by Lian Hearn
Like Seisenji, the shrine seemed abandoned, neglected. He could hear a bullfrog in the shrine garden. It was evening now, the last rays of the sun spilling onto the verandas of the old wooden buildings, casting shadows from every knot and irregularity of roof and floor. There were the horses, tethered in one of the outbuildings; the same mare, the same packhorse. His heart leaped suddenly with the realization, only half believed till this moment, that she was here, that he would hold her, hear her voice, smell her hair. All the pent-up desire and longing of the past six months rose like a flame within him.
His senses seemed unnaturally acute, as though one layer of skin had been stripped from him. He could already smell her perfume and the female scent that lay beneath it.
He called softly, “Is anyone there?” His voice sounded like a stranger’s to his own ears.
The young man, Bunta, came round the side of the building, saw Shigeru and stopped, looking momentarily startled, before dropping to one knee and bowing.
“Lord—” he said, cutting his speech off before he uttered Shigeru’s name.
Shigeru nodded to him, saying nothing.
“The ladies are in the garden,” Bunta said. “I will tell my lady that a visitor is here.”
“I will go to her,” Shigeru replied. Despite Bunta’s discretion, the man made him uneasy. He could so easily be a spy from the Tribe, could so easily betray them. Yet at that moment Shigeru knew that nothing, no threat of death or torture to himself or to anyone he loved, would stop him from going to her.
I am bewitched, he thought as he walked swiftly round to the back of the shrine, remembering the tale she had written for him. The garden was overgrown and untended, the spring grass tall and green, studded with wild flowers. The cherry blossom was just past its peak, the ground covered in drifts of white and pink petals, like a reflection of the flowers that still clung to the branches.
Lady Maruyama and Sachie sat on cushions placed on stones around the pool. It was clogged with lily pads and lotus leaves, and one or two deep purple early irises bloomed at its edge.
She looked up at the sound of his footfall, and their eyes met. He saw all color drain from her face and her eyes go lustrous, as though the sight of him were a physical blow. He felt the same; he could barely breathe.
Sachie whispered something and Naomi nodded, her eyes never leaving Shigeru’s face. Sachie stood, bobbed her head to Shigeru, and disappeared into the shrine.
They were alone. He went and sat beside her, in Sachie’s place. She leaned into him, resting her head on his shoulder, her hair spilling across his chest. He ran his fingers through her hair and over the nape of her neck. They stayed like that for a long time, neither of them speaking, listening to each other’s breath and heartbeat.
The sun set and the air began to cool. Naomi drew back and gazed into his eyes.
“Just before you came, a heron alighted at the edge of the pool. Sachie and I agreed it was a sign that you would soon be here. If you had not come tonight, I would have left tomorrow. How long can you stay?”
“Some fishermen from Hagi brought me. They will return in four days.”
“Four days!” Her face lit up even more. “It is an eternity!”
MUCH LATER HE WOKE, hearing the surge of the sea on the shingle and the noises of the night from the grove around them. He heard the horses stamp as they shifted their weight. Naomi was also awake; he saw the moonlight that drenched the garden glint on the surface of her eyes. They watched each other for a few moments; then Shigeru said quietly, “Where were your thoughts?”
“You will laugh at me,” she replied. “I was thinking of Lady Tora of Oiso, drowning in love.”
She referred to the well-known tale of the Soga brothers, their revenge and the women who loved them.
“Juro Sukenari waited eighteen years for his revenge, did he not? I will wait as long, if that is what it takes,” Shigeru whispered.
“Yet Juro died—his life fading with the dew of the fields,” Naomi replied, quoting from the ballad that was popular with blind singers. “I cannot bear the thought of your death.”
He took her in his arms then. Death had never seemed so distant or life so desirable. Yet she was trembling, and afterward she wept.
THE FOLLOWING DAY was sultry, unseasonably hot. Shigeru rose early and went to swim in the sea. When he returned, he did not dress fully but went half clothed to the back of the shrine and began the exercises he had been taught by Matsuda. Both body and mind were tired, slightly dulled, drained by the slaking of passion. He thought of the night’s brief conversation. It was only two years since his father’s death and the betrayals of Yaegahara. Was he really capable of maintaining the pretences of his present life for so many more years? And for what purpose? He could not raise an army against Iida. He would never meet him in battle, or indeed in any situation where he might come close enough to him to strike him down. He might allay Iida’s suspicions against him, but how would he make use of this? He might be a better swordsman than Iida, though even this seemed doubtful this morning when he was so tired and so slow, but he did not have the skills to surprise him, to ambush him ...
To assassinate him.
The idea kept returning to him. Now he did no more than note it, bringing his mind back to concentrating on the work. After a few moments he became aware that someone was watching him. He let the movement turn him and saw Naomi beneath the trees.
“Where did you learn that?” she said, and then, “Will you teach me?”
They spent the morning going through the exercises; she showed him the way that girls were taught to fight in the West, and then they found old bamboo poles in the outbuildings and sparred with them. Her strength and speed surprised him.
“One day we will fight side by side,” she promised him when the heat forced them to stop and retreat into the shade. She was breathing hard, sweat glistening on her skin. “I have never let a man see me like this,” she said, laughing. “Other than Sugita Haruki, who taught me to fight with the sword.”
“It suits you,” he said. “You should appear like it more often.”
THE HEAT CONTINUED, and after the evening meal Naomi begged Sachie to tell a ghost story.
“It will chill our spines and cool us,” she said. Her spirits were high, her look brilliant, her happiness overflowing.
“This shrine is said to be haunted,” Sachie replied.
“Is there any that is not?” Shigeru asked, remembering Seisenji.
“Your lordship is right,” she replied, smiling slightly. “Many dark things happen in these isolated places: uneducated people are afraid of their own violent thoughts. They turn their own fears and hatreds into ghosts.”
Her insight impressed him. He saw there was more to her than he had first thought. Sachie was so quiet and self-effacing, and he had been so obsessed with Naomi that he had overlooked her intelligence, her lively imagination.
“Tell us what happened here,” Naomi said. “Ah! I am shivering already!”
Sachie began her tale in a deep, sonorous voice. “Many years ago, these shores were inhabited by evil men who made a living by luring ships onto the rocks. They killed the survivors of the shipwrecks and burned everything except what they took for themselves, so that there would be no witnesses and no evidence. Mostly their victims were fishermen, occasionally merchants, but one night they wrecked a ship carrying a lord’s daughter to her betrothal in a city in the South. She was thirteen years old; she was washed up on the beach when the ship sank and all her retinue were drowned. The cargo was of her betrothal presents: silk, gold and silver, boxes of lacquer and zelkova wood, flasks of wine. She begged them to spare her life, saying her father would reward them if they returned her to him, but they did not believe her. They cut her throat, filled her clothes with stones, and threw her body into the sea. That night, while they were celebrating their catch, they heard sounds from this shrine and saw lights. Flute music was playing, and people were singing and laughing.
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“When they crept close to investigate, they saw the girl they had murdered, sitting in the center of the room, surrounded by her waiting women and her retainers. At her side was a tall lord, dressed in black, his face hidden. They thought they were concealed, but she saw them and called out, ‘Our guests are here! They must come in and join the feast!’
“The evil men turned to run away, but their legs would not obey them. The girl’s gaze pulled them in, and when they stood trembling before her, she said, ‘You betrothed me to death, and this is my marriage feast. Now my husband desires to meet you.’ And the man at her side stood; Death stared in their faces. They could not move. Drawing his sword, he killed them all, and sat down again at his wife’s side.
“The feast went on even more wildly, and the dead men’s wives said to each other, ‘Where are our husbands? They are enjoying the stolen goods without us.’ They ran to the shrine and burst in, and the girl said to them, ‘I am glad you have come. My husband desires to meet you.’ And the lord stood up and drew his sword again and killed every last woman too.”
“Did they have any children?” Naomi said. “What happened to them?”
“Their fate is not recorded,” Sachie said. “But after that, this place was uninhabited.”
“Until a gentler people came,” Naomi murmured.
“The men who brought me told me the villagers here are Hidden,” Shigeru said, equally quietly. “I believe they have suffered from these same men. I will take steps to put an end to it.”
“They are so isolated and so defenseless,” Naomi said. “We can protect them from the land—each year we conduct campaigns against bandits and outlaws in these and other remote areas of the domain—but we do not have the ships or the resources to deal with pirates.”
“They are not pirates,” Shigeru replied. “Not yet. But they are full of grievances of their own, so they prey on those weaker than themselves. I will speak to their leader and command him to keep them under control. His son told me a story,” he added. “He is a boy of about eight years old, Fumio. His father adores him and takes him everywhere with him.”
“Tell us!” Naomi said.
It was around the first half of the Hour of the Dog, night had fallen completely. There was no wind and the waves were muted. A pair of owls were calling to each other from the old cedars, and a few frogs croaked from the pool. Now and again some small creature scampered through the rafters. The flickering lights threw their shadows above them, as though the dead kept them company.
Shigeru began his story. “Once a boy went fishing with his father. A storm came up unexpectedly, and they were blown far out to sea. The father gave his son all the food and water he had, so after many days the man died, but the child lived. Finally, the boat washed up on the shores of an island, where a dragon dwelled. The child called to his father, ‘Father, wake up, we are saved!’
“But his father did not wake. The boy cried louder and louder, so loud that he woke the dragon, who came to the beach and said, ‘Your father is dead. You must bury him and I will take you home.’
“The dragon helped the boy bury his father, and afterward the boy said, ‘I cannot leave my father’s grave. Let me stay here and I will be your servant.’
“ ‘I am not sure what you can do for me,’ the dragon replied. ‘Since I am a powerful dragon and you are only a human being, and a small one at that.’
“ ‘Maybe I can keep you company,’ the boy suggested. ‘It must be lonely on this island all by yourself. And when you die, I will bury you and say prayers for you at your grave.’
“The dragon laughed, for it knew that the lifespan of a dragon far exceeds that of a human, but the boy’s words moved it. ‘Very well,’ it said. ‘You may stay here and be to me what you were to your father.’
“So the dragon brought the boy up as his son, and he became a great magician and warrior, and one day he will appear, Fumio says, and put an end to cruelty and injustice.”
“Even in stories told by children, we hear the people’s longing for justice,” Naomi said.
WHEN THEY HAD lain together the previous night, their desire had been overwhelming and uncontrollable. This night they were both more thoughtful, more aware of the risks they were taking, the madness of their actions.
“I am afraid we will make a child,” Shigeru confessed. “Not that I do not long for it. . . .”
“I do not believe I will conceive this week,” Naomi replied. “But if I do—” She broke off, unable to voice her intention, but he knew what she meant and was filled with sorrow and anger.
After a few moments, she said, “I long to give you children. I thought of that when you spoke of Fumio. You must want so much to have a son. It may never be possible for us to marry. I feel all we can do is steal these moments, but they will be very few, with long stretches of time between them, and always so dangerous. It claws at my heart to say it, but you should marry again so that you can have children.”
“I will marry no one but you,” he said, and then, realizing the depth of his love for her, “I will lie with no one but you for the rest of my life.”
“One day you will be my husband,” she whispered. “And I will bring your children into life.”
They held each other for a long time, and when they made love, it was with a hesitant tenderness, as though they were made of some fragile material that one rough move might shatter.
SHIGERU SWAM AGAIN the following day. Naomi watched him from the shore.
“I have never learned to swim,” she said. “I do not care for boats. I suffer from seasickness and prefer to travel by land. It must be terrible to drown—it is a death I fear.”
He could see that her mood was made somber by their imminent parting, though she tried hard to conceal it. It was a little cooler, the breeze stronger, shifting to the southwest.
“It is the wind you need to blow you home,” Naomi said. “But I hate it. I wish the northerly would blow and keep you here forever.” She sighed. “Yet I must return to the city.”
“You miss your daughter?”
“Yes, I do. She is delightful at this age. She is four years old; she talks all the time and is learning to read. I wish you could see her!”
“She will be brought up in the Maruyama way,” Shigeru said, recalling Eijiro’s daughters.
“I pray she will never have to be sent away,” Naomi said. “It is my greatest fear, that Iida will feel himself strong enough to demand hostages, and Mariko will go to Inuyama.”
It was one more constraint on them. By the end of the day they were both silent. Naomi was pale and seemed almost unwell. He intended to refrain from touching her, but she threw herself against him as soon as they were alone, as though she would annihilate her fears with passion, and he could do nothing but respond. They hardly slept, and when dawn came, Naomi rose and dressed.
“We must leave early,” she said. “It is a long journey back, and anyway I cannot bear to say good-bye to you, so I must go at once.”
“When will we be able to meet again?” he asked.
“Who knows?” She turned away as the tears began to spill from her eyes. “I will arrange something, when I can, when it is safe . . . I will write or send a message.”
Shigeru called for Sachie, who brought tea and a little food, and Naomi regained her self-control. There was nothing they could say to each other; nothing would make the parting easier to bear. The horses were prepared, Bunta as silent as ever, the packhorse loaded with bundles and baskets. Naomi mounted the mare, Sachie and Bunta their horses, and the three rode off. Only the young man looked back at Shigeru.
