by Zoe Marriott
My mind still spinning at that casual admission, I helped arrange her arm over my shoulder again, taking her weight with a grunt of effort and pain as my ribs protested. The Perfumed District was the area of the city where men and women would dance, play, and sing to entertain people of the opposite — and occasionally even the same — sex, and offer more intimate services, too. Such people ran the gamut of social classes from the well-educated, accomplished oiran who were sought after by lords and princes to lowly flower girls who walked the streets seeking custom from strangers.
As we stumbled along the well-paved road, through empty streets and past houses from which laughter, singing, and music still sounded even at this hour, I remembered the one time I had seen an oiran. It had been during my first week in the city, and Mother had not yet been confined for her pregnancy. We had been going to visit a friend of Terayama-san’s, when we had heard music, and found the traffic in the road going silent.
The oiran had been carried in an open golden palanquin that rivaled Terayama-san’s for showiness, with eight attendants besides the four men carrying her. The attendants were beautiful young girls who played soft, sad music on shinobue flutes and rang small silver bells. The oiran’s face had been hidden by a veil, but her kimono had been the color of a night without stars, and her hair had been coiled up in a tall, elaborate arrangement of dozens of combs and pins that glittered with gems.
As she and her little procession passed, everyone had crowded back to the sides of the streets, watching respectfully, not jostling or jeering as they had been doing before she arrived. It was as if she were a princess.
“This way,” the woman mumbled now, leaning on me even more heavily and drawing me down a side path. Here the houses were very large, with their red lanterns still glowing and flowering trees and plants flourishing outside their doors. The grandest house was the one at the end of the path. A haunting tune, played on what sounded like a four-stringed tonkori, drifted out from one of the upper windows.
I looked down at myself with blurry eyes and saw the dirt-and-dust gray of my kimono and my bare, blistered feet.
“Onee-sama, I don’t think —” I began.
“Too tired to think,” she said, and before I could say any more, she let go of me and fell forward onto the porch on her knees. I scrambled after her, trying to pull her away — but it was too late. She had hold of the intricately carved outer screen, and was shaking it so fiercely that I felt sure the whole house must be rattling.
“Stop it!” I cried, horrified.
The inner screen slid open, and I looked up to see an older woman, her hair streaked with gray, step out. Her face, glowing like the moon under a light coating of white makeup, showed no emotion. She stared at us impassively, and I braced myself, groping weakly for one of the porch posts to hold myself up. Then the woman’s eyes widened, and suddenly she was flinging back the pierced screen and dropping to her knees, crying out, “Akira-sama! What has happened?”
My shadow-weaving friend — Akira, it seemed — crumpled down into the other woman’s arms with a sigh.
The woman cast a look of horror and accusation at me. “What have you done to Akira-sama? What is the matter with her?”
I opened my mouth to reply, but only a dry croak came out. My knees wavered. Overcome with exhaustion, I slid down to sit on the edge of the porch, squeezing my eyes closed.
“Hush, hush,” Akira said, her words slurring. “Not so loud, my dear. You will disturb your patrons. I have had an accident, and this child has saved me. Now take me inside, and bring her in, too. She is . . . Yue. Yes. Yue, for the Moon. Take care of her, please, Mie-san. She is ours now.”
The next thing I remember is being hot. Sweating and confined and horribly uncomfortable, I struggled and squirmed, trying to get out from under what felt like layers of blankets. My ribs seemed to crunch against one another, and a wave of sickening pain ran over me. For a moment, I went cold, and every droplet of sweat on my face was a chip of ice. Then the cold flushed back into heat.
There was a red light shining through my eyelids that might have been fire or lamplight. I did not know. I felt as if flat river stones had been laid on my eye sockets. I could not open them. Terrified, I began to make frightened bleating noises.
“Quiet, now.” A shadow fell across the redness of my eyelids, and something wet and cool was put on my forehead. Trickles of moisture slid down the sides of my face into my hair. Someone took my hands and gently peeled them open — I had not even been aware of squeezing them into fists until then — and bathed them with cold water. Then they were dried and tucked back under the blankets, and a cup was pressed to my lips.
“Open up, now. This is medicine you must take,” said the quiet voice. It was kind but determined, and I obeyed automatically.
The liquid that flowed into my mouth was sweet with honey, but there was a harsh, acrid flavor under the sweetness that burned my throat and made me choke. The medicine bubbled up out of my mouth and dribbled down my face. I moaned, and the voice hushed me again, and a dry cloth wiped my face, just as if I were a baby.
Is that what had happened? Was I a baby again? Had I died and been reincarnated, as the religion of the Old Empire used to teach? Or had everything else, the life that I remembered, been nothing more than the fever dreams of a child? Perhaps I would wake up tomorrow and everything would be all right, and I would have a mother and father who loved each other again, and a cousin called Aimi-chan that I loved like a sister. . . .
The next time I woke up, the first thing I did was to try to open my eyes. They did open, although stickily, and it was such a relief that I did not panic at the sight of the strange room, even though the whole place was bathed in a reddish light with golden edges, and the walls and the ceiling wavered strangely. People moved around the room: black, featureless silhouettes.
I turned my head with a great effort, the bones of my neck and skull humming and sending golden-edged waves across my vision. The waves seemed to go through me, too, and the room became a strange froth of red and gold and black shapes, like a tiny pond full of bright fish that thrashed and struggled against one another.
When the rippling waves had settled down a little, I noticed someone lying on the futon next to mine. Their head turned restlessly back and forth, and they were muttering about the yamatagoto having a broken string, and how disappointed Ouji-sama would be if they could not dance tonight. . . .
Ouji-sama? Who did I know that might dance for a prince?
Squinting made my head ache, and all I could make out was a pale face and long hair straggling everywhere. I closed my eyes to make the ache go away, and fell asleep.
I had a strange dream. I was looking down at a small, skinny girl whose face was so thin and white that it might have been a skull, if it hadn’t been for the half-healed grazes and bruises that ran down one cheek. Her face was all that could be seen, for the rest of her was swaddled in thick layers of blankets.
Two strange women were kneeling by the girl’s futon, and a doctor was telling them that she was strong and would be all right if she was looked after properly.
I realized that the skull-girl was me. I had gotten those marks on my face when the guards had shoved me down on the bridge. I must have been ill a long time. The bruises were yellow and gray and brown now. It did not occur to me that staring down at myself from the outside like this was unusual. My eyes were closed, so how else was I to see what was going on?
As I examined my bony face with detached interest, I realized that the last thing I could remember was the woman, the beautiful woman who was a shadow weaver, too. And as soon as I thought about her, I found myself standing over her.
She was lying on a futon next to me, and she, too, was swaddled in blankets. But her face did not look like a skull. Somehow, and I was not sure how it could be, she looked worse than I did. Her skin was the color of cold wax, and her veins showed through it, dark and bruised.
She was not mumbling now, or movin
g at all. Her eyelids did not even flicker, and when I concentrated on the sound of her breath, it had a wet, sucking sound to it, as if there were water bubbling in her chest instead of air.
“The wound weakened her,” the doctor was saying sadly. “Or perhaps it was the exposure to the unhealthy prison air. I do not believe there is any more to be done. We must make her as comfortable as possible, and prepare for her to pass on.”
One of the women covered her face with her hands, and the muffled sound of tears reached me.
The other woman reached out to touch the shadow weaver’s face. “Oh, Akira-sama,” she whispered.
The two women stood — the first one still weeping bitterly — and led the doctor from the room, thanking him. I hovered over Akira-sama’s bed, and if I had had hands in my dream, I would have held them over my face in sorrow, too. Poor Akira-sama. To escape so bravely and then to die of fever. It seemed very unfair.
That was where the dream became even stranger.
I found myself back in my own body again, like falling from a great height and landing on a hard surface. Instantly everything began to ache, from my head to my hips to my toes. My ribs screamed, and I wanted to wake up, to escape from this dream that hurt. But I also knew that there was something important I had to do in the dream. Warmth was kindling within me — not the warmth of the fever but a bright, spreading heat that sparked and flickered in my hands.
Fighting with my covers, I at last succeeded in pushing them down and off. Sobbing with effort, I flopped over onto my stomach. The pain in my ribs made my vision go black, but the heat in my hand would not let me pass out. It itched and itched. I had something to do. I reached out blindly, groping across the tatami mat until I found the edge of Akira-sama’s futon. Yes, this was it. This was what the heat wanted.
Akira-sama’s hand was lying neatly across her breast. With a mighty effort, I heaved myself across and grasped her wrist.
Her skin was chilled and clammy, and her wrist bone poked sharply into the center of my palm. I was shocked to see that my hand was glowing, white-yellow and orange with burned black edges, like an ember. I could feel it getting hotter where it touched her, throbbing in time with my pulse. I wondered that I could not hear her flesh sizzling under such heat, but the burned edges of my skin seemed to keep the heat inside. That was no good. It needed to come out. Out. Please come out.
Come out.
There was a flash. I felt as if it was inside me, but it made the room go bright. Now I could see perfectly. The edges of my skin peeled away, and the heat spread outward, pouring from my fingers.
Her wrist warmed and softened under my touch, like melting wax, letting the heat enter and sink into her body. Part of me followed that heat, racing through veins and burning out the poison, blasting her lungs to dry them, scorching the seeping wound until it crisped into a hard, protective scab and warm, healing pink tissue.
Akira-sama shuddered and twitched and cried out, and as she opened her mouth, a long black trail of smoke left it. I was very glad this was a dream. That smoke danced and coiled over her body like some awful living creature. The shapes it made reminded me of claws and scales and lashing tails. I could almost see glinting eyes in the blackness, eyes that saw me, too, and hated me. My imagination was more powerful than I had ever realized.
Go away, I told the blackness. I want to wake up, and I cannot until you are gone. Go on. Disappear.
The smoke writhed again and dissipated, leaving a sickly charred smell behind. Abruptly I was cold. Akira-sama’s skin beneath mine felt warm and comforting.
She breathed in, and my whole arm was lifted up with the depth of that breath. As I lay there, hanging on to her wrist, she turned her head on the pillow to look at me.
“Yue? What is happening?”
I didn’t have the energy to explain. I managed a sleepy smile. My dream was slipping away now, going gray and distant at the edges. In a moment, I would wake up. . . .
I opened my eyes.
It was daylight, but early, and a soft yellow light was filtering through screens into the room. I felt weak and hungry, and there was a disgusting taste in my mouth. My eyes were crusted and flinched from the light, as if I had not opened them for a long time.
Next to me, Akira-sama was lying peacefully, her deep, slow breaths telling me that she was asleep. There was no one else in the room.
I lifted up one of my hands, and my arm felt slow and heavy. My palm and fingers were clean and the nails were neatly pared, and when I put that hand over my face to block out the light, my skin smelled of flowers. I had managed to get away from prison alive. I was clean and safe.
And I had killed someone. I had killed my mother.
My actions lay before me now, like a path of little white stones on the surface of a still, dark pool. I made myself look.
She had chosen Terayama-san. Even after she knew what he had done, she had chosen him. She had betrayed Aimi and my father. She had killed my love for her, banished me, and forgotten me. But I had stolen her life. I had committed a cold and cowardly murder, against a woman who had no way to defend herself. Just as Terayama-san had taken my family’s lives, I had taken hers.
I did not have the right.
She had ceased to be a mother to me long before — but she had not ceased to be a human being. I had killed her.
I was a murderer.
Hard, dry sobs racked my body. My ribs ached and jabbed. I endured it.
After a while my sobs died down, and I took my hand from my face. Akira-sama was still breathing evenly next to me, and the morning light was still yellow and warm. I felt as if I had run a long, long way and gotten nowhere. There was a kind of peace in that. I would never get anywhere. I would never get away from what I had done.
If there was justice in the next world, I would be punished. If not, then I would simply turn to dust. But I would not fling myself into a river to escape. I would not take refuge in madness.
I would carry this secret, this burden, for the rest of my life, and I would never forget.
I would live with it.
Forever.
Akira-sama and I had been in the okiya above Mie-san’s teahouse for over a week before either of us woke up properly. Mie-san said that we were both nearly unconscious with fever by the time she managed to get us upstairs that first night. She said that I had probably caught the fever while wandering the streets and given it to Akira-sama in the cell. Akira-sama said that she had been in the cell longer than I had and had probably caught prison fever and given it to me while I was trying to help her. Either way, it had nearly killed us both.
What followed the illness was a strange, not entirely comfortable time, despite the fact that I was offered more physical comfort than I had known in a long while. Mie-san looked after us very well. She had a doctor in to examine us every day. She arranged for the young women living in the house to visit us, to play music for us and sing, and talk and play games if we wished. Mie-san’s second in command, Yoshi-san, arranged all our material needs from clothing to food with a smile, and begged us to tell her if we ever needed anything. It was almost like I’d gone back in time and was Lady Suzume of Terayama House again and wanted for nothing.
I am not dishonest enough to pretend I did not enjoy being truly clean and sleeping on a fresh, thick futon. I enjoyed having comfortable clothes, even if they were borrowed. I enjoyed having all the food I could eat, and not constantly having to hurry about menial tasks. I especially enjoyed not worrying about starving to death, or where I would sleep when it got dark.
The problem was that all these privileges were lent to me by the goodwill of Akira-sama’s friends, not for my sake but for hers. I knew it, and so did they. Akira-sama was the only one who did not seem to notice. I thought she was so used to being loved and wanted wherever she went that the idea of being a hanger-on and barely tolerated would simply never occur to her. Once again I was an outsider, lurking on the edges of a world which had no real place for me. T
he women who lived in the okiya were gijo, a kind of female entertainer, and their world seemed very strange to me indeed.
Because we were both aching and exhausted and forbidden to shift about and use up any energy during the day, we convalescents often sat up very late into the night, drinking tea and talking. It was during these nighttime conversations that Akira-sama explained to me a little about gijo. The gijo had only recently come into fashion in the city but had found favor with many because they practiced shorter, less formal versions of many of the traditional oiran arts, like dancing, singing, and playing musical instruments. They were highly skilled and the more popular ones were highly paid, but the gijo did not leave their okiya in grand processions to visit their patrons as the oiran did. Instead they entertained men in the teahouse attached to the okiya, and the tea ritual was part of the services they offered. Unlike oiran, who could take their pick of lords, and would not even see men of low rank, anyone with money was welcome to visit the gijo in the teahouse. However, like the oiran, the gijo often had danna, particular patrons with whom they had a special relationship.
These faithful patrons, most of them married, came to the teahouse not just to drink tea, watch fan dances, and be soothed, but also to make love with “their” gijo. No gijo was obligated to offer herself to a man in such a way if she did not want to, but many of them did. Some had several such special men, others only one.
“I do not really understand it,” I said slowly, leaning against the window frame and staring out into the busy nighttime street below. Laughter and music were coming up through the floor and from the houses all around, but after what Akira-sama had said, it seemed to me that all of it had a sad, desperate air. “If — if I did not have to lie with these men, I do not think I could.”
Akira-sama, who, still weaker than me, was reclining on heaps of pillows rather than sitting up, gave a husky little laugh. “Gijo are living, breathing women with beating hearts — and yet they may not take lovers, may not marry or fall in love. The danna visit them often, talk to them, bring them gifts . . . they grow fond of them. When they are alone together, holding each other, for a little while gijo and danna cease to be, and they are only man and woman. For a little while they can both pretend. Pretend to be in love.”
