by Steve Bein
“The mind is in fetters,” he said. Even now he looked past her, up into the distance. “Property. Family. Hope for the future. The people cling to them as if they are lifelines, but in fact they are shackles. The mind is bound by them, constricted, weighed down. You are bound too, drowning, but I can set you free.”
It was clear he’d given this little homily before. Mariko wasn’t interested. “Swell. You do that.”
“You belittle because you do not understand. You dream of stability, order, immortality. It is in the nature of what you do, who you are, but you are living a lie.”
“So enlighten me. Tell me how you rescue all these drowning minds. And don’t waste my time on the pretty speeches; that crap might work on your little Wind cult, but not on me.”
“Divine Wind,” he said. “Born of the Wind and yet not of the Wind.” He seemed to find this funny; it made him giggle like a little boy. “And I am divine,” he said. “My mother is the future and my father is the past. I am come to shatter the fetters, to burst the bonds, to explode the barriers. I am the light, the brightest fire. Stability, permanence, order, belonging, harmony, they are but shadows. Before my light shall they disperse, never to return.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Mariko said. She could see the excitement rising in him, swelling his chest, raising his gaze higher. It got her heart racing as well, but not out of some twisted sympathy inspired by his charisma. She was afraid. He was a zealot, all right, and he was dangerous. “Tell me,” she said. “You want to do away with order and harmony? Tell me how.”
“Still you cling to your fetters. You shy away from the light when in truth the light will set you free. Nothing you can do will stop the Purging Fire.”
“Then you might as well tell me your plan. Your deadline’s coming right up, neh? What did you call it? The hour of the demon?”
“The Year of the Demon,” Joko Daishi said ecstatically. “The appointed hour is at hand.”
“Of course it is.” Mariko tried to remember what else he’d said. “Your friend, Akahata-san, he’s out to do some purifying right now, is he?”
“Soon. Very soon.”
“Right. Because the wind is coming.”
“There is no place the Wind cannot reach.” He said it as if singing a hymn.
“Mariko!” Han shouted. She turned to see him running toward her with his phone outstretched. She ignored the phone, her attention captured by the look on his face. He was terrified.
He forced the phone into her hand and see saw the screen. “Holy shit,” she said.
“Bombs,” Han said, panting. “The hexamine. You can use it to make high explosives.”
“There is no place the Wind cannot reach,” Joko Daishi said joyfully. “The appointed hour is at hand.”
Mariko grabbed him by the beard and jerked him to his feet. “Where’s Akahata? Where are the bombs, you crazy son of a bitch?”
As she lifted him up, the demon mask slid down over his face. He locked eyes with her, his nose not a millimeter away from hers, looking at her from behind the crazed iron visage of the mask. “The Year of the Demon,” he whispered. “The appointed hour is at hand.”
BOOK EIGHT
MUROMACHI ERA, THE YEAR 198
(1533 CE)
44
The waves roared so loud that Kaida could hardly hear the thunder.
Lightning ripped another gaping rent through the dark gray underbelly of the sky. It was just after midday, and yet the lightning’s claws stood out clearly against the clouds. Kaida had never seen a storm so angry.
If anything, the sea was angrier still. Another huge, rolling wave tossed the rowboat as easily as Kaida could skip a stone. Her mother held her close with both arms, her knees and feet pressed hard into the sidewalls of the boat to keep herself and Kaida stable. She sang in Kaida’s ear, and though Kaida could scarcely hear her she knew which song it was. No other girls’ mothers ever sang this one. It was the song about the Kaida-fish, a little lullaby about a make-believe creature, which she’d been singing for as long as Kaida could remember.
Her father was the very opposite of calm. He clenched his teeth so hard that the tendons in his neck stood out. He back-paddled like mad, trying to keep their bow pointed into the waves. The muscles of his arms stood out like braided cords. He snarled and cursed and battled with the sea, a samurai armed with twin oars.
The boat lurched again, and for a fleeting moment Kaida was atop a mountain of water instead of falling down into a valley. She looked toward Ama-machi and saw nothing but flinders. Her mother told her the village would be destroyed and that they’d build it anew, but Kaida hadn’t understood what that meant until now. There was no home. Nothing to re-build, nothing there to repair. Just a beach and the rolling walls of water that pounded it, grinding down what little remained of Ama-machi.
This was the way, her had mother said. The ama had always lived like this. Kaida had taken comfort in it when the storm was still on the horizon, but now she saw it as an empty promise. She could not see a future for her village, for her family.
Kaida’s stomach dropped, the boat falling with it. For an instant she could see Ryujin’s Claw. It ripped the guts out of a rogue breaker and then vanished, swallowed by the water. The teeth of the Maw were always visible above the waterline, but the Claw was in deeper water. Kaida realized these waves were far bigger than she’d suspected if the troughs were so deep as to expose the Claw.
But her mother would protect her. Even in the face of this hell-spawned storm, she sang the song of the little Kaida-fish.
Thunder clapped again. A wave moving in the wrong direction smacked the stern and spun the boat like a little child throwing a stick. Kaida’s father lost his grip on one of the oars. Her mother’s hand darted out faster than Kaida thought possible. She snatched the oar’s grip in midair and thrust it back toward her husband, who damned the wind and the waves and his spent, wet hands.
Kaida felt her mother’s arms wrap around her once more. She would be all right. All of them would be. Storms are stronger than men, her mother always said, but they have no patience. We only need to outlast them. That’s what she always said, and already Kaida could tell the thunderheads had blown out most of their anger. She could hear her mother’s lullaby a little better now.
Her father never saw the other boat coming.
It caught them broadside, flung by a rogue wave. Wood screeched louder than thunder. Then it burst apart, shooting splinters everywhere. Kaida caught a volley full in the chest. Only afterward did she realize her mother took as many in the arm, protecting Kaida’s face.
Kaida watched her family’s boat crumple like washi paper. The other family’s boat plunged on, shearing itself in half like a giant barracuda opening its mouth wide, bearing down to bite Kaida’s boat in two. The sidewalls split down the middle, the bottom half submerging with the keel, the top half exploding into a hail of splinters as big as the bones in Kaida’s forearm. The bottom half of the boat dragged its occupants down with it. Still the two boats plunged on, ripping each other apart. Huddling against her mother, Kaida watched the other family go under. She could feel it through the soles of her bare feet when one by one the keel crushed their heads to pulp. It was merciful; at least they would not drown.
Drowning was every ama’s worst fear, and Kaida knew she and her parents were likely to face it soon. Their boat wasn’t taking on water; the water was taking it. The starboard side was no more than a jumble of ragged timbers. Kaida felt her guts heave up into her throat. The boat crested high above the sea, carried by the biggest wave Kaida had ever seen. For a terrifying moment she could see Ryujin’s Maw. Its black teeth dripped with white foam.
Then the sea dashed her family right into the Maw.
The world was nothing but darkness and noise. Kaida thought drowning would be quiet. She did not expect it to thunder so loud that it drowned out her other senses.
She tried to clap her palms over her ears, but she could onl
y move her right arm.
Just for an instant, the noise abated. Just for an instant, there was light. Kaida saw her mother huddled over her, hugging her close. She saw her father too, his back against sheer black rock, holding on to the inside of their rowboat as if some crazed mob were trying to pull it away from the other side. Then she understood. Somehow they’d landed between two of Ryujin’s fangs, and the weight of the water wrapped their little boat around them, trapping them as snugly as a turtle in his shell. But a turtle had flesh and bones to keep its shell attached. Kaida had only her father, fighting the sea with a tenacity found only in wild animals and madmen.
Kaida tried to help. It was stupid—she was a little girl, without a tenth of her father’s strength—but she tried to grab the boat anyway. She couldn’t reach with her right hand; her mother was in the way, so she tried with her left. Once again her left arm would not move. She looked down to see why.
Her hand looked like a stomped-on crab.
It was almost next to her nose when she turned to look at it, so she could see all the details clearly. Part of the boat pinned it to the black, bloody rock. Some of her fingers were still intact. The hand itself was nothing but jagged bones. They stuck out in crazed directions, all a-jumble.
The world went black again, the water pressing their turtle shell back down with deafening fury. When the noise relented the light came back, and Kaida got a good look at her dead mother.
• • •
Kaida sat bolt upright under her covers. She didn’t scream—not with her stepsisters around; she knew better than that—but she remembered screaming back then. She remembered the echoes of her cries within the wreckage of the boat, the intermittent fits of blackness and noise, the hope in every black moment that perhaps when the light came again she’d see she was mistaken about her mother. But the dark had been worse than the light. In the light she could see what was. Once the dark closed in around her, she could only imagine, and imagining made it worse.
She pressed her stump to her chest, trying in vain to slow her panicked heart. The house seemed smaller when she was afraid; the ceiling felt too close, as if it might collapse at any moment. She couldn’t stay inside. She couldn’t stay inside.
As silently as she could, she slipped out of bed. She tried to think of Masa, how quiet he could be, how he had melded into the sand the night she met him. Then she thought of how his dead body slumped when his friends dropped him in the shorebreak.
A moment’s inattention was enough. She didn’t crouch low enough when she passed by the window. She’d exposed her silhouette, and she should have guessed her father’s injuries would make it hard for him to sleep.
“Kaida? What are you doing awake?”
“I’m sorry, Father. I just have to go outside.”
She tried to make it sound like she just had to pee, but her heart was still racing; she couldn’t keep the tremor out of her voice.
“Kaida-chan, what’s the matter?” said Cho, her voice raspy and sleepy. Even now, after all these nights, Kaida still forgot Cho slept with him. Hearing Cho’s voice coming from her father’s bedroll startled Kaida every time.
“It’s all right,” her father said. “She just gets frightened sometimes.”
“Father, no—”
He didn’t hear her, but Kaida couldn’t risk raising her voice, couldn’t risk waking her stepsisters. They couldn’t hear what was going to come next. They just couldn’t. It would be the end of her.
“Father—”
“She was right next to her mother when she died,” he said, oblivious. “Dark, close spaces have troubled her ever since.”
Kaida froze. She held her breath, the better to hear whether anyone else was awake. If even one of the other girls overheard him, Kaida’s life would descend into a kind of misery that made everything she’d suffered so far feel like a mild sunburn.
But no one stirred. No one’s breath changed its pace. Kaida lingered for a moment just outside the door, listening, but she was safe. Her stepsisters were all asleep.
All the same, she stayed outside until she could make herself pee, close enough to the hut that Cho would hear her. Better for Cho to be confused in the morning. She was still groggy from sleep; maybe she’d remember the peeing and not the rest.
Kaida crouched outside and hugged her knees. It was cold, but she forced herself to count to a hundred before she went back inside. If the disturbance has jostled any of her stepsisters even halfway out of sleep, Kaida would allow them plenty of time to sink back into their dreams.
At last she crept back inside. Wiping the sand from her feet first, she padded over to her little bedroll. Just as she reached it, skinny, cold fingers tightened around her ankle.
“To think,” Miyoko whispered, “all the things we’ve contrived to torture you, and all we really needed was to put a sack on your head.”
Kaida’s guts went cold. She wanted to cry. She wanted to stomp on Miyoko’s hand, maybe break some bones. But that would only make things worse. Her father and Cho would hear. Then Kaida would be the villain, not Miyoko.
“Or maybe flip over a boat, neh, Kaida-chan? Sit on it with you under there. Maybe even bury it. What would you think about that?”
Kaida could almost hear Miyoko’s triumphant smile.
45
Ama-machi was just waking when the outlanders invaded. Kaida was the first in her house to hear them; her father lived close to the center of the village, and screaming from somewhere on the outskirts roused Kaida from a fitful sleep.
She felt like she hadn’t slept at all. First the nightmare, then thinking of Miyoko’s new weapon all night; it was enough to make anyone exhausted, and an ama’s life was exhausting to begin with—especially an ama with only one good arm. Nonetheless, Kaida pushed herself out of bed, shivering at the transition between the warmth under her covers and the cool dawn air. She knew she had to move quickly, just as she knew it was the outlanders who had caused the screaming.
A loud shriek from next door woke everyone else in the hut. Her father sat up in bed. In his dreams he’d forgotten his injuries; instantly he was flat on his back again, favoring his ruined arm and wincing. Kaida could see his teeth clamping down, oddly bright in the twilight. She wished she could stop for him, tend to him, do something for him. But she also knew that Miyoko might well kill her today—and if not today, someday soon. Miyoko already had no sense of when to quit. She could not begin to guess how terrified Kaida was of close spaces, and that meant every word of protest would goad her on. Even Kiyoko and Shioko wouldn’t be able to talk her down.
And that meant Kaida had to escalate weaponry too. She’d figured that out last night, lying in her bed and staring up at the thatch, listening intently to Miyoko’s breathing and wondering what would happen if she just smothered Miyoko and got it over with. In many ways that was the easier course. She’d do more than free herself of Miyoko; she’d be exiled from Ama-machi for life. It wasn’t much of a punishment for someone who wanted to leave anyway. But Kaida wasn’t like Miyoko. She didn’t delight in causing pain. And as much as she hated Kiyoko and Shioko, as much as she wished her father had never met Cho in the first place, she knew Miyoko’s death would hurt them so deeply that they’d never recover. Kaida knew what it meant to lose family. She wouldn’t resort to anything so extreme unless she had no other choice.
And since Miyoko had no such compunctions, Kaida knew she might have to resort to extreme measures soon. She slipped through the doorway and immediately saw one of the outlanders moving in her direction. His back was turned—he was talking to someone just out of sight—and Kaida threw herself behind her family’s hut before he turned back around.
She pressed herself to the wall, heart pounding, and heard him barge into the hut. There were shouts, protests, the sound of ripping cloth. “You get out there or I’ll kill you in here,” the outlander said, and everyone inside had wisdom enough to see he meant it.
Kaida froze, listening to them make th
eir way outside. It sounded like Cho wasn’t alone in getting her father to his feet; Kiyoko might have been helping, but it was hard to be certain. “Get out,” her father said. “What right do you have to threaten my family?”
“Is one broken arm not enough for you?” There was a grunt from the outlander, a slapping sound, a cry of pain. “I’ll break the other and send you out for a swim. Move!”
A small part of Kaida wanted to have sympathy for her father. He certainly wanted for it. But the greater part of her was bitter and hurt. “My family,” he’d said. He could have asked the outlander what they’d done with his trueborn daughter, but no: his first concern was for Cho and her evil offspring.
It was not hard for Kaida to wait in silence as the outlanders dragged her “family” away. She heard her father groaning in pain, but she could do little to help him even if she wanted to, and at the moment that urge was unusually easy to suppress. She didn’t move a muscle until everyone was well clear; then she sprinted toward the sea cliff behind the village.
She found the old camphor tree with its big gnarled root pointing at the foot of the cliff. When she dropped to her knees, she was still panting so hard that she could see each breath hit the sand. A flat rock the size of a rice bowl lay nearby; she picked it up and started digging.
When she was elbow deep she wondered if she was digging in the wrong spot. Then the edge of the rock rasped on something hard, and with a little more digging with her fingers she found her knife.
Yesterday she’d given thought about keeping it under her pillow, but that was far too risky. Nowhere in the village was safe enough; there were too many eyes, too many people wandering about, too many little children playing games in all the good hiding spots. The knife didn’t do her much good this far away, but she didn’t want to just throw it back in the ocean either. And now she was glad she hadn’t; if Miyoko wanted to take their little war to deeper and more dangerous depths, now Kaida could go deeper too.
