Lost was, of course, Ryouga Hibiki’s normal state of existence, but this time he’d outdone himself. He had been in this forest for days, with no sign of a way out. The trails he followed evaporated into underbrush. The tiny streams he hoped would lead him to a larger watercourse trickled away to nothing instead. He had resorted to blazing trees to keep himself from going in circles, but he wasn’t going in circles. There was just no end to this weird woods!
The forest was strangely empty of life as well. No birds sang in the web-hung trees. No insects buzzed, except flies. There were no tufts of fur on bushes, no gnawed bark, no little piles of fur and bone where some predator had caught its dinner. There were, however, spiders, or maybe something more like caterpillars. He hadn’t seen any, but there were webs in the trees. Disturbing dreams had plagued his sleep, dreams he couldn’t remember clearly, only there was something singing to him, and a feeling like… it had been indescribable, wonderful… and absolutely terrifying. Then when he woke up he found a large web over his bedroll. Something had spun it over him as he slept!
He was starting to get scared.
Just as worrisome was the shortage of water and the apparent absence of edible plants. It was early summer, and he should have been able to add a number of tasty and nutritious shoots and berries to his dwindling supply of instant ramen. But the plants he saw were unfamiliar, the berries foul-smelling and probably poisonous for all their bright colors, and instinct warned him not to try any of the small, bright-spotted mushrooms. As for water, he had not found any springs since yesterday, and the water in that one had smelled musty. He had boiled a little for his ramen, but it had made the noodles taste so foul he had thrown the mess away. Akane’s worst effort would have been delicious by comparison.
Oh kami, please let me get out of this place and back to Akane-san. I’ll never think bad things about her food, I’ll eat her cooking forever, if only I can see her again…
Besides, the summer rains were coming, and he really needed to find civilization and shelter. As bad as it was, being lost in this wilderness as a man, it would probably be a hundred times worse to be lost here as a pig.
Hitotsu, hitoyo no koi naraba...
It sounded like someone playing a shakuhachi. Or had he heard words? Either way, it meant someone he could ask for directions out of this nightmare forest.
Futatsu, futari de jigoku e to...
The voice had a flute’s impossible purity, but those were definitely words. Someone was singing. Off to his right, down the slope…
Mittsu, mina o koroshitemo...
…into a stand of dark trees, festooned with webs, and dark sacklike things that hung in the branches. It was a place that should have set off danger-warnings in his mind, but the haunting beauty of the song, the impossible loveliness of that voice, entranced him. It promised more than directions out, it promised beauty and acceptance and peace, an end to all his self-loathing and self-doubt, such wonder and delight as he had never known… except in those disturbing dreams…
Yottsu, yomi e no michi-shirube,
Yottsu, yomi e no michi-shirube.
The trees grew closer together here, the webs in their branches thicker. No breeze stirred the heavy, still air. There was not even the droning of flies here, only his footsteps and that song.
Itsutsu, ikusa no chi no ame no...
Then, with no thinning of the forest, it suddenly ended. He came out into a clearing. Emerald grass, smooth as moss, sloped to the edge of a little pool.
Muttsu, mukuro to kawarya senu...
She was standing with her back to him, knee-deep in the water. Her smooth hair flowed down her back to her knees, black, shimmering with highlights that were the green of the grass, the blue of the sky reflected in the water. He could see the sleeves of her flowing robe, green also,with traceries of blue and rose.
Nanatsu, namida mo kare hate te,
Yattsu, yamiyo ga tokate yuku,
Yattsu, yamiyo ga tokate yuku.
“Excuse me,” he began, blushing, hand to his head in embarrassment. “Can you tell me how to get to the nearest town?
“Wouldn’t you rather stay with me, sweet boy?” Her voice was as sweet speaking as it had been singing; it promised everything and more, he wanted to go to her, kneel before her in the cool water of the pool, surrender himself to… he scarcely dared imagine. His nose felt hot and tight; in a moment it would explode. Only the knowledge that if he gave in to that desire, if he went into that crystal water, he would change into a hideous black pig and she would scream and thrust him away, kept him from moving forward.
“Uh, sorry to bother you,” he muttered and began to back away.
“You looked so sweet, sleeping,” she went on. “And your dreams… Is the rest of you as delicious?” And she turned, and he saw…
Her face was a skull’s face, with huge multifaceted insect eyes, and an insect’s mandibles and sucking proboscis. Her humanoid body was indeed female, nude, but skeletally gaunt, her thin arms jointed oddly. And what he thought was a robe was instead her wings, vast and colorful. She leaped toward him on insectoid legs. At the last second, he leaped away, lashing out with a powerful kick.
She landed sprawling from a kick that could have snapped a tree, but she sprang up immediately and a stream of sticky gray stuff shot toward him. He dodged among the trees, wondering what to do. It would take too long to gather ki for a shishi hokoudan. If he could find a rock maybe he could blast holes in its wings with a bakusai tenketsu. But at all costs he had to stay away from that web-stuff and out of range of those claws and mandibles. He wished he could think moves ahead, could improvise tactics the way Ranma could… the way Ranma always managed to sucker him into the path of a bucket of water or something… that’s it! He pulled his umbrella free of the straps…
His only chance was the open space of the clearing. He didn’t like it; there was water in there and if he changed it would be all over. He didn’t stand a chance as a pig. But it was the only thing he could come up with… he sprinted toward the clearing and leaped onto one of the rocks by the pool, opening his umbrella as he moved.
She glided out of the trees. “You’re mine now, sweet boy,” she sang. And he threw his umbrella in a spinning arc. It curved away from her and she laughed, her laugh chimed like bells, it was an abomination that anything so hideous and evil could sound so beautiful.
“Then come get me!” he yelled, and took off across the clearing. She followed…
…straight into the path of his circling umbrella. Her laugh became a brief second of screaming, then silence as its razor edge sliced off her head.
Her body dropped to the ground, covered by its brilliant wings, and then the whole thing dissolved into a puddle of stinking goo that sank into the earth without a trace.
Ryouga dropped to his knees, his already-empty stomach trying to empty itself even further.
Colors were just beginning to be visible in the early sunlight as Ryouga shouldered his pack. The pool drained into a little stream, and he followed it under the web-hung trees. In the growing light, the webs looked old and tattered, no longer threatening. As he followed the water, he heard insects buzzing, and slapped at a mosquito. Somewhere up ahead a bird sang.
Before long the tiny stream joined a larger one. Cattails lined its banks. He picked one, peeled the stem and munched as he walked. Somewhere downstream would be roads, towns, people he could ask for directions, and a way back to Akane.
In the forest he had left, high in a tree, something broke through the end of a silk-wrapped bundle and fell to the ground. Wet and crumpled wings expanded, straightened, waved back and forth, drying, straightening, hardening. And something sang with the haunting purity of a bamboo flute.
Hitotsu, hitoyo no koi naraba...
NOTES, EXPLANATIONS ETC.
I couldn’t get the song out of my head, so I wrote a story around it. It’s not supposed to be a crossover or anything, the monster is actually a composite between the insect-winged youma in Curse of the Undead, assorted succubus-types culled from a lifetime of reading Andre Norton, the Blackworlder female in Wicked City (I wish I could have thought of a way to show her teeth, but this is Ryouga…)
I imagine that getting lost as much as he does, Ryouga probably knows a fair bit about wilderness survival, edible wild plants etc.
The song is from Curse of the Undead: Yoma (I think it was re-released recently as Blood Reign, but we have the older tape). It's in the form of a traditional counting song, and the words (translated in the tape subtitles) mean:
One, a love in one generation,
Two, we both go to hell,
Three, even if we kill everyone,
Four, signpost to the Land of the Dead (x2).
Five, a rain of blood because of the war,
Six, just like a dead body,
Seven, my tears run out,
Eight, a dark night starts to melt (x2).
There is a final couplet, but it's not on the tape and I haven’t tracked down a CD version of the song yet.