The Goddess Chronicle

Natsuo Kirino, Rebecca Copeland

• Publisher: Canongate Canons
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781786899170
• eBook ISBN: 9781838857585
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

On an island in the shape of a teardrop live two sisters. One is admired far and wide, the other lives in her shadow. One is the Oracle, the other is destined for the Underworld.

But what will happen when she returns to the island?

Based on the Japanese myth of Izanami and Izanagi, The Goddess Chronicle is a fantastical tour de force about ferocious love and bitter revenge.

The Myths series brings together some of the world's finest writers, each of whom has retold a myth in a contemporary and memorable way. Authors in the series include Karen Armstrong, Margaret Atwood, A.S. Byatt, David Grossman, Natsuo Kirino, Alexander McCall Smith, Philip Pullman, Ali Smith and Jeanette Winterson.

HOW COMELY NOW THE WOMAN

1

Its sails filled with wind, the ship cut through the waves at a vigorous clip. Yakinahiko, a white goshawk perched on his right arm, took a position at the bow, his eye on the course ahead. His young attendant, Unashi, stood at his side. The sailors scrambled along the deck and glanced from time to time at Yakinahiko, who seemed relieved finally to have wind in the sails. Standing there with his goshawk, he looked like the God of Safe Passage.

The wind was steady and the ship picked up speed, slipping quickly over the vast sea. The creaking of the mast, sounding eerily like a series of shrieks, kept up a constant din. The goshawk faced the wind head on and puffed out his chest as if about to take flight.

‘Sailing invigorates one, doesn’t it, Unashi?’ Yakinahiko stroked the goshawk’s sharp beak.

Unashi had been seasick, his face still pale with nausea. But he seemed at last to have found his sea legs. A bright smile played about his lips as he turned to his master. ‘If it stays like this, I think I could sail for ever.’ His eyes shone with respect for his master. Yakinahiko was thirty and in the prime of his manhood. His countenance was noble, his complexion fair, and his height well over six feet. His arms and legs were long, his chest broad, and his hair – parted in the middle and bunched into knots just above each ear – was thick and black. Unashi, in contrast, was nineteen and a mere slip of a lad. His body, not yet filled out, was willowy, and his face still bore a boyish trace, which lent him a forlorn air. The two might have been mistaken for brothers, separated by a few years. They were off, with the goshawk Ketamaru, on a journey that had no clear destination, stopping along the way to enjoy a hunt when the opportunity arose.

Yakinahiko usually travelled on horseback. This was only the second time he had boarded a shellfish trawler. The first time had been about a year earlier. He had felt like taking to the seas, having come across men with shell armlets. That would have been in a village towards the southern end of Yamato. Almost all its inhabitants decorated their bodies with shell ornaments. The women and children wore small bracelets on their left wrists and the men encircled their right biceps with shells that had once contained a thick white meat.

When Yakinahiko had entered the village he had been on horseback, his attendant Unashi following fast on foot. The villagers had gathered around them. At first the menfolk had been intimidated by his bow and arrows and his long sword; when they had glimpsed the jade jewels strung around his neck, they had shrunk back. Jewels were a mark of nobility and recognised as such throughout all of Yamato. The women, on the other hand, had been pleasantly surprised to see two such attractive men and sighed audibly over the luxury of their white silk garments. The children, driven by curiosity, had wanted to tease Ketamaru, and when they had tried to touch Yakinahiko’s long sword, Unashi had had to scold them.

‘What is the shell you wear about your arm?’ Yakinahiko had asked.

A man in his early forties pushed through the crowd and answered respectfully. ‘The bands are fashioned from the wide-mouth conch. The ones the women and children wear are made of the smaller cone shell. People like us make our living mostly from the crops we raise, so water is vital. That is why those who bring rain are exalted, and they wear the rarest shells of all. In this village, I bring the rain.’

The man had spoken with a touch of pride. He must have been the local shaman. The shaman had slipped the shell armlet over his wrist and handed it to Yakinahiko. It was heavy and carved on the outer side in a beautiful pattern.

‘The craftsmanship is very fine,’ Yakinahiko had noted, with admiration. ‘Where did you acquire this?’

‘Far across the seas there is a chain of islands where they collect these shells. We go back and forth in ships to barter our grains and pottery for the jewellery they fashion from the shells.’

This had surprised Yakinahiko and he glanced at Unashi. Unashi shook his head slowly. Apparently he, too, was hearing of these islands for the first time. The two had travelled to every nook and cranny of the kingdom of Yamato, but they had never heard of a chain of islands across the sea so they had never ventured that far.

‘Where is this island chain?’

‘It is due south as far as you can go. The seas there are full of little islands all strung together. You can travel easily from island to island because the sea is not difficult to navigate. The island furthest to the south looks nothing like Yamato. I hear it is very beautiful but the poison there is unlike anything we have here.’

‘Poison? What kind of poison?’

The shaman had grinned. ‘I couldn’t say. But you can be sure that in a place where everything is beautiful there must be people, plants or animals that carry some trap or poison that’s too horrible for us to even imagine. That’s what people mean when they talk about the poison there.’

Yakinahiko had determined that he would travel to that distant island chain. He wanted an armlet like the one the shaman wore, but more than that, if he went somewhere he’d never yet been, he might discover women more beautiful than any he’d ever seen. The notion had stirred him and he could not quell his excitement. The prospect of encountering an unknown poison had sent a shiver up his spine.

Driven by curiosity, Yakinahiko had boarded a swift-sailing shellfish trawler and journeyed upon the seas for two weeks before making port at Amaromi, the large island at the entrance to the chain. There, he had met Masago, the beautiful daughter of the island chief, and had made her his wife.

That had been a year ago. Now he was sailing home to his island princess. Around his right arm, hidden beneath his sleeve, he wore the armlet fashioned of wide-mouth conch that Masago had given him. The radiance of the shell and its exquisite craftsmanship were even more impressive than they had seemed on the shaman’s armlet. Yakinahiko touched the armlet under his garment with his left hand. He had missed Masago. He had never felt such longing for any other woman who had become his wife . . . No, perhaps there had been one other in the past, long, long ago. Then he had been nearly mad with desire for his wife. He recalled having wanted her so badly he almost preferred death over the agony of his desire. But he had lived so long, as long as a boulder, and had now forgotten it.

‘Yakinahiko-sama, what’s that?’ Unashi pointed to something just ahead of the ship. It was a small, reed-woven boat, bobbing up and down on the white-capped waves. Whenever one of the waves broke over the craft, it seemed likely to sink but then it would right itself again, rising and falling with the waves.

For some reason Yakinahiko’s heart began to pound. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’

Unashi looked anxious.

‘Call someone to us. I want to ask about it.’

Unashi clambered over the pitching deck and shouted to the helmsman.

Summoned before the nobleman, the sailor prostrated himself at Yakinahiko’s feet. Yakinahiko pointed to the reed boat and asked, ‘Why is that little boat out there?’

The helmsman raised his head. When he caught sight of the boat his face froze. ‘It carries the body of a dead infant. In the islands around here, when a child dies at birth the parents put it in a little reed boat like that and float it out to sea. They pray for the boat to carry the child to the peaceful kingdom on the other side of the sea where it will be given a new life so it can come back again.’

Yakinahiko looked at the tiny boat. It was sinking. There was a tug at his heart. At some point in the past he had set a little reed boat afloat on the seas. His mind raced. But when? And with whom? He could not remember. He was certain he had. But had he? His memory was too hazy to be trusted. Several hundreds of years had passed since Yakinahiko had assumed the guise of a man, a human. No, several thousand. Originally he had been a god, a male deity, but so long ago that he could scarcely remember it.

‘To meet the pain of parting after enduring the pain of childbirth . . .’

The helmsman heard what Yakinahiko had murmured and lowered his forehead with a look of compassion. Yakinahiko tended to feel things more deeply than most, and when he put his feelings into words, he induced tears in anyone who happened to be near by. He could just as easily prompt gales of laughter. As a result, people were instinctively drawn to him and crowded around him. Whenever anyone heard him begin to speak, they would prick their ears to hear what he had to say.

The goshawk screeched and leapt to Yakinahiko’s arm – he wore a deerskin glove.

‘Ketamaru, stay.’

Ketamaru could tell that his master was interested in the reed boat, so he was ready to fly to it. Just as Yakinahiko stretched out his other hand to calm the raptor, Ketamaru grazed it with his sharp talons, opening a gash on the palm. Blood spurted from the wound. Startled, Unashi raced to bind a white cloth around it. Yakinahiko clucked softly, mystified by what had happened. A goshawk is easy to train and always eager to obey its master. Why today had the bird put up a challenge?

Unashi stared nervously at the bandage he had wrapped around his master’s hand, now saturated with blood. From his expression, you would have thought he was at fault.

‘That’s quite a wound.’

‘It will heal quickly.’ Knowing that Unashi was concerned, Yakinahiko tried to make light of the injury.

‘It has sunk.’ The helmsman pointed into the waves. The reed boat had disappeared.

Yakinahiko shook his head sadly. ‘I wonder why they float the child away in a boat like that. Burial would be better. Do you suppose the child can find any rest at the bottom of the sea?’

‘That is what the people in these parts believe. And they trust the babe will be given new life and be born once more. That will be what they are praying for.’ Unashi spoke as if he believed it himself. But Yakinahiko was not so sure. ‘I wonder. To be alive is what matters most. Doesn’t everything end with death? It makes no sense to mourn in this way – to send the pitiful babe away on a reed boat all alone.’

He felt a pang. Among the many children women had borne him, had there been any pitiful stillborns? Yakinahiko closed his eyes and thought about it but he could not recall. The number of women he had taken to wife, the number of children they had had, was far, far more than he could ever count.

His encounter with the tiny death on the high seas, so unexpected, had left him feeling uneasy. Having been granted eternal life, he had seen more than enough of death; understandably, he wished to avoid it now. Death was something to despise: it tore loving partners apart, forcing one to journey to a distant land while the other sank into a pool of sorrow. Death perpetrated an outrageous atrocity.

Not that Yakinahiko was completely aloof from death. He was a hunter, after all. He set out on journeys with the sole purpose of killing animals. So, his attitude was contradictory. When Yakinahiko hunted with Ketamaru, they caught small birds, like thrushes and larks, as well as pheasants and rabbits. As long as there was game, he would hunt it.

And the target of Yakinahiko’s hunt was not always animals. He also pursued women. He sought virgins, or women at their peak – any woman for that matter, as long as she was a beauty. Once he caught wind of a beautiful woman, he would seek her out, no matter how far the quest might take him, and begin his seduction until he had won her from her father, her husband, her brothers. And, as though to atone for the lives of the animals he hunted, he granted the woman a child.

How many lives had he granted? In order to battle against the death he despised, he had had to continue bestowing life. That had become Yakinahiko’s mission. And since it fell to the woman to raise the child, all Yakinahiko did was beget it, and then he was off, without a backward glance. He was always travelling, almost never to visit the same place twice. But this island chain was different.

‘I wonder if Masago-hime is well.’ Unashi said worriedly, as he gazed out over the waters ahead. He was close in age to the island princess and adored her as he would an older sister.

‘I wonder,’ Yakinahiko responded cheerfully. ‘She’s probably still swimming, even with that big belly.’ He gazed into the blue sky. There wasn’t a cloud in sight. For him to confront yet another unfamiliar sea voyage indicated the dept...

Table of contents

• Today, this Very Day
• Into the Realm of the Dead
• With All I Do in this World
• How Comely Now the Woman
• How Comely Now the Man