When the sky turns deep purple, like the clouds themselves are bruised, I know the rains are going to last. After seven days of rainfall, our house smells of moldy straw.
I’ve heard that in other parts, places not blessed with as much rain as Izumo Village, the people pray for a clear Tanabata night. Their children sing songs to keep the rain clouds away for the festival, allowing the celestial lovers to finally meet on the seventh day of the seventh month. I ask Okaasan if it’s because people like to pray for things they might actually get instead of asking for ideals that will never be. But my mother insists there’s more to it than that.
★ ★ ★
“Okaasan, what are they making?” I whisper in my mother’s ear as we pass the red torii gate. I’m only a few inches shorter than her now, nearly full grown. “Are those the kind of sticks they hit themselves with?”
“Shh!” my mother hisses through closed teeth, averting her eyes from the priests. “Flagellation is sacred. We mustn’t speak of it so crassly.”
The priests gather in front of the shrine, wearing only their loincloths in the rain. They slice open stalks of bamboo as if making the hand fans they sell during summer festivals, but these are too long for hand fans.
★ ★ ★
At the market, the drizzle has reduced to a fine mist. I take off my straw hat and tilt my head toward the heavens. The sun peeks through the soft veil of clouds until a beam of sunlight breaks through and hits my face.
The warmth on my eyelids is sensual, soothing, and I imagine myself a lizard drying off on a warm sunny stone.
Okaasan shoves the hat back on my head, the rough edges pulling on my hair. “Don’t look at the heavens, Hoshiko!”
But around us in the market, more and more vendors are setting down their wares and stepping out from under their umbrellas to blink at the clearing sky.
It is Tanabata day, and the clouds are abandoning us.
★ ★ ★
Okaasan bargains for fresh mackerel from the old fishmonger and buys a thick daikon from a girl who looks no older than me, though she wears her hair in a bun and a sad wisdom in her eyes. As we leave, vendors are adjusting their market umbrellas and gazing warily up at the sun. The fresh air is filled with the aroma of grilled fish and whispers:
“I’m sure the storms will return by evening,” said the eggplant seller as she rearranged her wilting wares in the shade.
“Look at the dark clouds on the horizon—the sun can’t last.” The fishmonger dumped more ice on his dead-eyed freshwater eels, now starting to smell.
“Will you look up?” a young boy asked his mother.
“Of course not,” she snapped, tugging him along toward home.
I take the straw hat off again, letting it hang off my neck by its leather cord, and this time Okaasan doesn’t scold me when I tilt my head to the heavens to absorb the warming rays.
★ ★ ★
We hear the priests before we see them. FLACK… FLACK… FLACK. No grunting, no groans. Just the flapping of bamboo shards striking soft human flesh.
My mother casts down her eyes as we pass the torii gate, dwarfed by the surrounding pines, but I sneak a glance. The eldest priest is bald, his wrinkled back crisscrossed with white scars. He kneels on the shrine’s steps, chanting ritual prayers. Every few moments he holds one of the syllables on his tongue and slaps the long, shredded bamboo across his bare back. Fresh, red vertical stripes ooze with each strike. FLACK…FLACK…FLACK.
I glance up at the increasingly blue sky and a wet pit forms in my stomach.
★ ★ ★
The silence at our table is maddening. I set down the rice scoop and cross my arms across my chest.
“So what happens if the clouds don’t return?”
My father, still dressed in his herder’s clothes, runs a hand through his hair and glances at my mother across the table. She stares at her hands, folded in her lap.
“We’ll still have the festival, right?” I look from parent to parent.
My father’s chopsticks grab a daikon slice from the bowl in the middle of the table. He takes a bite, chews thoughtfully.
“I don’t know, Hoshiko. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
We finish our meal in silence. How quiet the house is without the sound of rain splattering on the straw roof.
★ ★ ★
The sun sinks beneath the mountains, bleeding the sky into pinks and purples. The first real sunset in months.
I’m pounding rice in the mortar with Okaasan when a solid knock on the front door breaks the rhythm of our strokes. We so rarely receive visitors, it makes both of us jump.
My father opens the door, though only a crack. I crane my head and glimpse the elderly priest we’d passed earlier, this time wearing a coarse brown robe. I flinch, imagining how the rough fabric must feel against his raw wounds.
By the look on my father’s face when he turns around, I know what he’s going to say. “The priests have decided to call off the festival. Just to be safe.”
Blood rushes to my face. “Safe from what? What’s so wrong with having nice weather for a festival?” I throw down the mochi mallet and storm out of the room.
★ ★ ★
I lay on my bed, listening to the silence of a clear, beautiful night interrupted only by the clipped whispers of my parents in the next room. They will go to bed early, too, tired of tiptoeing so as not to disturb me further.
When the house has been quiet for more than an hour, I rise from my bed. Without lighting the lantern, I pull on my yukata (light blue with silver stars) and tie the obi.
My parents are asleep on their futons in the main room, my mother curled up in a tight ball on her side, and my father snoring on his back. I tiptoe past them to the front door but turn to catch one last glimpse of my mother before I leave. She looks like a child having a bad dream. Her brow is furrowed, lips pursed. I slip outside before she has a chance to wake and discover her only child is missing.
★ ★ ★
The full moon peeks through the branches overhead, shedding brilliance across the road and a shadow where I’ve been. The silence rings in my ears; even the cicadas are speechless. I try whistling a tune, but it comes out muffled and flat like when I shout into my pillow, so I stop. My wooden clogs crunch along the rocks.
The property around the shrine is deserted; not even the priests are here to witness this night. The entire village is superstitious about the stars.
The flails are all stored away or burned, but in the grass, I find a discarded strip of the bamboo. It slices open my finger like a paper cut. A single red drop wells up. I stare at it before popping my forefinger into my mouth.
Where the forest fades and the foothills begin, I find the clearing where the festival would’ve been held had we been hidden from the heavens by rain. A few abandoned food stands were set up early by optimistic vendors, their colorful signboards painted with octopus and cups of kakigori. The grass on the north side is tamped down in a wide muddy circle. The dancing circle.
It’s sad to look at this empty place now, when it should’ve been filled with happy villagers dancing in the rain and enjoying takoyaki with bamboo skewers.
All because of some stars. Who cares if the lovers come together or not?
Despite my bravado, my heart pounds when I enter the clearing, eyes trained on the flattened, yellowing grass of midsummer. If I look up, I could see the entire sky from this high ground, away from the pine forests.
Why can’t I force my eyes upwards?
★ ★ ★
My mother’s stories were always colored with superstitions and folklore.
“When a pretty girl has done nothing but weave for a full year, kept away from her lover by the river of the Milky Way, she and her handsome ox-herder will surely be amorous when they finally meet.” My mother stared at the flames of the cooking fire. “And from that forbidden union will be born many evil deities, who will send drought and unspeakable calamities down upon the earth.”
I raised an eyebrow at my mother and paused in my sewing. “You sound like you’re reciting a sutra.”
“Well, it’s what my mother told me, and what her mother told her. Of course, it sounds a little stale.”
I wanted to say the myth sounded an awful lot like the story of my mother and father in their youth, separated as they were by the Hii River except when my mother could persuade her no-good cousin to ferry her across on his fishing boat. But I kept my mouth shut.
My mother took one look at my face and clucked her tongue like a disappointed hen. “Hoshiko, don’t make light of the union of Orihime and Hikoboshi. Or drought.” She stirred up the fire. “Where do you think this family would be without the rains?”
★ ★ ★
When I finally look up, the night sky is an inky black ocean, sprayed with tiny shining pebbles. Never have I seen so many stars. I blink back the tears to clear my vision.
I spin in a full circle before I find the summer triangle my mother taught me about. I raise a finger to trace the lines. Those two stars must be the lovers.
But something isn’t right. A brilliant streak of white is spreading out from the space between Orihime and Hikoboshi, curving out like a bold stroke from a calligraphy brush. Is this what it looks like when the star gods finally meet?
As I watch, the streak grows, spreading until it’s a thick line of paint bleeding against the black paper of the sky. My skin tingles. My tongue is dry. I cannot stop staring.
CAW, CAW, CAW
The silence is broken by crows taking wing from the trees nearby. They fly west, and I wonder whether they will pass over my house, waking my parents.
I wish my mother were here with me.
The streak spreads further and further, its blotted head growing until it obscures the star-lovers. I close my eyes, but the light is still seared into my eyelids.
It grows. It expands, like it is feeding on stars. Then it sheds babies, like sparks thrown off a festival sparkler. One, two, three, they spit and fizzle out until I see them no longer, but the mother keeps growing, even as she discards her progeny.
I still hold the sliver of bamboo in my hand, and it bites into my palm inside my tight fist. Blood trickles down and splatters on the muddy grass at my feet.
The light fills half my vision, but still it grows. A roar sounds in my ears like the waves on the beach during a storm, but I can’t tell if it comes from the light or the blood surging through my veins. The light sheds more babies, but now they are like the giant bonfires lighting the way up the mountain during Obon, and they disappear over the mountain, smoke trailing in their wake.
There will be fires tonight, a quiet voice murmurs in the back of my brain.
I should run. My mother always taught me to run toward the beach if I saw fire, for the ocean can’t burn. The ocean is safe, as long as I don’t wade out too deep.
But this light is the size of the ocean.
In the remaining seconds, I think of the crows and wonder how fast they can fly. I hope they manage to get away.
I’ve heard that in other parts, places not blessed with as much rain as Izumo Village, the people pray for a clear Tanabata night. Their children sing songs to keep the rain clouds away for the festival, allowing the celestial lovers to finally meet on the seventh day of the seventh month. I ask Okaasan if it’s because people like to pray for things they might actually get instead of asking for ideals that will never be. But my mother insists there’s more to it than that.
★ ★ ★
“Okaasan, what are they making?” I whisper in my mother’s ear as we pass the red torii gate. I’m only a few inches shorter than her now, nearly full grown. “Are those the kind of sticks they hit themselves with?”
“Shh!” my mother hisses through closed teeth, averting her eyes from the priests. “Flagellation is sacred. We mustn’t speak of it so crassly.”
The priests gather in front of the shrine, wearing only their loincloths in the rain. They slice open stalks of bamboo as if making the hand fans they sell during summer festivals, but these are too long for hand fans.
★ ★ ★
At the market, the drizzle has reduced to a fine mist. I take off my straw hat and tilt my head toward the heavens. The sun peeks through the soft veil of clouds until a beam of sunlight breaks through and hits my face.
The warmth on my eyelids is sensual, soothing, and I imagine myself a lizard drying off on a warm sunny stone.
Okaasan shoves the hat back on my head, the rough edges pulling on my hair. “Don’t look at the heavens, Hoshiko!”
But around us in the market, more and more vendors are setting down their wares and stepping out from under their umbrellas to blink at the clearing sky.
It is Tanabata day, and the clouds are abandoning us.
★ ★ ★
Okaasan bargains for fresh mackerel from the old fishmonger and buys a thick daikon from a girl who looks no older than me, though she wears her hair in a bun and a sad wisdom in her eyes. As we leave, vendors are adjusting their market umbrellas and gazing warily up at the sun. The fresh air is filled with the aroma of grilled fish and whispers:
“I’m sure the storms will return by evening,” said the eggplant seller as she rearranged her wilting wares in the shade.
“Look at the dark clouds on the horizon—the sun can’t last.” The fishmonger dumped more ice on his dead-eyed freshwater eels, now starting to smell.
“Will you look up?” a young boy asked his mother.
“Of course not,” she snapped, tugging him along toward home.
I take the straw hat off again, letting it hang off my neck by its leather cord, and this time Okaasan doesn’t scold me when I tilt my head to the heavens to absorb the warming rays.
★ ★ ★
We hear the priests before we see them. FLACK… FLACK… FLACK. No grunting, no groans. Just the flapping of bamboo shards striking soft human flesh.
My mother casts down her eyes as we pass the torii gate, dwarfed by the surrounding pines, but I sneak a glance. The eldest priest is bald, his wrinkled back crisscrossed with white scars. He kneels on the shrine’s steps, chanting ritual prayers. Every few moments he holds one of the syllables on his tongue and slaps the long, shredded bamboo across his bare back. Fresh, red vertical stripes ooze with each strike. FLACK…FLACK…FLACK.
I glance up at the increasingly blue sky and a wet pit forms in my stomach.
★ ★ ★
The silence at our table is maddening. I set down the rice scoop and cross my arms across my chest.
“So what happens if the clouds don’t return?”
My father, still dressed in his herder’s clothes, runs a hand through his hair and glances at my mother across the table. She stares at her hands, folded in her lap.
“We’ll still have the festival, right?” I look from parent to parent.
My father’s chopsticks grab a daikon slice from the bowl in the middle of the table. He takes a bite, chews thoughtfully.
“I don’t know, Hoshiko. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
We finish our meal in silence. How quiet the house is without the sound of rain splattering on the straw roof.
★ ★ ★
The sun sinks beneath the mountains, bleeding the sky into pinks and purples. The first real sunset in months.
I’m pounding rice in the mortar with Okaasan when a solid knock on the front door breaks the rhythm of our strokes. We so rarely receive visitors, it makes both of us jump.
My father opens the door, though only a crack. I crane my head and glimpse the elderly priest we’d passed earlier, this time wearing a coarse brown robe. I flinch, imagining how the rough fabric must feel against his raw wounds.
By the look on my father’s face when he turns around, I know what he’s going to say. “The priests have decided to call off the festival. Just to be safe.”
Blood rushes to my face. “Safe from what? What’s so wrong with having nice weather for a festival?” I throw down the mochi mallet and storm out of the room.
★ ★ ★
I lay on my bed, listening to the silence of a clear, beautiful night interrupted only by the clipped whispers of my parents in the next room. They will go to bed early, too, tired of tiptoeing so as not to disturb me further.
When the house has been quiet for more than an hour, I rise from my bed. Without lighting the lantern, I pull on my yukata (light blue with silver stars) and tie the obi.
My parents are asleep on their futons in the main room, my mother curled up in a tight ball on her side, and my father snoring on his back. I tiptoe past them to the front door but turn to catch one last glimpse of my mother before I leave. She looks like a child having a bad dream. Her brow is furrowed, lips pursed. I slip outside before she has a chance to wake and discover her only child is missing.
★ ★ ★
The full moon peeks through the branches overhead, shedding brilliance across the road and a shadow where I’ve been. The silence rings in my ears; even the cicadas are speechless. I try whistling a tune, but it comes out muffled and flat like when I shout into my pillow, so I stop. My wooden clogs crunch along the rocks.
The property around the shrine is deserted; not even the priests are here to witness this night. The entire village is superstitious about the stars.
The flails are all stored away or burned, but in the grass, I find a discarded strip of the bamboo. It slices open my finger like a paper cut. A single red drop wells up. I stare at it before popping my forefinger into my mouth.
Where the forest fades and the foothills begin, I find the clearing where the festival would’ve been held had we been hidden from the heavens by rain. A few abandoned food stands were set up early by optimistic vendors, their colorful signboards painted with octopus and cups of kakigori. The grass on the north side is tamped down in a wide muddy circle. The dancing circle.
It’s sad to look at this empty place now, when it should’ve been filled with happy villagers dancing in the rain and enjoying takoyaki with bamboo skewers.
All because of some stars. Who cares if the lovers come together or not?
Despite my bravado, my heart pounds when I enter the clearing, eyes trained on the flattened, yellowing grass of midsummer. If I look up, I could see the entire sky from this high ground, away from the pine forests.
Why can’t I force my eyes upwards?
★ ★ ★
My mother’s stories were always colored with superstitions and folklore.
“When a pretty girl has done nothing but weave for a full year, kept away from her lover by the river of the Milky Way, she and her handsome ox-herder will surely be amorous when they finally meet.” My mother stared at the flames of the cooking fire. “And from that forbidden union will be born many evil deities, who will send drought and unspeakable calamities down upon the earth.”
I raised an eyebrow at my mother and paused in my sewing. “You sound like you’re reciting a sutra.”
“Well, it’s what my mother told me, and what her mother told her. Of course, it sounds a little stale.”
I wanted to say the myth sounded an awful lot like the story of my mother and father in their youth, separated as they were by the Hii River except when my mother could persuade her no-good cousin to ferry her across on his fishing boat. But I kept my mouth shut.
My mother took one look at my face and clucked her tongue like a disappointed hen. “Hoshiko, don’t make light of the union of Orihime and Hikoboshi. Or drought.” She stirred up the fire. “Where do you think this family would be without the rains?”
★ ★ ★
When I finally look up, the night sky is an inky black ocean, sprayed with tiny shining pebbles. Never have I seen so many stars. I blink back the tears to clear my vision.
I spin in a full circle before I find the summer triangle my mother taught me about. I raise a finger to trace the lines. Those two stars must be the lovers.
But something isn’t right. A brilliant streak of white is spreading out from the space between Orihime and Hikoboshi, curving out like a bold stroke from a calligraphy brush. Is this what it looks like when the star gods finally meet?
As I watch, the streak grows, spreading until it’s a thick line of paint bleeding against the black paper of the sky. My skin tingles. My tongue is dry. I cannot stop staring.
CAW, CAW, CAW
The silence is broken by crows taking wing from the trees nearby. They fly west, and I wonder whether they will pass over my house, waking my parents.
I wish my mother were here with me.
The streak spreads further and further, its blotted head growing until it obscures the star-lovers. I close my eyes, but the light is still seared into my eyelids.
It grows. It expands, like it is feeding on stars. Then it sheds babies, like sparks thrown off a festival sparkler. One, two, three, they spit and fizzle out until I see them no longer, but the mother keeps growing, even as she discards her progeny.
I still hold the sliver of bamboo in my hand, and it bites into my palm inside my tight fist. Blood trickles down and splatters on the muddy grass at my feet.
The light fills half my vision, but still it grows. A roar sounds in my ears like the waves on the beach during a storm, but I can’t tell if it comes from the light or the blood surging through my veins. The light sheds more babies, but now they are like the giant bonfires lighting the way up the mountain during Obon, and they disappear over the mountain, smoke trailing in their wake.
There will be fires tonight, a quiet voice murmurs in the back of my brain.
I should run. My mother always taught me to run toward the beach if I saw fire, for the ocean can’t burn. The ocean is safe, as long as I don’t wade out too deep.
But this light is the size of the ocean.
In the remaining seconds, I think of the crows and wonder how fast they can fly. I hope they manage to get away.
"Tanabata Night" was inspired by the discovery that there is a specific rainy region in Japan which hopes for rain on Tanabata night, and my imagination just took off." Amber Logan
Amber A. Logan is a university professor, freelance editor, and author of speculative fiction living in Kansas with her husband and two children: Fox and Willow. In addition to her degrees in Psychology, Liberal Arts, and International Relations, Amber holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge. When she’s not writing, Amber enjoys trips to Japan, exploring unusual vegetarian foods, and reading Haruki Murakami. Amber’s debut novel is THE SECRET GARDEN OF YANAGI INN - out October 2022 from CamCat Books. Find out more at www.AmberALogan.com
Amber A. Logan is a university professor, freelance editor, and author of speculative fiction living in Kansas with her husband and two children: Fox and Willow. In addition to her degrees in Psychology, Liberal Arts, and International Relations, Amber holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge. When she’s not writing, Amber enjoys trips to Japan, exploring unusual vegetarian foods, and reading Haruki Murakami. Amber’s debut novel is THE SECRET GARDEN OF YANAGI INN - out October 2022 from CamCat Books. Find out more at www.AmberALogan.com
Use and/or duplication of any content on White Enso is strictly prohibited without express and written permission from the author and/or owner.
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