1 Lishi shu'Ling

Lishi knelt down alongside the bed, smiling determinedly at the motionless, unresponsive body under the white linen sheet. She took the woman's hands: clammy and limp, the loose skin netted with fine wrinkles. "Mamaqin," Lishi whispered, then spoke her name, since Lishi thought she sometimes responded better to that. "Tao, I'm here."

Eyelids fluttered but did not open, and Tao's fingers twitched once in Lishi's hand but failed to clasp hers in return. "It's nearly First Ring," Lishi continued, "and I've come to pray with you, Mamaqin." The wind-horns sounded plaintively from the Old Shrine dome at the same moment, muffled by distance and blurred with echoes from the intervening buildings. Ana glanced up; beyond the curtains, the sun glazed the rooftops of the city. "Do you hear the horns, Mamaqin? Listen to them, and I'll pray for both of us."

Lishi placed her mamaqin's hands together just under her throat, then clasped her own hands to forehead. She tried to pray, but her mind refused to calm itself. The comforting routine of the morning prayers was diluted with memories: of Hu'Torii shu'Chang's rebukes, of her fading memories of the time before the Cold Fever left her mamaqin helpless and unresponsive, of the happier times before Lishui had to bear the guilt of what she did nearly every morning just to keep her mamaqin alive. "Forgive me, Inari," she said, as she always did, wondering whether He heard, wondering when He would punish her for her impertinence— because that was what the Confession, the code of rules governing the Inarian Faith, insisted must inevitably happen. Inari was a stern God, and He would insist that Lishi pay for her impertinence in subverting His intentions. "Forgive me ..."

She wondered whether she spoke to Inari or to her mamaqin.

She began to chant, the words coming unbidden: guttural nonsense syllables that were not the rigid forms Hu'Torii shu'Chang taught her. Her hands moved with the chant, as if she were dancing with her fingers alone. Even before Papaqin had sent her to the Old Shrine to become an acolyte, even before she'd begun to learn how to channel the power of Misogi, she'd been able to do this.

And even then, she'd known it was something she needed to hide.

She'd listened to the torii thundering their admonitions from the High Oratory enough to realize that. Hu'Torii shu'Chang, the Instructor an'Acolyte, was just as blunt and direct: "A torii does not thwart Inari's Will unpunished ..." or "To use the Misogi for your own desires is forbidden ..." or "The Confession is clear on this. Read it, and if the harshness of it gives you chills, it should."

Lishi told herself that she wasn't using the Misogi for herself, but for her mamaqin. She told herself that if it were truly Inari's Will that Tao die, well, Inari certainly had the power to make that happen no matter what small efforts she might produce to keep her alive. She told herself that if Inari had not wanted her to do this, He would not have given her the Gift so early.

Somehow, it never quite convinced. She suspected that Inari had already chosen her punishment. She already knew His displeasure.

She shaped the Misogi now, quickly. She could feel the cold power of what the torii called the Shadow World rising between her moving hands, and her chant and the patterns she formed sent tendrils of energy surging toward her mamaqin. As the Misogi touched the prone body, Lishi felt the familiar shock of connection. There was a hint of her mamaqin's consciousness lost somewhere far below, and she felt that if she wished, she might, she might be able to pull her entirely back.

But that would have been truly wrong, and it would be too obvious. So, as she had done for the last few years, she used just a touch of the Misogi, enough to ensure that her mamaqin would not sink any further away from life, enough for her to know that Tao would live for another few days longer.

And she let the Misogi go. She stopped her chanting, her hands dropped to her sides. The guilt—as always—surged over her like the spring flood of the Yellow River, and with it came the payment for using the Misogi: a muscular exhaustion as severe as if she had been up all day laboring at some impossible physical task—once more, she would be fighting an insistent compulsion to sleep as she listened to Hu'Torii shu'Chang's lectures. She clasped hands to forehead again and prayed for Inari's understanding and forgiveness.

"Lishi? Are you with your mamaqin?"

She heard her papaqin open the door to the bedroom. "So quickly, Inari?" she thought. "Is this what I must bear for what I do?" Lishi bit her lip and squeezed her eyes shut, refusing to let herself cry.

"I know your presence comforts your mamaqin," her papaqin said softly, coming up behind her. Deng shu'Ling had a voice that purred and growled, and once she'd loved to hear him talk. She would curl up in his lap and ask him to tell her a story, anything, just so she could lay her head against his broad chest and listen to the rumble of his deep voice.

Once...

She felt his hand on her shoulder, stroking the soft fabric of her jōa where it gathered. The hand followed the curve of her spine from neck to the middle of her back. His hand slid along the curve of her hip. She closed her eyes, hearing him half-kneel alongside her. "I miss her, too," he whispered. "I don't know what I'd do if I were to lose you, too, my little bird." She wouldn't look at him, but she felt him as a warmth along her side, and now his hand slid along the jōa's folds to where the cloth swelled over her breasts. His fingers cupped her.

She stood abruptly, and his hand dropped away. He was looking down at the floor, not at her nor at Tao. "I have to leave for class, Papaqin," Lishi said. "Hu'Torii shu'Cheng said we must be there early today..."