When The Sun Rises

Ito Yumi, grandfather twice over, once-officer of the Imperial Navy, rose with the sun, except on days when the sun was late. On summer mornings, when the sun felt its blood in its veins, Ito Yumi would open his eyes to meet the first warbling rays of dawn. In winter, Ito Yumi was awake and walking with ghosts long before sunlight had woken his closest neighbors. And while the farmers who lived in the shadow of the great mountain greeted their ancestors and broke their fast, Ito Yumi urinated on trees.

These were the trees of history. They marched in silent pairs along either side of an ancient road, facing forward at the same time that they faced back. Somewhere deep below, their roots wound about each other, excusing themselves politely as they groped ever deeper for life. It was uncertain whether they minded Ito Yumi's contribution to their water supply, and it is unlikely that Ito Yumi would have cared if they did.

An old cat awaited Ito Yumi outside his door one morning when the man and sun nearly agreed upon the time to rise from bed. Ito Yumi opened his door to the first rays of dawn and found waiting for him a stray with the colors of earth mottled through silver in her fur. Cat and man considered one another for a long moment, and then, as if by unspoken cue, they began to walk together. They walked down the row of trees nearest the man's house, and when Ito Yumi had spent his water, the cat did the same. Ito Yumi stood patiently, watching with the expression one wears when considering a colleague's masterpiece. And when they returned home, they strode like gods.

The cat stayed the day with the man, eating fish from a plate the man placed on the floor next to his own table. When the sun fell and the man shivered, the cat rose from her place on the mat and curled about the man's toes.

Ito Yumi awoke to find the cat waiting for him, its eyes brilliant and expectant in the promise of day. Ito Yumi stirred his bones and began warming tea. Then, while the tea boiled, he opened the door, and cat and man went walking. When they had given to the earth that which they had to offer, the cat began to purr. It winked once at the man and trotted down to the road. It turned and, with the kind of haste that only cats can make look graceful, walked towards the mountain. Ito Yumi watched it disappear around a bend.

Weeks later, when the sun was tardy but not yet slothful, Ito Yumi rose to find a crow outside his door. The bird was large, twice the size of a cat, and midnight shone from its feathers. It skipped from foot to foot, spinning its head to gape at the man. Ito Yumi paused for a moment at the threshold, then closed his door and walked along the trees. He walked a good bit farther than usual, with the crow fluttering and skipping along after him. When the man found a tree that suited him, he began his work and turned an eye to see that the crow was watching. The bird stood still. When the man finished, he stood back and waited for the bird to follow suit. The crow bounced from root to root, apparently unsure of what was expected. Finally it shot its neck behind a rock and wrested a worm from the ground. The man nodded in approval, and the two went home.

The crow seemed uncomfortable in the man's house, and from time to time Ito Yumi opened the door to let the bird stumble out, only for it to return again directly. He offered rice to the bird, which was refused with graciousness. Periodically the bird would speak to him, spinning a tale of squawks and screeches that made the old man's blood ache. And though he did not understand what the bird was telling him, he nodded and grunted assent.

Before the next dawn, the man urinated, the bird breakfasted, and with a short call of farewell they parted ways.

The days turned colder. When the little fire in his house could not warm him, Ito Yumi thought of the cat, and knew that he would ever again when the cold fell. When the mornings were so quiet that he could hear the snow settling, Ito Yumi thought of the crow. At times he thought he had other visitors, but he could never tell for certain what shape they took. He took to leaving a bowl of rice on the table, and if there were sometimes fewer grains in the morning than the night before, Ito Yumi pretended not to notice.

It was at the height of winter, when the explosions of fireworks had faded, that the dragon came.

The slightest glimmers of flame shone from the dragon's nostrils with each breath as it lay curled in the snow. Ito Yumi could see the creature's outline dimly, scales and whiskers and pronounced eyebrows pooled in a bank of white. "Good morning, grandfather," it mumbled. "It has been a long journey, and I am near the end. May I stay with you until it is my time?"

Ito Yumi bowed slightly, shut his door, and moved off along the cedars. The dragon uncoiled, roughly the size of a man from snout to tail-tip, and followed. When the man had urinated, the dragon lifted its thin body just above the crust of snow and circled once around the tree. Then it looked at its host. "Shall we go inside, grandfather?" the dragon asked. Ito Yumi turned and led the way.

The dragon paced its way around the small room. When it came time for supper, the dragon ate precisely as much as the man did, then settled into the fire pit and slept. The next morning, they followed the same ritual. And the next. The dragon spent most of its day in the fire pit, though it occasionally lifted its front paws to the window and looked outside. Sometimes it would tell the old man stories. But mostly it slept.

"Grandfather," said the dragon one day, "I know who planted those trees."

The old man ignored him and tried to remember summer. The coals leaked almost as much smoke into the room as they did heat, and even with his ankles dangling over the edge of the fire pit, the old man could not feel his toes. Ito Yumi shivered, grumbled, and ignored.

The dragon pressed his nose to the window pane and gazed at the cedars through the steam-stained glass. "I don't mean that I know of him," it whispered, "I mean that I know him, grandfather. I knew him." The dragon's whiskers shivered. "I know him."

When Ito Yumi failed to answer, the dragon lowered itself delicately onto its front paws and crept into the fire pit. There was barely room in the pit for a soup bucket, but the dragon curled nicely, stirring sparks from the ashes. When he was quite comfortable, he spoke through sleepy lips.

"He owed the shogun money, grandfather; taxes, grandfather. He owed a great sum of taxes, but he did not want to pay, if you can imagine such a man." Ito Yumi did not respond, and the dragon went on. "But he was a wise man, grandfather. Yes," he whispered with dreams in his hooded eyes, "he was very wise. He knew the shogun's vanity, and he offered to plant trees along the road from Tokyo to the mountain where the shogun wished to be buried, as an exchange, a trade you see, so he could give the shogun immortality instead of gold."

The old man gave up on the fire and rolled to his feet. The dragon lifted its head from the ashes and rested its chin on the tatami. "Getting dressed, grandfather? Don't you want to hear what I'm saying? I'm talking about beginnings, grandfather, about a time when even I was young." The old man found his boots and began tugging them on. Seeing this, the dragon uncurled itself and stretched, its green and black scales arching to the ceiling. "Time for a bit of a walk, is it?" The dragon yawned once, languidly, and pawed across the floor and into one of the old man's shirts. He slipped one leg through each sleeve and nudged his head through the top in time to see the old man holding the door for him. "Thank you, grandfather," he said and stepped into the snow.

Ito Yumi walked in front, his legs still strong years after his friends were dead. The dragon frowned at the snow and picked his way a few paces behind. His shirt dragged, but he paid it no mind. The great mountain of the serpent god pierced the skyline, lines of snow cupped into the wrinkles of dirt and fallen leaves. The dragon gave it a wistful look and hurried after the man.

"Of course he did not plant them all himself," the dragon said as it stopped to lick an icicle. It grimaced and licked its nose to get rid of the taste. "The little men who worked his fields planted nearly all of them, but there are a few he planted himself. Take the trees right outside your window for example. He planted those. I saw him myself."

The old man stopped and squinted at the snow around him. He drew the winter air into his nose, not daring to let it too close to his heart, and held it. The dragon watched. Ito Yumi shivered once and turned back the way he had come. A rabbit bounded around one of the cedars and stopped short within sight of the dragon, who regarded it with thinly veiled disdain. The rabbit wiggled its nose twice, looked at a sprig of grass poking through the grass beside the dragon's tail, and sprang off behind the trees. The dragon sighed and turned home.

"And I wondered, grandfather, why he sent his workers away so that he could plant these trees entirely by himself," the dragon said when it caught up. "So I hid in a certain ditch one night to watch him work. The stars were burning brightly, and I could see his withered arms shake as he dug up the earth."

The pair was drawing near to the old man's shack, and the dragon hurried in anticipation of the fire pit. "He had brought six saplings with him," the dragon said as it scampered, "and planted five of them as quickly as he could. But the sixth, grandfather, the sixth he dug deeper. He dug until the spade ground against rock, and then he put down his tools and looked around him in fear. His lips were moving as if by themselves, a pair of thin, frightened worms caught in the rain. Then he reached into his robe--" The dragon stopped.

The silence was so sudden that the old man turned to look. The dragon was standing with one paw raised in mid-step, his whiskers bristling. His eyes were on the mountain of the serpent god.

Finally he spoke, but he did not take his eyes from the mountain. "Ah, grandfather," he said in a voice that reached across an ocean, "It seems I must go now." He wriggled backwards, dragging the old man's shirt until it caught in the snow and came off. "Thank you for the shirt, grandfather. I'm afraid it's quite wet." And he shot across the snow like a star falling through the sky.

The old man watched him until the trees swallowed him up. Finally he stooped and picked up the shirt, slinging it over his shoulder. The mountain looked down at him, and the old man squinted back. He thought of bamboo, and rivers falling off sudden cliffs, of dragons and boxes in the snow. He drew another breath, this time as far as his throat.

"I believe," said Ito Yumi to himself, "that today I shall pee on the other side of the road."

And so, while the dragon fled to the mountain, while the rabbit trembled in its warren, while the winter sun clawed its way above the horizon, Ito Yumi urinated on trees.