The Twelve Kingdoms: Shadow of the Moon

disappointment to them."
    "Would there be any way to find them again?"
    "I don't know. A search of the records might reveal the answer. If you calculated the time at which you were swept away, and then figured out the time and place where such a shoku had occurred, and then investigated all the ranka that were swept away at the same time . . . . It'd be tough."
    "Yeah, you're right."
    She was struck with the desire to search out the people who had wanted her, see what kind of people they were. Knowing that there were people here as well who had prayed for her birth finally convinced Youko of her origins. Under normal conditions, she should have been born in a place like this, somewhere in this world, in the embrace of the Sea of Emptiness.
    "Children look like their parents, don't they?"
    "Why would children look like their parents?"
    Rakushun treated it like such an odd question that Youko had to grin. A human woman with a child who looked like a rat. There couldn't be anything in the way of genetic inheritance going on there.
    "In that other world, children resemble their parents."
    "Well, that's different. Isn't it a bit creepy, though?"
    "Hard to say whether it is or not."
    "Seems to me it'd be kinda creepy if everybody in the same household looked like each other."
    "Come to think about it, you might have a point."
    A young couple entered into the courtyard. They consulted together, whispering while pointing at a branch. After a moment of indecision, they tied a thin, beautiful ribbon to the chosen limb.
    "That ribbon is a design of their own making. While thinking about the child they wish born to them, they choose a design they think most felicitous and embroider it into the ribbon."
    "Oh." It struck her as a most heartwarming custom. "When I was in the mountains, I saw trees like this."
    Rakushun glanced up at Youko. "Yaboku."
    "They're called yaboku? There was fruit growing on them, too."
    "There are two types of yaboku. Yaboku from which plants and trees are born, and yaboku from which animals are born."
    Youko's eye widened in surprise. She said to Rakushun, "Even plants and trees and animals are born from these trees?"
    Rakushun nodded. "But, of course. How else would anything be born?"
    "Well, ah . . . . " If children could be born from trees, it stood to reason that so could animals and plant life.
    "Domesticated livestock come from the riboku. Farmers petition the riboku for livestock on special days, following certain rules. In the wild, trees and plants and the beasts of the mountains reproduce on their own from the yaboku. Their fruits ripen on their own. In the case of trees and plants, the yaboku produces seeds. In the case of birds, the yaboku produces chicks. In the case of other animals, their young."
    "Isn't it a bit risky for seeds and chicks and cubs to be born willy-nilly? You'd think a chick would soon become some other creature's dinner."
    "The parents of animals also come to collect their offspring. Otherwise, until they can survive on their own, they live beneath the tree. That's why other creatures can't come close to the tree. Beasts who are natural enemies aren't born at the same time, and no matter how ferocious the animals might become, while beneath the tree they never fight. People who fail to get to a city before nightfall will go into the mountains and search out a yaboku. It's always safe beneath a yaboku."
    "That makes sense."
    "In exchange, no matter how fearsome a beast a cub might be grow up to be, it is absolutely forbidden to capture or kill one in sight of a yaboku."
    "That being the case, I take it birds don't hatch from eggs."
    Rakushun grimaced. "Who'd want to eat one with a chick inside?"
    Youko laughed. "Yeah. I guess you wouldn't."
    "Whenever I talk with you about such things, I get a weird feeling about that other world."
    "I can see how. How about youma? I take it youma are also born from trees?"
    "They are, naturally. Nobody has seen the tree from which youma are born, though. It's said that somewhere there are rookeries for youma. It would certainly be in such a place."
    "Huh."
    Youko nodded. She had more whimsical questions on the tip of her tongue, but they were of a more vulgar nature, so she thought better of asking them here. Like, exactly what kind of hanky-panky went on in the red-light districts, that kind of thing.
    "What is it?"
    "Oh, nothing. Thanks for bringing me here. I found it very rewarding."
    Rakushun smiled broadly in return. "It looks like