Mina rested for a while on the rock, slowly rubbing her aching calf.  She turned over in her mind carefully what she might say to Ikeda once she reached the shrine. She again considered the path she was about to embark upon and hoped the priest would remember his offer to help her out in an hour of need, when she had saved him from the hungry jaw of the mountains.

Mina had been raised largely by her grandparents, who eked a living out of these very mountains. Her grandfather had been a trapper and knew the way of the animals in the treacherous mountains like the back of his hand. However, it was her grandmother who had really educated her. She taught Mina the way of the herbs: where to find certain, medicinal herbs, when and how to harvest them, and then, how to prepare them to cure specific ailments. They were poor, even by the standards of the poor in the village. Yet they were wealthy in their freedom from society and its attendant prejudices for her kind – Eta, the polluted ones. Mina’s parents had disappeared when she was still a baby. Her father was an Eta, but her mother was not, and to this day, it was not certain whether they had been murdered by the shamed and enraged family of her mother, or if they had managed to escape to the northern frontier land of Hokkaido.

As far as she knew, she was alone in the world, since she buried both her grand parents two winters ago, and she was fine with that. That is, at least until now. She sighed as she looked out into her beloved forest without really seeing anything, her calloused hands making a rasping sound as she rubbed them tentatively together. Times were changing, and she felt for the first time in her life that she was being strangled slowly. Freedom to her had been being left alone in the mountains. She had inherited her grandmother’s herbal practice, and delivered herbs to the few who knew. But now, she not only had been burned out of her small shack, she saw the mountains were being subjugated to development, and with that came her eviction. She shifted the weight of her bundle tied to her back. There was nothing much she owned in the world: some herbs and salves that were rare she had painstakingly gathered and made, a change of clothing so threadbare she might as well have left behind, and the treasure – a short, written text that had been passed down in her family from a mystical ancestor.

Mina wondered again whether this move was a mistake. Should she not go deeper into the mountains, away from the developers? How on earth would a Shinto priest be able to offer any kind of aid to an Eta? Yet, there was a promise that had been passed down through her family, a promise that made absolutely no sense, yet as any promise, each generation had been held to uphold. Mina decided that the only thing she could do was to tell that priest the truth. Or at least of what she understood of it, and see how he would respond. If the response was not good, she would simply hike back into the mountains and disappear into its folds. She was no longer young, but she could still do that.

That decided, with a sigh, she stood up and stretched. Her stomach growled. She would need to look for some berries to stave her hunger. Around her the forest that had become noisy with the sound of birds and crawling, prowling things became still again, sensing her moving, human presence.

“Ha, ha,” she laughed into the forest, “that’s about the way I feel, going in to see this priest.” She sniffed the air. Deer was nearby. Maybe some plump berries were close for the picking. It was early summer. Plenty of food to be picked. Must be careful of the humans, though, she thought. They were easy enough to avoid, but the energy around them troubled her. The ones who had burned her place down were not the kind of mountain folk she was used to seeing, occasionally. They were loud and careless. No respect for the mountains, she thought. That was what had troubled her. They had no respect for the mountains.

Adjusting her pack, Mina stepped quietly and quickly through the forest, moving, stopping, listening, then moving again. She was built small and compact, with an agility and sure-footedness of a goat.  She did not know how old she was, but she had stopped bleeding several winters ago.

“Time to become a wise woman,” her grandmother had told her then. It was true she had not slept with a man in awhile. The need or urge had become less, and perhaps with less desire driving her, there was more space to just relax and observe life. It was true when that man Ikeda had to be taken care of. Even though she had to bare him to make sure how and where he was hurt, seeing his naked body did not start a fire deep in her belly that used to sometimes consume her in her younger days. Here she grinned to herself and stopped in her tracks.    “Well, if he had been younger and not so emaciated,” she said out loud to a bush, hanging full of berries.

“Old woman, stop your foolish thinking,” she hissed in mock exasperation even as her fingers gleefully went for the plump berries. She chewed one carefully, her eyes half closed. Yes, theses were good. With that, she focused on procuring more, putting them into the kimono sleeve of her faded, blue work coat. A gentle wind blew through the trees, making the young, bright green leaves shimmer and dance. There was lightness in the air. The rainy season would be upon them soon, but for now, the weather was beautiful and sunny, with a hint of the fecund summer in the air. Mina carefully sat back on her haunches, again smelling deer close by.  They were sacred to the mountains, and it was good luck to be blessed by them.

When they appeared, they approached as in a dreamscape. She saw the giant stag first, dappled with light as it lightly and proudly stepped through the forest at a trot, its horns huge and beautiful, crowning its mighty head. In the cool green shadow of the old growth forest, it was as if they were semi-mythic, aquatic creatures moving with elegance, dancing swiftly and lightly in and out of sunlight. The herd behind him was large, with young bucks and many does and fawns. They moved through gently and swiftly, and Mina thanked the gods for this magnificent blessing on her venture into the world. It was as if the Heavens had shown her the secret undercurrents that piloted the events on the surface. It was beautiful and enigmatic, and not without a certain twinge of pain.

“Sacred Lord of the Mountains,” Mina intoned as she pressed her forehead against the loaming earth, “may you keep this forest safe and peaceful, out of the clutches of those men with yellow hats who came and burned down my house. And if those men come anyway, may you make the forest and all its inhabitants disappear and keep them safe somewhere else. “  She thought a little further, then added grimly, “And may you make each step of those yellow hat men be difficult and full of peril. They come in to destroy with no respect. You MAKE it hard on them. It is only just.” There, she thought, that is good. Bitterness was part of nature’s flavors, and it was good to infuse it into what was about to be done to these sacred mountains. Bitterness was part of medicine at its most potent.