Risuko

by David Kudler

  Father. A brush poised like a knife. I was just learning to write myself, and I loved to watch him practicing his calligraphy and his drawing. He sat in our yard, staring at the bare cherry tree, a length of rice paper on his scribe’s lap-desk. I tried to imitate with a stick in the dirt Father’s beautiful handwriting, the beautiful blossoms. As he wrote out the poem for what felt like the hundredth time and began to draw the cascade of flowers, I asked him why he was drawing cherry blossoms in the autumn. He thought about that for a moment, put down his brush, and said, “The blossoms fall just once each winter, yet in our memories, they fall every day.”

  “SQUIRREL!” snapped Lady Chiyome. “What on earth are you staring at?”

  Without even looking back at her, as I should have, I pointed and gasped, “Where did you get my father’s poem?”

  Lady Chiyome blinked at me and then at the huge scroll. When she looked back at me, her furious expression had been replaced by a more familiar one: shrewd calculation. “Your father’s?”

  “Of course!” I blurted. “I know it by heart! I would recognize that handwriting anywhere! I swear that is my father’s poem!”

  “I know,” she said. “He gave it to me.”

  Masugu groaned.

  I blinked at her, and then suddenly remembered where I was, who I was. I fell to the tatami, which still reeked of pickled ginger, and began to apologize for my rudeness.

  Chiyome-sama interrupted. “Come, Risuko. We shall let Kee Sun and Mieko care for the lieutenant. You will come and explain yourself to me.”

  I looked up to answer, but she was already striding away. I scampered after her out of the guesthouse and into the bright cold of the courtyard. The Little Brothers fell in on either side of us. I wasn’t sure whether they were protecting her, keeping an eye on me, or both.

  I felt, in fact, very much as I had that first day, stumbling along beside her palanquin away from our village, from my home, and from my life.

  —

  We marched back to the great hall, empty now except for Aimaru, who stood at the bottom of the narrow stairs that led up to Chiyome-sama’s rooms, shifting from foot to foot. His usually bright face was dark and troubled; he looked away from me as we approached.

  “This puppy can go back to guarding the guesthouse,” Lady Chiyome barked, nodding her head at Aimaru. “With Mieko and Kee Sun caring for Masugu, I don’t think anything can go wrong there that hasn’t already. You two,” she said, gesturing to the Little Brothers, “keep an eye on things down here. I don’t wish our conversation to be... interrupted.” She began to stride up the stairs. “Come, Risuko.”

  I followed. Halfway up the stairs I turned back. The Little Brothers had faced away, watching the doors. I drew a deep, unsteady breath, turned, and fled upward.

  By the time I entered Lady Chiyome’s chamber, she was already kneeling at her desk, mixing ink in a small bowl. I found myself coming to a stop in the doorway with one foot in the air, the memory of my one previous visit to her rooms rendering me as cold and as still as if I’d been encased in ice.

  “Much easier simply to climb the stairs than the outside wall, isn’t it, my Risuko?” said Chiyome-sama without raising her gaze from whatever it was that she was writing. “And if you’ve been invited in, there’s no point in trying to hide. Especially in the middle of the doorway.”

  I stumbled forward and knelt before the desk. “Chiyome-sama,” I said, trying to keep the trembling whine out of my voice, “this humble servant could never, ever try to hurt Masugu-san, or search his rooms, or—”

  “I know,” she said, and then gave her dry, rasping laugh. “Another humble servant. Just what I need.”

  “Yes, Chiyome-sama.”

  “Kano Murasaki,” she addressed me, very formally now, and with no laughter, “answer me: why are you here?”

  “In... your room?” She raised a carefully drawn eyebrow. “Oh. I am here because you wish me to become a shrine maiden, Chiyome-sama.”

  “And?”

  “And... And a kunoichi.”

  “And what, Kano Murasaki, is a kunoichi?”

  “A kunoichi...” In my mind’s eye, I could see her writing the word that first afternoon at Pineshore, her brush slashing across the paper. “A kunoichi is a woman trained to kill, Chiyome-sama.”

  She gave a quiet grunt. “Close enough.” From beneath her desk, she drew a length of red silk with white edging—an initiate’s sash. “Red is the color of weddings. White is the color of death. A miko is married to that which cannot die. A kunoichi is married to her duty. And to Death.” She held the sash out to me.

  Dumb and terrified, I stared at it.

  She snorted and let the silk fall to the floor before me. “In the first place, I must admit, I can’t see you turning the guesthouse over like that—it doesn’t seem like your style at all.” She leaned forward, her gaze impaling me. “In the second, I saw your face when you spotted that poem. Either you’re the greatest liar I’ve ever met—and I have met some very accomplished ones, young Kano—or you had never been inside of those rooms before, and they had been searched by our clumsy fox demon at least twice before last night. Close your mouth, child. You look like a frog waiting for flies.”

  I snapped my jaw shut, but couldn’t bring myself to lower my gaze as I ought.

  “Pick up the sash, Risuko.” Lady Chiyome’s voice was warm—for her.

  I stared down at it.

  “Put on the initiate’s sash, Kano Murasaki,” said Chiyome-sama.

  My fingers heard the order and obeyed.

  When it was knotted around my waist, Lady Chiyome sighed and said, “Your father...”

  I did not dare to look up.

  “Mukashi, mukashi, long ago, when you were just a baby, there was a great battle in a valley not far from this. My husband commanded Takeda-sama’s heavy cavalry at Midriver Island. They were routing the Uesugi and their allies, driving them at last from Dark Letter Province. Only one island of resistance stood—troops lent by the Uesugis’ ally, Lord Oda.”

  I looked up.

  Lady Chiyome’s gaze was still directed at me, but she was looking elsewhere. “Your father... Kano Kazuo faced Mochizuki Moritoki sword to sword, there on the battlefield. Kano Kazuo prevailed.” Her eyes regained their usual sharp focus, but they were dew-rimmed. “Though my husband fell, the Takeda nonetheless won the day. The Uesugi and their allies were shattered.” She sniffed, looked away and then looked back again. “For some time after the news arrived—after Kee Sun came back and told me—I hardly left the walls of this room. One day, my servants came, telling me that a lone samurai was approaching on horseback. His swords were bound across his horse’s back, but they were worried for my safety. I bade them open the gates to him. I did not particularly care for my own safety, you see.”

  I waited for her to continue.

  “It was your father, of course. He told me that he was sorry for my loss, but that my husband had died with honor. That it had been an honor to face him. That... That a battlefield is not generally a place of honor.”

  I found tears beginning to spill from my own eyes.

  “I spoke with him for some time. He spoke of you, of his family. Of how in taking my husband’s life, he had felt as if he were taking yours.”

  A sound began to whistle up from my throat. I did not have any sense that I was making it myself.

  “I reminded him of the Buddha’s saying: All life is sorrow. All that lives, dies. The same forest gives birth to the tiger and the deer. Who kills and who is killed are one.”

  We sat there for some time, she and I. The old woman and the young girl. She weeping silently, I keening. Each of us mourning what we had lost long before.

  31—Taking Up the Blade

  I stumbled down from Lady Chiyome’s apartment, tears and memories leaving me blind, and so I walked into the Lit
tle Brothers at the bottom of the stairs. The larger one gave me his customary blank look, and then turned back to face the entrances—the front door and the door to the kitchen.

  The other Little Brother smiled. From behind his enormously wide back, he drew two bound bundles of bamboo. Each of the bundles was slightly curved, and seemed to have a handle at one end.

  “Swords,” I whispered.

  “Practice swords,” said the Little Brother with a nod and another grin. “Since you are now an initiate, it is time for your proper training to begin.”

  When the Little Brother held out one of the swords, however, I stood there frozen like river-grass in winter. “Murasaki-san?”

  “I... I cannot. I cannot.” I looked up into his frown—the same frown he’d been wearing when I had arrived in Masugu’s rooms that morning. That morning? It felt as if that had been a memory from a previous lifetime. “My father... I—”

  “Murasaki-san,” said the Little Brother, his voice low. “Our lady wishes you to learn to defend yourself. You are Chiyome-sama’s servant.”

  “I live,” I said, my tongue thick, “at Chiyome-sama’s pleasure. But I cannot kill. I will not.” I knelt and touched my forehead to the cold wood. “If our lady wishes this humble servant killed for her disobedience, this humble servant will gladly die.”

  The Little Brother hissed. “Get up. Don’t... There is a difference between learning to defend yourself, Risuko, and killing people.”

  I looked up; his broad face was creased with concern. “I know what the kunoichi are. I know what it is Lady Chiyome expects me to do.”

  He grimaced and shook his head—whether to deny what I was saying or to clear his mind I did not know. “Do not be so sure. Your father would have wanted this, I think. Take up your sword.”

  “Little Brother. Sir...” I stammered.

  “To learn with a bamboo sword how one defends oneself is not to kill.” He held the sword out to me. “Take the sword.”

  I thought of my father. Wrapping away his blades.

  Hand trembling, I took the handle.

  The leather-wrapped hilt fit in my fingers as if it had been created created for no other hand but mine. I stood there, my feet spread, the bamboo practice sword held before me. Without thinking about it, I had taken the first position in Mieko-sensei’s dance. Of the sword exercises that Otō-san used to do every morning out in the courtyard, right up until that last morning when he was summoned by Lord Imagawa. I stared at the bundle of tightly-bound pieces of split bamboo, seeing in my mind’s eye the impossibly bright steel of Father’s katana.

  My vision flared.

  “Well done, Risuko,” said the Little Brother. “You have taken the first position. Good. Now, let us begin.”

  And he led me through the whole of the exercise—the dance—and as always, I knew each move before the last was finished. After all, hadn’t Usako and I mirrored Otō-san in the mornings, each us holding a stick of pine or a stalk of bamboo as he swept his sword through each of the parries and cuts?

  I can remember us standing in the shadow where the roof is low, by the kitchen, both of us mirroring him. I remember Otō-san pretending not to see us.

  Soon, I had followed the Little Brother through the exercise four times—once facing in each of the cardinal directions: East, south, west, and north.

  The Little Brother bowed, and I bowed back. I felt as if quicksilver were swirling through my innards. “This,” he said, “we call The Sixty-four Changes. Mastering these positions, you will learn to wield a sword in balance, attacking and defending while still remaining rooted to your center. Each position combines the five elements, the two energies. All flow from the first position, The Two Fields.” He took the initial stance, his feet spread wide and his sword before him. “You should feel planted, as if your legs extended deep into the earth.”

  He walk around me, adjusting the stance with the tip of his sword—moving my feet further apart, making sure my knees were bent, but not too much, showing me how to hold the sword neither too high nor too low, but with the hilt just at my navel.

  Finally satisfied, he stepped opposite me and took the pose again himself. “The next stance we call The Bamboo Bud.” He stepped to one side with his right foot, bringing his blade up to match the diagonal line from his left foot to the crown of his head. “This position allows you to redirect the force of an opponent’s downward cut with no harm to yourself or to your blade—like the young bamboo, you bend, shedding the attack, but do not break.”

  If it hadn’t been for his size, and for the wooden sword in his hands, he might indeed have looked a bit like a shoot of bamboo sprouting from the forest floor.

  I mirrored him, and once again, he adjusted my stances until I met his standard.

  “Last for today is The Key to Heaven.” He stepped toward me, lifting his right foot and knee in exaggerated fashion while raising the sword high above his head, and then bringing leg and sword down with a thunderous bellow.

  I blinked, staring down at the wooden sword, which he held a fingernail’s width from my chest.

  We had gone through these movements while following Mieko-san. I had watched our father practice them. And yet watching them one by one...

  I stood there, my hands once again shaking.

  “Risuko,” said the Little Brother, stepping back and gesturing for me to imitate him, and I started to try to tell him that I couldn’t, but his big, kindly face shone on me, remorseless and relentless. I gulped down a whimper, stepped forward, and slashed down half-heartedly with my bamboo sword.

  Why, I do not know, but as I did so, the image that floated through my mind was of the chicken that I had trapped, just before Toumi wrung its neck, its strange, demon eyes boring into my soul.

  “Good,” said the Little Brother, smiling. “Again.”

  I repeated the motion—the lunge forward and the downward slash of the blade—over and over until it felt more like working in the kitchen than anything else: chop, chop, chop....

  “Good,” said the Little Brother again. “You have done well for today. Tomorrow, we will work on the next three forms. You may go to the kitchen now.”

  —

  I found myself some time later in the kitchen, one of the long, sword-sharp cleavers in my hand, chopping up daikon because although I needed to be moving, there was nowhere for me to go. I was thinking about the movements of Mieko’s dance. Of how they would feel with a blade in my hands. The Two Fields—balanced and ready. The Bamboo Bud—moving to the side and bringing the blade up to block an attack at one’s head. The Key of Heaven—a swift cut downward....

  “That’s enough radish I think, Bright-eyes.” The voice surprised me, and my eyes suddenly took in what I had created while my mind had wandered: a pile of sliced daikon that flowed off of the cutting table like slabs of snow from hemlock boughs. Startled, I looked up.

  Kee Sun was grey-faced; his scars seemed even paler than usual.

  “Is...?” So much had happened that morning that I couldn’t even think how to finish the question.

  “Masugu’s goin’ t’be all right. Be off his feet for a while, mind. But yeh and Serpent-girlie did good. And my tonic did the job, right enough.”

  “Serpent?”

  “Ayup. Mieko, as yeh call her. Beautiful as a snake, twice as calm, but just as deadly if yeh step on her, right?” He winked.

  “Oh. Is she still...?”

  “Nope. Off in the Retreat with all of the rest of them but you, the lady, and us men-folk.” I must have looked concerned, because he held his hands up. “Yehr friend with the moon-cake face, Aimaru, he’s watchin’ Masugu. Keepin’ him talkin’.”

  The memory of Masugu’s fingers on my chin—of his babbling—flashed through my mind.

  Kee Sun smiled. “Don’t think he’s asked Moon-cake to marry him yet. But yeh never know.”
/>
  I felt the blood rushing to my face.

  “Nice sash yeh got there, girlie.” He began pulling some herbs from the rafters and dropping them into a large pot of chicken stock that was just beginning to boil over the fire.

  “Uh. Thank you, Kee Sun-san.” I picked up the knife that I had been using, and then put it down again. I wanted desperately to forget the sash and all that it represented—married to death and that which is deathless. “So. What are we making for the mid-day meal?”

  He grunted. “We? I’m brewin’ another batch of tonic, and then I’m headin’ back to care for Masugu.” He grinned at me. “Yeh’re making rice, and servin’ it with some o’ the smoked eel from the storeroom. Oh. And radishes,” he snickered, pointing at the pile on the cutting table.

  “I?” I gasped. “All alone?”

  “Well,” he said, “guess yeh’re an initiate and all now. So I’ll send Moon-cake over t’help yeh. Though I’m thinkin’ he’d rather be talkin’ to Smilie, right?”

  “Thank you, Kee Sun-san.” I was so pleased that I wouldn’t be preparing the meal alone that I didn’t even mind him making fun of my friends. A question occurred to me. “Kee Sun-san? Did they—? Did Masugu-san really ask Mieko-sensei to marry him?”

  I watched his shoulders bunch—a grimace or a shrug, I couldn’t be sure. “I tell yeh, Bright-eyes. Men and women? A bloody mess. Every time.” And that was all that he said on the subject.

  —

  Not long after Kee Sun had left with another dose of the spicy-scented tonic, I found myself standing in the middle of the kitchen, holding the long stick that Kee Sun kept to shoo away the rats. Gripping it in both hands like a sword. Like a samurai’s katana.

  Could I? I wondered. Could I be like Mieko and the rest? Could I be like Father?

  I was in the starting rest position, feet spread, sword in front of me, balanced. The Two Fields. I stepped to the side, bringing the stick up at an angle as if to parry a downward cut. The Bamboo Bud.

  I heard a noise behind me and whirled, not even thinking, bringing the stick above my head and down...