Toko tried it just in case, but the vivid green light died quickly in her hand, leaving only a forlorn afterglow. “But why? Why should someone like Sugaru have more power than us?”
Returned to Sugaru, the magatama practically taunted the girls with its bright glow. Sugaru shrugged. “Don’t ask me. It’s no big deal anyway. It’s not like I can get anything for it just because it glows.”
“But it is important! We need that magatama,” Toko protested. “We need it for the Misumaru. We’ve no hope of defeating the bearer of the Sword without it.”
Sugaru scratched his head. “I don’t see what use a childbearing charm would be in a fight. What you’re really trying to say, though, is that you want my stone, right? If so, why don’t you just ask me?”
“All right then, I will. I want your stone,” Toko declared defiantly. “I’ll give you my sword for it. I’ll give you everything I’ve got, so please, give it to me.”
“No, Toko, that won’t work,” Kisako said. “Magatama only have power when they glow. Even if you take it, it will be as useless as the one from Mino that’s now in Mahoroba.”
Toko fell silent. “There’s no reason to look so gloomy,” Sugaru said with a smile. “There’s a very simple way to give you Midori and make it shine. All you have to do is bear me a son. Midori will glow all you want if you do that. Would you like to try it and see?”
Not surprisingly, Toko thought she had never heard anything so offensive in her life. She froze, and rage boiled up inside her. But rather than lashing out at him, she stalked off without uttering another word.
“Toko, wait!” Kisako hurried after her, stumbling in the dark. Sugaru was left on his own. In the light of the magatama, he looked a little remorseful. Now he would have to fix the door of the shrine all by himself.
SLEEPLESS, Toko lay listening to the birds chirping merrily as she stared at the ceiling in the faint dawn light. Finally, she heard movement in the main house. She opened the door a crack and saw the old man emerge and walk slowly across the frosted ground toward the forest. Glancing back into the room, she checked that Kisako was still breathing evenly, oblivious to the world. Toko dressed quietly so as not to wake her and then slipped outside.
It was not hard, she thought, to guess where Sugaru would be sleeping—in the room on the corner with the double doors closest to the gate. She was right. Peeking inside, she saw him sprawled facedown on the floor. After a moment’s hesitation, she let herself into the room and closed the doors.
“Sugaru,” she whispered, but he did not wake up. She shook him, but he still did not respond. Finally, she kicked him, at which point he opened his eyes to thin slits.
“Who’s there?”
“It’s me, Toko. I’m sorry about last night. I wanted to talk with you one more time.”
“Oh, Shorty, it’s you.” He groaned and rolled over. “You’re the only girl I know who would come to a man after daybreak. Leave me alone, will you? Why are you always in such a hurry?”
“Because there’s no time! Prince Ousu is already on his way to Himuka.”
“Ousu … I think I’ve heard that name before.”
“He’s the emperor’s son who killed his own brother, Prince Oh-usu, and razed Mino to the ground.”
“Ah, yes. Now I remember.” He struggled earnestly to make his sleep-fogged brain think. “I once knew a supporter of Prince Oh-usu. I heard he went to take revenge but never came back. I suppose he must’ve died.”
“It’s the Sword. Prince Ousu wields the cursed power of the Sword. He’s an abomination. That’s why I have to kill him. But the only way to defeat the Sword is to gather all the magatama. Please, Sugaru, help me.” Facing him, she knelt formally just as her mother used to do. “Only you can make your magatama shine,” she said. “I want you to go with me to Himuka. Come with me and become the warrior who bears the Misumaru.”
“Where did you say you were going?”
“Himuka.”
“You can’t be serious. You mean the land at the far western edge of Toyoashihara?”
“Yes, that one.”
“Not interested,” Sugaru said, closing his eyes. “I’m more worried about finding someone to take my magatama. I need to find a wife. You understand, don’t you? I’m the last of the headman’s line. I need to settle down and make my grandfather happy. Surely you can see that that’s much more important than becoming a warrior, right?”
Toko’s anger flared. Of all the times he could have chosen, why did he have to pick this one to say something so reasonable? “Why did you make all that fuss about getting your own boat then?” she demanded.
“That’s different. That’s a business venture. And besides, I’d be going to Koshi, which is in the opposite direction from Himuka.” Sugaru raised himself up on an elbow and peered into Toko’s face. Close up, she saw that his eyes, like his hair, were light in color—a clear amber. “Knock it off, squirt,” he said. “Give up this silly idea of going off to fight. It doesn’t suit you one bit. Why are you so wound up? I don’t want to hear you talk about killing anymore. Girls should be gentle. It won’t be long now before you’re a pretty woman yourself—”
“Sorry, but I’m never going to be a woman—at least not the type of woman that would appeal to you. So it doesn’t bother me at all to talk about killing. I’ll do it as often as I like.” She looked him straight in the eye. “Killing Prince Ousu is all I care about. It’s more important to me than me. Every night I think about killing him so that I won’t be distracted by what’s happening around me. Once I’ve destroyed him, then I can finally be myself again. Then I’ll finally have Oguna back—” Her voice caught and she bit her lip. She was surprised to feel her emotions surge so strongly inside, threatening to spill over.
“Who the heck is Oguna?” Sugaru asked. When Toko did not reply, he said, “Ah, I see. You’re in love with him.”
“I am not!” Toko shook her head.
“If you like someone, you should say so. You’d be surprised at how much better you’ll feel,” Sugaru admonished her.
But she could not tell him that Oguna was Prince Ousu; she could not say that the person she loved more than anyone in the world was also the person she hated most. Perhaps if she told him, Sugaru would agree to come with her, yet she did not have the words with which to explain. Instead, the tears Toko had held back for so long began to roll down her cheeks one by one.
“Oh, no, please, please don’t cry. I’m begging you,” Sugaru said, suddenly desperate. “You’ll ruin my whole day. I make women cry all the time, but I just can’t stand making kids cry. Please stop. Really, I’m sorry already!”
Evading the hand with which he tried to wipe away her tears, Toko asked one last time, “Won’t you please come to Himuka with me?”
Sugaru’s answer was gentle but firm. “No, little one. It’s more important for me to find a wife.”
TOKO spent the morning in a daze. She had not cried for a long time, and it made her head throb. Wanting to avoid Kisako’s questioning, she decided to go for a stroll and gloomily trudged through the village. Near the bridge, she passed a group of about ten girls without really noticing them, but they immediately surrounded her. Before she knew it, they had led her behind some trees along the riverbank and begun to interrogate her.
“So what’s your friend up to? The intruder wife?”
“Intruder wife?” The expression was not in Toko’s vocabulary.
“That’s right. We heard she came to the bead-makers’ village chasing Sugaru. Everyone knows the two of you met him at the market, and the rumor that you’re here has spread. We’ve come to speak for all the maidens in this area.”
“Yeah. Why should we put up with outsiders like you when Sugaru belongs to us? You’re not playing fair.”
Four or five others chimed in simultaneously so that Toko could no longer make out what they were saying. “Hold on a minute. Stop talking all at once!” she shouted. When they had settled down, she said, “So what
you’re trying to tell me is this. You’re worried because Sugaru is paying attention to Kisako. She’s beautiful so you’re afraid that he might marry her. Right? Well, in that case, you’ve nothing to worry about. Kisako’s a shrine maiden. She’ll never get married because she’s dedicated her life to the gods.”
“That doesn’t prove anything. She could change her mind at any time. It certainly doesn’t give her the right to go and live in his house, to make herself indispensable to him and trick him into marrying her!”
It’s such a pain talking to people who don’t know anything about shrine maidens, Toko thought. “Well then,” she said in exasperation, “if you’re that worried about her stealing Sugaru away from you, why doesn’t one of you hurry up and marry him yourself? All he thinks about is getting married.”
The first girl answered for all of them. “Sugaru has vowed to marry only the most beautiful woman in all of Toyoashihara. We know our place. None of us expects to marry him. It’s enough that he’s nice to us. But we will never, ever recognize your companion as the most beautiful woman in Toyoashihara. If that’s her intention, then we’ll do everything in our power to stop her.”
Toko saw no point in arguing with them over something so ridiculous. “Personally, I think you should be talking to Sugaru, not me,” she said.
“We don’t need you to tell us that. That’s why we’re here. We came looking for Sugaru.” They stomped off, raising a cloud of dust behind them. Toko shrugged and walked back to Sugaru’s house, keeping an eye out for any roving bands of angry girls like them.
When she returned, she found Kisako sitting in their room looking very grumpy. “Did a group of village girls come here?” Toko asked.
“No,” Kisako answered coldly. “What’re you talking about?” She seemed so sensitive. Toko wondered if she was getting her period again. An uncomfortable silence ensued for some time before Kisako finally broke it.
“Toko,” she said. “You’ve been so weird all morning, almost as if you’re trying to avoid me. I really needed your advice, but how can I even talk to you when you’re like that? You abandoned me at the time when I needed you most.”
“I’m sorry,” Toko said, feeling slightly guilty. “I just needed to clear my head. I was thinking about what happened last night.”
“I was thinking about last night too. Over and over. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Toko—” Kisako hesitated for a moment. “I’ve realized that I can never become the high priestess. You saw that magatama, didn’t you? Izumo has its own magatama, one that is passed on in its own way. No matter how much training I might have had as a priestess, it would have been impossible for me to make it shine. When I saw you tell Princess Toyoao that you were going to find the Misumaru, I realized that I can’t do this anymore. I don’t want to travel any farther. Please understand. I need a place where I can have peace and quiet, a place to settle down.”
Toko’s mouth went dry as she struggled to digest what Kisako was saying. “But I want to settle down and live an ordinary life too.”
“No, you’re different, Toko. You’re ready to fly off at any moment. I can’t. Just getting to Izumo was hard enough for me. If I’m going to stay here, then I’ll have to follow their customs. I plan to learn from them.”
“You mean you’re going to give up becoming a priestess? That’s what you’re trying to tell me?” Toko leaned in close to Kisako and asked her timidly, “You’re not planning to get Sugaru to give you the magatama, are you? You’re not really thinking of doing what he said?”
Kisako’s cheeks flushed crimson, but she forged on. “This isn’t about the magatama … or, actually, maybe it’s the same thing. I’ve decided to return to the first duty that was given to me—the duty to carry on the Mino line. The blood of the Tachibana of Mino and Izumo has grown very thin, but if the two were joined together, we might be able to change the flow of fate.”
Toko looked at her beautiful cousin more closely than ever before. They were the same age, yet they lived in completely different worlds. Never before had she been so aware of the huge gap between them. What about me? she wanted to protest, but she bit back the words, knowing they would be unfair. Kisako, she felt, was right—at least in her method of trying to obtain Sugaru’s magatama. If the bearer of the magatama wanted that too, then what could be better?
“If that’s really what you want to do, why don’t you?” Toko said, thinking ruefully that if the girls she had met earlier could hear her now, they would rip her to pieces. But what else could she say?
Kisako’s face brightened, and she beamed at Toko. “So you’re not going to try to stop me? I’m so glad. I wanted to talk to you about it first. It wouldn’t have felt right otherwise.”
“There’s nothing wrong with what you’re doing. You’re you. You should do what’s best for you.” Toko smiled, concealing the sinking feeling in her heart. But Kisako’s next statement was a far harder blow from which to recover.
“So, then, you understand … um … about tonight. Let’s sleep in separate rooms, all right?”
“WHAT’S UP? You seem pretty down.” Toko was wandering aimlessly at dusk when someone called out to her. Turning around, she saw five or six of Sugaru’s friends. Sugaru was not with them.
“Sugaru’s busy trying to hide from some pretty scary women,” one of his friends said. “It’ll be interesting to see if he makes it home in one piece tonight. Mind you, he’s reaping what he sowed.”
One of the others looked at Toko with avid curiosity. “Did you really ask Sugaru to go to the western end of the country with you?” he said.
Honestly, Toko thought, Sugaru’s such a chatterbox. But she did not have the energy left to lie. “Yes, I did,” she said. “He turned me down flat though.”
“Really? He was wondering what to do all morning. And after that, well, he was rather preoccupied.”
“Are you serious?” Toko said in surprise. “He told me twice that finding a wife was more important.”
The young man laughed. “He always says that. Don’t give up. I’ve placed my bet on you. We’ve got a little fortune riding on whether or not Sugaru decides to go with you.”
These guys never learn, Toko thought. “If you don’t want to lose, you’d better change your bet. Sugaru’s certain to do what he says this time. Kisako has decided she’s willing to give up being a shrine maiden.”
The young men looked at each other. “Well, that certainly changes things.”
“But the other girls will put up a fight.”
The only one who remained unmoved was the one who claimed to have bet on Toko. He looked at her confidently and said, “I stand by my prediction. Do you know why Sugaru is so famous in Izumo? Although there’s no one stronger when it comes to fighting or women, when it comes to kids or the elderly, there’s no one softer. Just you wait and see.”
DESPITE THIS ENCOURAGEMENT, Toko still could not believe him. Every time she recalled that last conversation with Sugaru, her conviction that he would choose Kisako only grew. She had to admit that Kisako was the more attractive option. She had so much to offer, whereas all Toko could do was beg for help. Pursuing Prince Ousu may be my first priority, but that doesn’t mean anyone else feels the same way. Why should they? The world doesn’t revolve around me.
Although it was hard to accept defeat, doing so let Toko start thinking of an alternative solution. With her usual good grace, she channeled her despair into planning her next course of action. Regardless of what others chose, she could still go looking for the magatama. No matter how long it might take or how hard the road might be, she could still pursue the bearer of the Sword. If that was what she wanted to do, then she could go by herself. She had started this journey of her own free will, not because anyone had made her, so she could choose to carry on.
And at least I’ve found one of the magatama. I’ll just have to be content with that instead of being upset that I can’t take it with me. The first step is to get to Himuka as fast
as I can. The rest will work out somehow.
Feeling better, she decided to head back and get some sleep. She had not slept the night before, and she would need all her strength to set off on this new journey.
Toko woke again in the dead of night and stepped outside. It was almost the same time as she and Kisako had gone out the night before. Though not as cold, Toko felt the darkness much more keenly. The black forms of the house and forest seemed cold and distant. Taking a step forward, she forced herself to cheer up and focus on getting to the coastal road.
“So you were planning to leave without even saying goodbye, were you?”
Toko jumped and whirled around to find Kisako standing behind her. “What are you doing here?”
Kisako walked up to her. “If you’re leaving, then I’m leaving too. I don’t want to stay in this house any longer,” she said.
“What happened? I thought you were planning to—”
“If you mean Sugaru, I hit him. Three times. Once across each cheek and once more for good measure. He had the nerve to tell me that I’m one of five.” Toko stared at her, utterly bewildered. “He meant I was one of five candidates for his bride. How humiliating! I’ll never forgive him. I’ve decided to become a shrine maiden after all. Why should I bother marrying anyone? I was foolish to let my feelings waver.” As Toko remained rooted to the spot, dumbstruck, Kisako said, “Come on. Let’s go.”
“Are you sure, Kisako? You said that you didn’t want to travel anymore, remember? I’m going to Himuka, and after that I don’t know where I’ll have to go. And you haven’t prepared for the journey.”
“That’s all right. I just want to leave this village. I’ll find a place to live in Izumo. I can do that myself. I think.” She looked at Toko in the starlight and smiled. “It’ll be much easier than what you’ve decided to do—going to Himuka all by yourself. You’re so strong … I’ve decided not to be dependent anymore. I’m going to take care of myself.”
“Are you really sure, Kisako?”
Mirror Sword and Shadow Prince Page 23
