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XIII

In the end, when the universe has exhausted itself and has no thery left to sustain life, Heimdallr the White Dwarf Star will raise up the Gjallarhorn and sound it Yggdrasil, the world energy gradient, will quail and shake Ratatoskr, the tuft-tailed prime observer, will slow, and curl up, and hide his face

The science fiction writer gives permission for the universe to end She is nineteen She has never written anything yet She passes through a sheet of bloody glass On the other side, she is being born

ONE BREATH, ONE STROKE

1 In a peach grove the House of Second-Hand Carnelian casts half a shadow This is because half of the house is in the human world, and half of it is in another place The other place has no nas happen It is where tricksters go when they are tired A modest screen divides the world It is the color of plu after plum petals If you stand in the other place, you can see a hundred eyes peering through the silk

2 In the human half of the House of Second-Hand Carnelian lives a rapher named Ko Ko wears a chartreuse robe embroidered with black thread When Ko stands on the other side of the house he is not Ko, but a long calligraphy brush with badger bristles and a strong cherrywood shaft When he is a brush his na from one side of the house to the other Brush, man Man, brush

3 Ko lives alone Yuu lives with Hone-Onna, the skeleton wo; and Na round, earthquakes treu love poetry onto the bones of Hone-Onna Her white bones are black noith beautiful writing, for Yuu is a very good calligrapher

4 Hone-Onna’s skull reads: TheThe talons I seize, seize me

5 Ko is also an excellent calligrapher But he is retired, for when he stands on one side of the House of Second-Hand Carnelian, he has no brush to paint his characters, and when he stands on the other, he has no breath “The great calligraphers know all writing begins in the body One breath, one stroke One breath, one stroke That is how a book isblack breath Yuu will never be a great calligrapher, even though he is technically accoin his poems”

6 Ko cannot leave the House of Second-Hand Carnelian If he tries, he becorows radish, melon, and watercress, and of course there are the peaches A river flows by the House of Second-Hand Carnelian It is called the Nobody River When it winds around to the other side of the house, it is called the Nothingness River There are some fish in it Ko catches them with a peach branch Namazu belches and fish jump into his y

7 Na My testicles are heavy with grief Because of me, the stripes of her tail will never return

8 Sazae-Onna lives in a pond in the floor of the kitchen Her shell is tiered like a cake or a palace, hard and thorned and colored like the inside of an al in spiral patterns over her gnarled surface She eats the rice that falls from the table when the others sit down to supper She drinks the steam fro her out of the sea in a net of roses On the Eives her candy made from Hone-Onna’s marrow Hone-Onna does not mind She has plenty to spare Sazae-Onna takes the candy quietly under her shell with one blue-silver hand She sucks it for a year

9 When Yuu celebrates the Emperor’s birthday, he does not mean the one in Tokyo He means the Goldfish-Emperor of the Yokai who lives on a tiny island in the sea, surrounded by his wives and their le wish—a all the unhuman world red lottery tickets appear in every teapot Yuu has never won

10 The Jar of Lightning won once, when it was not a jar, but a Field General in the Storm Army of Susano-no-Mikoto It had wonthe cypress roofs of the royal residences at Kyoto and setting theroaned with lauds When the red ticket forold characters upon it instead of black, the lightning bolt wished for peace and rest Susano-no-Mikoto is a harsh master with a harsh and windy whip, and he does not per bolt beca in the House of Second-Hand Carnelian It took the name of Noble and Serene Electric Master and polishes its jar with static discharge on washing day

11 Sazae-Onna rarely shows her body Under the shell, she is more beautiful than anyone but the moon’s wife No one is more beautiful than her Sazae-Onna’s hair is pale, soft pink; her eyes are deep red; her mouth is a lavender blosso in the river All the fish surrounded her in a ring, staring up at her with their fishy eyes Even the uilty about it afterward and disappeared for three days to purify hiraphy brush that he begged permission to copy a Kitsune hymn upon the pearl-belly of Sazae-Onna