The Golden Naginata

by Jessica Amanda Salmonson

  The monk had finished his prayer and looked at his three conspirators one at a time. He added to Tahara’s statement, “The one you killed did not return here alone, Shuzo. His partner lies dead among those bushes, filched items strewn around his corpse!” Shindo stood and pointed with his staff. Then he asked, “Where is Ich ’yama?”

  The ronin appeared across the garden at the gate. He carried two parcels. “I had errands!” he said, looking somber as he approached the other four. One of his parcels was bloody and about the size of a head. He threw it on the ground at their feet. “This is one of the fifty,” he said. “Iran into him on the market street.”

  “What is in the other parcel?” asked the bonze.

  Ich ’yama hugged the parcel close, looking furtive and mean. “It is my business!” he snapped.

  “If it affects us …”

  “Don’t meddle!” he said, cutting the bonze short. “If you must know, it contains a new kimono, rice paper, writing kit, and a knife. Now, I’ve private matters to attend!” He entered the house, leaving the others in the morning’s dewy garden. They wondered about his attitude.

  “Ich ’yama is in bad temper,” said Hidemi, sounding slightly pleased about it. The bonze said,

  “He is still upset about losing the match with Tomoe.” The bonze passed a knowing eye toward Tomoe, as if to say, “Or he is temperamental because of a broken heart! See how he has bought a new kimono besides a knife to shave himself. Who does he want to impress?”

  Tomoe returned the look quite differently, as though saying, “You have sworn silence on this matter, bonze!” So neither of them verbalized their ruminations.

  Outside the garden there were children laughing, for the final day of Tana-bata was already in full sway. Their merriment was a harsh contrast to the mood of the four within the garden walls. Prince Shuzo spoke seriously:

  “We each have nine left to kill. No doubt our morning slayings will alert the others to their danger. They will begin to get their group back together to discuss their unexpected bad fortune. Then they’ll spy on the garden to learn how many their foe number.”

  “They could easily prepare an attack before evening,” said Shindo, looking pensive and holding his monk’s staff straight up to one side. “We have to delay them somehow, so that the fight will happen after sunset. Okio can’t leave the Land of Gloom until then.”

  Tomoe suggested, “We could leave a letter of challenge posted in this garden. It might say, ‘After nightfall, the five avengers of Okio will gather to fight the forty-five remaining assassins.’”

  “A good plan,” said Shuzo Tahara. “In the meantime, we must make ourselves scarce.”

  Hidemi said, “But won’t they be waiting for us when we come back? We cannot surprise them! They’ll grant themselves critical placement throughout these grounds!”

  “It can’t be helped,” said the bonze. “Are you afraid of the odds?”

  Hidemi Hirota puffed out his chest. “Certainly not.”

  “Good,” said the bonze. The prince said, “Let’s scatter through Isso, then. Everyone maintain a low profile for a while longer. We will return at sunset for the main encounter.” Tahara looked over his shoulder at the door of the house and called, “Are you listening, Ich ’yama?”

  Ich ’yama did not come out; but his voice carried deep and strong: “As I have recently purchased a writing kit, I will post the challenge myself, after you are gone. For myself, I prefer to remain hidden in this house.”

  Hidemi rushed atop the deck and looked into the house, but a premonition kept him from entering. He scowled and shouted into the unlit interior: “That is too risky! You might be found too soon!”

  “It is my risk,” said Ich ’yama. “I am answerable to none of you.”

  Hidemi’s cheeks shook and reddened. Ich ’yama wore the broad-shouldered samurai’s patience thin, but Prince Tahara intervened, saying, “Let it be.”

  “Baké!” said Hidemi, which meant “fool” or “crazy.” He stormed away from the house and the others followed him. At the gate he suddenly remembered his plums and, forgetting the annoyance of Ich ’yama’s strange behavior, divided the dried fruit among his friends. The monk, prince and woman samurai thanked him. Hidemi’s spirits were restored. Then they went opposite directions from the gate.

  Throughout and around Isso there were many temples and shrines, for it was a capital of holiness since antiquity. Among the gods honored with relics, gates and buildings, however, there was no place or refuge designated for Weaver Maid and Herdsman. Yet on Star Festival’s second and last day, every temple was temporarily converted into places to honor the stars of Heaven’s High Plain. Novice nuns and acolytes had worked feverishly through the night making thousands of little cakes which the priests and priestesses generously gave away during the Children’s Parade. Many children marched in large and small groups through the various streets of Isso and around the outskirts of that big town, making mini-pilgrimages to various temples and shrines of importance to different families. These little girls and boys wore colorful kimono with exceptionally long sleeves. They carried bamboo branches hung with bright papers, switching them in time to a song their own pretty voices made. They sang before the holy spots with happy faces, and they received the little cakes to save or eat, and then they took their parade elsewhere.

  Behind the long lines of children came mothers and older sisters wearing their most festive costumes plus simple straw hats of a kind which folded in the center and were like gabled roofs on their heads. These were the children’s guardians on the pilgrimage, but also they were dancers, waving fans in time to the children’s songs. One song went: “Weaver Maid and Herdsman met last night in the sky. The morning dew happens to be their tears of happiness.” More children and adults joined these parades as the day progressed, so that the ranks swelled and the streets grew merrier still. As these folks traipsed gayly through Isso’s respectable and religious quarters, they harvested the hundreds of love-poems and -prayers hanging everywhere on bamboo trees and bushes. These would later be tossed into one of the streams or rivers running through and around Isso, with the expectation that each poem or prayer would ultimately find its way to the Heavenly River itself.

  Tomoe was hard put to evade a joyous spirit. She craved solitude before the battle, not celebration. She spied one happy parade of children, girls, and women; and she went quickly the other way down a street, coming eventually to the city limits. She strode through shadowy woods, the singing city seeming much less noisy with every step she took. As she went, she chewed the tough, salty meat from the dried plums’ stones. Since she had already eaten something that day, the nutritious plums were overly filling and she could not finish them. Although they would keep indefinitely if she stored them in her kimono against a hungrier moment, she was moved to offer the last of the plums to a squat, pleasantly carved rock she happened upon.

  The rock was naturally shaped like a kneeling monk and had had a whimsical face added to it by means of a chisel. Someone had tied a paper bib to it in recent days, but already the bib was tattered. “Have you been neglected?” Tomoe asked as she knelt before the stone. A flat rock had been placed in front of the rough-hewn statue, and on this Tomoe placed the plums. “Since I am a samurai,” she said, “it is rare that I honor rustic gods; so I hope you will forgive my presumption. Unlike many of my caste, I am more faithful to the Shinto deities than to Buddhism. Because you look very old, I know you are one of the Billions of Myriads of Shinto gods; and that is why I have given you these plums. They are from me, but also from Hidemi Hirota, who bought them this morning. I won’t ask any favors in return, since I am a warrior and you appear too gentle for beseeching in matters of dueling. If my offering pleases you, however, please grant the request of the next traveller to happen by.”

  Her odd prayer given, Tomoe bowed, stood, and continued along the sun-dappled, shady path. She came to a stream. There was a bridge further down the way, but she did not cross it;
rather, she sat upon a smooth rock and rested. There was a small, unpresuming temple on the other side of the shallow, wide stream, but she saw nobody around it. On her own side of the stream there was only one other person in view: an elderly, hunchbacked fisherman sitting under a willow tree. He fished in the old, sporting fashion, not in the commercial manner with nets; he had a line tied to a twig. He didn’t seem to be having much luck, although Tomoe saw now and then that there were plenty of fish to be caught. In any event, he was far enough away that Tomoe’s solitude felt no hindrance. She watched the sparkling waters and meditated on matters sometimes important and usually unimportant. Occasionally she cleared her mind entirely.

  She spied a crayfish in the stream, chasing after a minnow.

  A cicada cried out from a sunny spot behind her. It was commonly believed that cicadas spoke with the voices of dead loved ones reborn among the withered bushes of the field. Tomoe began to listen carefully. She thought she heard the voices of friends lost in battles. She heard especially the voice of Madoka Kawayama, who had fought at her side when the warlord Shojiro Shigeno still lived. Madoka’s voice was sad because he had been slain by his own best friend; his voice seemed to call his friend’s name: “Ushii! Ushii!” as the cicada chirruped. Tomoe was reminded that she should visit the grave of Madoka in Shigeno Valley as soon as it was possible to return. She was reminded also of the shrine built for Shojiro Shigeno; she had helped build it with her own hands, in partial recompense for an unavoidable killing. These things reminded her inevitably of Shojiro Shigeno’s heir, Toshima-no-Shigeno, who had kindly given Tomoe leave of a vassal’s duties for however long it took to resolve personal matters. Tomoe brooded deeply and realized she was an inferior vassal, to be far from Toshima’s side in difficult times.

  The crayfish captured the minnow and tore it to pieces.

  Across the river at the small temple, acolytes began to appear, and then a priest. They looked down the path together. Soon, Tomoe heard a procession of laughing, singing children. Tomoe was shaken from her moodiness and, despite herself, was won over by the beautifully clad children and other celebrators who swarmed up the path to the temple. The children sang a special song and received their cakes. Then the parade began to cross the stream on a narrow bridge. The path brought them near the place where Tomoe was sitting on a rock. The children were delighted to happen upon a samurai. They halted and began to sing a song for her, although she had no cakes to give them. She gave them smiles and nods instead, and one pretty girl ran forward and placed her bamboo branch in Tomoe’s lap and ran back to the group again, looking shy.

  The mothers and older sisters came forward to the very edge of the stream. The poems and prayers which they had gleaned from bushes in Isso were thrown into the water. The papers floated away, encouraged by a farewell song to go up into heaven so that Weaver and Herder could read and enjoy the verses. When at length the parade of children started on its way back toward the city, Tomoe felt curious indeed. She couldn’t explain the feeling. She reached into her kimono sleeve and pulled out a wadded piece of paper. Why she had saved it she didn’t know, for it was an infuriating thing: It was the poem that Ich ’yama had written her, and which she had angrily torn from a bush. Despite its false charge of inconstancy, it was a pretty poem. Tomoe thought that perhaps Weaver and Herder would like it. Therefore the samurai threw the paper into the stream where it trailed after the others.

  “I am being very strange today,” Tomoe said aloud, after the reveling children were gone and she was with her solitude once more. The poems had all drifted away, except a few caught on twigs and eddies. The water hurried by her vision. Miniature, mountain-like waves rose and fell and rushed away, seeming like eons of Time compressed into each second. The stream’s quick, simple beauty made Tomoe feel inconsequential.

  The voices of the children and women faded away into the woods. The priest and acolytes went back into their temple. Once again the only other person in eye’s sight was the hunchbacked fisherman up the way.

  Tomoe stood from the rock she’d been sitting on, leaving the bamboo branch behind as a small offering to Oho-iwa Dai-myo-jin, the great and unchanging rock god, and for his consort Iwa-naga-hime, Lady of Rock Perpetuity. It was fitting for a samurai to honor that strong pair on a lovers’ holiday!

  As there was half the day to wait before returning to fight in the gardens, Tomoe walked upstream, going slowly, watching birds and plants and insects. Her nostrils were assailed by autumn’s aromatic decay. It was largely an evergreen woods, yet patches of colorful, deciduous leaves broke the greenness here and there.

  Because she did not want to bother the wizened fisherman or scare the fish so that his luck was even worse, she gave him wide berth. She intended to pass him without so much as a nod. But, as she was about to go by, he hooted with delight and pulled his line from the water. There was a big toad caught on the end! The line flicked in the air and the toad came loose, landing near Tomoe’s feet. She jumped one direction and the toad jumped another. The fisherman came hopping, too, and chased the toad through the grass, shouting, “A fine dinner! A fine dinner for me!” Tomoe smiled at these antics, being in a very much better mood after listening to the children sing. Then she noticed something odd about the fisherman: There were feathers showing from underneath the hem of his ragged kimono. The feathers were blue.

  “Old Uncle Tengu,” said Tomoe, her voice even and calm. The fisherman looked her straight in the eye, his toad held firmly in one hand. The weathered peasant-face melted away and the tengu’s long-nosed face showed instead. He said,

  “You have seen through my disguise.”

  Tomoe asked, “Have you come to exact vengeance on me?” She did not sound worried about the possibility.

  “I have two reasons to wish vengeance now,” he replied. “I have many lumps on my head because my nephews took your advice and flew above me, dropping stones. Until my flight-feathers have grown back, I am unable to chastise them properly. Because of my shame in not being able to fly, I have disguised myself to travel around the country afoot until the sky is mine again. However, despite my grudge against you, it seems that I will be unable to have vengeance in any usual fashion. This is because you were kind to my nephews, sparing their lives, feeding them, and even giving them useful advice, albeit advice annoying to my pate. There are tengu-diviners among my tribe who made a magic-circle flying beneath the moon; they divined that Tomoe Gozen was the Patron of Demon Children. An honorable appointment for you! Now, even an old tengu like me must honor your name, although I like the idea a very small amount.”

  “What you say is interesting,” said Tomoe. “To be appointed Patron of Demon Children merely for feeding tengu brats a few roots I pulled in the forest! It would seem that tengu tribes bestow honorific titles for low prices.”

  “Well you may scoff! But famous heros of history have talked to tengu-diviners for guidance. If they have divined that you are a kami or deity to our race, then neither you nor I can say they are wrong. It has even been suggested to me that I should be proud to have some of my feathers clipped, and consider it a boastful mantle that the rest of my feathers were dyed blue by Tomoe-sama.”

  “If I accept the diviners’ commission as Patron of demon brats,” said Tomoe, “it does not mean I won’t kill full grown demons as I decide!”

  “Of course not,” said the tengu, his tone matter-of-fact. “Nor does it mean that demons will no longer cause you trouble. Even I, whose hands have been tied by my tribe’s authority, may find ways to make your life unhappy.”

  “It would be interesting to have you try.”

  “Good.” The tengu grinned wickedly and his long nose turned up. “I will try immediately.”

  Tomoe bowed politely. “Please do so.”

  “I will start by telling you a story,” said the tengu: “In a town not far from here there was an important official who often went riding on his horse. His horse was trained for war and resented that he was taken out for p
urposes other than fighting. The horse grew angrier and angrier each time he was ridden about casually. Finally, the horse could no longer tolerate being treated like a useless, gentle pet. He threw the official onto the ground and trampled him in the legs and belly.

  “The official was taken home and the doctor came to set the broken legs as best as was possible, but said, ‘He will never walk again.’ The doctor gave medicine to the official’s mother (for the wife had long since died birthing a son) and said, ‘Give him this medicine and maybe he will live, but I doubt it. His broken legs are bad enough, but the hoof in the belly will surely cause him to die.’

  “Now the official’s son was behind a screen and heard the doctor’s words. The son and father had been on evil terms for a while, so that now the son felt remorseful. He went out to the stables where the horse was waiting. The son took the horse into the exercise yard, bridling the murderous beast as if for war. Then the son said, ‘We will have a grudge match! You have fatally injured my father. Now, show me a warhorse’s better virtues!’ The young man drew his sword. The horse’s eyes were red with hatred and delight.

  “The battle went on a long while. Sometimes the son was almost trampled. Sometimes the horse’s tendons were nearly cut by the sword. Eventually the horse knocked the young man over; but he rolled aside in time to not be trampled as had happened to his father. As he rolled, he cut the horse’s belly. Viscera fell out. But the horse would not give up. Although its back legs stomped upon its own innards, the horse neighed with bloodlust, not agony. It reared and jumped straight into the air. The young man moved aside too slowly to keep from having his arm broken by a ferocious kick.

  “And still the battle went on, in a grisly way. The official’s son fought one-handed, his broken arm dangling limp. The horse’s blood reddened the exercise yard from one side to the other. Guards came to help, but the son said, ‘Don’t meddle!’ At last he cut the horse’s throat and it could only fight a little while after that.