The Straw Doll Cries at Midnight (A Tiger Lily Novel Book 2)

by K. Bird Lincoln

  “Come on,” Little Turtle hissed.

  The guards in the hallway gave each other sly smirks as we passed. Little Turtle ignored them, pulling me towards the kitchen where we found Beautiful helping Jiro make perfect mounds of rice in ochre, rough-worked bowls.

  “Not in chains, then,” she said, not pausing in her work, but the smile on her face was genuine pleasure.

  “The cheek of you Northerners!” said Jiro. “Such an impertinent boon.”

  “I told them what you did, but they wouldn’t believe me until they saw you with their own eyes,” said Little Turtle.

  “I am here,” I said. “But how are you here?”

  “Uesugi turned pink as a boiled shrimp when he discovered Zeami in the sedan chair. But the actor is the hawk that hides his talons in courtier’s robes, isn’t he? Smooth-tongued. He talked Uesugi into giving him a horse to ride back to Kyoto. As soon as we arrived in Ashikaga Domain, Uesugi went straight to Lady Hisako and told her everything.” Little Turtle shook her head. “Suddenly Lady Hisako no longer felt content for Lord Hojo to make the wedding plans without her. She just had to come to Kyoto as soon as possible to oversee everything herself. We all but raced back here.”

  “I’m glad you’re here,” I said, giving Little Turtle’s hand a quick squeeze. Everything simple and good was in the frank, familiar expression of exasperation in her face. Surrounded by my friends and the familiar kitchen smells, the fear I’d bungled things unratcheted a few notches.

  “Yes, yes,” said Jiro. He shoved a tray of carrots and a knife at us. “Everyone’s glad Lily-of-the-Valley isn’t rotting away in jail. But there’s still vegetables to chop and noble stomachs to fill. There’ll be time for nattering on later.”

  I pulled up a stool next to Little Turtle and sat, shaving carrots into flowers under Jiro’s critical eye, good-humored banter and teasing holding back darker thoughts.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  * * *

  “LILY,” SAID MY LORDLING from the shadows under the now-quiet cherry trees. No grumbling tonight. The courtyard was instead filled with the incessant “gee gee gee” of late spring cicadas calling out for mates. With the cherry tree kami appeased and the yurei gone, I wondered if anyone besides the bats swooping down for their dinner had noticed the return of normal night noise.

  “Lily!” A sharper tone this time. I halted under a low-hanging branch. Something soft brushed my cheek. With tentative finger tips, I prodded the softness, expecting a gray-furred moth, but it was one of the last fragile cherry-blossoms, falling silently around us in the dark.

  “Lord Yoshinori.”

  A hand shot out, closed around my elbow, and jerked me against the tree. Shadow hid Ashikaga’s face, the waning moon’s faint glow unable to penetrate the leafless branches. “I have decided to give up,” said my lordling.

  “My lord?”

  “I wound myself up tight like a top, sifting through our conversations, trying to pinpoint where I misspoke, where I could possibly have said something so naïve that you could never quite trust me.”

  “I, you never—”

  “This is almost worth it,” said Ashikaga. “You tongue-tied.”

  I bit my tongue, hands clenched into fists to keep them to myself. Ashikaga was in a volatile mood. Nothing was understood between us. Even when I thought we had reached some kind of understanding, Ashikaga always seemed to twist things, letting loose with a jerk that sent my thoughts spinning.

  This was a trap. Punishment, maybe? My lordling had stayed away the whole afternoon and evening. I’d finally given up waiting. All day I’d been expecting something, but not out here under the cover of darkness, finally on my way to lie down in the handmaidens’ room, redolent with the other girls’ familiar warmth and earthy odor.

  Urgency in my bladder—the reason I’d ventured outside at all—melded with the fluttery, fizzy feeling in my stomach. Rough-edged bark poked my back through the thin under-robe I wore. My lordling rested palms on either side of me, not quite imprisoning, but clearly daring me to stay. Stay with Ashikaga, here, where no one would interrupt us, kami or human.

  Make Lord Ujimitsu your heir.

  My boon hovered in the air between us. Did Ashikaga mean to give up on me? On whatever we were to each other?

  “What? Is your cherry tree still grumbling?” Ashikaga lifted one hand to flick my nose. “Pay attention.”

  “I don’t not trust you,” I said stiffly.

  Ashikaga gave a high, light laugh. “Do you remember that night in the charcoal maker’s hut? You’d just risked yourself for the first time to sing a Jindo song so I could fight those two fox soldiers?”

  I nodded. My lordling gave a frustrated sigh. The cumbersome darkness required more of me. “Yes,” I said.

  “I held your life in my hands. If I’d said anything about the Jindo song, Abbot Ennin would have dragged you away. You would never have seen your family again.”

  The Abbot would have sentenced me to kneel for a day weighed down by heavy stones, and then had me executed. “I remember,” I said. My insides felt bloated, skin stretched tight over urgency and fear and the swell of impossible yearning my lordling’s tea-soaked breath and nearness provoked.

  One slender callused fingertip trailed from the middle of my forehead down my nose, and flicked again, hard enough to sting.

  “You say you remember all that. Do you not remember the most important part of that night?”

  My eyes blurred with tears. I blinked, trying to pull myself out of this heated fog. Ashikaga had kissed me for the first time in that hut, under the moonlight, and my lordling’s touch, her touch had been achingly beautiful. Like waking up to the bite of the first frost carpeting grass and trees in white splendor, or the aching joy of watching a hawk in flight. Beautiful, impossible, never truly meant for me.

  Ashikaga’s wanting. No need for light to see it in my lordling’s eyes. It was there; I could feel it. And always it gave rise to that heated blush of shame. I could never quite answer that need. Not with my body. Not with my words. What could I say? What did Ashikaga need me to do? “You held my secret, and you gave me yours.”

  “To give us mutual secrets,” said Ashikaga. She shook her head, and then bowed, bringing her forehead down to mine, so that the words were a soft caress on my skin. “Foolish to think it would be that simple.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  Ashikaga snorted, curling the wandering finger in a lock of my hair to give it a sharp tug. Like Little Brother when I was busy cleaning fish or sewing, demanding my attention. But my concentration was already solely focused on Ashikaga. The arms on either side of me no longer imprisoned.

  Not even Little Brother calling out to me could have moved me away from this tree, this being before me burning brightly in the moonlight. It was all I could do not to rise up and meet that fierce wanting with the brush of lips, of skin on skin. But that wasn’t what Ashikaga needed, or my lordling would have taken such a kiss already.

  “My Tiger Lily would never have considered using my secret against me.”

  I sucked suddenly chill night air through clenched teeth. Tiger Lily was my village name. The name of an outsider, the loner skulking around in the forest on the fringes of society. It was true, I could never have conceived of having any influence on Ashikaga back then. Here in Kyoto, Lily-of-the-Valley suited me better for many reasons. Beautiful, Kazue, Zeami, and even Mitsusuke—against his will no doubt—had taught me about influence.

  Returning home wouldn’t be easy. Uncomfortable to go back to the role of daughter and village spinster again. My beloved forest, even Whispering Brook, would seem empty by contrast without the presence of guards, handmaidens, and my lordling down the hall. Back home my lordling and I were separated by more tha
n just walled gardens, the rice fields, and half the village.

  “The idea of consulting me, before forcing my own father to disinherit me, didn’t enter your thick skull?” Ashikaga’s palms came down on my shoulders, curling fingers into the flesh of my upper arms. This. I’d forgotten the trap, that Ashikaga was angry.

  Punishment, then. If I meekly accepted Ashikaga’s anger and was contrite, this would pass. A wave of rebellion ate through the fog of my lordling’s closeness. Lily-of-the-Valley, the girl who faced down the vengeful despair of an unclean yurei, would not meekly accept even Ashikaga Yoshinori’s gall. Bracing one foot on the tree, I butted forward at the spot where our foreheads touched.

  Ashikaga fell back, but the grip on my arms forced me to stumble against a chest heaving for air as if my lordling had run three times around the compound. “You say showing me your secret gives me some kind of hold on you,” I said, stabbing my own finger into the middle of that infuriating chest. “It’s not true. It’s only another kind of hold you have over me.”

  “No,” said my lordling in an overly harsh tone. “In this one thing,” the grip on my shoulders loosened, “I will carve out something more than just soldier duty and Ashikaga honor and my father’s pride.” The voice shook with suppressed emotion. “I want something for myself. For who I am both outside of and underneath the triple-paulownia crest.”

  A tiny part of my heart delighted in boldness—and Ashikaga’s reaction. Slice through Ashikaga’s cultivated armor and watch the darkness bleed out. How much had I bled for my lordling?

  But the rest of my body—flesh, blood, bone, could not bear prolonging this miserable feeling between us. Not when Ashikaga revealed himself . . . herself like this, the part that lived only behind closed doors.

  “I am your handmaiden,” I said. “You have me.”

  “Do I? Then why keep secrets? Why don’t you trust me enough to tell me the crazy plans and thoughts filling up that head?”

  I laughed. “This is what I am. I have no crest to live up to, no layers to uncover. The only secrets I keep are the ones you give me.”

  Ashikaga slowly brought up a hand between us, uncurling the heart-finger. An eyebrow, arched, held my gaze as my lordling poked firmly, painfully, in the middle of my chest. “You are far from simple.” Ashikaga pulled away, shook out her . . . his shoulders and straightened up into the erect, young hawk of a lordling. I’d been forgiven, or Ashikaga had grown tired of this game. “Come to my room.” It was an order, but couched in the polite inflections Ashikaga would have used with Lady Hisako or the Chamberlain. Something had shifted.

  I gave the lingering bow of a peasant to her lord, testing, but Ashikaga only laughed, caught my elbow, and dragged me across the courtyard to the back verandah.

  “Wait,” I said, digging my feet into the gravel. “I’ll . . . ah . . . join you in a moment. I still need to . . .” I waved a hand in the general direction of the outhouse.

  “See that it’s only a moment,” said Ashikaga with mock sternness.

  I watched my lordling until the darkness behind the Residence swallowed the slender figure whole. My bladder was about to burst. But I lingered there, under the moon, for a few moments longer. We would return home, my lordling and I, and the joy of reunion with my family, my village, and Whispering Brook outweighed worries I had about how Ashikaga and I would fit back into that life.

  Ashikaga would go back as lord, indeed, of Ashikaga Domain. What would my lordling make of being the true lord without the Daimyo there to overshadow? I shook my head and headed toward the outhouse.

  Whatever my lordling did, I would be there, too. That was the only thing I knew for crystal-clear truth. As true as the ecstasy of a kami’s song, as clear as the hawk’s flight across a cloudless sky, as persistent as the stubborn strength of a girl born in the year of the Tiger.

  The End

  Afterword

  * * *

  I PUBLISHED Tiger Lily and The Straw Doll Cries at Midnight as an indie author. That means everything you see here can be blamed on me (except for the excellent copy editing and cover design by Rick and Najla). If you liked what you read, it would be totally awesome (or as my daughters would say “goalz”) if you would give it a star rating or review on Goodreads or Amazon or your platform of choice. Every opinion helps.

  Sign up for my infrequent newsletter through my website or Facebook page, and get free access to short stories like “Exposure at Dejima,” where Tiger Lily and Ashikaga attempt to kidnap a Barbarian doctor to save the Daimyo, and “The Garlic Walkers,” where an ESL teacher in Gilroy, California finds dark magic during the garlic harvest.

  World Weaver Press (http://www.worldweaverpress.com/) will be bringing out my next series in April 2017, an Urban Fantasy about a half-Japanese girl in Portland, Oregon who finds out her father might be more than just a Japanese immigrant. The first book is called Dream Eater.

  Koi Pierce dreams other peoples’ dreams.

  Her whole life she’s avoided other people. Any skin-to-skin contact—a hug from her sister, the hand of a barista at Stumptown coffee—transfers flashes of that person’s most intense dreams. It’s enough to make anyone a hermit.

  But Koi’s getting her act together. No matter what, this time she’s going to finish her degree at Portland Community College and get a real life. Of course it’s not going to be that easy. Her father, increasingly disturbed from Alzheimer’s disease; a dream fragment of a dead girl from the casual brush of a creepy PCC professor’s hand; and a mysterious stranger who speaks the same rare Northern Japanese dialect as Koi’s father will force Koi to learn to trust in the help of others, as well as face the truth about herself.

  No vampires or werewolves, but there is a trickster who turns into a blue jay and an Armenian sea-dragon. Check it out.

  Other places to check me out:

  Website: kblincoln.com

  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kbirdlincoln

  Sporadic blog: kblincoln.wordpress.com

  Book reviews galore (I read and review a lot, ’cause otherwise I forget what I read!): https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5829904.K_Bird_Lincoln or follow my reviews on Amazon

  Miscellanea

  * * *

  TIGER LILY LIVES in a medieval Japan based on the early years of the Muromachi period in Japan (circa 1337–1573). True history had the powerful Ashikaga warlord family establishing a Northern Emperor while a Southern Emperor held court in the traditional capital of Kyoto. Kyoto, in this book, goes by the name “Kyoto” alternating with “Kyo no Miyako,” although it was also called at various times “Miyako” and “Saikyo,” amongst other things. While the Shoguns ruled mostly from Tokyo/Edo and Kamakura, Kyoto was long reserved as the Emperor’s home.

  Tiger Lily’s lordling, Ashikaga Yoshinori, is the namesake of the actual 6th Shogunate of that time . . . although unlike the historical Ashikaga Shogun, Tiger Lily’s lordling is neither male nor a Buddhist Monk from the tender age of ten.

  Zen Buddhism and Chinese influence was on the rise at that time of Japan’s history, but Shinto was not outlawed. Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples coexist today all over Japan.

  Ashikagas and their history came to my attention when I was teaching English in Tochigi Prefecture, the Ashikagas ancestral home. Ashikaga is now a small town fifty miles north of Tokyo, overshadowed by Mt. Nikko and it’s ornate Toshogu Shrine—the temples and shrines dedicated to the founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate (Tokugawa Ieyasu), which would form Japan into the world of samurai and peasants that U.S. Commodore Perry found when he forced his way into a harbor near Tokyo with his black ships and cannons in 1853.

  Finally, the Jindo warding songs sung by Tiger Lily in this book are based on tanka poems from the Japanese Classic Poem Tome, the Manyoshu. If you’d like to read the re
al thing, check out Thomas McAuley’s terrific translations. The lullaby, “The Forest Owl,” that Lily sings to Ashikaga is an actual traditional, Japanese lullaby. You can hear me sing it at my webpage (kblincoln.com/ miabb/ jpllmori.html). Zeami Motokiyo was an influential artist and courtier of the time. He basically brought Noh Theater to its classical epitome and his plays have been on exhibit in Japan almost continuously up through the present day.

  * * *

  Online I used some of these sources to shore up the holes in my iffy memory about Japanese history and art, as well as educate myself a bit on trans-gender stuff:

  —On the art of the Nō drama:

  The Major Treatises of Zeami, translated by J. Thomas Rimer and Masakazu Yamazaki:

  http://books.google.com/books?id=Rty-xnBHkSsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:%22Zeami%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=lWfsUI7wJImJiwKkv4DgAg&ved=0CD8Q6AEwAg

  The Samurai Archives:

  http://www.samurai-archives.com/index.html

  http://www.scribd.com/doc/37410638/Life-in-Medieval-and-Early-Modern-Japan

  TransYouth Channel:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8llA18OQlKc

  Minneapolis Institute of Art’s Shoin Room:

  http://www.artsmia.org/art-of-asia/architecture/japanese-audience-hall.cfm

  —Youtube Playlist

  I’m one of those people who write to music. I tend to often play the same set of songs when writing a particular book, to help me get into the “feeling” or “personality” of the book right away. Here’s the music that inspired me for Straw Doll:

  (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVlv9-4Gcl8eti0Ib79DFbRygWpLrDuuR)

  But there’s some music on that list that really got to the heart of some of the characters, their struggles, or was just cool Japan or Japanese-connected music in general. Hope you’ve heard of all these artists, but if not, you should definitely check them out.