The Straw Doll Cries at Midnight (A Tiger Lily Novel Book 2)

by K. Bird Lincoln

“Oi!” said Ashikaga, giving the lacquered table a little shake. “Your court masquerade won’t work on me. The man who won the Hyaku-i contest by shooting arrows across the thirty-three ken length verandah of Sanjusangen-do past doesn’t fall asleep in the afternoon like a soused geezer.”

  Yoshikazu yawned. “Be careful,” he slurred in a drowsy voice. “If you stir up banked coals, you’re likely to get burned.” If Lord Yoshikazu’s sudden drowsiness was an act, he was a good actor. The anger drained away as quickly as it had come. “Up North you had some protection,” he mumbled, closing his eyes. “All eyes will be on you here.” He laid his head sideways on crossed arms.

  Ashikaga stared at Yoshikazu, sword hand clenching and unclenching.

  Uesugi-san caught my eye. He closed his eyes and ever-so-slightly shook his head. Warning me to remain silent? As if I would dare intrude. Villagers still spoke of Lord Yoshikazu’s stunts. Hanging sideways off his horse to shoot apples from the top of trees with a longbow. Conquering more handmaidens’ hearts by age thirteen than a royal Prince. How could this be the same man? My lordling idolized this man. Countless times I’d heard Yoshikazu invoked whenever Ashikaga was caught in some stupid stunt.

  Ashikaga rested back on folded legs. As if at a tea ceremony, my lordling slowly turned the tea cup three times to the right and sipped delicately, savoring the fragrant bitterness. Using the form, the practiced movements to keep away from the boiling point of a Tiger temper. The white spots high on those flushed cheeks did not fade. The air still crackled between the two Ashikagas as in the instant before a brazier caught fire.

  “What do you know of Zeami Motokiyo?” Ashikaga said.

  Lord Yoshikazu’s eyelids fluttered open for an instant. “His Takasago brought even the Emperor to the theater. He is all the rage among the bakufu.”

  “Brother, I am here, now, not hiding anymore in the North. Don’t think this muddle-headed façade will protect me. I need answers, not false paths.”

  Sleepily, Lord Yoshizaku fumbled for the other teacup. He raised his head to slurp noisily from the translucent rim—a mockery of my lordling’s refinement. “Not a façade,” he mumbled. “I am a drunken lout—an unrefined bozo from the hicks. Couldn’t survive court if I were anything else, could I?”

  Ashikaga gripped Yoshikazu by the ears and pulled him up. “Why did Zeami Motokiyo have a box from Mother wrapped in an Ashikaga furoshiki?”

  Yoshikazu growled and shook off my lordling’s grip. “Zeami Motokiyo approached you? Interesting.” No one defied Ashikaga this way. Even Uesugi-san tensed, ready to intervene. “Have you seen his Takasago?”

  The feelings writhing under my lordling’s blank expression threatened to burst forth like maggots from a tainted rice bale. “I’ve not had the pleasure.”

  That rigid back. Those eyes bright with anger. My heart ached for it. The weight of unsaid secrets choked the air, almost like the heavy buzzing of the kami. Unbidden, Jindo words formed on my tongue. I held in the song.

  Like coals banked in the brazier, but still alive with heat, I have hidden my heart in melancholy.

  Now the ash has burned away. . . .

  My whole body vibrated. As I did for the kami—taking in their essence and channeling it into power through Jindo song—I yearned to do for Ashikaga’s anger and pulsing hurt. But sing Jindo here, in the heart of Buddha’s temple? No kami would answer. I pinched a fold of inner cheek between my back teeth. Pain focused me.

  Lord Yoshikazu dropped his heavy arm over Ashikaga’s flat-spread palm. “Listen, then, to the story.”

  Ashikaga burst up, overturning the small table. Liquid dripped down Lord Yoshikazu’s collar and Uesugi-san’s hakama. A teacup rolled over and over across the tatami until a wall tippled it upright. “Stories? That’s all you offer? I’ll not waste time when Father awaits us.”

  Uesugi-san scooted himself between Ashikaga and Lord Yoshikazu.

  “Your man is worried you will do me some violence,” said Yoshikazu. He stood, lazily, but with a grace that belied his paunch and slit-eyed drowsiness. Prickles laid a cold trail up my arms. A slight change in stance, weight resting on his back leg, and arms curled lightly at his side, transformed him into something other than the drunken lout he’d been an instant before. Suddenly the village tales about this man didn’t seem unbelievable. I’d seen Ashikaga practice those strange fighting moves, swordless, with Uesugi-san and his guard. Would they begin striking each other with something other than words now?

  “We are in Ryoan-ji temple,” said Uesugi-san. Ashikaga turned that hot glare on Uesugi-san, but he did not flinch. “Please, my lords, be seated.”

  “No,” said Lord Yoshikazu. “We are better standing. Listen, now, Little Brother. Tame that Tiger temper long enough to use that pretty little head. Do you think your little bird huddling in the corner is the only one overhearing our conversation today?”

  Ashikaga grunted, slicing me a quick look. Both lords crossed arms, settling weight off the balls of their feet. A quick dip of my lordling’s chin—and the sparks extinguished.

  “Zeami Motokiyo wrote Takasago about the spirits of ancient pines—a male in Takasago Bay and a female in Kyo no Miyako. The two spirits meet a boy on the Northern road and tell him of their long marriage and fidelity despite their lives spent apart.”

  “He wrote of . . . of Father and Mother?”

  “Of course not,” said Lord Yoshikazu. “That would be an unbearable insult. The Ashikaga Daimyo a character in a Sarugaku play? But it makes a good story, doesn’t it? Two spirits long-separated, but still joined together by love?” Lord Yoshikazu changed his tone to theatrical sing-song. “Distance and difference do not fray attachment if hearts are true.”

  “Zeami Motokiyo strikes me as a man with too much passion,” said my lordling slowly.

  “Most definitely,” said Lord Yoshikazu. “But you would be foolish to discount him. An earthy body can house a true heart.”

  The partition painted with cryptomeria and crows on the far side of the room slid open with a mumbled apology. A priest in a black robe knelt outside the partition, head bowed. “Lord Ashikaga awaits you,” he said. “If you please.”

  The two Ashikagas turned to give an acknowledging bow. Now I saw the resemblance in their mirrored grace, the same bland expression fitting over their faces—the perfectly calm faces of united warriors.

  I shifted over my knees, but Uesugi-san put out a spread palm on the tatami, telling me to stay put. Ashikaga and Lord Yoshikazu left the room. The priest knit his bushy brow and pursed his thin lips at the sight of me, but slid the fusuma shut.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” said Uesugi-san.

  Chapter Four

  * * *

  “GENERAL NORINAGA IS HERE,” I said in a rush. “He came with Lord Yoshikazu.”

  “What? Impossible.”

  “Lord Yoshinori didn’t believe me, either, but he shouldn’t go unprotected and unwary with Norinaga loose.”

  Uesugi-san snorted. “All those late nights in the west wing are making you see visions.” He reached over to set the lacquered table to rights.

  My cheeks burned. Of course Great House servants whispered about who slept where at night, even more so here in Kyoto. Back home, Auntie Jay’s midwife tales spared no details about girls and boys and touching. But those romantic things, those body-to-body things had always been talk very distant from me. In Ashikaga Village, I’d been able to slip away into the forest to meet my lordling and barely anyone knew. Here in Kyoto there was no place safe from other eyes. I was still getting used to it.

  Uesugi-san and Ashikaga had argued over where I slept at night. Dangerous to call attention to me, but a lord with no midnight visits from handmaidens was remarkable here in the capital.

 
Uesugi-san had won that argument—sacrificing my anonymity for the shield I provided against suspicion. Now he thought to make me blush. And why should I blush? What was between Ashikaga and me was ours, tangled as it was. The Boarish oaf in front of me was a fool to ignore my warnings. Two could play that game. I’d been watching Beautiful. She wielded teasing as well as Ashikaga, a sword. “And your lamp? Haven’t I seen it burning late as well? The scratch of ink on paper reaches even to the handmaiden’s quarters.”

  Uesugi-san labored mightily over his regular letters to the only remaining Ashikaga back home. Handmaidens whispered that flirting with Uesugi-san was like planting seedlings in sand. He only bloomed for Lady Hisako.

  “Kyoto’s making you cheeky,” he said. The delicate cup in his scarred hand made a quiet tink as he placed it on the table. “Tiger Lily blooms in the capital?”

  My village nickname. Uesugi-san always addressed me by the most condescending form of ‘you’ he could use. After Hell Mountain he’d treated me with less suspicion, but he would never rest easy with me knowing Ashikaga’s secret.

  “Even before all this,” I said, staring at the cup, “it was this humble peasant who discovered the fox soldiers in the forest.”

  The second cup came down on the table with rattling force. I’d pricked too deep. “There’s enough real danger here without your seeing ghosts at every rustle in the night. General Norinaga ran down Hell Mountain with his tale between his legs. He’ll not dare show his face in the heart of Emperor Chokei’s capitol.”

  “That’s exactly the place a sly fox would hide. Right under your nose!”

  Uesugi-san lunge-walked over. He leaned forward, his eyes boring into me, not allowing me to drop my gaze, as if he could force the truth to the surface of my skin like the earlier blush. “Are you sure?”

  The noble on the stairs had touched me and there’d been that trickle of unmistakable heat. Norinaga. Power, earthier and more sweltering than Whispering Brook’s cool flow, wasn’t anything I’d mistake. “It was him. He didn’t wear the same face. His robe had a crest. A big circle with eight circles surrounding it.”

  “The nine-planet crest,” muttered Uesugi-san. “Bloody Hosokawas. Where did you see him?”

  “Outside. I came with Little Turtle and Beautiful through the main entrance.”

  Little Turtle. Beautiful. I’d forgotten them. Did they worry for me? My continued absence after Uesugi-san’s appearance must confirm Beautiful’s suspicion I was here for an assignation. If they weren’t on their way back home by now, they’d be in for a scolding from the Chamberlain. As I would be.

  The taut pressure of Uesugi-san’s fierce stare siphoned straight into my belly, sitting there like overcooked millet. The Chamberlain was the least of my worries if Norinaga was here.

  Norinaga. And the three most important members of the Ashikaga clan were alone together, swordless in the next room. My bottom slid off my ankles onto the tatami. I lurched to a stand, cramped legs protesting. Uesugi-san followed me back out to the main corridor.

  “Whether its Norinaga or Hosokawa, I should go to him,” said Uesugi-san. “You go walk the grounds, see if that noble lurks outside.”

  “It is Norinaga,” I said.

  “If you find him, can you do Jindo magic? Make him turn into a fox?”

  Uesugi-san believed me. Breath rushed back in. “On the grounds of Ryoan-ji temple you want me to sing a forbidden song?”

  Uesugi-san gripped my wrist, fingers punishing and tight over my pulse. “Your worth, Tiger Lily, only outweighs your danger so long as the promise you gave me on Hell Mountain holds true.”

  After I’d betrayed the only other man I’d met who could sing the kami into himself, and Ashikaga had cut off his head on top of Hell Mountain, Uesugi-san had helped me down the long, winding stone stairs. He’d shielded me from soldiers who likened me to one of Norinaga’s terrifying fox soldiers. Kindness, I’d thought. But I was mistaken. Uesugi-san wasn’t kind.

  No longer was I the naïve, exhausted girl leaning on Uesugi-san’s arm, eager to fool herself there was any kind of grudging acceptance to be found in this warrior. Uesugi-san meant to scare. He didn’t believe, then, that I’d climbed Hell Mountain to confront Norinaga to save Ashikaga. Uesugi-san still thought he had to force me to protect my lordling. Acid crept up the back of my throat. As if I’d need forcing. As if this man was my judge.

  I stepped inside his grip. “Asama-yama found me worthy to hold all the fiery power of Hell Mountain. I do not require your permission to protect Lord Ashikaga.”

  Uesugi-san flung my wrist away from him with stinging force. “But you require Lord Yoshinori’s approval, or Abbot Ennin wouldn’t have to turn a blind eye. His courtyard is full of rocks just the right size and weight to crush the sin out of heretics.”

  Asama-yama’s name on my tongue summoned an echo of that kami’s molten anger. The spirit indwelling me had tried to bring the mountain down on Ashikaga’s men. Similar, corroding heat pooled in my belly. Threatening me again? I knew what would make him back off. “Then that makes two of us who live and die by our love for Ashikaga-sama.”

  Uesugi-san grunted as if I’d kicked him between the legs. We stood there, too close, breathing heavily, both of our cheeks flaming. I’d skimmed close to the truth of his love for Ashikaga. Bristling now, like the Boar of his birth year, Uesugi-san clenched his jaw tight. If I had been any other handmaiden but the companion of his Lord, he would have flattened me against the tatami.

  With a roar of frustration he left, the plain wooden boards groaning under his angry footfalls. For a moment, I stood, outwardly a demure handmaiden with bowed head, inwardly seething with worry and frustration.

  I flew back through the main waiting room and out the door to where my geta waited, scuffed and frayed and unbearably common next to the lacquered wood of the others. The hot feelings drained away like pulling the plug on a casket of sake.

  Sodden dregs of confused feelings remained. The words between Uesugi-san and I shouldn’t have gotten so heated. Both of us were worried and thrown off-kilter, and somehow we’d broken our uneasy truce. I blinked up into a sky gone clammy and gray. Rain was coming. The grounds were deserted except for one black-robed priest clutching a straw-broom, headed for the doorway where I stood.

  Keeping a demure pose, I brushed past him on the path, heading around the west corner of the main building. Only a few peasants were at the viewing windows in the dry landscape garden wall—none of them handmaidens nor wearing the nine planets crest. At the entrance, silence greeted me back near the spring-fed rock basin of water for visitor’s ablutions.

  Not a soul breathed under the still branches of Ryoan-ji’s Akamatsu and Laceleaf pines. Beautiful and Little Turtle must be safely gone. That only left Norinaga to worry about. I hadn’t felt the slightest flicker of the General’s presence, and Uesugi-san was there now. Boarish brute he might be, but I trusted his strong arms and his love for the Ashikagas.

  A cone tumbled down from the tree shading the water-trough, plunking into the basin. Ripples disturbed the water, distorting the sky and shadows of the pines. I stepped over to the basin and trailed my fingers lightly through the flow of water under the bamboo spout.

  I gasped. Cold like the sharp edge of a knife traveled up my hand, into my arm and straight to my heart. My skin crawled with the caress of a thousand frosted fingers. Otherness.

  I shivered, the trees and basin and sky fracturing into a gray palette of formless shapes.

  Little girl. Little tiger girl.

  The voice of a kami.

  Every muscle prickled with energy—the restless needles of limbs awakened after too long stuck in one position. I could not move. Along with the cold came a pressure along the surface of my skin, holding me motionless as ancient sediment pr
essed underground into jumbled layers of rock. Here in the Buddha’s temple, a spirit still dwelt in the spring feeding the stone basin—a cousin of Whispering Brook.

  The Jindo song I’d been forcing back for the past half hour broke free at the touch.

  As the mountains birth rustling winds to sweep bamboo plains,

  I will be steadfast and never leave you

  With the song, came the sense of well-being, the seeing, Whispering Brook always showed me. As if I lived my life in a deadened, murky world of no light until the kami touched me, and suddenly I was painfully, sharply real.

  So long since I’ve heard such a voice.

  In the brightness of the kami’s power, the crystal-cut certainty of who and what I was flooded me with a sense of rightness. The otherness melted, flowing into me, becoming me. For a long moment, there was no sense of the world but the song, and the cold, and weight of years. Pure, powerful, and anchored in the life-giving earth.

  But slipping underneath the cold-comfort touch of the kami came a tremor of doubt, a single tendril of inky blackness drifting like smoke into the song. My voice faltered.

  “Please don’t stop your song on my account,” said a person. Human.

  My eyes flew open. The bearded noble with the nine-planet crest stood in front of me. Norinaga. The inky smoke, fanned by the timbre of Norinaga’s words and his fox magic, seeped through the cold-crystal clarity, deadening the needles of awareness prickling across my palms. The kami pulled back a little.

  “What is it about you? A perplexing riddle why the kami wake for you. I have walked past the spirit of the spring a dozen times and gotten only silence. Yet here you are in communion.”

  He gestured back up the path. A solemn procession of black robes was filing out of the main building, heading directly towards me. “A girl communing with a kami on Ryoan-ji’s grounds would not intrigue the priests as it does me, sadly.”

  I gasped, drawing breath into ravenous lungs. How long had I stood there, singing?