Barefoot on the Wind

by Zoe Marriott

  Before any more of the mystery could be unravelled between us, there was a knock at the door. Kaede’s head poked in. She looked at us warmly for the length of a smile, and then, as one who briskly ties up her sleeves before undertaking an unpleasant but necessary task, she pulled on her familiar grumpy expression.

  “No more time to gossip, I’m afraid,” she said. “The elders are outside – the whole village is outside – demanding to be told if Hana-san is really back, if Ichiro-san is really awake, if the curse is finally broken. And most likely if the sky is blue as well.”

  I sagged in place, holding in a groan.

  Of course. Hana-san had marched off into the forest to kill the beast, break the curse, and save her father, had she not? And now, against all expectations, Hana-san was back, and alive, and her father was indeed saved.

  They thought I had done it. They thought the curse was broken and that Itsuki – the beast – was dead. They thought they were free at last.

  Nothing could have been further from the truth.

  I looked down at my neatly folded knees, clad in the shimmering cloth that Itsuki had woven, and felt the last of my strength drain away. I was tired. So very tired. I had not eaten a morsel all day, and I now noticed that my mouth was parched with thirst, too. Every part of my body that did not ache with exhaustion throbbed with still healing scars, or previously ignored bruises, or hunger, or sheer cussedness.

  The last thing in the world that I wanted was to have to face the villagers, and the elders, and explain to them that, despite my miraculous return, the mountain still lay as deeply under its enchantment as ever. They would not want to hear such news. But they would expect to hear my story, just as my mother did. How … how could I tell even a fraction of what I had seen, and learned, and done? Of what lay beyond the bounds of the Dark Wood? The terrible things and the beautiful, the truth of the beast, and the maze, the Yuki-Onna – and the poor dead remnants that served her?

  The thought of even trying made me feel ill.

  All I really wanted right now was … to eat a bowl of Itsuki’s delicious vegetable noodles, and drink some of his mock-tea. To listen to the calm, deep rumble of his voice. To lay myself down on the other side of the fire with the solid bulk of his body comfortingly close by. I wanted to sleep for a hundred years like that, safe and watched over and … and cherished.

  But none of that, not the least part of it, was within my grasp.

  My breath hitched, and I bore down on my emotions, squeezing my eyes shut.

  “Hana…” my father said softly.

  “Can Mako-san not turn them away?” my mother asked with an abruptness that was not at all characteristic of her. “We’re all so tired – Hana most of all – and she has only just returned to us. Surely they could wait until tomorrow!”

  “Mako-san left me a week ago,” the healer said with a humph, and I heard her footsteps as she came fully into the room and approached us. “Finally decided to marry that charcoal-maker on the other side of the river. Waste of all my training, and a fine pair of steady hands. No, no, I didn’t expect you to notice, not as things were at the time. But if she were still here, even she couldn’t put these fools off. One or two are threatening to take my door from its hinges and come in to speak to you themselves, and the rest of the elders aren’t saying much to dissuade them. It’ll probably avoid a lot of fuss if you just come out yourself and answer a few questions before they riot, my girl.”

  I raised a hand to my forehead and rubbed, as if I could wipe away the hard band of tension that encircled my temples. “I… Very well. Can we roll the screens back, in here? I don’t want to have to—”

  “Go out and stand among the whole lot of them? Of course. It’s a good idea. They’re used to me shouting at them from the porch anyway.”

  “Listen to me,” my father said, claiming my attention. “You don’t owe anyone apologies or explanations. Say only what you wish to say, and dismiss them. They have no more right to command you than – than—”

  “Than a dog has to command the Moon Prince,” my mother finished. Then she pulled a face. “But do try to be polite, Hana.”

  “When we’ve got rid of them, you can eat something, and then rest here for the night,” Kaede said encouragingly. “I’ve just finished making my famous soup dumplings. You’ll like those, I promise.”

  This was offered rather in the tone of someone calming a toddler’s tantrums with treats, I thought wanly. I nodded in agreement and tried to compose myself.

  Together, my mother and Kaede rolled back the paper screens and then one side of the wooden door that blocked the great room of the healer’s house from the covered front porch. The noise of the crowd gathered outside swiftly filled the quiet space, and surged up still more when they realized that this door and not the front one was inching open. I heard everyone rushing around to try to get the best place, and had the impression of feral creatures baying for scraps.

  You’re only tired, I admonished myself. Get this over with and you can rest, as Kaede said.

  With a quiet groan I got up – my father awkwardly patted my ankle – and went to stand at the healer’s side by the open door. My mother backed up a step but stayed behind me, as if to offer support. My father’s place on the other side of the room was still hidden, and I was sure he was grateful. I wished I could hide there with him. Dusk was deepening, and a few torches flared orange here and there among the gathered villagers, but that only seemed to intensify the dimness everywhere else. Most of the light was coming from the lit lamps of the healer’s house itself, which meant that I was bathed in it. I must be shining in their gaze, while they seemed like a restlessly shifting, anonymous mass, the half-hidden shadows of people I knew in the daylight.

  “Hana-san is worn out,” Kaede said severely to the crowd. “So you’ll take it as a favour that she’s come out to answer your questions, and not keep her standing here too long.”

  “Where have you been?” someone unfamiliar shouted.

  “Did you see my little girl?” a woman asked in a high, quavering voice. It was Misaki – the beautiful, laughing weaver’s daughter, upon whom Kyo had had such a crush – whose five-year-old daughter had vanished just this past winter. The child was the youngest the village had ever lost.

  No one had heard Misaki laugh since.

  As I cringed at the thought of the fate which must have befallen the little girl, the first voice bellowed again: “How did you find your way back?”

  “Now, now, that’s enough!” One of the torches shifted forwards to the edge of Kaede’s porch, and I could make out the faces of the elders, Yuu, Hirohito and Hayate clustered around it, with Yuu’s gawky grandson holding it up.

  “Don’t bark questions at the girl, don’t overwhelm her, you heard what Kaede-sensei said,” Hayate went on, but even as he spoke, he directed an anxious look at me.

  As soon as he was finished, Yuu blurted out: “Is it really … her? Not some demon or yokai, come back to taunt us?”

  The sensei let out a long and dramatic sigh. “She is as real as she ever was, and as human as you or me. And you should be ashamed of yourself for asking, Yuu-san. Do you think I would let a demon into my house?”

  This could go on all night, I realized, as Kaede continued to bicker with the other elders. Gathering up what fortitude I still had – and the idea of enduring this for a single breath longer than I must was enough to remind me that one always had a little fortitude left, if there was the right incentive to dig it out – I edged forwards and raised my hand. The elders broke off their fight abruptly, and the mumbling, shuffling crowd grew quieter and more still.

  “I am the same girl who left here nearly four weeks ago,” I said. My voice sounded as thin and done-in as I felt. “I have been into the Dark Wood, and there I saw … many awful and astonishing things. My return came about through a combination of luck, and stubbornness, and the – the contrary nature of the creature who holds the Dark Wood in her thrall.”

>   “What of the beast, then? What of the monster?”

  “Yes – did you kill it, Hana-san? Is it dead?”

  “No,” I shot back. “It was not in my power to kill it – nor anyone else’s power, either. The beast cannot be killed.”

  “But your father is awake. The curse must be broken!”

  “No,” I repeated, more gently this time. “I could not do that, either. The enchantment on the mountain is as strong and dark as it ever was.”

  A low moan of denial, despair and disbelief, and a sharp faint edge of anger, ran through the crowd. Someone – Misaki, probably – burst into tears, and was hushed.

  “Then what good did you do by running away?” a new voice demanded, and I looked down almost directly into the face of Shouta. His brows were drawn together and his mouth was a tight, resentful line. “If all you accomplished was to disappear for a month and leave us to mourn you for dead, and then come back dressed like a painted—” One of Shouta’s brothers, who stood just behind him, gave him a powerful shove, and Shouta broke off, looking chastened for a moment. But then he shook his head angrily and finished, “Why go at all if you were to come back having changed nothing? What good did you do us, Hana-san?”

  In the course of my life I have felt many strong emotions, some so deeply that I feared they would rip me apart. But never in all my years had I experienced such an incandescent, all-consuming rage as boiled up inside me then.

  My heart thundered against my ribs until I thought it should crack them, my nails curled into my palms with enough force that they cut the skin, and when I opened my mouth, the words rolled out like a female version of Itsuki’s ferocious roar.

  “What good did I do? What good? The only good I sought! I did not walk into the Dark Wood at the dark of the Moon, alone, with a bow in one hand and a wood hatchet in the other, for any of your sakes – I did it because it was my father’s only hope and none of you had spine enough for the job.”

  Shouta leaned backwards as if the force of my response was a strong wind blowing in his face, and the ranks of others behind him shuffled uneasily.

  “Don’t take offence,” Shouta’s brother said, stepping in front of Shouta as if to shield him from my wrath. “He didn’t mean it that way.”

  “I know exactly what Shouta-san meant,” I snarled.

  “Come, young lady, this is pettiness,” Hirohito quickly interrupted. “There’s no need to point fingers or rake up the past—”

  “You are the ones who threatened to break the healer’s door down if I did not come out here and let you rake up the past. You! And now you stand here before me with whining and complaints, and imply that I have failed you? That I would have done better to have stayed home instead – as Shouta-san did – as all the strong men of this village did when we needed your help? Because I didn’t do you any good?”

  With a rough jerk I dragged Itsuki’s shining kimono down my arms, letting the top part sag over the sash, and shrugged the pale nagajuban off over my right shoulder, pulling it as low as I could without exposing my breast. An audible gasp of shock ran through the crowd as they saw the deep livid pink scars carving the flesh of my shoulder and arm.

  “Yes, I walked into the forest, yes, I fought the beast – and, yes, I survived. You who would judge me may do the same. Take up your spears! Take up your scythes and bows! Do as I did. The Dark Wood awaits you. If you return in one piece, then you will have earned the right to question and criticize me. But until that day comes, I will tell you now that I do not answer to you, or to anyone here. Do you understand?”

  There was a long, hushed silence, and not a living thing within the valley seemed to dare even to breathe. And then, one by one, the people of my village – even the elders, and Kaede herself – bowed down to me, the deep, wordless bow of respect.

  My mother sighed. “Perhaps asking for politeness was too much…”

  Twenty

  I half feared, half hoped to dream that night, as I curled up on the spare futon Kaede had rolled out for me beside my parents. My time in the maze had been characterized by vivid, barely understood nightmares: memories fighting to break free of the strange barrier that my mind had imposed to protect my sanity. The barrier was gone now, and all my memories were free to roam through my dreaming mind at will. I had seen much that was worthy of dreams, and even more that was the stuff of nightmares. Nor had I forgotten that peculiar – almost prescient – dream which I had the night before I went into the Dark Wood, even if I could not now truly convince myself that I had seen my father looking at me with Itsuki’s eyes, and talking to me with his voice. I was no seer.

  Both hope and fear were wasted. I was too exhausted for dreams, and slept so deeply that I believe I barely stirred the whole night through. When I woke it was not on account of my own bad dreams but my father’s.

  The muffled gasp – an unmistakable sound of panic – jerked me from slumber into a sitting position, with my hands raised before me in defence. I was disoriented and dizzy with the speed of waking, and my blurry gaze shot into every corner of the shadow-shrouded room, seeking danger. There was no one there but me, and the long, thin shape in the futon that was rolled out next to mine. The shadows lay quietly, like soft shreds of grey silk edged with the warm gold of mid-morning light that crept in around the edges of the shutters and door. Outside I heard the usual noises of a small busy village at work. Dawn had come and gone. There was nothing to fear here.

  At last I turned to look again at where my parents had lain. Only Father was there now. My mother’s space beside him was empty, blankets smoothed carefully down. My father’s eyes were open, and when they caught mine, he made a calming gesture.

  “Your mother is well. She woke a little after sunrise and could not sleep again, so she went back to the house to throw open the shutters and stoke up the fires and do all the other things she worries about. The sensei said I should let you sleep and try to sleep myself. I seem to have failed on both those counts.”

  “Oh.” I sighed, allowing myself to fall backwards onto the pillow again. It felt very soft and giving under my head. Too soft, after the pillow of moss I had grown used to. Just as the futon was different to a fur spread over packed dirt, and the crisp autumn chill that stole into the room with the light seemed to get in under my blankets in a way no chill had ever defeated my sleeping furs beside Itsuki’s fire.

  “I’m sorry that I woke you,” my father said.

  I turned my head sideways to find him watching my face intently. I wondered what my expression told him. “That’s all right. I was most likely ready to wake anyway – I’m not used to sleeping so late.”

  “I know.”

  The stilted exchange trailed off, but the awkwardness lingered in the air like pungent smoke. Perhaps I should pretend to sleep again. Then he might fall asleep in truth, and so rescue us both. Our happiness and ease with each other did not last very long, did it?

  “Hana,” my father said, and I worried for a second that he had somehow read my mind. But he went on, “I was dreaming. I dreamed of a maze of black thorns, and a maze of ice and ivory. I dreamed of a beast who fought and snarled within a cage made of the bones and faces of people I knew. And there was a white creature there that once might have been a woman, who laughed at the monster’s roars, and made it writhe with a twitch of her finger.”

  My eyes snapped open and I sat up hastily. “You still dream about what lies within the Dark Wood?”

  He nodded. “Some vestige of the enchantment must cling to me, even now. But I am grateful for that, because it means I know … something of what you have done, and where you have been. I think, although you may not be able to speak of those things yet, you do need someone who can understand. At least a little.”

  I swallowed thickly, and blinked fast, my shoulders easing as the sense of sitting beside a distant stranger faded away. Perhaps we did not know one another as well as a father and daughter should, but strangers … no.

  “You saw him. He
was in the form of a beast?” I asked, voice small.

  “Half a beast. Parts of him changed as the white woman laughed, and parts of him were still human. There were words in his cries.”

  I closed my eyes again. On my lap, my fingers curled, squeezing tight on nothing, and then uncurled to lie straight. I will be all right. I promise…

  “Hana—”

  “Father—”

  We both broke off. I nodded at him to continue first.

  “You have left the job half done,” he said, a faint smile quirking his lips. “Never could you bear that. Even as a child, you always had to see things through, complete what you had started. You are returning there, are you not? To finish the job.”

  I drew in a long breath. “The job I must finish is not to slay the monster, Father.”

  “No. You are going to save him.”

  My breath whistled out, and left me light-headed with relief. “You do understand.”

  “A little,” he repeated. “When will you go?”

  “Soon. Today, if I can.” I said it firmly. “You’ve seen what she is doing to him. It’s…” I shook my head. “Her vengeance brings her no peace. I believe it has driven her mad, warped her into something cruel and wicked. He has suffered enough for a hundred lifetimes, more than anyone but he could have endured, yet still she is not able to let go. They are like … like a lightning storm caught in a bottle, trapped in that place, with only their memories and their hurt, and each other. Someone has to stop it. Or it will go on forever. And we will all suffer with them.”

  He made no reply at first but gave me a glowing, watery eyed look, with a small smile tugging at his lips. It took me a moment to recognize the expression, for I had never seen it on his face before: pride, and the respect of one equal for another. It was a look that said, Daughter, you have honoured our house. It silenced me, and as he realized this the smile died away and he bowed his head.