What happens in the library stays in the library. Unless it's demons

[freedom_is_grey]

Ysalwen is seated at a table in the library, tomes and scrolls spread out before her. There's also the remains of at least two plates of sandwiches next to her elbow, and two empty glasses of water. There is one half-empty glass, too.

Liranan, seated at her side, seems to be watching that half-empty glass as if his life depends on it.

Time continues to pass.

Comments

[freedom_is_grey]

"It -- perhaps?"

She lifts up the one he's looking at, flipping through it carefully.

"The language is very simple, at least, and there are a great many pictures."

Ysalwen hands it up to him a moment later.

"Take a look, if you like, and you can tell me if it's accurate or -- very off-center?"

[yinyangwizard]

It's a book of Japanese fairy tales with lovely illustrations. Seimei is just one chapter. He turns to the beginning and starts reading through it.

"Well, most of it is accurate, generally speaking. But my father was not a court official. He was a zuryo, a provincial governor. He wouldn't have met my mother otherwise. And my mother didn't have a fox tail when she took human form, like she does in the picture. She was too skilled for that."

[freedom_is_grey]

"It does seem a little too easily discovered -- the tail, I mean -- to make actually running about in human shape in the human world a very safe affair. Or a long-lived one."

Her voice is, for a moment, very wry. As is her expression.

[yinyangwizard]

"Well, it's not like she was officially his wife," Seimei says. "They were married. He insisted on it. But very few people knew. Certainly not his primary wife. He built a house for my mother in Osaka, where I was born, and that's where she raised me."

Osaka is a major city now. At that time, it was out in the sticks.

[freedom_is_grey]

"Was it widely known she was a fox-spirit? Or was that -- not the problem."

Hmm.

"Multiple wives were uncommon then? And now? Or -- and were there multiple husbands as well? Or is that one of those things that no one would dream of doing?"

Multiple husbands tend not to generate greater numbers of children, after all.

[yinyangwizard]

"If people had known that my father had taken up with a fox spirit, he would have been banished from the Capital, and I would never have been allowed in at all," Seimei says. "And at that time, having multiple wives was not terribly uncommon, at least not for the aristocracy. A court official might have two or three. The Emperor himself had several," he explains. "Although the difference between 'wife' and 'concubine' was not always that clear, especially where the Emperor was concerned."

Marriage meant something very different back in the Heian era.

[freedom_is_grey]

"Sometimes the difference between 'wife' and 'slave' isn't very far, either."

Her voice is very dry.

"But -- ah. They fear spirits, then? Or do they consider such beings beneath them? It's difficult to predict, on the whole."

[yinyangwizard]

"Well, some spirits we worshipped or revered. But by and large, fox spirits did not enjoy such high regard. Sometimes they were even lumped in with yōkai, or demons."

Seimei, of course, never lumped them in that way.

"If my father had simply had a tryst with a fox spirit, it would not have been considered such a bad thing. But to marry one, and acknowledge the child you had together? That was unthinkable.

"And by the way, noblemen's wives at that time were most certainly not slaves. They did not have such a high status as men, and were limited in certain ways, but no man regarded his wife as property. In fact, women inherited property. Men by and large did not. We were expected to make our fortunes at court."

[freedom_is_grey]

Ysalwen laughs, quick and bright.

"I wasn't necessarily talking about your world, but that's all right."

Her mouth quirks at one corner.

"Court being where the power was, then?"

[yinyangwizard]

"Yes. The samurai and daimyo came later. Back then, the Imperial Court was the center of power. Not the Emperor, so much. Emperor Daigo, the first I served under, was probably the last Emperor to hold any real power. The de facto rulers of Japan were the ones whose daughters were Empresses and Imperial concubines, and whose grandsons were future Emperors and princes."

[freedom_is_grey]

She raises an eyebrow.

"The fathers of those daughters, or the mothers, as well? And aunts and uncles and cousins and -- or just the head of said family, whoever it was?"

[yinyangwizard]

"Mostly the fathers. And mostly the head of the family," Seimei answers. "But women had more influence at court than was generally acknowledged. They stoked their husbands' ambitions, oversaw their sons' education, and did all sorts of subtle things to advance the men they favored or embarrass the ones they didn't. I owe much of my success to my first wife, her keen grasp of politics, and her network of friends in palace service."

[freedom_is_grey]

"Mmph."

Ysalwen bites back some profanity.

"Subtlety. From the shadows. Quiet pressure."

It's one thing to choose it. It's another for that to be the only choice.

"I'd be terrible at it. Did you agree to work together, you and your wife? Did you like each other?"

[yinyangwizard]

"Akiko was the granddaughter of Kamo no Tadayuki, my primary teacher. It was an arranged marriage, and initially we did not like each other very much. She was not what you would call warm and friendly, and I was a socially inept lad who had no idea how to relate to women other than the ones I grew up with."

So a match made in heaven it was not.

"She may not have liked me much in the beginning, but she recognized that her welfare was very much dependent on my own. She also took to heart her grandfather's pronouncement that I just might amount to something." Seimei smirks. For Kamo no Tadayuki, that was high praise.

"So early on she sat me down and said, 'It is the duty of a wife to support her husband whether they have great affection for each other or not, for their fortunes rise or fall together. I will offer you what help I can, if you are wise enough to take it.' And fortunately, I was." Seimei chuckles.

"She was right. We did not choose to be allies, but there we were, so we decided to make the best of it. Affection came later, although it took a few years." Seimei pauses, lost in thought. "It's been a long time since I thought about those days, let alone talked about them."

[freedom_is_grey]

"Do you want to stop? We can, I don't mean to pry. Not about personal things, anyway. It's -- difficult."

At least in her experience.

"I've heard of worse marriages. I haven't seen many, because usually one person is already dead if it goes that badly."

It's a joke. Mostly. Ish.

[yinyangwizard]

"The word 'nostalgia' originally meant 'the pain from an old wound,'" Seimei says. "It is actually a welcome thing, when the wound is nine hundred years old."

Also, it's good to have the reminder that he used to be human. But that's about the present, isn't it? Not the current topic of conversation.

"I don't know if you've come across the Kagerō Nikki in your studies, but that was a very unhappy marriage."

And is now one of the enduring classics of Japanese literature, oddly enough.

[freedom_is_grey]

She doesn't laugh, just smiles crookedly.

"The worlds have no end of unhappy marriages, I would guess."

[yinyangwizard]

"Indeed not. I have seen my share of them, some worse than what is detailed by the author of that diary. Fortunately neither of my marriages were like that."

Seimei turns a page in the storybook.

"Ah! Here is Kamo no Tadayuki," he says, showing the picture to Ysalwen. In it, a young boy (presumably Seimei himself) is writing Chinese and Sanskrit on a paper with a calligraphy brush. Sitting beside him and overseeing his efforts is a man with a flowing grey beard and prodigious eyebrows. He looks down on the boy with a smile of approval.

"Kamo-sensei did have a beard like that, but he almost always looked very stern. And I would not have been writing on paper at that age! Paper was too expensive in those days for a child to scribble on. I had a tray of wet sand and a stick. I didn't graduate to paper until I knew my characters." Seimei shakes his head and clucks his tongue.

"I was fortunate to have such a teacher, even if he was a curmudgeon. He had studied yin-yang magic - onmyodo, we called it - with the Daoist masters in China. To him it was not simply a job or a means to an end, as it was for so many, but a sacred calling.

"My mother also had a hand in my training - beyond engaging Kamo-sensei, I mean - but that is not generally known."

[freedom_is_grey]

Ysalwen studies the picture for a moment or two, listening to Seimei speak.

"What was it like? To be taught by your mother. And -- her magic was different, then? Than this onmyodo, I mean."

[yinyangwizard]

"As my mother and Kamo-sensei understood it, their magics were of a different nature," Seimei answers. "As I understood it, each of them knew certain spells that the other did not. The truth is that they both experienced and practiced magic in very different ways, even though the magic itself came from the same source."

This was a concept that Seimei instinctively grasped for centuries before he learned how to put it into words.

"Unlike the magic Kamo-sensei taught me, my mother's magic involved no incantations, implements, or components. It was just something she did. She taught me how to change shape, how to create glamours and illusions, how to perceive spirits and magic that most humans don't notice."

[freedom_is_grey]

"And one of those isn't any easier for you than the other?"

It's an important question -- and a useful one.

[yinyangwizard]

"I took very well to both," Seimei says. "That was...sort of what my mother was concerned about. When I was born I had no fox features at all, and she thought I was completely human. But when I was five or six, I did a very unusual thing.

"Out in Osaka, we were very isolated. I had no other children to play with. So where a child my age would normally have one imaginary friend, I had a few. And one day, they stopped being imaginary." Seimei turns back a page, to the picture of him and his mother. He points to a group of small ogre-like creatures in the near distance.

[freedom_is_grey]

"Huh."

Ysalwen studies the image of the creatures, leaning forward a little for a better look.

Then she glances up at Seimei.

"Had they always been real, or did you make them so?"

[yinyangwizard]

"I'm not sure what I did. I think they were imaginary at first, and then I wished very hard for them to be real. As a result I summoned a group of small oni. They are a kind of demon, and normally very bloodthirsty creatures, but they did not behave that way with me - fortunately. We played tag in the garden, until one of the servants saw and went running for my mother. She chased them off." Seimei sighs.

"Initially, I was very cross. I didn't understand how much danger I had been in, or how much I had frightened my mother. What I had done, a fox spirit could never do, and even human mages with decades of practice would have a difficult time doing. If I could do a thing like that, what would I do the next time I had a tantrum? Or when I was older, and wanted something I could not obtain by legitimate means?"

[freedom_is_grey]

She raises one eyebrow, studying his face intently.

"And now that you are older?"