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Spring was in its infancy, snow still plentiful, when Ginko came across a man on the edge of a road. He was shivering in his haori and peddling meager wares of quartz stones. Ginko looked over the collection before meeting the eyes of the salesman, who sneezed on cue. His cheeks were gaunt with starvation. Like countless times before, Ginko wished he was the sort who could walk away.
“It’s been a long winter for you,” Ginko remarked.
“Indeed it has, sir,” the man replied with an involuntary shudder. The man changed strategies, cupping his hands and holding them over his head as he lowered his face. “I don’t suppose you have a cup of rice to spare?”
“I have some food,” Ginko replied. “Do you have a place to cook it?”
As they walked, the man introduced himself as Tatsu. He wrapped his arms around himself and his teeth chattered in the cold as their feet crunched through the fields behind the roads. Even covered with snow, there were no trees and large stones pockmarked the landscape.
“It must be difficult to till land like this,” Ginko remarked.
“Yes sir,” Tatsu nodded. “Impossible, in fact.”
“Impossible?”
“It’s just my sister and me,” Tatsu said with a sniff. “Clearing the stones is slow work for just the two of us, but she isn’t doing much of anything these days.”
At Tatsu’s little house off of the road, Ginko saw why.
“You don’t have to get up, Natsuko,” Tatsu told his sister as she sat up from her tatami mat when they entered. Natsuko’s movements were sluggish and minimal. She stared at Ginko for a while instead of lying back down.
While Tatsu busied himself with making the rice, Natsuko did not move. As far as Ginko could tell, she wasn’t breathing. If not for her sitting up and blinking eyes, Ginko would assume she was dead. While Tatsu plainly appeared to be starving, Natsuko appeared well-fed.
While they waited for the rice to cook, Ginko asked: “What happened to her? I haven’t seen her breathe since we came in.”
Tatsu glanced at his sister. “I don’t know. She hasn’t eaten in months. It’s not like I could get a doctor to look at her.”
Ginko took a moment to light up a cigarette. “I’m not a doctor, but I am a mushishi. If you tell me, I might be able to help you.”
“A mushishi...?” Tatsu murmured curiously. “I suppose there’s no harm in it. A few years ago we were exiled from our village because the village leader’s son wanted to marry Natsuko and wouldn’t take no for an answer. Our father got into a fight about it and we were sent to live out here on his dead sandy soil to starve to death. They threw us out in the winter and my father didn’t survive to the spring.” Tatsu took a moment to rub at his eyes and composed himself.
“So then it was just me and Natsuko. In the spring, the only thing that would grow in these fields was penpen grass. We collected mushrooms from a forest half a day to the north, and I even found the grass growing in rotting leaves from the fall. So we bought rice with money from selling penpen grass and mushrooms. We would walk for half a day north to reach a wood to collect what mushrooms and plants we could, and when the fall came again I remembered the penpen grass growing from rotting leaves. So my sister and I would collect the leaves, too, and spread them around the land by this hut for the spring.
“One of those days, after we carried home mushrooms in our packs and leaves in our arms, Natsuko stopped speaking. She stopped breathing. She mostly acted like normal, but she seems to be getting slower and weaker and colder every day. Not eating like this can’t be good for her.”
Ginko watched as the young man sat back with a steaming bowl of rice in his lap only to stare mournfully at his sister.
It must feel a bit like his sister died after his father, since she’s not even able to talk to him.
Ginko blew mushi tobacco out of his lungs and into the room. “I wouldn’t worry. She’ll be back to her former self once the spring sets in and the penpen grass grows again.”
Tatsu spun to look at Ginko. “What?”
“I believe she’s currently the host for a mushi called ochiba mushi, or the mulch mushi. They live in fallen leaf litter and eat the dead leaves, helping to break it down into soil. In the winter they become a part of their environment and hibernate under the snow until the spring. When you were bringing those leaves here, she probably inhaled one and it settled in her lungs. As it set in to hibernate for the winter, she no longer needed food or even breath. In the spring, she’ll breathe it out and go back to normal, but you have to make sure she remembers to breathe. Humans can forget how if they haven’t done it in a while”
“Really?!” It was only then that Tatsu remembered his rice, and consumed a few enthusiastic mouthfuls.
“That’s right,” Ginko said, looking at Natsuko. “Come spring, you’ll have to remember to breathe again.”
“I hope you’re right,” Tatsu said.
When Ginko left the following day, his rice provisions were a bit lighter, but the sun was warm against his back. The snow melted, revealing the leaf litter Tatsu and his sister had spread the previous fall.
Within weeks of Ginko’s visit, Tatsu heard his sister’s voice again. “Tatsu!”
Tatsu ran to Natsuko across the stony field, tears already in his eyes. “Natsuko, you’re speaking!”
“Look,” Natsuko said, ignoring him. “The penpen grass is growing right next to the house!”
She was right. The long jagged leaves of a green rosette was there, in the leaf litter.