I think about the story of the Leech Child. My mother told it to me when I was a girl. She said I would ask to hear it again and again, as if something about his misfortunes struck my fancy.

He was the first child of Izanagi and Izanami, the incestuous brother and sister who created our world. Their other children were strong, and became the sun and moon and all the islands of our homeland and its trees, waterfalls, rocks and storms. But the Leech Child had no bones. He was white and formless, and he couldn't stand or walk.

When he was three his parents put him in a boat and set him adrift on the sea. No one rescued him, nor was he transformed through luck or magic into a mythical creature - a phoenix, perhaps, or a dragon. he simply died.

How did he die? I would ask my mother, but she couldn't tell me. I imagined him parched by the sun or cast into the water by a wave.

And did his mother miss him?

No, my mother would say, she was busy having other children. But her last child, the god of fire, scorched her when she was giving birth, and she died. Her husband Izanagi sought her in the underworld and begged her to return. She replied that she could not, but promised that she would appeal to the gods, and warned him not to look at her until she did so. But he broke his vow, and saw her corpse riddled with maggots.

Izanagi was so repelled that he fled the underworld and found a river and bathed himself over and over to rid himself of the taint of his wife's body.

There are no sins in this story, nor any sense of guilt. The Leech Child is born and is left to die; the mother dies also. No one can bring them back.

Julith Jedamus, The Book of Loss