Holy crap, but is it ever hard to write that damned Ishi no Torii. I know that the little girl is being abused, but she doesn't know it. So she's still loving toward the uncle that's abusing her.
I keep wondering who on earth is going to be up for reading a story like this. It really is very dark, and full of haunting images. But then my dad read it and said it was a beautiful story so far, so that was a huge relief. It's probably harder for me to write than for an average person to read.
Torii is the name of those beautiful, tall red wooden gates that stand at the entrance into a Shinto shrine. Ishi no torii means the first of a series of them, the first gate unto sacred ground.
The spirit realm exactly mirrors the mortal realm, and where the north pole would be, there's instead the gateway into the Sacred Realm, or heaven. It's a hidden gate and forbidden ground. That's the Ishi no Torii in my story. And yes, in the south pole, there is a hidden gateway into the underworld, also under lock down.
Tenshio is the guardian of one of four floating mountains. On each mountain is a shrine and from each shrine issues one of the four winds. The winds originate from the Sacred Realm, and are therefore a holy symbol, so the fountain head of the winds are guarded, lest someone come along and try and tap the spiritual energies found there.
The mountains float over the Mirror Planes, which looks exactly like earth, and on which all the spiritual drama acts itself out. There are four groups populating the spirit realm. First, are the daemons. And by daemons, I don't mean demons.
Daemons are originally a Greek concept, they were a race of beings that were just above man and slightly below the angels. But as you can tell from my ramen excerpt, my daemons will take their cue from the Japan, not ancient Greece. In fact, much of the feel of the spirit realm will be drawn from Japanese legend and folk tales.
My daemons are this very cool (I think) combination of priest and samurai. They're priests in that they are responsible for places of importance, such as the floating mountains, and they're samurai in that they are warriors obedient to the death, if absolutely necessary. They serve the Sacred Realm. There aren't many of them.
But they can be good or evil. My story will have some evil daemons, too.
Then there are a whole bunch of human ghosts who are, in one way or another, still tethered to the mortal realm, and can go in and out of the spirit realm at will. They have unfinished business back home that keeps them from ascending to the Sacred Realm. They either haunt someone they love or hate, or linger on because of huge emotional wounds that they are healing from.
So there's going to be like large, beautiful, pastoral nunneries where, for example, ghostly victims of violent murders and sexual abuse heal before finally being able to let go of the trauma and float up into the greater mystery beyond.
Of course, there's the flora and fauna that are native to the spirit realm. Ideas on that are still brewing, but I'm going to fill the entire landscape with things like fireflies that are actually little, living pieces of organic spirit, and the spirit foxes of Japanese mythology, who come out when it's rainy and sunny both, and owls with human faces, etc.
Lastly, there will be the manifestations of human actions in the mortal realm. So, one can assume that in places where the cities are located, there's going to be a maelstrom of caustic clouds, like the storms that swirl around Mars. And evil actions stalking through the wilds and kind actions popping up unexpectedly and other things like small, localized weather patterns.
I think. This is all in flux. I'll know more as I write more.
So, the story so far goes like this: Tenshio is severely wounded in battle, in fact, he loses his right hand. He transforms his loyal man at arms into a statue and throws himself into the mortal realm. His enemy, an evil daemon, can't follow. He gave up that ability in order to seek out more arcane and forbidden powers.
Tenshio ends up somewhere in upper New York state, in at the edge of Gilly's orchard, where he waits, conserving his energy and healing. (I know that technically he should commit seppuku at that point, but this is my story, and he's not really a samurai.)
Gilly finds him there, and cutely, (I believe) washes his savaged right arm in a mixture of peroxide and water, that she took from under the family sink and then binds it up with strips of pastel printed sheets. All this Tenshio mutely endures, much as he would if a ladybug had alighted on his hand.
He leaves, but he is forced to leave the statue of his man with Gilly, which is not ideal, considering that she's eight. But he has no idea how much damage his enemy might have inflicted in his mountain, nor does he have any experiencing being only left handed. He wants to go back alone, first.
When he comes back for the statue (a year, a month later? Maybe six months), Gilly begs him to take her with him. She may not consciously know she's being abused, but unconsciously, she longs for escape. Tenshio wouldn't, it's highly irregular. But he does because he feels obligated, since she took responsibility for one of his people.
He tells her that she can come for just a little while. Unfortunately, he is not well versed in the ways of young mortal children, or how very attractive a living human soul would be to the natives. They are like moths to a lamp. Little glowing chi bob around her, closer and closer and she ends up accidentally a swallowing a chi. (There's more to this story, but I'm not sure if I'm keeping it.)
So, now she's stuck. Which was, of course, the whole point. Tenshio must now take her across the Mirror planes to the Ishi no Torii, to get guidance from the gate keeper on how to send her back home. I will alternate between their journey and flashbacks of Gilly's past, slowly culminating in her realizing what happened to her at the same time that she faces it on the Mirror. I will lighten this by other scenes that hold the same whimsy at a ramen shop in the middle of no where on a floating mountain. I want whimsy to offset the haunting, dark qualities of the story.
I can't decide yet how long their journey will take, in terms of time, or if she returns home or not. I keep exploring both options, they both have interesting emotional ramifications.
Excerpt:
There was a quiet rustle of skirts and trousers as everyone sat down. It was a deeply respectful sound, an expectant, submissive hush as people lifted their shoulders and put their hands in their lap, or if they were men, leaned their arms along the back of an empty chair, or a chair which held a member of their family.
The sermon seemed to last forever. The girl sat on her chair, her hands gripping the sides tightly, her feet dangling. Sometimes she tipped her head up and stared into the round, glowing ceiling lights. Sometimes she stared into the flames that flickered around the straight, black suited legs of the pastor, as he stood in front of the fireplace.
During the concluding prayer, the girl squeezed her eyes shut, watching the blood red and livid orange shapes that danced in the darkness behind her eyelids. They were a welling and fading away of half seen faces with sightless eyes and helpless arms that reached out only to dwindle away.
Her mother grabbed her by the back of her blouse before she could dart away at the last amen.
“Where have you been?” she hissed into the girl’s ear. “Your knees are filthy.”
“I got lost,” the girl whispered, her feet coming back to earth.
That night, she twisted and turned on her narrow bed. The habit of obedience kept her tightly tethered there, though her mind ran rampant. The furniture of her room, the run down, second hand dresser, the battered toy chest and cheap, pink throw rug seemed foreign to her, a world that she had been dropped into by accident, only a subterfuge.
She knelt before the open window that her bed was pushed up against, a slight silhouette against the dim glow along the rim of the sky, where the moon was rising. It was a blood red moon, and its aura swallowed the stars on the eastern horizon. Her eyes had become accustomed to the darkness and she could see the shape of the pear tree far below her on the slope of the hill.
Her sleep that night was deep and dreamless. She lay on the sheets, her face covered in a thin film of sweat, her arms flung out, hands curled. A square of moonlight slid slowly across the walls of her room, and finally narrowed and disappeared in the early morning hours.
The morning released her from her bonds; she came upright with a gasp. Throwing the sheets aside, she pulled on a faded, cotton skirt and a short sleeved blouse. In a desperate, guilty silence, she darted about the house, gathering up the things she thought she might need, stuffing them into a spare pillow case.
Outside in the dawn, the young girl made her careful, determined way down the grassy hill, a bulky pillow case clutched in one arm and a plastic gallon jug of water in the other.
She wondered, when she passed into the mingled shadows of the orchard, if she would really see the creature again. Maybe there would be nothing there but shadows, the ground undisturbed. Maybe she would see the trampled grass, the spreading stain of old blood, and nothing else.
Excerpt:
“Where has my favorite niece been to, this morning?” asked some one, as she came up the gravel drive, between main building and the dairy barns.
Her eyes lit up with a shy joy when she saw it was her uncle. He was a tall, spare man with a narrow, hatched shaped face and murky eyes. His hands were greasy with oil, the same oil that stained his coveralls.
“How’d you get all wet?” he asked, a gleam surfacing in the opaque surface of his eyes. “What secret games have you been playing, down in the woods?”
Guilt and delight vied in the girl’s face. Hanging her head, she twisted her arms around in back of her and kicked at the dirt with her bare foot.
“Does my Gilly girl have a kiss for me this morning?” he asked, with an odd pitiable appeal in his voice.
