Firefly

by India Millar

  Isamu’s voice trailed off and he stared over my head as if I wasn’t there. I was deeply disappointed. I wanted so much more. Where had this extraordinary woman learned to fight? What had she done to persuade the gods to give her such courage? And above all, what had happened to her? It was this last question that I asked Isamu. He blinked at me in surprise as my voice called him back to the present. He seemed to find my question irrelevant as he shrugged impatiently.

  “Oh, there are various versions. Some say she was killed during the fighting. Others say that when her husband understood he was finally defeated, he told her to run away because he wanted to die alongside his brother. He would have been ashamed for it to be known that he died alongside a woman. Does it matter?”

  I stared at Tomoe Gozen’s picture and wanted to say that it mattered very much to me. But the more I looked, the more certain I became that I knew the truth anyway. Her husband had probably told her to flee, but it was not because he was afraid to die alongside his woman. Unlike every other man I knew, he had loved his wife. And he had known that the only way he could ever persuade her to leave him to die in battle was to make it a matter of pride. Every samurai—male or female—would understand that. She would have wanted to die at his side, but she would have listened to what her husband was telling her. I love you. Go. Save yourself, for my sake. This way, I will die with honor and you will live with pride in me. If you stay, we will both die needlessly. Yes, that made perfect sense to me.

  “No, of course it doesn’t matter,” I lied cheerfully. “Are all the rest of the illustrations of her?”

  “Yes. Look.” Isamu pointed his finger at the next illustration. Tomoe Gozen’s horse reared in the heat of battle. She had drawn her long naginata—intrigued as I was, I still wondered how she had managed it without unseating herself—and with it had skewered a man with a raised sword in his hand. Most of the rest of the illustrations were similar, except for one that was particularly gory. In that one, she had decapitated a samurai and was holding his head aloft, his blood spattering her armor.

  “Isn’t she wonderful?” Isamu’s tone was so reverential that I glanced at him in surprise. He might have been speaking of a woman he knew and admired rather than one who had lived and died centuries ago. “I tell you, little sister, there is no woman walking the earth today who could ever match Tomoe Gozen. If I ever found one who could, I would marry her tomorrow.”

  He was speaking more to himself than me, and I allowed my thoughts to wander. Isamu was nearly twenty. He had been betrothed to a perfectly nice girl—the daughter of a friend of our father’s—for years. By now, they should have been married and his wife installed in our house. The rooms should have echoed with the sound of children playing. Boy children, of course. I often wished that he would marry and bring his bride to our home, as it would have given Emiko somebody other than me to sharpen her tongue on. Could it be possible that he was really languishing in passion for this long-dead warrior woman? Greatly daring, I spoke carefully.

  “But even if she were alive today, it would be impossible. Himari-chan is waiting eagerly for you to name the day you are to be married. It’s all arranged. You know that.”

  Isamu made an impatient gesture with his hand. “Oh, Himari-chan must wait. You sound just like Father, nattering at me to marry. Of course I will. The family name depends on me. I’ll get around to her eventually, and father enough children to keep everybody happy.”

  He sounded angry and I stayed very still. Himari was a nice girl. Not too pretty—but then, who wants a pretty wife? That is what a man has mistresses for. I had never gotten the impression that she was particularly bright either, but she clearly adored, Isamu and I was sure she would be as dutiful a wife as any man could expect or want.

  “I see,” I said seriously, even though I didn’t. And then, even more cautiously, “The story of Tomoe Gozen is very interesting, brother. And I can quite see why you would admire her. But what has it got to do with me? There is no place for onna-bugeisha in this modern world of ours, more’s the pity.”

  Isamu began to gather the fan of the washi pages together. He pressed them carefully into place before smoothing the leather cover back into place firmly. He did not speak again until he had slid the silken cover back over the book and drawn together the threads that held it close.

  “What would please you most in life, little sister? A husband? Is that really what you want?”

  I stared down at the floor miserably. I knew I should say yes and pretend to be enthusiastic. But why bother lying to my brother? He would see through my pretense at once in that irritating way that elder brothers had.

  “No,” I said instead. A surge of bitterness made me speak far more plainly than I had intended. “What use is a husband to a woman? All you men are the same. You just look on us as an unfortunate necessity. None of you love your wives. None of you even enjoy being intimate with them. All you want a wife for is to bear your children and make sure the servants keep the house clean and tidy.”

  I was panting with my vehement outburst. I thought Isamu would be furious with me, but to my surprise, he laughed, long and loud.

  “Dear little sister, if only you had been born a man! What fun we would have had together. But that’s the way of the world. You are not a man. You are my little sister, who only thinks and speaks like a man. I think it would be a very brave man who took you as his wife! Alas, I have no idea where we could find that special man for you. So, if you will not marry, what will you do?”

  “Live out my miserable existence as an old maid,” I said bitterly. “When you finally marry poor Himari, I suppose I will get the chance to bully somebody who has even less status than I do. At least until she has a male child and becomes important. And then I will go back to living on Father’s charity and being at everybody’s beck and call.”

  I was so filled with resentment I didn’t even bother looking at Isamu. Why bother? He would only be laughing at me again.

  “And what if you had the chance to do something else?” Isamu’s voice was so soft I had to look up and watch his lips to catch what he was saying. “What if you had the chance to make Father proud of you? To make him forget that he only kept you about the place because of his obligations as a samurai? What if you could make him take notice of you at last?”

  His words bit home, sharply as a snake. I had never spoken to anybody about the one thing that would make me happy above all else. I had never even considered making Father proud of me. It would always have been enough if I had managed to make him even acknowledge my existence. Somehow, Isamu knew what lay tightly enclosed in my heart. I stared at him in silent astonishment.

  “How did you know?” I managed to say at last. My mouth was so dry, my voice was a croak.

  “Because I know you, little sister,” he said gently. “I’ve seen the envy on your face every time he tells Emiko how beautiful she is. I’ve even seen your jealousy when he spares a kind word for one of the dogs.” He was right; the knowledge that Father cared more for his hounds than he did me was salt in my mouth. “I saw your expression a while ago when he called you Kiku instead of Keiko. That hurt, didn’t it?”

  I kept my eyes wide and did not blink. I would not cry. I thought nobody had noticed Father’s—uncorrected—mistake, except for me.

  “Yes. It did hurt me. But what else can I expect? Nobody is going to marry me whether I want to be married or not. Father’s stuck with me until I die. I’m useless to him. A burden. I’m grateful that he allows me to live here as part of our honorable family.”

  “No, you’re not,” Isamu said smugly. “You hate every moment of your existence. Every time you look at Emiko, you resent her beauty. And above all, you hate Father for not loving you. Don’t bother to lie, Keiko. I’ve watched you grow. Watched your resentment swell with every day that passes.”

  “So?” I shrugged, desperate to appear uncaring. “Nothing I can do about it, is there?”

  “Nothing you can do about it,
little sister. But perhaps there is something I can do for you. Would you be happy if I made Father look at you with respect? If I made Emiko look like the shallow creature she is next to you? If I gazed at you with admiration? Would you be happy then?”

  I thought that Isamu must have been smoking too much opium. He took a pipe now and then. Most men did when they were tired of sake. I managed a laugh.

  “I think you are making fun of me, brother,” I said politely.

  “Then you are wrong.”

  He rose and put his book away in the cedar chest. He smiled down at me. Politeness dictated that I should also rise. As I did so, I grimaced in pain. I had been sitting on my heels for a long time and my calves were cramped. To my astonishment, Isamu gave my shoulder a brisk slap. The blow was hard enough to hurt.

  “Do you trust me, little sister?” I nodded. I was close to him now, and there was no opium fragrance in his clothes. Nor could I smell sake on his breath. Excitement shivered in my belly as I began to hope that he was not playing games with me. “Good. Then we shall begin. Take that as your very first lesson. Pain is nothing. It is not worthy of the attention of an onna-bugeisha.”

  He fell silent. I waited hopefully, but eventually realized there was no more to come, so I bowed politely and walked out, my back very straight in an effort to hide my pleasure.

  Five

  You will not make me

  A slave unless I will it.

  Am I then a slave?

  Isamu took it for granted that I would not question his decision about my future. Would I have defied him if I had had doubts? Probably not. While ever I was a slave to doubt, then I would not find the courage to speak, still less to refuse my elder brother anything. But it didn’t matter. I was going to be onna-bugeisha. And I wanted that with all my heart and mind.

  But I had to summon all my patience. Several weeks passed before Isamu spoke to me again about the onna-bugeisha way of life. I had begun to think that he had either been teasing me or had simply found something else to catch his attention and had forgotten our conversation. Isamu was like that. His mind was a butterfly, flitting from interest to interest and rarely returning to any one thing. It seemed to me that the only two things that were constant in his life were the bushido code—the way of the samurai—and his love of hunting, either with hawks or, for bigger prey, with Matsuo as his companion. I wasn’t shocked that he had forgotten our conversation, but I was disappointed.

  At least I was until the day he roused me out of bed early and waited as I found a warm robe and dressed. His glance flicked around my bare room as if he had never seen it before. I was relieved he did not spend much time looking at me. Although we bathed together regularly, that was far more impersonal than having him standing and watching me make the transition from naked to fully clothed.

  “Ready?” he demanded impatiently.

  “What for?” I asked as I slid my feet into wooden geta.

  “To begin your training, of course.” He spoke in such a matter-of-fact tone that it might only have been yesterday that we had looked at his book of images of Tomoe Gozen.

  “I thought you had forgotten all about that,” I blurted.

  Isamu stared at me as though I had insulted him. “Then you are far more stupid than I thought you were,” he snapped. I flinched, but Isamu had not yet finished with me. “If I am to teach you anything, you must never question what I say or do. It will always have a purpose. Understand?”

  “I suppose so.” I was hurt and wanted to let him know.

  “Little sister.” His tone had softened slightly. I raised my eyes and looked at him woefully. “You are to learn the code of bushido, the traditional code of all samurai. It is said that the tiny tongue can fell a man two yards high. That may well be true. But I promise you that a sword would hurt you a great deal more. To become onna-bugeisha, you must have great strength of both mind and body. Insults must not trouble you at all. Nor must you ever give way to pain. Now, we will try again. Do you understand?”

  I thought about his words carefully. “No, not at all. But I will if you teach me.”

  “That’s a start.” He pursed his lips and I thought he was angry with me. “You are very like Emiko, you know. Both of you say what is on your mind without thinking about it. Neither of you is at all submissive like a good woman should be.” I saw his eyes were alight with amusement behind the pout and I smiled. Apart from anything else, I was delighted to think that I resembled my beautiful elder sister in at least one way. Isamu obviously realized my attention had wandered as he prodded me in the shoulder. “You’re not listening. Do you remember when I was much younger, Father sent me on the first and last day of each month to take food and sake to Aya-san?”

  I was puzzled by the apparent change of subject, but I nodded. I remembered Aya-san very well. He was an old retainer of Father’s who had been given a house to live in when he became too old to perform his duties as estate manager. I did not like Aya-san at all. I tried to avoid him when I was a small child and he was still about the house, but it rarely worked. Although he was old then, his hearing was obviously still good as he would often waylay me. He always pinched my cheeks and rubbed his face against me. Often, he would slide his arms around my waist and pick me up, pretending he was making me fly like a bird. Even then, I knew his intentions were improper. I could see it in the way his face flushed and his tongue snaked out to lick his lips. Once or twice, he went so far as to slide his hand inside my robe and stroke the inside of my thighs. I was delighted when he was pensioned off.

  “I remember him,” I said shortly.

  “You didn’t like him,” Isamu said calmly. I was surprised; I had never spoken of Aya’s actions to anybody. I would have been far too embarrassed. “I imagine he touched you in the same way as he touched me. He was always patting my face and slobbering over me. When he moved out of our house and I took his food to him, he dared to go much further. Often, he would tell me to take my robe off so he could see how much I had grown. After a while, he got even bolder. He began to fondle my tree. He told me it was the mark of a man to have a good-sized tree. He often pulled his own tree out of his robe and played with it in front of me.”

  “No!” I gasped in disbelief.

  Isamu smiled and nodded calmly. “Oh, but he did. And it got even worse. Eventually, he told me to come close to him. Then he took my hand and put it on his tree. I was so horrified, I didn’t know what to do. I just stood there like an idiot, wishing I could find some excuse to leave and never come back.”

  “Why didn’t you?” I asked curiously. “If you told Father, he would have had Aya punished for doing that to you. He might even have taken his head off his shoulders himself.”

  “You’re wrong.” Isamu shook his head. “I think Father knew exactly what Aya was like. I’m sure he must have realized he had a taste for young children.”

  “Why did Father make you go to see him, then?” I asked. I was bewildered; if Father knew what Aya was doing to Isamu, I would have expected him to have put the old man to death instantly.

  “To teach me that the code of bushido, the way of the samurai, is not just words. By doing as Father told me and visiting Aya even though I hated it, I was learning obedience. And not just obedience, but duty and self-sacrifice. Those principles are not the whole of bushido, but everything else in the code stems from them. Do you understand now why I couldn’t tell the filthy old man to keep his hands to himself? Father had sent me. I had to obey him. Although I have to admit, when Aya got so bold he told me to bend over it took every bit of my willpower not to run away.”

  “No!” I exclaimed in horror. “What did he do? He didn’t actually…” I floundered for words. Then I remembered Choki asking if I would like him to split the melon with me and I suddenly understood. “He didn’t split the melon with you, did he?”

  Isamu stared at me in silence. Then he laughed loudly. “Where did you pick that vulgar phrase up from? Never mind. No, even Aya didn’t dare go that
far. But he did push his tree between my thighs and burst his fruit all over me. It was horrible. I had to stand there and let that revolting old man do that to me. And almost worse, afterward he wanted to kiss me and slobber over me, telling me he loved me and I was the only boy he wanted to do that with.”

  I grimaced in sympathy. “And you were still ready to go back?”

  “I had to. I told you, I was fairly sure Father knew what he would get up to. It was a test to see if I had the strength of will not to let it disturb me. He must have known because a short while before I was due to take Aya his food again, he asked me if I got on well with the old man. I lied, of course. I said it was a great honor to be of service to a man who had dedicated his own life to our family. Father smiled at me when I said that and told me that he thought it was time that one of the women servants took his food and drink to him.”

  I stared at my brother in awe. Had I been a man, could I have shown such fortitude, I wondered? I was always obedient, of course. But that was different. I was a girl. It was expected of me. A man had a choice in the matter. That was what made Isamu’s submission so exceptional.

  “You were very courageous,” I murmured.

  Isamu smiled. “Not at all. I have always known I would follow the code of bushido. If I did not, I was not worthy to follow in Father’s footsteps. There were other things almost as bad as Aya, but in different ways. Father would send me to walk to the nearest village and back in mid-winter with no shoes. Even though my feet were bleeding and so frozen that I couldn’t feel them when I got back, when he asked if I had enjoyed the exercise, I always said that I had. He taught me the art of swordsmanship himself, and he had no mercy. Even though we used blunt training swords, he still cut me frequently or walloped me with the flat of the blade. But I understood why he did it. The more hurts I received in the first few months, the quicker I learned how to avoid it. The day I parried Father’s thrust and got my own blade to touch his ribs was the proudest of my life.”