#phillida

He went to the window and peered out. No shoji were sliding out before he could. It was just a gap in the wooden hut where his mother has been cooking until a moment ago. It was meant to clear the steam away the room, the plugged pipe got broken, then removed last week, thus allowing Shinta to pry his big brothers through. His mother had allowed him not to hang around nor to help out in the fields, even a hollow rise up to a window rank in those conditions. In his loose hand-me-downs, Shinta looked smaller than he was. Perhaps his parents chose his name wishing he could grow big, but somehow they changed their minds in the process and changed his first kanji from “lengthen/develop” into “heart/soul” as well, betting on his kindness, leaving the “large” one unvaried. Besides there wasn’t much hope for him to fulfill such an achievement since he had to skip meals more often than he should In the past years the famine had spared no one, but his family managed to survive nevertheless.

Shinta squinted off in the distance, watching his older brothers , their back to the poppy red sun as they returned from the fields. Benjiro was holding his circular straw hat like it was a cradle, while Sotohiro quickened his pace, still addressing his brother. Shinta listened to his brothers’ words carefully, hoping for clues concerning their father’s whereabouts. He couldn’t bear the secretive looks they gave him whenever he asked, and part of him suspected they only talked about it outside his presence. To Shinta’s disappointment, a stream of complaints about the weather was the only thing he could catch before jerking.

“What do you think you’re doing, Shinta?” his mother hissed behind him.

“Okaasan! Etto…”

“Hurry up!”

He was told to set the table while she was carrying out an inspection of the supplies. There were so few of them that it didn’t take her long to make sure everything was in its proper place.

“Tadaima!” a boyish voice rang like bells in unison.

“Okaeri” replied their mother.

“A mole attacked the daikon again and this is the result” Benjiro said, proudly showing her a mass of blood and bristles in the hollow of his hat.

The woman looked away in disgust. Benjiro felt Shinta’s attention and unexpectedly approached him and dangled the carcass close to his nose.

“Shouldn’t we taste its meat, Shin-chan?”

He expected Shinta’s eyes to widen in shock at the proposal, but they blazed with fury instead. Benjiro drew back his prey just in time, and Shinta barely missed grabbing the mole.

“Maa, maa”

It was Sotohiro’s voice this time. Reluctantly Benjiro handed over the dead mole to his elder brother. He didn’t never get used to the fact that his brother was in charge in their father’s absence. He sighed and knelt at his place at the table.

“Let’s bury it, Shinta, before the sunset!” Sotohiro said softly.

Shinta made a dart for the door and followed Sotohiro outside before their mother could ever raise an eyebrow. Shinta’s ponytail brushed against Benjiro’s eyes in passing far before his elder brother realized.

“Then, there’ll be more soup for me"Benjiro said shrugging and he helped himself.

"Itadakimasu!” ‘he said, clasping his hands together.

The table was set, other dishes apart from Benjiro’s were empty but he didn’t care about it. Before Benjiro could begin eating, the ladle dipped into his bowl again and transferred some of the soup to Shinta’s bowl. He lift his look slowly like hoping the ladle were stirring by itself, then he was taken back to reality: he saw his mother’s face smirking at him.

“Eat slowly, son”

Benjiro waited for his mother to accuse him of being selfish, but it never came. Instead of feeling elated, guilt and displeasure settled at the base of his stomach.

“She pitied me”

“Eating slowly won’t solve the problem”

Those few words of his mother and the shapeless substance floating, or better drowning, in that dishwater, like shrunken wool would in hot water, were too much. He lost his good mood as he couldn’t lose his appetite.

“Where’s Otou-san?” Shinta asked.

The words fluttered out of his mouth, the unwilling teeth couldn’t trap them. The twitter of a lark was soften in the air while dark shadows were lengthened over them. In the twilight Shinta’s bangs hid what could have been seen of his eyes. Sotohiro was stamping on the ground, playing for time. Only when the silence had fallen did he speak:

“Rest in peace” Sotohiro murmured to the mole, a fitting end to the mole’s life.

“If I tell you, you must promise me that you’ll pretend not to know a thing, all right?” Sotohiro said gently but with no room for bargaining.

Shinta nodded.

“Rumor said that beyond the mountains, an undetected disease decimated the population. Our daimyo ordered to each village committee to gather at Sumi-e camp. Doctors were supposed to give the instructions against the infection and so on. Otou-san should have been back by now” Sotohiro came closer to his little brother, his lips lightly curled “You care too much about everyone, bro, even a mole. This is why okaasan won’t tell you stuff’ unless it comes to the worst and…

"But I don’t!” Shinta cut in.

“You do. The moles destroyed our crops! Benjiro was just joking, but you still…”

“But dead moles do no harm! There’s no use in…"the child was at a loss for words and obviously heating, his stance was trunk-like still but the trembling lips betrayed him "… no use at all.” he uttered the last two words resolutely.

Sotohiro sought for an answer but it was difficult and blamed the darkness. At least, he admitted, it made sense after all. He cast an inquiring look toward Shinta. He reminded to himself.

“I am the elder one. Should I prevent him from crying?”

He was wondering if that eventuality was coming. He asked to turn his little brother away from his deepening thoughts:

“Otousan will come back in no time. Do you agree?”

“Hai!”

Shinta answered aloud.

“That’s the spirit! Let’s come in, it’s raining.”

When some drops hit his cheeks, Shinta felt as his brother’s words concealed some power in them - so that even his father’s return sounded certain.

Shinta heard the thump early in the morning and thought of an earthquake tremor at first. He turned over, hoping to fall back asleep, but then some snips followed and when it continued he frowned and sprang to his feet only to find his middle brother grinning back at him.

“Okaasan is up to some measures of prevention, I guess.”

That explained things, but it was more a riddle than an enlightening sentence. While his mother’s fussy activities were going on not far away Shinta ruminated on those words: they tasted bad. He thought back to his recent memories.

Since the conversation she had had with the oba-san, she had been acting strangely, eying Shinta’s face while pulling up his chin and nodding, or praising his hair out of the blue, or calling kokori daemons names in an almost imperceptible whisper. Just a couple of days ago, the oba-san burst into the hut with news late in the evening, when Shinta was already asleep. Sotohiro made it short: he wasn’t certain their mother would approve of him sharing such information and said, when she wasn’t around, that kokori daemons were responsible for the disease. They envied the strength of human men and were pleased to send as many people as they could to the other world. Unfortunately Sotohiro joined the conversation much too late and he didn’t hear about their father, nor he could ask their mother, who had been busy like a swallow building its nest since then.

What Sotohiro was doing out of bed that late was another mystery to the child, but he couldn’t know that it wasn’t worth investigating. He heard the embarrassment in Sotohiro’s voice as he said he was watering, but he couldn’t read through it. Shinta thought that he lied, older people would had simply smiled.

“It seems you’ll be allowed outside the same moment they’re ready.” Benjiro added.

Shinta sighed. Instinct told him that he won’t like his mother’s point of view about prevention. But when it came to that moment, curiosity won easily and he rushed into his mother. She went ahead of him and threw him a yellowish bundle.

“Wear it, quick.” she said kindly as it landed on his knees.

He unfolded that piece of fabric, still kneeling on the floor.

“Ori?”

“Not ori, my child, but o-ro.” she intimated articulating properly.

“O-ro?” he echoed unsure.

“This will fool the kokori daemons for good!”

She cried out with satisfaction for the way it sounded. There were tears at the corner of her eyes and, overwhelmed by the emotions, she hugged him. Then she helped him untie his ponytail and brushed his glittering hair. Shinta hoped that she wouldn’t start whistling a tune.

“Let’s see…for the time being your name is …”

A bit later a child was walking down the hill, the scurry of tiny chalky feet in their waraji barely audible, a bucket in the hand, an indigo ribbon on the hair suddenly whipped by a gust of wind. At the bottom of that dusty twisty path someone else wiped the sweat from her forehead in need for distraction.

“Anata!”

“What?”

“I didn’t know the neighbors have a daughter. Did you?”

“Nope.” the man answered, showing no interest.

“And a pretty one, I dare say."she pondered. – Look! –

She prodded her husband in watching as it was clear he wouldn’t turn his back.

"Couldn’t she be a perfect match for our elder son?"she asked.

"Uhmm…”

Likely the woman found that answer revealing enough because she smirked. Under his heart Shinta wished he couldn’t had heard them. Disguising him like a girl was his mother’s plan against the daemons, but he doubted it would work. He would rather think they could spare him as a reward for making them split their sides with laughter. Definitely he hated his mother’s point of view about prevention.