The Wings of Dreams

by Fuyumi Ono

  “The next emperor or empress is somewhere to be found among us. Nobody knows who. But while they all tremble in fear at the long journey ahead and the dangers of the Yellow Sea, people are dying like flies.”

  Hearing of youma appearing everywhere, they only wrung their hands and lamented the fallen state of the world.

  “If every subject went to Mt. Hou, the next ruler must be among them. But instead they treat every bad turn of events like it’s somebody else’s problem, somebody else’s business. They bar the windows and the doors and whine about how bad things are getting from inside their self-imposed jail cells. Such stupidity!

  “Shushou—” Gankyuu reached out to her.

  “When I ask why they’re not going on the Shouzan, they laugh and go on about how I don’t know anything about the grave responsibilities of ruling a kingdom and the dangers of the Yellow Sea. I’m only a child, you see, and a child of privilege to boot. They smile and tell me how naive I am about the ways of the world, while they are wise to everything.”

  “I see.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, when people are dying all around you and you turn the other way and pretend it won’t happen to you, you’re the one who’s being naive. You’re the one who knows nothing of death and suffering. Do you disagree?”

  “Not at all.”

  “The Yellow Sea is a scary place, they say. Don’t be unreasonable, they say. What is unreasonable? Even I only came here with a single resolve in mind!”

  Shushou slumped to the ground. Gankyuu caught her in his arms. “You’ve got nothing to cry about. You’ve done well.”

  Shushou got to her feet and wiped her face with her sleeve. “If had no desire to go on the Shouzan, I might as well be like the koushu and say that nobody needs an emperor. When youma show up all over the place, shrug it off. Learn how to live with them, how to protect yourself from them, how to keep from being attacked.”

  “Definitely.”

  “People live in the Yellow Sea, after all. So people should be able to live in Kyou. You could hunt youjuu everywhere, pick up work guarding people traveling through the kingdom. Everybody would be a goushi or a shushi.”

  Gankyuu grinned. “Nothing wrong with that.”

  “Gankyuu, right now, you’re really annoying.”

  “Oh?”

  “It’s written all over your face. You don’t want to upset the weepy little girl.”

  “Well, the truth’s the truth.”

  “Hmph,” Shushou pouted, averting her gaze.

  Behind her Shinkun gently asked, “If you were empress, what would you do?”

  Shushou glanced up at the wizard. “That’s a bridge I’ll cross when I come to it. But if I did become empress, that would mean there’s nobody better suited for the job in the kingdom than me. What else could I do but resolve myself to take on the task?”

  “Naturally,” he said, a smile in his voice. “And you’d be able to indulge in every possible luxury, with an army of servants kneeling at your feet and tending to your every whim.”

  “Don’t spout nonsense. I’m the cute and clever daughter of a wealthy family. I’ve lived a life of luxury up till now, treated every step along the way with kid gloves.”

  “And yet you cannot tolerate the ruin around you. Why is that?”

  She couldn’t hide the surprise on her face. “Simply because I do not suffer does not mean I should sleep well.”

  “No?”

  “When the whole kingdom is safe and prosperous, when every subject wears silk and fills their stomachs with good food every night, that is when I will return to the lap of luxury, dress however I wish and eat whatever I want without a guilty thought crossing my mind.”

  “I see,” he said with a smile. “But we should get food in your stomachs right now.”

  Chapter 42

  [6-4] Shushou put down the bowl with a satisfied smile. “You know, that was the first real meal I’ve eaten in a long time.”

  Gankyuu couldn’t help grinning at her reaction. The koushu called the main meal of the day hyakka, a mixture of edible grains roasted and finely ground. It didn’t take up much space and provided enough sustenance to live on alone. So it’d become the staple of the koushu diet. To call it bland was an understatement. Though now that he thought about it, that was the one thing Shushou had never objected to.

  “You may be the only person who’s never complained about the food.”

  “Really? Well, I wouldn’t exactly call it delicious.”

  “Surely you’ve eaten much better at home.”

  “I suppose,” Shushou said with a shrug. “Every meal was a banquet, the table piled high with dishes. But after hearing stories at school about students going for days without a real meal, it was hard to appreciate the flavor.”

  She sighed.

  “Even so, what I didn’t eat would just end up pig fodder, and it wasn’t like I could hand out the leftovers on the street. And if I said I didn’t have the appetite for it, that’s just me being a prima donna. There wasn’t anything else, so I ate what was put in front of me. But I really didn’t care for it. Not the flavor or the cooking. The heart and the soul.”

  “I guess that’s what good food always comes down to in the end.”

  “Yeah, it does. Unless you’ve experienced it yourself, you can’t imagine what it’s like knowing that there are starving people in the world while a feast is laid out before you every day, like it or not. Your stomach empty and all those delectables right in front of your eyes. You can’t swallow. It sticks in your throat. Have you ever been in that kind of situation?”

  Gankyuu said with a thin smile, “Can’t say I ever have.”

  “While going hungry is certainly a terrible thing, having food and not being able to eat it isn’t all that different. I’m not saying it’s anything like starving to death, but I’ve often thought that actually starving would be preferable.”

  Gankyuu opened his mouth to respond. Shushou scowled. “I know what you’re going to say, so don’t. I’m liable to loose my temper. I’m a pampered princess who’s doesn’t really know what it’s like to go without. Right?”

  Shushou turned her head away. “Thinking you want to empathize with those who can’t put food on their table is nothing but charity. A child of privilege who’s never suffered in her life shouldn’t presume to go around helping people. Feel sorry for someone and trying to do something about it is simply inflating your own ego and showing off your wealth. Admit that you come from money and always went to bed with a full belly and they’ll only laugh at you. You don’t qualify if you do.”

  “Hmm,” said Gankyuu.

  “Now and then, I’ve wanted to pare down the menu a bit, except it wouldn’t accomplish anything. Economizing would only leave more money in my father’s pockets, not make the poor any richer or less hungry.”

  Shushou took a long breath. “No doubt about it, I’ve had an easy life. When it came to food and clothing, no expense was spared. I lived in a large and luxurious house, the windows barred to ensure maximum safety. Bodyguards everywhere. But outside the walls, people were dying every day. However pitiable, it wasn’t my place to say so. I had only one thing left to say at times like that—”

  She paused and held up a finger.

  “Why didn’t you at least hire a bodyguard?” Accompanied by suppressed smiles, the answers were voiced from next to the haku and aside the fire.

  Shushou looked back at them and sighed. “I did think of becoming a government official. In that small way, I could work on behalf of the people, maybe begin to assuage those vague feelings of guilt. But the headmaster was killed by a youma and the academy closed. I was awfully naive. Studying hard and joining the civil service in order to improve the government only made sense if somebody in charge was running things in the first place.”

  Gankyuu said, “So that’s why you decided you’d become empress.”

  Shushou shook her head. “No. But I wanted somebody to. There’s no way
a twelve-year-old could. I’m the first one who’d laugh at the idea. When the right person with all the right qualifications becomes emperor, the youma will go away. The famines will abate. That’s why I was always asking people why they weren’t going on the Shouzan. But I got no takers, except to be told that children are such simpleminded creatures.”

  She cocked her head to the side. “I figure if you’ve got the time to sit around complaining about how hard life is and envying the lives of others, then you might has well gather up your fellow whiners and go on the Shouzan. Otherwise it was so much spitting in the wind. Though when I thought about, the same applied to me too.”

  The expression on Gankyuu’s face was one of sincere regard.

  “I was angry that nobody was trying to become emperor. At the same time, I told myself there was no way I could and so there was no reason for me to go to Mt. Hou. I was pretty much putting myself in the same box as them. My actions had to speak as louder than my words. I would go to the Yellow Sea. When I returned I could tell everybody to put up or shut up with a clear conscience. Resent me or envy me, but I’d give back as much as I was given. And once I did, there was no need to make myself become some stuffy government official. I could do as I pleased.”

  “As you pleased?” came the soft voice next to the fire.

  “I always wanted to be a kijuu stable master.” Shushou smiled. “I like kijuu. Nothing wrong with being a shushi either. And don’t tell me I can’t understand what it means to be a koushu. I’ve had enough of that. I’ll become a shushi, leave Kyou, spend all the time I want with kijuu. And if I happen to cross paths with an old friend and get an earful about how terrible things are in Kyou with an empty throne, I can tell them to shut up about it until they’ve gone on the Shouzan.”

  Now from beside the fire came the sound of smothered laughter.

  “I really couldn’t tell you myself that life is better with an emperor. That’s what the adults all say, but there hasn’t been an emperor since I was born.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “There hasn’t been an emperor all that time. Yet my father went to work every day. I went to school. The government went about its business. And businesses went about theirs. Everybody got by the best they could. So I have to believe that even without an emperor, people will keep on getting by the best they can.”

  She tilted her head the other way, as if posing the question to herself. The fire itself seemed to gently question that conclusion.

  “I wouldn’t be so sure.”

  “Are things really that much worse off without a ruler?”

  “The problem isn’t so much that they’re worse, it’s that they keep getting worse and never improving.”

  “That is a troubling thought,” Shushou said, folding her arms. “Leaving Kyou and taking off on my own is one thing. But it’d be hard living with myself knowing that life back in Kyou was going from bad to worse.”

  Gankyuu settled against the haku and watched Shushou making plans and debating those plans with herself. With the pain mostly quenched by the medicine, a soft drowsiness was creeping in. The downy warmth of the haku pressed against his back. It seemed to his sleepy senses that Shushou was leaning towards a life as a shushi. She’d make a good one. But that probably wasn’t going to happen.

  Shushou had journeyed to the south, to a waterless sea called the Yellow Sea.

  Its back like the slopes of Mt. Tai

  Wings sweeping like a cloud across the sky

  Raising a whirlwind with every stroke

  It takes flight, slicing through the lingering smoke

  Tracing a broad arc in the air

  Bearing the blue heavens upon its shoulders

  It turns toward the south and the southern seas

  That bird was the phoenix and these were the wings of dreams. The spreading of those wings came to mean setting off with great plans in mind. Riding on the wings of the phoenix came to mean a Shouzan that included the future emperor or empress.

  Kyou could certainly do a lot worse.

  Gankyuu shook his head and smiled.

  I suspect a greater calling than shushi is waiting in store for her.

  Chapter 43

  [6-5] The man and the girl and the haku spent the night huddled together. They awoke at the break of dawn and prepared to depart. The wizard didn’t appear to have slept.

  Before they left, the wizard had Shushou reapply the dressing to Gankyuu’s wound. Undoing the wrappings and the bandages, she and Gankyuu were equally amazed at what they found. The wound had already begun to heal and form new flesh.

  Shushou peered at the bamboo flask and then at the wizard. “This is amazing stuff.”

  The wizard smiled and gave Gankyuu the same medical treatment he had the night before.

  “Um, didn’t you say that Tensen don’t interact with humans?”

  “I did.”

  “Looks like you’re doing a fair amount of interacting here.”

  He chuckled. “So I am. Well, nothing wrong with that. I’m curious that way, spending my days wandering about the Yellow Sea. Gyokkei has given up trying to reform me.”

  “Gyokkei,” Shushou repeated to herself. So perhaps sticking to the matter at hand and avoiding unnecessary tangents wasn’t such a hard and fast rule after all.

  He smiled and got to his feet. “It’s only a little further to Mt. Hou, but now’s not the time to start taking it easy.”

  “Thanks for everything.”

  “You’ve got one last rough patch to go, the hardest, rockiest desert on the road from Ken. Don’t let your spirits flag.”

  Shushou put down the saddle and looked up at him. “So you’re not going to see us the rest of the way?”

  “Hey!” came Gankyuu’s scolding voice. He was hauling along the saddle packs.

  “I’m afraid not,” the wizard said with a small smile, and turned on his heels.

  “What about the youma?”

  “Well—”

  “Well, he says. Are they gathering about us even now? That’s what you said last night. If you knew that much, then you’d know if they were still there.”

  He shook his head. “I may have fibbed a bit.”

  Shushou glared at him. “Why am I not surprised? You are a scoundrel at heart.”

  “If you think me a scoundrel, then keep this in mind: a prayer reaches no ears if it is anything less than sincere.”

  For a moment, Shushou looked right into his gentle eyes.

  “It must be from the heart, Miss. Otherwise, Heaven will withhold its divine protection.”

  “You Wizards of Heaven are a mischievous lot.”

  He laughed. “I guess I’m not human, after all.”

  “And if you weren’t telling fibs? Would you at least escort us back to the Shouzan road?”

  “I do not see the need.”

  “What a cold-hearted cur. There’s a wounded man here, you know.”

  “Yes, a wounded man is here. But I won’t be. So the youma won’t come.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “I so rarely run into other people.”

  Shushou frowned in confusion. “I haven’t the slightest idea how you Wizards of Heaven think.”

  He smiled. “In other words, you have good fortune on your side.”

  “And you’re saying that meeting you used it all up?”

  “Not in the slightest. But it wouldn’t hurt for you to stay in the dark a little while longer. Be on your way. You have the divine protection of the Lord God Creator.”

  Shushou twisted her head and glanced at Gankyuu. He only nodded with a knowing look.

  “There are times when adults simply become incomprehensible.”

  Shinkun grinned and walked down to the stream bed.

  “Oh, that’s right. Hey!” Shushou got to her feet and ran a little ways after him. “Weren’t Wizards of Heaven once human?”

  “Yes,” he said over his shoulder.

  “Then you have a name?
Shinkun is a nickname or title, isn’t it?”

  He nodded. As if remembering something, he took hold of the shawl wrapped around his shoulders. “You’ll need this when crossing the desert.”

  He undid the shawl and tossed it to her, revealing the armor underneath. The sunlight slanting through the treetops sparkled off the chain of jewels.

  “What’s this?”

  “You’re missing a sleeve. You’ll get sunburned otherwise.”

  “Thank you. What was your name again?”

  “What good will knowing it do you?”

  “When people meet, their names become the foundation of the relationship.” Shushou said with a slight bow, “My name is Shushou. That is Gankyuu. The haku still doesn’t have a name. Gankyuu said I could give it one. If you don’t mind, yours will do nicely.”

  He grinned. A breeze tousled his hair, black tinged with blue. He said, “The name is Kouya.”

  Chapter 44

  [6-6] The sun climbed high into the cloudless heavens. Gankyuu eyed the sky with a puzzled expression. “There’s hardly been any rain.”

  “Is that so strange?”

  “It doesn’t rain that much in the Yellow Sea to begin with. But the lack of rain up to now is quite extraordinary. A good thing we were able to stock up on water here.”

  “Hmm.”

  Through the branches of the pine trees Shushou could see the crisp ridgelines of the mountain far in the distance. That, as ever, remained their goal. Except—

  Shushou took the reins while Gankyuu set the saddle on the haku’s back. “Gankyuu, do you know the way back to the road?”

  He answered with an air of exasperation. “If I knew that, I wouldn’t be concerned about water.”

  “You don’t know where the road is?”

  “The result of all the running away we did. The koushu village is over there, so I should be able to get a bearing on our position eventually. But I’m not a goushi. The road is not usually where I go.”

  “I should have made Shinkun take us back to the road, even if that meant twisting his arm.” Shushou held the ends of the reins in her teeth and handed Gankyuu the shawl Shinkun had given her.