Shadows on the Moon

by Zoe Marriott

  Not one of them carried a bow, wore a glove, or displayed any other sign of the archer. It seemed that Chika-san had been wrong. There was no contest to be held here today. Something else was going on. And the boy — my boy — was not among them.

  There was a pang in my chest. I breathed out sharply.

  Terayama-san bowed deeply to his foreign guests. They bowed back just as deeply, but somehow I felt that they found the ritual amusing. Despite Terayama-san’s smile, I did not think he shared their amusement. Something had nettled him.

  He motioned his friends and the servants to silence, and I wondered why he had not ordered the servants away yet.

  “Here we gather, friends and honored guests,” he said. “We were speaking of archery, and we have disagreed on the subject. It will give me great pleasure to demonstrate to you ky-ujutsu — or as some are calling it now, ky-ud-o — the Way of the Bow. I intend to prove to you that this is, indeed, an art. Ky-ud-o is based upon the three principles that all disciples must attempt to attain: truth, goodness, and beauty.”

  My fingers tightened on the harsh bark of the willow until they went numb. I remembered my father and Terayama-san standing together in the ky-udojo in my old home, laughing because neither of them could beat the other. They had had the same teacher, had practiced together all their lives, and their skill and technique were equal.

  Terayama-san had said that he was sure my father could beat him, if only he had the ambition. He had seemed frustrated that Father would only exert himself to a draw. Father had said that Terayama-san had enough ambition for the both of them. He had never realized how true that was.

  Terayama-san was made of avarice and desire and covetousness. What he wanted he must have, no matter how low he sank to gain it. There was no place for truth, goodness, or beauty anywhere that he was.

  That was what this so-called contest was about. That was why it was taking place out here in the open: for though the house had a perfectly good ky-udojo of its own, it was so small that only Terayama-san and his foreign guests would be able to watch the demonstration, and Terayama-san wanted witnesses, lots of them, even servants. He wanted to win against the foreigners, defeat them, and prove it to everyone.

  Terayama-san spoke again, gravely. “For a master of ky-ujutsu, there is only one target. The one within our own spirit. Some have called me a master of this art, but I will leave it to you, honored guests, to judge.”

  The dark-skinned men nodded respectfully, and I felt sorry for them. Terayama-san held out his hand. It was clad in a yotsugake, an archer’s glove that covered all but one of his fingers. A servant came forward to hand him his yumi. The bamboo bow was taller than Terayama-san, with a slight recurve to the bottom third of its length. The servant had already strung the bow for him. My father would have frowned at him for that. He had said that a man who cannot string his own bow is not fit to shoot it.

  Terayama-san already had three arrows thrust into the back of his obi. Now he reached back with his free hand and carefully pulled one out. It was longer than the full reach of his arm.

  Still holding the bow above his head, he nocked the arrow to the string. He slowly drew the string taut, bringing the bow down in the same measured movement so that the arrow lay next to his eye. He sighted and released.

  The arrow hit the target dead center. Terayama-san drew the next arrow from his obi. Again the arrow thudded home at the precise center of the target. There was a low murmur of admiration and pleasure from his friends.

  Terayama-san drew the last arrow from his obi and held it in his hand. “From the moment that I lay my hand upon my bow, I must know that the arrow is already in flight. When I touch my arrow, I must know that it has already hit the target.”

  He closed his eyes. Keeping them closed, he went through the movements of nocking the arrow and drawing the bow. He stood still, blind, waiting. I could see most of the people around him holding their breath.

  Terayama-san loosed the arrow.

  It hit the target in exactly the same place as the others.

  The foreign visitors began clapping their hands noisily. Terayama-san opened his eyes and smiled. Then his friends stepped forward to congratulate him.

  “Do you see now, A Suda-sama? Do you understand that this is an art?”

  “Oh, yes,” said one of the foreign men. He stepped forward, reaching out. Terayama-san seemed to expect this. He switched his yumi to his left hand and allowed the man he had called A Suda-sama to clasp his forearm.

  “Then I have changed your mind?”

  The foreign man released Terayama-san’s arm and made an odd gesture, lifting both hands and laughing. The painted scars on his face were in straight lines across his cheeks, like a cat’s whiskers, and his laughter made them move as whiskers do when a cat yawns or snarls.

  One of the female servants made a frightened noise, and it struck me with a deeper awareness than it ever had before that what Youta had said was true. The servants here in Terayama-san’s house had swathed their own minds in so many layers of illusion that they were incapable of seeing these foreign men clearly. They did not see the friendliness, the relaxed confidence, the life and joy that glowed around them, like sunlight reflecting from polished jet. Those serving girls, and probably everyone else there, thought the foreigners were ugly.

  To me, they were the most beautiful men I had ever seen.

  “I am afraid my mind is not changed, Terayama-san,” A Suda-sama was saying regretfully. “I cannot deny that you have made archery into an art here in your garden. This does not change the essential nature of the thing. Archery is what we call gan a hamat a hana. A skill of killing, a way of death. It cannot be beautiful.”

  “I do not understand you, A Suda-san. You have said to me that your young people, even your young women, are trained to use a sword and bow. How can you call archery evil if you teach it to your children?”

  “I do not say it is evil. I say it is not art. It is a necessity.” A Suda-san shrugged. “We are a peaceful people and we abhor killing, but our lands are rich, and we must be able to defend ourselves. Our sons and daughters fight and hunt, and we honor them for it — but because we know what they endure to fulfill their duty, not because the hunting and killing are glorious things in themselves. To kill is to destroy, and destruction brings despair. That is why our people do not eat the flesh of domesticated animals. If we hunt wild animals, we give them a fair chance to escape, and in taking down a stag or a boar, we know we risk our own lives, too. To destroy a tame animal that does not even know it may run and that trusts the hand that spills its blood is sickening to us, as is all death.”

  The man spoke so passionately in his deep, accented voice, I could see that everyone listening had been unwillingly touched by what he had said, and their instinctive resistance made them resentful of him.

  “Our greatest warriors,” Terayama-san said, “believe that they are already dead. They live as if their lives are over, and so fighting holds no terror for them.”

  A Suda-san looked gravely at him. “That, Terayama-san, is one of the saddest things I have ever heard.”

  “I hesitate to disagree with such an honored guest, but it occurs to me that with such sentiments ruling their training, your warriors may struggle to defend your prosperous land. Should they ever need to.”

  A Suda-san blinked slowly, his dark eyes glinting. When he smiled, he again reminded me of a cat, but a rather less friendly one this time.

  “You have been kind enough to provide a demonstration of ky-ujutsu for me and my countrymen today. Perhaps you would be interested in a demonstration of the way we train our archers.”

  “You will shoot against me?” Terayama-san asked, surprised.

  “Oh, no, no. I did not bring any weapons to your house. I did not think I would need them. Luckily, there is one among us who is still in training and so needed to carry his bow with him to practice.”

  “In training? Do you mean —?” Terayama-san broke off as som
eone new stepped out onto the veranda.

  It was my boy.

  The boy who had saved me.

  Only it did not seem right to call him a boy anymore. He had grown. He was nearly as tall as Terayama-san now, if not as broad. He wore the same leather breeches as his fellows but had stripped to the waist, displaying long, wiry muscles that flexed and bunched smoothly as he stepped down from the veranda to the grass. His long hair in its thin ropes was gathered into a horsetail on the back of his head and was free of the golden ornaments his countrymen wore. In fact he had on no jewelry, save for a long leather thong around his neck that bore a piece of some fine white stuff, bone or ivory perhaps, carved into the shape of a crescent moon. The pendant hung just beneath his breastbone.

  Then he stepped out of the shadow of the house and I — along with everyone else in the garden — gasped. The boy’s back was . . . marked. Like his face. The scars glowed against the skin, a deep, almost iridescent blue. The dots and lines curved and swirled, like storm clouds or the sea. His left arm to his elbow was also thickly covered in the marks, as was his left shoulder. The pattern ended in a single, delicate tendril that curled around the top of his right hip, as if it were beckoning. Only his right arm was bare.

  I had heard somewhere that criminals wore tattoos to identify themselves to others of their kind, but I knew instinctively that these marks were different. They meant something not frightening or bad, but important.

  “My son, Otieno,” A Suda-sama said. “He is just seventeen, so please excuse his technique. He still has much to learn.”

  Terayama-san looked at the younger, slighter man and nodded affably. I wondered if anyone else could see the suppressed smugness there. “Of course. None of us would expect perfection from such a young person.”

  And the boy — Otieno — smiled. My breath stopped at the glory of it. It was a fearless, reckless grin. Not the expression of a boy who knows his mistakes will be forgiven but of a man who has a healthy interest in winning, and every expectation of doing so.

  Terayama-san did not see it. He was too busy directing the servants to remove the arrows from the targets. “Come now, Otieno-chan,” he said. “Where is your bow? Surely you have not forgotten it?”

  “I have it here, Terayama-san.”

  And it was there, in his left hand, just as if it had always been. It was tiny, not half the length of Terayama-san’s yumi, and with a sharp recurve that bent it almost exactly in two.

  Terayama-san blinked. “What a clever trick. An odd bow, though, if I may presume to comment.”

  Otieno raised an eyebrow. “To me, your bow also seems strange. Please inspect it, if it interests you. There is no magic in it — I promise.”

  Terayama-san took the unstrung bow and turned it over in his hands. “It is heavy,” he said, giving it a little shake, as if he expected to hear it rattle.

  Otieno took the bow back from Terayama-san and, having been handed a coiled string by one of his countrymen, quickly tied a figure-eight loop to one of the white nocks, and then pressed that end to the ground, bending the bow so that he could slip the string over the other nock and loop it into place. The young man who had given him the string said something to Otieno in a different language, a quiet mouthful of melodious sounds. Otieno laughed and so did the others, apart from A Suda-sama, who clapped Otieno on the shoulder.

  Terayama-san broke in on the moment. I could tell he did not like their laughter: not when he could not tell if it was directed at him. “Such a small bow must have rather a shorter range than we are accustomed to. It is not fair to expect Otieno-chan to hit the targets as I have done. We will bring them closer.”

  “You are very good, Terayama-san,” A Suda-sama said. “But if my son is to improve, it is best for him to have targets which are a little too difficult for him rather than a little too easy.”

  “That is very true,” said the man who had given Otieno the string. “My father is wise. I recommend we move the targets back another length.”

  “Brother!” Otieno tried to cuff the man’s head, but he danced away from the blow, smirking.

  Terayama-san was not one to blow away gold dust when it landed on his palm. He nodded. “Very well. We will move them back.”

  As servants hurried to do his bidding, I could see Terayama-san calculating the odds of his making such a shot himself at this distance, and then, after glancing at Otieno’s small bow and smaller frame, smiling. I bit my lip. I knew elder brothers sometimes teased their younger siblings, but surely not in a situation like this?

  I looked at Otieno again. He was not laughing now. His face was serious, his eyes focused on the targets as he took up his stance. A Suda-sama and his countrymen moved away from Otieno, leaving him alone in position. They were no longer laughing either, not even the brother who had been smirking moments ago.

  Something shimmered on Otieno’s back, and then there was a black leather quiver there, the strap slung diagonally across his chest. I drew in a sharp breath. He was shadow-weaving, right there in public. I was astonished that no one had noticed it, but then, perhaps no one else had believed their eyes.

  Holding his bow in one hand, Otieno raised his carved, moon-shaped pendant to his lips and let it rest there, his eyes closing as his chest filled with a deep breath.

  Then he let the pendant drop.

  His bow was in position by the time the pendant hit his chest. It had not bounced once before he had reached back, found an arrow, and nocked it. The first arrow left Otieno’s bow with a high-pitched whistling noise, and a second seemed to fly almost in the same movement. The final arrow was released before the first had hit the target. My ears filled with their screaming as, for an instant, they hung in the air together.

  Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

  Three arrows stood in the targets, each one at the exact center. Even from where I stood, I could see that they had sunk so deeply that they would have to be cut from the targets, not pulled free. I clutched the tree for balance.

  Otieno was the greatest archer I had ever seen. Better than Terayama-san. Better than my father. Better than my father’s legendary teacher Honma-sensei. And he was still in training. No wonder the Moon Prince wanted these people as friends. They might abhor killing, but if they had a thousand archers like that, their enemies would die regardless.

  No one clapped this time. Terayama-san and his friends stood frozen, and the foreigners simply moved forward to surround Otieno, patting and punching him on his arms and back.

  His father smiled at him and spoke in their own language. I did not have to know the words to understand what was said. You shot well, son. I am proud of you. They hugged each other, right there in public, with Otieno holding his bow awkwardly out to one side to avoid poking his father with it.

  Otieno’s brother shrugged. “You hesitated on the third shot. If the target had been moving, you would have missed it.”

  “I don’t want to hear that from the man who shot our uncle for lack of hesitation,” said Otieno. He held up his bow as a shield when his brother made a threatening movement toward him.

  “I missed him! I missed him by a clear foot.”

  “More like an inch, Kayin. Ask him yourself.”

  “Enough, enough,” said one of the other men in the group. His ropes of hair were mostly gray, and I thought he might be the oldest, though he stood straight and had no wrinkles on his face. “You are neglecting our host. You must thank him for letting you practice today.”

  Otieno turned immediately, bowing to Terayama-san. “I thank you for the practice,” he said. “My bow was growing brittle with disuse.”

  Terayama-san’s free hand clenched and unclenched as Otieno’s father stepped up to him with a broad smile. “Do you see now why I insisted that to us, bow and arrow are . . . your word is . . . business?”

  Terayama-san stared at them both in silence for a second, eyes blank and glittering. Then he laughed, and I sagged with relief. I did not trust his look of resigned humor — but i
t seemed the immediate danger was past.

  “If your son is representative of a mere half-trained warrior of Athazie, then I am certainly willing to consider your point.”

  “Oh, Otieno is not a warrior,” A Suda-sama said. “He is a scholar! An Akachi. He is my cleverest son, far too clever to risk in hunting or battle. We teach him archery and other skills to force him away from his papers and out into the sun once in a while.”

  Terayama-san’s expression flickered as he absorbed the implication that he had been beaten by a mere scholar. “Well, after such exertions, I think that some shade and refreshments might be in order. I am sure my wife will be interested to hear about Otieno-chan’s studies,” he said in a voice of strained patience.

  Otieno did not move. He squared his shoulders and asked, slightly too loudly, “Before we go in, there is something I have wished to ask you since we became your guests, Terayama-san.”

  “Oh? Ask, then,” Terayama-san said, a little too tolerantly.

  “I wonder when I might have the honor of meeting your daughter, Suzume.”

  I nearly fell out from behind the tree and had to grab a low branch to steady myself. Oh, no. What on earth is he doing? Of all the questions to ask! Yet, even as I tensed with worry, another part — a tiny, unreasonable part — was suddenly flushed with warmth. He knows my name. He remembers me. . . .

  Terayama-san’s expression of genial inquiry did not change, but I saw his throat work before he replied, “Suzu-chan is my stepdaughter. My wife’s child from her first marriage.”

  “Really?” Otieno’s face was utterly innocent. His father closed his eyes as if in exasperation. “How strange. We do not make such distinctions where I am from. You called her your daughter on the ship.”

  “I am very attached to her,” Terayama-san said. “She is visiting relatives of her father’s in the country at the moment. She is much missed.”