a serialized online story
by Tommy Schmitz
Chapter 7 - Windows, songs, voices and hands.
Katie crouched and kept her head and shoulders
under the spill of light.
The jungle, Hebi-yama was right there.
The blackness was not something you carefully approach:
Slip out the bedroom window,
and you're there.
Katie continued hearing the piano, the flute, the moonlight lullaby,
her grandmother in polite and high octave voice
still chattering away.
She felt her socks and ankles grow cold and wet from dew,
felt a single drop of sweat running down the ridges of her ribs,
heard the drone of ten thousand bull frogs,
and could smell the jungle in a new way.
If her eyes were opened any more
they'd be falling right out of her head.
The chance of the flautist not being alone,
with a small group maybe,
produced a flash of fear:
she could be snatched if he had somebody, some goon
waiting just inside the wall of bamboo black.
She stayed crouched and moved along,
knees bent, head up, ankles feeling strained,
and eyes focused out there, at nothing.
"Great." she thought,
but on a lower level
she hated it when she allowed this sort of sarcasm
to vouch for feeling afraid.
Right now fear is fear, she thought.
Right now there's nothing much funny about it.
"You're out here," she thought, "Don't screw up. Don't get caught.
And by all means
do not scream if the situation does not allow."
"Yea right," she interrupted herself..
"Dang. I gotta pee." she thought.
"No I don't. I just peed. Stop this nonsense."
The moonlight scattered at random the thinnest of fingers of itself,
eery and pale blue beams,
acting more leery than herself.
Wings flapping,
arranging themselves
seven, ten meters above, in nests.
Jungle crow not used to having human company,
not even during daylight.
"At least they can't swoop down here in this thick mess."
"The bullfrogs are so loud."
She tried remembering Oba-chan telling her about
how the bull frogs were imported from America decades ago,
Alabama bullfrogs.
Japan's rice crop had failed and
bullfrogs were food,
bull frogs were protein,
bullfrogs were breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Now, just a pain in the butt.
"We got them back, I guess, with kutsu."
She recalled reading about the invasion of kutsu,
or kudzu perhaps they call it there,
in the the southern states of America.
"Sorry, didn't mean that."
She thought again . . . still swatting down thoughts.
"What am i thinking about? Kutsu? Pay attention, Katie!"
The flute was thirty or forty meters due west of the house wall.
"I'll crawl along the edge of black, here,
past the back of the house,
then over the retaining wall, four feet, piece a cake,
up the hill about twenty meters,
then west into the jungle.
And I will go
really slow,
as quiet as a snake."
She felt her heart pound now,
"Oh god, the snakes!
I forgot.
do snakes sleep?
Snakes sleep like sheep, don't they?
like kittens?"
"Great." said Katie again.
Katie crouched lower and slipped sideways into the jungle.
holding herself up with her right hand,
her right forearm sometimes.
"Oops, no room...
Do right elbow, Katie,
left leg push,
left arm grab,
oh god, make sure its vegetable or mineral
or anything at all but snake."
Her body shivered at the thought.
"Right arm slide." she continued.
Right foot drag and stop."
And she shivered again - that gross feeling of yuck and fear.
and moved again
and shivered.
This government land had been sectioned off forever,
as far as Katie knew,
even during the Edo Period,,
when the Emperor lived in Kyoto,
the old capital of Japan.
when a handful or so of Daimyo - land barons - ruled the world.
"Perhaps one of the Tokugawa Shoguns made this a park,"
Katie and Susan would speculate from time to time.
In this solitary seven acres of bamboo forest,
in the thick of suburban Tokyo
there existed a habitat unique
to the greater part of Tokyo, the Kanto Plain.
There were birds and snakes and insects in here
that you would never see for a good 70 kilometers.
"Keep on playing that pipe," Katie whispered to herself.
"He's gotta be down there about twenty yards,
if I could only see."
She tried to imagine
the depth and distance inside her mind.
The piano stops.
And in a single measure
stops the flute.
"What are you doing, Susan!" Katie said with her eyes.
"Katie-Susan!"
"Susan-Katie!" Oba-chan was yelling.
"Oh my god, Oba-chan is calling us."
Again she called.
And yet again.
"Say something Susan!" Katie whispered harshly.
"Yes Oba-chan? Did you want something?" Susan responded.
"Would you girls come here a moment...
the men from the Japan Foreign Ministry would like to ask you a few more questions."
Katie's jaw drops and
she suddenly exhales.
Just a minute Oba-chan! I'm helping Katie with her math! We almost got it.
"Do finish .... but hurry girls! We are keeping these men waiting!"
Katie's moves her neck in a "no" and looks around,
trying to remember exactly where she heard the flute.
Not there. Not there. Not there.
Oh great.
Must be right down there,
"Not one finger of pale moonbeam
in those five square meters
just down there."
Katie crawled in that direction.
And she felt someone grab her hand.
"Don't scream." spoke a soft voice.
Katie made a quick motion with her body to get away.
"Don't move. Don't worry. Your sister is on her way."
Minutes pass inside while Oba-chan waited
with the two men from the Japan Foreign Ministry.
"I'll go check on them." Oba-chan said.
She returned to the living room, her hands covering her face.
"They're both gone." she shook her head.
(Chapter 8 coming Wednesday, July 19, 2006, 11:00 pm Mexico City Time.)
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