Hawk in Chains
By
Toshiya Kamei
“Inari, darling, do you want me to do your makeup?” I asked, glancing at our reflections in the mirror at the vanity table. The sunlight shone across my long, oval face, exposing a web of blood vessels pulsating beneath my near-translucent skin. Inari possessed a feral sort of beauty, the sort only accentuated by a lack of makeup, but I couldn’t resist the urge to add an extra touch to her natural looks.
“Yes, Hinoe.” Inari gave a slight nod, and a glint of warmth flickered in her chestnut eyes. My name derived from my birth year—Hinoe-Uma or the Fire Horse. It was an ominous year, especially for girls, as many believed Hinoe-Uma girls would grow up to murder their husbands. The most famous, or rather the most infamous of all was Yaoya Oshichi, a lovesick girl burned at the stake for arson. That was also the year I celebrated my mizuage, my deflowering ceremony.
Inari fidgeted and shifted in her seiza position, apparently uncomfortable on the tatami floor. There was an untamed air about her, and she carried herself like a caged animal. When I found her at the Inari Shrine in the Hongo district a week ago, she stood in a stupor beside a stone statue of a sitting kitsune. She seemed famished, and I took her home to feed her. I asked what her name was, but she said she didn’t have one. No name meant no past. Like a blank sheet of paper. I decided to call her Inari after the guardian fox. Danna-sama treated her as if she was my servant. He acted as if she didn’t exist most of the time, and he never addressed her by Inari or any other name. When he grunted in her direction, she knew she was being summoned.
I mixed the oshiroi with water in a container, and the floral scent of the powder wafted to my nose.
“Sweet, juicy suika, fresh, ripe!” The cry of a street vendor hawking watermelons echoed in the distance, and my mind drifted back to the Kyoto geisha house of my girlhood.
“I was a maiko in the Gion district,” I said, recalling my days as an apprentice. “My onee-san taught me how to do my hair and makeup. I was in love with her. How naïve of me to think she would reciprocate my feelings!” My face felt scorched, and I brought my palms to my cheeks. “We savored suika slices after our lessons.” My mouth watered, and I swallowed.
Shortly after I turned nine, a long drought shrouded my natal village, and poverty forced my father to sell me to the okiya. My initiation into the hanamachi at such a tender age put an abrupt end to my childhood, but I didn’t mind revealing my past, albeit in carefully curated doses, when the occasion called for it. Meanwhile, my attempts to learn anything about Inari bore no fruit. My questions incited nothing from her. Nothing except faint smiles. The past mattered less than the present to girls like us.
Before my virginity was auctioned off, I tearfully pleaded with my onee-san to deflower me. I mistook her kindness for something more, and she laughed off the idea. “Okaa-san would kill me if I damaged the precious merchandise.” She arched an ironic brow. “No one wants a Hinoe-Uma girl around. Talk about being cursed!” I knew unpopular geisha failing to earn sufficient ohana faced grim realities. Banishment from the okiya, in a worst-case scenario. Dark-clouded thoughts weighed heavy; the odds were stacked against me from the start.
Even so, I missed the sisterhood, the camaraderie among my fellow geisha, which, alas, ended when Danna-sama opted to set up house for me. Decades older than my father, he stank of graveyard mold. Stinginess was another fault of his. Danna-sama married well in his youth, but his haggish wife kept her purse strings tight; she would never allow her husband to lavish luxuries on his lowly concubine. His one saving grace, however, was his disregard for the Hinoe-Uma curse, and the best thing about him was his frequent absence; he spent the majority of his time in his office and, less frequently, in his posh Aoyama residence he shared with his family.
“You’ll love the oshiroi,” I said, forcing enthusiasm into my voice. “You’ll see.” The chalk-white skin tone was a mark of beauty.
Inari flashed her pearly teeth in a smile.
“You don’t wear ohaguro either,” I said, suddenly overconscious of my blackened teeth. A young woman who didn’t wear the common Edo cosmetics struck me as odd, but Inari’s beauty was still intoxicating.
I began to apply the oshiroi to her face, and she closed her eyes. I fought hard against the urge to kiss her. Her skin was tanned, and her nose peeled from sunburn. Her musty smell both allured and repulsed me. Her facial features looked more fox-like than human, and I suspected she was a yokai. A kitsune. I fantasized about stripping her sakura-patterned kimono to see if she had a tail.
Even so, I didn’t share my suspicion with Danna-sama. He wasn’t someone I could easily confide in. I feared him. Besides, I loved having Inari around, and I didn’t want to risk losing her. Perhaps I was already under her spell.
“Sweet, juicy suika!” The vendor’s cry grew louder.
“Come, Inari.” I took Inari’s hand and led her outside when I finished applying the oshiroi.
We slapped some watermelons to check for ripeness and took one home. Like the little girls we were never allowed to be, we sat side by side on the engawa facing the garden with suika slices in our hands. We were so close I could feel her warmth on my skin.
“The one who spits a seed the furthest wins!” Inari cried with childlike playfulness. With each spit, our knees grazed one another’s, and my pulse quickened despite myself.
“You have something there.” I reached for Inari’s face and brushed off a seed. Desire overcame me, and I leaned over for a kiss. She held a chunk of watermelon between her lips, and I bit off half of it. The juice ran down our faces as our tentative pecks turned into full-blown kisses. We found ourselves lost in each other’s embrace. With each caress, we kindled the flames of our burgeoning connection.
A sudden noise from the genkan made me jump. I heard the door slide open and shuffling footsteps approaching.
“It’s Donna-sama!” I whisper-shouted and pulled away from Inari.
At nightfall, I left Inari in the guestroom and retired to my room. While I drifted between consciousness and sleep, Danna-sama slipped into my futon. I groaned, rolled over, and turned my back to him.
“What’s the matter?” Danna-sama growled.
“Sorry, darling, I have a splitting headache,” I said with a grimace. I didn’t bother to open my eyes. “Would you mind leaving me alone?”
Danna-sama stood with a heavy sigh and left. I knew he was going home and spend the night with his wife. It was my turn to sigh, but mine was a great sigh of relief.
As I drifted into sleep again, something else crawled into my futon. I recognized Inari’s scent, that mixture of sweat and dirt. I groped in the darkness, and something furry brushed against my fingers. A bushy tail dangled behind her. I grabbed her tail and stroked it, and it hardened in my grasp. She moaned with every pump of my hand. My body pressed against hers, so close that our legs scissored together, our thighs touching. Her body heat enveloped me, and my senses heightened to a point where I could almost anticipate her movements. We continued to rock into each other until we both reached our peaks.
At dawn, I sat in front of the vanity table and pulled down my kimono to check if there was any bruising. I looked in the mirror and saw a hickey under my collar bone. Unfortunately, I was out of the oshiroi to hide the bruise.
“Do you see this, Inari?” I said, frowning at my reflection. Inari stirred on the futon, and I watched as she rose on hand and knee to circle her warm resting spot before settling again. .She exposed her tanned stomach to the room, and the vulnerability of the act reminded me of an animal, after days or weeks of attrition, finally letting its guard down.
Her smell, as pungent as the odor of a wild beast, still lingered on my skin, in my hair. “Please be careful next time. I bruise easily.”
“I’m sorry,” she said with a yawn.
“I hate to rush you this way, but you have to leave now.”
She stood, stooped, and kissed my forehead before she left.
In the evening, Danna-sama returned and mounted a hanging scroll on a wall in my room. The scroll depicted a hawk sitting on a wooden perch. The majestic bird regarded the viewer with glaring eyes as if in search of prey. A closer look at the sumi-e painting revealed Emperor Bunmei’s signature in one corner.
“What’s that for?” I asked, struggling to keep my voice from cracking. I wondered if Danna-sama suspected something. Perhaps he detected Inari’s smell on my skin. Maybe our bodies gave off pheromones like bitches in heat. I was treading a tightrope, regardless, and the danger of being discovered unsettled me.
“It’s to ward off evil spirits,” he said. “Monk Soho’s advice.”
The hawk’s sharp eyes seemed to gleam, and I felt like I was being watched. I tried to slow my heartbeat, worried the bird might hear my flighty heart.
That night, I waited for Inari as long as I could, but fatigue eventually won, and I succumbed to the lure of sleep.
Inari joined me in the kitchen the following morning as I fried leftover brown rice with scrambled eggs and cut green onions.
“I went to your room last night, but I had to leave,” she said.
“What happened?”
“That scroll is enchanted.”
“Enchanted?”
“That hawk came to life. It glared at me and flapped its wings, threatening to attack me. Luckily, the bird is chained to the perch, and it couldn’t fly.” She paused for a moment, and I looked up from the onion I chopped, the meat of it stringy from the knife’s dull edge. Inari moved to the window, her back to me.
“It was a close call,” she said, and the blunt words were a hand around my throat.
We went back to my room to examine the scroll. The hawk flew upward until the chain attached to its foot jerked him back, rattling and clinking.
“It gives me the creeps,” I said. Something like fear danced in Inari’s gaze, and her frown matched mine.
“What should we do?” I asked.
“We have to destroy it,” Inari finally said.
“No, you’re not going to do that!” A crude voice thundered from behind us, and Danna-sama stormed in. He grabbed my wrist and twisted it away from my body. His grip tightened. He was strong despite his old age.
“Please stop!” I cried. “You’re hurting me!”
He pulled down my kimono and exposed my shoulders. When he saw the hickey, rage distorted his face into a hideous grimace.
“Whore! Witch!” Danna-sama screamed, hurling insults. I trembled. He lit a torch and brought it close to the painting. The flame singed the painted chain and made the metal melt. I stared in disbelief as droplets of molten steel dripped like tears and smudged the ink. The hawk took one darting look at Inari and spread its wings. To my horror, it was free.
Before any of us could do anything, the hawk flew out of the scroll and hurled itself against Inari. Her shrieks pierced the air, and I covered my ears. The hawk’s talons tore her skin, and blood painted the floor crimson. A stream of hot urine ran down my legs and pooled at my feet. I froze in fear. Inari collapsed, and she twitched a little before she lay still.
A white-hot fury exploded in my chest, and a sudden rush of tears blinded me. “I’ll burn down the house!” I yelled.
“Have you gone mad?” Danna-sama grabbed my shoulders and shook me hard.
My hand became warm and began to glow red like a hot coal. I cried in alarm. An ember-colored mare—the size of a teacup—leaped from my palm and burst into flame.
“Damn! Hinoe!” Danna-sama reared back and let go of my arm. The blaze swept fast along the floor and swallowed everything in its path. The flames licked the walls and climbed to the ceiling.
My hand throbbed, and I heard a crash, Danna-sama crying out in pain, but I couldn’t turn around. I couldn’t move. The crackles and pops of the fire assaulted my ears, and smoke singed my nostrils. A particularly loud crack forced my head up, and I knew the roof was about to collapse.
Finally, my legs cooperated, and I stooped to drag Inari’s body back and out of the room, but as soon as I touched her, she crumbled into dust as if she were stone. I swallowed my gasp, and I tasted salty tears on my lips. The flames rose high, and I swore I heard a piercing neigh, saw a flash of molten eyes peering out at me from the fire.
I turned and ran, coughing as I went. The edge of my kimono was alight, and I cursed as I watched Danna-sama’s prone body get enveloped in thick smoke. Another loud crack, and I screamed when a part of the roof smashed down in front of me—embers flying everywhere. It was hot, impossibly hot, and I groaned in pain as I sank to my knees. I didn’t remember closing my eyes, but an inky, awful darkness filled my vision, and then nothing at all.
I blinked a few times, trying to regain my senses, and found myself lying in the midst of the churned ruins. Looters stepped over my body as they swarmed like hyenas and rummaged through the debris for whatever they could find. I was singed, my face smeared with soot, but I was otherwise unharmed. My heart ached for my poor Inari, and when I blinked, I saw her deep red blood. A flash of wicked, hooked talons. The fear in Inari’s eyes.
As if I summoned it, a bundle of feathers darted from behind a grove of collapsed beams. The hawk cried once, and as it circled in midair, it stared at me—right at me and through, down to whatever was left of my seared soul—before it soared into a gray sky.
Toshiya Kamei (she/her) is a queer Asian writer who takes inspiration from fairy tales, folklore, and mythology. Her short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Cutleaf, Mount Hope, and New Croton Review. Her piece “Hungry Moon” won Apex Magazine’s October 2022 Microfiction Contest.
By
Toshiya Kamei
“Inari, darling, do you want me to do your makeup?” I asked, glancing at our reflections in the mirror at the vanity table. The sunlight shone across my long, oval face, exposing a web of blood vessels pulsating beneath my near-translucent skin. Inari possessed a feral sort of beauty, the sort only accentuated by a lack of makeup, but I couldn’t resist the urge to add an extra touch to her natural looks.
“Yes, Hinoe.” Inari gave a slight nod, and a glint of warmth flickered in her chestnut eyes. My name derived from my birth year—Hinoe-Uma or the Fire Horse. It was an ominous year, especially for girls, as many believed Hinoe-Uma girls would grow up to murder their husbands. The most famous, or rather the most infamous of all was Yaoya Oshichi, a lovesick girl burned at the stake for arson. That was also the year I celebrated my mizuage, my deflowering ceremony.
Inari fidgeted and shifted in her seiza position, apparently uncomfortable on the tatami floor. There was an untamed air about her, and she carried herself like a caged animal. When I found her at the Inari Shrine in the Hongo district a week ago, she stood in a stupor beside a stone statue of a sitting kitsune. She seemed famished, and I took her home to feed her. I asked what her name was, but she said she didn’t have one. No name meant no past. Like a blank sheet of paper. I decided to call her Inari after the guardian fox. Danna-sama treated her as if she was my servant. He acted as if she didn’t exist most of the time, and he never addressed her by Inari or any other name. When he grunted in her direction, she knew she was being summoned.
I mixed the oshiroi with water in a container, and the floral scent of the powder wafted to my nose.
“Sweet, juicy suika, fresh, ripe!” The cry of a street vendor hawking watermelons echoed in the distance, and my mind drifted back to the Kyoto geisha house of my girlhood.
“I was a maiko in the Gion district,” I said, recalling my days as an apprentice. “My onee-san taught me how to do my hair and makeup. I was in love with her. How naïve of me to think she would reciprocate my feelings!” My face felt scorched, and I brought my palms to my cheeks. “We savored suika slices after our lessons.” My mouth watered, and I swallowed.
Shortly after I turned nine, a long drought shrouded my natal village, and poverty forced my father to sell me to the okiya. My initiation into the hanamachi at such a tender age put an abrupt end to my childhood, but I didn’t mind revealing my past, albeit in carefully curated doses, when the occasion called for it. Meanwhile, my attempts to learn anything about Inari bore no fruit. My questions incited nothing from her. Nothing except faint smiles. The past mattered less than the present to girls like us.
Before my virginity was auctioned off, I tearfully pleaded with my onee-san to deflower me. I mistook her kindness for something more, and she laughed off the idea. “Okaa-san would kill me if I damaged the precious merchandise.” She arched an ironic brow. “No one wants a Hinoe-Uma girl around. Talk about being cursed!” I knew unpopular geisha failing to earn sufficient ohana faced grim realities. Banishment from the okiya, in a worst-case scenario. Dark-clouded thoughts weighed heavy; the odds were stacked against me from the start.
Even so, I missed the sisterhood, the camaraderie among my fellow geisha, which, alas, ended when Danna-sama opted to set up house for me. Decades older than my father, he stank of graveyard mold. Stinginess was another fault of his. Danna-sama married well in his youth, but his haggish wife kept her purse strings tight; she would never allow her husband to lavish luxuries on his lowly concubine. His one saving grace, however, was his disregard for the Hinoe-Uma curse, and the best thing about him was his frequent absence; he spent the majority of his time in his office and, less frequently, in his posh Aoyama residence he shared with his family.
“You’ll love the oshiroi,” I said, forcing enthusiasm into my voice. “You’ll see.” The chalk-white skin tone was a mark of beauty.
Inari flashed her pearly teeth in a smile.
“You don’t wear ohaguro either,” I said, suddenly overconscious of my blackened teeth. A young woman who didn’t wear the common Edo cosmetics struck me as odd, but Inari’s beauty was still intoxicating.
I began to apply the oshiroi to her face, and she closed her eyes. I fought hard against the urge to kiss her. Her skin was tanned, and her nose peeled from sunburn. Her musty smell both allured and repulsed me. Her facial features looked more fox-like than human, and I suspected she was a yokai. A kitsune. I fantasized about stripping her sakura-patterned kimono to see if she had a tail.
Even so, I didn’t share my suspicion with Danna-sama. He wasn’t someone I could easily confide in. I feared him. Besides, I loved having Inari around, and I didn’t want to risk losing her. Perhaps I was already under her spell.
“Sweet, juicy suika!” The vendor’s cry grew louder.
“Come, Inari.” I took Inari’s hand and led her outside when I finished applying the oshiroi.
We slapped some watermelons to check for ripeness and took one home. Like the little girls we were never allowed to be, we sat side by side on the engawa facing the garden with suika slices in our hands. We were so close I could feel her warmth on my skin.
“The one who spits a seed the furthest wins!” Inari cried with childlike playfulness. With each spit, our knees grazed one another’s, and my pulse quickened despite myself.
“You have something there.” I reached for Inari’s face and brushed off a seed. Desire overcame me, and I leaned over for a kiss. She held a chunk of watermelon between her lips, and I bit off half of it. The juice ran down our faces as our tentative pecks turned into full-blown kisses. We found ourselves lost in each other’s embrace. With each caress, we kindled the flames of our burgeoning connection.
A sudden noise from the genkan made me jump. I heard the door slide open and shuffling footsteps approaching.
“It’s Donna-sama!” I whisper-shouted and pulled away from Inari.
At nightfall, I left Inari in the guestroom and retired to my room. While I drifted between consciousness and sleep, Danna-sama slipped into my futon. I groaned, rolled over, and turned my back to him.
“What’s the matter?” Danna-sama growled.
“Sorry, darling, I have a splitting headache,” I said with a grimace. I didn’t bother to open my eyes. “Would you mind leaving me alone?”
Danna-sama stood with a heavy sigh and left. I knew he was going home and spend the night with his wife. It was my turn to sigh, but mine was a great sigh of relief.
As I drifted into sleep again, something else crawled into my futon. I recognized Inari’s scent, that mixture of sweat and dirt. I groped in the darkness, and something furry brushed against my fingers. A bushy tail dangled behind her. I grabbed her tail and stroked it, and it hardened in my grasp. She moaned with every pump of my hand. My body pressed against hers, so close that our legs scissored together, our thighs touching. Her body heat enveloped me, and my senses heightened to a point where I could almost anticipate her movements. We continued to rock into each other until we both reached our peaks.
At dawn, I sat in front of the vanity table and pulled down my kimono to check if there was any bruising. I looked in the mirror and saw a hickey under my collar bone. Unfortunately, I was out of the oshiroi to hide the bruise.
“Do you see this, Inari?” I said, frowning at my reflection. Inari stirred on the futon, and I watched as she rose on hand and knee to circle her warm resting spot before settling again. .She exposed her tanned stomach to the room, and the vulnerability of the act reminded me of an animal, after days or weeks of attrition, finally letting its guard down.
Her smell, as pungent as the odor of a wild beast, still lingered on my skin, in my hair. “Please be careful next time. I bruise easily.”
“I’m sorry,” she said with a yawn.
“I hate to rush you this way, but you have to leave now.”
She stood, stooped, and kissed my forehead before she left.
In the evening, Danna-sama returned and mounted a hanging scroll on a wall in my room. The scroll depicted a hawk sitting on a wooden perch. The majestic bird regarded the viewer with glaring eyes as if in search of prey. A closer look at the sumi-e painting revealed Emperor Bunmei’s signature in one corner.
“What’s that for?” I asked, struggling to keep my voice from cracking. I wondered if Danna-sama suspected something. Perhaps he detected Inari’s smell on my skin. Maybe our bodies gave off pheromones like bitches in heat. I was treading a tightrope, regardless, and the danger of being discovered unsettled me.
“It’s to ward off evil spirits,” he said. “Monk Soho’s advice.”
The hawk’s sharp eyes seemed to gleam, and I felt like I was being watched. I tried to slow my heartbeat, worried the bird might hear my flighty heart.
That night, I waited for Inari as long as I could, but fatigue eventually won, and I succumbed to the lure of sleep.
Inari joined me in the kitchen the following morning as I fried leftover brown rice with scrambled eggs and cut green onions.
“I went to your room last night, but I had to leave,” she said.
“What happened?”
“That scroll is enchanted.”
“Enchanted?”
“That hawk came to life. It glared at me and flapped its wings, threatening to attack me. Luckily, the bird is chained to the perch, and it couldn’t fly.” She paused for a moment, and I looked up from the onion I chopped, the meat of it stringy from the knife’s dull edge. Inari moved to the window, her back to me.
“It was a close call,” she said, and the blunt words were a hand around my throat.
We went back to my room to examine the scroll. The hawk flew upward until the chain attached to its foot jerked him back, rattling and clinking.
“It gives me the creeps,” I said. Something like fear danced in Inari’s gaze, and her frown matched mine.
“What should we do?” I asked.
“We have to destroy it,” Inari finally said.
“No, you’re not going to do that!” A crude voice thundered from behind us, and Danna-sama stormed in. He grabbed my wrist and twisted it away from my body. His grip tightened. He was strong despite his old age.
“Please stop!” I cried. “You’re hurting me!”
He pulled down my kimono and exposed my shoulders. When he saw the hickey, rage distorted his face into a hideous grimace.
“Whore! Witch!” Danna-sama screamed, hurling insults. I trembled. He lit a torch and brought it close to the painting. The flame singed the painted chain and made the metal melt. I stared in disbelief as droplets of molten steel dripped like tears and smudged the ink. The hawk took one darting look at Inari and spread its wings. To my horror, it was free.
Before any of us could do anything, the hawk flew out of the scroll and hurled itself against Inari. Her shrieks pierced the air, and I covered my ears. The hawk’s talons tore her skin, and blood painted the floor crimson. A stream of hot urine ran down my legs and pooled at my feet. I froze in fear. Inari collapsed, and she twitched a little before she lay still.
A white-hot fury exploded in my chest, and a sudden rush of tears blinded me. “I’ll burn down the house!” I yelled.
“Have you gone mad?” Danna-sama grabbed my shoulders and shook me hard.
My hand became warm and began to glow red like a hot coal. I cried in alarm. An ember-colored mare—the size of a teacup—leaped from my palm and burst into flame.
“Damn! Hinoe!” Danna-sama reared back and let go of my arm. The blaze swept fast along the floor and swallowed everything in its path. The flames licked the walls and climbed to the ceiling.
My hand throbbed, and I heard a crash, Danna-sama crying out in pain, but I couldn’t turn around. I couldn’t move. The crackles and pops of the fire assaulted my ears, and smoke singed my nostrils. A particularly loud crack forced my head up, and I knew the roof was about to collapse.
Finally, my legs cooperated, and I stooped to drag Inari’s body back and out of the room, but as soon as I touched her, she crumbled into dust as if she were stone. I swallowed my gasp, and I tasted salty tears on my lips. The flames rose high, and I swore I heard a piercing neigh, saw a flash of molten eyes peering out at me from the fire.
I turned and ran, coughing as I went. The edge of my kimono was alight, and I cursed as I watched Danna-sama’s prone body get enveloped in thick smoke. Another loud crack, and I screamed when a part of the roof smashed down in front of me—embers flying everywhere. It was hot, impossibly hot, and I groaned in pain as I sank to my knees. I didn’t remember closing my eyes, but an inky, awful darkness filled my vision, and then nothing at all.
I blinked a few times, trying to regain my senses, and found myself lying in the midst of the churned ruins. Looters stepped over my body as they swarmed like hyenas and rummaged through the debris for whatever they could find. I was singed, my face smeared with soot, but I was otherwise unharmed. My heart ached for my poor Inari, and when I blinked, I saw her deep red blood. A flash of wicked, hooked talons. The fear in Inari’s eyes.
As if I summoned it, a bundle of feathers darted from behind a grove of collapsed beams. The hawk cried once, and as it circled in midair, it stared at me—right at me and through, down to whatever was left of my seared soul—before it soared into a gray sky.
Toshiya Kamei (she/her) is a queer Asian writer who takes inspiration from fairy tales, folklore, and mythology. Her short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Cutleaf, Mount Hope, and New Croton Review. Her piece “Hungry Moon” won Apex Magazine’s October 2022 Microfiction Contest.
