Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine #211 Read online

  Ginko, the cigarette-smoking ‘mushishi’ or ‘mushi-master', moves through rural Japan, listening to people's stories and acting as an exorcist-healer. Each chapter is a separate tale: ‘The Green Gathering', ‘The Soft Horns', ‘The Light in the Eyelids', ‘The Travelling Bog'. Sometimes Ginko is able to help those he meet who have been affected by mushi, sometimes, as in ‘The Pillow Path', his efforts to help go tragically wrong. The nameless man who seeks his help has premonitions when he dreams, so Ginko gives him medicine. But when Ginko returns to the village, he finds it deserted and overgrown. Only the dreamer has survived, alone and wretched. ‘If I'm the cause of all this tragedy,’ he demands, ‘why the hell did you keep me alive?’ Only now has he realised that the mushi within him are making his dreams come true.

  'Imenonoawai. They live within the host's dreams ... but there are times when they come out of dreams,’ Ginko tells him. ‘Then ... they emerge from the host to become an open Petri dish that infects reality.'

  In his desperation, the man slashes open his pillow, believing it to be the path used by the mushi to infect his mind—with devastating and surprising consequences. Later, Ginko reflects, ‘The word for pillow ‘makura’ is made from combining the words for “Storage place” and “soul".’ Between dreams and reality is the storage place of the soul.

  Urushibara's images of the Japanese landscape are nostalgic and atmospheric: soft snow scenes, remote villages untouched by today's technology, the delicate watercolours on the cover, all are imbued with an ominously disconcerting sense of the numinous. Her style of story-telling is understated, yet no less resonant for its muted tone. ‘It feels like an era between the Edo and Meiji periods,’ she says in her Afterword, although Ginko is often depicted in jeans and T-shirt.

  As each story is complete in itself, with little sense of progression, my only concern is that the series might never develop beyond a ‘mushi of the week’ scenario, unless Urushibara goes on in future volumes to reveal a little more about Ginko, her enigmatic central character. Perhaps, though, that won't seem so important as the reader is gently seduced by the unique quality of her drawing and story-telling.

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  Air Gear is translated and adapted by Makoto Yukon for Del Rey and Tanoshimi. Mushishi is translated and adapted by William Flanagan for Del Rey.

  Copyright © 2007 Sarah Ash

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  Visit www.ttapress.com for information on additional titles by this and other authors.