by Nick Lake
‘So the person being haunted doesn’t even know they are dying?’ said Taro. ‘They don’t see the ghost?’
Oshi spread his hands. ‘In most cases. But that is where priests like myself come in. We are consulted, usually by a family member, and if we arrive in time, we are often able to help. We give charms, prayers, shiryo-yoke to hang in the windows. These things help to keep the spirits away.’
‘Like Hoichi’s writing.’
‘Exactly like that.’
Taro thought of Shusaku’s tattoos. Would they have made him immune to ghosts, then, too? Of course, Shusaku was dead himself now, and Taro felt it as a stab in the stomach, as he always did when he remembered it. He wondered if the ninja master would be wandering the Pure Land alone, unseen by the other souls there, because of his protective marks.
That would be appalling. Unless, of course, Shusaku was in one of the hell realms. Then it would be a mercy.
‘But,’ said Oshi, gesturing to the painfully thin samurai sitting on the wooden floor, ‘sometimes, as in this case, it is worse.’
‘Worse?’
‘Yes. A person is sometimes haunted by a ghost that is more. . . connected to them. Usually it is a karmic connection – perhaps someone with whom they were in love, in another lifetime, or in this one. These people see their ghosts – usually, they believe that the person is still living, because the ghost appears to them as a healthy human being. That is what happened to Hayao. The girl was his lover.’
Was it Taro’s imagination, or did Hana blanch at that? He must be imagining it. She couldn’t have had feelings for this man Hayao. She’d come with Taro, hadn’t she, when he’d walked out of Lord Oda’s castle? Taro glanced at the samurai, sitting gazing into the eyes of the ghost that only he could see, perceiving her as a living woman. He shivered. ‘What happened?’ he asked. He felt a desperate desire to know how the samurai had ended up with that thing of blood-drained skin, as well as a frisson of terror at the idea of being told. It was as if his skin was trying to go in two directions at once.
‘Yes,’ said Hana. ‘Where did this ghost come from? When I left. . . Lord Oda’s castle, he was fit and healthy. He was teaching me the bow.’
‘These things can happen quickly,’ said Oshi. ‘But it’s a long story. I will explain everything to you on the road, as we travel. As much as I can, anyway – I don’t know the whole thing, because it was only once he was already haunted that I was called on to help. For now, I suggest we get some sleep. It’s still a long walk to Mount Hiei.’
The five of them divided the floor space as best they could. Taro contrived to place himself as far as possible from Hayao. He couldn’t bear the sight of those wasted, once handsome features, nor could he stand to be near the pale woman no one else could see. The woman never once looked at him – he didn’t think she was aware of anyone but Hayao. But her very impossible presence was awful.
He noticed, though, that Hana curled up to sleep closest to Hayao, and that rat inside him started to chew again, and he clenched his fists. You’re being crazy, he told himself. The man’s sick – she’s just concerned for him.
All the same, he found it impossible to sleep.
CHAPTER 6
The mountains near Mount Fuji
Three months earlier
YUKIKO PULLED THE cloak tighter around her, shivering. She didn’t like these high places, with their thin, cold air. There was something mean about them, something cruel and remorseless, that reminded her of swords, arrows, bullets – those pitiless instruments of death, those sharpened pieces of cold metal.
Yukiko was an instrument of death too, but she did not think of herself as cruel – she was passionate, rather, fuelled by fury and revenge. She was a living thing, hot-blooded, a hawk, not a blade. She belonged down in the warm, striving, fighting. Not in this inhuman coldness. She felt that the cold wanted nothing more than to creep into her veins and still them, and she cursed Kira for leading her here.
Trudging up the path, she rounded a corner and saw smoke ahead, coming from a hut. She was glad – for the warmth it promised, and for what it meant. Months now she’d been tracking Kenji Kira. Then, finally, the breakthrough – he’d written to Lord Oda, saying that Taro’s mother was at a monastery on Mount Fuji, Taro no doubt with her, and that he was riding there without delay to kill them. This despite the fact that Mount Fuji was over the border, in Lord Tokugawa’s province.
Impetuous fool.
Yukiko knew Taro was not at Mount Fuji, knew also that Kira would kill Taro’s mother without thinking through the consequences. She had set out for Mount Fuji herself, hoping to stay his hand. Yet when she arrived – or rather, when she drew near, for the samurai massed in the region prevented her from getting too close – she found that the monastery had already been destroyed by Lord Tokugawa’s army. The rumour was that the monks had defied him one too many times.
She knew that Kira would have turned back, would not have risked capture by Lord Tokugawa’s troops. And so she had hunted for him, chasing gossip and horse-trails farther and farther into the mountains.
And finally, here she was, at this little hut. The question was – what was Kira doing here? There could be no strategic value in holing up in the high places like this. She ducked behind a tree, as a samurai wearing the Oda mon stepped out from the hut, stretching in the pale light.
Well, she was about to find out.
She stepped out, keeping her hood up as she approached the man.
‘I’m looking for Kenji Kira,’ she said as he looked up, startled.
‘What?’
‘I’m looking for Kenji Kira.’ She could be patient. It was something she’d learned about herself, these past months.
The samurai grabbed her arm, peered at her face. ‘What are you doing all the way up here?’ he asked. ‘Pretty girl like you.’
Yukiko sighed. ‘I’m looking for Kenji Kira.’
‘So you say,’ said the man. ‘He isn’t here, as it happens.’ He kicked the door open with his heel and dragged her inside. She let herself be dragged – there was no point giving herself away. But she could feel the steel against her side where her sword was strapped.
Inside the hut, three other samurai turned to look at her. They were rough men, with uncut beards, missing teeth, and scarred faces. Battle-hardened men, violent men, used to doing Kira’s dark bidding.
She took a deep breath.
‘Little girl’s looking for Kenji Kira, she says,’ the first one said.
The fattest of the men stood up. He stepped towards her. ‘What for?’
‘I can’t say,’ she replied. ‘Not to you. I need to speak to Kenji Kira himself.’ This was wasting her time. Where was Kira? She’d been sure he’d be here, and now it seemed like he had vanished into the thin, cold air.
The fat man backhanded her; light exploded in her eyes as her neck snapped round. She raised a hand to her cheek, felt blood trickle on her fingers. The man was wearing heavy rings; one of them had broken her skin. ‘She’s a spy, I reckon,’ he said. ‘We should kill her.’
‘But first,’ said another – he had a missing eye, she noticed with disinterest – ‘we may as well have some fun with her.’
The samurai who had dragged her in tore her cloak from her, and even with the fire going in the back of the hut she felt her skin rise up instantly in goose bumps, felt the cold prying at her with its icy fingers.
Then the thick fingers of the samurai were pulling at her too, fumbling at her clothes. She let him – she was looking over his shoulder, fixing the positions of each man, the places in the room and on the earth in which each would die.
Suddenly, the samurai backed away. He was staring down at Yukiko’s waist, at the sword pommel there.
‘That’s. . .’
Yukiko glanced down at the petals carved into the hilt. ‘Lord Oda’s mon. Yes.’ She drew the katana. It was perfect – no, more than perfect. It was in its imperfections that it showed its beauty, its craftsma
nship. The silver wave that ran down its length was not completely even, yet it shone in the light of the fire like a river of moonlight, the colours of the different steels used in its manufacture clear to see. The edge was so sharp it sang even as she drew it, cutting the very fabric of the air.
‘I’ve seen that sword before,’ said the samurai with the missing eye. ‘It belongs to Lord Oda. It was made by Masamune.’
Yukiko nodded. ‘Yes. A sword of violence. One of the few remaining.’ It was said that Masamune swords were built to kill, where others might be made to protect. They liked the taste of blood, it was said. Yukiko appreciated that. She liked the idea that her sword was no cold and remorseless instrument, devoid of intent. She liked the idea that her sword wanted revenge as much as she did.
Inside her, in the darkness of her mind, she pictured her sister, lying dead after Kenji Kira killed her.
‘How. . . did you. . .’
‘How did I get it? Lord Oda gave it to me. After he asked me to find Kenji Kira, and deliver him a message.’
The samurai closest to her, the one who had taken her cloak, backed away. ‘We meant no harm, little girl,’ he said. ‘We apologize. Kenji Kira is. . . not well disposed. But we will take you to him.’
‘Where is he?’ she asked.
The samurai pointed to the ceiling. ‘Up the mountain, just half a ri or so. He won’t come inside any more. We’re not sure, actually, what—’
Yukiko wasn’t listening any more. Her sword leaped, and the man was open from throat to belly. He fell to the ground, spraying blood that pattered on her skin, warming it.
‘He said sorry!’ said the fat man.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘But this is a Masamune sword. I didn’t have to draw it, but now I have, it must taste blood. You should know that.’
She danced forward. The fat samurai, to give him his due, managed to get his sword into his hand, but she smacked it aside with her blade and took him on the point. The sword – so sharp it seemed it could cut through the world itself – came out of him like he was made of butter, then snaked round behind her almost of its own accord and removed the top of one-eye’s head.
She turned. There was one samurai left, and he was armed. He held his sword before him like a talisman that might protect him. She noticed that his arms were trembling. She slid her sword back into its scabbard.
‘You,’ she said. ‘Take me to Kenji Kira.’ The man was young – he hadn’t spoken the whole time, and his beard had barely grown in. He had light brown eyes that reminded her of her sister’s.
She was a hawk, not a blade, and she had hot blood inside her and was capable of pity.
The man ran at her, screaming. She sighed, then sidestepped, tripped him as he went past. His head hit the wooden wall of the hut with a dull thud; she knelt to drop the tip of her sword – it took no more force than that – into his back and through his heart.
The walk from the blood-filled hut took only moments, it seemed, and then she was in the highest of high places; she could see the peaks of the other mountains all around her. Kenji Kira was lying among broken rocks in a gully that led to the summit. A trickle of water ran down the rocks, perhaps to widen into a stream lower down. As Yukiko approached, he was licking this water from the stone. There was no moss here, even – it was too high. Only cold stone, the bones of the mountain.
Gods, she thought. She had heard that Kenji Kira had once been trapped on a battlefield, watching tiny creatures feed on his dead comrades, and ever after he had been obsessed with the idea of avoiding the state of decay, of making his body proof against putrefaction. It was even said that his loyalty to Lord Oda derived from a promise Oda had made – that if and when Kira died in his service, he would have him embalmed, or frozen in ice – the stories differed on that point.
Now it seemed he was attempting this process for himself.
He looked up. ‘Who. . . are. . . you?’
‘My name is Yukiko. I come from Lord Oda.’ She held out the sword, showed him the mon.
He nodded wearily. ‘Kill me then,’ he said. ‘Just. . . leave my body here. I should like to be cold. To be stone. I should like. . . not to rot.’
She stared at him. ‘I’m not here to kill you,’ she said.
Now it was his turn to stare. ‘No? But I failed. I did not find Taro. I do not know where to look.’
‘You found his mother’s message. You went to the place she was.’
‘Yes. And it was destroyed. Lord Tokugawa did it. For all I know he has Taro now. He has his son. He has his heir.’
She smiled. It took an effort – every atom of her being was telling her to kill this man, to avenge her sister Heiko’s death at his hands. But that could wait. It would be sweeter if she waited. She was patient. It was something she’d learned.
‘Taro was not at Mount Fuji,’ she said.
He peered at her. She saw how thin he was, how the skin stretched tight over his bones. It was true, everything she’d heard about him – it was as if he was turning already to stone, to something hard and cold. She couldn’t understand how he could want this. How he could want to be something other than human. ‘You’re. . . sure?’ he asked.
‘I’m sure. Taro is at the ninja mountain. Now – did it not occur to you that, having intercepted his mother’s message, you could simply substitute a different one? Send him a false message?’
‘You mean. . . trap him?’
She nodded.
‘But. . .’ Kira stammered. ‘I would not be capable of getting a message to the ninja mountain. I don’t know where it is.’
Yukiko forced herself to smile again. ‘No. But I do.’ She reached down and held him under one armpit, helped him to his feet. It seemed a travesty, to be assisting the man who had killed her sister – she had the impression that she would be bringing him down from this high cold place into life again, that she was leading him out of death itself, and that felt wrong.
Still, she reminded herself – over and over, like a mantra – that she would kill him one day, when the time was right, and make him suffer as she had suffered. If he died here he would have what he wanted; his body would grow cold and still and would lie here among the rocks without rotting. For now, she needed him to believe he could make everything right, that he could capture Taro for Lord Oda, and return to the daimyo’s good graces. She needed him to be happy when she killed him.
He was shivering, his skeletal body wracked by spasms as they descended the path. When they passed the hut he raised a twitching hand to point it out. ‘My men are in there,’ he said.
‘No, they’re not,’ she replied.
He glanced down at the blood on her clothes, and said nothing.
As they continued downward, the air began to warm, and he shivered less. She had some dried meat in her cloak – she tried to get him to eat, but he would let nothing but water and herbs pass his lips, and the occasional acorn he found on the ground. At one point she saw him chewing on a stick.
Strange man, she thought. He seemed to think he was already becoming rock, that his body would never decay – she heard him mumble about stones in his entrails, about the contamination of the flesh. It was nonsense, of course. Yukiko meant to make sure that he putrefied and boiled with maggots, like a dog.
But at least for now he was growing stronger, seeming to regard with pleasure what lay ahead, the prospect of trapping and killing Taro. That was good. She wanted him strong and she wanted him pleased. She wanted him coursing with blood, his heart pumping his life force, his whole body singing the joy of its existence when she killed him.
She was a creature of passion, after all, not a pitiless instrument. She was not of the high, cold places; she was of the forest and the field, a fierce hunter, not a stealthy assassin – a hawk, not a blade.
She would wait until Kira was on the verge of achieving all he hoped, until his heart was hammering in his chest, filling him with the pleasure of being in the world, and then she would cut it out with her
sword and he would bleed out all his blood, all over the indifferent ground.
CHAPTER 7
OSHI WAS NOT a big man – he was shorter than Taro, with the sunken chest of one who had spent his time with books, not swords. But he must have had deep reserves of strength, because he had been travelling with Hayao for some days now, he told them, pulling the samurai in a small, two-wheeled cart. Taro was impressed. The priest was evidently dedicated, to drag his patient all the way to Mount Hiei.
But Oshi wasn’t on his own any more, and so Hiro took the cart for the first part of the walk that day. It had stopped raining, but the stone of the path shone with moisture, and the moss on the trees was greener than green, as if the whole world had been washed clean.
As they walked, Oshi told the friends about what had happened to Hayao. It seemed that the samurai had fallen in love, on a return visit to his mother’s home in the mountains of the north. The girl had been as beautiful as her name, which was Tsuyu, for she was named after the plum rain. And now this girl was the ghost that travelled with them, and that Taro had to avoid looking at, because of the way that it floated along beside Hayao, some of its body in and some of it out of the cart.
‘But how did she die?’ said Hana.
‘I’m getting to that,’ said the priest. ‘There’s no rush, is there? Mount Hiei is still a long way away.’
‘Tell me about it,’ said Hiro, panting as he pulled the cart.
Oshi smiled. ‘Very well, since you ask.’ He took a breath and stretched his back, as if thinking where to start. ‘This Tsuyu, she did not get on with her stepmother, when her father remarried. So her father built her a small house in the hills. Her only visitor was a local monk, who had undertaken to teach Tsuyu the women’s characters her father wished her to learn – but not, of course, the Chinese characters a man of similar rank would be taught.’
