Chapter 24 — The Sorcerer And The Fox (1)

Across Hwa-guk there are said to stand more than thirty thousand Shinto shrines enshrining the god Inari.

Fushimi Inari Taisha is the head shrine of them all.
In authority and in divinity alike, it ranks among the Nijuni-sha, the twenty-two shrines that may be called the very pinnacle of Hwa-guk’s Shinto culture, and within those it is counted among the Joshichi-sha, seven shrines of higher standing still.

“How splendid.”
“And there are so many people.”

Shin Hweein and his thralls stood with their figures hidden by stealth-craft, the Ichiban Torii, the gate that marks the entrance to Fushimi Inari Taisha, directly before them.
Go straight on past it and a red, resplendent romon (a gate set beneath an upper tower) awaited, and the mountain they were soon to climb hid behind it, not yet even properly in view.

“Ichinomine, the first peak, is it? And where exactly is that?”
“Near the mountain’s summit. Were such a thing done anywhere near the shrine’s honden, surely Inari, who belongs among the great gods, would have taken measures one way or another.”

Even now, if anything, he could not understand why the matter had been left so utterly alone.
It was only here, with Mount Inari directly before him, that he grasped it at last.

When one stood in the chaotic, brimming current of the gods’ presences all mingled together, one could not fail to know.

‘To the people of Hwa-guk, the god Inari goes by several other names besides. Honwondorae has driven into precisely that gap. If their object is to work some mischief upon Aeshin, that alone would have been enough.’

Just as Shin Hweein, gauging the divine power flowing out from Mount Inari on which the shrine stood, at last grasped the whole of the matter and his face grew set, Leon asked him once more.

“Then would it not do simply to teleport ourselves directly to that place?”
“That cannot be done.”

Eulha, who only today had aided Shin Hweein no small amount with his space-shifting ability, answered for him, and wore an apologetic expression.

“This whole area is the domain of a god, so it isn’t easy to move about ignoring that. The deeper you go in especially, the worse the resistance gets. Your ordinary sorcerer won’t even be able to use his own ability.”
“And defy that resistance and run wild, and you come face-to-face with the god’s wrath. From a certain angle it is a somewhat rough warning, given so as not to provoke any unnecessary friction. …The trouble is that Honwondorae has ignored even that and gone ahead with brazen audacity.”

Shin Hweein, too, was confident that should he wish, he could marshal his sorcery and reach the mountaintop directly.
But he knew, of course, that doing so was inadvisable.

To muddy the divine precinct of Inari at the very moment he wished to make her his ally would do him no good.

“We shall have to walk to the summit. As politely as we can manage.”
“Is that so…. No, certainly we are quite all right, but. Ah, the master will be all right as well, then.”

— You idiot, read the room.

Flame-tail, who after very deep deliberation had decided to provisionally acknowledge Shin Hweein in his female state, growled toward Leon from where he was tucked in Hweein’s arms.
He might have acknowledged it, but from the standpoint of the creature, who prayed his master would return to his original form even a moment sooner, to be discussing the merits of his present body was an unforgivable act.

— Young master, look, they’re selling inari-zushi over there. It looks delicious.
— Moa. At a time like this, is finding food to eat what you ought to be —

At the critical juncture of whether or not they could pick up Honwondorae’s trail, whether or not they could learn even a little of the identity of this so-called overseer, Shin Hweein had been about to chide Geum Moa for talking of nothing but inari-zushi.
But in the next instant, realizing why it was that a shop selling inari-zushi should stand right before a shrine, he closed his mouth.

What is called yubu chobap, fried-tofu sushi, is in Hwa-guk’s language called inari-zushi, and the Inari here is, of course, the very same Inari as in the name of the god.

From of old, the people of Hwa-guk have believed the tale that foxes love fried things, and so they made a custom of offering up fried tofu to the foxes who are the god Inari’s messengers, and on that account the name came to attach itself even to fried-tofu sushi.

“Yes, let us buy a few inari-zushi, then. Plain fried tofu won’t do; it must be inari-zushi proper, no?”

— What carries the maker’s sincerity is, of course, inari-zushi rather than plain fried tofu, isn’t it.

To begin with, there was no chance a real fox actually liked fried food.
The reason fried tofu carried meaning as an offering was when it was directed at the messengers of the god Inari, the foxes, that is, the divine beasts.

“In that case, sincerity is what matters. Let us go buy some.”
“All of a sudden?”

If for long ages people had believed and offered it up to them, surely by now the foxes too must be heartily tired of it.
Yet there must be a reason Geum Moa was bringing it up now of all times.

Shin Hweein walked toward the inari-zushi shop in front of the station and asked Geum Moa,

“How many ought we buy?”

— As many as they have.

So they still all loved it, then, it seemed.

“Wait, master, you were just about to release your stealth, weren’t you. No, I’ll go buy them.”

Just then Eulha cut in with uncanny timing, restrained Shin Hweein, released his own stealth alone, and went revealing himself toward the shop at a dash.

“Buy as many as they have. The money is —”
“No problem!”

Eulha was rather striking in appearance, so people’s gazes turned his way; but since Fushimi Inari Taisha was such a famous tourist spot, the constant flow of people quickly let him slip out of sight.

“At this rate I worry that when things break out inside, there will be people who get swept up in it. It would be well if the Onmyo Bureau properly drew the people back.”
“It seems the word has already reached them inside. The flow of people moving about is little by little chang—”
“Picked up every last one they had!”

Before Leon had so much as finished trading a few words, Eulha returned, shouldering an enormous bag.

Shin Hweein took it briskly, in one hand no less, and wore a grave expression as he declared,

“Then, shall we begin our climb?”

They passed through the Ichiban Torii and headed for the romon.

With Shin Hweein at the center, on his left walked Eulha; the right was left open for the fickle house-fox.
In his arms, Flame-tail; on one shoulder, Arong in baby-bear form; on top of his head, Neuldam.
Leon following behind.

All bore themselves with composure, walking with the propriety of true shrine pilgrims.

— There are foxes on either side of the romon, young master.

“Mm.”

What symbolizes Fushimi Inari Taisha is the foxes, the god Inari’s messengers.
On the left of the romon stood a fox-statue with a key in its mouth, and on the right a fox-statue with a jewel.

Shin Hweein paused briefly before them and drew an inari-zushi from the bundle.
He thought to offer it up as it was, but on a hunch held it out first toward the right; when there was no sign whatever that anything meant to touch it, he clicked his tongue, tsk, and worked his own spiritual power into it.

Because his spiritual power, having taken the influence of Ushi-gozen, was somewhat more turbid than usual, he had to take care to filter it and send forth only the clean energy alone.
Of course, since his very capacity for handling spiritual power had been amplified too, the work took only an instant.

— Then, first, one bite for me.

Sure enough, no sooner had he finished the fastidious purification and laden the offering with cleansed spiritual power than someone, concealing their presence, pounced upon it, took a bite of the inari-zushi, and finding it greatly to their liking by the look of things, devoured it with a vigor that suggested they might lick even his fingers clean.

— Thank you for the meal!

“Yes. So this much is sufficient, is it.”

He took out two more inari-zushi in turn, laded them with spiritual power as he had done before, and offered up one each to the fox-statue on the left and to the fox-statue on the right.

It was an act for which, if any of the people round about happened to catch sight of it, they would have nothing to say should they try to seize him for defiling the shrine; but since Shin Hweein himself was hidden from view to begin with, and since the sushi vanished the moment it was placed before each shrine, there was no danger of being found out.

“Now then, let us climb. If you see a fox-statue, tell me.”
“Master, surely you don’t mean every time we see a fox-statue…?”
“It may be that the god Inari’s vital essence has waned, no? I had better look after them.”
“I do not understand.”

He could not heedlessly come forward in front of his master to obstruct him, yet Leon could not, by any stretch, hide his bewilderment.
At last passing through the romon and walking along the path that stretched toward the shrine’s honden, he asked plainly,

“This place is one where the countless people of Hwa-guk render up their faith of their own accord, is it not? Surely the chance that the god’s vital essence might wane is vanishingly slim. Of course, if one looks at it that way, then it makes no sense from the start that Honwondorae would have dared to work their mischief in so sacred a place.”
“Shirakiku-oo-kami.”
“…Hm? Is that a god’s name?”
“It is the name of the god enshrined at the lowest of the three peaks, Sannomine. A god, it is said, with potent efficacy in the arts, the entertainments, and the prospering of business.”
“Eh…? But, this place is the god Inari’s—”

Shin Hweein then went on, intoning the names of Aoki-oo-kami, enshrined at Ninomine, and of Suehiro-oo-kami, enshrined at Ichinomine, explaining each in turn.

“And do you think it ends with them? The path toward the summit forks in two; we shall be ascending by way of Sannomine and Ninomine, but on the opposite side there are many other shrines, and in each of them yet another god is enshrined. Even just at the Shin’ike we’ll come across along the way, there is a toad with the same name as Suehiro-oo-kami…”
“No, no. I see now what you are saying. Can it be that the Yaoyorozu (meaning very many in number) gods, the belief of the people of Hwa-guk that the divine dwells in all things. You mean that this made it difficult to gather all the power into a single god?”
“Yes, but surprisingly, there is a still more important reason than that.”

As they passed a fox-statue holding rice-ears in its mouth, Shin Hweein offered up to it sushi laden with spiritual power; and at his words, Leon slowly took on the look of someone about to weep.
In all that the master did there was meaning, but out of idle curiosity he had pried, and now he was being made to bear the consequence.

“Uka-no-mitama-no-kami. A goddess proper to Hwa-guk, signifying agriculture, grain, and abundance.”
“Enough already. Hm? Those somehow, I seem to remember hearing them only just a short while ago.”
“And, by another name, she is also called Inari-no-kami. That, of course, is a name attached later.”

Leon’s expression, hearing those words, turned strange.
But by then the path of the Senbon Torii had already begun, and the party, with no way to turn back, was reduced to keeping its formation and pressing silently forward.

“Ah.”
“It begins from here, does it.”

And, in time with that, the party’s stealth was lifted all at once, and their out-of-the-ordinary figures were laid bare for all the world to see.

But strangely enough, the tourists packed densely all around them still did not seem to see them, each prattling on amongst themselves, or cursing at the shrine attendants who had suddenly closed off entry to ordinary visitors, all the while walking past them as though brushing them aside.

“And so this Fushimi Inari Taisha is also, in fact, the head shrine of the shrines enshrining Uka-no-mitama.”

He offered up another inari-zushi to a fox-statue holding a scroll in its mouth.
For an instant it seemed as though the fox-statue had broken into a broad smile, and Shin Hweein, behind his mask, smiled faintly along with it.

“Then let me put it to you thus. Can it be that Uka-no-mitama, the goddess proper to Hwa-guk, and Inari, the clan-deity that the Hata clan, toraijin who crossed over from ancient Aeshin, believed in, are one and the same being?”
“…No, surely not.”
“Just so. According to the records, the two began to be identified with each other from about the fifteenth century. Of course, it would have been at the will of Hwa-guk’s overlords. For them, naturally, it would be the right and proper thing to lend their strength to a god born of this very land rather than to a god who had come from abroad.”

The Shirakiku-oo-kami, Aoki-oo-kami, and Suehiro-oo-kami of whom he had earlier spoken are in fact called the Inari Three-Gods; some say they are identical with Uka-no-mitama, others say they are the deifications of three miko (Shinto shrine maidens) who served Uka-no-mitama.
In truth, the three peaks on which they are enshrined had originally been nothing more than the places where the Hata clan offered their rites to the god Inari.

“To merge a foreign god with one’s own god…. Quite so. Coming from Hwa-guk, who interpreted and accepted even Christianity exactly as they pleased, it is a thing more than plausible enough.”

After walking on a bit further from there, around the time they reached a large pond, the people abruptly grew fewer.
It was no doubt because tourists, disliking mountain paths, were unwilling to penetrate deeper from the start, and because the Onmyo Bureau, too, were moving with corresponding speed to drive the people out.

As if to take their place, a small fox appeared and began to trot along beside them.

“A mingled faith is worse than none at all. Inari, from some moment onward, must have done nothing but weaken, on and on. Were that not the case, Honwondorae could not have dared so much as to conceive of working mischief on this sacred mountain.”
“And what of Uka-no-mitama?”
“That intent is beyond my measuring. Whether she wishes to help but cannot, whether she wishes for Inari to vanish utterly, or whether the two of them have long since become one.”

The foxes accompanying them gradually grew, one and then another.
The scenery around them was little by little going awry, but in Shin Hweein’s stride forward there was no hesitation.

“To begin with, for a human to try to measure the will of a god is wholly without meaning.”

Passing Kumataka-sha, which appeared just before the forking of the paths, and turning down the right-hand path that led to Sannomine, Shin Hweein laughed quietly to himself.

“A human ought only to pray and to plead that his own will be done. He prays to the god in whom he believes to grant his wish, and in return offers up his faith and his offerings. This much, whatever the age, whatever the religion, does not change.”
“And so the master, to the god Inari—”
“Yes. I mean to plead my case to the god Inari.”

The physical distance could not be all that great, and yet the path to the mountaintop felt far.

Praying that his sincerity might, please, be conveyed to the right object, Shin Hweein once more worked his spiritual power into an inari-zushi as he spoke.

“Still, we are folk from the same homeland; surely something must be a little different, no?”

Past Sannomine to Ninomine, and on to Ichinomine.
The god they sought was one and one alone.
He steeled himself: any other god that appeared, he would cut down even so, and press on.