Fudoki by Kij Johnson

something—but she could not hear it, for by that time, she and the sorrel were past, and she had been craning back in her saddle to watch.
    There was little traffic. She watched her breath puff in front of her and thought of mice. Ahead, a large party had pulled off the road near a roadside shrine to Inari. A well-dressed provincial woman and her women laid a packet of silk and a little barrel before the moss-green statues of Inari’s foxes, bowed and clapped. The tortoiseshell woman picked up her reins, and helped her horse choose a path through the cloud of servants and guards and horses and oxen that clogged the road. The noblewoman lifted a hand and hailed her, and the tortoiseshell woman stopped.
    “We are about to eat,” the noblewoman said. “Would you be so kind as to join us?”
    The tortoiseshell woman looked down from her saddle for a moment. The noblewoman was of middle age but still lovely, with a clever expressive face and merry eyes. She had kilted her padded robes to her knees, but this had not prevented their hems from being splashed with mud. The noblewoman looked down at herself and said, “I must look a perfect demoness to you; but I promise I’m hardly that. I don’t exaggerate when I say it would be a kindness for you to join us. We’ve been on pilgrimage for half a month now, and we are sick of each other’s faces.” She laughed and her attendants laughed with her. Provincials have a very different sense of the proper relationships between a master and the various sorts of servants. “Please.”
    The tortoiseshell woman trusted no one, and yet she found herself sliding from her saddle. One of the noblewoman’s menservants reached for the sorrel’s bridle. “My horse doesn’t like—” she began, but the sorrel finished the statement by lashing out at the man, teeth slamming together with an audible sound a hairs-breadth from his arm.
    He laughed and grabbed its bridle. “Settle down, biter.” He caught the tortoiseshell woman’s eye and said, “I like ’em feisty. Horse like a dragon, here.”
    “He’ll make sure your horse gets some food and water,” the noblewoman said. “Please, come.” She bowed and took the tortoiseshell woman’s hand. If she felt the burn scars she said nothing, only led her to a rush-walled ox-carriage and helped her up into it.
    It was warm in the carriage, and when the noblewoman followed her inside, it was crowded. There were five of them, all women, kneeling on thick cushions. They passed around little boxes filled with food of various sorts, and each helped herself with smooth little sticks to pickled cabbage, cold fried rice cakes, salted eggplant, and sea slugs. The tortoiseshell woman had never used sticks to eat, but she found a pair tucked into her sash—a thing she understood without learning, like horses and knives and knot-making. When the women were done, they handed the boxes out of the cart, and the men filled them with hot tea. She sniffed it warily (cats do not like hot things to drink), and carefully sipped. The warmth soaked right through her, along with a sweet, bright grassy flavor. She remembered with bitter clarity that summer afternoon, crouched on the wall at her grounds, the last moment she had still belonged. Her eyes filled with tears and she turned her face from the women.
    There was little talking until the tea.
    “I realized I have said nothing of who we are,” the noblewoman said suddenly. “I am the oldest daughter of my family. I’ve been to the temple at Takeshiba to pray for my youngest brother’s success in an endeavor. These are my women.” She named each, but the tortoiseshell woman frowned. She didn’t understand names: unlike a cat’s place in the fudoki, they said nothing useful about a person. The noblewoman laughed at her expression. “Never mind, you can ask again later, when there aren’t so many of them. Now: who are you and where are you from?—because this is the middle of nowhere, you know.