Risuko

by David Kudler

  “All right.” She stood and stepped into the doorway. I knew her well enough by then to know that the sadness on her face was neither habitual nor feigned. “It’ll be boring without you. All they want to do is complain, eat or sleep.” She started to close the door, but turned back toward me. “Say hello to the lieutenant. And, uh, to Aimaru.” Her nose and cheeks were already reddened by the cold, but now a pink flush rose up her neck.

  “I will,” I answered, but she had already closed the door, slurping at her soup.

  —

  When I got to the guesthouse, Aimaru was far happier to see the soup tureen than he seemed to be to see me, but even so he smiled when I extended Emi’s greeting to him.

  “Is your head all right?” I asked. The bruise on his forehead was the deep purple of maple leaves.

  He grinned as he touched his hand to it. “Oh, yes. It doesn’t hurt.” He winced. “Much.”

  My stomach sank as I passed him his bowl. “I’m so, so sorry, Aimaru!”

  He chuckled. “Don’t be. That was really amazing, the way you did that. Where did you learn?”

  “I...” I was about to deny having ever learned anything about anything, but I realized what a pointless effort that would have been. “When I was little, I would watch while my father practiced with his katana. And sometime I would follow him, with a stick instead of a sword. I guess I actually learned something.”

  “I guess so!” He rubbed his neck and laughed. He sat and began to slurp his soup, but looked up. “If you see Emi...”

  “I will offer your greetings,” I said, and noticed with interest that his neck pinkened in very much the same manner as Emi’s had.

  Turning toward the sliding door to the bedroom, I felt myself hesitate. The room where I had argued with Mieko and Lady Chiyome, where I had watched Masugu himself nearly die—the idea of going back in there terrified me.

  The chaos in the room, courtesy of what Lady Chiyome had called the kitsune, the fox spirit, made me shiver with apprehension, wondering if perhaps a malevolent demon was in fact among us. Nonsense, I told myself, sliding open the door just a bit with my left hand and then opening it the rest of the way with my right—just as Mother always taught us to do. I entered and knelt, the tureen in my hands.

  Masugu-san lay on his bed, his eyes just barely open. The sleeping robe that he wore was damp with his sweat, and the room was stale with the scent of his perspiration, as well as the barely perceptible odors of vomit, of the burnt mugwort, and of the pickled ginger that I had spilled, just on the spot where I was kneeling.

  “Mu-saki,” he rasped through chapped lips. At least this time he knew that I was me and not Mieko. His hand, which was on top of the blanket, motioned feebly: come.

  I shuffled over on my knees. His face was pale, but not as grey as it had been the day before. “Would you like some soup?”

  He made a face—it was just like the face Usako used to make when Okā-san tried to feed her okayu. She was the only baby I ever knew who didn’t like rice porridge.

  “It’s good for you,” I said, ladling out a bowl—just as Mother used to say to my sister.

  “Ginger,” he said, turning up his nose, and I couldn’t blame him. That day, he’d probably had more ginger shoved down his throat—and up his nose—than he’d eaten in the entire year.

  I held the bowl up to his lips. “Kee Sun says that it helps sharpen the senses and fight off the effect of the poppy. Just a sip.”

  He took a sip, but still made a face, and I couldn’t help it: I laughed. “No being fussy! Are you a samurai or aren’t you?”

  He gave me a weary look of disgust, but took another slurp from the bowl that I continued to hold before him. He swallowed, grunted, and lay back. “Bitter.”

  I sniffed at the soup. Under the delicious smells of the ginger and garlic, the bitter tang that I’d noticed before was still there. “I thought so too. Kee Sun thinks he may have let the stock simmer too hot or too long or something.”

  He grunted again. Taking a faltering, deep breath, he raised his drooping eyes to mine. “Mu-saki.”

  “Yes, Masugu-san?”

  “Chimney.”

  “Chimney?” I remembered in a flash crouching on the wall above the Retreat’s chimney the night before in the driving snow, listening... “Oh. Oh, Masugu-san. I’m so, so sorry, I didn’t mean to overhear—”

  “No.” He shook his head with some effort. “No.” He raised a finger and pointed at me. “Chimney.”

  I sighed. “Yes. I... I climbed the wall. I heard a noise and I thought perhaps someone was trying to sneak into the Full Moon, so I climbed up above the Retreat and I overheard you and Mieko-san fighting.”

  He actually managed to flash a bit of a smile. “Not fight...” He chuckled, a dry, dead-leaf chuckle, and pointed at me. “Sq’rrel.”

  I knew that he was teasing me because I’d been climbing again, but I couldn’t help but feel mortified.

  “Mu-saki...”

  “Yes, Masugu-san?”

  “Go... chimney.” His burst of energy was fading; he fell back against his bedroll, and his eyes began to close.

  “Yes. I went up by the chimney.” I really wished he wouldn’t keep bringing that up.

  “No. Chimney. Go.”

  “You...?” I peered at him. He was struggling to stay awake; I wondered if he were beginning to suffer from one of the poppy-induced delusions again. “You want me to go back to the chimney of the Retreat?” Perhaps he wanted me to listen to what the women were saying? If Emi was right, I didn’t think that anything that they might be talking about would be of interest—especially to a man.

  Even so, he gave a tiny, relieved smile and nodded. “Go. Chimney... Roof.” His chest and face softened as if he were melting into the bed. “Snowbird... Fox...”

  Kitsune. That sent a shiver through me. Perhaps the lieutenant was possessed?

  “Scroll,” he said—or at least that’s what it sounded like. “Go....”

  At that moment, there was a crash from the front room; shocked, I turned to see Aimaru slumped against the wall. His soup bowl was shattered on the tatami below his limp hand, bits of mushroom and tofu and porcelain all dripping into the mat.

  I gasped, and so did the lieutenant. “Poison!” he hissed.

  I turned. His eyes now were wide. Masugu grabbed my hand. “Soup... poison...”

  Now my eyes were wide. “Oh! Oh, no! Masugu-san, I would never—!”

  “No,” he groaned. “No. Kitsune. Kitsune.”

  I nodded. I understood him, even if what he was saying made no sense. “The fox spirit poisoned the soup?”

  He nodded.

  My heart racing, I looked at Aimaru, who was still as death on the floor, and then at Masugu, who was weak; could two sips of poisoned broth finish the fox spirit’s assassination attempt? “I’ll get Kee Sun,” I cried. “He’ll help!” I hoped desperately that the cook had in fact waited for me to return before he ate; he could save Aimaru and the lieutenant....

  I stood, and the bowl that I was holding spilled to the tatami but I paid it no mind. I was thinking that I had just served every one of the women in the Retreat from the same tureen. I remembered Emi closing the door, sipping at her bowl... I began to stumble out.

  “Mu-saki!” Masugu’s groan stopped me. I turned. He was clenching his hands, as if trying to keep himself awake. “Chimney. Roof. Go!”

  “Go... to the chimney?” I answered, incredulous.

  “Yesss,” he wheezed, and collapsed onto his back in a deep, dead faint.

  33—Smoke and Stone

  For the second time that day I was running across the courtyard toward the great hall. This time, however, I was not stumbling after Lady Chiyome.

  To whom, I realized, Kee Sun had fed the same soup.

  Could Kee Sun be the kitsune?
<
br />   I stopped, mid-sprint, panting in the dark, winter evening. No, I thought. He’s crazy, but if he’d wanted to poison us, the Full Moon’s cook could have done it any time. And, as Lady Chiyome had said about Mieko-san, he’d have done it without making a mess of it.

  I ran the rest of the way to the kitchen; I had no hope that the cook wouldn’t already have served Chiyome-sama and the Little Brothers. When I burst into the outside door to the kitchen, he was just where I expected him to be: sitting at the work table, with two lidded bowls of soup laid—one for him, and one for me.

  “Poison!” I gasped.

  He blinked at me, then down at the bowls. He swept the lid from one of the bowls, sniffed, and then snarled in Korean and spat on the floor. “Bitter. You said it was bitter, Bright-eyes.” With a look of panic on his face, he sprinted into the dining hall; Chiyome and the Little Brothers where slumped over the head table, their soup spilled on the ground. Lifting our mistress’s head, he used his thumbs to open her eyes. “Chiyome! Chiyome, can yeh hear me?”

  She let out a kind of snort and said something unrepeatable.

  Kee Sun gave a bark of relieved laughter. Placing her head gently back on the table, he checked the others quickly—they too seemed to respond. Then Kee Sun ran back into the kitchen, sweeping past me and stumbling over to where the herbs were hung. “Bitter,” he muttered, looking along the rafters for the herb that had been used to poison the soup. “Bitter. Bitter.”

  The poppies were still there—but they would have smelled sweet. He pointed up at an empty space on the beam. “Whew!”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Why’d anyone use that to poison folk?”

  “What?”

  He turned as if just remembering that I was there, shaking his head to clear it. “Ah. Corydalis.”

  “Corydalis?” The root from which Mother used to make tea before her moon time. The root out of which he’d been making Emi’s tea. “Is that... dangerous?”

  “Well...” Kee Sun rubbed his hand through his mop of grey hair. “It’ll make’em all sleepy and boneless, and I suppose it’ll give folk an awful headache, if she’s used all of it. The men-folk especially!” He started to grin, but suddenly his relief disappeared. “Bright-eyes, tell me—how much did yeh feed Masugu?”

  “T-two sips! I swear!”

  He sighed, “Well, that’s all right. Shouldn’t oughta harm him, though he’s in no fit state...” Turning away from me, he started to grab herbs—what was left of the ginger after all of the day’s tonic- and soup-making, mugwort, black tea, green tea, and a box of precious ginseng.

  I, however, was thinking about what Masugu had been trying to tell me before the corydalis put him back to sleep. Chimney... “Kee Sun! Do you need my help for a few minutes?”

  “What?” he grumbled, dumping the stimulating, yang herbs onto the cutting table. “Well, I could use some help feedin’ this t’everyone, but no, I can get this prepared quick enough. Yeh need to go t’the privy?”

  “The...? No! No, Masugu-san wanted me to go up to the chimney of the Retreat—I don’t know why, but he made me promise as he was passing out.”

  “Huh,” grunted Kee Sun, chopping madly away. The kitchen filled once again with the sharp smell of ginger and the earthy tang of ginseng. “Maybe whatever it is she’s been lookin’ for’s hidden up there. Smart place for a man to hide a thing.”

  “Oh.” I thought back—Masugu asking me if I’d visited his rooms, the night of the first snow; Lady Chiyome telling him the fox spirit had been looking for something...

  I remembered that night of the first snow, Masugu walking away in the direction of the storehouse, I had thought, tapping a sealed scroll against his own shoulder. Not toward the storehouse, I realized: Toward the Retreat!

  “Kee Sun-san, I need to go get it before the...” I stopped at the door and turned. “Why do you keep calling who did this she?”

  He laughed again, sharp and bitter this time. “’Cause I know it’s not me that’s done it, and the other men in the Full Moon are all asleep. I’d never believe such sloppiness of a kumiho—a fox spirit, as yeh call it. And in this weather, I don’t think it’s someone come in from outside o’the wall over and over without anybody knowin’, do yeh? Though if it’s one of the girls who’s worked in my kitchen, I’d like to remind her of a lesson or two in how to handle herbs proper!”

  “Oh,” I said. “I see.” And I did. It occurred to me in that moment that it couldn’t be Emi who’d done this—or Toumi either, for that matter. All of us knew poppy by sight—and if we’d wanted for some reason to poison the inhabitants of the Full Moon, there were herbs that we’d have known to use before grabbing the corydalis at random from the rafters. “I’ll be right back,” I called, and waved, but Kee Sun was already bent over the table, tossing herbs into the long-handled wok, and filling the kitchen with their rich scent.

  Growing up, I had always been the one who insisted loudly that there were no such things as spirits and demons, that they were just something that Mother made up to scare us with. But as I sprinted behind the great hall, I felt the presence of the kitsune, in spite of Kee Sun’s certainty: the fox spirit, lurking in the shadows, laughing, the tips of its nine tails whipping, threatening, taunting, just beyond the edges of my vision.

  Why does the kitsune want the scroll? I wondered as my feet slapped the hard, frozen dirt. It must be something important, to go to all of this trouble to try to hurt people. And she—Kee Sun now had me thinking of the poisoner as a she—must be getting frantic.

  When I got to the Retreat, before I tried to climb, I went to the front door. It was open; Emi lay snoring, her cheek pressing against the cold stone threshold and the shards of her soup bowl still clutched in her hand. I would have found it funny: she always fell asleep so quickly under any circumstances that I could imagine her dropping off in mid-step, on the way to warn us of the poison. But I was worried that she would freeze, out in the winter night, or cut her hands on the shattered porcelain. I removed the pieces of the bowl, pushed her with some difficulty into the Retreat where the other women were strewn about on the floor like blown dandelion seeds, and closed the door.

  Then I walked around to the far side of the building where the stone chimney butted up against the back corner of the Retreat. There didn’t seem to be any crevices there—certainly none large enough to hide a scroll in. Looking up, I saw a trickle of smoke drifting from the covered top of the chimney and swirling, dancing with the falling snow. Perhaps, I thought, he hid it where he could be sure that no one could find it. Another thought gave me a guilty sense of righteousness: Or perhaps he hid it where he knew only I could find it. Reaching up, I began to scale the rough stone of the chimney.

  There were plenty of handholds there, and so, cold and icy though it may have been, I quickly made my way up to the roof of the Retreat, scrambling up onto the dense thatch before I’d even started to breathe hard. There was a huge mound of snow blanketing most of the building, but there at the back, close to the compound wall, the wind and the heat from the chimney kept the roof more or less clear.

  I scrambled along the stone base of the chimney; just above me I could see the top of the Full Moon’s wall, where I’d knelt and listened to Masugu and Mieko’s argument (not fight, he’d said). I couldn’t see the scroll, nor any obvious cranny in the chimney in which to hide it.

  Chimney.... Roof, he had said. I had assumed that he had meant that he had hidden the scroll—or whatever it was that I was looking for—in the side of the chimney, somewhere at roof-level. What else could he have meant?

  Peering down, I considered the possibility that he had hidden the scroll at ground-level. That seemed unlikely—it was too easy a place for someone to find the scroll, and I would most likely have seen it when I was down there. Inside of the Retreat? No. In the first place, I couldn’t see Masugu-san, who always tried to be so e
xtremely proper, sneaking inside of the Retreat—except to meet Mieko. In the second, he had very clearly said Roof, which meant that it had to be outside.

  I searched the surface of the chimney again; no loose stones, no crevices, and no place to hide anything larger than a pebble. I couldn’t imagine that even a demon would make all of this trouble over a pebble.

  Trying to think, I let my eyes wander up, watching the smoke trickling out from under the chimney’s slanted cover.

  The chimney’s roof.

  I stood. For a man of Masugu’s height, the chimney roof would have been within reach. For me, however, it meant a little more climbing. Not a problem, I thought with satisfaction, and shimmied the small distance up and found a good foothold so that I could reach up under the chimney roof’s soot-smeared eaves. There was a small ledge out of sight there—just right.

  My fingers danced along the hot, grimy wood. At first I found nothing, and I began to worry that if the lieutenant had left a paper scroll there, perhaps it had been burnt to ash. But just before I reached the far corner, my fingers touched something warm, hard, and round. I grasped it and pulled it down.

  It was a metal cylinder—the letter case that I had seen Lady Chiyome with that first day at Pineshore; the letter case that Masugu had poked me with our first night at the Full Moon. The end was closed with a seal marked with three ginger leaves.

  Grinning, pleased with myself, I slid back down to the roof. The snowfall had broken for the moment, the clouds had parted to expose the black night sky and snowflake stars, and bright moonlight turned the entire compound silver as trout scales.

  As I sat, preparing to make my way down to the ground and return to help Kee Sun revive everyone, I looked down at the cylinder in my hand. What is in it?

  Perhaps it was simple curiosity. Perhaps the presence of the trickster spirit had infected me. Without even considering, I pulled open the end of the case and tapped it twice, sliding the enclosed scroll into the palm of my hand.