He considered. “Maybe a year or so older than I am. Very long wild hair, dressed in white. She had no feet, and sort of floated on the opposite side of the spring, but the rest of her was plain as you are.”
“Funeral robes,” Kenji said. “It is often thus, poor thing. Perhaps I should send her to the other world . . . ”
“No!” The force of Lady Snow’s word startled all three of us. She realized we were all staring at her, then repeated in a softer voice, “No, there’s no need. She’s not dangerous.”
“I assumed you’d been here before,” I said. “Is this rei known to you?”
“I’ve seen her,” Lady Snow admitted. “Here and there. She means no harm, I know.”
“She should not linger here,” Kenji said, not unkindly. “A false attachment to this world will surely long delay her path to Enlightenment. It’s not right.”
Lady Snow did not look up from preparing our supper. “What is not right is that so many people must leave the world before they even have a chance to experience it properly, or understand any of it or find the one thing that, perhaps, they had been put here to experience in the first place. All paths must lead to the same place eventually, Master Daisho. Not even the wisest know the best course for everyone.”
“Kenji, please,” he said.
“You were speaking as a priest,” Lady Snow said. “I thought I should address you as such.”
Kenji smiled a rueful smile, and it was all I could do not to laugh. If this had been the game of One Hundred Poems, Lady Snow had just taken every card.
“Well then,” Kenji said wryly. “I certainly make no claims to either wisdom or great understanding. Unless the ghost attacks us or requests otherwise, I am content to leave her be.”
“It is a small matter, but thank you,” Lady Snow said.
“Small matter” indeed. Even when she had been trying so earnestly to persuade me to her cause, I had never seen her so passionate or fearful as she was concerning this one lonely ghost.
Lady Snow was heating miso soup and water for tea. I rose from the ground and started toward the spring.
“I’d like to wash my face.”
She shot me a hard glance and looked as if she wanted to say something but finally turned her attention back to the food without a word.
Kenji shrugged. “If you smell anything like I do, I think you should merely start with your face. If you do decide thus, move downstream a bit. We don’t want to foul the water. Or frighten the ghost.”
“I’ll keep this in mind for later,” I said. “So will you.”
A bath actually wasn’t a bad idea, though I felt a little uncomfortable at the idea of bathing in the presence of a strange girl, even if she was a ghost. Perhaps it could wait until Nara.
I found the spring near a bamboo grove on the side of a small hill. It welled out of a rock, flowed into a cracked stone basin, then out again into a small stream that marked the edge of the abandoned field. I looked around, but there was no sign of anyone else, ghost or otherwise. Defying Kenji, I washed my face at the stone basin.
When I looked up again, a glimmer of movement to the left caught my eye, and then in the interval from one blink of the eye to the next, I saw her. She hovered near the edge of the stream, pretty much as Nidai had described. There came a rustling of wind through the bamboo, and a sound that might have been a sigh or simply the voice of the wind. In another moment the ghost was gone. I wanted a better look at the ghost’s face, but obviously I was not going to get it. I waited for a few moments, but it did not reappear. I walked back toward our small camp, considering what I had seen. What I thought I had seen—and that was the ghost of Taira no Kei, one of the very first victims of the dark spiritual energy, whatever it was, that had ravaged the city. The girl whose body I had attended at Senrin-ji.
This far from Kyoto? This place would have no meaning to her.
While patterns and colors of the clothing of most young girl’s Kei’s age were as different as they could make them within the boundaries of taste and refinement, funeral robes were pretty much the same. One young girl prepared for burial looked a great deal like another, to one who did not know either. Doubtless I was mistaken.
Kenji hailed me from the campfire. “About time. I was about to persuade Lady Snow to start without you.”
“Kenji-san is, indeed, quite persuasive,” Lady Snow said. “But we waited nonetheless.”
The meal was simple, as befitted our current circumstances, but good and substantial. Even Kenji ate all of his portion with apparent enjoyment. When we were done, Nidai dared the stream again to wash our bowls, and Lady Snow withdrew to a discreet distance. I assumed this was to make her sleeping arrangements, but instead she reached into her bundle and pulled out a polished bamboo flute. She got to her feet and began to play. The first few mournful notes seemed to fill the air around us like the voice of melancholy itself. Lady Snow walked, her long sleeves trailing, as she played. Kenji settled back to listen, his eyes closed.
Nidai returned from his washing and packed everything away. “She’s back,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.
“Who? The ghost?” I asked, also keeping my voice low so as not to disturb the music.
He grunted assent. “Lady Snow started playing, and the next time I looked up, the girl was there again, just across the stream.”
“Did she try to talk to you?”
He looked puzzled. “I don’t think she noticed me at all. I think she was listening to the flute.”
Curious.
What was even more curious was that Lady Snow seemed to be playing as much to the trees across the field as to us, or anyone in particular. Part of me just wanted to enjoy the music, but when the ghost showed herself on the near side of the field, my mind would not let me.
There was a belief in some quarters that a spirit could not cross running water, but that was rubbish. I’d seen Seita do it numerous times. Mostly any hesitation on the part of a spirit was simple reluctance to stray from a familiar area or path, but now the ghost girl hovered just inside the edge of the field. I had the distinct impression that she wanted to move closer but would not.
I wondered why. Was it the remnants of the house? Perhaps this place had been her home, but something had driven her into the woods to die. Was there a battle? Bandits? Plague? Any one seemed as likely as another. Or maybe it had nothing to do with the house at all. Perhaps it was us.
To test the idea, I moved closer.
The ghost did not react. I kept back far enough not to cross between Lady Snow and the far edge of the field; she was now looking directly at the ghost, and the music did not falter.
I studied the ghost. Before I had merely suspected; now I was certain. I said nothing. Finally, Lady Snow lowered the flute, and the music and the ghost vanished together. I looked at Lady Snow. She was weeping.
“That was the ghost of Taira no Kei, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Did she follow you?”
“I have seen her before. We were friends; I told you.”
It wasn’t exactly an answer, nor was it a denial. “I’m not accusing you of anything, Lady Snow. I’ve just never seen a ghost travel so far from the scene of its death before, though of course I’ve heard of such things.”
“I think she liked the music.”
“We all did. You are very skilled.”
She wiped her tears on her sleeve. “My skills are poor things hardly worth mentioning, but thank you.”
“Does she ever speak to you?” I asked.
Her face was unreadable. “I’m sorry, Lord Yamada, but I’m not certain I would know one ghost’s voice if I heard it. There are so many.”
That wasn’t exactly an answer either, though it occurred to me I was delving into matters that, perhaps, were none of my concern. That was the recurring problem when one built one’s life around asking and answering questions—sometimes it was very hard to know when to stop. I wished Lady Snow a pleasa
nt night and withdrew. I was a little amused but not surprised when Nidai moved his bedding to lie halfway between where Kenji and I slept and where Lady Snow retired for the evening.
We crossed the river the next morning at the bridge south of Uji. We stopped in the village only long enough to trade for some fresh vegetables and set out immediately, quickly crossing the bridge. The road led into a bamboo forest where bandits were waiting.
I counted no more than five, well but crudely armed. Two had swords, two others clubs, one a thick staff. My tachi was clear of its scabbard before they were well out of the forest, but I had foolishly allowed Lady Snow to wander a good four paces ahead of us. An older, toothless brute who was their apparent leader reached her before I could do anything. He held her roughly by one arm as he brandished a rusty sword.
“Throw down your weapons or . . . ”
We never did find out what “or” was. What came next happened so fast I almost didn’t see it. Lady Snow’s free arm withdrew into its sleeve and when it emerged there was a flash of steel. Her captor immediately released both her and his weapon, which fell unheeded to the road. Now both his hands were wrapped around his throat and his face had turned ashen gray.
The bandits were momentarily stunned by the turn of events, but I wasn’t fool enough to give them time to recover. I killed the man with the staff while he was too busy watching his former leader pitch face first into the dirt. The other three quickly turned to face me just in time for Kenji to bring his priest’s staff down hard on the remaining swordsman’s head. He joined his leader and the first swordsman in the dirt, and the last two dropped their clubs and ran off into the bamboo as I rushed up to Lady Snow.
“Are you injured?”
“I have blood on my sleeve,” she said ruefully. “I-I think I need to sit down.”
We found a maple tree that had somehow endured the encroaching bamboo, and Lady Snow used it to lean against. “I will be fine. Please check on Nidai.”
Nidai was fine. He was busy pummeling the one fallen bandit who, I was certain, was not dead.
“Nidai-kun, I believe your opponent has had enough.”
There was a light of vengeance in the boy’s eyes. “This isn’t battle, Lord Yamada. This is punishment,” Nidai said.
“I understand, but your mistress needs you now. See to her. Kenji and I will take care of this.”
Nidai gasped and then rushed to Lady Snow’s side, where she was forced to reassure him over and over that she really was all right and finally gave him the task of cleaning her dagger just to keep him quiet. While they were so occupied, Kenji and I studied our fallen attackers. Shabby clothes, poor weapons, and today, even poorer luck. Kenji had his priestly methods for dealing with ritual impurity, but I could not care less for my own part. The leader’s body was face first. I turned it over with my foot. As I suspected, his throat had been cut cleanly, which explained all the blood pooling under him.
“It seems Lady Snow is not the helpless flower she appears,” Kenji said.
“If you ever thought she was such a flower, you clearly were not paying attention. Even so, that was impressive.”
“An understatement,” muttered Kenji who, I was certain, was now re-evaluating any notions he may have held as to the seduction of Lady Snow.
I was not at Kanemore’s level of swordsmanship, but even so I was certain my own opponent would not be getting up again. That left the third, whom Kenji had felled.
“He’s still alive,” Kenji said. “What shall we do with him?”
I knew what it was to be both poor and lacking in options. While I could not be certain it was this that turned the man to banditry and not a violent and brutal nature, my instinct was to spare the man. Common sense and justice both argued against that.
“Wake him up,” I said.
Kenji splashed some water in the man’s face and, after a few moments, had him kneeling if not standing. I waited until some focus had returned to his eyes.
“My name is Yamada no Goji,” I said, “and I have every right to cut your head off. Please explain to me why I should not.”
The man gibbered and bowed, and I could not get one coherent sentence out of him; certainly no justification for not treating him as he richly deserved. I methodically cleaned my sword to give him more time to think on the matter, but in the end I simply put the sword back in its scabbard.
“What is your name?” I asked.
“Y-Yoshi.”
“Yoshi, as of this moment forward your head belongs to me,” I said. “If I ever see you again, I will claim it. Do you understand?”
He stopped gibbering and bowed lower, which I took for assent.
Kenji frowned. “You’re going to let him go?”
“I’m going to treat him as we treat the others. Normally I would hang them at the bridge as a warning, but they’d be cut down by nightfall. Throw him in the river.”
The bandit found his voice again. “But . . . I cannot swim.”
“Now would be an excellent time to better yourself in that regard.”
We hauled the man to his feet, and together we dragged him to the river’s edge and tossed him in, soon followed by the bodies of his companions. By the time we threw in the last body, he had managed to splash his way to shallower water and crawled out of the river on the far side. If he had so much as shaken his fist at us, I would have not hesitated to take the time to hunt him down and collect my debt, but he just staggered off into the bamboo on the other side of the river as quickly as he could go.
“As a priest, I must of course applaud your mercy and sense of restraint,” Kenji said. “But as a traveler who may need to pass this way again, I really think you should have killed him.”
I sighed. “There are plenty left to replace him, but for what it may be worth, I agree. Most likely he’ll be waiting with even more of his friends upon our return.”
“You won’t see him again,” Lady Snow said very calmly. We had not heard her approach.
Lady Snow had just had her life placed in great danger and then killed a man. While she had been upset and shaking as one might expect, that all seemed to have passed. She seemed perfectly composed now.
“Indeed? Why do you think so?” I asked.
She looked away. “Most men have far less imagination than we might think. I don’t believe it had ever occurred to that fool that his prey might one day turn on him. Now he knows that, he will seek another occupation.”
I sincerely hoped Lady Snow was correct. While I prided myself as a judge of men, I would certainly admit there were large gaps in some aspects of that understanding. Somehow I doubted if that would be true for Lady Snow.
Nidai accompanied her to the river where she attempted as best she could to remove the bloodstains from her sleeve. Fortunately by then the bodies had been swept downstream, and the water was relatively clean. She tied her wet sleeves up to keep them from touching the dirt, and we resumed our journey on the southern road. I wanted to be well away from Uji as soon as possible in case any of the bandits’ friends and family came seeking revenge, but the day passed without further incident or any signs of pursuit. We pretty much had the road to ourselves, as this direction was not well traveled except for certain festival times linked to the temples at Nara, but this was the wrong season for that sort of travel.
That evening we made camp in a maple grove far enough off the road to obscure, if not hide, our campfire. After we were done with our meal, Lady Snow played the flute again. Again, the ghost returned. It did not approach any closer than before but simply hovered at the farthest extent of the firelight, apparently listening. I had already satisfied myself as to the ghost’s identity. There was far more that I did not understand. When Lady Snow finally put her flute down, she rejoined us at the fire.
“That was the same song you played the first night. I confess I am unfamiliar with it. What is it called?”
“ ‘Sunset at Mount Toribe.’ It was Kei’s favorite. She was a cheerful eno
ugh girl, but she did have her melancholy streak.”
“It seems you spent a great deal of time with her,” I said.
Her face was impassive. “It does not seem like so very much time now that I see it complete. We argued sometimes, but she was a dear girl. She did not deserve such a thing.”
“Does she follow you for the music?”
“She follows me,” Lady Snow said, “whether I play or do not play. I hope the music gives her some comfort, but I do not know that, or what she wants. Sometimes I think she is trying to tell me something, but I cannot hear her.”
“Does she come to you in your dreams?”
“I do not know,” Lady Snow said. “I can never remember my dreams.”
I’m not sure what moved me to share what I did with Lady Snow, but I think it was the pain in her eyes. “Shortly after her death, I dreamed of her. I do not know why; I never met her while she was alive.”
Lady Snow looked at me, suddenly intent. “Did . . . did she say anything? Please, she was my friend.”
“Yes. She said that I should take tea with her older sister, and that I should please be kind. Does this mean anything to you?”
Lady Snow did not look at me. “Her older sister was Taira no Hoshiko. If you ever meet that worthless creature, perhaps you can ask her.”
“From what you said to me when we first met, I gathered that you were not fond of Lady Hoshiko.”
“I had many problems with Lady Hoshiko,” Lady Snow said, “though perhaps no more than one of my lowly station should expect. Still, I was fond of Kei.”
“The ghost seems to think her sister is in pain.”
She didn’t look at me. “We are all in pain, Lord Yamada. Since no one knows who killed the poor child or why she haunts me now, I would rather talk of other things.”
Kenji grunted. “Who? I rather think the creature that killed your Taira no Kei was more of a ‘what’ than a ‘who,’ ” he said. “Possibly a demon.”
Lady Snow frowned. “You know how Kei died? What killed her?”
I glared at Kenji, but he only shrugged. “Rumor says far more than even you know, Yamada-san. I doubt Lady Snow knows much less than you seem to think is secret.”
To Break the Demon Gate Page 20