Fragrant Bamboo Inn was warmly lit from within, drawing us up the path towards it. There was a clearing around the inn, a little island in the bamboo shallows before you ventured out into the piney depths up the mountain. A safe refuge from the invisible terrors of the forest. Whatever they might be.

“Ah, guests, come in, come in! It’s so late, did you get lost on the road?”

We were greeted at the door by an enthusiastic older man. I never quite understood the expression bird boned. Birds have hollow bones- what, did you crack open a skinny guy’s arm like a chicken wing just to check? But I see it now.

The old man was wearing a yukata, and the limbs poking out of the sleeves looked like autumn branches. Not an ounce of fat anywhere on him. There wasn’t much more muscle. I would have thought he was starving, were it not for his bright eyes. There was a spryness to him. He was unburdened by heavy clothes or heavy meat or heavy bones.

The innkeeper bowed repeatedly, bobbing up and down like a sparrow pecking for seeds. His left hand lifted the curtain, and he bowed yet again to wave us in with his right.

“Please, this way! Let us get you around the fire, warm you up. Four people for the night? We might be a little crowded, but I’m sure we can make room. A busy night tonight. Bad time to be on the mountain. Bad time.”

“Oh, has something happened?” The inn was exceptionally unexceptional. I wasn’t really sure what to expect from a rural Japanese-ish inn. Something between a peasant’s hut and a Ryokan. What there was instead was rough wooden tables built around a fire pit, with hanging paper lanterns scattered about the room. It wasn’t brightly lit, but it was very cozy.

“Oh yes! You are fortunate, very fortunate, not to run into any monsters in the woods. They have been a terrible problem. Mmm. Seems like they have been a problem for years now. But what can we do? This is their mountain far more than it is ours.”

“Oh? Say more.”

“Fox spirits, spider women, long necked women, demon cats, and those are just the ones I can name! Other things, too terrible for words, are out there too. Awful things that make deals with awful men.” His gaze lingered on Miyuki for a moment. He was subtle about it, but he did. And he wasn’t looking with appreciation either.

Ding! The innkeeper has stories to tell, and secrets to keep. I wonder how you are going to react when Rikka walks through the door.

No tea on offer, I noticed. No soup bubbling over the firepit. Nobody here looked upset about it. There wasn’t any food to eat in Gradden March either. Did they just not want to have to program that? Or was there a deeper meaning to it?

“When you say the mountain belongs more to monsters than humans-”

“Haha! Does it sound very shocking? But it’s true. You are just in time. Our local storyteller, Mrs. Hungry will be here any minute.

Mrs. Hungry… I remember that name. She is one of the recruitable characters from Hidden Moon Mountain. We settled in around a table to wait. The other visitors didn’t look like anything much at first glance. Broccoli characters, NPC’s of the first order. It was a morbid sort of parlor game, but deciding which were hidden monsters/cultists/sorcerers and which were victims helped to pass the time.

I gave up when I realized that I just couldn’t tell the difference. The longer you looked, the more awful they got. After a few minutes, they all just screamed “I am a secret cannibal.” One of them, an older gentleman, kept liking his left index finger for no obvious reason. He held it up just to the left of his mouth, tip pointed perfectly vertical, and gave it long, lapping, licks.

There wasn’t anything remotely sexual about it. Like a cat cleaning its claws. That’s what it looked like. A cat polishing one particular toe. Demon cats spotted on the mountain, but instead of a hot chick with nekomimi I get this droopy fleshed old timer. He spotted me looking and smiled in my direction. It was like his lips were a stage curtain, pulled up and to the corners by an invisible rope.

He had the most remarkably yellow teeth I think I have ever seen. Human teeth, but the color of a school bus. Like nacho cheese sauce, I thought. And his black eyes sank into the folds of skin around them. Lost in the laundry pile of his face.

Sitting at the same table was a much more normal looking man. Middle aged, and the victim of a hard life, but doing okay. Not great, his yukata was frayed and stained. But okay. He was clean. His hair was neatly combed back and tied in a short ponytail. His sandals were visibly repaired, but seemed decent enough.

His gut was swollen to the point of bursting. Nine months pregnant with a quintuplet of baby elephants. The yukata was tied under the bulge which breached the cloth flaps of the garment and displayed his boney sternum to the room. The veins under his skin were traced in red. Bloody spiderwebs barely visible in the warm light of the inn.

They were all like this- the husband and wife who’s every move was perfectly mirrored by the other. A mother and daughter who would always whisper to each other, then look around the room and laugh. Every time they laughed, their hands came up to hide their black teeth. Which was a thing, at some times in Japanese history, for the absolute peak of aristocracy. But if you were in this inn, you weren’t someone qualified to blacken their teeth.

“Everyone, everyone, your attention please! Mrs. Hungry is here!”

The innkeeper walked out next to the fire, clapping his hands and drawing our eyes. The woman next to him looked… about as ordinary as the rest of this crowd. Mrs. Hungry was tall. Old. Rail thin. Long arms that hung loose from stooped shoulders, her boney fingers dangling like willow whips.

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“I will start tonight with a funny story.” Her voice had a hint of rasp to it. I couldn’t see her face clearly. She was looking down, her features obscured by the long waterfall of her sterling-silver hair.

“Once upon a time, there was a princess living in a castle. She didn’t like playing with her bright blue and gold ball. She didn’t like watching the orange koi flash gold and silver in their pretty little pond. She didn’t like her warm quilt, or the freshly woven floor mats or the big bowls of rice and soup that came with every meal. She didn’t even like the meat and fatty fish that were served on lacquered trays and richly glazed pottery. She was a very unhappy girl.

“One day, a servant came by with a big fan. On the fan was painted a heron. The idea was to throw the fan in the air, then catch it. The Princess was very bored and unhappy, so she reluctantly gave it a try. She threw the fan up into the air, and it was the most remarkable thing! The heron on the fan seemed to flutter and fly as the fan drifted down. Laughing, she did it again and again.

“The servant asked if the young miss would like to play a game of catch, tossing the fan back and forth. She said yes, of course! And so the heron seemed to drift to and fro, gliding across the pond waters, looking for unaware frogs. It was beautiful, and powerful, and fierce, and free. The Princess loved to watch it fly.

“The Princess was very happy with this game, and she wanted to play it day and night. The servant was very pleased, because no one else had managed to cheer up the princess, but he had. He dreamed of his own promotion, his own chance for big bowls of rice and fragrant meat sprinkled with hair thin slivers of green onion, carried to his seat on precious glazed porcelain imported from the land beyond the water. And in his dreams, the servant who carried the plates and bowls looked not a little like a grown-up Princess.

“The servant smiled at his reflection in the water. He knew it was only a dream. But it was a nice dream, so he was happy to dream it a little longer.

“But the Princess didn’t stay happy for very long. The Heron flew about, but it never caught any frogs. It went here and there, but it never found a single bite to eat. She felt terrible. She had very boring food, and lots of it, but no living frogs or eels for the beautiful bird that lived on her fan.

“No, the Princess was not happy at all. Fortunately, she lived in a castle and her father was a fearsome warrior. Hers was a brave heart. So one day she called for the Servant to fish out a Koi from the pond, but he must only use his hands. He was splashing about, not achieving much on his knees at the pond’s edge. It was a foolish demand, he thought, but far from the silliest thing the Princess had asked for. Besides, he was her favorite, and destined for greater things.

“He was soon proven right about that. The Princess came up behind him with a spear and, running quickly, drove it through his back. She rode her momentum to keep the blade moving forward, pushing the servant into the pond, then pinning him to the bottom. As he drowned in the muck, confused, terrified and in pain, he didn’t see the heron circling, or the happy smile of his mistress.

“The end.”

There were chuckles around the room. The mother and daughter were softly laughing behind their hands, sharing a knowing look, then laughing again. The innkeeper had a “Hah hah hahAAA” laugh, the last vowel suddenly going up in volume and register, dragging on for too long. The room seemed to agree- this was a very funny story.

The listeners reached into their sleeves and pulled out Runed Bones. They tossed the carved fragments at Mrs. Hungry’s feet. They clattered on the floor, making a sound I couldn’t put words to. Not just hollow, or dense, or crips, or soft. They sounded uniquely like themselves- the most vital part of the bones of a monster.

In life, the monsters were predators. In death, they were money. There is an allegory there, or a metaphor or something. I just couldn’t find it. I threw in a couple bones myself. Didn’t seem wise to stand out as cheap.

“Does anyone have a story they want to hear? Come come, most of you are old fiends. You know how this works!”

I smiled, recognizing my cue. “Can I ask for a ghost story?”

That quieted the room down. An eerie thing, having that eerie bunch all suddenly turn and stare at you.

“Ten bones for a safe story, fifty for a true one.” Mrs. Hungry's words sounded like a hooked worm. I tossed her the fifty anyhow.

“A true one, please.” I noticed the bones fell on an empty floor. All the bones that had been there before had quietly disappeared, despite no one picking them up.

“Very well then. A true ghost story.” Her voice picked up a faint sing-song feeling. The rasp never quite went away.

“Once upon a time on this very mountain, there lived an old woodcutter and his wife. The two lived a poor existence, where even salt was a luxury and a single fistful of grain was all that could fill a belly for a day. Still, they far preferred life in the deep woods to the madness and hunger consuming the rich farmland below.

“Life is merely choosing the road to your death and doing your best to not be interrupted on your path. The farmlands had many interruptions, such as plague, war and famine. Things got so bad, the once-fat farmers came to the woods. First to hunt for wild vegetables and herbs, then for meat, then for tree bark. Yes, so desperate to fill their once bouncy bellies, the farmers resorted to eating tree bark.

“The woodcutter and his wife weren’t pitiless folk. They had great sympathy for the once-fat farmers. After all, it was the farmers who used to buy the wood the woodcutter cut. But the hungry farmers were eating the mountain bare, and something had to be done.

“Husband and wife sat together in their little hut. Lighting no fire, nor a lamp, nor permitting even the light of the moon or stars to enter. They sat in the darkness and spoke frankly to each other the words they could not speak in the light. All the hidden truths from the dark caves of their heart felt safe to escape their tombs and run loose in the air. At least until the lights came on and they evaporated. Leaving only the traces of their passing in the minds and ears of the Woodcutter and his wife.

“The Woodcutter went to the nearest farming village and found the Headman. The Headman was in a bad way- usually he could find a few extra benefits for himself or his family, but now there was nothing to graft, and the responsibility of feeding the village rested heavily on him.

“The Headman imagined he was possessed by two demons- Hunger and Responsibility. Hunger peeled away his muscles and fat, eating them leisurely as his nerves screamed. But Responsibility was even more terrible. Responsibility broke his bones and drank his marrow. Running its long tongue inside the very core of him, clearing it out, leaving him as empty flesh hanging on hollow bones.

“The Woodcutter told him about the special place on the mountain, where you can always find fat pigs to hunt. You just need to perform the secret ritual, and you will find lots and lots of pigs to eat. You need a few people to go naked and wear a pig’s head mask, and a few more to go naked and chase them with spears. Then the pig spirits would appear, and you could hunt them.

“The Headsman went around and around thinking about it, but Hunger and Responsibility ate away at him, stopping him from thinking about anything but them. He stopped wondering if he should try it, and began wondering who he could convince to try it with him.

“On the night of the new moon, the Headsman led a dozen villagers up into the mountain. He brought them to the Heartless Clearing. They ate the blessed mushrooms, faces contorting under the pig head masks. Then they stripped themselves naked, hunter and hunted alike, and began the ritual.”

“The Pigs bolted and ran around the clearing, some running on all fours before desperately climbing to their feet. The Hunters yelled and waved their spears, chasing wildly. Remembering the time when food was abundant, remembering the warmth that came from a full belly.

“Once, twice, three times around they went, before their Hunger-gnawed bodies gave out. They couldn’t keep up the chase anymore. It was then that the spirits descended. The Hunters rose to their feet. The Pigs snorted nervously. Sniffing the air. A hunter raised his spear, and threw it well. The Pig’s screams alerted the rest of the sounder, and they bolted away.

“Around and around the Heartless Clearing they went. One by one, the Pigs fell, slaughtered by the Hunters. Each Hunter cut off an ear from a kill and anointed themselves in the blood of their prey. Each cut out a liver for themselves, eating it raw, eating it above the cleaned and gutted pig corpse. They needed to eat, so that they could return with their prey to the village.

“The Hunters were mighty, returning with great honor, and none of the villagers dared question where the rest of their party went, nor why all the meat was butchered and boned before they came down the mountain. All agreed it was pig meat. All agreed that it must be pig meat. It couldn’t possibly be anything else. It filled bellies. It allowed precious grain to stretch that little bit farther. It saved their lives.

“But the rain didn’t fall. War destroyed the good farmland around the village. Famine still stalked the land and the demon Hunger still ate their flesh. Again and again, it became time to hunt pigs. Until only the Hunters were left. And then, only hungry ghosts. Stalking around the Heartless Clearing. Waiting for their next hunt.

“As for the Woodcutter and his wife? That is a story for another day.”