Nine tales
Years ago, Yuki lost her children to winter. Grief took her wandering alone in the snow. Miles passed beneath her and it was a long time before she realised she might die out in the silent hills. One night, starvation stripping her of beauty, Yuki came to find the cooling leg of a man half-concealed between the drifts. Yuki had never eaten the flesh of men, but hunger makes many things easy. Eventually the corpse had been light enough to drag into shelter. Eventually Yuki had eaten his heart, and crawled inside his husk.
Early that spring, Kaito found Yuki living in a cave. Her tongue was blue and she would not speak. Her eyes were gold and her face beautiful. Her roughly braided hair always shone like fire, even though she never lost the hint of frost from her skin. Yuki walked back to Kaito's village. No-one ever found him. That summer, after she had been taken in and clothed, something snuck into the pens and tore the chickens apart. Yuki stayed silent and licked her fingers clean. That autumn, when the cherry blossoms fell like snow, four of the youngest men disappeared among the trees, one after the next. No-one would ever see Yuki eat anything but fruit and berries.
She never settled and never spoke a word. Sometimes, when a woman took her in out of pity, she would be caught on her haunches in a doorway, steaming amber from between the legs. When a man took her in for her beauty, she would spend all day learning from others, how to wear her two braids perfectly, which kimono were best. Yet she always screamed when men entered her. By the next year Yuki took to wandering the hills much of the time. Travelers, when travelers survived the road, would tell of dancing fire out in the same hills, dreams of snow amid summer, falling blossom amid winter, of bones found half-buried, gnawed clean. Some would tell of an eerie wail echoing between the pines, but none of the travelers that told tales had followed it.
Four-braids strong, each tipped with the creeping ice of age, Yuki took to haunting an abandoned house in the mountains. The villages around left the distant mountain alone. Occasionally a young villager would stride toward it. Later they would stumble back confused by visions and bloody from their flight. Sometimes they wouldn't.
As years passed more wide braids appeared in her hair. At five braids, lured by her beauty, the warlord Toshen braved the mountain and took Yuki as a wife. At six his growing dynasty started to fail, to crumble, and he was left with only Yuki and her house. Toshen's men had slowly trickled away from a wraith in the night. Curses left his enemies broken but each outbreak of error seemed fueled by silent sacrifices. Strong soldiers went scouting or hunting alone and never came back. Their armour and weaponry would be found buried and covered in blood. At seven braids Yuki finally bore children. By the time they could walk around the house it had become decrepit, its bells cracked, where once it had been brightly decorated and well furnished.
One winter Toshen saw something behind his bride and fled. That night the whole mountain howled with a long and aching wail. She had never learned to ride, but Yuki followed Toshen down the twisting road regardless, a blizzard at her naked heels. Eight braids whipped out around her. Abandoned, the house seemed just as it had before Yuki took to it. Her children were left to starve in the cold. For two grief stricken weeks Yuki wandered the hillsides drinking snow and eating nothing. Two weeks, hunting for a tiny heart and a different skin to crawl back into.
The warlord escaped, although to his death he carried wounds on his cheek that were deep and never healed. Sometimes he would be found drunk on sake, staring at the shadows of young women with braids in their hair.
The villagers near the mountain hardly ever go missing these days. Sometimes they stride back home, having seen a fox with nine tails, and they consider themselves lucky.