The Sho family home was located on a rise overlooking the entire port. It was undoubtedly an impressive residence in its prime, but now, it was no more than a dilapidated hovel that looked far from livable. Its roof was sloped, and its wooden walls splintered. There were no doors, and its pillars were rotting.
Cho walked past the decaying house and headed around the back. A shingle-roofed hut stood there with a straw curtain hanging at its entrance.
“Are you there, ma’am?” he called out.
“Is that you, Cho? What’s the problem?” came a reluctant voice from inside.
“You’ve got a visitor. Two big shots from the imperial capital.”
“Big shots” is bit of an overstatement, thought Shiki as he waited for the old woman’s response.
“The imperial capital…?” She poked her head out from behind the straw curtain. With deep, creased wrinkles nearly obscuring her eyes, the woman had an eccentric look to her. Her dry, white hair was tied back, and she wore a necklace of shells and animal fangs around her neck.
“You don’t want me to tell your fortune for you, do you?” she asked, staring suspiciously at Shiki and Senri.
Her gaze then settled on Shiki’s arm. “I don’t do exorcisms, you know,” she added, startling him, and prompting the man to clutch onto his sleeve. Could she see his sister’s hand?
Cho waved his hand in front of his face dismissively. “They’re not here for fortunes or an exorcism! They want to ask you about old folktales.”
“Folktales?” The old woman looked even more suspicious now. “Whyever would you want to do that?”
“We’re investigating the legend of the underwater volcano,” Senri said, taking a step toward her.
The old woman looked up at him. “The underwater volcano…” “Yes—to be specific, whether anything happened on this island roughly a thousand years ago in connection to it.” The woman’s eyes opened wider at that.
“You know something, don’t you?” Senri’s tone of voice was calm and unruffled.
The woman glared at him. “What are you going to do with this information?”
“I’m going to use it to save a young girl.”
The woman was dumbfounded. Once she realized Senri was serious and not just making a joke, she relaxed her brow, relieved.
“I still can’t understand what this is all about, but I can share a folktale or two, at least,” she said. “If you can tolerate a dirty home, then come on in.”
As soon as they went inside, it became apparent that “dirty” wasn’t an exaggeration. The small room had nothing but straw mats covering its earthen floor, and even those were blackened with mold. There was a water jug and an iron pot sitting nearby, alongside several baskets containing leaves, roots, and what looked like dried wood. There were also many bundles of plants and branches hanging from ropes suspended from the beams overhead. A strange medicinal smell was in the air—presumably coming from those.
Senri looked around the room. “These are medicinal plants for herbal remedies—licorice, gardenia fruit, and peppermint leaves… Did you pick them yourself ? That must have been hard work.” He probably recognized the plants so quickly because of his own health issues.
“I buy them from sea sparrows. It’d be tough for me to venture into the mountains at my age.”
“Oh, is that right? I still haven’t met any sea sparrows,” he commented.
“On this island, they take residence in caves when they come ashore. If you’d like to meet them, you should.”
Once again, Senri’s insatiable fascination with an endless amount of topics had caused him to veer off topic.
“Never mind that,” interrupted Shiki. “What about the underwater volcano?”
“Oh yes, let’s start with that,” said Senri, not even flinching as he sat down on one of the moldy mats.
Shiki lowered himself beside him, and upon seeing that, the old woman seated herself opposite them. She held onto a nearby jug for support as she wearily lowered herself to the floor, most likely because she had bad knees. Cho stood near the entrance, looking bored.
“They say that the Sho lineage descended from the sea god,” the old woman began, fiddling with her necklace of shells and fangs.
She then closed her eyes, as if attempting to recall the distant past.
“A long, long time ago, we presided over divine rites as the sea god’s oracles and assisted the island’s rulers. We did that for generations. This is a trading island, so it’s essential that people can travel safely by sea. We’re superstitious people, so that’s why we pray to the sea god. Anyway, the family that conducted divine rituals was highly esteemed. On the other hand, ill-fated families were shunned. Just look at the Jo lineage, for example. They kept a stone that was meant to be offered up to the sea god and incurred the god’s rage. Their family was hit by disaster after disaster, and at that point, everyone stopped associating with them. They were made into social outcasts, and things gradually began to fall apart for them. That family should have abandoned this island and left right away.”
The old woman paused there. She reached for a fang on her necklace and stroked it.
“Did the same happen to your family?” Senri asked.
The old woman swiftly looked up at him.
“Yes. We enraged the sea god and were barred from conducting rituals. That would have been in my great-great-great-great grandmother’s generation, or thereabouts. One girl from our clan eloped with a foreign sea merchant, killed the local merchant she was engaged to, and fled—and that was that. She’d already got her ancestors’ approval to marry that man, after all. There are rituals for that.”
“We have those sorts of rituals in the imperial capital as well. We predict the auspiciousness of a marriage in the presence of ancestral spirits.”
“Exactly,” she said. “When I say she got her ancestors’ approval, what I mean is that she predicted how the marriage was going to play out. Calling it off at that point is an insult to your ancestors and is blasphemous toward the sea god. Blasphemy tends to carry a heavier punishment than murder—at least it does on this island. But that’s how our family met our downfall. Until that point, we were revered as living gods. In fact, the underwater volcano you’re so intrigued by is what gave us such a status in the first place.”
Stunned, Senri leaned in closer. “Please, do continue,” he said. “It’s not a story worth making a fuss about, mind you. Around
a thousand years ago, a girl from my family managed to calm the underwater volcano. That’s why we started being referred to as living gods.”
“She calmed it…? Had it erupted?” he asked.
“That’s right. Off the shore of this island, a volcano lies at the bottom of the sea. All of a sudden, black water started gushing out from the sea—high into the sky like a mountain—and a cascade of pebbles pelted down on the surrounding area. The seawater came to a boil and stones bounced on the sea’s surface. After the turbid water spouted out, vapor rose into the air, and the area was enshrouded in mist for three days and three nights. The volcano continued to erupt at intervals, filling the area with a peculiar stench. Red stones covered the water’s surface, and the sea grew murky. Clouds gathered and hung over the volcanic smoke, and the island was enveloped in darkness, day and night. Then, the girl—a shrine maiden—prayed to the sea god for help and successfully quelled the volcano. The fishermen, who hadn’t been able to go out and fish, as well as the sea merchants who hadn’t been able to sail, were over the moon. The girl was deified and swamped with offerings and donations, even long after the issue was dealt with. From then on, this family’s shrine maidens were treated with great respect—or at least, until that elopement.”
The last few words that the old woman uttered were teeming with resentment.
“She betrayed this island. Its people turned on the Sho family overnight and persecuted us. People even started questioning whether the underwater volcano ever erupted at all, claiming that it was all a lie and the whole thing never happened. By that time, there was nobody left who witnessed it with their own eyes, so there was no way to argue otherwise. That’s why the people who live here today know nothing about the eruption. Even I, as I tell this story, am not entirely certain what’s true and what’s not.”
The old lady hung her head and fidgeted with her necklace using her fingertips.
“No, there must have been an eruption,” said Senri. “That’s the reason everybody knows that there’s a volcano there in the first place. There are still several legends circulating about it.”
“Is that right?” The woman looked up at him with her narrow eyes and blinked. “I’ll take your word for that. You’re a big shot from the imperial capital, after all.”
“Whether I’m a big shot or not depends on your perspective, but…”
“What?”
“I don’t have any authority, so I’m of no use to anybody who wants me to use my influence to assist them,” Senri admitted.
The old woman chuckled. “That only makes you more trustworthy in my eyes.”
Senri smiled at her. Shiki simply watched on in stunned silence.
This man truly is one of a kind, he thought.
Whether it was the head of the Jo family or this eccentric old woman, Senri had a gift for putting people at ease. He didn’t coerce them into opening up to him—instead, he coaxed their walls into dissolving like snow slowly melting in the sun, and they willingly opened their hearts to him.
No wonder His Majesty puts such trust in him.
Once the woman had stopped laughing, her face suddenly turned serious. “I’m only saying this because it’s you, and nobody else would ever believe me, but…”
“What is it?”
“Lately, the waters have been getting rougher. Many boats are delaying their departures from the port. More sailors are soliciting my fortune-telling services and buying medicines from me in order to stave off their boredom than usual. I’m very grateful for the business, but…”
“Do you have any idea why the waves have gotten like that?”
The old woman lowered her gaze as she diffidently fidgeted with her necklace. “It usually indicates that the sea god is on the rampage.”
“The sea god?” he asked.
“I’m still a shrine maiden—even if I am a poor excuse for one. I can feel these things. It’s terrifying. I’d prefer to believe that this isn’t an omen of an impending catastrophe, but that possibility is still playing on my mind… I’m scared.”
The old woman’s voice was almost a whisper as she made her confession. She was clutching onto her necklace for dear life.