One Final Spring

Snow drifted like powdered sugar on the mountain, blanketing everything in a pristine white. Here and there poked a stone nose until further down the mountain where a ribbon of red torii gates wound their way to Fushimi Inari Taisha.

I looked down the mountain, the snow blending into my fur and melting on my nose. Nothing moved, save for the swirling snow. A slight tug from the red string encircling my front paw caught my attention. It appeared just as I turned 900, though I had never met who it led to. I hadn’t left the mountain in almost two hundred years, preferring instead to meditate sitting atop the mountain peak. Observing winter slide into spring, then summer to fall, much as I watched the village around the shrine turn into a city, then into a modern metropolis. Many had forgotten the old ways. I stayed vigilant and watched over them all the same.

Today, the string became taut, vibrating with movement; as if whoever held onto the other end used the string to climb this mountain. I ignored it, just as I had when it appeared. One final Spring. When the last Sakura blossom falls, I will be Tenko.

As the snow melted down the mountain, small harbingers of spring poked through the soil. I arched my back, stretching. The ice encapsulating me slid and cracked, breaking into tiny pieces like glass on impact. I jogged down the mountain, warming my limbs. My paws found familiar stones beneath the snow, each one worn smooth by centuries of my passing. I had not walked this path in so long I had almost forgotten the weight of myself moving through it.

Midway down the mountain, many gathered, chittering loudly. I heard them before I saw them — that particular frequency of fox chatter that meant something had gone wrong, high and overlapping, like wind through a cracked gate.

“What’s this about?” I asked the closest kitsune.

“There’s a fox at the base of the mountain.”

“We are among many.”

“No. A Yako.”

“A Yako? Here? But how?”

“He came from Mount Nasu.”

“It’s been almost 200 years since…” I stopped short. “Since the stone split. But why now?”

The kitsune shrugged. “No one will speak to him.”

“I’ll go. Watch the others?”

They bowed their head in response.

I picked my way through the torii gates, slow and reflective, letting each step imprint on the melting snow. My presence fading as quickly. With each torii gate I passed, the slack on the string tightened, like a breath being held. A crow that had been calling somewhere above the gates went silent as I passed.

The last torii gate came into view. Framed within it, a black fox sat. His head was bowed, his tails curled around his feet. Five tails. Red markings still faintly lit, even here. I had heard of foxes like him — bound to something darker than themselves. Something about his stillness made me wonder if he even knew what he’d walked away from. I stopped before he saw me, regarding him from afar and deciding whether I should engage him at all. Wind ruffled through his fur, lifting just enough to reveal the edges of a scar on his right paw. He nuzzled it absently with his nose, as if that spot still stung in the cold air. He gave no notice to the string running directly to his chest, taut as a plucked instrument, red as the gates behind me. The string ended where it had always ended — wrapped once around my right paw, patient as the mountain itself.

My paws moved before I gave them direction, approaching the Yako as the string hummed between us. As I entered the final gate, he looked up. I could see from his reaction how I must look to him. Nine luminous tails fanned out behind me. He stood now, and I could tell his size very nearly rivaled my own, but he bowed his head low before me.

“You have come a long way, Yako.”

“I have nowhere else to go.”

“Your markings,” I said, gesturing with my nose to his tails, “Did you choose them?”

“I earned my markings. Now I hope to change them.”

“Scars are like stone, like this mountain. Not like Sakura blossoms.”

“Kintsugi will mend stone.”

I inclined my head in approval, then turned back through the gate, waiting for him to follow. Several kitsune clustered around gate three. Waiting. Listening. They looked from me to the Yako, slowly parting as we ascended through the gates. He walked behind, head still lowered. A pop of color against his black fur caught my attention — an omamori, half-tucked against his chest, delicate sakura blossoms embroidered across its face. Konohanasakuya-hime’s blessing was dim now, worn thin by the road. But it remained. The goddess of flowering things did not give her blessing lightly. I looked at him — black fur, broken markings, head still low, and wondered what she had seen in him I had not yet.

Several gates up, I paused, turning to him.

“How does a Yako obtain an omamori from Konohanasakuya-hime?” I asked, my gaze not hostile, but taking in every detail.

He lifted his eyes to mine and said, “I asked her how I could repair that which I have broken. She handed me this omamori. For two hundred years I have asked it to guide my steps until it led me here.”

My gaze remained fixed on the omamori, tracing its intricate details, before I finally found my voice. “The sakura blossoms have guided me as well.”

Thinking of my last spring, I continued on, up the mountain. The stairway through the gates wound through the mountain, paused only briefly by the nearby trees that seemed to hug the gates. At the halfway point, a steady stream of mountain runoff made the steps slick. Here, sakura petals fell in soft cascades with each breath of spring wind. One blossom fell at my feet, unfurling and twirling as if it danced in the snowmelt. Pausing, I watched its path. Such simple beauty. The Yako came alongside me, regarding the blossom with the look of someone who had long believed himself beyond the reach of beautiful things, and was only now uncertain of that.

“Kuro kitsune my parents called me. A bad omen.”

I turned to him now, silently nodding for him to continue.

“As a pup, I was abandoned on the very mountain that later became my prison.”

A falling petal caught my gaze. Named before he ever earned one.

He continued, “I was a runt and so full of anger. I gave myself over to it. Gave everything I had when he offered me the choice to serve in exchange for power. The anger fueled the power, the power fueled the anger, an eternal cycle. I’ve done terrible things.”

His words froze in his throat like the ice that still crusted the mountain top.

“Some choices are made for us.” I said into the silence.

“There was a child. A little girl, her hair had come loose from her kanzashi as she ran. She saw me in the river and thought I was something worth saving. Himari.”

The name lodged in his throat, like a stubborn pebble in a rushing stream. I didn’t ask, I already knew. Instead, I watched the branches sway overhead, blanketing the ground with fresh petals.

He looked at me now, blinking, as if he was only just registering I was there.

Bells tinkled faintly in the breeze. I looked down at the string tied to my paw, tracing its path with my eyes to where it connected around his neck. The omamori, tucked just below it, caught the late afternoon glow.

Divine energy pulsed through me like waves on the shore. I could feel it, reaching heavenward, as my soul yearned to attain that which I had worked and waited so long. One final spring, and that spring was drawing to a close.

But the string held it’s own kind of power. Not divine, like the resounding note of a Shakuhachi flute ascending past the range of the world. But a whisper and a tug. It didn’t say no, it just said ‘Not Yet’.

“Walk with me?” I asked.

His eyes answered my question within the question, but he said nothing. Only walking side by side with me, his head looking towards the mountain peak.