by Zoe Marriott
“Seems like rather a lot of effort on his part!” The man laughed. “Like a child returning to the festival year after year, trying to win the goldfish prize.”
“Precisely. One does wonder if he will be quite so pleased with his bargain once the shine wears off. I pity the woman then.”
They moved on to discuss other things while I sat as still as a statue, watching Terayama-san and Mother. They knelt formally side by side, facing the room; she in the stiff white robes and headdress of a bride, and he in black, with a white tomoeri collar that made the skin of his throat glow. They sipped from ceremonial cups of sake as the Moon Priest nodded benevolently at them.
The ceremony was almost over now. The triumph was there on Terayama-san’s face for all to see. Mother’s face was less easy to read. It was blank, white with nerves or excitement. There was a brilliance in her eyes, though. A glitter, like stars in the deep night sky. Every now and again, her fingers reached out across the little gap between them to gently touch his knee.
She turned her head suddenly to look at me and smiled, an awkward smile of stiff lips and rapidly blinking eyes. I smiled back. My smile was much more natural. It was the one I had stolen from Aimi. Mother nodded and turned her attention back to — I forced myself to think it — her husband. If she looked away from him for too long, he would notice. He always noticed when she was looking at something other than him.
It was so easy to fool her now. Once she had seen through my every excuse, detected my every disobedience. Once I had been unable to keep anything from her.
Once, she had known me.
I could hardly wait to be alone that night, hardly wait for the dinner to be over, so Mother and Terayama-san would climb into their flower-hung palanquin and be borne off on their tour of Terayama-san’s lands. When the chattering guests finally departed, Mai accompanied me to my room. It was not thought proper for a maiden to be unattended at night, but while Terayama-san and Mother were off on their wedding trip, I had the power to ban Mai from my room, and I did, sharply.
That night one cut was not enough. I broke open the scabs of other cuts, old wounds that I had made over the past three months, and made new ones, slashing again and again with the curved silver blade I had stolen from Mother’s manicure tools. I felt no relief. I heard nothing but the shrill cries inside me.
The blade slipped from my fingers and rolled across the tatami mat, leaving a wet trail behind it. I stared, panting. My throat was dry and sore, and my lungs were tight, as if I had been screaming, but the only screaming had been inside, I was sure of that.
Head swimming, I reached for the blade. There were soft plopping noises as I extended my hand. Fat, dark drops spattered the mats. I stared for a long moment before I realized I was looking at blood. My blood.
It had spilled over my pale pink kimono and snaked down my arms. My hands dripped. The gashes gaped open like red mouths. Too confused yet to panic, I tugged down my long sleeves with weak fingers and wrapped the thick layers of fabric around the wounds.
The pain was coming now. It grew with each movement, throbbing and burning. It cleared my head, and I looked in horror at the mess I had made. I had to clean this up. I had to get rid of the blood, or else everyone would know what I had done. I began to use the edges of the kimono to mop up the sticky trails, but more blood was already trickling down my arms. Wetness pooled at my elbows and dripped onto my legs. My sleeves were soaked. I had not known there was so much blood in me.
There isn’t that much blood in you. Not anymore.
I needed help.
Youta would help me. He would keep my secret. He was alone in the kitchen at night, he had said.
I staggered to my feet, the ground shifting uneasily under me. I could not even put out an arm to catch myself. Keeping upright with an effort, I nudged back the shoji screen with my foot and went unsteadily down the corridor.
The pain in my arms was worse with every moment. They felt molten, as if the flesh might simply drop off the bone. It was merest luck that got me down the stairs and outside without falling.
I pushed open the heavy kitchen door with my shoulder, gasping, “Youta?”
Inside it was empty, only the orange glow of the triple-hearthed stove visible. The walls seemed to loom miles above me. I could not hold myself up for much longer. Darkness threatened at the edges of my vision.
“Youta?”
I am going to die, I thought, and closed my eyes on a surge of relief. At last.
Then strong arms wrapped around me. They swung me up, making everything spin and whirl inside my head.
A harsh intake of breath and then a shocked whisper in my ear: “Little Mistress, what have you done?”
I could not answer. I did not know if I was moving or lying still, or even who was speaking to me. Then one of my arms was lifted up. I whimpered in protest. The sleeve was tugged, and then ripped swiftly away from the wounds. I screamed as fire roared up my arm.
The darkness won.
Something was wadded under me in uncomfortable lumps. I stirred, wriggling a little, but I did not have the strength to rearrange myself. I moved one of my arms and cried out when a white-hot pain spiked through it.
“Shh, Little Mistress.” A soothing, familiar voice.
“Y-Youta?”
“How do you feel now?”
“I am not sure. What happened?”
“You must tell me that,” he said, and he sounded sad.
With an immense effort, I forced my eyes open.
I was lying behind the stove on a tattered bundle of rags that I realized must be Youta’s bed. My arms were thickly bound in soft, grayish-white bandages. A lantern was lit now, and Youta was leaning over me, his back to the light. His face was too shadowed to make out. I was glad. I was remembering now why I was here, what I had done.
“I didn’t mean to . . .” My voice trailed off.
“To kill yourself?”
“No.” But I thought about that sense of relief I had felt the moment I believed I would die, and my denial had no conviction behind it. “I came to you. I came before it was too late.”
“Yes, I suppose that is something.” He reached across me and I heard clinking and things moving around. “I have made some tea — which you will oblige me by drinking.”
He handed me a bowl of fragrant green tea and helped me to sit up, offering his shoulder to lean on. He smelled of sweat and charcoal, and old man. His arm behind me was as solid as a tree branch.
“If you did not mean to end your life, please will you tell me why you cut open your own arms?”
I sipped the tea, though my arms burned and my fingers shook. It gave me an excuse for silence. I had come here for help, and Youta had helped me. Yet I found I still did not want to speak of it.
“It . . . was . . . an accident. . . .” The words came out slowly and heavily.
He refilled my tea bowl. “You trusted me to save your life. Trust me enough to tell me the truth.”
“I need it,” I whispered, tea slopping over the edges of the bowl.
Youta steadied my hands.
“I feel — I feel as if I am mad. I am so angry all the time, and so sad, and it screams inside me and never stops. Cutting is the only thing that eases me.” I met his eyes pleadingly. “I usually only make a little mark — but tonight it was not enough. I did not mean to hurt myself. I swear it.”
Youta did not react with shock or disgust. He helped me to lift the bowl to my lips again, saying, “I have heard of such things. Your feelings are natural, Little Mistress. It would be insanity if you were not angry and sad. But instead of being angry and sad with the men who hurt your family, it seems that you are angry and sad with yourself, and that is not right.”
“It is not like that. I am not punishing myself. The cutting makes me feel better.”
“Hurting yourself makes you feel better?”
I bit my lip. It was no use. He had not seen what I had seen. He had not watched them die. No on
e else could know how I felt.
Youta sighed. “You have made yourself very unwell. So much blood lost. And these wounds will leave scars. It will be hard for anyone to miss what has happened to you.”
I went rigid with horror as I realized the truth of what he said. For a moment I wished that I had simply stayed in my room and bled to death.
“I can help you,” Youta said, breaking into my spiraling panic.
“How?” I whispered.
“I will assist you back to your room, and clean the blood, and take your yukata away to be burned. If, when tomorrow comes, you are too weak to leave your bed, you must feign an illness. Young women of noble birth are notoriously delicate. The important thing is that you rest.”
“What about the scars? How shall I hide them?”
“Let me ask you something. When Tsuki no Ouji-sama’s men came to your father’s house, they pursued you through the orchard. How did you manage to escape so many armed men?”
“I do not know,” I said miserably.
“You do,” he said, and his definite tone made me look at him in surprise. “Try to remember.”
“I don’t know,” I insisted.
He gave me an impatient look.
I closed my eyes, forcing my mind back to that time of terror. So much fear . . . so much pain . . . running, seeing Aimi fall and then . . . the light. I had reached out into the light, bent it around me like a shield, like a mantle. I had imagined myself invisible.
And I had run past the soldiers and they had not seen me.
“It was not real,” I whispered. “It couldn’t be.”
“If you remember it, why should it not be real?”
That made me blink.
“And in the fireplace,” he continued, “it was not really the ashes that covered you. I made a blanket of darkness to hide you from the soldiers, just as earlier you had made a mantle of light. You are Kage Oribito. A shadow weaver. One who can weave illusions from the threads of the world. When faced with death, you instinctively used your talent to save yourself.”
“But I — I am not . . . Such things do not exist,” I stammered, shaking my head. “You are speaking of — of magic.”
“The skill is real. The men who taught me believed that Kage Oribito are favorites of the Moon, allowed to share in Her special gift of concealment; for does She not cloak Her face in the shadows of the sky? You may have been using this power in tiny ways, unbeknownst even to yourself, all your life. Or it may never have manifested itself were it not for those terrible events. I do not know. I do know that what you did was an extraordinary thing. To walk before those men in daylight, unseen, is a feat I could never have achieved, and you might never work such a weaving again. It was the Moon’s protection — Her gift — that saved you.”
A sense of wonder filled me. “How do you know so much about this, Youta?”
“I was not always as you see me now,” he said, his eyes turning far away for a moment. “Once I had a different life. I, too, was born with the Moon’s gift, though it does not work so strongly in me. As a young man, I was sought out by a group of men and women who had this skill and who made it their mission to find others like them and train them. It was done in secret, and I was told always to keep it so, except with others of my kind. We are drawn together. No one knows why. Instinctively we find one another. Instinctively we help one another. Perhaps that is another gift from the Moon. I do not know. ”
“Then you did come here to find me?”
“Yes. I had to. One day you, too, will feel that knowing, and will be compelled to aid other shadow weavers in need.”
“So when you said you would help me . . . ?”
“I can teach you to use your skill again. A small illusion to cover your arms should be within your power.”
“I have no idea what I did,” I said warily. “You call it a skill but, for me, it just happened, as easily as reaching for a blanket in the cold.”
Youta carefully drew my right arm out straight. “Watch what I do. Follow me not just with your eyes but with all your senses, and that extra part of you should be able to follow, too.”
I squinted, tensing as if my muscles could help me to see. At first I saw, felt, nothing. Then there was a strange sensation, not in my arm but in the air around it. A brightening of the light and an intensity of the colors: a sort of stillness in the air. I had an intuitive flash of understanding — I knew what was going to happen — and as the grayish lumps of bandage smoothed out into pale skin, I knew that Youta was right. I could do this. I did it all the time.
For weeks, whenever Mother or Terayama-san looked at me, I had been putting on the mask of Aimi’s gentle smile without ever realizing what that mask was. A shadow-weaving.
Youta now supported a perfect, unblemished arm in his rough hands. It was not quite my arm. The faint patterns of hair, the tiny lines at the wrist, were subtly wrong. But the bandages were gone.
“Do you understand what I did?” Youta asked.
“Yes!” I said, hearing the surprise in my own voice.
I knew I could do this. In a strange way, it felt the same as picking up my shamisen for the first time. When my fingers had closed on the instrument, I had just known what to do.
I hoped I was better at this than I had been at playing, however.
“Let me try.”
Youta laid my right arm down carefully and helped me to hold the other one out straight.
I stared at the lumpy bandages, then closed my eyes and imagined how my arm should look.
I sketched in my mind the skinny wrist, white but flushing to peach near the base of the palm. Faint lines ringed it, and there was a pattern of blue veins just under the surface. As my forearm thickened, the skin did, too, hiding the veins. A gleam of soft hair on the other side, and a tiny mole, and then the sharp point of my elbow pushing against the skin. Just as I saw Aimi’s smile as a mask, I saw the arm as a close-fitting sleeve that I pulled into place on top of the bandages. I felt a ripple of power, a tingling of pleasure and excitement that reminded me again of holding a musical instrument, and I knew, even before I opened my eyes, that it had worked.
There it was. My arm. Unscarred, unbandaged, mole and all.
“You have a good eye for detail,” Youta said.
I touched the weaving gingerly, half expecting to feel skin — but my fingertips found the bandages, which my eyes insisted were not there. The difference made me feel queasy.
“We have the ability to change only what the eye can see,” Youta said, noticing my grimace. “A shadow weaver’s principal tool is misdirection. You must try to prevent anyone from touching your arm, but if they do, simply act normally, and they will usually believe they have imagined it. That is the trick the senses play, you see. People trust their eyes above all else — but most people see what they wish to see, or what they believe they should see, not what is really there. It takes long study or intense desperation to overcome the illusions most of us carry in our own minds.”
“Will I need to think about it all the time? To keep it there?”
“As you grow used to it, it will become easier, just as you barely notice the concentration it takes to sit properly or to read. There are stories — my teachers told me — that at one time shadow weavers could fix their illusions in physical things so that the door in the wall would always be hidden or the piece of twine would always appear as a gold necklace. It was said that they could change the substance of things, too: turn a stone into a flower if they wished or simply wish a flower into existence. I have never met one of those people, though.” Youta smiled.
Hesitantly I reached out, wincing, and laid my small, white hand on his large, sooty one. “I would be dead twice over if it were not for you. Will you be my teacher, Youta? Teach me to see things as they really are and to create more illusions.”
His smile grew wider. “I will teach you everything I know.”
What Youta had said was true. Given a choice between what was
real — but improbable — and what was false — yet expected — people really did see only what they wished to.
Although I had never been indisposed during the months I had lived with Terayama-san, when I lay in my bed the following morning, groaning that my woman’s time had come and that I dare not move for the pain, Mai believed me without question.
The room was darkened, cold cloths were laid on my forehead, and I was left in peace.
Normally lying in bed without anyone to talk to or anything to do would have bored me into a restless rage within half a day. Instead I found myself dozing and daydreaming, too drained for temper. It was four days before I felt well enough to get dressed, and even then I was wan and listless: forced to move carefully for fear of dizzy spells. If my mother had observed my slow, careful movements, she would very likely have approved, all previous attempts to instill grace in me having failed.
Of course, Mother was not there.
The weeks that Terayama-san and my mother were gone should have been a miserable and lonely time for me. I took all my meals alone — except for Mai, sitting watchfully in the corner in case I choked on an eel bone or was attacked by spiders. If I needed something, Mai arranged it — but the sharp efficiency that Terayama-san inspired was notably absent, and I thought the servants must be treating it as a kind of holiday. I did not mind; it felt the same to me.
I read a little, walked in the garden a little, and tried to improve my painting skills once my arms had healed somewhat. Mostly I enjoyed the chance to be . . . whatever I wanted to be. If I was sad, I could stare out the window without guarding my face. If I was cross, I could stamp my way through the garden and throw stones in the river. There was no one to ask me what was wrong or to tell me that I must forget the past, be happy, be grateful.
Once I was strong enough, I made my way down to the kitchens each night and sat cross-legged on the floor with Youta. I listened to him talk for hours, and he taught me to turn a drifting piece of ash into a fluttering black butterfly, to transform his wispy pale hair into a glossy wave that reached his waist, and to hide him with a cloak of darkness that turned him into nothing more than a shadow. The control necessary to keep my arms concealed soon became second nature to me. I also learned to pierce Youta’s illusions, to detect them and see through them, though I could never see through my own.
