Part 2

Calamity struck two days later.

Ebisu departed on his morning round, but when he reached the north beach, what he saw stopped him cold.

The raft over which he had laboured these many days was shattered. Its remains were strewn along the sand, and most of the wooden spars had been taken by the waves. It was at once apparent that this was not a natural catastrophe. These past several days the weather had been fine, and even a little roughness in the waters could not send the waves racing so far up the beach to snatch away the raft.

Further investigation revealed footprints all round, and furrows in the sand where the logs had been dragged away. Someone had crept here last night, and destroyed what Ebisu had sweated and toiled so painstakingly to build.

Ebisu could think of only one possible culprit.

He turned and flew back to camp in a rage.

“Curse that Hotei!”

As he strode along he let out his anger by swinging his fishing rod round and round.

I never liked him anyways, he thought viciously to himself. That jiggling belly! That glistening pate! That silly grin which never left his face! How had that scruffy lazeabout ever become one of the Seven Gods of Fortune? His only redeeming quality was that magical sack of his.

The fire was smouldering when he stormed back into camp. As was his custom Hotei was reclining beneath a palm tree; there was no sign of Benten.

“Hotei!” Ebisu hollered.

Hotei’s eyes flickered open, but he made no move to get up.

“What is it, Ebisu?” he said with some annoyance. “I see you are in a most contentious humour.”

“My raft is in pieces. I’ll have to start over again!”

“Quite a conundrum. What happened?”

“Enough games! It was you that did it!”

Hotei slowly heaved himself off the ground.

“Why, I have no idea what you are talking about.”

“Liar!”

“Saying things does not make them so,” replied Hotei brusquely. “Why are you making such a fuss about that silly thing, anyhow?”

“The game is up, Hotei. You don’t want me to finish that raft. Because if I do, then your comfortable life here comes to an end. You don’t really expect a passing ship to come to our aid. You never wanted to leave this island in the first place. You want to frisk and frolic here with Benten until the end of time. Shame on you! Shame, you swine!”

“You dare!” Hotei stood up, his belly bulging out aggressively. “Long have I borne your insolence, but you have taken things too far. It is you whose mind has fallen into depravity. You are consumed with envy at the mere sight of Benten offering me a smile. Simply pitiful, pathetic, entirely unbecoming of a god of fortune!”

“Sheer nonsense! There is not a jealous bone in my body!”

“Isn’t there?” leered Hotei with narrowed eyes. “Why, you only built that raft to impress Benten, didn’t you?”

Unable to restrain himself any longer, Ebisu hurled himself at Hotei. But, being that they were both of them peace-loving gods of fortune, and entirely accustomed to conflict, they merely clung to each other singlemindedly, unsure how to bring the matter to an end. After they had rolled on the ground beneath the palm tree for some time, an ominous crack split the air. Ebisu took one horrified glance to see his beloved fishing rod poking out from beneath Hotei’s rear end. Frantically he pulled it out, but too late: the rod was snapped in two.

He sat down heavily, clutching the broken sticks.

“What’s wrong, Ebisu?” came the question from Hotei accompanied by a look of concern. “Surely it can easily be fixed?”

“If it were only so simple! The rod is imbued with magic,” replied Ebisu with a heavy sigh. “I can fish no more.”

“Then what will we eat?”

“There must be provisions in your sack?”

“There were,” said Hotei weakly, “until quite recently. It is just so difficult to say no to Benten, she eats with such delight. And so the sack is empty, save for some useless knick-knacks.”

Ebisu and Hotei looked at one another, both feeling as though they had just awoken from a dream.

“How very strange. What were we quarreling over, anyhow?

It was then that Ebisu noticed that Hotei’s face had turned an unhealthy shade of grey, and when he pointed this out Hotei replied, “If only you could see your own.” An empty sack, a broken fishing rod: their powers as gods of fortune were waning.

“Where has Benten gone?” Ebisu inquired.

“Earlier I saw her walking to the south,” said Hotei. “And she has not come back. What can she be doing, I wonder?”

Together they left the grove and walked south in search of their missing number.

The sun beat bright upon the sand. Benten stood at the edge of the waves, in exactly the same spot where she had washed up. Facing the sea. she beckoned, to me, come to me.

And they saw, as if in response to her call, a barrow rising in the sea.

Steadily it approached the island, like a living tsunami. When it reached the shore, it dissolved into a multitude of small jelly-like blobs, which transfigured themselves into human shapes and slowly picked themselves off the sand.

Each of them had the face of Benten.

The aberrant wave threw itself down upon the shore again and again, and with each crashing impact the multitude swelled, until the entire beach was covered with Bentens.

With cries of horror Ebisu and Hotei turned and fled.

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Running helter-skelter through the grove, they glanced backward and saw, between the trees, that horde of Bentens bearing down on them.

Hotei opened the mouth of his sack. “Quick, inside!” he shouted.

There was not a moment to lose. Ebisu wriggled his way inside, followed by Hotei, who cinched the mouth shut behind him.

The coarse cloth admitted enough light to see, and it was spacious enough that an entire whale could have fit inside with room to spare. It was a haphazard collection of paraphernalia which surrounded them: antique cabinets; daruma of every shape, size, and colour; even taxidermied peacocks.

Hotei sat down cross-legged.

“Well, if that was not Benten, then who was it?”

“It must have been a monster lurking in these seas.”

“Oh, how dreadful! I was entirely fooled.”

This false Benten must have been an agent of the leviathan from the very start; the sabotage of the raft must have been her handiwork. She had driven a wedge between Ebisu and Hotei, and then simply watched as their mistrust drove them to a disgraceful exhibit of self-destruction.

“Ye-es,” said Hotei ponderously, after Ebisu had finished speaking, “and yet I cannot help but think that the news is not all bad.”

“Why do you say that?”

“It was Benten that told us the treasure ship had sunk, was it not?” replied Hotei. “But now we know that she is false. And thus―”

With a little cry of epiphany Ebisu slapped his knee. Hotei was entirely right: if Benten had been misleading them, the treasure ship might still be roaming these waters in hope of coming across them. A faint ray of light blossomed in Ebisu’s mind.

But it was soon dimmed, for from without came the voices of that gaggle of Bentens.

“Look, look! What a grubby little sack!”

“It’s Hotei’s sack!”

“They must be hidden away inside. Let’s open it up!”

Ebisu and Hotei flew to the mouth of the sack and held it shut with all their might.

With what tremendous force did those Bentens tug at the cloth! It was all the two could do to keep it from opening. Hotei’s face was red as a beet, and the veins bulged on his forehead. And just as they feared that the sack would be torn asunder, the pressure slackened.

“How determined they are to stay inside!”

“Never mind. We’ll take it with us.”

“Yes, yes, it will burn quite nicely!”

“We’ll tear them apart, limb from limb. What a feast they will make!”

“I can hardly contain my delight. Gods of fortune, in our grasp!”

Their hairs stood on end as they listened to this bonechilling chatter, and soon enough they felt the sack being lifted off the ground, swinging back and forth in the air as they were carried off. Peeking through a minuscule hole they saw the Bentens all around them in their airy hagoromo. They would have been indistinguishable from the real Benten, if not for the dead sardine’s eyes which peered out from their faces.

“What now, Hotei? We’ll be roasted to a crisp!” whispered Ebisu.

Hotei folded his arms and thought a while. “It’s do or die, I suppose,” he declared eventually. His idea: to invert the sack all at once, trapping the Bentens inside.

“Hold on tight,” he cautioned. “Don’t let go for even a moment, lest you be trapped inside with them.”

Through the aperture in the cloth Ebisu saw that they were drawing close to the campfire, the rest of the Bentens gathered around the leaping flames. And just as they were about to be thrown in, Hotei made his move.

“Now!” he cried.

Ebisu wrapped his arms as tight as he could around Hotei’s belly. The moment Hotei opened the mouth of the sack, the world turned inside out. The next thing he knew he was standing beside the crackling fire, with the sack beside him. The Benten impostors were nowhere to be found.

Swiftly Hotei cinched the mouth of the sack shut.

“Splendid! I could not have hoped for better, hah!”

But Hotei’s beam of triumph was promptly interrupted by a horrifying bellow, like a hundred tigers roaring as one. As it dangled from Hotei’s hand the sack began to swell up like a water balloon. The enraged Benten impostors were thrashing about mightily to escape. Hotei hurled it away, unable to stand its writhing in his hand, yet it continued to swell up until it towered over them, threatening to burst.

“We had better get out of here!”

Together they turned and dashed for the beach.

And there, not far from the shore, they saw the treasure ship, riding on the waves! The deck was lined with faces missed and dear: Jurōjin, Fukurokujin, Bishamonten, Daikokuten―and Benten. They leaned over the side, waving wildly at the pair. And they heard Benten’s melodious voice ringing over the water.

“Ebisuuu! Hoteiii! We’ve come for you!”

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With joy and ecstasy were Ebisu and Hotei received when they had swum to the ship.

“We had thought you lost!” Jurōjin exclaimed jubilantly. “But we would never leave two of our number behind.”

From the deck could be seen a most monstrous sight. Hotei’s sack had now swollen to such a size that it dwarfed the palm trees; it bounced up and down at the edge of the waves in evident dismay.

Without warning the sack burst open, spewing an enormous fish into the air. It was as large as a whale, and its body was translucent, as though it was formed from the sea itself; through its belly the palm trees appeared wavy and distorted.

When it hit the surface it simply dissolved into the waves with neither splash nor sound, leaving only that tiny, flat, unremarkable island.

Standing side by side, Ebisu and Hotei watched it recede.

“Tell us, Ebisu. What happened on that island?” asked Benten, brimming with curiosity.

But Ebisu could not bring himself to say a word. How had he mistaken that impostor for Benten? Now that the real Benten was before him the difference was apparent as that between the sun and the moon. Yet both he and Hotei had been ensnared; if things had gone badly they would have been roasted alive. He could only admit that they had been bewitched.

Benten looked at him curiously.

“Is something the matter?”

“How marvelous you are, Lady Benten,” said Ebisu and Hotei in unison.

“Goodness, thank you! How very kind!” laughed Benten, and her hagoromo shimmered and swayed.

What a marvelous thing is friendship―thus the restored Seven Gods of Fortune went on their merry way. The sails billowed in the wind, bearing them onwards to the land of Japan.