by David Kirk
Ruins stood before Bennosuke also.
He gazed down into the landward valley of the village—the abandoned valley. At the bottom, amid the wild growth of eight years, a cluster of burned stumps and foundations were huddled. A vague outline of what had once been a village could be made out, charred angles and order within the mass of green. It was a view well known to the boy.
This was where his mother had died.
Yoshiko.
Bennosuke barely remembered her. She was a soothing voice in the night, a warm hand that enveloped his and nothing more, no face or tangible memory he could recall. What he knew of her was mostly what Dorinbo had told him: that though she had been born a samurai and was married to one in Munisai, she had a kind heart that drew her to healing. Dorinbo had taught her, and in turn she had tended to the peasants of the village. She set their bones, rubbed salve upon their sores, and sometimes delivered babies.
She had been called to do such a thing one night down in the valley before him, back when it had life there.
An earthquake had come.
A roof had fallen in.
A lantern had tipped over.
And that was it—after that she was gone. Bennosuke had been staying with Dorinbo that night, and he had been sleeping so deeply that he had not even felt the shaking of the earth. What had woken him was distant screaming, and bleary-eyed he had wandered out into the night. Dorinbo was up and out in the grounds already, tying a sack of his medical tools around himself, the sky above him tangerine.
“Go back to bed, Bennosuke,” he had said, his voice unusually hard. “It’s dangerous.”
The boy had obeyed, and while he had lain in a dark room his mother had burned to death. He wished he could have known her. She must have been a wonderful woman—this he knew, for his father so loved her that when he learned of her fate in the morning he was overcome with grief and had left the village, so haunting was it to remember the places they had been together.
The child Bennosuke had not dared to even look at the ruins for years afterward, but eventually he had summoned the courage. Now he found himself returning more and more often. It was a quiet place, away from the disgusted glares of the peasants. He could escape the shame here, and think. He never once went down, only looked, as he did now, clenching and unclenching his fists.
He somehow wanted the ghost of his mother to appear, as stupid as he knew that was, and to tell him what to say to Dorinbo. Bennosuke had gone to the temple every morning for as long as he could remember, whether to help with healing or with worship or for Dorinbo to teach him to read or to count or any number of things. But he had never once considered that this was what his future might hold. He had gone to the temple simply because he knew nothing else.
His uncle had obviously been thinking otherwise. How could Bennosuke deny the monk without hurting him? He knew his uncle was good enough and kind enough that he would surely take a renouncement of the offer as a renouncement of himself. What were the words, the shining explanation? The boy needed to know.
But the ruins were just ruins, the mortal and the spirit world separate as always. There was no answer here, no matter how long he stared.
He left eventually, still torn, still alone. It was time for training.
THE TIME IN the dojo, at least, Bennosuke relished. Every afternoon he came to train in the hall, grueling though it was, for here he could ignore the worries that nagged at him. There was nothing that could not be solved by the strike of a sword, and that was pleasing in the baseness of it.
Hours passed like moments, his concentration perfect as he took in martial form and pattern. Again and again he would repeat the same maneuvers, seeking to make the strange balance and unnatural movements fluid, preparing muscles that would not develop properly until adulthood. When he sparred, the boy would lose himself to the fight, putting the full body of his voice behind the victory cry shouted the moment his wooden sword had exploited the gap and struck gauntlet or helmet or cuirass.
Then, for a few vital seconds, he would feel a rush of accomplishment he felt nowhere else. Those moments were when he could allow himself to believe that he could one day be a samurai.
Not all took it as seriously as he did, however. Boys from the surrounding villages came to be taught, some days only a handful, some days over a dozen. Today was busy, and two boys thought this bought them anonymity. They had started giggling and slapping at each other’s calves, one with a wooden sword and one with a pole that served as a mock spear, any pretense of discipline forgotten. The hall’s master, Tasumi, had given a wordless bellow of rage and stormed over.
“You think you can come here and fool around?” the samurai snarled, the two boys cowed before him now. His face was slick with sweat, having just spent an hour drilling set patterns of parry and riposte. The other students had fallen silent, looking on.
“No, sir,” the one with the pole muttered eventually.
“So why are you acting like an idiot, then?”
“I’m not,” said the boy, and then Tasumi cuffed him around the head. The boy looked surprised for a moment.
“What was—”
Tasumi cuffed him again. “Not too clever, are you?” said the samurai.
“You can’t do that!” said the boy with the sword, and then Tasumi lashed out with both hands and brought their heads together.
“If you paid attention, maybe you would know how to stop me,” said Tasumi.
“Why should I pay attention?” said the boy with the pole, and he looked up defiantly for a moment.
“Oh?” said Tasumi.
“My father works the clan’s finances—I’ll take his role someday, and then what good is a spear to me?” said the boy, his voice cracking in anger as he tossed the pole on the floor. It clattered in the silence. Tasumi grinned.
“A bead pusher, eh?” the samurai said.
“Yes.”
“Counting is important for you, then?”
“Yes,” said the boy, but his voice was faltering. He had suddenly become aware of how alone he was in the face of that grin.
“Then let’s give you some practice,” said Tasumi, and put his hands on the boy’s shoulders.
Twenty-five times Tasumi dunked the boy’s head into a trough of water, the boy spluttering every count of his punishment, fifty times the boy had to drop into a squat while holding a rock the size of his head, then two hundred times he had to run barefoot around the outside of the dojo shouting an old battle cry at the top of his lungs.
“You shouldn’t be so hard on them, Uncle,” said Bennosuke when they were finished. He and Tasumi were standing beneath the eaves of the dojo, watching the other boys troop home. The son of the accountant was limping and glowering, his hair hanging around him in a loose and matted mess.
“You can’t harden clay without fire,” grunted the man.
“You’ll drive them away,” said Bennosuke.
“They’ll be back,” said Tasumi, and jerked his chin toward the back of the accountant’s son. “That one especially. You think his father would let good coin go to waste? He’s paid his dues for the next few seasons, and he won’t want to have fattened my purse without something in return. Why are you defending them anyway? They’re the same age as you.”
The samurai was built like a wrestler. His arms were long and the thick hair upon them was parted by the light ridges of scars. He had entered into an arranged marriage with Bennosuke’s aunt when they had been little older than the boy was now. Bennosuke had never met the woman, and Tasumi saw her only a few times a year, for she served her duty as a handmaiden to the wife and mistresses of Lord Shinmen in his stronghold.
But perhaps because there was no bond of blood between them, things were easier than they were with Dorinbo, or perhaps it was simply because Tasumi was a far blunter man. Now that swords were finished with, what Bennosuke had tried to banish earlier in the day seeped back into him. Tasumi noticed the change, saw the wan look that came onto the boy’s
face.
“You were bloody awful today too, I was watching you,” the samurai said, his way of polite inquiry into the boy’s well-being. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing,” said Bennosuke, but the man grabbed his hand and pulled it close to him, yanking the gauntlet off to examine critically what lay beneath.
“Hands like a thatcher, no wonder you can’t swing a sword,” he tutted, his small eyes focused like an artisan’s. “That monk has got you working too hard, prancing about weaving like some woman. Is this because of that great burning you’re planning?”
“Yes,” said Bennosuke, pulling his hand free.
“Has he told you about why we do that, the festival and the pomp and the ceremony?” asked the samurai.
“The twenty years symbolize the length of time Amaterasu spent in the cave after her brother slaughtered her handmaidens. Her light was gone from the world, and all things came close to death until they eventually convinced her to emerge once more. The world was born anew then,” said the boy, using words remembered from sermons. “And so it is when we burn the temple. A new start for all of us.”
“Well, isn’t that pretty?” said Tasumi. “Want to know the real reason? It’s good practice, is what. Every twenty years a new batch of apprentice builders gets to remake the temple—it’s small and it’s simple and they learn the basics of construction from it, and they get to feel all holy and special while they do it. The monks get a new temple out of it too, so everyone is happy.”
Tasumi turned away for a moment, waving one hand dismissively. He looked back into the dojo until he was certain he had registered his distaste at effete, passive things, and then when his honor as a samurai was safe he allowed himself to look at the boy again, this time as a man and as an uncle.
“Look,” he said softly, “Dorinbo is a good man. There is worth in what he does, there really is. Just … try to remember to think whenever someone tries to sell you on a cause. There is very rarely any divine crusade or something like that. Look for the real meaning of things, not what they are said to be—you understand?”
“Yes, Uncle,” said Bennosuke.
“Now—what’s wrong?” said Tasumi.
“I …” the boy began, and then stopped.
No further words came, because there were none of his own. Visiting the ruins had left a mark upon him as it always did, and what the boy relived within himself was the morning after the earthquake and the terrible fire. He remembered the last words of his father before he had left the village, those final moments before both parents were stripped from him.
“Bennosuke,” the man had said, his eyes red with what were maybe tears, thick black smoke curling into the air behind him, “try to be samurai.”
His hand tightened on the boy’s small shoulder for one moment, and then he had risen and walked away. The samurai had not looked back, growing smaller and smaller until he was over the ridge and gone to the unknown horizons beyond, and that was that.
Bennosuke often wondered if those words had formed the very core of him, or if they had merely kindled what was already there. The simple truth was that deep down he knew that he was meant to be a samurai. It was why he forced himself to face the shame of the armor and to hold his rash-plagued face high as he walked among those who recoiled in disgust. He could not deny that desire was there even if he questioned his ability to fulfill it.
That alone was why he could not become Dorinbo’s apprentice: simple gut instinct. To explain it that way would be embarrassing and insulting to Dorinbo, to fabricate a reason and lie to him even more so.
Tasumi would offer no advice—the boy knew that the samurai would simply march up to the temple and shout at Dorinbo for even making such an offer. He would have to bear this sickly sense of shame and burden alone, and he knew the right thing to do would be to address it now before it festered any further.
But he was just a boy. It was easier to distance the world, to close your eyes and pretend nothing existed outside that, and so he took the coward’s route, shook his head and let it go. Dorinbo was talking of lives, he told himself, and a night or a week would make no difference to that. Bennosuke could see the relief in Tasumi’s eyes at the vanishing of a troubling conversation.
INSTEAD OF BEING honest, they went and speared fish in the river together. They stripped down to their loincloths and waded in, trying to learn the angle of the water’s warping. It was a hard knack to find, and Bennosuke lost himself to the challenge until the light began to fade and the cicadas were humming and the swallows began to return to their nests.
He had caught a single, fat fish to Tasumi’s three, and they made a sack of their kimonos and put the silver bodies inside. This they hung over the end of their spears and marched home, letting the cooling air dry their bodies. They laughed and talked, alone now that the peasants had retired from the fields for the day. The paddy waters had settled into shimmering orange mirrors for the dying sun, glowing where the rest of the valley had faded into shadow.
As they headed down to the dojo, they became aware of a gathering of the peasants. They were still muddy from their work, and they stood in small huddles looking at the hall apprehensively from a distance. They muttered to one another, and suddenly fell silent when they became aware of Tasumi and Bennosuke coming from behind them.
A pale horse had been tethered by the hall. It was a samurai mount, a tall, strong beast bred for wearing armor and kicking savagely. Livery hung from the saddle, the light blue of Lord Shinmen. Tasumi’s eyes hardened in curiosity, but the peasants melted away in obsequious bobs when he looked to them for answers. This was not their realm.
Tasumi hesitated for a moment on the steps of the dojo, Bennosuke hovering with him. The samurai had not been expecting anyone. Greeting whoever it was in his underclothes did not appeal, and his kimono was sodden and stank of fish. But then, if whoever it was was expecting hospitality, they would have sent word ahead. The man shrugged, and then slid open the heavy door as though he were unconcerned.
A man sat cross-legged before the ancestral shrine. He turned, one arm bound tight to his chest.
“Oh,” said Tasumi, “it’s been some time.”
Bennosuke peered into the hall beyond the bulk of his uncle. There he saw the face that belonged beneath the brow of the helmet the boy had cleaned fastidiously since his childhood, the face that he had dreaded and longed to see more than anything else. Of course it had to be him; the specter was finally summoned. There for the first time in eight years, Bennosuke saw the face of his father.
CHAPTER THREE
Night had fallen. Munisai stood in the gloom of his house in front of his suit of armor, looking at it in silence. It had been kept immaculately, as had all the treasures of his youth, and all he wanted to do was laugh in disgust.
The shade of blue was gaudy and effeminate, the perfect lacquer chest plate spoke of time diverted from training to polishing, and the helmet … Where to begin? The needless embossing weakened the structure, there was no protection of the face at all, and the crest above the brow was practically begging enemies to grab and twist the thing from his head.
But above all there was the name threaded in brilliant white with such galling arrogance upon the armor.
Munisai Hirata.
The name that he had tried so hard to forget woke things that ached in his heart. He began to feel his chest well as though it might burst with sickness.
Hirata.
The name that he was born to, the name that he had damned, and the name that he had cast aside in favor of his lord’s.
“Hello, Munisai,” said Dorinbo.
Startled, Munisai turned to see his brother standing in the light of the doorway. A paper lantern glowed behind the monk. He had appeared as if from nothing.
“Dorinbo?” Munisai blurted in surprise, and then bowed apologetically. “Forgive me, I hadn’t expected to see you tonight.”
“I thought you might have had the courtesy to seek me ou
t, after so long,” said the monk, slowly returning the bow.
“I would have …” Munisai began, but then he faltered under Dorinbo’s gaze. He knew his brother was not talking solely about some mere slight of a greeting. There was much to explain, much of it shameful, and Munisai could find no words.
The monk looked exactly like Munisai remembered him; slender frame, bald head, and most of all a disapproving expression on his face. The silence stretched on and the samurai felt himself start to blush, a mix of guilt and disgrace that he had not felt—or at least not confronted—in some time. Of all men his brother alone had the ability to draw it out of him. He squirmed, until Dorinbo took pity on him and spoke again with warmth in his voice:
“I came because Tasumi told me about your arm. How does it feel?”
“It aches,” said Munisai, grateful for the clemency. “Sometimes I lose feeling in my hand. Other times it itches and tingles.”
“Would you like me to look at it?”
“If you would—I trust your skill, brother.”
Dorinbo gestured to the well-lit drawing room, and wordlessly Munisai followed. There was a creeping silence in the house, and although they walked shoeless upon soft bamboo mats, their footfalls seemed heavy as stone.
The samurai stripped himself to the waist and sat with his back to the lantern. Dorinbo undid the grubby sling—Munisai wincing as the arm dropped dead—and there was a sticky ripping as he peeled the bandage away from the flesh. The monk examined the wound for a moment, and then drew air through his teeth slowly.
“Who tended to this?” he asked.
“One of my men.”
“Was he a healer?”
“No. Is it poorly done?”
“I can’t even tell …” said the monk, and he ran a finger along the edges of the wound, causing his brother to wince ever so slightly. “Did he cut this farther?”
“Yes, upon my orders.”
“Oh,” Dorinbo said, and it was a somber sound. “Oh, you fool. Cutting of the flesh just mangles it. You can only make timber with an ax, you can’t build a house with one.”
