Firefly

by India Millar

  Emiko raised her head from my shoulder and looked at me as if she could hardly believe her own words. She spoke softly, in barely more than a whisper.

  “I was about to speak, to explain why I could not follow his will, but Father didn’t wait for me. He stood and put his hands on my shoulders and shook me, Keiko. Father has never laid as much as a finger on me in my whole life. I was so surprised, I shrieked out loud. That seemed to make him even more furious and he hit me. He slapped me on the side of my face, hard. When I tried to get away from him, he hit me again, even harder. I had a black eye and a bruise all over the side of my face that didn’t fade for many days. And all the time, that bird stayed on his robe, as if it had been fastened there. It kept opening and closing its beak. I’m sure it was laughing at me.”

  I recalled that not long ago, around the time of the New Year celebrations, Emiko had taken to her room and refused to come out for the festivities. I had thought it odd at the time, but had not dared ask her if anything was wrong. Now, I understood.

  “Did he really hurt you?” I asked softly.

  “Oh, yes. I didn’t have the sense to give in, not even when he hit me again. I shouted at him, told him I wasn’t going to marry Soji, no matter what he did to me.” I stared at Emiko in awe. Such courage! I would never have believed that she would dare. “He must have believed me finally. He stopped hitting me and took his hands off my shoulders and just stood back, looking at me. He and the eagle both. Do you know, I think the way Father looked at me was even worse than when he hit me. He looked at me not so much as if he hated me, I could have understood that. Hate is a strong emotion, and I suppose I had invited it, the way I spoke to him. But it was more as if it wasn’t me who was there anymore. As if I was a maidservant who had annoyed him.”

  “If I had dared to defy him like that, he would have beaten me to a pulp,” I said simply. Emiko shrugged, accepting the truth of my words. “What did he do?”

  “He didn’t do anything,” she said. “He just stood there and looked at me. He looked at me as if I was a stranger to him. As if I was…worthless. I began to be frightened, then. I knew I had gone too far. I kneeled down and kowtowed to him. I grabbed his ankles and bent my head to kiss his feet. What else could I do?”

  She sounded indignant, as if I had dared to say she should have stood her ground and continued to defy Father.

  “Nothing at all,” I said quickly. “I think you were amazingly brave to go that far. What happened? Did he come around in the end and agree to dissolve your betrothal to Soji-san?” I couldn’t believe it would be otherwise; Emiko had always got what she wanted. Or in this case, what she didn’t want. Father had vented his anger on her. No doubt he would go away and decide she had been punished enough.

  On this day of surprises, the greatest surprise was yet to come. I was wrong. Completely wrong.

  “No,” she said flatly. I stared at Emiko in disbelief. “He let me grovel until I had run out of breath to plead with him. Then he stood on my fingers until I screamed, it was so painful. He stepped back from me and just looked at me for the longest time. When he spoke, his voice sounded as if he was making polite conversation with somebody he didn’t greatly care for.”

  “‘From this day on, I have only one daughter,’ he said. ‘You are dead to me. Do not ask me for anything. Do not even speak to me. If you come into a room and I am already there, then you will leave. If you pass me in the corridor, turn your face to the wall until I have gone. You will marry Soji-san. I will speak to his father soon and see if it is possible to bring the wedding day forward. You will marry him, and you will be a dutiful wife to him.’”

  “Did he really mean it?” I asked. I could barely control the tremor in my voice. Father had said he had only one daughter—me! The daughter who had not existed for him at all until recently. I felt a bitter sense of satisfaction; now Emiko knew what I felt like to be an outcast. To dwell in the same house as the rest of the family, yet be apart from it. The family where I was now a member while she was not.

  “I still couldn’t believe that he meant what he said.” Emiko’s face was screwed up to keep the tears back. “I had to stay in my room until my face was back to normal, so I had plenty of time to think it over. After a while, I decided I had gone about things in the wrong way. I should have been the dutiful daughter. Begged and pleaded with him rather than just telling him.”

  A chill ran down my spine. I stared at my sister in disbelief. Father had told her she was no longer his daughter. He would never have said that if he didn’t mean it.

  “You tried again?” I asked, the amazement clear in my voice. Emiko nodded miserably.

  “I had to. The more I thought about marrying Soji, the more I thought I would rather be dead. I might have better fortune in the next life, who knows? And anyway, I had kept out of Father’s way for a long time. I was sure he must have forgiven me. I waited until Isamu had gone hunting. I sent you on an errand for me? Remember?”

  I nodded. Ironically enough, she had sent me to Soji’s house to tell him she was not feeling well and wanted to be excused from some event she was to attend. Soji had smiled at me and asked me to sit down and take tea with him. I had been thrilled, even though he had talked about nothing but Emiko. A curious train of thought occurred to me. Did she really hate Soji so very much? Or was she contrary because the decision that they were to marry had been made for her? Or—and I held my breath at the thought—did Emiko fancy herself in love with somebody else? Could even she be that silly?

  “As soon as you were well away, I went to see Father,” she continued. “I didn’t bother speaking, I just prostrated myself in front of him and begged for forgiveness.”

  “What happened?” I asked more out of politeness than anything. Clearly, Father had forgiven his dear daughter. She was still here, wasn’t she? Still alive and well, without so much as a bruise left to cloud her lovely skin.

  “He walked away from me without a word.” Even now, it was clear Emiko could hardly believe it. Her voice rang with amazement. “When he got to the door, he stopped and called to me over his shoulder.

  “‘I do not know you. I have only one daughter.’” Emiko was sniffling with self-pity.

  “Was that it?” I kept my voice even. After all, it was no more than I had suffered every day for as long as I could remember.

  “No!” Emiko howled. I jumped at the fear in her voice. “It wasn’t.” Her voice sank to a whisper. “He said that if I didn’t agree to marry Soji, he would not have me in his home for a day longer. And if I dared to say one more word to him before my wedding day, then he would take me to Edo himself and sell me to the meanest brothel he could find for whatever they were willing to pay him.”

  I almost laughed out loud at the drama of it. It was beginning to sound more and more like the plot of a kabuki play to me. Not real life, at all.

  “Emiko! No! Did you believe him? You were always his favorite. He would never do that to you. He was just trying to punish you, that’s all. If you’re good and do as you’re told for a while, he’ll forget all about it. I think you must marry Soji, though,” I added. “If you carry on refusing, he might even go so far as to put you in a monastery for a year or so to punish you. And even then, I’m sure Soji would be waiting for you the moment you came out.”

  “They would shave my hair off!” Emiko wailed.

  I shook my head in disbelief. Father had threatened to sell her to a brothel, yet she sounded more worried about losing her hair than being sold for the pleasure of any man who wanted to take her.

  “Anyway, I don’t care what Father says or does. I’m not going to marry Soji, and that’s all there is to it. I’ll kill myself first, and then he’ll be sorry.”

  “Emiko, have you met somebody else? Is there another man, is that it?” I asked hesitantly. Emiko promptly held her lovely head up, every fraction the wronged heroine. I stared at her in disbelief. “Emiko, no. Who is it?”

  She stared around as if making su
re that Father had not entered the room without us noticing and then leaned forward and lowered her voice to a whisper.

  “You remember late last year when Father had guests?” I remembered, but I did not know them. I had simply kept out of the way, as I always did when we had visitors. “One of Father’s friends brought his son with him. Reo-san.”

  She was glowing. I felt terribly mean when I had to shrug and say I had not seen the young man.

  “What was he like?”

  “Oh, he was beautiful!” Emiko said at once. “Tall and manly. Not only that, but he was so very iki.”

  I tried to stop my lips from twitching. Iki meant somebody who was immensely fashionable and urbane. A truly iki man would be welcome in all the best teahouses in Edo. Courtesans would fight amongst themselves for the joy of being his lover. It was an indefinable quality, but obviously Emiko had recognized it in Reo-san.

  “Do you know, he spent one whole evening composing haiku to my beauty? I was in heaven!”

  “I’m sure you were,” I said drily. “And does he feel the same way about you?”

  “Of course he does.” Emiko was indignant. “He came to my room before he went.” I gasped and she glared at me. Her nostrils were pinched, her head held high.

  “Emiko, that was a dreadful thing to do. He should have known it was forbidden as he was a guest in our house.” I thought of the dreadful Choki and shivered. That, of course, had been different. I had been nothing but the youngest girl child with no status at all. Emiko was—or at least had been—the favored daughter. “Did you lie with him?” I asked bluntly.

  “I did. Why shouldn’t I?” she asked defiantly. “He told me how much he loved me, Keiko. He promised he would talk to his father and ask him to speak to our father. We were to marry.”

  I stared at my lovely sister wonderingly. I had seen nothing of the world, yet even I knew that Emiko was deceiving herself.

  “And have you heard from him since?”

  Emiko pursed her lips. She stared at the ceiling, at the floor, anywhere but at me. “No,” she whispered finally. “Not a word. I was so desperate, I sent him a message with one of the maids who was going into Edo on an errand.” She caught sight of my appalled face and went on quickly. “Oh, I made sure it was all very carefully worded, just in case it fell into the wrong hands. When she came back, I asked her straight away if she had put the message into Reo-san’s own hands. She insisted she had. She said that he had read it and told her there was no reply.”

  We sat in silence for a long time.

  “What am I to do, Keiko?” Emiko asked finally. “I didn’t really want to marry Soji before I met Reo. Now, I would be miserable every day I had to spend in his company. But Reo doesn’t love me either. The only honorable way out for me is to commit suicide, but I don’t want to die, Keiko! What can I do?”

  My lovely, confident elder sister was asking me for advice? I pulled my scattered wits together and tried to think.

  “Wait a while. Forget about Reo.” Emiko closed her eyes and made a small, distressed noise. “I don’t care how iki he was, he was a horrible, sneaking creature to make you fall in love with him and then use you like that.” Something occurred to me, and I added curiously, “Was it good when he made love to you?”

  “Not really,” Emiko said sadly. “I had no idea what to expect, and it was all over very quickly. I suppose I should have known then that he didn’t really love me. If he had, he would have tried to make it nice for me, wouldn’t he?”

  I didn’t bother answering that since I knew nothing about it. I focused on her other problem instead.

  “Wait a while,” I advised finally. “I’m sure Father’s temper will mend itself eventually. Keep out of his way if you can, and when you do chance to be in his company, make sure you’re the most dutiful of daughters.” A sudden thought struck me and I looked at Emiko in horror. “You’re not pregnant, are you?”

  “Thank the gods, no.” She shuddered. “I’ve had three courses since Reo was here.”

  “At least you can be grateful for that. No matter what, you’re going to have to marry Soji-san,” I said bluntly. Emiko shook her head, but I was having none of it. “You must. He’s so mad for you, he’ll take you even though you’re not a virgin. And he’s probably the only samurai in Japan who would accept a bride who had been deflowered already. If you refuse him, you’ll end up an old maid, just like I was going to.”

  I thought she was still going to argue. I watched her thoughts flicker across her face and slumped with relief when she finally smiled.

  “I’ll make an offering at the temple to Amaterasu-O-Kami, the god of love. He’ll help me, I know he will. I suppose it might not be too bad being married to Soji. As you say, he’s so besotted with me, I’m sure he’d turn a blind eye if I found myself a lover, so I could take some consolation elsewhere.”

  She tossed her lovely head and smiled, her tears already forgotten.

  For once, I did not envy her.

  Ten

  Where has yesterday

  Gone, you ask me? Why worry?

  It will never change

  I put Emiko’s woes out of my mind. I had other, more pressing things to consider.

  I assumed Father would keep to his word. If he was determined to find a husband for me, then I was equally determined. Before I exchanged one prison for another, I was going to see at least a little of the life that had been denied me so far.

  I would go to Isamu and tell him what I wanted him to do. Not ask—tell. I was excited by my decisiveness. What, I mused, had caused it? Was it because my arrogant elder sister had asked for my advice? Or because I had literally climbed a mountain? Or perhaps it was the fact that Father had actually acknowledged my existence? I smiled to myself; I knew that it was none of these things.

  A few months ago, none of them would have happened. They had only happened now because of the change in me. It was I who was the catalyst for all the change, nobody and nothing else. I was learning to fight like a man and think like one. For a moment, I felt almost sorry for my bridegroom, who was no doubt expecting a dutiful, obedient wife.

  I caught Isamu practicing with his sword at the dojo. Impatient as I was, I forced myself to wait until he had finished, standing calmly at the side of the dojo.

  “Well, little sister?” he called cheerfully. “Come for another beating, have you?”

  “No.” I said not another word until Isamu turned to look at me, waiting for me to carry on. “I want to go to Edo, Isamu. To the Floating World.”

  I had expected him to laugh, and he did. But I was sure I caught a flash of puzzlement in his eyes.

  “Do you, now? And I’m going to take you, am I?”

  “You are,” I said calmly.

  “And how am I going to explain you away? Dress you up as a yujo maybe? Pass you off as somebody I picked up for a bit of fun?”

  He seemed to find the idea hilarious, as he started chuckling to himself again. Yujo were women of pleasure. They could be anything from a highly-paid courtesan to a prostitute so drab she could not even find a place in a brothel and rented herself out in a back alley to anybody who had a few coins in his purse. I stared at my brother steadily.

  “How perceptive of you, Isamu!” I said sweetly. “Obviously, such an iki man as you could never be expected to take his younger sister to the Floating World.”

  Even as I spoke, I realized with a mild shock that my brother was probably just as iki as Emiko’s lover. He was handsome and very confident. He was rich enough to dress superbly, and he had that indefinable something that marked him as a man of the world. I was pleased with my insight; that would make things all the better for me.

  “I don’t think you quite know what you’re asking.” Isamu had stopped laughing and was frowning at me. “You’d never pass as a yujo, not even if we plastered you in makeup and loaded you with cheap jewelry. And if you’re thinking of pretending to be a geisha, forget it. The geisha in the Floating World are the mos
t beautiful and elegant anywhere in Japan. You’re far too tall and skinny. Everybody would think you were a man trying to pass as a woman. Not that anybody in the Floating World would find that particularly odd.”

  His amusement bit hard. I had always envied the beautiful, flower-like geisha who had come to entertain Father. When I was younger, in the privacy of my own room, I had spent hours mincing about, trying to mimic their pattering walk. When I was sure nobody could overhear me, I had even tried to speak as they did, my voice high-pitched and deferential. Until Emiko’s stinging contempt had made me feel profoundly foolish. I smiled at Isamu sweetly, determined he would not see my hurt.

  “I have no wish to pretend to be something I’m not, brother. You know the Floating World well. I’ll leave the practicalities of it to you. I know you’ll think of something,” I said cheerfully.

  Isamu’s mouth was opening and closing. All the laughter had gone from his face. I watched him patiently, waiting for him to find words.

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?” he said finally. “I’m going to take you to see the sights of the Floating World, am I? Show you a few of the best teahouses, perhaps? Drop into a performance at the kabuki, maybe? Even take you to a brothel or two? And what makes you think, little sister, that I’m going to risk making a laughing stock of myself to do that? Have you run mad? Or is it perhaps the wrong time of the month for you and it’s addled your wits?”

  If it hadn’t been for Isamu’s final comment, I might have not been quite so angry. As it was, I was furious. And all the more determined.

  “I’m not mad, brother. Nor am I on the rag.” It was a disgustingly common thing to say, but it gave me great satisfaction to see Isamu flinch. “I want to go to Edo. To the Floating World. I can’t go alone, so I’ve decided you’re going to take me. You owe me the favor. If it hadn’t been for me, you would never have gotten Father’s eagle for him.”