Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Fiction
vr 3.00
2008-02-16
"Shippo's Little Asymmetric Dragon" by Abraxas | 2005-12-14
Chapter Three
All of the sources agree: as Shippo grew into adulthood more and more he settled into a dark and stormy character. He was somber and gloomy and – curiously enough – strangely nostalgic. His eventual withdrawal from group activity took root on or about that time yet even at that stage, though he kept to himself, he was not isolated. He shared his art, of course, drawing and sketching wherever. Whenever he reached a temple or entered a mansion, he was there (along with Miroku) notebook in hand to study the images that could be found along scrolls, across screens and other, scattered murals here and there. Old statues and artifacts said to be of ancient, Chinese origin were highly prized and avidly sought-after by the precocious and increasingly temperamental artist.
He was extremely fond of dragons although the reason why he kept tightly hidden out of view. Maybe it was something about their shapes. Maybe it was something about their complexities. Whatever it was, in Shippo’s hands it cannot be denied that dragons attained such a style and elegance that a thousand years later it remains to be equaled.
The fox’s designs were always immense and panoramic. The replicas – because in the beginning of his career he produced only replicas often from memory – were richly textured and intricately detailed. More than a few patrons considered them to be superior with respect for the originals. And the monk was not left behind – he made many comments and left more compliments throughout the countryside about the nature and quality of the kitsune’s art. (In modern-terms Miroku was Shippo’s ‘agent.’)
Shippo produced many varied works of art, all of which were sold during his life to support himself and the group. By his death he was a well-known and very-esteemed artist. His illustrious works could be found everywhere in ancient Japan. The original manuscripts of the Narakunomicon and the “Confessions of a Right Hand”, too, contained a few crayon-colored and pastel-colored samples – personal gifts from the artist to his friends – that have been verified as authentic.
Now, just what does any of this have to do with Shippo’s death? Surely nothing within the body of his work known to be authentic arouses notions of lurid and grotesque machinations. Indeed, it would be superfluous to discuss all of these matters if it were not for several, interesting passages found in the middle of Miroku’s “Confessions of a Right Hand.”
In this day and age, anyone who examines Shippo’s portfolio as closely and minutely as Miroku’s naked eye allowed will notice. Alone, one sample, one fragment, it is meaningless. Only when the works are taken together – as a whole – is it fathomed, that which peaked the monk’s curiosity. For it became clear that through the course of years the fox-demon – while he drew many, many dragons – stamped upon his art like a macabre, otherworldly signature one, singular image of a dragon. It was drawn at least once per work but over and over, added randomly. And that was not all, closer inspection yielded the strangest observation yet, he noticed the icon did in fact differ in one and only one respect.
The figure – what ever it represented – was shrinking.
Shippo’s work – what exists of it today – is ripe with epic and mythological images. But that dragon, I come again and again to that dragon, he must have considered it to be his ultimate creation as it is true that it became a signature. The final form of it – lost forever – must have been perfect considering how many times it must have been drawn just to get its proportions exact.
Another entry talks about a sheet of paper sliced thin and long. Throughout its course, at certain, well-defined intervals – across and askew the width – were drawn sequential yet disconnected portions of a dragon. That dragon. From what he could see, it did not appear to be a complete sketch of the creature for the details of its tail and its head were missing. He knew – understood – what it was but its design and purpose was a puzzle.
He stared at it, looping it about his hands, his fingers, for hours while he sipped sake and chatted with females. Its mystery attained a permanence in his mind until, at last, the symmetry of it spurned a sudden, quantum leap of understanding. It was so obvious, simple. Holding one end of the strip with his thumb against his palm, he wrapped the sheet as far as possible about his middle and index fingers. He adjusted the dexterous tube’s radius until one fragment of the dragon aligned with the next. He searched for a stick and found a tube with the right shape – he wrapped the sheet about its length and watched with a mixture of awe and horror as the dragon came together out of nothing into its familiar and terrifying shape as it seemed to be snaking across the cylindrical surface as he turned the stick like a screw. The eerie, three-dimensional effect baffled him as to how the artist could have drawn it so perfectly alive.
There was yet another sheet. At first Miroku thought it was scrap because it appeared to be crumpled. At last he realized it was not so – it was folded not crumpled – but it was too late for he understood that fact after he unwrapped its form from its original shape to its natural flatness. Like the strip, the page was drawn with the aid of a cryptic pattern that proved to be too complex to decipher. The central portion needed a rounded, knob-like form. The edge portion needed a solid, cylindrical shape. And not only did it need two models to disentangle the fragments but it was, in fact, two drawings. The inner resembled the mouth-tongue with flickering flames coursing above it, with teeth at one end and lips along the edges marking the border between the images. The outer appeared to be the skull of the dragon spread over a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree panoramic montage – it was as if a three-dimensional sculpture had been exactly translated into a two-dimensional surface.
Throughout his career, Shippo experimented. With paints, he was fascinated with the thought of adding metals to pigments to make the colors shiny and brittle. With canvases, he was wont to practice with materials of any-shaped forms and surfaces. And, according to Miroku – who often sat in while the artist worked – even with brushes he tried just about everything. One of his technical innovations, the monk notes, was a new kind of brush, an instrument capable of recording the most miniscule and demanding of strokes. Of its fine, metallic point he jokes – though the young man is said not to have been amused – that with a little more work it could have been fashioned into an instrument infinitely superior to any tattooing needle.
I find it curious and I wonder why Miroku dropped those anecdotes throughout his “Right Hand.” Could it have been guilt that drove him to divulge those bits of information? What did he know and when did he know it? Perhaps, again, I reach too far with the monk’s testimony. It is entirely possible that until the very end he knew nothing. Alas, if all there exists is that book (and that insane, emotionally depraved Narakunomicon) the reader is left to wonder – what was the Houshi suggesting? And what was the demon aiming at with that dragon?
No one at the time – no one for centuries – could have foreseen the final, fatal culmination of these physical and psychological ingredients.
END OF CHAPTER
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