The Golden Naginata

by Jessica Amanda Salmonson

  Ushii held the sword and sheath, but began to shake the way a nervous dog would. He looked as though he might throw it down, but he was greedy to keep it, too, like a dog not trusting strangers yet eager for a bone. “Madoka?” said Ushii, cocking his head. He held the scabbard in one hand and drew the steel forth to inspect it and, seeing it, fell upon his knees and gazed the harder. “My face does not reflect in the polished steel,” said Ushii wonderingly. “But I am not a ghost, and I should have a reflection.”

  “The sword reflects the soul,” said Tomoe, still sounding angry.

  “There is someone reflected here,” said Ushii. “But it is not me. Is it you, Madoka? Do you forgive me for killing you? I have never forgiven myself. I have tormented myself in Hell to make restitution. Why have you never come to visit me before now? Did you love me not so well after all?”

  “Ushii,” said Tomoe, gentle to him for the first time. “You must get your master to let you go free, so that you can return to the face of the land a proper mortal, and throw yourself upon Madoka’s sword. You have no soul left of your own, but his is strong enough to carry you into the next life. Then you can start again.”

  Ushii did not acknowledge Tomoe, but he must have heard. He asked the sword, “Have you waited for this occasion, Madoka? Have you come to take my life as I took yours? Are you strong enough to bear this soulless man into a better life? I have been immortal for only a few years. Perhaps I am not so addicted to it that I cannot throw eternal life away.”

  He stood abruptly, still not acknowledging Tomoe, but looking healthier than when Tomoe first found him. His shoulders were no longer hunched, and his eyes were more clear. He still gazed only at the sword as he spoke. “I will help you take revenge against me, Madoka! Then we can be joined in the next life as a single man!”

  So saying, Ushii Yakushiji turned and fled into the greyness of the Land of Gloom, leaving a track which might later lead Tomoe to the cliff wall.

  Taro had not been around while this was happening. Tomoe looked at the paw-marks on the gritty ground, and followed after the Shinto dog. She heard him barking, though the sound was muffled by the shadows.

  “Taro!” called Tomoe, going quickly. The track led her to him soon enough. He stood with long teeth bared, and hackles raised upon his back, glowering into the shadows at something Tomoe could not see. But there was something there, for whatever it was had a voice, and it said in soft, unctuous tones,

  “Call the komanio off of me.” Komanio meant “hideous dog,” and despite the fact that Taro was a handsome dog, he would not seem so to a creature of Emma’s Hell. Tomoe stroked Taro’s back until the hackles lowered, but she did not tell him to cease his careful watch.

  “Who are you hiding there? Make yourself visible to me!”

  The shadows wavered into a faint form, something like a tree. From behind the tree there stepped a woman dressed in red.

  “Tsuki!” exclaimed Tomoe. “Where are your scars? Are you all right?”

  She came forward with a pleasant smile, her walking staff held casually. “I have been cured of all deformity,” said Tsuki. “We can be friends again.”

  Taro started to leap at the Buddhist nun, but Tomoe still held him by the hairs at the back of his neck. So busy was she restraining Taro that she did not act swiftly enough when the staff of Tsuki Izutsu swept out and struck the hand which held the Golden Naginata. Tomoe shouted and shook her smarting fingers, letting the weapon fall. Now she saw that Tsuki Izutsu was not cured of her scars at all. In fact, the scars that had previously been on only one side of her face were now on both sides, and Tomoe Gozen had never seen a more hideous woman. Tsuki snarled like a beast, and Taro snarled back.

  The weird nun’s staff struck Tomoe in the stomach, knocking her backward, further from where the Golden Naginata lay. Taro was free of Tomoe’s restraint, and he leapt at the nun’s throat, harried her, forced her back before she could deal Tomoe a third blow. Tomoe rolled to her feet, shortsword to hand, and as Taro was knocked away by the monster-Tsuki, Tomoe took his place, and sliced through the weird nun’s neck.

  Although Tomoe felt the resistance of flesh and bone, by the time her sword passed through the other side of the neck, it was already healed, so the head did not topple off. Tsuki’s face twisted into an even more horrible scowl, and she laughed with notes so bass that Tomoe knew it was not the nun’s spirit she was fighting, but the Naruka.

  The Naruka showed its true shape, which was like a warrior carved in wax and partly melted, so distorted that it hardly looked human. What had looked to be a nun’s staff before had become a konsaibo, a hardwood and iron cudgel long as a staff. Tomoe ducked a sweeping blow to her head, but Taro was less lucky, smitten in the ribs so hard that he rolled away, yiping. Tomoe hurried to keep the Naruka from striking the dazed dog again, deflecting the konsaibo’s next blow with the flat of her shortsword. As Taro began to rise from his side, Tomoe rolled with another blow of the konsaibo so that it did not contact hard enough to smart; and as she rolled, she let loose of her shortsword and snatched the Golden Naginata from where it lay upon the flat ground. She came back to her feet in a ready posture.

  “Inazuma-hime will cut you better!” she said, and swung her weapon through the Naruka’s midsection, severing the monster in two. Strange to say, the monster did not die, for nothing born of Hell is truly living in the first place. Its legs ran one direction; its torso ran another on its hands. The legs and butt rushed Taro, stamping madly. The arms carried the torso toward Tomoe, and though the half-Naruka could no longer swing an iron rod, the sharp teeth snapped fiercely.

  Taro grabbed the buttocks of his half of the demon, holding it in snarling jaws, while Tomoe cut the head from the other part’s shoulders. Still the parts would not die or give up, so Tomoe used her naginata like a shovel and made a small hole in the ground and dropped the head in there, covering it over with grit. The other pieces could no longer see what they were supposed to do and could not fight effectively. As Tomoe stomped the ground flat where she had buried the head, the torso ran off into the shadows, and the two legs ran another way, and it is possible that neither part of the body ever again met up with its other half.

  Tomoe reclaimed her shortsword and placed it in her sheath. Taro shook his body as though he were wet all over. Both of them were bruised by the encounter, but neither one complained. As they backed away from the site of the conflict, Tomoe staggered and Taro yelped, for the floor of a house had appeared beneath their feet so suddenly they almost lost their balance. The floor was covered with fine tatami mats from one side to the other.

  A moment later there was a wall. On the wall hung a tall, narrow painting depicting the Fox Goddess, watching a billowing fire. In front of the wall there appeared a lacquered table on which sat a big vase. Another wall appeared, with rice-paper doors; and then there were the other walls as well, with entries to other rooms. Tomoe blinked her eyes in disbelief, and in that blink, there appeared futon bedding rolled out upon the floor. A dead old man and dead old woman were partially wrapped in this bedding, speared while making love.

  Tomoe looked into another room and saw the old couple’s grandchildren had been slain most brutally. She looked into the next room, expecting to see Okio and his dead wife as well, but somehow she had been fooled into returning to the first room, where the old couple sat up in a polite position and their futon was rolled up and put out of sight. Tomoe looked quickly into the other room once more, but the children were not there. Suddenly, they too sat politely, one to either side of their grandmother and grandfather.

  Sitting higher, on a raised part of the floor near the tall, narrow painting, was the swordsmith and his wife, dressed like royalty, their eyebrows shaved off and painted high up on their foreheads so that they looked startled, their teeth dyed black, their hair arranged perfectly. Okio wore his bent swordsmith’s hat, but otherwise might have been the Mikado himself, flanked by the august family, so regal did they appear. Seeing that they loo
ked perfect as dolls set out on Girls’ Festival Day, Tomoe remarked, “You have not done so badly here,” feeling strange to be talking to a family of ghosts. They did not reply, as dolls would not. Now she suddenly noticed that none of them were as pristine in appearance as she had first imagined. For they all had big wounds on their bodies, and their nice clothes were drenched in crimson. “How unfortunate!” she exclaimed stupidly, but still none of them acknowledged her.

  Taro watched from beside Tomoe, turning his head one way and then another, as though he, too, were confounded.

  Tomoe discovered she was standing on a wet tatami, and the wetness was the fault of blood. Disgusted with her clumsiness, she lifted up one foot, but now the blood was gone. Okio’s family had vanished also, while she was looking at her feet. There was only Okio left, and he was noticing Tomoe for the first time. He said, “You have defeated the Naruka who was to keep you from finding me. Why do you pursue me even to the Land of Gloom? I have no more control on you, now that you have retired my sword, and I am daily harried by the sutras of the priests with whom you left the sword I’ve haunted. Why not leave me be, since you are already free of my influence?”

  “I am sorry if I annoy you,” said Tomoe, who sat herself upon her knees in a formal posture. Taro lay upon his belly. Both of them looked most beseeching. She said, “My husband Kiso Yoshinake has become an unreasonable man because of you. He even threatens the Mikado. I saw no way but to come and beg you to set him free, to forgive his rash behavior in things past. There is no reason for you to be so cruel and to haunt his sword relentlessly.”

  “Yoshinake rushes headlong to his fate with open eyes,” said the hungry ghost of Okio. “He does this cunningly and with willingness.”

  “You refuse my request?” asked Tomoe, looking sad.

  “What can I refuse? I might be willing to forgive you for your part in the slaying of my chosen avengers, for you must obey a master and are not responsible. But there is no reason to say I forgive even you, because you have retired my sword in any case and, being beyond my reach, it no longer matters. Yoshinake can retire his sword of Okio as easily as you have done. My forgiveness is unnecessary.”

  “He refuses to put the sword aside,” said Tomoe. “You won’t let him give it up. If it were otherwise, I would not risk so much coming into the Hollow Land.”

  Okio reflected on this a few moments, then said, “I am impressed with your sincerity. But I, too, am resolved. I will think steadily about forgiving you. But, if Yoshinake wants like forgiveness, he must say it to his sword. He must make his feelings known to me. I think that I am being reasonable.”

  “It would be reasonable,” said Tomoe, “if you had not already made him so stubborn.”

  “You blame his stubbornness on me? So. What else can I tell you? That your trip was wasted? As token of my concern, I will give advice regarding escape from the Hollow Land, but I can promise nothing regarding Yoshinake’s fate. Have you any plan for leaving Emma’s Hell? I do not think the yamahoshi have any intention of helping you.”

  “I have not given it much thought,” said Tomoe. “When Makine Hei said he would not let me out again, I still could not waver. Going into Hell was the same as going into Battle. A samurai never asks how she will come out again. Those whose sincerity is the greatest, who strive the most going in, they are the ones left standing when the battle is done. Because I think like this, I have not worried about how I will get out, but rely on the sincerity of myself and the Shinto dog.”

  “Perhaps a little worry would not hurt you,” said Okio. “There is a Gate to Naipon just as there is a Gate to Hell, and it was that gate used by Ushii Yakushiji when running errands for Emma outside the Hollow Land. None but Emma can let you through. Not everyone can meet him. But I will be glad to write a letter of introduction if you desire.”

  “I have sworn that I will spit at his feet,” said Tomoe. “I will not ask favors of one who tortures children.”

  “If it were your resolve to serve nothing which tortures children,” said Okio, “then life itself you would refuse to serve. I don’t know if there is any other way from here, except through homage to King Emma. But I may have some good advice for you anyway. On your way upward, you will find obstacles difficult to surmount. It is important that you win almost every battle, for if you lose, you will die in the Hollow Land and never see your husband in life. But there is one battle you must lose. Which it is, I cannot say. Only, I will tell you this: Tsuki Izutsu and the red oni were bound spiritually so that they would be strong enough to win their way out of the Hollow Land. They were strong indeed, and won every fight without exception. In fact, they were too eager, and did not see that sometimes it is important to be more supple. As a result, the Naruka was able to invade their combined spirit, and both were driven mad. You, too, will be made insane by the things you have witnessed in the Hollow Land, and by the things you have failed to see around you … unless you know the one time you must fail. Otherwise, you may find yourself in need of a champion, someone bold enough to descend into Hell and destroy your Naruka and your madness.”

  Tomoe Gozen bowed before Okio and said, “I am grateful for your advice.” When she looked up, Okio was no longer there, but in his place was a mound of broken swords, their handles missing.

  Then the walls, painting, table, vase, doors, tatami, and floor faded from around her and she and Taro were left sitting on the gritty ground. Taro rolled his eyes and licked Tomoe’s hand. Tomoe said, “Well, Taro, did I succeed in any of my tasks? If we cannot escape this place, how will we know if Koshi returned to his mother, or Ushii regained his soul? Unless we are sincere enough to find the way out, it will not be possible to see if Tsuki Izutsu is truly free of the Naruka and, if so, if she had the strength to free herself from Makine Hei’s influence and the red oni. As for Lord Kiso, I think Okio was inclined to pity, don’t you? We must return to know for sure!”

  Tomoe Gozen hurried along the ground, following the track left by Ushii Yakushiji, searching for the face of the cliff which could not be seen through the atmosphere of the Land of Gloom. Taro was ahead of her, barking, seeming to want her to hurry. He was a white specter barely within range of her vision, and she ran to keep him in sight. There was a ghostly wind erasing the footsteps ahead and behind, smoothing out the gritty ground. Taro barked more, and the sound of him echoed faintly as from far away. Although there was no overt danger to detect, this was the first time on her journey that Tomoe fretted about what might lurk unseen among the shadows. Only when she realized the source of the weird echoes did she relax somewhat: the dog’s barking returned from the face of the very cliff they sought! They found their way to the zigzagging upward path. Still, Taro insisted they go quickly; but the climb was difficult even at a slow pace. She must cling to the wall at times, and be sure not to drop Inazuma-hime. It was a tiring occupation. “Are you part goat, Taro?” she asked, breathing heavily, accepting his encouragement as he led on.

  The mists of the waterfall coiled like serpents and mingled with the shadows of the land below. These mists and shadows welled upward, clinging to the clothing and hair of Tomoe Gozen. The Land of Gloom did not like to let her go. But mist and shadow have no strength, and she continued upward, feeling only a little sapped of energy.

  When she reached the top, she felt some easement of spiritual attack, and realized after-the-fact how dearly the Land of Gloom had tried to hold her back. “We won the first battle,” she said to Taro. “And I hardly knew we fought.”

  She had thought it would be the simplest task to trace their way back through the Land of Roots. But the upper country was as changeable as the country far below. The river seemed to flow from the opposite angle it had gone before, and Tomoe was not certain if she should follow the river pretending it had not moved, or try instead to go at the angle it had flowed previously.

  “You must lead us, Taro,” she said, but even he hung his head and whined an apology. Above, far over the Land of Gloom they had lef
t behind, she saw the clouds of battling Asura, their forms unstable, cutting each other relentlessly, although none of their severed parts ever fell completely from the sky. A loose arm floated off horizontally, elongating itself as it went, then growing a new body. How long Tomoe watched them, she did not know. It was exactly like watching clouds, the way they parted, grew, combined. As she stood gazing, her mouth hung open. She was fascinated by the Asura! Her breathing became more difficult as she gasped through her open mouth, her eyes fixed upward, eager to join the fray. She began to think: How gorgeous the jade and gold of the Vault of Heaven! How rich I shall be if I can only get up there and chip away some pieces! Her right hand reached upward longingly, for the fight and for the plunder, and she saw that her upraised hand was transparent like a ghost’s.

  There had been some annoying sound which she ignored for a long while, but now she realized it was her companion barking and jumping against her, trying to get her attention. Slowly she tipped her face down until she could not see the beguiling Asura or the Vault of so-called Heaven, and her hand became solid once again. She could breathe normally again, and Taro became less frantic. She looked at the Shinto dog and said, “Did I almost become a ghost, Taro? Have I won another battle? Come! We must take a chance and follow the river as though it had not moved. If we are sincere in our quest, we will find the way. Sincerity alone matters!”

  They went along the banks of the poisonous river, the pink back of Jishin-uwo shining beneath the rushing waters. They came to the river’s fork and followed the red-tinged tributary to the lake of blood. “We must be on the right trail,” said Tomoe, but Taro did not look convinced. They went as silently as possible, and as swiftly, around the lake’s circumference, careful not to rouse the blood-warriors beneath the waves. Before they had gotten all the way around, Tomoe spied a colorful object smashed upon the ground, surrounded by pools of crimson. She reached to pick up the crushed ball, but her touch destroyed it. It vanished in a puff of vapor.