Japan is not like Texas. In Japan, magic has existed for thousands of years. Anything can happen.

“You,” the young girl said. She was crouched on the side of the road, her oval, porcelain face upturned to the sky. “I’ve been waiting for you for a thousand years.”

The old man, a peddler by trade, lifted an eyebrow. “Eh? What are you waiting on me for?”

She smiled, beatific, and spread her hands before her in a plea. “For you to take me with you to Kyoto. It has been my life’s wish to see the city.”

The old peddler chuckled at this. “Your life hasn’t been long enough to see much of wishing,” he said. “But I am making my way to the Emperor’s Court to sell my wares. You come along if you like.”

The young girl joined him, and they arrived at the Emperor’s court after a few days of traveling.

The peddler set up shop and began hawking his silk fans to the women at the court. Snobbish as they were, however, the women turned up their noses at the fans, though they were well made and beautiful. Upon seeing the look and hurt on her benefactor’s face, the young girl took one of the fans and faced the women, eyes downward, and began to dance.

No one at court could take their eyes off her. She moved like a crane on the water, delicate, deliberate, and graceful. She held the fan like an extension of her arm, her nimble wrists and fingers letting the fan dance before the women, enchanting them with its beautiful colors, with the soft purr it made as it hummed through the air.

When she was done, the women of the court were so enchanted they bought every fan the peddler had to offer.

By that evening, the Emperor had caught wind of the young girl’s bewitching dance. “I would have her perform for me,” the Emperor said. “Please bring her to my private chambers at once.”

The young girl, who was as obedient as she was beautiful, entered the Emperor’s quarters with her fans at the ready. But instead of looking down as she had done when she danced for the women, she looked the Emperor directly in his eyes and smiled. With a flick of her wrist, the fans fluttered open, and as she danced before the Emperor with all the elegance and strength her little body could muster, she never once broke eye contact with him.

When she was done, the Emperor motioned for the girl to sit with him. She knelt before him, and the Emperor took her hands in his. “I know Kyoto must be a strange city to you,” he began, his voice soft. “And I’m sure the court must be stranger to you still. But nothing would please me more if you would stay at court with me. I suspect we could make each other very happy.”

The young girl smiled, and this is how she came to take up residence in the Emperor’s home.

Within a few years, the young girl had grown into an accomplished lady at court. Not only was she the most beautiful, she was also the most worldly, the most intelligent, the most capable. She became well loved for her ability to fairly settle disputes, to offer sage advice, and to offer words of encouragement to those who sought her counsel. The Emperor began to call her Tamamo No Mae—the Flawless Jewel, and he grew to love her very much.

To her surprise, she came to love him, too.

But not everyone was so enamored of the beautiful Tamamo. The Emperor’s most trusted astrologer, Yasuchika, had begun to suspect the beautiful woman of a sinister plot. The astrologer had noticed that while the Emperor grew increasingly in love with Tamamo, he also became increasingly ill and frail. “The more you love her, the more you lose your grip on this life,” the astrologer warned. “This can only portend foul things, Your Majesty.”

But the Emperor huffed, admonishing his old friend. “You old fool,” he said, “the older I get the more I lose my grip on this life. Loving Tamamo and getting old go hand in hand; how can you blame one for my sickness and not the other?” When the astrologer tried to protest, the Emperor shooed him away. “I don’t want to hear any more of this nonsense,” he said. “I love Tamamo, and I won’t have you disparaging her good name.”

Yasuchika took his leave of the Emperor, but his convictions were as strong as ever. He decided to take matters into his own hands and expose the woman for what she really was.

Yasuchika spent many days and nights trying to find a way to expose Tamamo. He spied on her when she danced, eavesdropped on her private conversations. But he could find no evidence to support what he knew in his heart to be true—that it was Tamamo who was causing the Emperor to slowly die.

Of course, Yasuchika could confide in no one, for no one would have believed him. Everyone saw how Tamamo doted on the Emperor: she read to him, massaged oils into his skin, combed his hair, brought him food. She sang to him, washed his feet, and hardly left his side. The sicker the Emperor got, the more devoted Tamamo became to him, the more she poured forth her affections. Indeed, the Emperor’s sickness had begun to wear on her as well; if the astrologer’s suspicion and hate hadn’t been so entrenched in him, he would have begun to see the signs of weariness and age that crept into Tamamo’s face.

One night at dinner, a terrible storm raged outside the Emperor’s court.  When one of the servants moved to open a window, a furious wind blew through the hall, extinguishing all the candles. The court screamed in surprise, but they drew their breath silently when they turned to Tamamo No Mae who, in the utter darkness, was glowing like an ember, gold and orange and red, a flame in the perfect blackness of the storm.

The dinner party collectively held their breath in surprise—all but Yasuchika who rose from the table slowly, eyes burning holes into Tamamo’s head. “You,” he said, voice low and dark. He raised a gnarled finger, pointed it like a dagger at Tamamo’s heart. “I know who you are. You are no woman. You are nothing more than the nine-tailed fox!”

Tamamo screamed and vanished; even in the murky darkness the party could see a fox in the place where the woman had been. Before anyone could speak, the fox took off into the night, leaving a cloud of confusion in his wake.

Yasuchika had been right all along. Tamamo No Mae was no innocent woman. Everyone had been tricked by the nefarious and most clever of foxes, Zorro-san.

“Don’t just sit there, you fools,” Yasuchika bellowed. “Catch and kill that fox!”

But Zorro-san was neither so easily caught nor so easily killed. Soldiers hunted him for weeks without finding him. But in their shame, they didn’t dare return to the Emperor’s court. And so it was that no one ever really knew what became of Zorro-san. With the fox gone, the Emperor regained his strength and ruled the realm for many more years.

Decades later, a high priest named Genyo was traveling through the Nasu plain. The villagers warned him of an evil stone nestled in the earth in the center of the plain. From the black stone flowed a poison stream, and every living thing that neared the stone, whether bird flying overhead or a blade of grass unfolding from the earth, soon withered and died. Nothing could survive in the shadow of the black stone.

Genyo, who believed that even the spirits of stones could be salved, traveled toward the stone. When he was near enough, he set up camp, lighting incense and offering up prayers and hymns to soothe the stone’s spirit. And when twilight descended on the plain, the priest struck the stone with his staff and commanded, “Spirit of the stone, show yourself!”

The stone split in two, and from its cracked center emerged the glowing fox spirit, Zorro-san. Eyes round and liquid, the fox spirit met Genyo’s gaze, his expression contrite and sorrowful. “I am called Zorro-san,” the fox explained, “the golden fox spirit that has lived for thousands of years. But I am also the one they called Tamamo No Mae, the Flawless Jewel,” he explained. “I was the Emperor’s love. That love transformed me, and when I was cast out the sorrow consumed me until I was transformed into the killing stone which you, in all your loving kindness, have freed me from.”

The priest removed his robe and wrapped it gingerly around the fox spirit’s shoulders. “The gods are watching you,” he whispered. “May you be reborn onto a path of light and devotion.”