Across the Nightingale Floor

by Lian Hearn

  To my amazement the lord began to snort with laughter. “That would have been worth seeing! But it places you doubly in danger. It’s an insult he’ll have to wipe out. Still, you are under my protection now. I won’t let Iida take you from me.”

  “You saved my life,” I said. “It belongs to you from this day on.”

  For some reason that made him laugh again. “We have a long walk, on empty stomachs and with wet garments. We must be over the range before daybreak, when they will come after us.” He strode off at great speed, and I ran after him, willing my legs not to shake, my teeth not to chatter. I didn’t even know his name, but I wanted him to be proud of me, never to regret that he had saved my life.

  “I am Otori Shigeru,” he said as we began the climb to the pass. “Of the Otori clan, from Hagi. But while I’m on the road I don’t use that name, so don’t you use it either.”

  Hagi was as distant as the moon to me, and although I had heard of the Otori, I knew nothing about them except that they had been defeated by the Tohan at a great battle ten years earlier on the plain of Yaegahara.

  “What’s your name, boy?”

  “Tomasu.”

  “That’s a common name among the Hidden. Better get rid of it.” He said nothing for a while, and then spoke briefly out of the darkness. “You can be called Takeo.”

  And so between the waterfall and the top of the mountain I lost my name, became someone new, and joined my destiny with the Otori.

  DAWN FOUND US, cold and hungry, in the village of Hinode, famous for its hot springs. I was already farther from my own house than I had ever been in my life. All I knew of Hinode was what the boys in my village said: that the men were cheats and the women were as hot as the springs and would lie down with you for the price of a cup of wine. I didn’t have the chance to find out if either was true. No one dared to cheat Lord Otori, and the only woman I saw was the innkeeper’s wife who served our meals.

  I was ashamed of how I looked, in the old clothes my mother had patched so often it was impossible to tell what color they’d been to start with, filthy, bloodstained. I couldn’t believe that the lord expected me to sleep in the inn with him. I thought I would stay in the stables. But he seemed not to want to let me too often out of his sight. He told the woman to wash my clothes and sent me to the hot spring to scrub myself. When I came back, almost asleep from the effect of the hot water after the sleepless night, the morning meal was laid out in the room, and he was already eating. He gestured to me to join him. I knelt on the floor and said the prayers we always used before the first meal of the day.

  “You can’t do that,” Lord Otori said through a mouthful of rice and pickles. “Not even alone. If you want to live, you have to forget that part of your life. It is over forever.” He swallowed and took another mouthful. “There are better things to die for.”

  I suppose a true believer would have insisted on the prayers anyway. I wondered if that was what the dead men of my village would have done. I remembered the way their eyes had looked blank and surprised at the same time. I stopped praying. My appetite left me.

  “Eat,” the lord said, not unkindly. “I don’t want to carry you all the way to Hagi.”

  I forced myself to eat a little so he would not despise me. Then he sent me to tell the woman to spread out the beds. I felt uncomfortable giving orders to her, not only because I thought she would laugh at me and ask me if I’d lost the use of my hands, but also because something was happening to my voice. I could feel it draining away from me, as though words were too weak to frame what my eyes had seen. Anyway, once she’d grasped what I meant, she bowed almost as low as she had to Lord Otori and bustled along to obey.

  Lord Otori lay down and closed his eyes. He seemed to fall asleep immediately.

  I thought I, too, would sleep at once, but my mind kept jumping around, shocked and exhausted. My burned hand was throbbing and I could hear everything around me with an unusual and slightly alarming clarity—every word that was spoken in the kitchens, every sound from the town. Over and over my thoughts kept returning to my mother and the little girls. I told myself I had not actually seen them dead. They had probably run away; they would be safe. Everyone liked my mother in our village. She would not have chosen death. Although she had been born into the Hidden, she was not a fanatic. She lit incense in the shrine and took offerings to the god of the mountain. Surely my mother, with her broad face, her rough hands, and her honey-colored skin, was not dead, was not lying somewhere under the sky, her sharp eyes empty and surprised, her daughters next to her!

  My own eyes were not empty: They were shamefully full of tears. I buried my face in the mattress and tried to will the tears away. I could not keep my shoulders from shaking or my breath from coming in rough sobs. After a few moments I felt a hand on my shoulder and Lord Otori said quietly, “Death comes suddenly and life is fragile and brief. No one can alter this, either by prayers or spells. Children cry about it, but men and women do not cry. They have to endure.”

  His own voice broke on this last word. Lord Otori was as grief-stricken as I was. His face was clenched but the tears still trickled from his eyes. I knew who I wept for, but I did not dare question him.

  I must have fallen asleep, for I was dreaming I was at home, eating supper out of a bowl as familiar to me as my own hands. There was a black crab in the soup, and it jumped out of the bowl and ran away into the forest. I ran after it, and after a while I didn’t know where I was. I tried to cry out “I’m lost!” but the crab had taken away my voice.

  I woke to find Lord Otori shaking me.

  “Get up!”

  I could hear that it had stopped raining. The light told me it was the middle of the day. The room seemed close and sticky, the air heavy and still. The straw matting smelled slightly sour.

  “I don’t want Iida coming after me with a hundred warriors just because a boy made him fall off his horse,” Lord Otori grumbled good-naturedly. “We must move on quickly.”

  I didn’t say anything. My clothes, washed and dried, lay on the floor. I put them on silently.

  “Though how you dared stand up to Sadamu when you’re too scared to say a word to me . . .”

  I wasn’t exactly scared of him—more like in complete awe. It was as if one of God’s angels, or one of the spirits of the forest, or a hero from the old days, had suddenly appeared in front of me and taken me under his protection. I could hardly have told you then what he looked like, for I did not dare look at him directly. When I did sneak a glance at him, his face in repose was calm—not exactly stern, but expressionless. I did not then know the way it was transformed by his smile. He was perhaps thirty years old, or a little younger, well above medium height, broad-shouldered. His hands were light-skinned, almost white, well formed, and with long, restless fingers that seemed made to shape themselves around the sword’s handle.

  They did that now, lifting the sword from where it lay on the matting. The sight of it sent a shudder through me. I imagined it had known the intimate flesh, the lifeblood, of many men—had heard their last cries. It terrified and fascinated me.

  “Jato,” Lord Otori said, noticing my gaze. He laughed and patted the shabby black sheath. “In traveling clothes, like me. At home we both dress more elegantly!”

  Jato, I repeated under my breath. The snake sword, which had saved my life by taking life.

  We left the inn and resumed our journey past the sulfur-smelling hot springs of Hinode and up another mountain. The rice paddies gave way to bamboo groves, just like the ones around my village; then came chestnuts, maples, and cedars. The forest steamed from the warmth of the sun, although it was so dense that little sunlight penetrated to us below. Twice, snakes slithered out of our path, one the little black adder and another, larger one the color of tea. It seemed to roll like a hoop, and it leaped into the undergrowth as though it knew Jato might lop off its head. Cicadas sang stridently, and the min-min moaned with head-splitting monotony.

  We went at
a brisk pace despite the heat. Sometimes Lord Otori would outstride me and I would toil up the track as if utterly alone, hearing only his footsteps ahead, and then come upon him at the top of the pass, gazing out over the view of mountains, and beyond them more mountains stretching away, and everywhere the impenetrable forest.

  He seemed to know his way through this wild country. We walked for long days and slept only a few hours at night, sometimes in a solitary farmhouse, sometimes in a deserted mountain hut. Apart from the places we stopped at, we met few people on this lonely road: a woodcutter, two girls collecting mushrooms who ran away at the sight of us, a monk on a journey to a distant temple. After a few days we crossed the spine of the country. We still had steep hills to climb, but we descended more frequently. The sea became visible, a distant glint at first, then a broad silky expanse with islands jutting up like drowned mountains. I had never seen it before, and I couldn’t stop looking at it. Sometimes it seemed like a high wall about to topple across the land.

  My hand healed slowly, leaving a silver scar across my right palm.

  The villages became larger, until we finally stopped for the night in what could only be called a town. It was on the high road between Inuyama and the coast and had many inns and eating places. We were still in Tohan territory, and the triple oak leaf was everywhere, making me afraid to go out in the streets, yet I felt the people at the inn recognized Lord Otori in some way. The usual respect people paid to him was tinged by something deeper, some old loyalty that had to be kept hidden. They treated me with affection, even though I did not speak to them. I had not spoken for days, not even to Lord Otori. It did not seem to bother him much. He was a silent man himself, wrapped up in his own thoughts, but every now and then I would sneak a look at him and find him studying me with an expression on his face that might have been pity. He would seem to be about to speak, then he’d grunt and mutter, “Never mind, never mind, things can’t be helped.”

  The servants were full of gossip, and I liked listening to them. They were deeply interested in a woman who had arrived the night before and was staying another night. She was traveling alone to Inuyama, apparently to meet Lord Iida himself, with servants, naturally, but no husband or brother or father. She was very beautiful though quite old, thirty at least, very nice, kind, and polite to everyone but—traveling alone! What a mystery! The cook claimed to know that she was recently widowed and was going to join her son in the capital, but the chief maid said that was nonsense, the woman had never had children, never been married, and then the horse boy, who was stuffing his face with his supper, said he had heard from the palanquin bearers that she had had two children, a boy who died and a girl who was a hostage in Inuyama.

  The maids sighed and murmured that even wealth and high birth could not protect you from fate, and the horse boy said, “At least the girl lives, for they are Maruyama, and they inherit through the female line.”

  This news brought a stir of surprise and understanding and renewed curiosity about Lady Maruyama, who held her land in her own right, the only domain to be handed down to daughters, not to sons.

  “No wonder she dares to travel alone,” the cook said.

  Carried away by his success, the horse boy went on, “But Lord Iida finds this offensive. He seeks to take over her territory, either by force or, they say, by marriage.”

  The cook gave him a clip round the ear. “Watch your words! You never know who’s listening!”

  “We were Otori once, and will be again,” the boy muttered.

  The chief maid saw me hanging about in the doorway and beckoned to me to come in. “Where are you traveling to? You must have come a long way!”

  I smiled and shook my head. One of the maids, passing on her way to the guest rooms, patted me on the arm and said, “He doesn’t talk. Shame, isn’t it?”

  “What happened?” the cook said. “Someone throw dust in your mouth like the Ainu dog?”

  They were teasing me, not unkindly, when the maid came back, followed by a man I gathered was one of the Maruyama servants, wearing on his jacket the crest of the mountain enclosed in a circle. To my surprise he addressed me in polite language. “My lady wishes to talk to you.”

  I wasn’t sure if I should go with him, but he had the face of an honest man, and I was curious to see the mysterious woman for myself. I followed him along the passageway and through the courtyard. He stepped onto the veranda and knelt at the door to the room. He spoke briefly, then turned to me and beckoned to me to step up.

  I snatched a rapid glance at her and then fell to my knees and bowed my head to the floor. I was sure I was in the presence of a princess. Her hair reached the ground in one long sweep of black silkiness. Her skin was as pale as snow. She wore robes of deepening shades of cream, ivory, and dove gray embroidered with red and pink peonies. She had a stillness about her that made me think first of the deep pools of the mountain and then, suddenly, of the tempered steel of Jato, the snake sword.

  “They tell me you don’t talk,” she said, her voice as quiet and clear as water.

  I felt the compassion of her gaze, and the blood rushed to my face.

  “You can talk to me,” she went on. Reaching forward, she took my hand and with her finger drew the sign of the Hidden on my palm. It sent a shock through me, like the sting of a nettle. I could not help pulling my hand away.

  “Tell me what you saw,” she said, her voice no less gentle but insistent. When I didn’t reply she whispered, “It was Iida Sadamu, wasn’t it?”

  I looked at her almost involuntarily. She was smiling, but without mirth.

  “And you are from the Hidden,” she added.

  Lord Otori had warned me against giving myself away. I thought I had buried my old self, along with my name, Tomasu. But in front of this woman I was helpless. I was about to nod my head, when I heard Lord Otori’s footsteps cross the courtyard. I realized that I recognized him by his tread, and I knew that a woman followed him, as well as the man who had spoken to me. And then I realized that if I paid attention, I could hear everything in the inn around me. I heard the horse boy get up and leave the kitchen. I heard the gossip of the maids, and knew each one from her voice. This acuteness of hearing, which had been growing slowly ever since I’d ceased to speak, now came over me with a flood of sound. It was almost unbearable, as if I had the worst of fevers. I wondered if the woman in front of me was a sorceress who had bewitched me. I did not dare lie to her, but I could not speak.

  I was saved by the woman coming into the room. She knelt before Lady Maruyama and said quietly, “His lordship is looking for the boy.”

  “Ask him to come in,” the lady replied. “And, Sachie, would you kindly bring the tea utensils?”

  Lord Otori stepped into the room, and he and Lady Maruyama exchanged deep bows of respect. They spoke politely to each other like strangers, and she did not use his name, yet I had the feeling they knew each other well. There was a tension between them that I would understand later, but which then only made me more ill at ease.

  “The maids told me about the boy who travels with you,” she said. “I wished to see him for myself.”

  “Yes, I am taking him to Hagi. He is the only survivor of a massacre. I did not want to leave him to Sadamu.” He did not seem inclined to say anything else, but after a while he added, “I have given him the name of Takeo.”

  She smiled at this—a real smile. “I’m glad,” she said. “He has a certain look about him.”

  “Do you think so? I thought it too.”

  Sachie came back with a tray, a teakettle, and a bowl. I could see them clearly as she placed them on the matting, at the same level as my eyes. The bowl’s glaze held the green of the forest, the blue of the sky.

  “One day you will come to Maruyama to my grandmother’s teahouse,” the lady said. “There we can do the ceremony as it should be performed. But for now we will have to make do as best we can.”

  She poured the hot water, and a bittersweet smell wafted up fro
m the bowl. “Sit up, Takeo,” she said.

  She was whisking the tea into a green foam. She passed the bowl to Lord Otori. He took it in both hands, turned it three times, drank from it, wiped the lip with his thumb, and handed it with a bow back to her. She filled it again and passed it to me. I carefully did everything the lord had done, lifted it to my lips, and drank the frothy liquid. Its taste was bitter, but it was clearing to the head. It steadied me a little. We never had anything like this in Mino: Our tea was made from twigs and mountain herbs.

  I wiped the place I had drunk from and handed the bowl back to Lady Maruyama, bowing clumsily. I was afraid Lord Otori would notice and be ashamed of me, but when I glanced at him his eyes were fixed on the lady.

  She then drank herself. The three of us sat in silence. There was a feeling in the room of something sacred, as though we had just taken part in the ritual meal of the Hidden. A wave of longing swept over me for my home, my family, my old life, but although my eyes grew hot, I did not allow myself to weep. I would learn to endure.

  On my palm I could still feel the trace of Lady Maruyama’s fingers.

  THE INN WAS FAR LARGER and more luxurious than any of the other places we had stayed during our swift journey through the mountains, and the food we ate that night was unlike anything I had ever tasted. We had eel in a spicy sauce, and sweet fish from the local streams, many servings of rice, whiter than anything in Mino, where if we ate rice three times a year we were lucky. I drank rice wine for the first time. Lord Otori was in high spirits—“floating,” as my mother used to say—his silence and grief dispelled, and the wine worked its cheerful magic on me too.

  When we had finished eating he told me to go to bed: He was going to walk outside a while to clear his head. The maids came and prepared the room. I lay down and listened to the sounds of the night. The eel, or the wine, had made me restless and I could hear too much. Every distant noise made me start awake. I could hear the dogs of the town bark from time to time, one starting, the others joining in. After a while I felt I could recognize each one’s distinctive voice. I thought about dogs, how they sleep with their ears twitching and how only some noises disturb them. I would have to learn to be like them or I would never sleep again.