by C. J. Anaya
“Oof,” I grunted. I sat up and glared at Musubi’s happy little smile.
“How…why…?”
“How did I manage to swipe your legs out from under you? Sight. The way you watch an opponent will be crucial to the success of your attacks and your ability to defend yourself. If I stare at your legs, the area in which I intend to strike, you might anticipate my move and prevent it. Though your legs are quite lovely to look upon,” he gave me a wicked smile, “staring at them will forewarn you of my intentions.” He reached for my hand and helped me to stand. “I see that you are wearing more appropriate attire this time. It’s a shame, really. I didn’t mind relieving you of your kimono.”
Studying myself, I realized I was still wearing my brother’s clothing. I folded my arms across my chest, feeling flustered and frustrated at Musubi’s teasing manner. Having him treat me with cold indifference was almost preferable to his sultry smiles and heady flirtations since he was so determined to never follow through with any of it. I nearly stomped my foot in annoyance, but remembered my upbringing and refrained from exhibiting such rude behavior. A silly thing to adhere to.
“Your mistake was looking solely at my face—”
“Your eyes,” I corrected absently.
“What was that?”
“I was looking into your eyes.” Just as I was at that very moment. I couldn’t help it. They were frosty pools of liquid blue and completely captivated me. Musubi’’s face went from that of teacher to something else entirely. It was a heated look of warning and possibly desire. “I mean...it’s just very hard to look away from them...your eye color is not common around here.””
“So you enjoy staring into my eyes due to their unique coloring?” He was teasing me. Again. I couldn’t hold onto my composure. His presence alone made my emotions unravel.
“I didn’t say I enjoyed it. I merely corrected you on your assumption that I was staring at your face. It’s perfectly normal for me to be curious about your origins. You don’’t look like you were born here.”
“Of course,” he said, approaching me like a panther might approach something he means to pounce on and devour. “It’s perfectly normal for you to stare lovingly into my eyes simply because they’re blue.”
“I wasn’t staring lovingly—oof.”
My legs went out from under me again, and he let out a low chuckle.
“You tend to lose focus when you’re flustered. It’s quite adorable, but it could get you killed.” He offered his hand, but I batted it away and stood up on my own.
“I highly doubt my enemy is going to attempt to flirt with me before he runs me through with his blade.”
“Is that what you think I’m doing? Flirting?”
“Well, you don’t seem to have any concept of personal boundaries, you are constantly ripping off my kimonos left and right.” He let out a laugh, but I ignored him and continued while wiping the grass from my trousers. “And you kissed me in the cave back there when you were sleeping.”
His laughter broke off abruptly.
“What did you say?”
I looked up and noticed an immediate change in his stance. His body was rigid, his jaw clenched tight, with arms straight and fists folded in at his side. The thrumming anger returned like a loud buzzing within my head, but this time his anger was directed at me.
“Mikomi,” he ground out. “I have already made myself perfectly clear as to how the dynamics of our relationship will play out. I am your teacher, and you are my student. I would never confuse that by kissing you in a dark cave in the middle of the night.”
No, but your eyes and emotional responses to me tell a different story.
His immediate rejection to my claim hurt me in a crushing kind of way. The ache in my heart was not the kind of pain my ki specialized in healing. I think what disturbed me more was his immediate need to wrap himself in a cocoon of negative emotion in response to any suggestions of physical intimacy between us. He looked like a tightly pressurized bottle of rage ready to explode. I’d witnessed and felt that same kind of anger around my father, and although I knew Musubi wished to protect me, I couldn’t help feeling fear in the presence of this cancerous rage coursing through him. It was so strong I began to feel nauseated.
“You must be right. I’m sure I was just terrified from last night’s events and as a result experienced some vivid dreams. It was just a dream.””
His shoulders lowered slightly as the heat from his rage slowly cooled.
“I’m sorry, Mikomi. I should not have reacted that way. You have no need to fear me. I promise.”
I let out a shaky breath and nodded.
“There…was this woman—”
“Please stop.” I didn’t want to hear about Edana. The kiss from last night and the pain his utterance of Edana’s name had given me remained raw and fresh. More than anything, I wanted him to trust in me and share those burdens he carried, but my fragile emotions couldn’t handle discussing the woman he had loved and lost. Not at that particular moment. “You don’’t owe me an explanation. You don’t owe me anything at all. You’re my teacher, and I am your student. Correct?”
Musubi silently scrutinized me. I wondered for a moment if he might tell me I was wrong. That being a simple student wasn’t the role he wished me to play. That he felt more for me than what an instructor might feel for his pupil. After a few moments, though, he simply nodded and returned to his previous instruction.
I inhaled deeply and did my best to breathe out the turmoil within me.
“As I was saying, it is important to see your opponent as you would a mountain.”
“A mountain?”
“Yes, you take in the whole of your opponent all at once as you would a distant mountain. If you look solely at my eyes for a hint as to my next move you may be missing some signal I give when I start to move my hands or feet. If your attention is diverted to my limbs, I can trick you with a movement designed to distract you. Soon you are focusing on something else when I strike. If you look only at the point of a sword you will also be fooled by a feint.”
“So, I look at the whole of the picture.”
“Correct. Now I want you to study the whole of me. Try deflecting my advances by blocking my attack with your palm extended forward.”
“Yes. I can—oof.”
I looked up at Musubi from my place on the soft grass. His wicked smile had returned. I was relieved to see him back to his mischievous self; happy to have my legs kicked out from underneath me over and over again if it resulted in a smile like that for the rest of the day.
“We’re just beginning, and once again you’re already flat on your back. Sloppy, young lady. Very sloppy. Again!”
I rose from the ground and squared off with him. What followed was one failed block after another. Though I focused my sight on the whole of Musubi—I could have easily excelled in this particular exercise—it seemed a more prudent idea to downplay my abilities, especially since his wicked smirk continued to grow with each failed attempt. After about an hour of this with no progress in sight, he took on a calculated look, preparing some new idea with which to torture me.
“I think perhaps we should up the stakes just a little.”
“Why would we want to do that?” I lifted myself off the ground again, but didn’t bother wiping the grass and dirt off my back. It would only return after my next failed block.
“If the stakes are higher your reflexes will be sharper…hopefully, and I think we’ve already established the fact that your everyday clothing, whether women’’s or men’s, is a health hazard during training.”
It took a second for me to realize what he was getting at.
“Oh, no. There is nothing wrong with my attire this time around. I get to keep my clothes on,” I said emphatically.
“Only if you can block my attempts at taking them off.”
I faced him with barely suppressed energy. My senses were on high alert now. I wanted my clothes to remain intact. I watch
ed Musubi as a whole and tried not to let the blue of his eyes get the best of me. His right hand flickered for a second, distracting me from his left hand, which shot forward and ripped the sash from my waist, releasing the wrap of my shirt and exposing the undergarments on my chest and torso.
I tried not to let it rattle me and focused harder on my attractive tormentor. He feinted left, but I saw him shift his weight to the right. I immediately held out my hand, palm flat to block his advance. My flat hand hit his chest, preventing him from moving any further. His hands stayed raised at his sides as if he had been getting ready to grab my shoulders.
The intensity with which his eyes had fastened on mine and the mere centimeters between us made the warmth in my heart spread throughout my chest, filling my body from the top of my head to the very tips of my fingers and toes.
The energy between us was charged with so much possibility. He must have sensed the way it built, encircling our bodies and begging us to explore it further. I slackened the stiffness in my arm and eased forward ever so slightly. I didn’t know what else to do after that. The different futures that lay before us could only be determined by a single choice. I knew where my choice would lead and what kind of life I wanted to look forward to despite my determination to accept my responsibilities, but his choice remained uncertain and might lead us somewhere completely different.
His turmoil and indecision caused him to hesitate, and then that thrumming anger returned with a vengeance fueled by bitterness, hatred, and despair. He held to something dark and poisonous. He covered himself with it like one might cover themselves with a shield. The warmth in my heart turned frozen and shattered. Events from his past continually denied us the opportunity to pursue a joint future. I was powerless against this insubstantial enemy.
Musubi pulled back abruptly and picked up my sash, handing it to me as if nothing had happened. Pretending this connection we made and the moment we shared was nothing but a dream...much like the way he had kissed me.
Twice.
“I think it wise to cook our dinner now while it’s still light. The glow from a campfire at night will give away our location.”
He walked past me, but I reached out and gently took hold of his hand.
“You called me Edana last night when you were sleeping.”
In all honesty I didn’t want to hear his response. I don’t know why I felt so compelled to delve into a subject I had recently attempted to avoid, but a part of me almost wished he might turn to me and acknowledge that he had intended to kiss me, not some insubstantial vision of Edana.
I expected him to go rigid and rip his hand from mine, but he did nothing. He didn’t even move. After a moment of silence he rubbed his thumb gently across the back of my hand.
“It wasn’t your dream then, was it? When I kissed you the dream was mine.”
He gave my hand a soft squeeze and let it go, taking my whole heart and soul with him.
* * *
Dinner was a silent affair. Musubi pulled out some berries, nuts, and dried strips of meat, something I had never before encountered, but thoroughly enjoyed, though I think the company had something to do with it, even if said company remained silent and sullen. By the time the sun sank low to the ground we had eaten our fill and extinguished our small fire. He didn’t say one word to me as he went about his preparations, but I always knew exactly how he felt. His anger smoldered just beneath the surface, causing me to wonder how he could operate under such stifling negativity.
At first the silence was like a peaceful balm to my injured feelings and frazzled emotions, but the steady thrum of his anger eventually offset the silence in an uncomfortable way.
Faint hints of darkness descended over the forest, bringing a slight chill to the end of our meal. It reflected the sorry state of our current relationship. What happened to our easy camaraderie? Why did he so doggedly refuse to discuss the darkness of his past? By the time we retired to the cave, the silence had grown unbearable, and I blurted out a question that had troubled me for some time.
“Why does your anger never subside?”
“What?”
He turned from feeding his horse and fixed me with a puzzled look.
“Your anger, it’s…persistent. Disturbingly so. Emotions are in a constant state of change. They rise and fall in intensity just as waves rise and fall in the wake of a forceful storm, but in the end, the waves die down and become part of the sea once again. Yours never seem to find any peace.”
“How do you know this?”
“I can feel it. Do you not remember the first time we met? The pain I experienced as Hatsumi labored to bring her child into this world?” His look lightened for a moment, signifying his memory of our first moments together. “Part of being a medicine woman is understanding and absorbing others’ emotions. I feel everything you feel whenever you let your guard down, and your anger is always present. There are moments when it is worse than others, but it never goes away. Not completely.”
This information was not well received. I imagined that for someone as closed off and secretive as Musubi, this revelation was considered a violation of his privacy. He stuttered for something appropriate to say.
“You must be mistaken, child—”
“I am not. You already know about my empathic abilities.” I wanted to tell him I wasn’t a child either, but with the line drawn, and my relationship to him being relegated to that of student, I honestly didn’t have the desire to endure the sting of that reminder yet again.
His anger spiked to a new level of outrage. It didn’t frighten me as it had before, but I decided to exercise patience and not press him any further. I sensed his battle to keep his anger tightly reined in. After a few moments the wave of anger subsided into a calm thrumming sound held in check with an enormous amount of effort.
“That must have been hard for you. You don’t usually calm yourself so quickly.” I thought I’d said it under my breath, but his surprise led me to believe he had excellent hearing.
His look held a thousand questions, but I intended to do the asking for the duration of the evening. I didn’t want to meet his questions with more lies. My poor heart could take no more of it.
“What is it that you’re holding onto?” I pressed.
It took several moments for Musubi to answer. His anger and indecision turned into apathy as if keeping his secrets to himself no longer mattered.
“I lost someone close to me. I believe I mentioned that several months back.”
I nodded, but said nothing. I feared that saying anything might stop him from sharing what he so desperately needed to share, and I also feared upon opening my mouth I might beg him to never give utterance to the name he called me last night.
“Her name was Edana, and she was my life.” He paused as pain, raw and aching reared its ugly head, preventing him from speaking further.
It was difficult to hear those words fall from his lips. I’d experienced jealousy through other people’s emotions, but I’d never had cause for it myself, never felt it penetrate my heart as if it were cutting away pieces of my will and reason. I pushed through the uncomfortable sensations and forced myself to ask another question.
“Did you grow up together?”
He gave me a sad look. “No. I was visiting the area she resided in for business related purposes, but when I met her I decided to stay.”
I sensed there was so much he wasn’t telling me. “What was she like?”
Musubi looked at the stony floor. My questions caused him to reflect on moments he wanted to forget. Memories he had worked hard to forget.
“She was vibrant and strong; a bright flame against a dark loneliness I’d felt for quite some time.”
“Why were you so lonely?”
“There isn’t much that I can tell you about my profession, other than that I am a warrior and as such I am not afforded the same opportunities to find love in this life. From the moment of my creation, my parents led me to believe that love w
ould never be part of my future.””
I felt outraged that any parent would be so heartless as to teach a young boy that loneliness was the only path available. What a horribly bleak outlook.
“I don’t understand why the option would have been denied you.”
“There are many things about myself and my history that I cannot share with you at the moment, Mikomi. All I can say is that I was not allowed to form attachments, and leave it at that.”
“But you formed one with Edana?”
Musubi’s expression turned pensive. “Yes. She was one of the few women I’d met during my travels who was...unattached to any other male.””
I puzzled over this.
“What happened to her?”
The soft lines around Musubi’s mouth hardened. His anger returned, slamming into me.
“She met someone else, someone who revealed to her things about my life I hadn’t yet felt courageous enough to speak of. It turned her against me and into the arms of another man.”
I swallowed hard. “I’m so very sorry.”
“I wasted several years of my life agonizing over the way things ended between us. If she had really loved me, she would have let me explain myself. I hadn’t meant to keep certain things about my life or my identity a secret, but I had to be very careful before sharing those things with another, for her sake and for mine. If she had let me explain why I’d remained silent, if she had trusted that I had my reasons, the outcome might have been different.”
The details surrounding Musubi’s profession must have been serious indeed to have caused him to be less than forthright with someone he cared about. I understood the position it put him in.
“In the end, the man she chose over me spurned her to prove a point.”
His anger began to boil anew.
“Why would he do that? Had he no intention of loving her?”
Musubi swallowed hard. “No. He used her just as he used every other human…woman with whom he entered into a relationship.”