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12 The pearl-belly of Sazae-Onna reads: Through nine tails I saintry lake at ht Skate-tracks wrote a poem of melancholy on the ice You stood upon the other shore For the first ti human

13 Ko has no visitors The human half of the House of Second-Hand Carnelian is well hidden in a deep forest full of black bears just wise enough to resent outsiders and arrange a regular patrol There is also a Giant Hornet living there, but no one has ever seen it They only hear the buzz of her wings on cloudy days The bears, over the years, have developed a primitive but heartfelt Buddhist discipline Beneath the cinna Sutra The religion of the Giant Hornet is unknown

14 The bears are unaware of their heritage Their mother is Hoeru, the Princess of All Bears She fell in love with a zen monk whose koans buzzed around her head like bees The Princess of All Bears hid her illegitimate children in the forest around the House of Second-Hand Carnelian, close enough to the pluh that their souls could never quite wake It is a sad story Yuu copied it onto a thousand peach leaves When the wind blows on his side of the house, you can hear Hoeru weeping

15 If Ko were to depart the house, Yuu would vanish forever If Ko so much as crosses the Nobody River, he receives a pain in his long bones, the bones that are raphy brush If he tries to open the plum-colored screen, he falls at once to sleep and Yuu appears on the other side of the silks having no ernails he writes upon the tataret that I never rateful for the bears

16 The woven grass ss his words

17 Sometimes the bears come to see him and watch him catch fish They think he is very clu Sutra as a cure for loneliness, but Ko cannot understand theh eak tea and shares his watercress They take a little, to be polite

18 Yuu has many visi

tors, though Naentleman skeleton at the full , conducted with a wide slate of volcanic glass, yuzu wine, and a transistor radio brought to the House of Second-Hand Carnelian by a Kirin who had recently eaten a GI and spat the radio back up The Kirin wrapped it up very nicely, though, with curls of green silk ribbon Hone-Onna and her suitor each contribute a shoulder blade, a thumb bone, and a kneecap They set the pieces of the to several arcane considerations only skeletons have the patience to learn They drink the yuzu wine; it trickles in a green waterfall through their rib cages Then they turn on the radio

19 Yuu thanked the Kirin by copying a Dragon koan onto his long horn The Kirin’s horn reads: What was the forons?

20 Once, Datsue-Ba came to visit the House of Second-Hand Carnelian She arrived on a palanquin of business suits, for Datsue-Ba takes the clothes of the dead when they come to the shores of the Sanzu River in the underworld She and her husband Keneo live beneath a persimmon tree on the opposite bank Datsue-Ba takes the clothes of the lost souls after they have swus them to dry on the branches of their tree Datsue-Ba knows everything about a dead person the moment she touches their sleeve

21 Datsue-Ba brought guest gifts for everyone, even the Jar of Lightning These are the gifts she gave:

A parasol painted with orange blossoms for Sazae-Onna so she will not dry out in the sun

A black funeral kis for Hone-Onna so that she can attend the festival of the dead in style

A copper ring bearing a ruby frog on it for Yuu to wear around the stalk of his brush-body

A cypress-wood comb for the Noble and Serene Electric Master to burn up and re