Sisters of the Sword

by Maya Snow

  Just behind Ken-ichi was Tatsuya. We smiled at each other, and I knew that Hana and I had at least one friend in the room.

  Kneeling at the table, Hana reached for an ink brush eagerly. I quickly poured some water onto the ink stone, and dabbed the dried ink stick into the little pool of liquid, turning it black. I selected another of the brushes, dipped the tip into the wet ink and swept it back and forth across the ink stone until it was coated with thick charcoal ink. As Master Goku had said, the brushes were well-used and most of the scrolls were already covered with faded kanji characters.

  No matter. My fresh black ink will show up over the faded gray, I thought as I began my first stroke. I knew Hana and I were lucky that Master Goku had provided for us when we could not provide for ourselves. I hoped that one day we would be able to repay his kindness.

  Beside me, Hana drew her brush downward in a graceful sweep, like water flowing over a smooth rock. At the end of the stroke, she lifted the tip of her brush clear of the paper, and then made another curving movement. As she covered her scroll in elegant kanji, I saw that her face looked tranquil for the first time since we had fled from the compound. She seemed at peace.

  In contrast to Hana’s writing, my own kanji seemed awkward and choppy. I could not find a rhythm, and as the black ink spread downward over the paper like the waves of a rough sea, I imagined my mother standing at my shoulder, shaking her head in disappointment.

  “Ah, Kimi, my dearest daughter,” she would say. “You are so much like your father. It is such a shame you do not apply the same focus to elegant writing as you do your sword skills.”

  For a moment, her presence seemed so strong that I imagined I could smell her cherry blossom perfume. But then I realized it was merely a hint of incense, carried in on a light breeze through the gap in the screens. My throat went tight and I blinked as I tried to concentrate on applying the correct pressure for each stroke of my kanji.

  Master Goku had begun to walk slowly around the room, stopping to correct the way a student held a brush or to give advice on the way characters should be spaced on the scrolls.

  “You may wonder why writing is so important to a samurai,” he said in his quiet, firm voice. “Of course, the importance of reading is obvious. How else can a man read the poems of the masters and gain greater understanding of the path a warrior must tread? And how else can a warrior follow instructions if he cannot read dispatches from his general who may be on the far side of a battlefield?” The Master paused by one of the gaps in the screens and gazed serenely around the room. “But writing…why is writing important? Perhaps one of our older students might enlighten the new boys?”

  One of Ken-ichi’s friends raised his hand and Master Goku smiled at him. “Please go ahead.”

  “We learned last year that writing promotes inner strength,” the boy said. “The literary arts are as important to samurai as martial arts.”

  “Indeed, that is so,” Master Goku said, folding his hands into the wide sleeves of his robe as he moved around the room once more. “Literary arts and martial arts are like the two wheels of a carriage. They keep everything in balance. Can you expand upon that theme, Ken-ichi?”

  “Yes, Sensei,” Ken-ichi responded. “You have taught us that creating beauty in our writing brings serenity and inner tranquillity, in much the same way as contemplation of a beautiful painting or a cleverly designed garden.”

  Master Goku smiled. “Well done, Ken-ichi. A serene mind will triumph over a troubled mind, just as composed movements will defeat erratic ones.”

  I bent my head over my work and tried to focus on my own inner tranquillity, covering my scroll in thick black strokes. Master Goku paused as he came to our table and watched Hana as she conjured a series of sweeping characters that reminded me of weeping willow trees.

  She glanced up at him when she had finished and he nodded. “Beautiful,” he said. “You write with grace and with a nobility that is rare in one of your status.”

  Hana lowered her gaze modestly, but my heart was beating slightly faster than before. Nobility…once again my sister and I were in danger of giving away our true status by our tiniest actions.

  I swallowed hard and twisted my wrist, making my next stroke even more awkward and harsh looking.

  Master Goku sighed when he came to inspect my progress. “Short strokes require quick and even pressure,” he said. “Try to imitate the curve of a swan’s neck….”

  As the Master moved away, I glanced up to see Kenichi smirking at me. “Just face the fact that you’re a peasant, rice boy, and peasants have no use for writing.”

  Master Goku suddenly loomed over Ken-ichi’s shoulder. “You could improve the refinement of your stroke if you concentrated more on yourself rather than those around you, Ken-ichi,” he said quietly.

  Ken-ichi flushed deep red. “Yes, Sensei.”

  I couldn’t help feeling a tiny dab of pleasure at his embarrassment. Master Goku gave him a stern look before moving on. We all bent our heads to our work, and for the remainder of the morning the lesson was conducted in near silence. The only sound was the sweep of sable brushes on paper.

  When Master Goku finally dismissed us, we all filed quietly past him, placing our scrolls onto his table. I was last in line. As I drew level with the Master, he reached out and took my scroll straight from my hand before I had time to put it with all the rest. Unfurling it, he studied the poem I had copied from one of the scrolls hanging on the wall at the back of the classroom.

  “Where did you learn to write, Kagenashi?” he asked.

  My mind raced as I considered the possibilities. Where would a peasant have learned to write? I glanced at Hana who was standing by the door. Her wide eyes showed her concern, but there was no way for her to help me.

  Master Goku, meanwhile, was waiting patiently for my answer.

  “In her youth, my grandmother lived with the servants of the Jito’s family,” I blurted at last. “She learned to write there. Sometimes when it was too cold to venture out, she would give lessons to my brother and me.”

  Hana nodded to confirm my story, and I could see that she was glad I had managed not to lie outright to our teacher. Grandmother had often given us extra writing lessons when the weather kept us from practicing outside, and she did live with the Jito’s servants, but not as one of them as I had implied.

  “Then your grandmother was a skilled tutor. The characters she taught you have great refinement.” Master Goku looked up at Hana and me. I could not read the expression in his eyes. “Long ago, I taught a student who formed his kanji in much the same way as you do,” he continued. “Firm pressure on the downstrokes…a certain choppiness in the upward sweeps…the brush wielded as if it were a sword…”

  His next words sent my heart fluttering. “If someone else had brought me this scroll,” he said quietly, “and they did not tell me where it had come from, I would have said that this writing came from the brush of the great Jito himself, Lord Steward Yoshijiro.”

  I stared in horror at the Master. Had he guessed our secret?

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “My grandmother would be honored to hear you say such a thing,” I said, trying to keep my voice level.

  “I would like to meet your grandmother one day,” Master Goku said.

  “Alas, Sensei, she is dead,” I told him. “Two winters ago, a sickness came and took many souls, including my grandmother’s.” I remembered the sad day of Grandmother’s funeral so well. The weather had been bitterly cold and an icy wind seemed to freeze our tears. That was the only time I ever saw my father cry.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” Master Goku gently placed my scroll with all the others. “I feel she and I would have had much to talk about. She must have known the Jito when he was a young man, as I did.”

  “Y-you knew the Jito?” I asked, pretending ignorance.

  “Lord Yoshijiro studied here many years ago,” Master Goku said. “He was a remarkable student. Very skilled. Born to be a
warrior and a leader of men.”

  My heart twisted as I thought of my father, the way I had seen him last, with crimson blood staining his yellow robes. Had that really happened only two days ago?

  It was on the tip of my tongue to blurt out the truth. I wanted to tell Master Goku everything—about Uncle, and the massacre, and the way Hana and I had run away…

  But before I could speak, a man in leather armor appeared in the doorway behind Hana. He was dusty from the road, and I guessed that this must be the messenger that Master Goku had sent to our compound last night.

  “So sorry to disturb you, Master,” the messenger said in a gruff voice. “I have urgent news and thought you would wish to hear it immediately on my return.”

  My heart began to race. Was he bringing Master Goku news about Uncle, and about Father’s death?

  Master Goku quickly dismissed Hana and me and drew the messenger into the scroll room.

  Just before we left the room, I saw the messenger hand him a crumpled scroll. Hana and I stopped just outside the door to listen.

  “I could not deliver the message you sent to the Jito yesterday, Master,” the messenger said. “The gates to the compound were heavily guarded by samurai who would not let me in. I refused to leave, and noticed that no servants were coming in and out. Something sinister has happened, Master. I am certain of it.”

  We had to move on because a pair of young masters came down the hall toward us, but we had heard enough. Hana and I stared at each other. Master Goku would know that something was wrong—it was unthinkable for his messenger to be refused an audience with the Jito. An insult!

  We made our way back toward the kitchens, cutting through the rock garden where gray stones and boulders had been carefully placed on a bed of finely raked gravel.

  “Uncle is already insulting his subjects and arousing their suspicions,” Hana whispered as we crunched along the pathway. “Why hasn’t he revealed his treachery? Why isn’t he telling anyone that he is the new Jito?”

  “I’m certain he won’t wait long. He must be gathering strength and consolidating his power,” I said. “When he finally makes his announcement, he will want to be sure that no one doubts his authority.”

  Hana turned to me and touched my hand. “No matter what, sister, we must keep our heads down and carry on being servant boys.”

  I nodded.

  Choji was waiting for us in the kitchen doorway. “Ah, skinny boys!” he boomed. “You’ve returned to me at last. Come along. Hurry! Hurry!”

  He gestured for us to go past him into the kitchen, where Ko was stirring a huge vat of rice, his face red from the steam. Another servant was on his knees by a low brazier, turning pieces of fish with a long-handled fork.

  “It’s time to prepare lunch,” Choji said.

  Hana and I had no more time to think about Uncle and his plans, because laid out on the table ready for us were several enormous piles of vegetables that tottered almost as high as our heads: brown ginger root, white cabbages, pickled green cucumbers, red-brown lotus roots, and giant daikon radishes.

  I guessed the vegetables had been placed there for us to peel and chop but Hana and I were both apprehensive—we had never prepared food before. At home, delicious meals had just appeared from the kitchens as if by magic. But, as with the tea and cleaning duties, we would simply have to improvise. Quickly we grabbed a pair of knives from the table and began to work on the cabbages, chopping them into tiny pieces which we tossed into a shallow lacquered dish.

  “No, no, skinny boys!” Choji exclaimed when he saw what we were doing. “Not like that! Your heads are so full of Master Goku’s teachings that you’re ruining my lovely cabbages!” He seized a knife and showed us how to slice. “Like this,” he instructed. “Coarse and thick. For texture in the food. If you must shred something, shred the ginger so that the full flavor will come out in the cooking.”

  Once we were chopping and shredding to his satisfaction, he left us to work alone. Sounds drifted in through a nearby open screen—the quiet strumming of a koto harp, students calling encouragement to one another as they sparred in the practice hall, the clash of bokken in one of the courtyards. My heart yearned to be out there with them, learning, moving forward on the pathway to becoming a warrior….

  I saw Hana looking out of the screen opening. “I wish we could be out there now,” I murmured to her, and she nodded.

  I wanted to be learning how to send an arrow winging toward a target as accurately as Tatsuya had done. Or practicing our kata until we could move with the same grace and deadly speed as our cousin Ken-ichi. We had to hone our skills to protect our family, to avenge our father!

  I was so distracted that my vegetable peeling was clumsy and slow. But the short blades of Choji’s vegetable knives were razor sharp and gradually my hands began to move faster.

  And suddenly I had an idea. I turned to Hana and grinned.

  When I had her attention I flipped my knife up in the air, caught it deftly, and held it like the tanto dagger that samurai warriors used for close-quarter fighting. Firmly grasping a long white radish, I slashed swiftly through the fat vegetable, imagining that it was an enemy’s exposed throat. Then I pared it into a hundred pieces, my fingers moving so fast they were a blur.

  “We can train,” I whispered to Hana. “Here and now, in the kitchen.”

  Hana caught on quickly, seizing another radish and holding it out as if it were a sword. I lunged and sliced off the end of the radish, dancing forward to catch the severed end in my fist before it hit the ground. Blade flashing, I whittled the radish all the way up to within a hairsbreadth of Hana’s hand, grabbed the remainder, tossed it into the air, and impaled it as it fell.

  With a gentle smile, Hana picked up a blade of her own and soon all the radishes lay slaughtered on the table. We practiced the footwork that Father had taught us, shuffling and sliding, turning in half-circles as we moved back and forth between the bowls of vegetables. In the same way, we quartered the pickled cucumbers and made matchsticks from the lotus roots while Ko stared at us in astonishment from the other side of the kitchen.

  Choji caught sight of us. He watched for a moment, and then shook his head. “Crazy boys,” he tutted, but there was a good-humored sparkle in his eyes. “If you weren’t so fast, I’d have to complain to the Master about you….” Then he said, “I’m looking forward to teaching you in my class later.”

  I glanced at Hana in surprise, and Choji nodded. “Yes, indeed. After the midday meal I take the servants to the small courtyard for their daily weapons training. Master Goku insists that everyone in his school train to the highest standards in the martial arts, including the servants.”

  Bursting with excitement, Hana and I raced through the rest of the vegetables and hurried to help Ko carry bowls of rice and fish to the eating hall, where the students chattered loudly throughout lunch. We cleared everything away afterward, gulped down our own food, and then scoured the dishes and bowls with sand and vinegar until they shone.

  “You need to change into a short-sleeved kimono,” Ko told us when we’d finished our work. “And bring your swords!”

  Hana and I hurried to our room and changed. We met up with Ko on the walkway outside and at last all three of us scurried to the small courtyard, along with the nine other household servants. Choji was waiting for us, a row of tall naginata spears propped against a rock beside him.

  I felt a thrill of excitement at the thought of taking one of those elegant weapons in my hand again. I knew how to handle a naginata—

  Suddenly I remembered that a poor farmboy would never have even held such a weapon, let alone used one! They were used by foot soldiers and even by horsemen but a shorter version had become a woman’s weapon, used to defend her home when her samurai husband was on the battlefield. All the women in my father’s household had been well trained in the naginata. Hana and I would have to hold back, or we might give ourselves away.

  I shot my sister a warning glance and s
he nodded as if she had been thinking the same thing.

  The head servant smiled as we all took our places, kneeling on the ground before him.

  “You have probably not trained with one of these before,” Choji said, and I tried to feign the same ignorance and curiosity as Ko. “The naginata is a versatile weapon, part spear and part cudgel.”

  He picked up one of the naginata and weighed it expertly in one hand before propping it in front of him. Its black wooden shaft and long blade gleamed. “Women in the home will often use it, because they can keep any intruders at arm’s length. And not so long ago the sohei warrior monks used it to beat, slash, and stab their enemies into submission. There are tales of great battles, where warriors would swing their naginata and slay ten or twelve opponents at a time!”

  Choji demonstrated different hand grips but then, without warning, he launched into a sudden and breathtaking attack upon an imaginary enemy, swinging the weapon over his left arm and stabbing backward.

  Knees bent, brows twisted in a frown, he leaped sideways and turned around as if to meet a second enemy head-on. The long curving blade, which rose from the tip of his naginata, sparkled in the afternoon sunshine. He dispatched his foe and sprang around to meet yet another.

  The weapon became an extension of his arms, whirling like a waterwheel, slashing at imagined limbs and slicing off invisible heads. When he came to a standstill, his powerful chest was heaving.

  “Now it’s your turn,” he said. “Choose your weapons according to your height. Your naginata should be at least an arm’s length taller than you are.”

  I leaped to my feet, Hana at my heels, and we both hurried to select naginata. Choji positioned us so that we were all standing in a row, strung out across the courtyard with a space the length of a naginata shaft between each of us. “We don’t want any collisions,” he explained gruffly. “No severed limbs, please, because there’s work to do this afternoon!”