by Zoe Marriott
She turned her head away. “You see, that is why it is so easy to fool people with our illusions, Yue. In this world, illusions are usually much kinder than the truth.”
It was clear that she thought I was being either judgmental or dense. I did not have the words to explain what I really meant. How could a gijo, knowing that her danna would leave her in a few hours and return home to his wife, simply pretend? Wouldn’t such an illusion, when it was shattered, cause more pain than the simple, bleak truth ever could?
Those stolen, golden minutes with Otieno . . . how they hurt me now, remembering . . . what if I had known all the time that by my own actions I would destroy that fragile relationship and be forced to leave him? What if I had known that every second was precious, and limited? Would I have had the courage to cherish my moments with him, or would I have cringed from the coming pain, and run all the sooner? I shifted uneasily, and winced as my ribs twinged.
The next day, Yoshi-san came to sit and talk with Akira-sama, and to bring her a gift of a polished metal mirror — in case Akira-sama wished to brush and arrange her own hair. Later I gave in to the temptation to look into that mirror, and wished that I had not.
It was a stranger who looked back at me: a gaunt, hard-faced woman with grayish skin and a look in her eyes that spoke of both fear and dissatisfaction. I wondered how anyone could ever have thought me beautiful. The knowledge that I could shadow-weave color into my cheeks and sparkle into my eyes only made it worse.
“You are very unhappy, aren’t you?”
I jumped at Akira-sama’s voice. I put the mirror away and looked up to see her staring at me gravely.
“I do not know,” I said. It was true. I did not know what I felt.
My sense of being lost and out of place was not helped by the discovery, a few days later, of who my savior really was. Everyone who had visited us up until then had called her Akira-sama, as I did. Then a very young maiko — a trainee gijo — came to bring us our lunch one day and called her Kano-sama.
It took me several moments to make the connection in my mind. By then I had a mouthful of gyza — a pan-fried dumpling filled with pork and vegetables — and nearly choked on it.
“Kano Akira?” I sputtered. “You are —?”
Akira-sama, who was serenely sipping a broth of fish stewed in sweet soy sauce, smiled. “We never did properly introduce ourselves, did we?”
I gaped at her. Aimi’s favorite story, the one that she had whispered about in bed at night before falling asleep. Kano Akira-sama was known to little girls all over Tsuki no Hikari no Kuni. Ten years ago, when I was a mere baby, the old Moon Prince had held the Kage no Iwai — the Shadow Ball — to meet all the most lovely and eligible women in the country, and he had chosen Kano Akira to be the Shadow Bride, his most favored companion.
It had been a scandal.
Though technically the Shadow Bride was nothing more than the most prominent of the prince’s lovers, her social status was second only to the Moon Princess, the prince’s legal wife. It had even been known for a child of the Shadow Bride to become heir to the crown if the Moon Princess was barren. That was why it was an unwritten law that the prince should chose a wealthy, well-bred young woman. And also the reason that the Shadow Bride, once chosen, could never marry: the mother of a potential heir could have no other man in her life. Nor could the prince ever marry her himself, even if he chose her before he took a wife.
Kano Akira had not been the wealthy, well-bred daughter of a lord. She had been a penniless entertainer of obscure birth, who was only at the ball to dance for the guests. What was worse, instead of retiring this scandalous Shadow Bride at the end of a year and then holding more Kage no Iwai to form new political alliances, as was traditional, Tsuki no Ouji-sama had refused to give Kano-sama up. He had never held another Shadow Ball, and Kano-sama had stayed with the prince for the rest of his life, reigning as the Shadow Bride until he died in an accident four years ago.
It was then that the beautiful Shadow Bride had disappeared. Rumor hinted that the Moon Princess, enraged at the favor shown to a mere commoner, had done away with her rival by some secret means.
I remembered my father shaking his head over it, telling me that he had once, on a brief trip to the city, glimpsed the Shadow Bride, and that such a lovely young woman did not deserve such a fate. My mother, I remembered, had raised her brows and said, “Adventurers often meet untimely ends.” There had been a frosty silence then, and no more was said of it.
Now it seemed that this woman, this legend, whose tale had made so many little girls sigh and weep, was alive after all. With all this in my brain, all I could think of to say was, “I am honored to meet you, Ohime-sama.” I used the honorary title of princess, since that was customary.
“Oh, for the Moon’s sake!” she said, sounding truly impatient. “I am not a ghost or a fairy tale. I am still that same person whom you took pity on in a dirty prison cell, whose wounds you bandaged and whom you almost carried through the city to safety. It is I who am indebted to you, child. And we are friends, are we not?”
I put down my cooling bowl of food and stared at my hands. “I had not thought of it . . . in quite that way.”
“Had not thought of what?”
“I do not consider that you are indebted to me. Though I . . . should like to be your friend.”
She reached out to me, with a hiss of effort, and took hold of my upper arm. “We can only be friends if you will stop acting like a shadow who is lurking at the door and might be banished at any moment. We are not waiting for the chance to get rid of you. You are not with me on sufferance. Not indebted to you? I would be dead if it were not for you.”
“I would be dead if it were not for you,” I protested.
She nodded. “Yes. The difference is that I desperately wanted to live, and you were already prepared to give life up. I know you escaped from that place for my sake, not your own, and that you do not know what to do with yourself now. That does not make your life worthless. Not to me. Now come. Call me Akira.”
“Akira-sama.”
“No. Call me as my dearest friend would. As a sister would.”
“Akira.” I stuttered over the end of the word, wanting to add the honorific.
She nodded again, sharply this time. “You will need to practice.”
“I will, thank you, Akira-sa — Akira.”
She sat back with a tiny groan and picked up her broth again.
I gazed at my cooling gyza with distaste. Akira caught my eye and gave me such a look that I quickly picked up the bowl again and began to eat, if not with enthusiasm, then with determination. She smiled, and I felt comforted.
A few days later, when the doctor visited us again, Akira asked him if we were both well enough to travel.
“Only three more days,” she said gleefully, when the doctor had gone. “Then we shall be able to go home.”
I looked at her, and she sighed. “Of course you are coming, too. Please rid yourself of the notion that I am itching for the chance to cast you out onto the streets. Where I go, you go.”
While I was trying to adjust to having my thoughts read as easily as tea leaves, Akira went on. “You will like my house, I think. It is not large, but it is very beautiful. We live on the edge of one of the little tidal lakes, just outside the city. The views over the water and the mountains are so peaceful.”
I smiled. “I will look forward to it.” I did not ask, What will I do there? What use will I be? How will I make up for the awful thing I have done? Akira did not know the answers.
By the end of the week, we were leaving. When we had been tucked tenderly into a carriage that had been hired by Yoshi-san, Mie-san and the other gijo, most of whom had got out of bed especially, waved us off.
It felt strange to smile and wave back at them, and even stranger, once the door was closed and the carriage had pulled away, to fold my hands in my lap and sit quietly, wearing the heavy, good-quality clothes Yoshi-san had found for me.
Even my butchered hair, reaching now to just below my shoulders, had been drawn up and tied into a simple knot. Once again I felt that sense of having been thrust backward in time, except that I was even less fit for the role of fine young lady now than I had been before. I was thinner and tougher and more wary, and that wariness was as much for the rest of the world as for myself.
Maybe that was all right. Akira had given me a new name, and who was to say that Yue should not be thin and tough and wary? No one. No one in my new life had known me before. No one even knew the name Nakamura Suzume now.
I could tell when the carriage left the Perfumed District — which was sleeping now in preparation for the night — by the sudden increase in noise. I wondered what part of town we were passing through and wished that we might have the windows unveiled. When I moved my hand toward the window and the gold pin that held the veil in place, Akira stopped me.
“This is the easiest way to conceal ourselves from passersby,” she said. “Your stepfather might still be looking for you, and I already know that my enemies look for me.”
“Why do you have enemies, after all this time?” I asked. I was curious, rather than doubting. She had lain bleeding in the prison cell for hours rather than call for help. “Surely if those at court disliked you, they would be happy just to see you go.”
“That would be true, if it were only ordinary dislike. Unfortunately there was one at the Moon Court who hated me with the kind of passion that does not dim with time. She will not rest until I am dead.”
“The Moon Princess?” I breathed.
Akira bowed her head. The swaying of the carriage made the butterfly ornament in her hair dance gently.
“The tales do not lie about that. After Ouji-sama’s accident I panicked, fearing she would do me harm. I ran in secret, and in doing so I made myself the perfect target, for everyone assumed that I was already dead. She had spies everywhere, including among the guardsmen. Once Ouji-sama was no longer there to hold her in check, and with the power of being regent until her son came of age, it was the easiest thing in the world for her to tell her spies that the man who brought her Kano Akira’s heart would have a thousand jewels heaped upon him. I became hunted — but covertly, for a messy murder that could be traced back to her would threaten her position. If I had stayed at court, I do not believe she would have dared to destroy me.”
“Then would not the solution be to return to court, to let everyone see that you are alive?”
“It would buy me back my safety, yes,” she said. “But I have not yet found the courage. There are so many memories there. It is strange how grief turns happy memories to knives that pierce you. Satoshi-sama will be grown now. We were good friends, he and I. It was part of the reason the princess hated me so much. I wonder if he still remembers me. . . .”
I gulped as I realized it was the new Moon Prince, who came of age this year, that she spoke of so fondly. But I knew what she meant about happy memories and knives. “Akira, did you love the Moon Prince, then?”
It was only when the reminiscent smile on her face froze that I realized how impertinent such a question was. Before I could stammer out an apology, the frozen look melted into a wry smile, and she laughed.
“Do you know, that is the first time anyone has ever dared ask me that? Not the first time someone has wondered, mind, but the first time someone has said the words. I think it ironic that with all the tales about me and the Moon Prince, none of them answer that question — the most important one of all.”
She turned her hands over and rubbed idly at the long, strong fingers, an uncharacteristic gesture; her movements were always so graceful and deliberate. “Have you ever heard this haiku, Yue?
‘Love comes like storm clouds
Fleeing from the wind, and casts
Shadows on the moon.’”
The noises outside the carriage increased as we entered some especially busy area, and our motion stopped with a lurch that made me catch at the wall for balance. I thought about the poem in silence. Was it saying that love was fleeting and unreliable, like clouds? Did that mean Akira had not loved the Moon Prince after all?
Before I could decide, Akira, her eyes on the veil at the window, continued: “On the night of the Shadow Ball when I was chosen, I was so frightened. It was all a terrible mistake. I should not even have been there. The prince was supposed to pick a noble virgin girl, and when he realized that I was . . . well, far from that, he would have me killed. They put me in his inner chamber — the bedchamber that only the Moon Princess or a Shadow Bride may enter — to await him, and I sat on the floor at the hearth, weeping because I knew that no matter what I did, I was going to die.
“When he entered the room, I cowered. He came toward me slowly and gently, like a man approaching some trembling wild creature, and knelt by me to ask me what was the matter.”
She let out a long, slow exhalation, as if even remembering was a deep effort.
“So I told him. He smiled, and put out his hand . . . and this time I did not cower, for there was something in his face . . . something I did not recognize but which did not frighten me. And he recited to me the haiku that I have just told you.”
She looked at me again, her topaz eyes bright with more than the memory. “It took me a long time to understand those words, or even to see why he did not cast me aside in disgust. I hope one day you will have cause to understand it, too.”
As the last word left her mouth, the veil at the window billowed up in a sudden gust of sea-scented wind. Akira turned away sharply, lifting her hand to hide her face. I knew I should do the same. I did not.
In that instant, as the veil fluttered upward, I had caught sight of a man standing on the other side of the road. The sea was behind him, glittering gray-gold in the sun, and as I looked, he turned and I saw his face.
It was a face of sharp, strong angles, chestnut skin, swirling blue-black marks, and a pair of mulberry-leaf eyes.
My breath became a stone in my throat as those eyes met mine and widened in recognition, and his lips moved, shaping the name of a tiny brown bird with a sweet singing voice. I leaned forward, as if I would reach out of the window, across the street, across all the people between us, and touch him.
Then, with another lurch and a shouted curse from the driver, the carriage pulled away. The man and the sea behind him disappeared and were replaced by the wall of a house. The veil fluttered back down. I turned away, stricken. My breath was still a stone but now it had slipped down my windpipe and sat heavy over my heart.
“You should have covered your face,” Akira said, replacing the pin that should have held the veil, then tugging to make sure of it this time. “What if someone you knew had seen you?”
I swallowed. “No one knows me. Not anymore.”
I knelt on the veranda, twitching my robe aside so that it would not be caught under my legs, and looked out across the gentle silver undulation of the lake. Its surface was pitted and pocked by rain, and its reflections hidden. The city was hidden from my view, too, by the trees, but the mountains were a cloud-shrouded blue-green shape on the horizon, a larger version of the delicate watercolor Akira was currently working on indoors.
I sighed.
The shamisen that Akira had given me a few days ago rested comfortably against my knee. I stroked the gentle curved rectangle of its do, enjoying the silky smoothness of the wood. I wondered what had happened to my old shamisen. Did it molder now in the ruins? It had not been anything like so fine as this one. It had been a child’s instrument. I was no longer a child.
I sighed again.
My fingers had not quite regained their old skill, but one thing had not changed: the sense of peace playing gave me. Mother had always said that the only time I could be relied upon to stay out of trouble was when I was holding my instrument.
Hesitantly, I began to pluck out a sad, slow tune that I had learned long ago, and when I felt I had gotten it right, I sang:
“Copper fish, dance,
dance,
Leaves falling on silver pool,
Autumn rain, fall, fall.
Autumn leaves, dance, dance,
Float in the pool of copper fish,
Silver rain, fall, fall.”
“You are not happy, are you?” Akira’s voice behind me did not make me start. I was used to her catlike ways by now.
“You asked me that before,” I reminded her, gently laying the shamisen down.
“And you never answered,” she said, kneeling beside me.
The wind swirled around us. I shivered. Autumn was making way for winter now, although the winter here was much milder than in my old home. By this time on my father’s estate, we would have seen the first snow. I pulled my haori closer around my neck as I fixed my eyes on Akira — and stared. The breeze had plastered her thin cotton yukata to her form, revealing a flat chest. Not flat for a woman with small breasts. Completely flat.
As flat as a man’s.
My gaze flew down to those strong, long fingers as I remembered Akira’s words: “I was so frightened . . . should not even have been there . . . supposed to pick a noble virgin girl . . . and I was . . . far from that. . . .”
“Akira. Are — are you an oyama?” I asked. It was the name for a male actor who plays female roles in the theater.
“It has taken you long enough to notice,” Akira said. “I have not bothered with my chest pads for over a week.”
I blinked up at her, numb with shock. Now it was clear how and why she — and Akira was still “she” to me — had become such a skilled shadow weaver. She had to be. I had never noticed the faintest hint of a man’s knot in her white throat before. It was there now, though it was not very prominent.
