Nureonna (濡女)

A woman appears at the water's edge, her hair perpetually soaked, never drying. Whispered to be kin to the isoonna of Kyushu, she has been sighted along rivers and shores alike, on rain-drenched nights and at the lapping tide. The Edo-period artists who painted her gave her the body of a serpent, yet no ancient written record directly describes her form — only the rumor that her tail stretched three cho in length, drifting through the years since the Bunkyu era like flotsam on a current.

In the Iwami region of Shimane, it is said that the nureonna never moves alone. Whenever she appears at the shore, she holds an infant in her arms. She offers the child to a passing traveler, then vanishes into the waves — and before long, the ushi-oni emerges.

Whoever takes the child tries to flee. But the infant in their arms grows, without warning, heavy as stone, and will not let go. Try to hurl it away, and it will not fall. The ushi-oni then devours them where they stand. The elders of Iwami passed down this counsel — hold the child with gloves upon your hands, and when you run, cast the gloves away along with it.

A tradition from Ota reveals a truth still more unsettling. A man who had barely escaped the ushi-oni heard a voice at his back: "What a shame. What a shame." The voice was indistinguishable — not by a single note — from that of the nureonna who had pressed the infant into his arms. Whether the nureonna and the ushi-oni are separate beings, or whether some single thing merely shifts its shape, the answer lies still sunken at the bottom of the sea.