by Nick Lake
“So when the order comes to assassinate Oda—if it comes—you’ll go yourself?”
“Of course. I’m the best ninja there is.”
Taro nodded, picked up his bow. “Good. When it comes, I’m going to join the mission. Oda killed my father. I want him for myself.”
Hiro stood up. “And I’ll be by your side.”
CHAPTER 32
When Heiko and Yukiko finally returned, Yukiko stood awkwardly in front of Taro. She swallowed nervously. “I know you didn’t mean …,” she began. She was looking down, and a tear glistened on her thick, dark eyelashes.
“I know,” he said. “I understand why you were angry.”
She nodded. “Thank you.” Then she turned and went to gather her things. The sun was dropping below the horizon, and Shusaku was keen for them to get to the mountain as soon as possible.
As they began walking up the valley toward the sacred mountain, Taro hung back. The forest they walked through seemed taken from the Pure Land. Elegantly twisted trees rose on all sides, luxuriant in soft green moss. Mounds of grass littered the ground, some of them revealing grinning carved faces of rock, especially near streams or unusually large trees—kami, placed here by local villagers to protect the forest.
Or found here by them.
As Taro walked, he attempted to conjure the face of his father, projecting it like a shadow puppet onto a screen in his mind that lay over the trees and moss, shimmering and transparent. But like a shadow puppet’s, his father’s features were dark, rough, impossible to make out. Taro grimaced, concentrating.
His eyes had been wide-set, had they not?
His mouth had been turned always in a smile.
No.
His eyes were narrow, catlike—
Taro cursed. Death had torn his father into pieces, like so much carrion—a hand he remembered clearly, the tendons and veins traced like rivers on a map; an ear, too, conch-shaped. But the whole was gone, torn limb from limb, and Taro could not piece it back together. It was impossible to picture his father in his entirety, the way that he had been when he lived.
Then, as Taro concentrated on the elusive image, which shook with the effort of his imagining, another image replaced it. A man in a rich robe, wearing the helmet of a samurai lord, his kimono adorned with a hollyhock mon.
Lord Tokugawa.
Taro had never even seen the man, yet his image dispelled that of his other father as effectively as a monk banishes a ghost. Taro spat, turned his eyes on the trees and their roots, which burst through the ground beneath his feet, and he quickened his pace.
The screen of his mind shivered, and went dull. But then another image floated up, completely unasked for—the girl they had saved, the one who had given him her ring. He cursed his own thoughts. She was just another impossible dream, come to taunt him, his admiration for her courage and beauty as useless as his curiosity about Tokugawa, or his grief over his father’s death.
Because this was the real world, not the fairy-tale world of Heiko’s stories. Nothing he felt for his father would bring him back from the Pure Land, just as nothing would bring Taro to one day stand in front of Lord Tokugawa and be acknowledged as a lost son and heir. He was a vampire, and, worse, he was a peasant. He might as well dream of walking the night sky to the moon as dream of that beautiful girl.
He twisted the ring on his finger, feeling its tightness against his skin as a form of mockery, yet equally unable to remove it, since it represented the only part of the girl he could see, and touch.
He didn’t even know her name.
He could feel the bow on his shoulder, and its weight seemed unbearable. It too was a tangible symbol of the change that had come over him. Whereas before it had always been the bow his father had made him, decorated with a motif of leaves, now it was a Tokugawa bow, the magical item left with him to identify him as the son. It was as if the object itself had been taken away from him, and returned as something strange and changed.
His focus now was on the bow on his shoulder, not on the roots and stones at his feet, and so it was that he remembered what the girl had said, the lady they had rescued. Something about the grip being thicker than usual. Frowning, he took the bow from his shoulder, holding it up before him while hurrying to keep up with the others.
There had been something at the back of his mind …
Gods. He tapped the grip.
A thin, hollow sound reverberated down the length of the bow, and there was—he could swear it—a very slight rattle that accompanied it.
There’s something inside, he thought. Something hidden within the heart of the bow.
His heart racing, he picked up the pace. He was remembering what the abbess had said, about the Buddha ball. About how it had been returned by the ama’s son to the woman who retrieved it from the deep. Couldn’t another ama have recovered it from the sea? He glanced at the bow.
What if the Buddha ball is hidden inside? He thought. It was a ridiculous idea, but then so was the idea of being a daimyo’s son. He felt slightly dizzy, as he thought that perhaps the bow might contain two legacies—one from Tokugawa, to identify him, but another one even more powerful and magical.
But no. The Buddha ball couldn’t exist, could it? It was only a fairy tale. Even Shusaku didn’t believe in it.
Still. When I get to the mountain, I will break the bow, even if it means destroying my only link to my real father. I must know what is hidden inside.
Then Taro was distracted by the sound of a sniff from ahead. He was surprised to see Heiko, walking alone, her eyes red. He hurried to draw level with her, when she turned and saw him.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yes,” she replied. “It’s just … the abbess, you know. And Shusaku. I’m worried about him. I don’t want anything to happen to him.”
“Shusaku?” said Taro, confused. Worrying about Shusaku seemed a little like worrying about an earthquake, or a tsunami. The man was a ninja.
Heiko sighed. “You didn’t hear what the prophetess said? And those tattoos. I can’t believe he did that. It’s like he’s tempting fate!” She looked at him for confirmation but he could only shrug. “Because of Hoichi!” she said, as if he were being very dense.
“I’m sorry,” said Taro. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please, tell me what it is that’s worrying you. If Shusaku’s tattoos are putting him in some sort of danger, I want to know about it.”
“You haven’t heard of Hoichi the Earless?”
Taro shook his head.
“He was a blind musician. He was tricked into playing his biwa for the Heike family, singing them the story of their defeat by the Minamoto, in the great sea battle.”
Taro shrugged. “And?”
“The Heike family were all dead: every one of them killed in the battle, even the women and children. Hoichi was singing to their ghosts. And the palace he thought he was playing in was their graveyard. He didn’t realize. It was only because a young priest in the seminary where Hoichi lived followed him to the graveyard that anyone knew what was happening. And of course he was becoming pale, and weak, from all that time with the ghosts.”
Taro shivered, imagining the blind man playing to people he didn’t know were dead—playing to the gaki spirits of the lower realm, who were called hungry ghosts and who returned at night to the earth in order to feed on the force and vitality of the living, so constantly empty and needful had they become in their death.
“Anyway,” Heiko went on, “the priest tried to help Hoichi …” She paused. “This is a famous story. You’ve really never heard it?”
“No.”
“Honestly. What are they teaching peasant boys these days?”
Taro laughed. “I’m very good at hunting rabbits.”
Heiko smiled. “So … the priest, he wrote on Hoichi with his brush and ink—the Sanskrit text of the Heart Sutra, to protect the blind man from the ghosts, which he said would be unable to see him due to the power o
f the symbols. Does any of this sound familiar?”
“Gods,” said Taro. “That’s where Shusaku got the idea.”
“Presumably. But he is as arrogant and presumptuous as ever.” She said this, despite the harshness of the words, with a sort of sad admiration. “He tempts the fates.”
“Why? I don’t understand.”
“The priest forgot to paint Hoichi’s ears. When the ghosts came for him, they ripped them off, and he died of blood loss. That is why the story is called Hoichi the Earless.”
Taro let out a long breath. “I see,” he said.
But your eyes will betray you was what he thought. Like Hoichi, Shusaku had failed to cover one part of his body with the text. Was that what the abbess had seen? Would his eyes give him away to an evil spirit—to a ghost, or a ninja? Taro felt a chill run through him at the thought, but he smiled for Heiko’s benefit.
“We’re going to the mountain, though, aren’t we?” he said. “It’s the ninja’s lair. There couldn’t be anywhere safer.”
“Let’s hope so,” said Heiko, and then fell silent, and didn’t speak again for a ri or more, as they crossed over increasingly steep terrain.
Soon they entered the final valley before the entrance to the sacred mountain. Shusaku cautioned them all to move with more care than ever before. It was here, near to the ninja’s secret encampment, that it was most crucial to preserve secrecy.
Silently they crept past a dark village. Smoke rose from one chimney. The others were still and cold. As they walked along the bottom of an irrigation ditch, a heron startled and took loudly to the air. Taro, panicked, dropped to the ground before he saw the silhouette of the bird crossing the waning moon.
It was only when they were climbing the terraced steps of rice paddies, the village houses below and behind them, as small as children’s toys, that Taro realized he had dropped his bow in the ditch.
He gestured to Shusaku, who tutted when Taro told him what he had done. “An ordinary bow? Bad enough. But a Tokugawa bow? There is no way to explain its presence if someone finds it.”
“I know,” said Taro. “I’m sorry.” And of course it was not only that it was a Tokugawa bow that frightened him—it was the idea that it might, just might, contain the Buddha ball. For a peasant to come across it would be disastrous. He felt his pulse quickening, and reminded himself that a peasant might not notice the thickness of the grip. He hadn’t, and neither had Shusaku. Only the noble girl had seen it.
And then, the Buddha ball didn’t exist, anyway.
Probably.
He bit his lip. “I’ll go back and get it. You wait here with Hiro and the girls.”
Shusaku resisted for a moment, but Taro was insistent. Eventually the ninja relented. “Go, but be quick.”
CHAPTER 33
Taro headed back down the valley toward the village. He moved fast, keeping low to the ground, trying to minimize the part of him framed by the moon.
Then he saw it, a shadow moving between the trees. He could also hear singing; the toneless, tuneless song of a man who has consumed too much rice wine. Taro melted behind a tree, following the voice. As he drew closer, he could see that the man was carrying something.
A bow.
The man was singing a song of his own invention. “Found a bow, gonna hide it; wouldn’t want my wife to find it; found a bow, gonna sell it; wouldn’t want my wife to … benefit. Ha, ha! Good one, Ito!”
Taro wondered for a moment who Ito was, then realized that the man was talking to himself. Taro considered his options. The peasant was drunk, clearly. He might not remember finding the bow, if Taro knocked him out and took it from him. And even if he told anyone, they probably wouldn’t believe him. Taro knew from growing up in a village himself that a man who was drunk like this on his own one night was likely to be drunk on other nights too. Most likely, he was well known for it.
Taro searched the thicket floor as he insinuated himself between the trees. Soon he found what he was looking for, a heavy branch. He’d sneak up behind the man and give him one hard blow to the back of the head.
He hoped he could do it without killing him.
Ahead of him, the man was walking toward the end of the thicket, into moonlight. Taro quickened his pace. It would be better to ambush him in the trees.
But when he caught up, the drunkard was standing at the door of a small wooden building, standing on the other side of the thicket from the village. As Taro watched, he slid open a metal bolt and opened the door, then threw the bow inside. Taro had just the time to see a mound of shimmering white inside, glowing in the moonlight.
A rice store.
The man shut the door again, muttering. “Said I was lazy.… I’ll show them. Bow mus’ be worth a fortune. ‘Look at Ito!’ they said. ‘He fell in the ditch! What a fool!’ I’ll show ’em foolish. They only think I fell. Really a kami mus’ have given me a push, so’s I’d find the bow. Prob’ly it’s magic—or it belongs to the shogun, or something. There’ll be a reward, oh, yes!”
And with that, he put a key into the bolt and slammed it home, locking the door.
Taro cursed. This made things more difficult. But not impossible. He would overpower the peasant, take his key, and quickly recover his bow from—
A group of staggering men rounded the corner of the thicket and burst into derisive laughter when they saw the man Taro had been following. Taro ducked behind a bush.
“Ito!” one of the men shouted. “Got out of the ditch, did you? What are you doing here? Surely you prefer dark, muddy places?”
Taro cursed. This wasn’t the village drunkard—the whole village was drunk. It must have been some kind of festival for the end of the obon holiday.
“Hilarious,” said the man who had hidden the bow. “Tha’s really hilarious. Ackshually I was jus’ enjoying a stroll in the moonlight.”
“Well,” said another of the men, clapping Taro’s intended prey on the back, “why don’t you stroll with us back to the village. Your wife is asking after you. Said if you didn’t come home you’d be living in the ditch on a more permanent basis.”
Grumbling, the man went with them, taking the path that skirted the thicket to return to the village.
And with that, the key, and Taro’s bow, were gone.
CHAPTER 34
Taro didn’t know why he lied.
When he returned to the others, Shusaku asked him if he’d found the bow, and he said no—he had searched the ditch from top to bottom and seen no sign of it. Perhaps he was afraid of Shusaku’s anger, if he ever discovered that the bow might be more than an heirloom, or perhaps he only wanted to solve his problems himself, for once.
For whatever reason, he didn’t feel that he could tell Shusaku the bow was in a rice store, hidden by a drunken fool.
“You’re sure you dropped it when the heron took flight?” asked Shusaku.
“No,” Taro replied. “Now that I think about it, it seems possible that I left it in the cave.” He had been walking behind. He trusted that Shusaku might not have seen whether he was carrying the bow or not. At the same time, he listened to the words coming out of his mouth as if it were another speaking. Why lie to the ninja?
Yet this was something Taro knew he had to do alone. His bow, his birthright, his responsibility. He remembered something too from when Heiko and Yukiko were talking to Hiro of their training.
Heiko had mentioned lock-picking.
“Well,” said Shusaku, “if it’s at the cave, then we are safe. No one knows of its location besides the ninja. Let us hope that’s where you left it.” He gave Taro a hard look and turned to carry on up the valley.
Soon the rice paddies gave way to rock, lonely pine trees, and moss. The air was thin and made for hard going. Even Taro and Shusaku, with their vampire blood, began to breathe heavily. They reached a meadow in which grew wild orchids, daisies, and poppies. Shusaku stopped.
“We’ve arrived,” he said. He pointed to a simple wooden hut that lay at the end of
the meadow, abutting the bottom of a sheer-sided gray cliff. Aside from the hut, there was no other visible habitation.
Taro, Hiro, Heiko, and Yukiko looked around, confused. “It’s just a hut,” said Hiro.
The rock wall rose high above them, and seemed to continue round on either side, as if to bar the way to the summit. A thin covering of snow lay on the ground.
Shusaku smiled. He spread his hands, indicating the scene, turning as he did so. They were standing on high ground. Taro realized how high only now that he turned and looked back down the valley. Below them, hills stretched into the distance, as low and pale as sand dunes. The tops of the trees at the tree line were a long way down, and the trees themselves seemed tiny.
In fact, this was the highest point for miles, as far as Taro could see. Only the side where the cliff stood was cut off from view. On the other three sides they looked on the world from above, like crows.
In the midst of this high-land desolation, the hut stood alone, as if some mad hermit had taken it upon himself to live in this isolated place, high above everyone else.
“This is where our journey ends,” said Shusaku. He led them up the meadow to the hut.
“You’re telling us this is the ninja base?” asked Hiro. “I was hoping for something a bit grander.”
Shusaku smiled at him and opened the door.
Taro looked at Hiro. Hiro shrugged and followed Shusaku through the door. Taro went after him, the girls behind. The hut was dark inside, and smelled of damp earth. Taro looked around. The walls were bare. There was no furniture. The only feature in the room was a square rug on the floor. Of Shusaku, there was no sign at all.
“Where’d he go?” asked Hiro, bewildered.
“I don’t know.” Taro lifted a corner of the rug.
Just then Shusaku’s voice came up to them from below the floor. “Under the rug,” he said. “There’s a trapdoor.”