The Disfavored Hero

by Jessica Amanda Salmonson

  Eventually, Tomoe responded, but she did so by rote, as though comparing her posture to a painting regarding the very subject. She felt a little, but not a great deal. Perhaps she was too weary. Certainly she was weary. Toshima’s massaging hands soothed muscles which still ached; her hands were welcome, but did not arouse. But Toshima was aroused. Encouraged by Tomoe’s relaxed state, the Lady moved her whole body near, raised herself over Tomoe, became Tomoe’s blanket, the grass cover cast aside. The moisture of Toshima wetted Tomoe’s thigh. The Lady sighed quietly, contentedly.

  In the dark of the ninja-house, Tomoe wove a private fantasy, a fantasy of a jono priestess named Noyimo, face bright like the sun. Suddenly Tomoe was aroused, incredibly aroused, and her arms swept up around Toshima. These women had been weakened by the previous days, but it only made them slower and more gentle about their endless, endless endeavor.

  Food and care and rest were miraculous healers. In the early dawn, Tomoe Gozen felt revitalized, and went about the investigation of the island which was perforce to be her home. Emotionally, she was not completely strong, but she hid this from herself, refused to admit that mind as well as body had been driven hard upon the sea. She focused attention on her sudden environment, not upon the uneasiness that trembled beneath consciousness.

  The island was of reasonable proportion, with two slumbering volcanic peaks, large grasslands, a forest which spread itself up between the ridge which joined the mountains, and several streams which suggested lakes in the highlands. It was a mystery why a nearly idyllic isle would not have encouraged settlement.

  Directly, Tomoe learned that a city had been established, but abandoned for some inexplicable reason. Ruins came into view when she first topped a rise. From her vantage point, she could see down into the rubble-strewn streets.

  The architecture was unlike that of Naipon. Buildings were tall and square and made of stone and masonry instead of wood. It was, in fact, more tomb than town—a city of oversized mausoleums. Yet she knew from her ventures on the mainland that there were indeed peoples nothing like Naiponese, peoples who preferred the permanence of deathly stone over the natural beauty of wooden structure; and, impossible as it seemed, these same people paved roads for fear of native soil; and they graveled their yard where gardens ought to grow; and worst of all, such folk imprisoned their whole cities inside plain grey walls, despising open space. For her own reasoning, Tomoe would have liked to assume the city was left because it was so adverse to living things. But it was not a people of her reasoning who built this place, and therefore her own disdain did not explain the exodus which had given the place over to decay.

  At first she was not encouraged to go down and explore the brooding, colorless city. Certainly she would not live there; she would rather risk the ninja-house. She might have gone away and never looked at the city again, even from a distance … except that her eyes captured a motion.

  A figure clad in long grey robes moved about the streets. The robe flapped against a wind which rushed between the buildings like a tide. An old woman, Tomoe guessed. From the distance it was difficult to be sure; and the figure had only been visible a bare moment before slipping into a monster’s maw of a doorway.

  Curious of this one inhabitant, Tomoe hurried down the slope, entered the arched city gate.

  Here and then, she chanced upon a vagrant weed which had upset the pave, or a vine which clung with inexorable tenacity, tearing down the walls with the patience of eternity. More rarely, she saw the quick movement of a mammal which had taken residence in the cracks, armies of insects marching single file across established intersections, or a lone bird in a squat, homely tower. In larger part, the city was ignored by all things living, the natural environment choosing to heed the surrounding walls and keep away.

  As Tomoe rounded a street corner, she saw a hem of grey robe, grey as the city of stone, vanish around a further turn. The clogs Tomoe had discovered in the ninja-house clacked upon the paved ground, and she considered taking them off, but decided stealth was uncalled for; for the old woman might suspect a sneak to be an enemy. The samurai ran noisily to the corner where the woman had disappeared, and saw again, but barely, the grey garment’s hem pulled out of sight.

  Hurrying to that corner, Tomoe discovered a blind alley, with no window or door or passage of escape. Yet the old woman was not there.

  “Good day, samurai.”

  “Huh!” Tomoe turned quickly. The old woman had come up behind, and stood with her head held at an odd angle, gazing wistfully. Her face was brown and creased. From the corners of her upper lip, long white hairs grew, had been cultivated into fine, soft, slender, snowy whiskers. One eye was clouded over, but the other was perfectly clear. She peered from the sharp right eye, grinned toothlessly and foolishly, and said, “Skittish, samurai? No danger here. I welcome you to Kyoto.”

  The woman was mad. Tomoe said, “This is not Kyoto.”

  “Did I say it was?” She raised her arm in a sweeping gesture, and introduced the city again: “Here is Kamakura. Death City! (Its beauty is a pretense).” She whispered that last.

  “A city of death, indeed, old woman. But it is not Kamakura.”

  “Kyoto,” she said again. “City of Sloth. City of Avarice and Waste.”

  “Old woman, I think you are very crazy.”

  “Tch!” She stepped sideways like a crab, lithe for all her age. She giggled like a little girl, albeit a slightly ill-sounding little girl. “We are all of us mad!” she said, waxing philosophic. “You are mad! I am mad! All the people here are mad!”

  “There are no other people,” said Tomoe, keeping her voice even and low.

  “Ah! Then you are not yet mad enough!”

  The woman was confounding, and Tomoe was becoming dubious about the wisdom of conversing with a madwoman. Birdlike and slender, her whiskers swaying in a breeze, the woman was the very epitome of aged innocence. Tomoe returned the intense gaze, and asked carefully, “Old woman, can you tell me what city this really is?”

  “Naniwa!”

  Tomoe grumbled. “It is not Naniwa!”

  “Whore City! Naniwa! Sailor’s Delight!”

  “Old woman, this island is not Naipon. It is a littler land than that, with two peaks and only one city, one not of Naiponese design.”

  “You think me feeble? I know it!”

  Patience, Tomoe lectured herself, and tried another tack. “You live here?” she asked.

  “I? No!” the oldster said indignantly. “I would live in a Whore City? Do I look like a whore? I come to scoff at whores! To scoff at the avaricious; the self-indulgent; the fools who plan but never act. I scoff at them all who live here.” She looked about the towers and walls, cried out half in anger, “Death City! Whore City! City of Greed! Of Sloth! Ah, the decadence …” she gazed at Tomoe once again and spoke with less volume. “Would I live here? I live there!”

  She pointed with bony finger, and Tomoe looked toward the higher volcanic peak.

  “I am a hermit,” she said. “An ascetic. You may call me Keiko. A pretty name? Ah, and once, long ago, I was a pretty girl.” A tear appeared in her one good eye, but she brushed it away, reinstated her humor with a loud boast, “Still am!” and danced around a bit, like a young girl, then asked, “Your name, samurai? No! Do not tell me! I do not need to know! I will call you Tada. Because when I saw you looking down from the hill, I said to myself, ‘Tada!’ Too long since I saw a living soul with my right eye, though I see too many with the left. You are less fool than these others, my eye portends.” She swept her arm wide, indicating those “others” on the empty street, believing as she did that this was one or several populous cities on Naipon. Loneliness must have driven her to unfortunate imaginings.

  “If you need help, old woman …”

  “Keiko! Keiko!”

  “Keiko,” Tomoe said, correcting herself. “If you need help, I will give you aid.”

  “I? Need help? Tch! You are madder than I thought, samurai!” She look
ed at Tomoe askance and said, “Not dangerous, are you, samurai?” and eased away a bit, as from a raving slayer.

  “If need commands,” said Tomoe. “I am.”

  “Good!” Keiko declared, and hopped close, kicking Tomoe in the knee, dancing around her and daring the samurai to strike back.

  “I live with a friend in the abandoned farmhouse,” said Tomoe, unperturbed by Keiko’s unpredictability. “You may come there if you please.”

  Keiko stopped dancing, looked horrified, stepped further back than she had before. “Not there! Not there!” She turned and ran away, her speed exceptional, her knowledge of the winding streets wonderful. Tomoe might have caught her, but found herself led into a street end’s cul-de-sac against the city’s high wall.

  Toshima stood anxiously in the doorway, her face scabbed and healing. It would be a few more days before she regained her beauty, but she had remained unconcerned about that. Presently, her eyes were bright with excitement, but also with a hint of alarm.

  “Tomoe! Tomoe!” She waved for the samurai to hurry, but Tomoe kept her pace. At the door, Toshima sounded breathless as she exclaimed: “This is not a ninja-house!”

  The samurai looked at her, questioning.

  “Come! Come!” Toshima tugged at the samurai, pulling her inside, still speaking. “I heard noises behind the walls—I heard them last night too, while you slept so deeply. After you went out, I began to look around the house. I expected some small animal, but all I found were corridors. Many! There are hollow spaces between the walls, and another space between ceiling and roof with a hidden gymnasium and storage for all manner of weaponry!”

  What Toshima had observed was entirely in keeping with the nature of ninja houses. Tomoe listened to the Lady, did not comment. Toshima continued to pull the samurai, bringing her to a specific wall. There, Lady Toshima pushed on one of the woven grass panels in a certain way, and it slid aside, revealing not merely a passage, but something far less explicable.

  When the door slid away, Tomoe’s senses were assailed by a coldness more spiritual than physical. She heard a whining sound, vague and distant. The space beyond the panel was like a window into nowhere, absolute void beyond.

  “Jono!” declared Toshima. “Jono magic!”

  “Jono live in temples, Toshima. Dark, austere temples of occult learning.”

  Toshima looked deflated, said, “But once jono were ninja.”

  Tomoe was adamant, and strangely unsettled. “Jono are no longer akin to ninja. They do not skulk, do not disguise their places like this. It is true they walk invisible paths, but those lead from temple to temple. This is not a place for priestess or priest, this would-be farmhouse. And it could not be the abode of a novice jono, for none of that sect leaves a temple until they earn high rank. I do not know who would live in a common ninja’s house with jono capabilities. I fear who might.”

  She continued to gaze into the black hole behind the wall, trying to pick out words or meaning from the barely audible whine, the sound of a thousand tiny creatures shouting in high-pitched voices. As she listened, it seemed she heard an even fainter dirge of other voices, deeper than the human ear could properly comprehend.

  “It is not dangerous, Tomoe. Do not look so frightened. I entered this very door. It is cold and strange inside, but nothing attacks.”

  “That was a terrible risk,” said Tomoe, more appalled than impressed by the Lady’s courage. “You should not have done it.”

  “But I did.” Toshima quickly unwound her obi from her waist, tied one end to the outside of the panel, urged Tomoe to follow her inside. “It is easy to find our way back if we hang on to the end of this,” she said. But Tomoe would not budge toward the Door into Nowhere. Lady Toshima grabbed her feebly, encouraged her, chided her reluctance. “It is safe,” she insisted, then added in a teasing tone, “I will protect you.”

  She held Tomoe’s hand, and they entered the black door-way. Immediately, Tomoe was engulfed in wintry chill, half the fault of her own dread. The hairs of her body stood and prickled. The sound of miniature, almost chirping creatures grew louder, yet kept its ambiguity; and at the periphery of her vision she thought she half-saw things like bats or small winged people fluttering madly about. The less tangible background dirge had become a soundless rumbling in her chest; and gazing intensely into blackness, she saw motion, like the after-images of light, shaped in some manner like shambling beasts, swaying back and forth as they made their noiseless death-chant.

  Tomoe would have stopped, gone back along the length of the Lady’s sash—the sash which had apparently stretched longer than long, seemingly endless. Toshima pulled the samurai onward, toward the furthest end of the lengthened sash. Tomoe squeezed the smaller hand for comfort and made no attempt to disguise her loathing of the passage.

  It felt as though they walked upon nothing, and might at any moment be dropped into infinity. There was no light in any direction, discounting the mottling effect of the after-images and phosphenes. There was no sign of the door behind them, or the other wall of the farmhouse ahead. With unexpected suddenness, Tomoe found herself drawn into the lesser darkness of a cavern which suited the natural senses far better than their method of arrival.

  Toshima still held the end of the obi, which stretched back into the cavern’s darker recesses and vanished. Carefully, she set the black length of cloth on the floor of the cave. The Lady then pushed Tomoe toward the mouth of the cave, where there was light aplenty. All around the interior were strewn evidences of habitation—including a firepit near the mouth, with coals still smoldering.

  “An old woman lives here,” said Toshima, leading Tomoe to the light. They gazed down from the top of a volcanic mountain, a smaller peak visible across a forested chasm. In the lowlands was the ruined city Tomoe had visited earlier that day.

  “When I found myself here previously,” Toshima continued, “there was an old woman sitting on that rock, digging in the firepit with a stick. But at the sound of my approach, rather than turning to see who was coming, she leapt up and ran outside. I tried to call her back, to reassure her I was no ghost, but she would not linger. She held back the briefest moment, and shouted without looking my direction: ‘I do not look upon who comes through that door!’ Then she ran on down the steep mountain trail spry as a kid goat despite her age, heading toward the ruins.”

  “I met her also,” said Tomoe, her voice without emotion. “I met her in the city, which she thought inhabited. She had no fear of me. Strange, she would have no curiosity about you.”

  They returned to the rear of the cave, and Toshima took up the end of the sash from the floor, using it to guide herself and her samurai back to the presumed-farmhouse. It seemed a farther trip back, distances being entirely warped and inconsistent upon the invisible path. In a while, they arrived in the house, and Toshima rewound her obi about her waist.

  “I think we should not go through there again,” said Tomoe, still holding her forced calm. “The old woman’s name is Keiko. She does not like this house, or anything in it. We should leave her be.”

  “There are other paths we might try,” said Toshima, her suggestion offered in an entirely tentative manner, for she clearly did not wish to frighten Tomoe more—and despite an air of calm, something of Tomoe’s fear was yet evident. It was that fear, completely aside from the excuse of not invading Keiko’s mountain retreat, which urged Tomoe’s command against the supernatural openings in the wall. Toshima said, “I went into some of the other paths, but they must lead to far places. The length of my obi took me nowhere. I thought I was lost once, but my trick with the obi is fail-safe. I thought we might make a long rope, and see where the other paths eventually take us.”

  “Please, no,” said Tomoe, her calm unraveling. “We must move from this house, go away from it. Live in a cave like Keiko! You have done without much comfort already, Lady. A little less will not injure you!”

  “Why do you shout at me so? Why do you fear the magic? It is less deadly
than your sword!”

  “I do not like it! Last night, I dreamed of a place like Naipon, but without magic. I would rather live there! I killed your father, Toshima! I killed him because of magic, not because I willed to! A year later, I met a woman named Tsuki Izutsu and I was not kind to her, and regret it, for magic killed her also, and we can never meet again.”

  Tomoe stomped from the panel as Toshima closed it. But she feared to stomp far, not knowing where the other doors were hidden. She stood in the center of the room, afraid to move in any direction, afraid even that the floor might hide some foul, black opening—and fuming about her own embarrassing fears.

  She verbalized her fears, half to rationalize them, half with the conviction that she was hugely justified. “The Dragon Queen’s monster brought us here! Something plots against us, Toshima; I know not what. Only, we are not in this place without interference. Who is to say what would come through those paths to snatch us away to some terrible land? Perhaps the Dragon Queen herself conspires against us, though surely we are beneath her notice. Perhaps she has a servant, or a worshipper, versed in jono magic—and that servant bears you or me some grudge. We are dishonestly manipulated, I know it!, possibly because we are faithful to the Mikado, or for some reason we do not suspect.” Her mind raced with its reasoning. “It could be the animosity of the Shogun which brings disaster upon us; though even the Shogun does not play with sorcerers. Our enemy may be unguessed.”

  “You see ghosts where there are none! You are like that old woman!”

  “There are ghosts! There are foes! I will tell you what I think, Toshima: even the jono have enemies. We have both had commerce with jono, and might be used against them …” Tomoe was not certain how much she dared suggest. Surely Toshima had suspicions, too. She had directed two jono to protect her father, and one of them to protect Tomoe, but only Tomoe survived that terrible Battle of Shigeno Valley. In that, there was intrigue, not fortune. The intrigues might have begun even before Toshima’s birth, when a marriage was arranged between Shigeno and a woman of royal lineage: Toshima’s mother. Despite this marriage, Shigeno held greater fealty with the Shogun. The Mikado insinuated through Toshima’s contacts that Lord Shigeno would be spared. The Mikado even sent jono, ostensibly to be Shigeno’s guards. But in fact, there was nothing to gain by pardoning the warlord from death.