by Lian Hearn
I slipped back from doorway to doorway. The temple bell rang out. The town was stirring, the first of the shutters were being taken down, and the smell of smoke from kitchen fires wafted through the streets. I had stayed far too long with Jo-An. I had not used my second self all night, but I felt split in half, as if I had left my true self permanently beneath the willow tree with him. The self that was returning to the Tribe was hollow.
When I came to the Muto house the nagging thought that had been at the back of my mind all night surfaced. How was I going to get across the overhang of the wall from the street? The white plaster, the gray tiles, shone in the dawn light, mocking me. I crouched in the shelter of the house opposite, deeply regretting my own rashness and stupidity. I’d lost my focus and concentration; my hearing was as acute as ever, but the inner certainty, the instinct, was gone.
I couldn’t stay where I was. In the distance I heard the tramp of feet, the padding of hoofs. A group of men was approaching. Their voices floated toward me. I thought I recognized the Western accent that would mark them as Arai’s men. I knew that if they found me, my life with the Tribe would be over: My life would probably be over altogether if Arai was as insulted as had been said.
I had no choice but to run to the gate and shout to the guards to open it, but as I was about to cross the street, I heard voices from beyond the wall. Akio was calling quietly to the guards. There was a creak and a thud as the gate was unbarred.
The patrol turned into the far end of the street. I went invisible, ran to the gate, and slipped inside.
The guards did not see me but Akio did, just as he had forestalled me at Inuyama when the Tribe first seized me. He stepped into my path and grabbed both arms.
I braced myself for the blows I was certain would follow, but he did not waste any time. He pulled me swiftly toward the house.
The horses of the patrol were moving faster now, coming down the street at a trot. I stumbled over the dog. It whimpered in its sleep. The riders shouted to the guards at the gate, “Good morning!”
“What’ve you got there?” one of the guards replied.
“None of your business!”
As Akio pulled me up into the house I looked back. Through the narrow space between the bathhouse and the wall, I could just see the open gate and the street beyond.
Behind the horses two men on foot were dragging a captive between them. I could not see him clearly but I could hear his voice. I could hear his prayers. It was my outcast, Jo-An.
I must have made a lunge off the step toward the gate, for Akio pulled me back with a force that almost dislocated my shoulder. Then he did hit me, silently and efficiently on the side of the neck. The room spun sickeningly. Still without speaking, he dragged me into the main room where the maid was sweeping the matting. She took no notice of us at all.
He called out to the kitchen as he opened the wall of the hidden room and pushed me inside. Kenji’s wife came into the room and Akio slid the door shut.
Her face was pale and her eyes puffy, as though she were still fighting sleep. I could feel her fury before she spoke. She slapped me twice across the face. “You little bastard! You half-bred idiot! How dare you do that to me.”
Akio pushed me to the floor, still holding my arms behind my back. I lowered my head in submission. There didn’t seem to be any point in saying anything.
“Kenji warned me you’d try to get out. I didn’t believe him. Why did you do it?”
When I didn’t reply, she knelt, too, and raised my head so she could see my face. I kept my eyes turned away.
“Answer me! Are you insane?”
“Just to see if I could.”
She sighed in exasperation, sounding like her husband.
“I don’t like being shut in,” I muttered.
“It’s madness,” Akio said angrily. “He’s a danger to us all. We should—”
She interrupted him swiftly. “That decision can only be taken by the Kikuta master. Until then, our task is to try to keep him alive and out of Arai’s hands.” She gave me another cuff round the head, but a less serious one. “Who saw you?”
“No one. Just an outcast.”
“What outcast?”
“A leather worker. Jo-An.”
“Jo-An? The lunatic? The one who saw the angel?” She took a deep breath. “Don’t tell me he saw you.”
“We talked for a while,” I admitted.
“Arai’s men have already picked the outcast up,” Akio said.
“I hope you realize just what a fool you are,” she said.
I bowed my head again. I was thinking about Jo-An, wishing I’d seen him home—if he had any home in Yamagata—wondering if I could rescue him, demanding silently to know what his god’s purpose was for him now. I am often afraid, he had said. Terrified. Pity and remorse twisted my heart.
“Find out what the outcast gives away,” Kenji’s wife said to Akio.
“He won’t betray me,” I said.
“Under torture, everyone betrays,” he replied briefly.
“We should hasten your journey,” she went on. “Perhaps you should even leave today.”
Akio was still kneeling behind me, holding me by the wrists. I felt the movement as he nodded.
“Is he to be punished?” he said.
“No, he has to be able to travel. Besides, as you should have realized by now, physical punishment makes no impression on him. However, make sure he knows exactly what the outcast suffers. His head may be stubborn but his heart is soft.”
“The masters say it is his main weakness,” Akio remarked.
“Yes, if it weren’t for that we might have another Shintaro.”
“Soft hearts can be hardened,” Akio muttered.
“Well, you Kikuta know best how to do that.”
I remained kneeling on the floor while they discussed me as coldly as if I were some commodity, a vat of wine, perhaps, that might turn out to be a particularly fine one or might be tainted and worthless.
“What now?” Akio said. “Is he to be tied up until we leave?”
“Kenji said you chose to come to us,” she said to me. “If that’s true, why do you try to escape?”
“I came back.”
“Will you try again?”
“No.”
“You will go to Matsue with the actors and do nothing to endanger them or yourself?”
“Yes.”
She thought for a moment and told Akio to tie me up anyway. After he’d done so, they left me to make the preparations for our departure. The maid came with a tray of food and tea and helped me to eat and drink without saying a word. After she had taken away the bowls, no one came near me. I listened to the sound of the house and thought I discerned all the harshness and cruelty that lay beneath its everyday song. A huge weariness came over me. I crawled to the mattress, made myself as comfortable as I could, thought hopelessly of Jo-An and my own stupidity, and fell asleep.
IWOKE SUDDENLY, my heart pounding, my throat dry. I had been dreaming of the outcast, a terrible dream in which, from far away, an insistent voice, as small as a mosquito’s, was whispering something only I could hear.
Akio must have had his face pressed up against the outside wall. He described every detail of Jo-An’s torture at the hands of Arai’s men. It went on and on in a slow monotone, making my skin crawl and my stomach turn. Now and then he would fall silent for long periods; I would think with relief it was over, then his voice would begin again.
I could not even put my fingers in my ears. There was no escape from it. Kenji’s wife was right: It was the worst punishment she could have devised for me. I wished above all I had killed the outcast when I first saw him on the riverbank. Pity had stayed my hand then, but that pity had had fatal results. I would have given Jo-An a swift and merciful death. Now, because of me, he was suffering torment.
When Akio’s voice finally died away, I heard Yuki’s tread outside. She stepped into the room carrying a bowl, scissors, and a razor. The m
aid, Sadako, followed her with an armful of clothes, placed them on the floor, and then went silently out of the room. I heard Sadako tell Akio that the midday meal was ready and heard him get to his feet and follow her to the kitchen. The smell of food floated through the house, but I had no appetite.
“I have to cut your hair,” Yuki said. I still wore it in the warrior-style, restrained as Ichiro, my former teacher in Shigeru’s household, had insisted, but unmistakable, the forehead shaved, the back hair caught up in a topknot. It had not been trimmed for weeks, nor had I shaved my face, though I still had very little beard.
Yuki untied my hands and legs and made me sit in front of her. “You are an idiot,” she said as she began to cut.
I didn’t answer. I was already aware of that but also knew I would probably do the same thing again.
“My mother was so angry. I don’t know which surprised her more: that you were able to put her to sleep, or that you dared to.”
Bits of hair were falling around me. “At the same time she was almost excited,” Yuki went on. “She says you remind her of Shintaro when he was your age.”
“She knew him?”
“I’ll tell you a secret: She burned for him. She’d have married him, but it didn’t suit the Tribe, so she married my father instead. Anyway, I don’t think she could bear for anyone to have that power over her. Shintaro was a master of the Kikuta sleep: No one was safe from him.”
Yuki was animated, more chatty than I’d ever known her. I could feel her hand trembling slightly against my neck as the scissors snipped cold on my scalp. I remembered Kenji’s dismissive words about his wife, the girls he’d slept with. Their marriage was like most, an arranged alliance between two families.
“If she’d married Shintaro, I would have been someone else,” Yuki said pensively. “I don’t think she ever stopped loving him, in her heart.”
“Even though he was a murderer?”
“He wasn’t a murderer! No more than you are.”
Something in her voice told me the conversation was moving onto dangerous ground. I found Yuki very attractive. I knew she had strong feelings for me. But I did not feel for her what I had felt for Kaede, and I did not want to be talking about love.
I tried to change the subject. “I thought the sleep thing was something only Kikuta do. Wasn’t Shintaro from the Kuroda family?”
“On his father’s side. His mother was Kikuta. Shintaro and your father were cousins.”
It chilled me to think that the man whose death I’d caused, whom everyone said I resembled, should have been a relative.
“What exactly happened the night Shintaro died?” Yuki said curiously.
“I heard someone climbing into the house. The window of the first floor was open because of the heat. Lord Shigeru wanted to take him alive, but when he seized him, we all three fell into the garden. The intruder struck his head on a rock, but we thought he also took poison in the moment of the fall. Anyway, he died without regaining consciousness. Your father confirmed it was Kuroda Shintaro. Later we learned that Shigeru’s uncles, the Otori lords, had hired him to assassinate Shigeru.”
“It’s extraordinary,” Yuki said, “that you should have been there and no one knew who you were.”
I answered her unguardedly, disarmed, perhaps, by the memories of that night. “Not so extraordinary. Shigeru was looking for me when he rescued me at Mino. He already knew of my existence and knew my father had been an assassin.” Lord Shigeru had told me this when we had talked in Tsuwano. I had asked him if that was why he had sought me out, and he had told me it was the main reason but not the only one. I never found out what the other reasons might have been, and now I never would.
Yuki’s hands had gone still. “My father was not aware of that.”
“No, he was allowed to believe that Shigeru acted on an impulse, that he saved my life and brought me back to Hagi purely by chance.”
“You can’t be serious?”
Too late, her intensity aroused my suspicions. “What does it matter now?”
“How did Lord Otori find out something that even the Tribe had not suspected? What else did he tell you?”
“He told me many things,” I said impatiently. “He and Ichiro taught me almost everything I know.”
“I mean about the Tribe!”
I shook my head as if I did not understand. “Nothing. I know nothing about the Tribe other than what your father taught me and what I’ve learned here.”
She stared at me. I avoided looking at her directly. “There’s a whole lot more to learn,” she said finally. “I’ll be able to teach you on the road.” She ran her hands over my cropped hair and stood in one movement, as her mother had. “Put these on. I’ll bring you something to eat.”
“I’m not hungry,” I said, reaching over and picking up the clothes. Once brightly colored, they had faded to dull orange and brown. I wondered who had worn them and what had befallen him on the road.
“We have many hours of travel ahead,” she said. “We may not eat again today. Whatever Akio and I tell you to do, you do. If we tell you to brew the dirt under our fingernails and drink it, you do it. If we say eat, you eat. And you don’t do anything else. We learned this sort of obedience when we were children. You have to learn it now.”
I wanted to ask her if she had been obedient when she’d brought Shigeru’s sword, Jato, to me in Inuyama, but it seemed wiser to say nothing. I changed into the actor’s clothes, and when Yuki came back with food, I ate without question.
She watched me silently, and when I finished she said, “The outcast is dead.”
They wanted my heart hardened. I did not look at her or reply.
“He said nothing about you,” she went on. “I did not know an outcast would have such courage. He had no poison to release himself. Yet, he said nothing.”
I thanked Jo-An in my heart, thanked the Hidden who take their secrets with them . . . where? Into Paradise? Into another life? Into the silencing fire, the silent grave? I wanted to pray for him, after the fashion of our people. Or light candles and burn incense for him, as Ichiro and Chiyo had taught me in Shigeru’s house in Hagi. I thought of Jo-An going alone into the dark. What would his people do without him?
“Do you pray to anyone?” I asked Yuki.
“Of course,” she said, surprised.
“Who to?”
“The Enlightened One, in all his forms. The gods of the mountain, the forest, the river: all the old ones. This morning I took rice and flowers to the shrine at the bridge to ask a blessing on our journey. I’m glad we’re leaving today after all. It’s a good day for traveling: All the signs are favorable.” She looked at me as if she were thinking it all over, then shook her head. “Don’t ask things like that. It makes you sound so different. No one else would ask that.”
“No one else has lived my life.”
“You’re one of the Tribe now. Try and behave like it.”
She took a small bag from inside her sleeve and passed it to me. “Here. Akio said to give you these.”
I opened it and felt inside, then tipped the contents out. Five juggler’s balls, smooth and firm, packed with rice grain, fell to the floor. Much as I hated juggling, it was impossible not to pick them up and handle them. With three in my right hand and two in my left, I stood up. The feel of the balls, the actor’s clothes, had already turned me into someone else.
“You are Minoru,” Yuki said. “These would have been given to you by your father. Akio is your older brother; I’m your sister.”
“We don’t look very alike,” I said, tossing the balls up.
“We will become alike enough,” Yuki replied. “My father said you could change your features to some extent.”
“What happened to our father?” Round and back the balls went, the circle, the fountain . . .
“He’s dead.”
“Convenient.”
She ignored me. “We’re traveling to Matsue for the autumn festival. It will take five or s
ix days, depending on the weather. Arai still has men looking for you, but the main search here is over. He has already left for Inuyama. We travel in the opposite direction. At night we have safe houses to go to. But the road belongs to no one. If we meet any patrols, you’ll have to prove who you are.”
I dropped one of the balls and bent to retrieve it.
“You can’t drop them,” Yuki said. “No one of your age ever drops them. My father also said you could impersonate well. Don’t bring any of us into danger.”
WE LEFT FROM the back entrance. Kenji’s wife came out to bid us farewell. She looked me over, checked my hair and clothes. “I hope we meet again,” she said. “But, knowing your recklessness, I hardly expect it.”
I bowed to her, saying nothing. Akio was already in the yard with a handcart like the one I’d been bundled into in Inuyama. He told me to get inside and I climbed in among the props and costumes. Yuki handed me my knife. I was pleased to see it again and tucked it away inside my clothes.
Akio lifted the cart handles and began to push. I rocked through the town in semidarkness, listening to its sounds and to the speech of the actors. I recognized the voice of the other girl from Inuyama, Keiko. There was one other man with us, too; I’d heard his voice in the house but had not set eyes on him.
When we were well beyond the last houses, Akio stopped, opened the side of the cart, and told me to get out. It was about the second half of the Hour of the Goat and still very warm, despite the onset of autumn. Akio gleamed with sweat. He had removed most of his clothes to push the cart. I could see how strong he was. He was taller than me, and much more muscular. He went to drink from the stream that ran beside the road and splashed water onto his head and face. Yuki, Keiko, and the older man were squatting by the side of the road. I would hardly have recognized any of them. They were completely transformed into a troupe of actors making a precarious living from town to town, existing on their wits and talents, always on the verge of starvation or crime.