by Nick Lake
In this way, he passed through the landscape without seeing it. And then, finally, he stood near dawn at the top of the cliffs to the south of Shirahama, and could see the lights of the village twinkling on the steep slopes, like fireflies. On the warm breeze he could smell pine oil and the sea, and while he had smelled these things the last several days, the scent now seemed special to this place. From various points in between the houses, steam rose into the night air from the hot onsen springs, which the people used for baths.
All he wanted was to get to the bay, to the taboo place where the wreck was, and dive for the ball. But it was a cloudy night, without even moonlight to guide him. The site of the wreck was unsafe as it was – no ama would dive there, for fear of the spirits that lay in wait among the coral and the seaweed-covered spars of the broken ship. With no visibility, it would be suicide.
Not that suicide was something Taro ruled out. He just wanted to get the ball first – to avenge his mother, and to try to bring Hana back. Only if he failed would he contemplate that other option.
He traced the thin path that ran along the cliff top, heading towards the village. He passed the torii gate that led to the shrine of Susanoo, kami of storms and the god in whose hands lay the lives of all fishermen. Men like Taro’s father – when he had been alive – worshipped at the shrine almost every day, giving gifts and obeisance to this terrible entity, who could choose to sink their boats if he so wished, or dash them against the rocks. On the other side of the bay, beyond the houses, Taro could just make out the other torii gate – the one that announced the shrine of Benten, the Princess of the Hidden Waters, who protected the amas. In both of these shrines, the very bodies of the gods were kept, in a sort of mirror called a shintai. These mirrors – which reflected the essence of the kami – were held in ornate wooden boxes called mikoshi, and none but the priests could open them. It was said that if you looked at the shintai of Susanoo, you would see a terrible creature made of thunderclouds, and that the Princess of the Hidden Waters was a beautiful woman riding a great purple dragon.
Now, though, Taro suspected you would only see yourself, staring back from the glass.
Just then, as he glanced at that far-off red gate, looming over the pine trees, Taro saw lights moving in single file towards it. They were leaving the village and winding through the trees, up the hill towards the shrine of the Princess.
It must be obon already, he thought.
He couldn’t believe so much time had passed. He remembered last year’s obon. Then, as now, he had largely missed the Festival of the Dead. But he had seen the little blue lanterns in windows as they passed, under cover of darkness, with Shusaku – on their way to safety in the ninja mountain. It was that night that he had first seen Yukiko and her sister Heiko. The two girls had been setting down candlelit lanterns in the stream outside their house, marking the end of the festival by sending the spirits of their dead ancestors back to the land of the dead.
It seemed impossible that only a year later Shusaku was dead, and Yukiko, who had been in Taro’s eyes little more than a somewhat bad-tempered girl, had killed Taro’s mother.
If the procession was only now wending its way to the Princess’s shrine, then the festival was still at its height, and the dead were everywhere. During obon, the shades of one’s ancestors – the shoryo, or shadows – were everywhere on earth, doing the things they had done in life. It was proper to welcome them, with joy in your heart and food on your table. If the person had been a painter, you laid out paint and brushes. If the ancestor had been a fisherman, you mended and put out their net, for their use. They stayed for three days, sating their hunger for rice and wine and the companionship of their living descendants. Then they left again in lanterns that floated down streams, or up to the sky – or, as was done in Shirahama, on gaily painted and lit boats, which drifted out to sea.
This procession, though, marked the end of the ohaka mairi, the Honourable Visit. The spirits of the dead were still here, and in their honour the villagers were going to the shrine of the Princess. For the last two days, her shintai mirror had been in the village, carefully protected from prying eyes by the priest, and by the wooden box it was kept in. For those two days, the people of the village – mostly the women, for the amas were particularly loved by Benten – were able to play host to their goddess and honour her with gifts of food and prayer. Hopefully, in doing so, they would raise the merit of their dead ancestors, so that they could pass smoothly to a new plane of existence and be reborn in glory.
Now, though, it was time for the goddess to return to her shrine by the sea, where she would spend the rest of the year watching over the bay and keeping its women from drowning. They said it was only because she was watching that no ama had ever been taken by a mako shark.
Taro quickened his pace, wanting to catch up with the train of people. He didn’t believe in these things any more, but he wasn’t a gambler, either. If his mother’s soul was anywhere, during obon, it would be in Shirahama, where she had lived and worked. His father’s, too, perhaps.
Taking the quick way down to the village, then running across the soft sand of the beach, Taro came upon the children at the back of the procession as they entered the cedar woods. He ignored their gasps when they recognized him. They wore their new summer kimonos, the yukata, and he was painfully aware that he was still in winter garb, and sweating because of it. Some of the children carried lanterns, their flames representing the fourteen kami of the district.
Ahead of them were the men and the women of the village, and they, too, gasped when they saw him. He nodded to them and explained nothing, just hurried so that he could reach the front, where the kannushi priest walked. Finally, his breath coming in ragged gulps, he reached the head of the file. Here four strong fishermen walked behind the priest, carrying the mikoshi, which had been fitted with two long bars, making it a kind of palanquin. The heavy box was carved with elaborate designs, and gilded and jewelled all over.
When the priest saw Taro, he stopped, clutching Taro’s arms. ‘Are you here, boy?’ he asked. ‘Or are you a spirit?’
‘I’m not a spirit,’ said Taro.
The priest had stopped, and half the procession, too – the other half were bumping into the people in front, everyone murmuring, surprised to see Taro.
‘But. . . you have been gone so long! Your mother and Hiro, too. What happened? We found your father’s body, and there was talk of ninjas. Old man Michi swears he saw them chasing you on the beach. . .’
Taro nodded. ‘There were ninjas. They came for – Well, they killed my father. We had to run. But now I’m back. I came because. . .’ He tried to complete his sentence but found himself choking on the words, as if they meant him harm.
The priest put a gentle arm round his shoulders. ‘You are troubled, boy,’ he said. ‘What is wrong?’
‘My mother died this spring,’ said Taro eventually. ‘I had hoped, with it being obon. . .’ He didn’t want to speak of his desire to find the Buddha ball, and really he was speaking of his mother to avoid the necessity – but as he said it he realized that was why he was here, at least partly. The dead return home at obon, and this was his mother’s home. He found himself crying, and the priest held him for a long moment.
‘I am sorry,’ said the priest. ‘She was a good woman. What happened?’
‘It’s a long story,’ said Taro. ‘We were attacked, and she was killed.’
‘Attacked? Again? But why?’
Taro shrugged. He couldn’t tell the priest any of what had happened. ‘I wish I knew,’ he said, in a tone that did not invite further questions.
‘Well,’ said the priest. ‘You are back. And in obon, too! It is auspicious. Come, walk with me, and tell me what you can about where you have been.’
They walked together for a further half an incense stick, the terrain gradually becoming rougher and steeper as they approached the sea’s territory. The rocks became larger and sharper, the air tangier with brine. T
he shrine of the Princess of the Hidden Waters was on a cliff directly above the sea – and not the calm sea of the bay, but the wild, unbridled sea, where it was not held and soothed by the arms of the twin headlands. As they walked, Taro told the priest about some of the places he had seen – Lord Oda’s capital city; the lands between here and the ninja mountain. He left out all mention of the rival lords, or ninjas, or battle. But it soon became apparent anyway that the priest had never left Shirahama, and would not have batted an eye if Taro had told him he’d been riding a dragon over the three islands of Japan this last year.
Taro had forgotten, too, how quickly time passed in Shirahama, and conversely, how slowly it passed too. He’d been gone a year – a year in which he’d trained with ninjas, fought and killed a daimyo who was a sword saint, and participated in a battle at Japan’s most famous monastery. In the same time, these people had fished and harvested abalone – day after day. His disappearance had surprised them, he could tell, but for them it was as if he had only been gone a day, because all their days were the same.
At long last, as a few drops of rain began to fall, they arrived at the red gate, and from there covered the short distance to the shrine quickly. The four men put down the palanquin, just outside the door to the shrine. Rain spattered on the rocks, mingling with the spray from the sea. The priest took from his sleeve a small silver flute, and without announcement or further ceremony, began to play a thin, melancholy tune, accompanied only by the roar of the waves, far below. It was a tune that hung at the edge of things, clearly present but impossible to grasp, like running water or moonlight. The atmosphere – falling rain, guttering candles, unearthly music – was almost unbearably moving. Taro felt moisture on his cheeks and was not sure if it was rain, or seawater, or tears – or all three combined.
Taro turned to look at the people of Shirahama, and saw that the lanterns held by the children were failing in the rain, falling apart into paper mulch and wood. The flames were dying out. He turned once again to the priest, and the man suddenly stopped playing, putting away his flute with as little flourish and drama as he had withdrawn it. Taking from the other sleeve an onosa – a stick covered in paper decorations that were meant to ward off evil – he waved it in the air, before allowing sake to be distributed by the men who had carried the mikoshi.
There were no words, no chants, and Taro was struck by the contrast between this simple ceremony and the all-night vigil at his mother’s side, when the monks had recited the sutras over and over, seeking to ease their passage into death. He supposed, though, that whether there were words or not was not important. The ceremony was not about the Buddha, or the goddess, or even the dead. It was about bringing the living together, making them remember, for one three-day period, all those they had lost.
Taro needed no reminding. And he did not need to be brought together with people. He didn’t know why he’d come along with the procession, really. He had thought he’d pay his respects to the Princess of the Hidden Waters, ask for her intercession in his mother’s and Hana’s cases, ask her to help them. He had thought he might pray, and in doing so increase his mother’s good karma.
But he could not pray. He could only listen to the sea and the rain, whose song was harsher than that of people, and more true to the reality of existence.
There were no gods. There were no Buddhas or bodhisattvas, and no ghosts, either. Taro was not sure what he had seen on the mountain, with that samurai, but it had not been the spirit of his dead lover. Such things were impossible. It must have been something Taro conjured from his imagination, a being of air, which he had seen because he wanted to see it, or felt it right that he should see it. The samurai had been staring intently at nothingness, and so Taro had built a thing for him to see.
Because nothingness was all there was. There was no death, even – only nothingness. All of this was for nothing.
Through the open gate of the shrine he could just make out the demon they kept in there. It was a desiccated thing – the people of the village said that the Princess had killed it, when it threatened to drown an ama. It was meant to be a Kappa. It had the large shell of a turtle, but with hairy legs like a dog’s. And its head, which ended in sharp teeth, was that of a snake. The demon was kept in the shrine as a reminder of the real threats the Princess guarded against, something to keep the children afraid. He almost smiled when he saw it. It was clear to him now that someone had made this thing – a resourceful person who had stitched it together out of bits of dead animal. It was no demon.
Taro wiped water from his brow and turned his back on the box that held the meaningless mirror dedicated to the Princess. He scanned his fellow villagers, seeing the faith in their weather-beaten faces, seeing their belief in this ritual, and he wished he could go back in time to when he had been one of them, and the biggest concern in his life had been what would happen when his mother could no longer dive.
And that was when he saw the ghost of his mother, standing among them.
CHAPTER 36
YUKIKO GLANCED UP at the night sky, which was torn and burning.
A great rip ran down the middle of the enormous canvas that covered the top of the ninja mountain crater. Swathes of star-filled blackness hung in tatters from the hole, through which the sun blazed fiercely, in the all-blue, heat-hazy sky of the Month of Leaves.
Below, a couple of the ninjas were still screaming, writhing in agony as the sunlight burned the flesh from their bones. A foul stench filled the air – something like the smell of rotten meat roasting, or leather being soaked in charcoal and piss. Yukiko wrinkled her nose and sighed. She had been enjoying this, until they started to blabber and cry. She didn’t like that – it made her feel guilty.
‘Put them out of their misery,’ she said to one of the samurai beside her. He bowed, stepped forward, and began to slit their throats with his sword.
Another samurai hurried towards her, the antlers on his helmet wet with blood. ‘There are several boys among the dead,’ he said. ‘We’ll line them up, and you can see if you spot him.’
Yukiko nodded. She knew that Taro would not be here – he had gone towards Shirahama, as she knew he would, with two of Lord Oda’s best and most silent spies behind him. But her men had told her that another boy left Mount Hiei that morning, travelling in this direction. A large boy, who carried himself like a fighter.
Hiro.
Yukiko almost hoped that Lord Oda would keep Taro alive long enough for her to see him again, and read in his face the poetry of his grief – though she knew it was unlikely. The next time she saw Taro, he would be dead. In the meantime she hoped he was suffering, as she had suffered when her sister died. In the meantime, she would have some small measure of satisfaction, seeing Hiro’s corpse among the dead ninjas.
She ran her fingers along the rock wall of the main cave, seeing the tunnels that led to the living quarters. She didn’t want to go in there. The memories would be too strong – of her sister, laughing. Of herself, her sister, Taro, and Hiro sparring together, thinking that life was going to be only training and fun. But she knew now why the ninjas trained so hard with their swords and their shuriken. It was because people were always going to be trying to kill them.
People like her.
A flash of movement from her left, and she registered the grimacing face of a young woman, before a sword blade swished down past her eyes, where her head had been a moment before. She stepped back, startled but retaining her composure, keeping her movements smooth as she had been taught. The girl came at her again, the heavy sword moving lightly in her grasp. She’d been trained well, but had not yet been made a ninja – that much was obvious from the fact that she had all her skin on, and her muscles, too. Like Yukiko, this girl had been made to work, but had not yet been given the rewards – the heightened senses of smell and vision, the ability to move with animal grace, that came from being a vampire.
Yukiko could almost feel sorry for her.
But then she had been
trained as a ninja too.
Ducking a sword-strike to the shoulder, she reached into her left sleeve and when her hand came out again, there was a shuriken throwing star flying from it. The star hit the girl in the cheek, and she stumbled, dropping her sword for one fatal moment. Yukiko stepped nimbly forward and opened her throat for her.
For the first time that day, the vague nausea she had felt since the morning faded. That had been a clean kill. An honourable kill. Not like the sky above – even though it had been she who had told the samurai about it, and conceived the plan to destroy it with burning arrows. That had been the logical strategy, for the canvas sky protected the ninjas from the light. But it had made her feel queasy, all the same.
The only thing that made the guilt worthwhile was the thought of Taro’s utter destruction. She had received a pigeon from Lord Oda only this morning. It seemed he’d followed the boy to the coast. He’d hired a group of pirates, planning to intercept Taro at Shirahama. They’d take the ball from him, if he had it, and then they’d kill him. Yukiko was sorry she wouldn’t be there to see it, but she also knew the value of loyalty. Lord Oda wanted her here, killing ninjas.
So killing ninjas was what she was doing.
From the tunnels there still came the occasional ringing of sword against sword, and the odd scream. She’d sent the lowest-ranking samurai in first, knowing that any ninjas who had fled into the darkness of the caves, or had been there anyway when the sky came down, would fight tooth and claw to survive. Nevertheless they numbered in the dozens, some of them barely out of childhood. She had hundreds and hundreds of heavily armed samurai at her disposal.
As she watched, one of the older samurai came out of the nearest tunnel, dragging a cowering figure. He stopped in front of her and gestured with his thumb to the sorry-looking specimen behind him.
‘This one says he wants to speak to you,’ he said.