The rain beat against the shutters and the old man had no desire to see it stop. He had a bowl of warm saké between his hands and the eyes of someone who has seen the sea do things the land would not believe.
— You laugh, he said, without turning towards the table of the young fishermen. — You laugh because you have never crossed the Bay. I crossed it. Once. And that is why I am still here to tell you — instead of being down below, serving her tea.
Someone asked who he meant. The old man drank first. He always drank first.
— The Lady. The one who smiles. You know her by the wrong names — you call her the curse of the Bay of Dead Waters, the sea with no waves, the place where compasses go mad. But those are her effects, not her. It is like calling thunder the one who throws it.
He leaned back. The innkeeper pretended she had been cleaning the same cup for a very long time.
— The elders say there was a time when she walked up here, like us. She was not human, of course. She was one of the divine foxes, the real ones — not the kind you see passing through the fields bringing luck. She was one of the daughters of the lightning goddess — a part of her, they say, broken and placed in the world to handle the things a goddess alone cannot reach. And to her fell the ugly part. The part of shadows. The part of secrets.
— And the sea? asked the youngest, who was no longer laughing.
— The sea came later. The old man lowered his voice, and it was worse. — They say there was something in the ocean. Ancient. Older than the kingdoms, older than the names. A hunger with the shape of water, that wanted to swallow all of Inari in a single breath. The others would have made war. She didn't. She invited it to play.
He smiled, and it was not a pretty smile.
— And she won. And the prize for winning was to keep it. She put the entire ocean inside herself, boys. She took the fear of every drowned soul in the world and locked it in her chest, and then went to serve tea as if nothing had happened.
The rain grew heavier. No one spoke.
— That went on for centuries. A thousand years, ten thousand — I don't know. She smiled, she pulled the strings, she protected the kingdom without anyone knowing they were being protected. But there is one thing not even goddesses can endure, children. Time. Time eats the mind. And when one carries a hunger the size of an ocean locked inside, there comes a day when one no longer knows where the lady ends and the monster begins.
He drank the rest of the bowl in one swallow.
— So she did the last lucid thing left to her. She did not ask for help. She never did. She went to the edge, looked at the kingdom she had spent her life guarding in the shadows — and she threw herself in. She descended. Descended to where light no longer reaches, to the bottom where the water is black and still, and she sealed herself there with the thing she carried, so that neither of them would ever hurt anyone up here again. She sealed herself. It was her greatest secret, and the only one she never told anyone.
— And she is still there? whispered the innkeeper, without meaning to.
The old man looked at her as if the question saddened him.
— She is. That is why the Bay is as it is. That black sea that does not move, those storms without thunder — that is not the sea. That is her, breathing. And if any fool goes through there by boat, they will hear a voice, calm and gentle, asking whether they might not like to stop a moment, rest, have some tea. And they will feel the boat sinking even though it is perfectly intact.
He set down the bowl.
— Those who answer her stay. Those who stay silent and row hard, sometimes come back. I stayed silent. I rowed until my hands bled.
He rose slowly, placed some coins on the table, and walked to the door. Before leaving, he turned one last time.
— Do not call her a curse. A curse does not protect us. She protected all of us our entire lives, and the payment she received was to become a story to frighten children in a rainy inn.
He shrugged.
— If you ever cross the Bay and she offers you tea... thank her. And row. It is all she ever wanted us to do. To survive.
The door opened to the wet night, and closed.
Only the sound of the rain remained — and, far away, very far, something that could have been thunder, but had no thunder to accompany it.