Shadow of the Fox

by Julie Kagawa

  “No one is taking anyone’s head,” I argued. “That would just be messy and disgusting. Let’s just try to find the way out of the mountains. It’ll be dark soon, and...” I paused, pricking my ears forward, though that went unseen by the two humans. Down the slope, in a small bowl between the mountains, I could see a few faint, glimmering lights. “Wait a minute. I think there’s a village down there.”

  The two humans straightened and turned to peer into the valley, as well. “Oh, there it is,” Okame said, sounding satisfied. “I knew it was around here somewhere.” He ignored Tatsumi’s dark glare and loosened the bow, sticking the arrow back in his quiver. “Well, what are we waiting for?”

  We started down the slope, but it was steep and treacherous, the stones covered in slick moss, forcing you to watch where you put your feet. It was slow going, but I had played this game with the monkeys in the forest, and skipped from rock to rock, landing as lightly as I could before continuing on. Okame slipped once, skinning his hands on a boulder and letting loose an impressive string of profanity. Tatsumi, of course, was as graceful as a deer, stepping calmly from boulder to boulder, making it look like he did this every day.

  By the time we reached the edge of the valley, the sun had set behind the mountain peaks and the shadows had grown long. We crossed a bridge over a tiny stream, and followed a winding dirt path toward a cluster of thatched huts scattered in the distance. The air in the valley was thick and humid; cicadas buzzed in the trees and fireflies blinked over the rice paddies, their lights reflected in the dark, muddy water. Tiny rice seedlings had been planted in neat rows through each of the terraced fields, and would soon grow into a waving sea of green. Along the banks of the slow-moving river, I could see nets hanging in the sun to dry, and tiny fishing boats docked along the shore. The sunlight glimmered off the water, and the entire valley had a lazy, isolated feel to it, like it had been forgotten by the rest of the world.

  Past the rice fields, the winding trail intersected with a larger, wider road cutting straight through the village. A sign had been erected at the crossroads, handmade and hand painted, kanji scrawled down the board in stark black ink. You have arrived in Yamatori, the signpost announced. Travelers always welcome.

  “Well, that’s friendly,” Okame said. “It’s a good sign, at least. Some of these little hamlets have a very unfavorable attitude toward visitors. They don’t like travelers, they don’t like samurai and they especially don’t like ronin.”

  “Why?” I wondered.

  “Because ronin tend to take what they want,” Tatsumi answered flatly. “And the farmers can’t do anything about it.”

  “Hey, samurai aren’t any better,” Okame returned, glaring at him. “You think they all follow that code of Bushido nonsense?” He sneered. “I’ve seen samurai take another man’s wife and kill the husband for daring to protest. I’ve seen one cut off a kid’s head for startling his horse. I might be a dirty ronin dog, but at least I don’t use the code as an excuse to do whatever the hell I want.”

  “Whatever I want?” Tatsumi’s voice was soft, and he shook his head, almost in pity. “One who has no honor,” he stated, “will never understand the actions of those who do.”

  “Says the man with the creepy glowing sword.”

  “That has nothing to do with anything.”

  “Right, because scary glowing swords are always used for the purest intent.”

  “There are more?” I blinked. “I’ve only ever seen one scary glowing sword, Okame-san,” I said. “Are they very common?”

  Okame sighed. “I’m going to have to teach you about sarcasm, Yumeko-chan. But not right now, because we’re being stared at.”

  I glanced toward the village. Several men and women had gathered in the road, most of them farmers according to their simple tunics and suntanned skin, and were peering at us intently.

  Okame smirked. “Well, they all know we’re here,” he said, and began walking toward the crowd. “Guess we should go say hello.”

  The villagers continued to watch us as we drew close. Most of them smiled and nodded or bowed as we passed, averting their eyes and never looking us in the face. I saw a few men whispering to each other, their faces excited but tense. One white-haired woman, sitting in the doorway of her hut, beamed toothlessly as we went by, her eyes nearly sinking into the folds of her face. A little girl in a yellow kimono bounced in place and waved to Tatsumi, who was trailing a few paces behind me and Okame. He ignored her, but that didn’t deter her enthusiasm. Everyone here seemed excited to see us.

  And yet...

  “Welcome, travelers!”

  A man approached us, smiling. His bald forehead was shiny with sweat, dark strands along the sides of his head pulled into a topknot. His clothes were a little nicer than the rest of the farmers’: a blue-and-gray jacket over black hakama trousers. He walked forward and sank into a bow that bent him forward at the waist. “Welcome to Yamatori, honored guests,” he greeted as he rose. “I am Manzo, the headman of this village. Will you be staying long, or are you just passing through?”

  “Just passing through,” I answered, and he looked at me in surprise, obviously expecting Okame or Tatsumi to answer the question. “We’ll be on our way soon. We don’t mean to trouble you—”

  “But if you could spare a room and some beds for the night, we would certainly appreciate it,” the ronin added, stepping up beside me. He gave the headman a disarming grin and reached into his obi. “I can pay you for the inconvenience.”

  “Pay? Oh, no no no!” The man shook his head vigorously, holding up a hand. “I will not hear of it. You are honored guests in Yamatori. There is no inconvenience. Please, come.”

  “Well, they’re certainly a friendly lot,” Okame mused as we followed the headman down the road toward the center of the village. People smiled and nodded as we went by, peeking at us from doorways and between buildings. He waved at a young boy, watching us from behind his hut, and the child darted back behind the wall. “Makes you wonder what happened, to make them so accommodating of samurai?”

  “I don’t like it,” Tatsumi said in a low voice. “Something seems...off.”

  “You mean people being nice to you? Yeah, I can see how that would be unnerving.”

  The headman led us up a small rise to a larger house at the top. This one had a thatched roof like the others, but a veranda circled the front, and wings stretched to either side, unlike the single-room huts the farmers lived in. As we followed the headman, I spotted an old monk in black robes sitting under a tree beside the path, a metal staff resting on his shoulder. He smiled and nodded as we passed, and I paused to offer a quick bow before hurrying after the others. Okame gave me a strange look as I caught up, but didn’t say anything.

  We walked through a bamboo gate and into a small garden, in which a mossy lantern sat beside a tiny pond under the boughs of a pine tree. Remembering the pond in the Silent Winds temple, I peered into the water, expecting to see a few carp or fat goldfish swim up to me, mouths gaping. Sadly, the pond was empty, the water holding only a few rotting leaves, making me frown in disappointment. But my reflection stared back, a girl with furry ears and eyes glowing yellow in the fading light, and my stomach dropped.

  “Kitsune,” the headman said, and my heart gave a violent lurch. Stomach roiling, I turned to face the human, who gave a nervous smile. “We’ve had terrible trouble with foxes lately,” the headman explained, gesturing at the pond. “Always getting into everything. My poor fish had no chance.”

  “Oh,” I breathed. I quickly stepped away from the edge, hoping no one else had seen the brief flash of a kitsune in the pond. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  Stupid mistake, Yumeko. Be more careful. This is no time to be playing with fish.

  The headman slid open the front door, which was heavy and wooden, I noticed, not made of rice paper on a frame. “Asami!” he called, as we l
eft our sandals below the lip of the wooden floor before following him into the house. “We have guests! Set three more places for dinner.”

  “You really don’t have to do this,” I told the headman, as a middle-aged woman in a dark blue kimono appeared in the door and, with a gasp, hurried off again. “We have our own supplies.” I remembered the tiny farming community at the base of the mountains near the Silent Winds temple. Sometimes a farmer would show up at the gates of the temple to ask that someone pray over his fields or drive the spirits of evil fortune from his house or family member. The monks had obliged, and accepted only meager forms of payment in return; a sack of barley, or a few skinny carrots. The people there barely scraped by, Master Isao told me. Farming was a difficult life; many villages often went hungry, as over half their rice crop went to the Earth Clan daimyo for taxes each year. I didn’t want to take food away from these people if I could help it.

  But the headman wouldn’t hear of it, stating yet again that we were honored guests in Yamatori, and it would be unforgivable to treat us as less. So we sat cross-legged on thick tatami mats with lacquered trays in front of us, as the headman’s wife and daughters brought us dish after dish of food. Much of it was simple, hearty fare: pickled cabbage, cooked river eels in miso, dried plums and seemingly unlimited bowls of pure rice, without a kernel of millet to bolster it. According to the headman, some of the farmers made their own sake, which Okame took great pleasure in sampling; Tatsumi and I stuck to tea. But no matter how often I emptied my rice bowl, another would appear, almost by magic. I couldn’t keep up with the amount of food, even as Okame gorged himself on everything. Tatsumi ate very little, saying nothing except to politely turn down the offer of more. If it wasn’t for the fact that the headman was eating the same dishes as us, I doubted he would have touched any of his food.

  Finally, when I couldn’t eat another kernel, the headman rose from his table, smiling and clasping his hands together. “You must be tired after such a long journey,” he said, glancing out one of the windows, where a bloated yellow moon was beginning to peek over the treetops. “If you will follow me, I will show you where you can sleep tonight.”

  I dragged myself upright, feeling my stomach press against my ribs, and stifled a yawn. “You are very generous,” I said, earning another strange look from the headman, as if he were again puzzled that I was the one speaking for the group, and not the quiet, black-clad samurai behind me. “But we wouldn’t want to intrude upon your lovely home.”

  “It is no trouble, my...lady,” the headman said. “We have a guesthouse out back that we keep for this very purpose. It is quiet and isolated from the rest of the village. You won’t be disturbed, I assure you.” He gave me a shaky smile, as his two daughters hovered outside the door looking in, wide-eyed and...fearful? “Please, follow me.”

  We left the house via the back door, but on the other side of the bamboo fence, a small crowd had gathered. As we stepped through, a young woman came forward, smiling and holding a bundle of white daikon radishes. With a bow, she thrust the vegetables into my hands and stepped back before I could say anything.

  “Um...thank you.” The words were barely out of my mouth when another villager approached and handed me an entire head of cabbage. Yet a third placed a trio of cucumbers atop the growing pile of vegetables; I grabbed them before they could roll off into the dirt. Both women bowed and quickly backed away, ignoring my protests.

  I glanced at Okame, and found him beset by villagers, as well. A white-bearded man put a sake gourd around his neck, grinning, while an old woman, possibly his wife, thrust a reed basket of dried fish into his hands. The headman did nothing to stop or discourage this, and more food was added to the pile with smiles and bows, like they were genuinely happy to be giving away their livelihoods.

  Tatsumi, I noticed, remained unmolested, probably because you could almost see the hostile aura around him, the do not touch me look in his cold purple eyes. However, when a tiny girl in a ragged kimono tottered up and lifted a slightly squashed persimmon to him, he accepted the gift with a solemn bow of his head, before the girl’s mother snatched her away with hasty apologies.

  By the time we got past the crowd, Okame and I were laden with food, and I was barely able to see past my own offerings. I hoped this guesthouse wasn’t far. We followed the headman down a narrow dirt road, passing more fields and storehouses for the rice, heavy wooden buildings sitting on stilts to keep them out of the wet. Around the village, the mountains loomed into the air, black silhouettes against a sky dusted with stars. A nightbird called, a mournful cry in the darkness, crickets sang from the long grass and fireflies winked like a miniature galaxy over the fields. It should have felt peaceful out here.

  So why did I feel so...exposed?

  I glanced over my shoulder and saw that the villagers had disappeared.

  Except for one.

  The monk was back, standing like a statue at the side of the road. His black robes blended into the darkness, but his staff and wide-brimmed hat glimmered in the faint light of the moon. Beneath the hat, his face was hidden in shadow, but I could sense he was watching us, and me in particular.

  I turned back, and nearly ran into Okame, as both he and the headman had stopped in the middle of the road. With a hasty “Gomen” I veered away and nearly crashed into Tatsumi, who smoothly stepped aside to avoid the collision and even caught the cucumber that tumbled free of the rest.

  “As I was saying.” The headman gave me a mildly annoyed look and pointed a thick finger down the path. “You can see the guesthouse from here. Just keep following the road.”

  I peered over cabbage leaves and could just make out a squat, isolated house sitting at the edge of the fields. It looked like every other village house we’d seen, with wooden walls and a pointed thatched roof. Soft orange light spilled through the window bars and the open doorway, and I could see the flicker of a fire pit through the frame. The road curved past the hut and continued down a slope until it disappeared from view.

  “Everything has been prepared for you,” the headman continued, speaking to Okame and ignoring me. “The fire has been lit, and fresh bedding has been laid out. There is a stream behind the house if you need water, and a cooking pot over the fire pit, should you get hungry in the middle of the night.”

  I didn’t see how that was possible; I didn’t even want to think about food until tomorrow morning. But Okame thanked the headman, who gave a somewhat brittle smile and bowed low.

  “You honor us with your presence,” he said, still staring at the ground. “I hope you have enjoyed your stay in Yamatori. Oyasuminasai.”

  “Good night,” I repeated, and the headman hurried away, striding back toward the village at a near jog. As his silhouette got smaller and smaller, I noticed that the monk who had been standing beside the path was no longer there.

  18

  Curses and Gaki

  Something was wrong with this village.

  I felt it, Hakaimono felt it and I was fairly certain Yumeko felt it as well, though the ronin seemed oblivious. It wasn’t just the air of excitement and fear that hovered around the village like a dense mist. Or the way the villagers were almost frantic to give away their food, despite the fact that it wasn’t uncommon for farmers to starve during the winter months and rice was more precious than gold to them. Suspicious behavior, though it wasn’t unreasonable for the village to overcompensate for our needs, especially if they had been treated poorly by wandering samurai in the past. Our food hadn’t been poisoned at least; part of my training involved intimate knowledge of the various toxins and what they tasted like, and the meal had been clean.

  But there were other, smaller indicators that made my instincts bristle. The fences around the rice paddies, the bamboo tops sharpened to lethal points. The houses with the heavily fortified doors. The fact that there were no animals of any kind in the village; no dogs, cats or chickens. Y
amatori had a secret. I just didn’t know if it was one we should be concerned about.

  The guesthouse was empty, and the embers glowing in the fire pit threw long shadows over the bare wooden walls. Yumeko stepped through the doorway, then knelt and dropped the bundle of food in a corner with a sigh. The ronin followed her example, only he kept the jug of sake, taking a pull before tucking it into his jacket.

  “I don’t know about you two, but I like this place,” he announced, flopping down before the fire pit. “I haven’t eaten this well in weeks, and there’s plenty more where that came from.” He patted his stomach with a lazy smile. “We’ll be gorging like princes all the way to the capital.”

  “Baka,” I said quietly. Idiot. “This village is hiding something. They weren’t feeding us to be kind. We were put here for a purpose.”

  Yumeko looked relieved. “You felt it, too,” she said, and I nodded. “It’s the strangest thing,” she went on, gazing back toward the village. “I got the impression that they wanted us gone, but at the same time, they were desperate for us to stay. Everyone was trying so hard to make us feel welcome even though they were terrified.” She paused, then glanced back at me, her eyes troubled. “You don’t think they brought us out here to rob or kill us in our sleep, do you? That would be terribly dishonest.”

  On the floor, the ronin snorted, lying on his side and resting his head on a hand. “Farmers are a cowardly lot,” he said, as if speaking from personal experience. “The only time they’d attempt to cut our throats would be while we slept, but from what I saw, they’re too scared even for that.” He yawned, scratching his neck, and glanced out the door. “But we should probably post a watch tonight, just in case.”

  I went to the door, intending to slide it shut, only to discover there was no door on the tracks. Frowning, I glared out toward the village, noticing that the road snaked around the hut and continued down the slope at the back. Not liking the idea that more of the village could be behind us, I stepped outside and followed the path around the hut, until I came to the edge of the rise and could see what lay at the bottom.