“Lily.” Two hands on my shoulders. Ashikaga spun me away, the seeping pain gone as soon as my fingers left bark.
No wonder the cherry tree kami was so grumpy. That slow leak was a gaping wound in the kami’s spirit. It had to be a result of the straw doll curse. Somehow Lady Ashikaga had tapped into the kami like Father boring a hole into maple to drain sap.
“The straw doll has to be still here,” I said. “Nailed to the tree.”
“After all these years?”
“Help me find it.”
Ashikaga gave me a little shake. “It’s not here.”
“The yurei is so strong, my lord. I don’t know if I can—if what Norinaga-san taught me was real. If I had the straw doll in my hands, I know I could—”
“You can take care of this.”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
“You are my Tiger Lily,” said Ashikaga. “You climbed Hell Mountain. You left behind your village. You stood up to fox soldiers. I know.”
My heart swelled inside my breast, like it would burst through skin and bone just to please those dark eyes. Please. Please let me be able to do this thing for my lordling. I ached to be this powerful person Ashikaga thought me to be. But I was afraid. Afraid of the yurei, afraid the crone’s teaching wasn’t enough. My lungs felt so tight, I just couldn’t get enough of the cool, night air. Every muscle in my body trembled, holding back, holding in the tumbling, whirling feeling threatening to overwhelm me.
What was wrong? This wasn’t plain old fear. I gripped Ashikaga’s wrists on my shoulders, fingers pressing so hard my lordling winced. “It’s okay, Lily.”
A soft sigh, the barest scrape of air came from behind me. A pressure against my inner ears—the cherry tree kami groaning, a sustained note of grief echoing in my chest. At the corner of my eyes, a safflower-red haze creeped. Heat prickled at my neck. Ashikaga froze, eyes wide.
The yurei.
All the cherry trees in the grove suddenly shook as if gripped by storm-strength wind. Blossoms cascaded around us, catching in Ashikaga’s hair, illuminated by a red glow. Something hot and fierce burst from the grove and smashed itself through the closest sliding windows. I blinked, startled to see the shutters whole and unshattered after the yurei’s passage. The tumult of feeling lessened.
“We have to get inside,” said Ashikaga.
“Not without the wara ningyo.”
“There’s no time,” said Ashikaga. “Do Norinaga’s charm now.” My lordling jumped up on the verandah, vaulting over the railing. For an instant I thought Ashikaga would try to smash through the thick window shutters like the yurei itself, but Ashikaga raced for the back of the residence, toward the Daimyo’s rooms.
Follow? Or find the straw doll?
As long as Lady Ashikaga’s cursed doll was connected to the cherry tree, I didn’t think I could banish the yurei. Where was it? It had to be here. I ran my hands down the sides of the nearest tree. Rough-edged bark scraped my hands. Nothing. On to the next one, and the next. My palms began to ooze from scrapes. Urgency made me careless. I had to find it. Had to. Ashikaga couldn’t hold off the yurei for long.
Think! I pounded my temples with a throbbing fist. The next tree was another young, slender one. I bypassed it, heading to the old grandfather in the back where I always pictured the cherry tree spirit residing. My sleeve caught on the sharp tuft of a sucker sprouting from the young tree as I passed. I tugged free, causing a shower of blossoms and leaves.
More suckers grew in a fan shape around a small burl. A burl? On this baby tree? I knelt, gingerly feeling around the burl. It was strangely soft.
Another groan from the cherry trees, followed by an angry buzz that cut into my skull like an ice pick. I blinked back tears and began to scrape at the burl. Flakes of dried bark came away, along with bits of fingernail. The kami’s buzz grew even more insistent. I gritted my teeth and tore away another layer of burl-flesh, as soft as rotten shitake, with the same moldering smell. From the burl’s innards peeked a distorted face. I gasped, rocking back on my heels. Not a real face. The eyeless bumpy oval of the wara ningyo. I reached for it. Ouch! It burned my finger-pads like touching the handle of an iron pot left too long in the coals. I jerked my hand back and stuck the burned fingers in my mouth, cooling them on my tongue.
The cherry tree kami’s anger ground on. I was trying to help! Maybe if I sang a verse of a warding song, the kami would settle long enough for me to concentrate.
It is for your sake,
That I walk, careless, the fields in spring,
My garment’s hanging sleeves sodden with falling rain.
My fingers needed protection. The hem of my sleeve was damp—with blood or sweat, it didn’t matter. Protected by the thin fabric, I grabbed at the face. Crisp rice-straw crackled. Impossibly clean and new looking, and—
Dust and heat pressed in from all sides, a crimson veil down. Despair closed my throat. What did it matter if I found the straw doll? Nothing mattered. All effort was wasted, what could matter when I had waited, waited so long. Nursing the bitter dregs of tender passion in my heart for a husband who never came. A husband who crumpled my carefully drawn and worded letters and threw them to the dirt. Anger flared all along my arms. Here! How dare he? Here in my husband’s room! Two heads bent together, hair let down from tight queues, tangling like vines. His night-soiled actor in my place!
A drop of salty sweat dripped into my eye, stinging sharply. Blinking rapidly cleared the sting, as well as the miasma soaking me with the yurei’s emotions. I rubbed at my eyes with the back of my hand. I’d found the wara ningyo, but I couldn’t touch it without the yurei in my head overwhelming all sense. Urgency was a stone in my chest. The vision of the two men, heads together, caused a fierce rage. I had to do something; the yurei must already be in the Daimyo’s room, and my lordling couldn’t hold it off for long. Not even a verse of my warding song had kept it at bay.
Clenching my jaw, I reached for the nail embedded in the doll’s neck. The metal sank deep into the fleshy part of my finger-pads. At the first tug, the cherry tree kami’s anger swelled inside my skull to a buzz like radish graters. It hurt so much. I couldn’t summon breath to sing. I hadn’t the strength to pry the nail out.
Startled cries came from within the residence. The nightingale floor’s high-pitched squeaks gave proof we weren’t the only ones stirred up by the yurei. The kami had to calm down—give me room to breathe.
“Stop it! I’m trying to help.”
The buzzing abruptly ceased. The branches of the tree seemed to droop, shuffling leaves for all the world like Little Brother shuffling his feet when Father scolded him. The absence of the kami’s anger allowing a few, quick breaths.
It is for your sake,
That I walk, careless, the fields in spring. . . .
The song alone wouldn’t work. Now that I’d gotten the kami to quit being angry, could I coax it back into helping? With half my attention on the warding song, I did my best to bring up the sensation of Whispering Brook’s otherness, the soft as cotton, stinging-like-nettles presence that pressed my skin, seeping into my belly until I felt filled with the kami’s song. I’m here, I thought as hard as I could at the cherry tree. Help me.
A tentative, soft vibration licked down my inner forearms, as if the cherry tree kami were holding back. So different from the chill sureness of Whispering Brook or the heavy ache of Higashi-yama. The cherry tree was a young spirit. Our voices twined together had failed to hold off the yurei before. Because the kami’s power was already being siphoned off by the yurei’s curse.
Help me, I thought again, still singing. A light buzz tickled over my belly. I took in a deep breath, cupping palms over my navel. The tickle dove straight inside, making a bee-line for the place wh
ere the kami filled the emptiness, where kami and human fit together like pieces of a puzzle box. There it settled in, buzzing happily.
Another verse. The kami bubbled up into my throat like steam venting through a loose pot-lid. Eerie harmony decorated the melody under my single voice. Where Whispering Brook was winter-runoff chill, and the mountain was heavy fire, the cherry tree kami was a vibrating sweetness all along my insides, filling each crevice, each hollow, in my body with the plucked resonance of a sound like Lady Hisako’s thirteen-string zither. The accompanying sense of rightness, of being centered around a belly full of strength, was as strong as with the other kami, only tinged with the tartness of cherries. The temptation to stretch my arms around the tree and just sing was strong. Before the sensations of the kami indwelling could overwhelm me, I reached for the nail again. This time the painful clench of wrongness was muted. No crimson veil fell. The nail slid out of the tree-flesh as easily as tugging a fish line from creek water. Another verse, another nail came free. Still, it was taking too long. At the next high note, I stretched the syllable, pushing the kami’s buzz into it so that the sound became a high, keening cry. Curling fingers around the straw doll’s middle, I tugged with all my might.
The straw doll came away from the burl with a sound like ripped linen. I fell on my back against crushed blossoms and mulch, staring up at the pinpricks of starlight in the darkened sky. An oppressive blanket of must and cloying wisteria fell over me. Each muscle in my body spasmed, pulling me taught as a bow string. My limbs would not obey me, as flimsy as the straw doll’s arms. The kami had withdrawn the instant the wara ningyo came away from the tree. The heavy heat on my skin pressed against an aching emptiness—aftermath of a kami indwelling.
What have you done?
A rush of hot prickles signaled the yurei’s return. The stars blurred and then winked out. In their place the elegant oval of a woman’s face materialized. I gasped for breath like a fish caught on the weave of a river-weir. My insides felt carved out, aching with hunger for the kami’s ecstatic indwelling.
Give it to me. That’s mine.
The face blurred, spun like some nightmare dust devil, and then resolved back into a close-lipped grimace around a wooden comb. Dark empty sockets where the eyes should have been.
You don’t need this anymore. My fist clenched around the limp straw still somehow in my hand. The yurei couldn’t reattach the crumbling remains to the tree, but it didn’t seem like a good idea to let it try, either. I rolled to the side, every muscle protesting, and sat up.
The yurei was clothed as before in full, seven-layer court dress, but the edges of the innermost robes were all shades of gray or black, and the outermost sleeves hung in tatters. The polished mirror around her neck reflected some hellish light, glinting red. Her hair drifted behind her, long tendrils that dissolved into smoke, curling and swaying on a ghostly wind. The face loomed closer, hands outstretched.
Interloper. Unnatural wretch. How dare you steal from your mistress!
I shook my head, holding the wara ningyo behind me like a child caught with a forbidden toy.
I am no threat to you or yours. I only want to help. Oh let the cherry tree kami still be listening and not completely withdrawn.
Liar! I saw him. I saw the two heads bowed together. My rightful place is taken. I am attacked on all sides.
I reached out my empty hand, palm up. I was wrung out. I couldn’t imagine the despair and anger-energy required to keep the yurei active.
Aren’t you tired? Don’t you want rest? I started the first of the five horizontal strokes in the air Norinaga had taught me at Kiyomizu-dera. The strange words of the ofuda chant to banish the yurei hovered on my tongue. Rin, pyo, zai, zen. A deep breath, and the place in my belly where the kami indwelt, where I needed the power of the cherry tree kami, uncoiled. Open, ready.
Let me sing you to rest. I began the chant.
Instead of the cherry tree’s fragrant sweetness, the putrid, suffocating heat of the yurei poured in. The outstretched hands melted into red-tinged smoke, writhing in twin streams up into my nostrils. I coughed, reflexively inhaled, and choked on the chant and the decayed melon taste of old blood.
Something twitched in the yurei’s hollow eye-socket, a lighter shadow of gray. Wilted cherry blossoms, petals edged in brown and lacey with decay, piled up, blocking the round sockets. With a puff of fetid air, the blossoms blew towards me.
I clawed at my face, straw doll forgotten, but the petals clung like leeches, sinking into skin. The yurei’s hair lashed out in all directions, a halo of twisting snakes.
Inside my belly, the hollow place left by the cherry tree kami’s withdrawal was starving, aching for that otherness that made of my lonely peasant girl-self something in harmony with the world, a morning glory unfurling to the kami’s sun. But instead my stomach filled with a heavy churning, like I’d eaten too many rich red-bean paste dumplings.
This was not the home-coming jubilance of a kami indwelling. Too late, I curled in my awareness, hugging my arms folded across my middle. The yurei. The feel of that passionate hate coating my insides made me frantic. I wanted to reach down my own throat and rip out my lungs. That place, where I had known only the ecstasy of joining with the kami, welcomed in the yurei’s power, joining with it as I had the kami.
But it was all wrong. The yurei’s power was tainted, soiled.
“No.”
I’d broken the yurei’s connection to the cherry tree, now it tried to draw on me instead as fuel. My eyes opened slowly, finding that perfect oval of a face still biting on the comb mere fingers-widths from my nose.
“Now I will have my due.”
Dread soaked me like a splash of ice-water. The words had been spoken aloud. From my throat.
I’d never fought against a kami indwelling before—I didn’t know how to rid myself of the yurei. Already my limbs felt swollen and stiff with the heated musk of the yurei’s anger. No room to call on the cherry tree kami even if I could take control of my throat long enough to sing.
A wrenching feeling tore up my leg, as if my foot were a sapling pulled roots and all from packed clay soil. The yurei forced my body in lurching steps to the verandah. I panicked, heart thudding wildly, thoughts skittering here and there inside the prison the yurei had made of my mind.
The yurei forced my hands to pull me onto the verandah, and along the far edge of the inside corridor, muting the nightingale floor despite the clumsiness of my forced steps. My flesh felt numb and distant, like the dead feeling I got when sitting too long in formal seiza posture.
Oh spirits. Oh Father. Oh Dawn. A litany of fear drowned out other thoughts. I watched in horror as my own hand, ghastly image of tattered, court-robe sleeve overlaid on top of my serviceable linen, reached for the door pull inset between mulberry paper panels. The door slid open.
“Lily?” said Ashikaga. My lordling barred the opening with a drawn wakizashi in one hand and a furled scroll in the other. My heart leapt—trying to smash through my ribcage, as if Ashikaga could fill that empty place the yurei had claimed. For the first time, I realized the wanting I saw in Ashikaga was akin to the ache I felt for the kami. Wanting, all alone, by myself. And once my lordling realized I could never sate that fierce yearning, I would no longer be allowed to lie beside my love, feel the closeness under moonlight, thrilling at the way Ashikaga gripped my hand with those heavy palms and blunt fingers . . . Oh, spirits, this was the yurei bleeding through into my very thoughts.
“Strike her!” came a gruff voice—outside my head. I blinked, and found myself standing over the Daimyo of the Northern Han brandishing a wooden comb like a dagger.
Chapter Twenty-one
* * *
THE AIR FROSTED white in front of my mouth. I couldn’t relax the hand clutching the comb. Beside the
Daimyo, hair loose and tousled artfully despite being startled awake in the dead of night, was Zeami Motokiyo.
Two heads bowed together.
“Lily,” repeated my lordling from behind me, “wake up.” Something glinted at the corner of my eye, moonlight reflected on the wavering point of the wakizashi.
“She’s possessed!”
The yurei would use me to hurt the Daimyo. Ashikaga couldn’t allow that. But would that really mean cutting me down? The thought sliced right across my heart, drawing blood. The yurei rode the surge of pain. Red haze edged my vision and my body took a step forward.
“It’s your wife that possesses her,” said Zeami in a dry voice. “Yoshinori’s mother.”
The wakizashi clattered to the mats. Ashikaga gripped my elbows from behind. The yurei made me struggle against the cool burn of those hands on my flesh.
“I can hold her back,” said Ashikaga. “There’s no need for a more brutal method.”
“She’s still dangerous,” said the Daimyo. “And what if she should get loose during the Blossom-Viewing party?”
“I’m holding her,” said Ashikaga again.
“You dry bag of bones! You soul-sucking leech. You flaunt your lover in my place! Laughing together over my heart-deep pain!” The voice was mine, but the words tumbled from my lips tinged with the yurei’s high-pitched court lady tones.
“This is our chance to get rid of her once and for all,” said the Daimyo.
“After everything I gave you? My heart? My body, my babies?” The yurei thrashed my arms about, almost pulling free from Ashikaga’s grip. She brought my sensation-deadened foot down on my lordling’s instep and jerked an elbow back so hard Ashikaga bent over with a grunt.
“I won’t hurt you,” breathed my lordling into my ear. “Fight her, Tiger Lily.”
The Straw Doll Cries at Midnight (A Tiger Lily Novel Book 2) Page 26