The Stone at Yomi's Gate

Japan

Mythic Prehistory

Before the bridge, there was only water

 

Before the bridge, there was only water. Water and drifting light.

 

Across the Heavenly Plains, the first five kami appeared, emerging with neither gender nor form.

 

Time continued to pass.

 

More kami emerged, filling seven generations. From the Floating Bridge of Heaven, they looked below and spied gathering mass in the brine, quivering like a nascent thing yet to be born.

 

Time kept passing.

 

Izanagi and his sister Izanami, two of the younger kami, met upon the bridge of starlight and mist. Together, they listened to an echo of sound: oceans sloshing, the roar of a wave hollowed inside another wave.

 

They could do nothing but listen to the embryonic cries of an unborn world, yet they could not look away.

 

Then the elder gods placed in their hands a jeweled spear.

 

And commanded them to create.

 

Izanagi and Izanami stood solemnly on the Floating Bridge of Heaven, each with a hand upon the spear’s haft. Slowly, carefully, they lowered it into the restless waters below.

 

They churned the ocean through a tight circle:

Once,

Then twice,

And finally, a third time.

 

On the first rotation, the ocean calmed, and on the second, light shimmered across their surface. And on the third, the hollow roar of wave wrapped in wave began to hum.

 

Izanagi met his wife’s eyes; she nodded back.  Together they raised the spear. Drops of brine brimming with life clung to its jeweled tip and fell.

 

Where they landed, the first island rose.

 

Izanagi and Izanami married upon their new creation. They constructed a palace to be a home for all kami and upon that, erected a holy pillar and circled it:

Once,

Then twice,

And finally, a third time.

 

On the first rotation, Izanagi pledged his devotion, and on the second, Izanami pledged hers. And on the third, they met again.

 

Izanami, overcome with joy, spoke first. A beat later, Izanagi answered in kind.

 

Time passed once again.

 

Izanagi and Izanami met in union, but the child born of that union was not ready for this world and could not remain.

 

They set the frail infant adrift upon the waters. The current took him beyond the island’s edge, where no hand could draw him back.

 

And the sea bore him away.

 

Silence gathered around the holy pillar, and they knew then their rite of union had been flawed. So, they knelt before the elder gods and began again.

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This time the rite was kept in proper sequence.

 

They walked the black shore of their island, where brine gathered in pools and wind bent the reeds. New creations rose as they passed.

 

Izanagi named the mountain.

Izanami named the river.

Together they named the spaces between. And everything flourished.

 

As they had promised the elder gods, Izanagi and Izanami created new islands for life to thrive upon. The brine that had once roiled without form gave way to glorious immensity.

 

They raised islands from the sea and filled each with living powers.

 

Waterfalls thundered.

Rivers braided through stone.

Mountains rose.

Wind found its voice.

And for each force, a kami, so that the world might keep itself in harmony.

 

But every creation asks its cost.

 

For soon fire sought to be born. Izanami bore Kagutsuchi, the fire kami, and flame burned within her womb.

 

And something entered the world

that had not been there before.

 

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When waters deepen, even gods may lose their way

 

When waters deepen, even gods may lose their way. Even gods can feel pain.

 

Fire had entered the world, and with it came a wound no creation could mend.

 

Izanami cried out as she bore Kagutsuchi, and flame turned against the mother who carried it. Her flesh burned and her strength ebbed.

 

Izanagi held her, bewildered that a woman who had shaped mountains and dug rivers could be undone by what she had borne.

 

Until then, the world had only known creating. Even the first child of their union they had set upon the waters had not broken her.

 

But now the world heard the cries of its creator.

Now it felt the heat of her suffering.

Now it learned loss.

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And in that first grief, even the newly formed earth seemed to quiet.

The rivers hushed and the trees stilled.

Even the winds she had named grew quiet.

 

When her breath left her, the world remained in pause. For it was no longer whole.

 

Time slowed in rhythm with grief.

 

But Izanagi could not accept that death should claim a creator, or that the world could bear the loss of one who had helped shape it.

 

Had they not drawn land from brine? Had they not corrected their first mistake and built beyond it? The boundary between life and death seemed to him no more fixed than water—at times an ocean, at times a trickle.

 

Surely this boundary could be crossed, too.

 

And so Izanagi set out to retrieve what had been taken.

 

Below the Heavenly Plains lay the Earth, and below the Earth the place where all things lost yet lived.

 

Yomi.

 

With love in his heart and loss upon his mind, Izanagi journeyed to the land of the dead.

           

The road to Yomi followed no mortal path and no mortal logic. Even for a kami it was difficult to perceive, less a place measured in distance than a deepening one entered by degrees.

           

Izanagi walked from one edge of creation to the next.

           

And now he saw the places where the light thinned.

Now he heard where waters collected, whispers and babbles disappearing into their black.

Now he felt roots twisting through stone like his own memories, refusing to stay buried.

 

Time slowed to a trickle.

           

As Izanagi descended into Yomi, the air itself seemed older, untouched since the days before the islands rose from brine.

 

Here the world no longer answered when named.

 

Here it bore different names altogether.

           

Izanagi called for his wife—

Once,

Then twice,

And finally, a third time.

 

At the first call, nothing stirred. At the second, only his own voice returned. But at the third, a sound rose from the dark.

 

It was Izanami’s voice.

And not her voice.

 

Something familiar yet altered, as if spoken through water and earth.

 

You have come too late, she said. You have come before your time.

I have eaten the food of Yomi.

And its bonds hold me.

 

But Izanagi would not leave without her.

 

Then wait for me, she said.

Do not look upon me.

Wait—

and we may yet be united.

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And so, he waited, listening to a silence that seemed to breathe.

 

Time passed.

And still he waited.

 

Water dripped somewhere in the dark.

 

Time thinned.

And still he waited.

 

He counted breaths.

 

He listened for footsteps that did not come.

 

Time paused.

And still he waited.

 

But waiting had its own hunger, and with hunger came doubt.

 

At long last, Izanagi lifted his lamp and looked into the darkness.

 

What he saw was Izanami.

And not Izanami.       

 

In place of the woman who had flourished upon the Earth stood a figure altered by a realm no living being was meant to behold. In her face Izanagi saw not decay alone, but the work of death already done.

 

In a single glance, longing turned to terror.

 

And one truth became undeniable:

Death had claimed his beloved.

He could not call her back.

 

In the space between heartbeats, Izanagi ran.

He ran past whispering trees and silent brooks.

He ran without thought.

 

Beneath his feet, the underworld stirred

Roots clawed at his legs.

Shadows melted together.

And an old power rose in pursuit.

 

Behind him, a voice once beloved called after him.

 

He slowed for a second. But only a second.

 

The farther he fled, the farther home receded. Darkness multiplied around him, each boundary he crossed seeming to open another.

 

Only memory of the living world drove him onward—the wind over the water, the black rocks and bending reeds—all the names of things he had made.

 

For now he knew what was done could not be undone.

 

Even by him.

 

Finally, he reached the mouth of Yomi.

 

The space between worlds, where only the edges could touch.

 

Izanagi did not pause, for a hair’s breadth behind him came the one who had been Izanami.

No longer his bride.

No longer a creator.

 

Between escape and pursuit stood only a threshold.

 

One too fragile to bear such crossing.

 

There, at the edge of his return and her forever exile, Izanagi reached for a stone.

 

And wept

as his hand closed around it.

 

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At the stone, the bridge gave way to a gate

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At the stone, the bridge gave way to a gate. A gate no one had planned to create.

 

Izanagi curled his fingers around stone.

 

Grief was still wet upon his face, and terror pounded with his heart.

 

He heaved the stone into the gap between worlds.

 

Stone struck stone.

And something final settled into place.

Earth and water shuddered with the sound of a world dividing.

 

From Yomi came only silence.

 

The mouth of Yomi was sealed.

 

What had once been a crossing became a gate,

and what had been a gate became a law.

 

From beyond the stone came Izanami’s voice:

Each day, a thousand souls I will claim.

 

Izanagi stilled.

Then each day, he answered, fifteen hundred lives shall answer them.

 

Not in revenge.

 

Not as justice.

 

But in creation.

 

But death still clung to Izanagi, and so he sought the rivers he had once made. There he washed away what Yomi had touched. And the waters that once birthed islands birthed again.

 

From his left eye, the sun.

From his right, the moon.

And from the cleansing, the storm and sea.

 

Time passed.

 

The stone at Yomi’s gate held,

And the waters of creation moved on.

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