Thousand Shrine Warrior

by Jessica Amanda Salmonson

  “If we join hands momentarily,” the bikuni suggested, eminently more reasonable than the stuck-up little monk, “we could negotiate the treacherous route with mutual safety and benefit.”

  The monk was aghast. He exclaimed indignantly, “How can you suggest it! To lay hands upon this pious and chaste friend of Buddha? Women are perverse and greedy! They are ignorant of correct conduct! Your scheme is not clever enough to take me in. What a clumsy conceit, to think you might touch so much as the hem of my vestment, let alone these hands, which perform holy works.”

  The nun replied evenly: “Please rest comfortably. Your attitude scarcely fills my heart with perverse sentiment.”

  “It is you who lack proper manners,” said the monk. “How is it troublesome for you to return the way you came, then start out anew once I’m safely through? Someone instructed you poorly as Buddha’s servant!”

  “It is unforgivable if you cast aspersions on the old priest who instructed me,” she said, not mentioning that her instruction had consisted exclusively of shakuhachi lessons. “His feelings about young monks was that they spend the first year of their study sitting and thinking and thereafter they just sit.”

  “If I were sitting somewhere,” said the monk, “you would not be in this dilemma. What will you do about it?”

  “It crossed my mind,” she said, “to push you off.”

  The monk, ignoring the idle threat, closed his eyes, turned his face upward, and, as he waited for the bikuni to do exactly what she said, he chanted, “Shin-kwan, shojo-kwan, kodai chie-kwan, hikwan koji-kwan…”

  Exasperated, the bikuni started back along the way she came. The monk followed with a smirk, pleased to have won out against her unsubtle bluff. Soon they were on a dry part of the riverbed, standing face to face. As it was nearly sunset, it would not be wise for her to attempt renegotiating the ledge until morning. At least now she could be certain it led somewhere! Despite herself, she was amused. The monk was not a strong-looking fellow and would have had the harder time starting over again.

  He began to make camp. Without asking permission, she decided to share the same site. If he didn’t like it, the monk changed his mind on discovering himself incapable of making a campfire from the damp and iced wood around the river. The bikuni had collected a number of twigs earlier in the day, keeping them inside her kimono, where they dried nicely. With flint and steel from her travel kit, she struck a small blaze, sufficient to ignite the damp stuff the monk had gathered.

  Although the nun was not traveling without food, she had not eaten that day. The Shinto priest of White Beast Shrine had repaired her alms-bag and put a lot of millet inside; but she had nothing in which to boil the millet. For this reason she was extremely hungry. The homely monk happened to have a nice supply of dried fruit and crackers, the latter practically in crumbs. When he unfolded the wrapping paper, the bikuni sat near him by the fire and said, “This humble servant of Buddha is indebted to Buddha’s friend for sharing.” He was tremendously annoyed, but made no acidic reply.

  In a while, he struck up a conversation, affecting a friendly tone although retaining an abusive edge to many of his comments. “So, you’re running away from Kanno province, am I right? I’m going straight there myself.”

  “What do you know of Kanno?” she asked softly.

  “No monks allowed. No nuns. The lord of Kanno is a fanatical Lotus convert. I’ll cause some trouble about it.”

  “Maybe it’s not exactly what you think.”

  “Can’t be scared off,” boasted the little monk, his chin held firm. “I’m resolved to reestablish Kwannon’s worship.”

  The bikuni was tempted to let the overconfident buffoon find out on his own how things were in Kanno. But it would be too wicked to let him wander innocently into a different kind of trouble than he expected. She told him with stark simplicity, “Lord Sato is held under the sway of a goryo.”

  “Is it so?” said the monk, putting on a show of attentiveness, though the nun thought his amazement was a deception. “Lord Sato is under such a fiend’s influence? So that’s why priests are banned from crossing the borders!”

  The bikuni nodded. “The vengeful ghost is a spirit of my own clan. For that reason I could not fight it. You’re correct to say I am running away. I cannot deny it. As you are above a lay nun, surely you will be more capable than I.”

  Her irony did not evade him. She was a warrior and he a little fellow. All the same, he answered with unswerving braggadocio: “No doubt you’re right about that. At least I’m not his relative! Might just kick him in the shins or someplace better.”

  “You’re a funny man, but rude,” she said. “My Buddhist name is Neroyume.”

  “Ho ho! A fierce name! Mine is just as bad: Kasha.”

  A kasha was a corpse-stealing demon known to crash wakes and make off with casket and all. It was the sort of name a cynical esotericist might consider, but not a worshipper of gentle Kwannon. “Why did you choose such a name?” she asked.

  “I didn’t,” said monk Kasha. “I’ve always had it.”

  “Your parents must be strange.”

  “Quite so,” he said, not insulted, but taking it as flattery. “By the way, I happen to know a good story about a revengeful spirit. It’s called ‘A Correction Regarding the Fate of Okinamaro the Dog.’ I heard it from a pious and elderly priestess who in her youth served an Empress.”

  “I, too, know the story of Okinamaro,” said the bikuni.

  “You think so? You have heard how the august cat-in-waiting was attacked by Okinamaro, how the dog was subsequently banished from the capital, but reinstated a few days later when he piteously ingratiated himself to His Majesty? The story did not happen exactly as Sei Shonagon wrote it down. When she recorded that chapter of Makura Zoshi she was feeling sentimental, and the sorrier truth of the event didn’t suit her mood.”

  “In that case,” said the nun, “tell me the tale.”

  “I would like to. Well, the august cat-in-waiting was much beloved by His Majesty, who in His devotion conferred upon the feline the title of ‘Chief Superintendent of the Female Attendants of the Palace.’ One day this high-ranking animal wandered out into the garden, making footmarks here and there upon the fresh-raked sand, and climbed upon a bridge to sun herself. A nurse in charge saw the august cat-in-waiting and cried out, ‘How improper! Come over here at once!’ The august cat-in-waiting yawned hugely and looked the other direction.

  “The nurse was beside herself with vexation and called to the garden’s dog, Okinamaro. ‘Okinamaro!’ she said. ‘Go over there and bite the Chief Superintendent of the Female Attendants of the Palace at once and teach her a lesson!’ Okinamaro, thinking the order was meant in earnest, set upon the august cat-in-waiting, only to get his nose injured by quick claws. The indignant Superintendent marched away, twitching her tail. She took refuge behind a screen, in the lap of His Majesty.

  “His Majesty saw that the august cat-in-waiting was perturbed. Furthermore, He was alarmed by the foul-smelling slime upon the fur of the generally fastidious animal. Learning that Okinamaro had salivated on the august cat-in-waiting, He ordered Okinamaro to receive twenty lashes, which was not excessive, then to be exiled from the palace, which was a most unhappy fate.

  “‘Alas, poor dog!’ Sei Shonagon wrote, the sleeve of her kimono doubtless soaked with tears. ‘He used to swagger so much at ease. When he was led along the paths with a willow wreath upon his head, and adorned with flowers of peach and cherry, could he have guessed it would so soon come to this? At meals he used to be with us, and after three days of his exile, we missed him greatly.’

  “A few days later, a dog was heard to be howling in terror. A scavenger-woman ran through the palace gardens shouting, ‘Awful! Awful! Two chamberlains are beating a dog to death! They say it is chastisement for ignoring the rule of banishment!’ Here the Makura Zoshi gets things right, for Sei Shonagon was among the witnesses who hurried forth to try to save Okinamaro’s life. Alas, h
e had ceased howling and reposed a battered heap of fur and blood. His body was flung outside the gate.

  “But after sunset, a wretched-looking dog appeared, trembling all over, his body woefully torn and swollen. ‘Is that Okinamaro?’ asked a maid, standing on a deck overlooking the garden. She called to him by name, but the awful-looking beast did not move.

  “‘Okinamaro was killed,’ said another. ‘Surely he did not survive such a beating.’

  “Yet another maid said, ‘He is too utterly loathsome to be our dog. Okinamaro always came when he was called, and hopped joyously. As this animal won’t come, it cannot be Okinamaro.’

  “This is where the version told by Sei Shonagon goes astray, for her soft-minded readers would not have wished to be seriously disturbed. For doesn’t Makura Zoshi say Okinamaro groveled at the feet of His Majesty and was recognized at last? Doesn’t that book assure us that Okinamaro’s banishment was reversed and he was his old self in a few days?

  “Okinamaro may or may not have been recognized. But he had become so repugnant that he was turned out by guards, who poked him with sticks. The dog did not once whine or grovel, as was falsely said. The guards who got him out of the garden came back sweaty and alarmed. They were certain the dog was nothing but a resurged corpse. The dog had not so much as panted, but had looked at them with eyes the shade of plum-blossoms, malevolent and weird.

  “That night, a warrior broke into the women’s quarters of the palace. Everyone was running around in fright and confusion. The warrior was looking for one specific woman, and it was certainly not for the sake of a discreet tryst. He found the nurse who had set Okinamaro upon the august cat-in-waiting; and he shouted at her, ‘Woman! Why did you not tell them you commanded me to bite the Chief Superintendent of the Female Attendants of the Palace?’

  “As the nurse was incapable of reply, the warrior stuck her through the breast with a spear and pinned her to the sliding door. By then a lot of guards had gathered in the halls of the gardens. The murderous warrior could by no means escape. All the same, he vanished somehow and was never seen again or brought to justice.

  “The nurse lived a few days, refusing to die until a meeting with His Majesty could be arranged. Then she confessed that she set Okinamaro upon the august cat-in-waiting and had remained silent afterward. The corpse of Okinamaro was recovered and interred with the bodies of other palace animals, and sutras were offered. Only in a certain sense, therefore, did Sei Shonagon tell the truth when she wrote that Okinamaro was completely reinstated.”

  Tomoe Gozen was uncertain to what degree monk Kasha wished his story to be taken seriously. A dog’s grudge against a nurse was hardly the same as the grudge Kuro felt against seven clans. Or was it presumptuous to think a limited event regarding a dog was less significant than an event of monumental effect? To the bodhisattvas and the Thousands of Myriads, Okinamaro’s revenge might be no smaller or greater than a human spirit’s vengeance.

  Having reflected on the story in a courteous and appropriate manner, the bikuni offered a sort of all-purpose critique, since she remained uncertain of a precise moral. “Human life is a ripple behind a passing ship,” she said. “The ship’s port is unknown to the ripple. It dashes off the wrong direction, then disappears.”

  Monk Kasha laughed and waved a hand, as though this were altogether the improper comment. Belatedly the bikuni suspected the monk had teased her from the beginning. He offered the counterobservation, “Life is a cranberry growing on a mountain path. It is snatched in the beak of the hototogisu cuckoo bird.”

  The bikuni’s complexion flushed slightly. The sky was dark and only the campfire lit their faces. “You make fun of people,” she said. “Not that I mind. I will lose any contest of Buddhist thought.”

  “You’re a better nun than you believe,” said Kasha, feigning sweetness. “Which is not to say you’re much of one. Even lacking pious intention, if you go down upon your knees before Kwannon or Buddha, good will come of it. Just as a meal taken abstractly nourishes the body.”

  Monk Kasha leaned nearer the fire, the homely contours of his face made weird by the dancing blaze. He brought the subject back to its beginning. “Say, tell me more about Kanno. Not much information gets out.”

  “The goryo is the main problem,” she answered. “Not many of Lord Sato’s men are left. By this time next year, the shogunate will have moved in to put someone else in charge of Kanno. There is a chamberlain trying to forestall it; but there’s no question he will fail. He trusts the goryo, who has manifested himself as a most beatific priest named Kuro. If you and he stood side by side and several people voted, it would be decided you were the evil spirit, not he.”

  As she spoke to the homely monk about the goryo, he seemed to peer inward, something of gleeful expectation passing across his face. It was a strange response. In fact, the monk did not appear truly surprised or fretful about anything she mentioned. He surfaced from his inward glance and said, “What do you know of vengeful spirits?”

  “What I observed in Kanno,” she said. “They’re strong.”

  “Not usually,” the monk amended matter-of-factly. “They’re trouble enough, like the spirit of Okinamaro, who was able to achieve his aim. But as a rule, a goryo lurks around the place of its unnatural death and can get its enemy only if that enemy comes close. It is also generally the case that a goryo is immune to ordinary exorcism, and lingers until it gets its way. Yet this one doesn’t like priests. With such an excess of power, why fear a Buddhist exorcist?”

  “If what you say is true,” the nun allowed, “then Kuro the Darkness is exceptional.”

  “Well, I’ll see him soon enough,” said monk Kasha. “I don’t think he’ll escape me, in any case.”

  The monk curled up near the fire, wrapped only in his garments. The bikuni unrolled the musty travel-quilt and wrapped it around herself, drew her arms inside her kimono, and sat with her back against a rock. She sat watching the campfire, listening to the river and occasional gusts, thinking deeply. Monk Kasha began to snore.

  She went over the history of the goryo as told to her by Heinosuke. And she considered the monk’s advice on the matter, for it did seem he had meant to advise her, and had not grilled her on account of information needed for himself. Kasha knew more than he pretended. As the bikuni fell asleep, this topic was uppermost in her mind, and continued through her dream.

  In the dream, the campfire did not die down, but became a brilliant shade of green, burning bright. The homely monk jumped up from where he had been sleeping. He appeared to have doubled or tripled his size but was otherwise unchanged. He kicked at the green fire and offered a lot of unholy curses. “This will fix you!” the monk said, kicking another stone into the unusual blaze. “You’ll be sorry about that!” he said. “Too much trouble for everyone!”

  The bikuni awoke in the white haze of morning and sat forward with a gasp, exclaiming, “I know where the goryo gets his power!” She was eager to share her realization with the monk, but he was nowhere to be seen.

  She could see no evidence of his having shared the camp. The fire’s remains appeared to consist of the twigs she herself had lit, with none of the wood monk Kasha presumedly had gathered. There was only a charred bit of river-rock to mark the place where she recalled a large, healthy blaze. Her stomach growled as though she hadn’t eaten anything the day before. She couldn’t find any of the pits of the dried plums Kasha had shared with her.

  She might have dreamed him entirely! The gorge was noted for its hauntings, so it was worth considering. If a goryo was able to plot supernatural vengeance by eliciting the aid of the Lotus Sutra, then surely some other kind of spirit—god or devil—might make a new web contrary to the other, with the help of the Kwannon Sutra. When she thought it over, that monk had not looked quite human, though his homeliness hadn’t been of a frightening kind. Despite his rude manner, he had cheered her heart with snooty humor; he had affected her thinking about leaving Kanno and about the powers of vengeance a
fter death; and right from the start he had caused her to delay her flight away from the entire mess.

  “What an odd man,” she thought. “Picking up after himself just to confuse me.”

  She rolled her travel-quilt and strapped it to her back, tied her hat on straight, and considered which direction to take—back to Kanno, or away. The thought of returning revived doubts: suppose the odd little monk had been Kuro’s cleverest trick to get her back! But if that were the case, the monk would not have provided her, by subtle means, with the final clues that might well be the undoing of Kuro the Darkness. It was maddening that the monk had gone off without letting her explain the theory that her conscious and subconscious had worked out. Had the monk vanished like that so she would be forced to return and personally test her theory? She would have preferred to tell him her reasoning and get his opinion. If she were wrong, it would be an error to return to Kanno, where Kuro might again manage to manipulate her actions.

  As the morning was nearly as foggy as the previous morning, the nun used the lack of visibility as an excuse not to tackle the treacherous ledge. Instead, she wandered through the mists, in search of anything edible growing above the river’s bank. She managed to uncover a few wintering roots, which were exceedingly tough, but digestible.

  Almost to spite her, she thought, the fog began to burn off early, unlike yesterday, forcing her to the difficult decision. Everything had gone badly in Kanno and she was not feeling inherent predilection toward adventure. She was mostly decided to continue her journey as far from Kanno as possible. It was wiser than risking the chance of killing others because of Kuro’s influence over her.

  The cliff’s face was becoming visible through the dissipating haze. It was senseless to delay longer. She started in that direction, but stopped when she spied a faint figure sitting across a miniature inlet of partially iced, stagnant water. At first she thought it must be monk Kasha. A breeze swept away the light haze that clung to the figure, and the bikuni saw that it was a woman samurai. She was sitting on a rock, gazing along the river. She was armed with two swords and a nagamaki, or short-poled halberd. She was dressed in bright colors: kimono with fernbrake pattern and a quilted haori jacket in a lighter shade of green, with gold threads forming a sea pattern. In a moment, the samurai stood and faced the bikuni across the pool, apparently having been waiting for this very meeting. She had a pleasant face.