by Fuyumi Ono
Gankyuu chuckled. “It looks that way to you too?”
“What if I went to that place and called for help?”
“Stop it. You’re more likely to end up dead than get anybody to listen to you.”
“Then I’ll help you get close enough. I promise never to say a word about it to anybody. What is that place?”
Gankyuu lay down and watched the sky brightening above the ledge of rock. “What did you come to the Yellow Sea to accomplish?”
“To become the next empress.”
“So be on your way. I’ll manage somehow.”
“As close as that place may be, you still need a shoulder to lean on, even my small shoulders.” She tilted her head to the side. “If I was a koushu, there’d be no problem with us going there together, right?”
“If you had any idea what it meant to become a koushu in the first place.”
Shushou sighed. “Do you know how insulting that is? It really ticks me off.”
“Huh?”
“You’re saying that a child like me has no clue about the hardships the koushu have to put up with.”
“And do you?”
“I can forgive you for making fun of me because I’m a child. I can forgive you for pointing out that I know relatively little about the Yellow Sea. But I can’t forgive you for insisting that I simply don’t understand how the big world works!”
“And do you?” Gankyuu jested.
The furious child glared back at him. “I have eyes, don’t I? And ears? Don’t you believe there are many things in the world that can be grasped if you only watch closely and listen carefully?”
“Are you claiming to have acquaintances among the koushu?”
“My family are wealthy merchants, well known even in Renshou.”
‘‘I guess that makes you a genuine princess, eh? Not surprised.”
“Stop talking to me like that!”
Gankyuu held up his hand. “Keep it down, please.”
“Then stop saying such insulting things! Anyway, we’re wealthy enough to afford a large staff of live-in servants.”
Gankyuu gazed at Shushou’s flushed face.
“I wore silk kimono and attended the prefectural academy. My servant Keika wore a cotton kimono that was always dirty. I have no problem imagining what it means to work from sun-up to sun-down. Coming on this journey taught me that my imagination wasn’t far off.”
Two girls the same age, one living a life clothed in silk, the other living a life just to serve her.
“The live-in servants are itinerants too. They left the place where their family records are registered, lost their land and their vocations and their homes. With nobody to turn to or depend upon, they have to indenture themselves in order to eat. Their employers take care of the basic necessities but they can’t do a thing without a by-your-leave. My professors taught me that it’s illegal to buy and sell people, to own slaves. Live-in servants may not be called slaves but that’s what they are.”
Gankyuu’s attention didn’t waver.
“People see these refugees and itinerants—who can’t even put food on the table—and hire them because they feel sorry for them. The servants in turn repay that kindness by working for them the remainder of their days. That’s the polite fiction we all tell ourselves. Both parties know when they’re hired they’ll have a status little different than that of a slave.”
“I see.”
“In exchange for indenturing themselves, live-in servants give up their passports. Did you know that?”
Gankyuu nodded. A passport was issued by the government office in the prefecture where a person legally resided and was the sole means of vouching for his identity. If he did not occupy his house and land for a period of seven years, he was declared legally dead and the land was confiscated. But by producing a passport, he could return home and file a claim for compensation. At the bare minimum, he could appeal to the prefectural government for support.
The majority of refugees gave up their passports for reasons that came down to trading uncertainty for security or peace of mind, as in the case of child sold to a koushu guild master. As a result, refugees were also known as “undocumented.”
“Giving up a passport is essentially a pledge not to run away. When a parent becomes a live-in servant, so do his children. They go to work when they are still young. They won’t attend school, and if they have a passport, it will be confiscated. When they become adults, they won’t be registered on the census and won’t receive a homestead, making it difficult to pursue an independent life. They can’t get married and can’t have children. Their only hope for a reward comes from working for their master. And because the master doesn’t want them saving money and running away, he won’t pay them in cash, only in kind, and the bare necessities at that. When they grow old, because they are not registered on the census, they cannot retire to a rike. They’ll work until the day they die and get buried in a potter’s field.”
Gankyuu silently nodded.
“Keika won’t be free until my father dies. Even when he dies, if my mother is still alive, she will inherit the live-in servants along with the rest of the property. Keika will remain a live-in servant until my mother dies and no one is left to inherit and the household is forfeited to the kingdom.”
“Except such forfeitures hardly ever happen.”
“That’s right. Under the guise of compensation, my father will distribute the assets of the household and company to my eldest brother. When my father dies, in the eyes of the law, he will be a penniless old man living off the charity of his children. There will be no estate—or servants—left to forfeit, it having been divvied up among the children.”
Gankyuu nodded again.
“I can’t claim any koushu as my close acquaintances. But being raised by servants meant being raised by refugees. I always thought it strange that I should be given such beautiful silk while Keika was not. Why couldn’t Keika and I eat the same meal at the same table? And how was it that our meals, prepared in the same kitchen, were so very different? Why couldn’t Keika live in the main wing of the house with me? Even though I’ve never been a refugee or itinerant, nobody can tell me I don’t understand their lot in life.”
“Of course.”
“Though I don’t get the koushu to that extent, I understand that instead of trading their freedom for the safe and secure jail cell of a family estate, the koushu choose to live free in the Yellow Sea. Servants and koushu start out refugees. On the one hand, there are those who grovel to the master of the house, trying to shed the stigma of a refugee and rise in respectable society. On the other, there are those who shed respectability and take on the name of koushu no tami. As for me, I’d take that red passport over the patronage of any lord of the manor.”
“But you are going to Mt. Hou in order to become empress.”
“That I am. That’s why I’m here. But if I can’t be empress then becoming a koushu is good too. You know, there’s nothing wrong with being a shushi either.”
“So empress on one side of the scale and koushu on the other.”
“What’s the problem with that? Don’t you know? Emperors and empresses don’t have census records either.”
Gankyuu grinned. “Koushu like me don’t need either.”
Gankyuu was born in Ryuu. Driven out of the kingdom by civil strife, his parents were stricken from the census records. They relocated to En, except that the Kingdom of En existed for the people of En and the refugees were left to observe the lives of its blessed subjects while sleeping at the side of the road. They could hope for no land or children of their own. As vagrants, they were cut off every aspect of society.
“The emperor can do nothing for us. On the other hand, if there is no land to be had, no place to call our own, then we have no need of an emperor. And if Kyou goes to the dogs, there is nothing left for us to do except to say goodbye and wish her good luck.”
“I suppose so.”
“What does this wor
ld really need with an emperor? When an emperor strays from the Way, calamity awaits. I say they should lock them up. Permanent house arrest. Let the government grind to a halt. Sure, things may not improve, but they won’t get any worse.”
Shushou tilted her head to the side, as if trying to shake free some meaning from Gankyuu’s words.
“Does the benevolence of the kirin save any lives? Anybody can feel sorry for somebody else. If that’s all the emperor and kirin are good for, who needs them? All that matters in the end is resolving to live your own life and rejecting a kingdom’s handouts. People long for an emperor out of habit. They subjugate themselves before the emperor the same way refugees beg for mercy from the lord of the manor.”
Rejecting the rule of the emperor, repudiating the will of the Lord God Creator, the koushu were subjects of the youma and their home was the Yellow Sea.
“You can’t long for an empress and be a koushu, Shushou.”
“Don’t be silly,” Shushou laughed. “I don’t long for an empress. I want to be empress. Hardly the same thing at all.” She looked up at the brightening sky. Dawn was breaking. “It’s getting light. Shouldn’t we be on our way? Or do you want me to leave?”
Gankyuu got to his feet. “Lend me your shoulder,” he said.
“Will you be okay?”
“I should be able to hold out till we make it there.”
“There—”
Gankyuu raised his face to the sky. “The koushu village.”
Part Six
Chapter 39
[6-1] Those who entered the Yellow Sea could not leave until the following solstice or equinox. They slept under the stars. If they got injured or sick, all they could do was cower beneath the shade of a tree.
The koushu village was said to have started a long time ago. Shushi and goushi—every different kind of koushu—journeyed into the Yellow Sea to hunt beasts, forage for plants, or prospect for gems. They sought out sanctuaries in advantageous locations and collected stones and bricks for underground bunkers as a defense against the youma.
The koushu had no place to call their own. Most didn’t have a home or a permanent address. In time, there emerged koushu who wished to settle down. They joined forces and began to build towns in the Yellow Sea.
“But those aren’t real towns. They don’t have a riboku,” Shushou said as she propped up Gankyuu.
“They didn’t at first.”
“At first?” Shushou said with a surprised look.
“Do you know how riboku spread?”
“No. I’ve never heard an explanation.”
“Supposedly they’re all grafts. Only a cutting from the riboku in the Imperial Palace will suffice.”
Each imperial palace was home to the mother tree of that kingdom, not only where a child of the emperor grew, but also where new fruit appeared when the emperor successfully petitioned for new domesticated plants and animals. The branch bearing that fruit could be cut off and replanted, thus creating new riboku, though only in that kingdom.
“Huh.”
“The koushu wanted a riboku of their own. If there was a riboku in the Yellow Sea, then children born from it would truly be citizens of the Yellow Sea.
“Are you telling me they stole one from the Imperial Palace?”
“What palace would they steal it from? The Yellow Sea belongs to no kingdom.”
“But—”
“The pleas of the koushu no tami were heard and the God of the Koushu granted them a riboku.”
Or so the legends claimed. Kenrou Shinkun, the guardian saint of the Yellow Sea, petitioned the Lord God Creator and the Gods of Gyokkei and received twelve cuttings, which he gave to the koushu no tami.
“I don’t believe it.”
“You don’t believe it?”
“My professors told me that gods don’t exist except in people’s imaginations. Anyway, that’s just folklore and fairy tales, isn’t it?”
“Who’s to say? The koushu all believe it. That part of the story couldn’t be more than three or four centuries old.
“Did that riboku take root?”
“Yes. When Shinkun gave the koushu those cuttings, he told them not to tell anybody else about them.”
Shinkun petitioned the Gods and gave the koushu the branches he received, but the Gods were not altogether pleased with the arrangement. As a consequence, the blessing came with a curse. An ordinary riboku could not be killed by youma or natural disasters or humans. But the riboku of the koushu would die if touched by anybody who was not a koushu.
“So that’s why you didn’t want to bring Rikou or me there.”
“That’s not the only reason. If it became widely known that there were towns in the Yellow Sea, people would flock to them. Not only those going on the Shouzan, but anybody coming to the Yellow Sea for whatever reason. If that happened, at some point somebody would kill the riboku. It’s human nature.”
“You’re probably right.”
“Besides that, no ruler of any kingdom takes kindly to the thought of people living beyond his control. We don’t accept the protection of any ruler. In exchange, no ruler taxes our labor or our wages. It’s easy for people to close their eyes to fact that we take nothing from any kingdom and despise us as a bunch of tax-dodging loafers and laggards. They’d be doubly upset to learn these dog’s tails got their own riboku.”
“Yeah. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them would kill the riboku out of spite. It really is too bad.”
“That’s why nobody but the koushu can enter a koushu village. We pledged to protect our covenant with Shinkun, to keep secret the existence of the koushu villages, even if that means killing anybody who stumbles across one.”
“So I wasn’t supposed to see what I saw.
Gankyuu nodded.
The riboku in a koushu village was not a hardy tree. But it would produce children. Their social standing and the kingdom of their birth was irrelevant. If their petition was answered, a golden fruit would grow on the riboku. No matter how small and misbegotten, a village with a riboku was that koushu’s birthplace.
Outside the Yellow Sea, there’d be no end to the persecution and prejudice that came his way. But here was a place where somebody would always have his back, a place he’d be proud to call his own. Even if such a man never set foot in the Yellow Sea and never laid eyes on his village again, no matter how despised and feared it might be, his hometown would always be there in the Yellow Sea.
“Koushu who want a child go to the Yellow Sea and petition the riboku. The child will live with his mother in the village until he’s old enough to be trusted with the secret of his birth. During that time he’ll study at the feet of the guild master.”
Shushou chuckled. “Those of us who live outside the Yellow Sea have never seen a true koushu child. They really are youma no tami. Like the youma.”
Gankyuu smiled. “I suppose that’s one way of looking at it.”
He wasn’t loud but he’d grown awfully talkative. Shushou didn’t have to guess why. He was leaning heavier on her shoulders. His feet were beginning to drag. The color was draining from his face. His words were clumsy and indistinct. He was slowing fading away. Talking was his way of holding onto consciousness.
Shushou raised her head. What were these big trees soaring here and there out of the forest floor? Big, dark, oak-like leaves sprouted at the ends of twisted branches. Between the branches she could make out the hazy outlines of the mountain with the twin knobs.
She wasn’t sure they’d make it there by evening, or whether she could keep Gankyuu upright the whole time. Every time they stopped to rest, she loosened the tourniquet around his thigh and checked the bleeding. Perhaps it’d slowed down a bit, though she couldn’t say it had for certain.
“Does it hurt?”
“No. Compared to refugees, the koushu are a lucky lot. They will never die abroad. Even if a koushu’s corpse is cast into a potter’s field, that red passport guarantees his return to the Yellow Sea and his
burial in a koushu village.”
“Stop it. Now’s not the time to go jinxing us. By the way, what kind of place is Ryuu?”
“I remember it was cold.”
“So is Kyou,” Shushou quipped. And he was cold now. Gankyuu’s arm on her shoulders was cool to the touch.
It’d take several men linking arms to ring the trunks of the great trees around them. Despite their massive size, the treetops hung low to the ground. The big leaves formed a dense, green canopy that turned the ground into a shadowed twilight.
Thick roots thrust out of the ground, as if pushing the trunks into the air. Slender hair-like roots hung down like bamboo screens. Thicker ones stretched across the pale brown ground and entwined with those of their scattered siblings. They welled up all around them, lifted and twisted skyward like threads plucked by the fingers of giants.
Navigating this arboreal maze, the slightest stumble could break a man’s leg, all the more so when that man was nursing an injury like Gankyuu’s. The low canopy spread out horizontally over their heads. Where the branches of one tree touched another, noonday sky, narrow bands of sunlight slanted through the treetops.
Shushou caught a glimpse of the blue, noonday sky. A shadow grazed her view.
She immediately pushed Gankyuu to the ground between the tangle of roots. Clinging to the root above her head, Shushou looked up. It wasn’t a bird. It wasn’t a suugu. It didn’t appear to be any of the kijuu the goushi had brought with them.
“That’s a san’yo,” came Gankyuu’s hoarse whisper.
A flying snake twice as long as a man was tall. Flapping its four wings slowly, slithering its torso back and forth, it swam through the air. The sight sent a chill down Shushou’s back.
She stifled the urge to bolt and squatted down among the roots. The san’yo swam through the air and circled back. It passed right above her, close enough that she could make out the scales on its body and count its three legs. Right when she thought it was going to keep on going, it turned around.
