by Ronan Frost
Chapter Seventeen
I dream I am running. My center of being floats flat and even, the sandal of each foot kissing the ground but a moment, landing forefoot first and then kicking back high to my buttocks. In the soft sections of mud, small pools of brown water have collected in the footprints of others. In other sections, the ground is loamy and yielding, or hard and slippery with gravel. The trail gives me a deep connection with the forest and I sense everything around me; the sunlight flashing through the trunks of the trees, the wind rushing past my ears carrying with it scents of pine and moss and damp. My breathing is in time with my steps; an inhalation over three strides, deep and long into the lowest part of my lungs, expelled in one stride as it starts to burn. Again, again, again.
This is no ordinary dream.
Some part of me can still feel my body, reciting mantras in the lotus position in the room stuffy with incense smoke. My eyes are still open, and I know that if I shake myself even a fraction I can bring myself back, but I don’t want to, I want to see where this vision is taking me. I relax.
Then I am in a clearing and I realize I’m almost there; the five-storied pagoda.
It is mid-summer, the snow-laden branches of the pine trees of my memory replaced by verdant green. The worn flagstones leading to the base of the pagoda are grey and dry like rounded islands in a sea of grass. Bright patches of sunlight cast deep shadows beneath each of the five roofs, leaving vague hints of the intricate carvings in the cypress beams.
I stand in the shade listening to the chorus of cicadas, lost in thought, aware that their distinctive song marks the height of summer. I feel light inside, blades of grass beneath my soles springing upward as the weight upon my feet lessens. I drift upwards into the canopy and see the enormous thickness of the thatched roof, even more striking from my vantage among the trees. It sits in the shade of the forest, every door and window thrown open to the sticky summer air. There is a young monk I don’t know dressed in the yellow and white of the yamabushi at the temple stairs, bent in some task. I can’t see his face as I fly silently overhead, seeing only the top of his head and his shoulders.
Something is drawing me around the back of the temple, as water is drawn towards a hole in a bucket. My thoughts darken, realizing that hole is the small graveyard at the rear of the temple. Tall wooden rods stand upright in metal caskets where the ceramic pots containing the ashes of the dead lay, the painted characters on the rods faded in varying degrees corresponding to their age, inscribing the new names given to the dead. One particular painted rod, although seemingly identical stacked among its peers, somehow distinguishes itself like a familiar face in a crowd. The sinkhole into which all things are draining is centered upon this marker, and as I am drawn closer, I see the words marked on the rod and my heart gives a tight squeeze within my chest. I know it instantly, for elements of Hatano’s name in life have been incorporated into the eight characters of his posthumous name. The ink is not among the newest of those here; already his death is a part of the past.
There is a presence at my shoulder, I can feel it close, a drowned boy trying to speak, grabbing at my shoulder, mouth open, but instead of words he can only cough gouts of water as cold and sharp as a winter stream.
With a start, I snap back to reality. My eyes are still open and they refocus on the shrine before me. I realize I have stopped reciting the mantra and the monk at my side casts a sharp look of reproach.
I shake myself. The second day of the period of stillness, and I still have another seven to endure. Memories come flooding back of the dinner I had with the other monks before it began; a farewell feast in case I did not survive. A great array of delicacies covered the table; battered tofu and bonito flakes, shitake mushroom, pickled eggplant and baked river fish. Following Kan’emon’s advice, I had eaten sparely, only a few token mouthfuls and a sip of water, despite the allure of the meticulously prepared dishes. I had been long in preparing for this moment, tapering down my meals, and paradoxically, to gorge myself in the final feast would mean certain failure. I had made the prostrations before the shrine, the guests had departed, and I had begun.
I chant the mantras continuously, my mind free to wander. My stomach is a constant pit of hollowness and thirst has constricted my throat, but I feel in control of both; it is the lack of sleep that is beginning to turn my head, visions of my brother invading reality.
As I sit and mediate, I recognize the importance of reflection. It is only in moments of quiet can we truly make the most of experiences, to integrate our memories into who we are and shape what we become. Without such introspection, life is a flash of fleeting sensations that cannot become form or substance.
I bathe myself in memories of the softness of fallen leaves underfoot as that first summer of my trials drew to an end, as the forest changed to a bright display of reds and gold. My pulse quickens with the exhilaration of recalling fierce storms that lashed the upper branches, debris littering the path, the skies bellowing ground-shaking rolls of thunder. On occasion, earthquakes would shake me from my sleep, the wooden frame of the temple rattling and groaning for interminably long breaths.
I hold those precious moments of memory when the forest gave me its gifts: the rush of awe upon seeing a stag crash through the undergrowth and into the trail before me, quivering to a stop before me, all muscle and grandeur, before launching off the trail headlong through the forest. Another time I had been passing an escarpment, and, sensing something, turned to see in the shadows of the night a huge bear looking over its shoulder at me with entrancing placidity, bleeding away my fear so that I simply stood watching for long moments, until at last I slowly backed away.
There were times my whole body ached and cried out for rest, yet taken one day at a time, I overcame. The light of the moon, and the multitude of chirping, rustling and moving lives within the forest had been a calming and buoying balm.
I ran through the mountains, my vast course extending year by year. I came to learn the famous four characteristics of Mount Hiei monastery: incessant study, high humidity, freezing cold, and poverty. True to his word, Kan’emon made those first one-hundred days a living hell. Against all expectations, I was given permission to continue, embarking upon the unbreakable vow.
For five years I ran the paths around the mountain; for the first three years, a continuous block of one-hundred days of constant motion, no matter the weather, no matter my condition. In the fourth and fifth years, the blocks were extended to two-hundred consecutive days, of sleeping less than four hours a night to awake at midnight, strapping on woven straw sandals that had to be made new every day. For the first four years I ran with bare feet in the sandals, my toes overhanging the lip and open to the mud of summer monsoons and ice of winter snows. It was only in the fifth year that I was permitted split-toe socks to protect my feet. I carried the rope and blade at all times, and every morning I tied them to my belt to remind me of my oath; the cord for hanging, the knife for self-disembowelment.
I wore the characteristic narrow rectangular hat of the running monks. My studies told me it represented enlightenment, the shape of a lotus leaf breaking the surface of water. I soon saw in it a more practical function: it kept the branches and rain out of my eyes, yet was narrow to fit between trees. This practicality was surely no accident, and it made me smile, feeling a stirring of kinship to those monks who had gone before me. I developed the kind of gait I had seen in Yobutomo; short quick steps, upper body held erect, not so fast as to draw labored breath, but neither was it languid; a pace able to be maintained for hours on end, eating away at the distance.
At the end of each day’s arduous circuit I would take up broom and mop to work the various tasks of temple, a small bowl of rice and soup, tofu and vegetables for my midday meal. Then my studies would begin, and I would pour myself into the books, my eyes blurring at times, fighting fatigue, as I laboriously deciphered each character in my mind, thankful that Master Masakage had instructed me not only in the
common alphabet of the so-called “woman’s hand”, but also some of the Chinese characters used by officialdom and the educated.
Although I was already well accustomed to being in my own company, long periods of running through the dark trails forced me to become comfortable with myself. It was no easy thing, for often that inner voice in my head would often torment me, a monologue playing in my head criticizing everything I did, and I came once again to doubt myself. More than once, I saw the ghost of my brother racing along the path before me, laughing playfully, flitting between trees, as real to my eyes as every other creature in the forest. These heart-wrenching visions brought with them thoughts of Aki, and the image of her severed head upon a spike often haunted my dreams. These were the times I missed Yobutomo the most. I wished quite selfishly that he had not departed so soon after I had begun my trials, returning to his home of Mount Haguro. The sting of isolation is two-edged, such terrible loneliness that strikes so bitterly into the very core of my being, yet if I embrace it, I find strength and truth in Yobutomo’s words: It only when one is solitary can we find enlightenment, only through deprivation can we find truth.
Although spending vast stretches of time alone, I was no immune to the influences of the world and the sense of impeding battle that lay upon the land. The warrior monks drilled in the yard with fervor, the thousands-strong army practicing swordplay and the firing of arquebuses, their shouts and cries and echoing shots of their practice a constant drone throughout the entire temple complex.
It is not that itch of war, however, that sets my nerves upon edge night after night. There is something else, a tugging feeling, an emptiness in the mind where I fear to venture.
If I am silent, I can almost hear Aki’s voice…
The tolling of a bell resounds in my skull and I start from my reverie. My eyes are still open but for a moment I don’t know where I am. A headache bunches at the base of my neck, radiating pain. I feel every muscle hanging from my face, feeling as if it has been flayed of skin.
Then I remember: the nine days of deprivation, where failure means death.
I glance to my left, where a monk sits, his job to keep me awake. He nods almost imperceptibility, a signal it is time to take the water ritual for the third time.
Hours of sitting unmoving upon my legs has made them tingle with weakness and cramp. I move slowly, incrementally straightening, feeling that it is impossible that they can bear my weight, but after some time I am able to get them beneath me and stand. I shuffle out of the room heavy with incense and into the mountain air. The path is short to the well. There, under the watchful eye of the monk, I take a mouthful of water from the cup, rinsing my mouth slowly and deliberately, keeping my attention focused. I know if I relax, primal instincts will take over and I will not be able to stop from swallowing. I linger a little longer until my resolve begins to weaken, then spit the water back into the cup. The monk moves closer, inspecting the cup to ensure that the level remains as before. Satisfied, he nods.
I am told the water taking ritual is necessary to stop the mouth adhering permanently closed: another lesson discovered by painful experience from early practitioners. I wonder if my willpower will be strong enough to stop from swallowing in the coming days. As I walk back to the temple, my steps have regained a little more strength, and the third day of the trials begins.
It is several hours later that the weakness takes me. It has remained silent, lurking, and when it strikes, it does so with surprising rapidity, taking me off-guard, robbing me of my inflated sense of confidence. I realize I had been a fool, thinking five years of strenuous activity had hardened my body and strengthened my mind. It seems my subconscious, my most base self, has rebelled against my conscious mind. Deprived of sustenance, it has waited long enough, and demands action. My senses are becoming sharper, and I can smell food being prepared somewhere distant, carried upon the breeze. I can even smell the moisture and food on the breath of the monk who sits motionless at the far end of the room up against the wall. I study him from the corner of my eye, and his form shimmers and flickers before my eyes. It is only when I look at him askant do I see it, but I fancy I can see his true shape; he is no man, he is a tengu: a crafty beast of black feathers, half-dog, half-raven, a harbinger of death. His shadow looms huge against the squared paper wall, bristles raised in the massive arched curl of his back, rising and falling with each foul breath. My thoughts turn to schemes into way I can trick him and escape. I reject the notion of trying to overpower him, for tengu have the strength of twenty men. If he catches me, those claws will cut away at the white net of root-bound nerves of my skinless skull, the orbs of my lidless eyes spinning free -
I gasp for air.
My only choice is to simply stand and flee into the forest, and hope my legs, folded so long in the lotus position, do not fail me. If I run deep and long enough, there is a chance he will not find me. I picture myself dropping to my knees and bring cupped hands brimming with chill clear mountain water to my mouth. It would only take a few great gulps and my body would once again be mine.
I blink. The monk is a man again, and I rein in control of my thoughts, shaken at how vivid and how urgent the urge to take flight had been. I study the monk for so long that he eventually senses my gaze, raising his head and meeting my eyes. I break contact and resume my head forward position, directly towards the shrine. I blink again, my eyelashes seeming to stick and only just breaking free to open halfway. I closed my eyes again, resting the dry surface in the balm of blackness behind closed lids. I held that position with held breath, basking in the delicious feeling of rest. All I needed were a few seconds, just to snatch a little rest…
I snap alert as my nodding head jerks me back, startled at how my emotions have launched from extreme to extreme; from a moment of pure terror and readiness to run, to the heaviness of deep sleep. I began to feel the very real concern that I cannot do this, that I have made a terrible mistake.
My thoughts keep returning to food and water. I sense the sun moving through the sky but can see no shadow in this cloistered room. My back starts to ache and, although I struggle not to, I have to shift my position upon the mat more than a few times. The excruciating pain of sitting motionless overwhelms my mind until every part of my body is screaming. I pass the rest of that day and into the night feeling miserable and knowing that surely I could not survive a further four days.
Abruptly the monk by the wall stands and tells me in a soft voice that it is time for the water ritual. I shake my head, seeing that it is a different man to before; I had not noticed that they had swapped shifts.
On the fourth day, I feel no hunger, and on the fifth I have no saliva and can taste blood in my mouth. Fatigue claws constantly at my mind and I break free of the deepening trap of sleep with starts. Keeping my awareness is a constant struggle, and each time I ease my guard I am drawn back down again where things solidify. My eyes feel full of grains of sand and lifting my eyelids is a conscious effort increasingly fueled by desperation. It is a long terrible battle of defiance before a foe that does not relent. I can feel life bleed from my body, every ridge of the sun-bleached driftwood of my ribcage exposed as the tide of my flesh ebbs, my skin stretching like waxed paper.
In my five years of running the sacred course about the mountain, I had found escape from myself. Here, I am forced to confront everything. My senses are as keen as the pain of running a finger down the edge of a knife blade. I can hear the soft avalanche of ash falling from the incense sticks burning in the altar before me. On the back of my tongue I taste the mingled scents of far-distant food, a sharp contrast to the fetid stench of acidic decay of my own breath. All have deserted me, and I will surely die, and not a single soul will mourn my passing from this world.
Suddenly a thunderous crashing breaks the moment. My heart constricts, my breathing stops, a flush comes over my body as a bat struggles to free itself with a flutter of papery wings from the corner of the room. It is impossible. How did it get
inside?
The monk on duty springs to his feet in alarm. There is a brief commotion as he rushes to throw a blanket over the bat, at last capturing it, and holding the bundle lightly he takes it outside.
I am alone in the room.
I am still shaken. I try to tell myself it is only an accident, but I cannot shake the chill. Although it is summer, a sudden frost forms on the surface of the alter. Footsteps that squelch with water approach from my rear.
The skin at my back crawls and I know he is here, yet I do not move. Everything dims. He comes toward me and I hear his footsteps grow closer and he at my side, his hair plastered to his face, his clothes clinging to his body. In the years since his death I have grown and he has stayed a small boy, frozen in time. Although I sit, his face is level with mine.
My tongue is thick and heavy in my mouth, swollen ten times its size, my words slurred.
“No. You are dead.”
“I am a part of you.”
He reaches out. I shrink back, and the touch of his hand upon my shoulder is a jolt of power.
In a rush, I am back in my boy’s body. I am standing waist deep in the river, Takatora’s face is underwater, and I am pulling him to the surface, dragging his body towards the muddy bank. Things are subtly different, more real, as if I had dug into black soil and had unearthed the hard edge of a truth long buried.
“All your life you have sought to find your place,” says Takatora. “You blinded yourself. What do you truly remember of that day in the river? Your true memories, not what you were told.”
“We were fighting, I pushed you, and you slipped and fell into the water, and I fell after you. I was so angry that I kept pushing you – ”
“No, that’s Masakage’s story. That’s not how I died. Look closer at your memories.”
“The arrow,” I said in a moment of sudden clarity. I saw it then; it had hit Takatora in the back, the metal arrowhead pieced through his chest and tearing a hole in his tunic. The blow had swept him from the riverbank and cast him into the waters below. I had leapt into the sluggish brown waters, raising Takatora to the surface, his body twitching and thrashing in a way that scared me so much I almost dropped him.
“It was a raid,” I say slowly.
Takatora nods. “The Date clan attacked our village, slaughtered everyone but for a few young children who were taken back to the castle as servants.”
“But I saw our father, he was so angry at me. Master Masakage, he was on his horse at the riverbank, he saved me.”
Takatora tilts his head and gives a little smile. I hesitate. Once again, I am atop Masakage’s horse, covered by his cloak, hauled up impossibly high, our father’s face contorted as he runs after me. I am looking back, confused and breathless, watching as my father is intercepted and felled by a foot soldier who runs him through with a lance.
“You have the strength, my brother, and you are not alone.”
There is a shifting to the air, the room temperature rockets back up and the lanterns which had guttered to a feeble glow burst back into life, casting a warm soft light. My brother is gone. The monk returns from outside, shaking the empty blanket. He pauses, looking suspiciously at twin impressions of dampness in the tatami by my side.
My eyes are wide and my breathing hitches.
“I did not kill him,” I say in slow wonder, feeling a profound shift in the seating of my soul.
The monk narrows his eyes. He is about to speak, but just as his mouth opens the tolling of the temple bell signals midnight.
It is time for the water ritual.
The monk shakes his head, his eyes narrowed and I sense he has put aside the mystery for the moment. He indicates I should stand.
I bring my legs out in front of me then bend one knee at a time. I raise myself carefully and slowly, feeling the world spin. I cannot shake my brother’s words from my head. The truth of that day has always been within, overlain with the lies of Master Masakage.
The walk from the hall to the well which had taken less than a minute the first night now takes an eternity. I wonder how much time is passing as I shuffle forward, and acknowledge the patience of the monk at my shoulder. My small mincing steps are filled with riling thoughts, confusion mixed with the myriad aches of my starving body that skirts close to death, every sensation heightened to giddying heights.
I step outside the temple and the instant my foot eases over the threshold into the bracing mountain air my head clears. Laden with smells of the earth and forest the wind seemingly rushes through my lungs as if they were clearing out a long shuttered and musty room, and the pores of my skin open up, absorbing water from the dew hanging in the air. This is why Takatora had long haunted me - he wanted me to know the truth.
I am released.
I am suddenly aware a silent crowd has gathered upon the path up ahead, about the well. They stand still, yet my senses are so sharp I hear the individual threads of their clothing catching and rustling as they breath, their overpowering scent of vitality and life. I wonder why they are here.
I move towards them, achingly slow yet my body can go no faster, and as I approach they part before me, creating a corridor. I do no look up or seek anyone’s eye; purged of all desires and thought, my emptiness is a keen and painful thing. The wood of the well is worn smooth by an age of hands as I place my palms upon it.
I take the ceramic cup and reach down, filling it from the waters. I hold it to the light of the midnight moon, its surface rippling, tantalizing. I take some water into my mouth, rinsing, fighting that incredible urge to swallow. Every part of my body demands it, my mind skimming upon some strange plane, my thoughts fleeting wisps of cloud through which my body and its litany of demands perpetually tumble.
I shake myself, realizing I still hold the water in my mouth. I wonder how long it has been, and am worried that I have swallowed some. That tumult of noises of the crowd is a constant assault to my ears; shifting upon their feet, the thunderous roar of their breath, the creaking of their bones and cartilage like some precession of rickety wagons. I carefully spit back into the cup, relived to see that the level is restored.
A familiar scent washes in with my next inhalation and am not startled by the distinctive timbre of the voice at my side.
“It is over,” says Yobutomo. His hand rests lightly upon my shoulder.
I turn and find that in the seven years since I had last seen him I have grown. Yobutomo and I are now of a height, my eyes level with his. They hold that same mischievous glint. That distance I had always felt between us vanishes and I raise my right hand and place it upon his shoulder, and he takes my weight and helps me inside.