The Straw Doll Cries at Midnight
A Tiger Lily Novel
2016
UUID# 013FDB04-1C6C-4C0A-BEF7-DD8866517A10
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Copyright © 2016 by K. Bird Lincoln
Cover art and design by Najla Qamber Designs
(najlaqamberdesigns.blogspot.com)
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any methods, photocopying, electronic or otherwise except as permitted by notation in the volume or under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States copyright Act, without prior permission of the author.
This is the second book in the Tiger Lily series. The character Tiger Lily is based on characters from three short stories previously published online:
“Another Tiger Woman”
SpaceWays Weekly (Reader’s Choice Award for March, 2000)
“Wilting Lily and the Yurei”
Foxfire Magazine January, 2001
“Exposure at Dejima”
Healing Waves Anthology September, 2011
Editing and formatting by:
E-QUALITY PRESS
The name E-QUALITY PRESS and the logo consisting of the letters “EQP” over an open book with power cord are registered trademarks of E-QUALITY PRESS.
http://EQPbooks.com/
PRODUCED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Acknowledgments and Note
* * *
ALTHOUGH THE TIGER LILY stories are based on a period in Japanese history where the Ashikaga Shoguns ruled, I do not claim strict adherence to historical accuracy. I’ve shanghaied medieval Japan as my framework, but changed the political and religious background for my own purposes. Mainly, I’ve made the indigenous Shinto religion outlawed when in reality, there was coexistence between Buddhism and Shinto. All mistakes, inaccuracies and flights of fancy are my own and should not be blamed on any source or, actually, be worried about at all. I was a Japanese Studies Major at Earlham College a long, long time ago. I have a bunch of books sitting around about Japanese History and the Arts. I owe a lot to late or retired professors such as Jackson Bailey and Chuck Yates.
I owe some thanks to a bunch of people who inspired me to continue Tiger Lily’s story and hung in with me through my long writing process: Tina Connolly, who is always a cheerleader; my husband and daughters, who put up with me staring at a screen for far too long; friends (Heather Kovach, Laura Treadway, Sarah Lichty), whose willingness to read my stuff despite my reluctance to talk about writing, was important support in my moments of self-doubt; and Rochester MN writers and Rochester Fantastical Women, for giving me a place to start being an “active” writer again.
CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Afterword
Miscellanea
Chapter One
* * *
“THE NIGHTINGALE’S SONG betrays the night-blooming lily,” said a husky voice. I froze in the dark passage. Under my feet, polished cryptomeria board gave a soft, high sigh. A hand reached out from the shadows and grasped my wrist—long, slender fingers with the calloused strength of a horseman.
My lordling, second child of the great Daimyo of the Northern Han, emerged from the darkness. As part of the Ashikaga retinue come down from the Northern hinterlands, I slept in the room down the hall with the other girls hired to be handmaidens here in the capital. To reach the outside, I had to pass my Lord Ashikaga’s room. I’d been on tiptoes, arms pressed close to my sides to quiet the swish of the long, cumbersome robe I was forced to wear. I had imagined I could escape unnoticed.
Stupid floor. The Daimyo had built this Residence in the fashion of the Emperor’s palace, complete with specially constructed flooring designed to sing whenever a person walked upon it.
“My lord,” I said, bowing low, despite the hour and the lack of watching eyes.
Laughter—a mocking, sharp-edged sound in the twilight. “For days you have pleaded exhaustion. Yet I find you outside your bedroll in the dead of night.” The grip on my wrist dragged me across the polished wood. Shadows hid my lordling’s eyes, but the breath that prickled my cheek was over-sweet with rice wine. “A midnight tryst, perhaps?”
I muffled a snort. No chance anyone in the entire city of Kyo no Miyako would believe that. Not a girl born in the Tiger year, drab as a crow in the midst of petite, greenfinch handmaidens. Coarse spinsters did not have romantic meetings in the moonlight. Ashikaga teased only to drive home the real reason I, the mere daughter of the Daimyo’s cook, was here in the Ashikaga Palace at all. I knew a secret—my lordling’s secret. As if I needed a reminder of who Ashikaga Yoshinori was. As if my thoughts didn’t dwell on the lordling too great a portion of my waking hours already.
I gave a little sigh.
“Lily,” said the lordling. Fingers bit painfully into the tender skin of my wrist. “What are you doing?”
How to answer? The truth would only cause anger. The kami were not a welcome subject. My lordling had readily used me and my forbidden songs not long ago against the Pretender Emperor’s general, Norinaga, and his fox magic. Now the Pretender was . . . dead. I brushed away the memory of the black, lacquered box in my lordling’s hands and the blood on his sword.
Best keep the Jindo part of me quiet this night. Ashikaga looked on edge.
There was no way to stop hearing the ancient Jindo spirit-kami, nor avoid the cold-prickling otherness that filled me when I sang my mother’s forbidden songs. Since I had come to the Great House’s notice and climbed Hell Mountain with Ashikaga, my life had changed utterly. Before I was a solitary person, practicing my heresy alone in the woods. Not here in Kyo no Miyako. There was no time, no daylight songs. Now I spent all my hours in Ashikaga’s service, more alone than before, pretending I listened to the other handmaiden’s conversations instead of to grumbling cherry trees.
But the lordling didn’t understand. Ashikaga thought of Jindo and the kami like a silk robe—a garment to put on or take off. If only I could—it would make things so much easier, so much less dangerous for my family back home. Maybe I’d finally even get a whole night’s sleep.
The kami of the ancient cherry trees lining this eastern wing of the Ashikaga House’s Kyoto residence whispered and grumbled night and day. But mostly during the dark hour of the ox.
My lordling grew impatient in the silence, as stubborn a Tiger Year as I.
“Lily-of-the-Valley,�
�� said that fierce-delicate voice. No longer the mocking lord. The soft caress of my true name undid me. A tingling heat spread from the hand still gripping my wrist. Tingling up my arm and down into my middle. My insides tightened, condensing into a single thread of awareness.
Ashikaga Yoshinori, second child of the powerful Ashikaga Daimyo, Lord of the North. My lordling.
Feeling surged up to meet the wanting in his voice. Kami whispers forgotten, I raised the hand imprisoned by those elegant fingers and searched in the shadows until I cupped a smooth cheek.
One by one, the imprisoning fingers dropped away. Ashikaga turned into my palm, lightly pressing lips to the tips of my fingers. Feeling surged again. Breath caught impossibly somewhere in hollowed-out insides. If Ashikaga knew the power these touches had on me—as if I were one of those wooden statues I’d seen in the Kyoto temples, all stiff and lifeless, until Ashikaga touched me for the first time.
My lordling bit down, hard, on my medicine finger.
“Oh.” I jerked away. Mocking laughter again. Punishment for something. What had I done this time?
“Word that my handmaiden spends moonlit nights under the cherry trees, pining, spreads through the residence.”
My hand balled into a fist. I pushed against my thighs to push down the sudden swell of panic. “Not pining, my lord.”
“No, I didn’t think so.” Ashikaga gripped my elbows, pulling us both to a standing position pressed against the wooden wall. “But I also didn’t think you would risk singing forbidden songs in the middle of the Emperor’s capitol.”
Back to the bitter ground of our old argument. Vanquishing Norinaga’s fox soldiers on Hell Mountain made Ashikaga think we no longer had need of the kami—nor my connection to their power. As if I could so easily cast aside part of my heart. Nobles always had a hard time comprehending why their every wish wasn’t immediately fulfilled. Despite the secret that set my lordling apart in other ways, Ashikaga had the same inability to think outside immediate desire.
“I don’t sing. I listen.”
Ashikaga breathed exasperation through closed teeth.
“Every night since we arrived at your Lord Father’s residence, the kami of the cherry trees has . . .” I searched for the right word. The kami’s discontent didn’t take word shapes like my own, familiar Whispering Brook back home. It wasn’t a complaint, exactly, more like a vague uneasiness. The feeling it caused put me in mind of the huge mouth organs I’d heard when we were first presented at the Emperor’s courtyard. A row of Gagaku court musicians in metallic-gold embroidered silk and tall hats of black linen had lined the inner courtyard. The shrill sound their breath made over the reeds had vibrated numbness from my teeth down to the tips of my fingers.
“Grumpy cherry trees draw you from your bedroll?” breathed my lordling.
Unspoken in the tightness of that voice were the words my prickly lordling didn’t say. Instead of coming to me.
Inside my churning thoughts the words to appease Ashikaga were nowhere to be found. Not why I avoided my lordling now, or why I’d tried to stay behind in Ashikaga Village when my lordling first asked me to accompany the family here.
A desire to punish myself? Or worse, a desire to punish Ashikaga for killing the Pretender Emperor?
Or was it what my lordling was, and the added danger of discovery here in the capital away from the Great House and all who kept the secret out of love for Ashikaga?
“I didn’t mean to—” I started to say. Ashikaga pulled my head down to a shoulder, muffling my words.
“Don’t,” came the soft command. “I forget how deadly earnest you can be, Lily. But you are here, now, and so am I.” Lips found the curve of my neck through the tangle of my hair. Warmth murmured on my skin. “Do I have your attention now?”
Yes. Oh, yes.
Those long-fingered hands, so elegant, but unyielding in their strength, smoothed the linen of my robe down my arms. Ashikaga untangled my clenched fists and clasped our hands palm to palm tight enough to stop the flow of blood.
“You risk both our secrets, Lily,” my lordling said. “For once, can you let it be? For me?”
I gritted my teeth. I could do this thing for Ashikaga. Enduring the grumbling cherry tree kami would only be as difficult as sleeping through Little Brother’s snores and kicks at home. It wasn’t as if this were my beloved Whispering Brook; there was no childhood bond between me and the cherry tree. I could ignore the grumbling; I just didn’t want to ignore the kami. It would be denying my own heart, the part of me that was my mother’s daughter. Dawn’s daughter.
I remembered Hell Mountain, and how the Pretender Emperor in his palace there had spoken to me of how few people listened for the kami anymore. He had spoken of us running away together, to create a place where man and kami sang together in harmony.
And my lordling had cut off the Pretender’s head and put it in a black lacquered box as a present to Emperor Chokei.
Something bitter churned in my belly.
Ashikaga made an impatient sound, low in the throat. I freed myself and used my heart-finger to draw the triple paulownia-leaf crest, slowly, on the back of the hand that imprisoned my own. So few kami voices. Here in Kyoto, I could only hear the cherry trees, as if the weight of humanity packed together drowned out Jindo spirits. My mother’s religion held my loyalty, but surely my lordling couldn’t doubt where I had given my heart? Tension drained from Ashikaga’s shoulders as the shape of the crest I drew sank in.
“I will not draw dangerous attention to you, my lord.”
Ashikaga jerked me against a silk-covered chest. “Shh.”
“I’m—” My lordling’s hand clapped over my mouth. A handful of heartbeats passed as we both stood, frozen. Down the corridor from the direction of the main wing came a sighing moan.
The sound died away, wisps of ragged breath unraveling into a pulsing silence. A bird’s song came next, a trill that felt like a bruise on already-tender skin.
No, not a bird, the Nightingale floor.
My lordling slid open the sectioned wood-and-paper shoji door, pushed me inside, and then carefully shut it. The oiled wood silent as it glided in polished grooves. Ashikaga tugged me away from the mulberry paper panels, glowing softly in borrowed moonlight, and into a room lit only by the moon’s rays leaking through the window.
The Nightingale sang nearer to Ashikaga’s room. But the sound was hushed, as if a practiced foot tread the boards, knowing exactly where to step to provoke the least noise. My lordling put a finger to my mouth—a caution. As if I needed the reminder to stay silent. The panicked tempo of my heart made my throat constrict. I couldn’t have made a sound if I wanted to. Something wasn’t right here. That moan had sent chill-prickles skittering down my back.
Whoever walked the corridors of the Ashikaga palace at this illicit hour was headed away from the main entrance. Down the corridor were only the rooms of the other handmaidens and the attached bathhouse. What would anyone want down there at this time of night?
The footsteps paused outside our shoji. A gasp, and then a few lines of song hummed in a high, breathy tone. A small, oval shadow appeared on the thick paper of the middle panel.
The night-walker pressed an open palm to the mulberry paper. Ashikaga’s grip about me loosened. We stared at the small shadow, heads at a curious tilt.
The moan sounded again. The hand was snatched away, and the Nightingale sang louder as the night walker moved at an unguarded pace down the hallway. Ashikaga tensed as if to stand, to follow.
Chill-prickles skittered again.
This time, it was I pulling Ashikaga back. The night-walker went towards the moan, towards danger. Not the kind of danger my lordling could fight with a sword or fists.
Pressure constricted my ches
t. But it wasn’t the familiar chill otherness of the kami. This was a heat, a smothering like the humid air of the bathhouse. Sweat beaded under my arms.
Somewhere outside, I heard soft sobbing.
Wrongness. Like tiny bones catching in my throat when I swallowed Father’s sea bream stew.
“I need to see,” ordered Ashikaga, tugging a sleeve from my grip.
I shook my head violently. The night-walker had been human, only a threat to Ashikaga’s dignity if our relationship were discovered. But that moan—it was something else.
Otherworldly, like the kami, but more . . . hostile. I knew with a solid surety that if my lordling ventured out into the corridor now, something terrible waited.
As if the thought of kami and danger together had jolted the cherry trees awake, the kami’s teeth-grating grumble joined the still-sighing moan. The paper panels glowed brighter, as if the moon’s face shown directly upon them. Only, instead of rice-white, the light tinged pink, and then a fierier blush. The moaning grew louder as Ashikaga jerked away from me.
Heat stifled my breath. I moaned, gasping for breath.
Then, tiny ice crystals coalesced inside me, cutting through the moaning wrongness with points of sharp, chill pain.
As if a kami were trying to enter me, as if Whispering Brook was here, instead of leagues away in her Northern forest. The stifling heat dissipated.
I opened my mouth to warn my lordling as one hand brushed the tassels of the round, metal door-pull. Instead, a song came unbidden through my lips.
It is for your sake,
That I walk, careless, the fields in spring. . . .
Ashikaga whirled on me, backlit by that eerie light, now burning the mulberry paper red with anger. An aching, yearning, desire seared through my middle, melting the ice-cold clarity of the kami’s power. My song faltered.
“Lily!” Ashikaga covered my mouth again. “Fox magic?”
The Straw Doll Cries at Midnight (A Tiger Lily Novel Book 2) Page 1