Dororo: Part One
Nakamura Masaru
Part 2: Dororo
Chapter 8
Dororo took an involuntary step back. "What the hell?"
Dororo looked more closely at the dolls. They were made of straw and uniform in size: all of them were about as tall as an adult woman. They were covered in something wet and dripping that looked reddish-black in the torchlight. Blood? But why? Straw dolls certainly didn't bleed...
What kind of festival is this? Dororo thought.
There were large stones all around the circle where the straw dolls stood, all decorated with prayer ropes. Two people were busily placing other stones to make the stone circle more uniform and complete. Two other men in pure white robes stood near the dolls, poking them over and over again with long, sharpened skewers.
Villagers stood observing the spectacle with expressions of dread. Their lives had been ones of endless suffering and terrible poverty. Some chanted desperate prayers; others shouted questions that had no good answers.
"Haven't we endured enough?!"
"When will it stop?"
"Help us!"
All told, there were around fifty villagers gathered around the stone circle. Whenever the men in white robes stabbed at the straw dolls, the red liquid covering the dolls spattered in all directions like paint or the sparks of a fire. Dororo couldn't tell what the red liquid was from this distance, but he was now sincerely hoping that it wasn't blood.
The villagers flinched every time the reddish liquid touched them. The men in white robes got the worst of it: their clothing was spattered red with every stab they made into the straw dolls. The red splattering on their robes looked like blood rain. Dororo hadn't noticed at first, but the two men were just as nervous and frenzied as the other villagers. If he didn't know any better, he'd swear that they were about to burst into tears.
But they didn't. They kept attacking the straw dolls with their long metal skewers as if their entire lives depended on it.
Dororo caught sight of Yohei and Oshizuka in the crowd. He stood frozen to the spot, face pale, as the villagers continued their strange ceremony. Drumbeats shook the ground and echoed in Dororo's ears. The torchlight made rosy rings in the mist, bathing the clearing in reddish, pre-dawn light.
Every detail made this look like a blood ritual. Dororo had never seen anything like it. He felt like he'd stepped into a world completely different from his own, and that this world was somehow worse.
What the fuck is this?
Dororo only thought these words, but Hyakkimaru responded as if Dororo had spoken. "We need to take a closer look at those dolls," he said. "I can't really tell what they are from here."
Dororo opened his mouth to reply—then realized that he hadn't actually spoken. "Are you...seeing these things through my eyes, or somethin'? Aren't you blind?"
Hyakkimaru said nothing in reply.
Dororo folded his arms. "There are times when I don't like you at all. Y'know that?" He turned away and focused on the two men skewering the dolls again.
"They're lowering and raising their heads based on a rhythm," Hyakkimaru said. "Do you see it?"
Dororo frowned, then squinted at the crowd to check Hyakkimaru's observation. The villagers did seem to be moving quite strangely, though it was hard to notice a pattern.
What are they doing? Summoning a god? Making a sacrifice? What?!
"It's a replacement ceremony," Hyakkimaru said. "They're asking for something back that was lost. My guess is that it's for a missing person, or people."
"Is someone in the village missing?" Dororo asked.
"Maybe, maybe not," Hyakkimaru said. "They could just be praying for no one else to go missing."
"I don't understand what those dolls have to do with missing people," Dororo said. "They look like blood sacrifices to me. Is it...some kind of atonement, or something?"
"Yeah."
"Where's the god? Is it those rocks?"
"I think so."
"People are dumb enough to worship rocks?" Dororo asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Seems so," Hyakkimaru said. "As for where the god is...I think it's there." He pointed.
"No way," Dororo said. "There's an actual god?"
"It's nearby...I can't tell exactly where yet..." Hyakkimaru's face transformed almost instantly from sudden rage.
Dororo stared at him. "What's up with you? Is there a demon? That makes sense. They're praying to a demon instead of a god, huh?'
"Get out of here," Hyakkimaru said. "Leave. Run far away from the village and don't come back."
"How about no," Dororo said.
"It's not safe for you here," Hyakkimaru said. "You'll just be devoured like the others."
"Others?" Dororo raised an eyebrow. Hyakkimaru wasn't usually quite so solicitous of his welfare.
The sound of the drums faded away. The two men attacking the straw dolls set their skewers down and stopped moving. The villagers kept looking at them with expressions of hope, or confusion, or pain. None of them so much as glanced in Dororo and Hyakkimaru's direction.
It was as silent as death all around. Only the crackling fire of the torches was audible.
There's something seriously wrong with these people, Dororo thought. He started wondering if he should actually get away from this place, like Hyakkimaru had urged. He hesitated, hopping from foot to foot, unsure of what to do or where to go.
Then, Dororo heard another sound.
Footsteps, definitely: people were coming up the road from the direction of the village. At least one of the people coming was riding a horse. Dororo and Hyakkimaru both reacted at the same time and turned to face the road.
The villagers also heard people approaching and started whispering to one another in nervous voices. "It's Lord Sabame," a man whispered.
Through the mist, a rider appeared: a rider that seemed to have nothing at all to do with the villagers, their poverty, and their problems. He wore an ancient ceremonial court robe that was immaculately clean. His attitude was regal, like he was prepared to shoulder responsibility as well as power.
Lord Sabame looked over the crowd, halting his horse directly in front of the ring of people. "You may continue," he said. "There is no need to stop."
The villagers exchanged glances. One of them gave the signal for the drums to start beating again.
"You there," Lord Sabame said, looking straight at Dororo and Hyakkimaru. "Are you travelers?" He looked down on them from horseback, squinting a little. His face was painted white like an actor's. His features were as refined and dignified as a court noble's.
Hyakkimaru looked up at Lord Sabame and said, "We're staying at the temple that burned down, just for the night. We'll soon be on our way."
Lord Sabame blinked. "But that old temple must get so cold at night. None of the walls survived the fire...how terrible, for you to have to sleep in such a place." He spoke in a tone of some condescension, but also genuine solicitiousness.
After a moment of consideration, Lord Sabame spoke again. "I cannot allow travelers to stay in such inhospitable conditions on my lands. Could you be persuaded to lodge at my own residence tonight? You would of course be fed, and you may make use of my baths as well."
"You're too kind," Hyakkimaru said. It was hard to say if he really meant that or not. "But we don't need any of that, really."
"It is no trouble at all," Lord Sabame said. "In fact, I insist. If you are concerned about what I might get out of this exchange, hm...why not tell me stories of your travels?"
"Stories of our travels?"
"I must remain here to protect and govern the village, so I know little of the wide world," Lord Sabame said.
Dororo's eyes sparkled with excitement. He took a hasty step forward, putting himself in front of Hyakkimaru.
"Your clothes are the finest I've ever seen, Mr. Lord," Dororo said. "We'll accept." Dororo smiled like a cheshire cat. "If it's stories you want, I'll tell you the best stories you ever heard, from the east to the west!"
Dororo beat his drum a few times in a cheerful, pitter-pat rhythm.
Lord Sabame smiled faintly. It was the first time his face had changed expression at all. "Truly? Then I am most pleased that we have met. Come, travelers. Let us go to my estate."
Dororo and Hyakkimaru followed Lord Sabame up the road to his estate. The ruined temple was far behind them now, so far behind that they could no longer see it through the trees.
"Yo. That guy ain't a demon, is he?" Dororo whispered to Hyakkimaru. He stared at Lord Sabame's back with an expression of distrust.
"Him? No. He's a regular human," Hyakkimaru said.
They climbed up a gradual hill that offered a good view of the buildings in the village below. Small plots of land were separated by low fences. Houses dotted the landscape here and there; the village was not densely populated. Several wooden watchtowers rose into the sky. It was growing dark, so guardsmen carrying torches stood atop the watchtowers, looking down.
Lord Sabame didn't even glance at the village. He turned his horse at a fork in the road and kept riding. The incline of the hill steepened sharply as they neared his estate.
The hill leveled out on a grassy plateau. "Here we are," Lord Sabame said.
Dororo grinned and barely resisted the impulse to rub his palms together. This is the stupidest man ever. He's invited the world's greatest thief into his home!
"Don't blame me if you get eaten," Hyakkimaru said.
"Hmph. No way I'm turning back now."
They passed noisily through a bamboo grove thick with underbrush. Lord Sabame's estate was at the very edge of the grove. The plateau the estate was built on was somewhat narrow, so earthen walls surrounded the main building as a protection measure against erosion and earthquakes. It must be the only estate like this for miles aroud. Dororo thought it looked like a prize. It certaintly seemed well-built, and the terrain did much to make it defensible.
"I see two storage buildings," Dororo muttered. "Think they've got treasure in there?"
"Too obvious," Hyakkimaru said.
"Huh?"
"You're a thief. Those outbuildings look attractive to you for a reason. Try not to jump at any potential piece of treasure that moves, or you'll get us thrown out."
Dororo and Hyakkimaru followed Lord Sabame through the gate leading into his estate. Lord Sabame's daughters came out of the house to greet them. The daughters were all about five years old, with identical bobbed hairstyles. They were also dressed in very similar clothing, making it difficult to tell them apart.
Dororo counted seven daughters standing on the veranda outside of Lord Sabame's estate. So many...that ain't normal, that's for darned sure.
One of the girls had a lump on her back that was large enough to be noticeable, but aside from that, all of Lord Sabame's daughters looked exactly the same.
"We have guests," Lord Sabame said. "Greet them properly."
The girls nodded their heads together and smiled, then spoke with one voice: "Welcome, guests! We're glad you've come."
Dororo thought that the bloody ceremony would be the strangest thing he'd see today, but he was wrong. This was weirder: unsettling in a way he couldn't fully define.
But he wasn't about to pass up dinner just because this place was batshit crazy. He paid for his and Hyakkimaru's keep and then some, telling stories that he knew all night long until morning.
"...and then that guy, Hosonaga, was chasing us through town, remember? And then he...wait, no, that was a different time. Anyway, it's hard out there for herbalists these days. We hardly make any money at all.
"Speaking of medicine sellers, we ain't the only ones," Dororo said. "But some aren't as honest as us, y'see. Like that old blind monk. He lures you in with his honest façade, but he's more of a criminal than all the rest of us put together." Dororo was quite drunk, and a night full of telling stories had put some strange ideas in his head.
"I think you're telling a different story from the one you started with," Hyakkimaru said.
With Lord Sabame as host, Dororo and Hyakkimaru were granted a lavish dinner. Dororo did most of the storytelling—it was only fair to earn his keep now, since he intended to rob the place later. Dororo's goal was to spend the night. That way, he could wait for everyone to go to sleep and get to work in absolute secrecy. Besides, Dororo hadn't really gotten to talk to anyone besides Hyakkimaru in a while, and Hyakkimaru was not a good conversationalist. He was gratified by Lord Sabame's interest in his tales.
Hyakkimaru waited for a natural pause, then shifted a little toward Lord Sabame. "I saw that burned-out temple in the village," he said. "May I ask how that happened?"
"Ah, Jishōni's temple..."
"Oh yeah," Dororo said. "We heard that a nun and a bunch of kids lived there before the fire. What happened to them?"
"Well, Jishōni came here more than twenty years ago, back when this land was still ruled by the Kaneyama Clan," Lord Sabame said. The corners of his eyes narrowed slightly. "When I was a child, no one lived in that temple at all. But then, one day, Jishōni came to the temple, bringing three abandoned children with her.
"Jishōni supported the children by offering memorial services for the dead and chanting prayers. But the village was so poor when she arrived that no one had anything to spare for almsgiving. The villagers gave the temple what seeds they could spare so that Jishōni and the children could grow their own food.
"I remember that those first few years were cruelly harsh. Jishōni was accustomed to asceticism due to her religious training, so she often went without for the sake of the children, getting paler and thinner as time passed. It was hard to see her suffering like that. She was an extraordinarily compassionate woman and always had a motherly smile for the children."
Hyakkimaru caught a glimpse of Jishōni by reading Lord Sabame's memory of her. Jishōni had been a wonderful person, inside and out—or at least, that was how Lord Sabame thought of her. So far, nothing he'd said was a lie.
"Over time, the people in the village opened their hearts to her. Perhaps they accepted her too much."
"Is that when they started abandoning their own children at the temple?" Hyakkimaru asked.
"As you say. The villagers knew that alms given to the temple went toward supporting the children, even children from other villages, and that Jishōni wouldn't let them go hungry. Perhaps it was inevitable, wars and famine being what they are. They saw no reason why Jishōni couldn't support their children as well, since she'd already taken in so many strangers.
Dororo nodded in understanding. "So it really was a habit here. Everyone must have done it—abandoning their own kids."
"Not everyone, but many people did," Lord Sabame said.
"How did that temple burn, anyway?" Hyakkimaru asked.
Lord Sabame had related what he knew of Jishōni dispassionately up until this point, but Hyakkimaru's question disturbed his flatly unemotional expression. "I believe it was…the judgement of Heaven," he said.
"Huh? But I heard in the village that people tried to save the kids from the fire. Why would they do that if it was a punishment from some god or something?"
Lord Sabame's face looked strained, but he answered Dororo as well as he was able. "I do remember the day it happened, since it was so strange. Jishōni had taken in something like twenty children. This was a sharp increase from before, and it was a struggle to care for them all, since the village had few resources to spare. Everyone knew that she couldn't just keep accepting more children. But what else was she supposed to do?
"I was determined to find out what the children's living conditions to see if anything could be done. But when I had the temple searched, I discovered something...terrible." He paused. "Jishōni was selling children."
Selling children. Dororo remembered seeing the people in cages in the village where he'd met Hyakkimaru a few days before.
"Jishōni kept taking in more children, but the alms she recieved and the food she had did not increase. She sold our children to feed herself, and the few others fortunate enough to remain in the temple. I had not suspected her of such terrible selfishness and greed."
"Why didn't the villagers notice their kids were missing until you searched the temple?" Dororo asked.
"Some did, but until my investigation, no one knew what had happened to them. When I found out, I had no choice but to tell the villagers..."
Lord Sabame's expression tightened with remembered pain. "The oldest woman in the village, who is no longer with us, sadly, refused to believe it. She remembered Jishōni only as a woman of deep compassion, and argued on her behalf. Many others believed the same thing, even though I had proof of the horrible things she had done. No one in the village saw Jishōni as an enemy. I thought to confront Jishōni myself, in the hope that I could at least prevent more children from being sold, but..."
"The temple burned," Hyakkimaru said quietly. "How did it happen?"
"I don't know. But the fire spread so fast...that is why I say it was the judgment of Heaven. The fire had no known cause, and the people inside the temple burned away so completely...what else should I think?"
"Have you heard the rumors about it in the village? People say no bones were found in the ruin," Hyakkimaru said.
"I've heard those rumors," Lord Sabame said. "I don't know for certain if they're true, but they could well be. The best case would be that Jishōni set the fire herself, and led all the children away elsewhere. But there's more than one way to explain the lack of bones."
Dororo's forehead creased. "You think there's another explanation?"
Lord Sabame nodded. "Someone from the village could have taken and hidden them all."
Dororo sucked in a breath. "So someone wanted to protect Jishōni's reputation and fake a story. Make it look like all the kids went to Heaven. Yeah?"
"I cannot say for certain," Lord Sabame said.
Silence. It stretched out between Dororo, Hyakkimaru and Sabame like a living thing, tense with unspoken questions.
Hyakkimaru cleared his throat. "If you don't mind, there are still a few things I'd like to ask about."
"Ask," Lord Sabame said.
"What was that ceremony we saw for?"
"Has no one told you?" Lord Sabame's eyebrows lifted slightly.
"We spoke to the parents of a child who was abandoned at the temple and saw them at the ceremony, but we didn't have time to ask them about what we were seeing."
"It is a ceremony of atonement," Lord Sabame said. "The villagers started noticing people going missing from the village last year. Not just children, but adults as well. The disappearances continued, without explanation, so the villagers held the ceremony to beg for those who are lost to us to return." Lord Sabame took a sip of sake. "These disappearances truly are puzzling. We might blame it on bandits or wild animals ordinarily, but the number of animals in the area has dwindled in recent years, and the roads are well-guarded. And there are no tracks leading away from the village after someone goes missing."
Dororo's curiosity was piqued. He leaned forward. "Do you think demons might be behind it all?" he asked in the tone of a curious child.
"Perhaps," Lord Sabame said. "Some in the village believe this as well."
"Which happened first, the disappearances or the fire?" Hyakkimaru asked.
Lord Sabame's eyes went wide in surprise. "Why would you ask such a heartless thing!" He blinked a few times, took a deep breath, then said. "But there may be something to your question. People did not start disappearing until after the temple burned down. Now that I think of it...yes, it was just about a month after that when we noticed the first person go missing."
"A month?" Dororo snorted. "There can't possibly be any connection between the temple burning and the disappearances, then. That's a pretty big gap in time."
Lord Sabame nodded crisply. "Indeed. It makes the disappearances that much more unfortunate. We do not understand them at all."
Dororo considered, chin in hand, then asked, "What were those funny prayer rocks we saw at the ceremony? Do they have anything to do with Jishōni or the temple?"
"No, not at all. The stones were arranged for the ceremony and wrapped in prayer rope, but that rope did not come from the temple, nor did the stones."
"If the ceremony wasn't religious or anything, and didn't have anything to do with the temple...why have it? Seems like a nun or a priest or something should pray at something like that, if it's going to be effective."
"I authorized it," Lord Sabame said.
"You?" Dororo asked.
"The stones are ancient and have been here since before our village even sprang up," he said. "People gathered them from the ruin of a very old temple that was destroyed in a storm many centuries ago. They've been there in that clearing ever since.
"There is an old legend that the village was plagued by demons while it was being built. An old monk came and instructed the villagers to gather and place the stones to repel the demons. That's all I know about them," Lord Sabame said. "Other legends and stories have grown up around the stones over the years. Some people claimed to hear crying or screaming from the stones, so they call them "weeping demon rocks." The place where they're gathered is considered unlucky. People shun it, except when there is a ceremony."
Lord Sabame paused. "I believe that evil place was once the sight of many demon battles. Who knows how many people those demons devoured. I also believe our modern rituals owe something to ancient blood sacrifices. The villagers may have offered up some of their own for the demons in exchange for peace, before the monk came." He sighed. "It is a terrifying story. I apologize if I have upset you in any way."
"It's quite a tale," Hyakkimaru said. "Do many people in the village know these legends?"
"I don't believe so. It has been a very long time since our village was founded, and people would rather forget such a violent and bloody history, as a rule. The villagers fear demons now because they do not know what else to fear."
Dororo folded his arms. "But there's a pattern. People were disappearing then, when your village was founded, and they're disappearing now. How many people have gone missing?" he asked.
"Four," Lord Sabame said.
"Four children? Or children and adults?"
"All of those who have gone missing since the temple burned down were adults."
"And the demons that abducted people in the past have something to do with those prayer stones?"
"I think so," Lord Sabame said. "It's impossible to know."
"I don't get it," Dororo said. "No matter how you slice it, there doesn't seem to be any connection between the prayer stones, the temple, the freaky ceremony and the disappearances. Seems like you and the villagers have got a lot of questions and no answers. What happened to the missing people? Where did they go? Where are the children's bones..." he trailed off.
To Hyakkimaru, the most important question—the one that everything else hinged on—was this: How did the temple burn down?
After dinner, Dororo and Hyakkimaru were led to a spacious guest room with polished wooden floors. Two futons were unrolled on the floor. There was little other furniture, and none of it looked expensive.
Dororo sat cross-legged on a futon and folded his arms. Hyakkimaru stretched out on the other futon.
"So," Dororo said, "did that guy tell us the truth back there? Could you tell?"
"More or less," Hyakkimaru said. "But not everything he said was true."
"What was true and what was lies, then?"
"He never discussed Jishōni with the oldest woman in the village. That was a lie. I'm pretty sure he just made her up—when he was talking about her, I couldn't see her face. And he knows how the temple burned down."
"Really? How?"
"He set fire to it himself," Hyakkimaru said. "I saw him do it, in my mind's eye."
"What! Lord Sabame? Why?"
Hyakkimaru sighed. Rather than talk, he tried to share a vision of what he'd seen with Dororo. Dororo sat up straight as images passed before his eyes. The images weren't clear—he felt like he was seeing through water, or the thick mist of time—but some of them were recognizable.
Dororo saw Lord Sabame's hands, setting fire to the temple.
"What the hell, you read his mind?!"
"Our questions were making him uncomfortable. I wanted to know why," Hyakkimaru said.
Dororo was stunned. Hyakkimaru had never shared information with him in this way before, and the method seemed totally impossible. On top of that, what Hyakkimaru had shown him was unbelievable. Why would Lord Sabame burn the temple down? What could his motive possibly be?
"But then...do you know why he did it?"
Hyakkimaru shook his head. "I'm still not sure about everything."
Dororo dropped his gaze from Hyakkimaru to the futon he sat on. He was remembering the giant baby that he and Hyakkimaru had seen near the temple—the collective spirit of all the children who had died when the temple burned down. The sweetness of the spirit's innocent smile pierced Dororo's heart.
Whatever had happened in this village, Dororo was certain that the children were entirely blameless. Abandoned and burned to death, haunting the place where they'd died...even their spirits were lost and abandoned.
Dororo's fists balled in the soft futon. "That couple should have brought their kid a bed, not food. Bad enough their folks'll never get to hug them again. The least those kids deserved was a soft bed to sleep on."
Hyakkimaru's back was to Dororo. His slouders slumped. "I see. So your mom and dad were good parents. I suspected as much, after hearing you chew those people out."
"Well...I mean, yeah. Of course they were."
Hyakkimaru should look at Dororo when he spoke, but he found that difficult. He was remembering the river and his own abandonment. He had nothing belonging to his birth parents save for the anchor-patterned clothes he wore. The only man he'd ever believe to be his father was dead. The only direction or purpose his life had was to kill demons—either to seek them out, or to wait for them to come to him.
Dororo stared at Hyakkimaru's back and the patchwork cloak that covered it. It was so crudely sewn that Dororo wondered why he kept it. The tears and patches there had been earned through travel and pitched demon battles. Hyakkimaru's artificial body wouldn't scar, like this cloak had—it wasn't patchwork. It repaired itself automatically. But the cloak wasn't like that. More than anything else Hyakkimaru carried, the cloak was emblematic of his journey thus far—and might be a predictor of the violence to come in his future.
Hyakkimaru's birth parents might still be alive, somewhere. The demons that had stolen his body certainly were.
He grew up thinking the guy who adopted him was his dad, Dororo thought. He'd have to. Knowing your parents ditched you and treated you like that...it would be too painful to face. I wonder what he thinks about his actual parents. Does he hate them? Does he want to find them?
But Hyakkimaru finding his parents was probably secondary to the goal of finding his body. Most parents wouldn't want a child who was such an obvious freak of nature. Was Hyakkimaru putting himself back together so that he could return to his parents without shame, or was there another reason, a more personal one?
Dororo was following Hyakkimaru because he wanted the sword in Hyakkimaru's left arm. He wouldn't be able to get it until Hyakkimaru regained all of his body parts, since demons would likely be swarming around him until then. He wondered if Hyakkimaru would go to see his parents when he was finally whole.
"It's not what you're thinking," Hyakkimaru said quietly, reading the general trend of Dororo's thoughts. "I don't want to meet them, ever. Why would I? I'm trying to regain my body for my father's sake."
People aren't supposed to live forever. They're supposed to die.
That was what Jukai had told Hyakkimaru before ordering him to burn the house. Hyakkimaru was a living experiment: the result of Jukai's dangerous and powerful research. Hyakkimaru had promised his father that he would destroy all of that research—and to do that, he had to become human. Just human.
Dororo couldn't read Hyakkimaru's thoughts. He didn't understand Hyakkimaru's rationale for going on his demon-hunting quest at all, beyond the obvious observation that demons were evil and needed killing. So it was a shot in the dark when he said, "I guess you hate 'em, then. Your parents."
"No," Hyakkimaru said quietly. "I don't blame them for abandoning a limbless child. It's not like I would be able to work in the fields or tend livestock—or go to war. Without my dad, I never would have been able to do anything at all. I'm grateful to them for giving me away so that my dad could find me."
"If you don't hate your parents and don't want to see them, why bother with the demons?" Dororo asked. "Your current body works just fine—why do you want your original one back?"
Hyakkimaru's heart was closed. He showed Dororo no images, and he said no more.
Yeesh, what has he been doing since he came down the mountain and met Biwabōshi, huh?
Dororo remembered hearing much about Hyakkimaru's early life from the old monk, but he had no desire to question Hyakkimaru himself about it all. He would have to explain how he'd come by his knowledge, for one, and that would be awkward. Really, though, he just didn't have the heart to ask.
But Dororo still had questions. He didn't know why Hyakkimaru was letting him hang around. Would he let Dororo take that demon-killing sword, in the end? Or was Dororo just deluding himself?
Thoughts were faster than words. Before Dororo could even open his mouth to speak, Hyakkimaru said, "You can have it. The sword, I mean. After I kill all the demons, it's yours."
Dororo blinked. "Why?"
"You want the power to kill your enemies, right?" Hyakkimaru asked. "The sword will give you that." He lifted his left arm to Dororo's eye level, then continued speaking. "This blade was formed for the sake of revenge. It's not a sacred weapon forged by the gods or some heavenly being. It was forged by a man who wanted vengeance for his slaughtered family. Don't you want it?"
Dororo was at a loss for words. Hyakkimaru had never been so direct with him before. Dororo hated having his thoughts read so easily. He felt exposed—no, worse: he felt incapable of hiding anything from Hyakkimaru at all.
"Do you really just go around ripping the thoughts right out of people's heads?" Dororo asked. He lay down, then burrowed under the futon cover, concealing his head. "You shouldn't do that. People hate it, you know! It's wrong!"
"Are you going to sleep?" Hyakkimaru asked.
"Shut up," Dororo shot back.
"But you haven't stolen anything yet," Hyakkimaru said.
"Of course I haven't; I have to wait for everyone to go to sleep for that," Dororo said matter-of-factly.
"Like I thought, the male is better."
"Mhm, he's cute. We should eat him first."
"His meat might be tough."
"But the female's all dirty and stinky..."
"If we wash her, it should be fine."
"Yeah. Her meat's probably nice and tender."
"I think so, too."
"So we should eat the female first then?"
"We should eat both at once."
"But how? Boiled? Braised?"
The girls speaking all wore identical nightclothes. Strange shadows moved under their sleeves.
"All right, let's boil some water."
"If we wash the male and let his meat cook for a real long time, it might be just as soft as the female's."
"Oo! Let's try that!"
The girls decided to go and boil water, but they did not leave their room in human shape. They transformed into the shape of enormous green caterpillars. The bright coloring and markings on their segmented bodies indicated that they were poisonous. Their fangs were large and sharp—perfect for biting, chewing, and slashing meat.
"Hurry up. I'm hungry."
"Fine. You go ahead, and I'll get the water boiling."
One of the caterpillars headed toward the kitchen. The other six slithered down the hallway to Dororo and Hyakkimaru's guest room. The sound of their many legs sweeping across the floor echoed in the darkness of the night.
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