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"See how it swells?" said Shogun Katsumi. The stern white fox, calm in his decorum, pointed to the base of the maple, his onion-colored claw protruding from his gauntlet. "We must rip it from the earth, like a traitor from her child."

To my eyes, Shogun Katsumi was an evil man. He had indeed ripped many traitors from their children. Often, when a loved one died, before they were burned to ashes, water of the last moment would be placed upon their lips to bless them in the name of Buddha. Katsumi often said that the rice paddies were wet enough. But my master Daiichi told me, as he often did, that if I sat upon his shoulders, I would be tall enough to understand the reasons of higher classes. I did not feel short when comparing myself to other stoats, but to a fox, a tall stoat was still small, if not in stature, then in importance.

But I was clean, and I could listen, and I could keep my paws inside my pockets when the lord let me eat off of silver. My name is Gorou, the traditional name of a family's fifth son. I was sold to a noble house for rice paddies. This transaction was not enough to keep my family from starving.

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When Daiichi carried me that morning, my feet dangled from his shoulders, and the thought passed my mind that the tall are fewer in number than the small, and there would only ever be so many shoulders.

"You are afraid, Gorou," said Daiichi, whose tone was boyish but deep. My legs shook against his neck, which, despite being red and warm like a kindling flame, could not cast light upon the temple on the horizon. It was the spire of the Daimyo. The shining husks of black centipedes dragging their white bellies crawled into my mind when light reflected from the pagoda roofs until Daiichi's voice burned them away. "The winter's made you white, like death."

"There's still a patch of summer left in my fur," I said, my voice trailing off. "You just haven't seen it."

"There's always summer in my fur, if you have trouble remembering," he said, squeezing my ankle. "You cannot flinch in front of Katsumi. The Daimyo can see us too, and will report what he notices. The emperor will know, too." At that point it was still a mystery why the boy emperor had come to our district. Although the capital believed he was a god, Shogun Katsumi was Buddhist like the peasants. He held the true power over this land, and he had little love for the boy-god. Visiting was a risk, and would happen only in urgent circumstances.

"I understand. I am not afraid of the emperor," I said, staring at the tracks Daiichi's paws left in the snow.

"That's wise," said Daiichi, crossing his arms and twitching his fiery ears. "Surely you know, little banner-bearer. Do not be afraid of anything but negligence. We are all only strong as our frailest in this society. That is why all we can do is strive to make each other stronger. Otherwise, we perish." He put me down, and the snow crunched beneath my feet as his russet tail swayed neatly, attentively, in pace to the war beat of the taiko; the massive drums sat upon lacquered posts and reverberated to the beat of the soldiers who struck them in blows.

Neither I nor Daiichi had been in the garden of Daimyo before today. Although Daiichi was a noble, his family held less power than Katsumi's, and they were not often summoned to the tower. Here, the maples and cherries were barren. The bronze statues of Buddha on marble huddled back-to-back, as if watching the path for one another, afraid.

There was but one maple in the garden that had all of its leaves. Its crust-laden body coiled, serpentine, in and out of the ground with arcs that turned like the napes of dragons, thick and twisting hungrily skyward so that its shade burnt the soil black.

When Katsumi pulled his katana from its sheath, the plates of his emerald great armor shifted, and the white fox bared his teeth.

"There is no place for filth in my subject's garden!" He snarled, gauging his enemy, before pacing forward, moving faster as he broke into a run. Although Katsumi was large in his emerald great armor, compared to the maple, he was but a beetle with a soft belly in an oversized shell. There was something impressive to me, watching that insect in his jewelled carapace assail the gnarled welts and the roots that looped into the soil like earth-eels, fattening themselves on clay-- but that was before we saw the branches start to move.

Some of us screamed. Some of us wailed. But that would not change what we had seen-- that the tree had taken our Shogun, and in his absence had it acquired a new piece, silhouetted as a man in eternal pain before slinking into an amorphous tuber.

Such was the end of one of the most powerful men in Japan. Katsumi had died in his hubris and I could not even smile. Without his orders, we would have little tactical direction. The Daimyo shrieked out distraught orders of advance. The quickened pace of the taiko blows beckoned the Samurai forward. I could not tell Daiichi not to fly at the tree. I could not even show it on my face, although I knew my mind and my heart were not one and the same. Betraying the orders of the Daimyo meant betraying him too. He would see it no other way.

He would have an honored death, be remembered by me, all his underlings, and his proud family, who would drink to the boy who fed the blood tree in the name of the emperor. Surely, I would be the first to finish my saké.

A command was issued from the tower behind us, higher than I could see, bellowing to halt the attack. "The emperor sees no gain in this assault," said a hoarse woman I could not see. "He will not have them feeding it anymore. This is not working."

The eyes of the men trailed to the Daimyo, who wore a blank expression. Normally, his will was second to that of only Katsumi, but the Shogun was dead. Without the leadership and military power of the Katsumi, the assassination and instillation of a new emperor was not a threat in this district any longer. He bowed sharply, saying nothing more. The emperor's servant spoke again.

"Your emperor has come to this district only to see proof of a rumor so monstrous. With his curiosity sated, there will be national action taken. Katsumi's men has our emperor's sympathies. All men henceforth are dismissed from his presence."

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Inside the Temple, I stripped Daiichi's armor away, which had made his shoulders appear wider than they really were. Some of the men had soiled themselves, but I was relieved to see my lord had not. I boiled water, and washed him with rags in the quiet of muffled voices that bounced off the walls of the barracks.

"Sometimes I am frightened by your loyalty, Gorou," he lilted, resting his arms behind his back, shoving his chest forward in a gentle stretch of the spine.

I scrubbed between his knees, where the red fur met white, and the pink of him often sagged. When he was clean there, I bent to scrub at his shins, wrinkling my brow.

"Disloyalty is perhaps a wiser thing to fear," I said, relieving an itch on my outer ear, accidentally dampening myself there.

"You would have tried to stop me out there, would you not?" said Daiichi, slouching, studying me as if I were a piece of stale bread.

"No," I said. "I would not have." This was the truth, although it seemed he did not know it.

"Your intentions... were transparent. A servant putting his lord above the will of the emperor would be a shameful display, indeed. It would make me look bad... and it would not end so kindly for you, especially."

I squeezed out his rag, moving to the space behind his ears. "Sentiment is not the same as action, my lord. Trust me. I know that impertinent people do not eat."

His ears splayed. "We are not children anymore, Gorou, but I am afraid that is something we both struggle to forget when we are around one another."

"Might I relay the tale of the two fishermen?"

He opened his mouth to speak, but his mouth was left agape, before it slanted into a crooked smile, and with his clawed foot, he sloshed a bit of the water on my nose. "You would tell it to me anyway if I said no, wouldn't you?"

I growled, rubbing myself dry on the hem of his sleeve before blowing out breath, attempting to concentrate. I pinched the bridge of my nose, and let the old story come back to me. "There were two men in a fishing village. One noble, one poor. They grew up together in their youth. The noble man was very good at cooking the fish, and the poor man was very good at catching the fish."

I rose, dropped the rag into the bucket, where it made a soft sloosh, and began to pace.

"One day, it just so happened that the two men were searching for a new trade route along the western pass, when a snowstorm forced them into a cave in the mountainside. They were ill-equipped for a long stay, and knew that if they left the cave, they would freeze. They also knew that if they stayed in the cave, they would starve. Do you know what the men said to one another?"

"Surely the poor man offered his meat to the noble man?"

"Yes, so he did." I closed my eyes, and put my paws behind my back. "But the noble man did not accept. Do you know why?"

"Of course! Because the idea was revolting."

"Yes, it would have been grim... but no, that is not why. The noble man realized that if he ate his partner, he would have no future, for he was hopeless at catching fish, even if he did, by chance, survive. Despite being of noble blood, his family no longer had any money to their name. His riches would wane, and he would die in disgrace. His end would be the same both inside of the cavern and outside of the cavern."

"So if his fate was the same, why did he still refuse the meat?"

"Because he wouldn't have to die alone," I said as I dried him and reached for his wool. "I know what choice you will make if given a foolish order. That is how I know mine, too."

His lip curled into a snarl as he looked down at me, flushing with anger before he choked. "There is nothing foolish in dying for a noble cause."

"I am sorry," I said. "I have been cruel." Perhaps it was ironic for me to fear for Katsumi, worth fields of livestock, when I was but a mere rice paddy.

"You have been ruthless," he scolded. "But not cruel. No. At the very least, I know that I can trust you."

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In the following weeks, the maple tree amassed in girth, and height, and soon any trace of the initial garden was gone. The tower of the Daimyo had collapsed, and the shadow it had cast over the village was replaced by the overbearing maple, stagnating the free flow of wind.

The emperor sent for his best scholars, priests, and counsellors while the festering wood of the maple overtook the temple. Thick trunks snaked into the forest, blotting out the light of other trees and laying waste to the undergrowth. After it had conquered the wild, it came for us, past the countryside and into the village. The spread of the wood turned the rivers black, killing the fish with a tarry, sap-like residue that stank of iron.

All we knew of the maple was that ire fuelled its growth, and those who charged it were consumed by the branches. Sinewy vines furrowed through stone, plaster and silk, enveloping the village in a weedy parameter. Layers of the gnarled, wriggling wood criss-crossed and overlapped until it trapped us in a wooden maze. Those who tried to escape perished into the skin of the branches. I dared not watch when a villager went too close to the forest. Often, nothing was left but their clothes, which were folded into the wedges of the wood.

It was weeks before we heard from the emperor, who had managed to break in from the outside.

My lord's presence was requested, as usual, with one servant at his side. More samurai had formed at the opening, underneath a clearing of the wood where we could gaze at the sky and remember what the stars looked like. There was fresh water here. The sickly sweet smells of bloated fish and sap were overcome with the purifying aroma of nothing: melting ice and windward snow from the mountainside.

There was a congregation of guards. The emperor sat in a palanquin held by six white foxes, his face hidden by the curtains. One of the foxes called out: "A horror has been unleashed upon us all, facilitating a necessary act of courage and skill. We do not know if any of you will live. But we do have a stratagem, designed by counsellor Sumia. She will now speak."

"Thank you," said a crone of a cat in black robes. She had waddled out from behind the palanquin, her robes billowing as if the smoke of the forge became her. Puffs of her opium swirled from her nostrils and dispersed into the air. "It must be strange, to approach you, offering an escape from the stories of your childhood. I did not believe it. The emperor did not believe it. But this weed of the world, which stretches to the sky, as if to nip at the heel of the gods, is real. A karma eater has manifested itself as this tree."

Whispers hissed about the camp. I dared not speak up to my superiors, but I had been raised on the stories of the karma eaters. The hate begetters[1][1]. The stories said they might appear as a sick villager, or a bloated fish, but never a tree. The only effect the tales and the tree agreed upon was that frustration made it fat. The old cat continued.

"Like a nasty rumor, karma eaters cannot be slain with swords." She opened a fan, tore it with the twist of her digits, and threw it to the ground in a clackering whirl. "Weapons are futile. Fire is smothered and stymied with the stink of brimstone. But, on the contrary, a karma eater is highly responsive to emotion. Hatred feeds it. Trust destroys it. It recoils, and shrivels. That much is certain."

"And emotion is to be our weapons?" spoke a Shiba holding an uneasy stance. "Emotion as a weapon to be wielded by those who have mastered the blade?"

"Emotion is always a weapon-- especially when concealed and directed with the finesse of a handled dagger," said the cat. She shot the dog a glare. "Many can master the blade if they have a name and a coin purse." The shiba inu's posture straightened, and she continued. "And that is why we must ask the trial of trust from the warriors who have not yet failed us. Each servant must kneel before his bushi, undress them, and please them as the act of ultimate loyalty. You must know one another's body, or you will fail this mission."

A paw lifted the curtain of the palanquin, and I saw the emperor, watching from his chair. Surprise and horror twisted his face. So he really was just a boy. Did he think this would even work?

There were murmurs of discomfort and displeasure. The shiba spoke first.

"Pardon my impertinence, but what is asked does not seem possible. I do not desire my servant."

A hare chimed in. "I agree. I do not think my loyalty could be measured in pleasure. What is asked by the hag is shocking."

I looked immediately to Daiichi. He was guarding his expression. I knew he would not speak his mind, for that was not his way. More interruptions of discontent filled the air when a tiger paw drew the palanquin's curtain. The emperor stared at them all, eyes burning bright yellow. "I speak to you all directly as your emperor. Sumia has never erred me. You will do what Sumia asks, or you will be banished. It is a grave thing that I am speaking to you all, now."

The emperor tugged the curtain again, and he was visible no more. A small army of servants brought forth lanterns, stools, and many silk dividers. Oil lamps were burned to illuminate the insides of the screens so strong shadows could be cast. There were no more questions.

I heard rustling, and falling cloth as the bushi around me were stripped naked, their bare forms shivering in the snow, tails twitching nervously. Masters and servants entered their screens, separate from one another. Daiichi looked down at me, his eyes cold. I did not want to disappoint him, but he knew I was afraid. My paws pulled the topknot of his kimono loose, and I did as the others did. I had dressed him before. We entered the enclosed silk structure together, and I had to adjust my eyes to the intensity of the light. The shadow of my body mimicked my form in detail on the side of the wall facing the emperor and Sumia. My paw brushed against the piece of him that was beneath the inner layer and he closed his eyes.

I pulled the wool shirt from his skin, and lowered myself, hinged upon my knees to see him. His was like mine, but slightly different in basic shape. Broader. Longer, with a tapered tip. His legs did not shake. He was brave, and I could be too. I touched him, and didn't flinch. His length smelled like firewood and his bed sheets. I kept his soft skin warm with a kiss, all the while my breath fogged on him. Some kind of ache in me panged as I watched him thicken. His length was often in this way when the morning came to greet him, but his bed sheets were to be touched only after he left them. A globule, like dew, formed on his tip before I lapped at it, holding his balls to shield them from the cold.

"I know my choice," I said. A gush of breath emptied out of him when he heard me, while white fog billowed from his maw. Something shifted in him below, and my eyes widened as a bulged formed around his base. Curious, I cupped my hand around it, and he growled pleasantly. Then he barked, and I could feel his piece twitch in my mouth, splattering something into my muzzle, tasting like murk and salt. My arms held his soft waist in place as I drank my fill, bound to him, eager to save him, and to save myself.

When I had finished, I brushed the traces of Daiichi's sex from my mouth. I stood awkwardly, a tent pushing my clothing away from my groin. Around us, the wood retreated, twisting away where it could not be seen. There was a light burning bright inside me after it occurred what I had done. I had never wanted a wife, or a child, although I knew it was expected of me. I knew I would be pitied by the village had I not fulfilled my duty. But was there no other way to do that? Was there another way to be useful I had never seen?

But still, Daiichi was bothered. He could lop off heads for his nation, and let himself be strangled, but he had never been asked to mate. Could he do it again, if he was asked? Of the two of us, I had always believed myself the weaker. How strange that now, here, I did not want that to be true. There was fear in Daiichi... and ahead of us was only forest.

Each samurai and servant exited the screens and walked into the wood. I recognized the shiba, who looked as if he were wounded. The hare, however, seemed to have a skip in his step. We were followed by the words of advisor Sumia: "In the forest, you will find the garden, and the center of this devil. Show your trust, and purge this evil."

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We pushed on for hours into the forest. When the wood is eerily silent, and there are no birds or insects, there is a feeling in your gut that a predator lurks close by, quick to lunge and suckle from marrow. But when the wood slivers and shifts without the force of the wind, and the world is maddened by your presence, it is all too easy to infect the spirit. It had been apparent that not all of the samurai and not all of the servants approved of the ritual of trust. Their curses echoed ahead, before they were silenced forever by the wringing of the bark-scaled fingers of the wood, and naught but their clothing remained.

We took a break by a stream, found crabs to boil, and sat back to back, ensuring that no root or branch could sneak up on us.

"Perhaps sex was not the best way to form trust," I said, stripping the cloth from a servant's shirt to use as gauze.

"We often believe those we mate with are closer to us forever," said Daiichi. "But isn't that often the contrary? For how many of us is sex meaningless? That is why we buy our whores with currency, not trust."

The forest rattled us on. Somehow or another, I felt that it wanted us to argue. I wanted to speak, needed to speak, but I knew that an argument would end in anger, and silence would end in sadness, or frustration. This trap was sophisticated. Even the spiders don't force the moths to wrap themselves.

"Perhaps trust had to be there in the beginning for the sex to work."

"I don't think that's the case. I trusted you before... you did that to me."

"I see no reason to be worried," I whispered, feeling the fur on his back bristle. The wood seemed to be taking notice, which forced a twitch in my ears, and my involuntary scamper backwards.

"Will things be quite the same?" He panicked.

"Certainly not," I said as Daiichi's eyes widened in horror, and I could feel his heart palpitate. He saw the forest slithering toward us from every angle. "But we will die soon if you fall into despair." I could not afford to panic too, or else we would be immediately consumed.

He opened his mouth to speak, but I stopped him with my tongue. I pushed him to the ground and kissed him, feeling him, smelling the scent of a warrior who must not succumb to the poison of the forest. His paw reached up to me, gingerly, like a child as I petted his face.

I lowered my head for him, whimpering, snuffling the soil trapped in his fur as he pet my ears and whispered to me, "I must know your body, too." His paw pushed me down into the grass, tearing at my trousers and exposing the long, thin leaking length that clung to my belly, oozing my want for him. His long tongue lapped up the mess I had been making, and I saw him wince before a sharp grin curled up his cheeks, a fox smile broader than any I had known without fearing. He pointed to the side of my belly, where a lone patch of brown still clung to me.

"I see summer, there."

He sniffed deeply as he took me into his mouth, sucking and bobbing. I cringed when his vice-grip tugged on my tail, and his spit slathered my groin like thickened honey. He grunted as I fit tightly into his long, slender muzzle. A muscle in my inner thigh twitched involuntarily and my leg kicked. That's when he swallowed as much of me as he could.

I squeaked.

I had never been sucked before, by a man or by a woman. He was hungry for me, and there was more in his eyes for me than just duty. I had spent more time with this fox than any other. I forgot what a family was. My importance as a piece of a mechanism didn't seem to matter anymore, so long as Daiichi was here, looking at me in the way he always had, but with a new and gentle fear in the gaze. I closed my eyes and heard the creeping of the branches, surrounding us, snapping, recoiling, wilting while the doubt in my lord struggled to stamp itself out. I whispered his name, and stroked his cheek as the warmth of his mouth rekindled me, making me squeak for him.

For summer.

"Will not leave me," I gasped. A spasm deep inside of me quivered, as my balls retracted, and a giddiness drowned all sense of restraint I once had. Sticky white fluid pumped from my member, pungent and plentiful, clotting his smooth fur into a matted tousle. My smell covered Daiichi, as he sat there, happy, dazed in my stink before he licked himself clean.

We held each other in the clearing until the wood snapped. The leaves withered and all that was left in front of us was the marble slab, cusping the two statues of Buddha, their eyes now cracked, and with woody tendrils spiralling from the sockets.

Passing the statues, we approached the trunk of the maple, whose sides had eaten into the temple. It seemed we were the only ones to make it, or to try to make it. With haste, we scampered over twigs and rushes caked with ice to approach the tree at its face.

When a child clumps clay into a doll, there is some semblance of a person. A semblance too misshapen to be convincing, but irreconcilable in its doomed familiarity. Such was the face of Jubokko. A giant's face, simian, shifting, as if it did not know what an expression could look like, and could not make up its mind. Three eyes, sloppily placed on the form focused on the two of us. Its sideway mouth struggled to open, more like an expanding orifice than a hinge. The wail of a woman eked its way out of wood all around us, and the false mouth warped into a puppet-like expression.

"Who comes, with fire and sword, and the stink of the mind that wanders, that wanders."

Frightened, I said, "We are here. Two men."

"Men with fur. Men with bark for skin, like me, gone. Where have you been for long, so long, so long. Long."

Daiichi growled. "It is you who have recently arrived. It is you who have taken the Tower of the Daimyo. We have always been here. What do you mean?"

"Here is food," said the monster as one of its eyes spun in place, squelching as it revolved. "You are not food. You are source. You have left me. You have ruined me. You made me grow. Your food. Your food. My food."

"I don't understand," said Daiichi, holding me back, his burly arm outstretched. "They never told us a karma eater could speak?"

"I speak... if you speak. I am Jubokko. Everything I have has been given to me. I was planted when the lives of ten thousand men soaked into the soil. The men who bleed without having to bleed have made me full, for so long. Then the blood stopped. Then the blood stopped. The blood turned to blood thoughts, so I drank. I have longed for the blood to rain once more, to parch my thirst. Why do you not want me anymore? Animals fight. They fight."

"We don't only fight," I piped up to the wood woman, repulsed by her countenance. "We sculpt, and we garden, and we make each other shoes. We dream in images. Fear and anger keep us alive, but we don't need them so much."

"So says you," boomed the forest. "You who give me so little space. Who give me so much food in blood thought. You who deny me nutrition, who give me my meals in poison. A weed is a weed is a weed. You can pluck me but your claws are green. You can cut me but I always grow stronger. You must answer, not ignore. You must not burn me down, burn me down. I am you but you are not me. You must not forget me." The tree rambled through her howls and hisses, and her angry intonations whistled from the skin of the bark.

"Enough of this!" Daiichi yowled. "I must ask you want you want, Jubokko! What do you want from the people? What will make you stop taking life? Augh!" He covered his snout with his paw, and I shrank back too when I saw the fetid water rise from the murk in Jubokko's roots, welling up as the veins in her third eye blushed purple.

"I want... a war. The war to end all wars. The war that will give me what I lost so long ago. The war that will feed me all blood and will undo us both forever."

Daiichi's fur bristled, and he waved his paw at the tree. "What you ask for is impossible," he said. "I refuse to end!"

"Every beginning has an end. One cannot be, without the other. As I am, I will be unhappy forever, until the end."

I stood there with Daiichi, trying to calm him, trying to keep the hatred away as the second of Jubokko's eyes rolled in its socket, maddened. I mustered my courage to speak, once more.

"If you grant us safe passage, we will tell the emperor your wish."

The eyes stopped rolling, ending cross-eyed before they fell into place, all three upon me. "Then that is your promise. I will wait, as I have waited. Waited. Waited. You will tell your emperor. If you fly, as men without wings have always tried, I will grow, and I will find you." _____________________________________________________________________

Outside of the forest by the river, we heard the windmill turning in the distance, grinding wheat for bread that tongues would never taste. The sun shifted from behind a mountain in the horizon before we remembered that we had not slept for days during our journey. I crouched on the ground, and so did Daiichi, where I laid my head on his tail, pulling it over me as my eyelids drooped.

"You mean to tell the emperor Jubokko's whim?" said Daiichi, cleaning moss from my whiskers.

"I owe no oath to the demon tree," I said. "Death is a hollow threat when it is every option she has to offer." I had been in this field of barren cherry trees before. I remembered gathering bamboo to make baskets for the fruit with Daiichi, before he was a samurai and before I was a servant, back when we said we'd never need wives, and we picked our teeth with leftover switches. "I don't know the answer to the best decision. There is no story to guide me in this."

"You're frightened to take a chance without reason to guide you. Isn't that so, Gorou?"

I shuddered and squeezed his paw. Winter crickets chirped in the distance, and the bubbling of the stream marked signs of an early spring. The world was neutral, here, like a mattress.

"So I am the one who must takes risks. That is because you will not.... Very well.

I kissed his thigh, and his voice faltered.

"I don't think you should tell the emperor. He'd do it."

"That answer sounds... unlike you." I rounded on him, lowered my head, and sifted my paws through the fur on his crimson shoulders, pressing my forehead to his white throat. Daiichi sighed.

"Our lord is no monster. But there is a monster. A monster with demands. Our country may survive longer if we agree. I think many would choose that option to stave off their own doom. Either way, a lot of people will die. And if I were emperor, and that weight were on my shoulders... compliance would be the only choice."

I choked back a sob and dragged him to the ground with me, where his soft tail wrapped around me, and he shushed me quiet.

"Do you know why I chose you to be my serving man, Gorou?"

"No."

"I chose you for this, out of all my servants, because your heart is platinum, and that is something that I lack. You can recover from a lot of pain and disappointment. Most people cannot do that."

"There is some fire in your heart, too," I said, staring at my lord. "Take from my lantern, if your oil burns low."

We slept in each other's arms that night, and I buried myself in his warmth, smelling his chest.

_____________________________________________________________

I woke to the gentle crackle of flame and a whistling kettle. Daiichi crouched, handing me a cup full of nettles, pouring the hot water over them.

"I had a lot of time to think when you were asleep."

"I'm not sure I would like to think, for a while," I said.

"Here's a worthwhile ponder, though. There is another way to solve our problem. Trees are grown from seeds, aren't they?"

My cup swirled, and viridian splotches clouded the water. "Most of them, yes. Jubokko told us that she was grown from a seed, I remember."

"So it's not as if her spirit demands as much space as she claimed. She merely hungers. She expands to satiate that hunger. But that's what trees must do to survive."

"But she doesn't want to survive."

"Not as a tree, no. But I do not think she was always a tree. There is the maple, and there is Jubokko. Their spirits conflict."

Slouching, I grumbled, warming my paws on the mug, wincing from the bitter nettles. "What else was she but a tree?"

"Certainly something as small as a seed."

"But that would only make her angry. If she made herself small again, that would prolong her judgement. She'd never agree."

"But what if she wasn't a seed. What if she were a boat, or a piece of parchment? Something that could move without struggle?"

"I can't imagine why you would want to help her move."

"Because we cannot deny that Jubokko has a point. Men will always hate. Men will always murder. Those feelings are a part of us, and will not be repressed. If she is free to move, she will not have to drink from the soil. She will have her fill, without forcing tragedy. She is an evil we cannot eliminate... but we can keep her from taking us all. I think her confusion would clear if she weren't bound to the earth, or tucked into a seed. I think a mask might work. But it's very risky. The moment she is free, she'll ravage to the closest source of fear or hatred. We will be the first to cross her path. We'll have to keep her away. With trust."

I squeezed his paw, feeling the warmth of it. "I was scared you would no longer want to do that, after we don't have to."

Daiichi didn't say anything, and looked forward into the wood. He had often looked forward where the rest of the world and I could not see him. Wind blew through his fur, and it was time to busy myself with other things. ______________________________________________________________________

That night, we returned to Jubokko's core. One of her eyeballs had left her cheek, and had replaced itself on her forehead. Her mouth had formed jaws, with a splintered maw, and her nostrils became more pronounced, flaring like a lizard's.

Although I was exhausted, my concentration on Daiichi helped me to forget fear and anger for a short while. Daiichi showed no symptoms of fatigue, his spry steps leading to the center of the forest, and his arms akimbo as he faced Jubokko.

"My message," he orated, putting on his most official decorum, "was given to the emperor, and was accepted. But there is a better option than that. If you are to drink the blood of the people, why must you be confined to your roots, your woods, your body? Were you not born from the smallest of seeds, no bigger than the padding of my paw?"

Her nose compressed, exuding ichor as she thought. "Yes... there was once a time where I was no larger than a dove's egg, lighter, lighter. Long before the promise was made, and the heaviness of betrayal seeped into my very nature."

Daiichi's eyes lit up, and the fire I had seen there days before was back. "If you make yourself very small, I can carve you from your tree, and your roots will not entrap you in this place. You can wander freely to where the blood is spilt. No more waiting for battles. No more roots that seep into the dry cracks of the world. You may take the blood that is yours, and leave the burden of your promise behind."

The tree's mouth cracked and splintered as it morphed into a grisly rictus.

"The promise will shift. I consent."

Our work was slow as I stood on Daiichi's shoulders once more, carving into the tree with a whittling knife. Slow, careful traces of the blade left white marks in the tree. Her bark was unnaturally hot, and a staccato beating sound quickened when bubbling sap oozed from the first stab into the tree, blackening my gloves.

Once I had placed my incisions, Daiichi helped me saw the face from the tree. The smell of fetid coagulation lingered as we removed more of her. She made no sounds and exhibited no pain while we worked her face, almost as large as a shield, away from her trunk. The cursed spirit was expunged from its body and roots, channelled into the center of the mask, where small flames erupted from the eye sockets, the mouth and the nose. Leaves fell from above me as I listened to the forest rustle and die as we had to drop her giant hollow face that grew too hot to hold.

Her corners crunched like parted firewood, splitting and molting. Thick appendages sprouted from her jagged edges. Legs with clawed feet that seemed to be a grotesque caricature of Daiichi's paws stemmed from her back, inverted. Then came segmented arms that ended in the claws much like a bear's.

There was a crunch, and a thick neck jutted upward; from its base blossomed a head. From her head sprung crimson grass that writhed and twisted without the wind blowing through it. Pike-like horns sprouted from her crown. She bent over and crawled, crablike, scuttling along the forest floor.

Daiichi bumped into me and flinched as the demon disappeared into the decaying remnants of her old forest body. Trembling, I spoke: "She was an oni. She had been tied to the soil for so long that I am surprised she remembered her original form."

Daiichi's tail hair prickled as a bush in front of us was set aflame. "All her existence had been bitterness and pure wrath. We must run. We have to get away before she can sprint!"

"No. No running," I said. I kissed Daiichi, tasting the velvet of his tongue in my mouth, reminding him of his promise. He blinked, splaying his ears. His golden eyes listed from my chest to my groin. "She will catch us when we run."

He stared at me, his brow scrunching into sadness. "Even if we die together, I don't want to die yet." He kissed me again, holding my back tighter, using the full extent of his muscles and nearly putting me out of breath.

"I have had my fill of evil things, Daiichi," I said. He groped my groin.

"Then take your fill of me," he murmured, putting his paw into my pants, plucking at me, playing me better than any stringed instrument. I stripped off my shirt as his neck stretched, tasting me again with his tongue, tickling me with his prickly whiskers, making me squeak.

"I want to lie with you, like I should a woman."

"You may," I said, as his finger brushed between my balls and my waist. "But I am still your man."

"And I am still your lord," he said, shifting his back and swishing his tail as his belly touched mine, and he lay on top of me. The wail of a devil howled in the wood. The close sounds of claws slashed tree trunks, toppled soil and shattered rock.

The freezing floor was nothing compared to the blaze that burned through Daiichi's member as he dragged it across my balls, leaving his mark on me while my white tail thrashed against the soil, my black tip trembling.

Daiichi's breath was heavy, and his low bay blew warmth into the fur of my neck. He drooled on me, as if taken by heat, and nudged his tip against me. I squirmed underneath, struggling to put myself into the right position. I knew that some lords took their servants, but it had never been asked of me before. I blushed in my inexperience, but finally lifted myself high enough to feel his warm, wet tip brush against my bottom.

Daiichi panted, but his breath wasn't all I heard. I could feel the beast watching. We were defenceless there. But I knew if she could have devoured us, she would have done so already. I pressed against Daiichi, clouding my mind from any other thought than his pleasure, and the scent of sweat, and the smells of home.

"When I put myself inside you, you'll be bound to me for a while. We won't be able to run."

"We aren't running. I'm bound to you already."

His eyes were slit as he stared at me, and he pushed himself deep. I felt the pinch when he entered and the taper of his length widened within me, hurting slightly, while his round, rigid bump forced itself against my bum.

I panted for him, louder than the noise of the beast above us who covered us in its shadow.

His piece pulsed as it throbbed inside me. He thrust his hips, moving in me, forcing his bulge against my sore muscle. His throaty growls echoed through the forest. "Take me Gorou. This is what will hold us together."

"I'm... trying... I... Ahhh. You're touching something!" I squeaked.

"T-touching what?" he said as a speckled of spit dripped from his mouth.

"Something wonderful inside me. Something- S-something that takes me out of my own control... I... I..." A small popping noise sounded, and my end burned. Daiichi bit my neck and whined, stuck in place while his warmth flooded into me, sealing us in happiness.

I held him, lying still as the snow fell on us. The shadow had gone, and took with it the life of all green things around us.

Years passed, and the world believed me dead. With the forest barren, the nearby village collapsed into ruin. The temple was abandoned, said to be the site of a great schism, and the lands subsequently salted. I never told the emperor, or the Daimyo, or anybody what we had done. Jubokko disappeared from our lives forever, living only as a rumor; an ogre running through the countryside, plaguing the footsteps of warriors and conquerors, where blood vines and war banners draped over the bodies of the fallen.

I walk as an older man now outside my cottage in a village south of Kyoto. My pelt is brown at the height of spring, when the azaleas peak up from behind mounds of earth and sweeten the air. When we ford a bridge and walk from one part of our lives into another, we are often encouraged to burn the bridge behind us, as a conqueror would. I was never one for flames, or for violence, but looking away forever was a skill I had picked up a long time ago.

There are no lords with me now. The emperor still lives, but I do not see his eyes nor hear his commands from his faraway castle.

There are no slicing blades here, nor are there tests of guile or leadership. My gardens are to be tended. My geta clack against stone as I observe the yams and the cabbage.

There are no buds such as Jubokko in my garden. It is hard for me to understand how she appeared in any garden, or why taking and destroying are exalted over giving and creating.

All of destruction owes its existence to creation. There must be wood before there can be bonfires. There must be stone before it can be hurled. There must be food before it can be consumed. Her voice echoed inside of my head: Your food. Your food. My food. Still, I did not weep, even as I sat there alone. I kneeled and brushed some earth from the cabbage.

A paw took me under the arm and brought me to my feet.

"You've been out here a little long, haven't you?" said Daiichi, the confidence still in his voice. He dresses in the common clothes of a fisherman, now. "Dinner's ready."

"I feel old. But I felt old even when I was young." I leaned on him, warmed by his sides. Much of the color had faded from his fur, but the warmth did not. He picked me up and sat me on his broad shoulders as we walked to the house.

He sat me down to a plate of tuna and vegetables. I took small bites. "I was thinking about her again."

Daiichi regarded me with sympathy, and poured me some water from a ceramic pitcher. "We have kept her away from our beds for years. We can do it again tonight."

I squeezed his paw. "Or today. Or in the morning. Any time, as you do."

He pet my face and gave me a kiss. The house of two fishermen are best filed with food and laughter.