Archive for the ‘Series’ Category
Dr. Fujiwara’s Several Surprises
Wednesday, February 10th, 2010
Students at the Women’s Battle College had awaited the arrival of Dr. Fujiwara for months. They saw a tiny, wizened old woman in an indigo wrap jacket, sword stuck in her obi—not surprising. But she had short, spiky hair dyed fire engine red and wore jeans instead of hakama—quite surprising.
“Give my regards to your mother, Miss Mountain-root,” she said to Dana Yamamoto. She didn’t say “your mother the General” but all the students heard it.
“Your name isn’t Mountain-root,” pointed out Mirabelle Hayes.
“It is, actually,” replied Dana.
Dr. Fujiwara passed into the school. She (and the contents of her covered cart) disappeared for a week.
Monday morning, Martial Principles Class A arrived at the dojo to find a teahouse built on a cotton pad in the middle of the mat. Dr. Fujiwara waited beside it.
The door to the teahouse stood only three feet high. The students grumbled, finding they had to remove their weapons to avoid knocking them against the door frame; then the low height of the door forced them to bow as they entered. Crowded inside, they looked at each other curiously. Dr. Fujiwara had not become famous for making tea.
“Don’t,” said Dana when she saw Mirabelle gird herself to ask why they were studying tea instead of sword work. Mirabelle looked startled and kept quiet.
“You will wonder why I am teaching you about tea instead of sword work,” said Dr. Fujiwara, looking straight at Mirabelle. “I will tell you. I teach this for the sake of the dead. When I was young like you, I thought I had a calm mind, and knew how to do honor to my enemy. I thought I had compassion. I understood none of these things: I killed one hundred twenty-one people in duels or in battle against the Chinese before I understood,” she went on, nodding to Bao-Yu Zheng as she spoke. “Since then, I have taken only three lives, those of people who insisted there was no other way.”
No one breathed.
“Make no mistake, you are being taught the art of killing. Yet your teachers also teach compassion here; grammar and arithmetic too. Study only killing, and you will be only killers. Study all that they teach, and you may yet become honorable warriors.”
She did not seem to notice the silence.
“We will begin with the mixing of the tea.”
The Cabbage-Patch God
Friday, February 5th, 2010
First in a new series.
Quantum gods appeared and disappeared in Kayla’s wake like soap bubbles. No god can survive long without worshipers, and Kayla’s attention span cut off many a deity before it shook off the mists of its own making. As time went by, her attention and memory improved, and the average lifespan of her creations lengthened from moments to hours. The Easter Bunny God born when she was three lasted long enough to smite a few peeps and raise an entire bag of jelly beans from the dead. The beans were consumed in short order by Kayla and two of her friends.
For her fifth birthday Kayla received a venerable cabbage-patch doll from Marlys, who was going to college, and didn’t want the trappings of childhood cramping her style in the Big Show. The doll had seen better days. Some of her hair was gone, and what was left contained its share of gum and other household residue. Someone (could it have been Marlys when she was young?) had used a black sharpie to enhance the doll’s eyebrows. The dress she came with was long gone, and the one she was wearing was 10 sizes too big. But the doll had two things going for her that overrode all other considerations. First, she had belonged to Marlys, who occupied the place in Kayla’s life that Marlys herself had reserved for Christina Aguilera, back in the day. Second, the doll had belonged to Marlys.
For about three weeks after she received the doll, Kayla lavished on her all the adoration any deity could want. That first night, the doll blinked Her eyes. She stretched a mighty stretch, feeling Her back pop. “Only I,” she thought “can appreciate this sensation the way it should be appreciated.” In commemoration of the event, the doll bestowed speech on all of the other toys. Speech that only toys could hear.
“Bow down to me,” the doll commanded, but the other toys did not move. The doll had forgotten to give them the power. “Silly me,” She thought, “it might take a while to master this miracle thing.” So She practiced, carefully undoing all but one of Her experiments. Fortunately, Kayla’s mother had her eyes shut when the old blue horse, now translucent and trailing sparks, emerged from her bathroom mirror and disappeared through the opposite wall.
That day, Kayla loved the doll with all her heart, and that night, every toy on the Two Shelves paid the Cabbage-Patch God all the obeisance it was due. Celestial music emanated from the doll’s fingertips and the toys lifted up their voices in song.
The end