by Nick Lake
No, Hiro probably wouldn’t know what to do. But he would help, that much was certain.
Taro dragged himself up the slope. Then he saw that something was wrong.
The door to the hut was open.
Taro stared. The door was never open. Nobody knew that the ninjas used this summit’s crater as their base, and the ninjas had every intention of keeping it that way. Then he saw something even worse.
The trapdoor inside was open too.
CHAPTER 50
HIS HAND ON his sword’s grip, Taro stepped slowly into the main hall. Reddish light flooded in, making a bright shaft in the middle of the cave, something that seemed to Taro as though, were he to step into it, he might dissolve into light himself. His eyes went up, and he saw the great tear in the canvas that had once held the night sky, and its charred edges.
They burned the sky, he thought.
He took a step forward, then stopped. He stood very still, looking around him. Piles of clothes lay on the ground, evocative of splayed and agonized bodies, though there were no bodies to fill them.
Only ash.
He fought back a wave of nausea. They’re all dead, he thought. All the vampires. . .
At first he wanted to turn on his heel and leave. Then he remembered Hiro. His friend was not a vampire – that meant his body would be here, if he’d died too. Something had already torn in Taro’s mind, that night on the top of Mount Hiei, when he lost everything – so he assumed that there was no more of him left to break.
He was wrong.
Taro got down on his knees, began to crawl around the floor of the great hall, checking the clothes, turning over pieces of black and grey fabric, but he found only bones and dust. Tears stinging his eyes, he began to crawl faster, stirring up the burnt remains, mingling the dead with one another in his haste to find his friend. A distant part of his mind remembered the Tendai monks in the ruins of the Hokke-do, prizing up the pieces of their fellow monk with chopsticks, putting them so carefully into the urn, in order from toe to top. Familiar shame rose hotly in him, as he thought of these dead ninjas waking up in whatever new plane they found themselves in, their reborn bodies a jumble of different parts, as if Enma had assigned them new heads and feet and hands as a final, humiliating prank.
Ignoring these thoughts that raced around his mind like rats, he moved quicker and quicker still, wasting the energy from the old man. There was a larger pile than the rest, but it turned out to be a girl, one who had been at the wrong end of a sword. Taro thought he recognized her. She was the daughter of one of the older ninjas – she’d have been made a vampire soon, if she’d lived.
There was a scraping sound behind him, and he was turning on his knees before he even registered alarm, his sword jumping up from his side as if suddenly animate, and he was moving up onto the balls of his feet, snarling.
Just before his sword bit into the body before him, he stopped it, gasping with the effort.
‘Taro?’ said Hiro.
CHAPTER 51
HIRO STEPPED ASIDE and Little Kawabata appeared beside him, both of them seeming to emerge from the rock itself.
The hidden passage, thought Taro. He’d had so many occasions to curse it, when Kawabata Senior would suddenly appear to put him off his concentration while sparring. But now he blessed it with all his heart.
Hiro threw his arms around Taro and hugged him tight, cutting off Taro’s breathing, but that was all right.
‘What happened?’ Taro asked, when Hiro finally released him. ‘Did you see?’
Hiro nodded. ‘The sky started to burn first. Nearly everyone was here, for a ceremony. One of the boys was going to be turned.’
‘It was as if they knew,’ said Little Kawabata.
‘The light came bursting through,’ said Hiro. ‘Arrows, too. People were screaming. . . running around. . . Then they were falling. I was just. . .’ He turned his head from side to side, as if to mime his incomprehension, his inability to do anything.
‘I was the only one who could bear the sunlight,’ said Kawabata. ‘I grabbed Hiro and pulled him in here. After that we only heard.’
‘The screaming,’ said Hiro, ‘went on for a long time.’
‘Who did it?’ said Taro. But a horrible suspicion was forming in his mind.
‘Yukiko,’ said Little Kawabata. ‘We heard her. . .’ Now it was his turn to raise his hands, in silent mime of his inability to describe what he had witnessed.
‘We heard her kill Little Kawabata’s father,’ said Hiro.
‘Gods,’ said Taro. ‘I’m sorry. I mean, I know your father tried to kill me. But he was still your father.’
Little Kawabata bowed. ‘But that’s not the worst thing.’
‘What?’
‘Yukiko said Lord Oda was still alive.’
Taro swayed on his feet. ‘Kenji Kira said that too. How is it possible?’
‘It gets worse,’ said Little Kawabata.
‘Worse?’
‘Yukiko said Lord Oda was a vampire.’
Taro’s jaw dropped open. ‘A vampire?’
‘That’s what she said.’
Taro shook his head. ‘No – he can’t – I mean—’ Everything that had happened, the people who had died. . . if Lord Oda was alive, then that was one thing – he could always be killed. But if he was a vampire, then it would be infinitely more difficult. Taro felt himself swaying.
‘You don’t look so good, Taro,’ said Hiro worriedly, and his voice seemed to come from a long way away. ‘As a matter of fact, you look terrible.’
‘Just. . . a shock. . . that’s all,’ said Taro. He hadn’t even killed the man who killed his father. He hadn’t succeeded in anything. The ball didn’t work. His father and his mother and perhaps Hana had died for nothing.
‘No,’ said Hiro. ‘You haven’t looked well from the start. It’s like you’re wasting away.’ He was examining Taro closely, and his eyes were full of concern.
Taro smiled at him. He was glad to see his friend again, even if everything was falling apart. ‘It’s my mother’s ghost,’ said Taro. ‘I think I’m being haunted.’
Little Kawabata looked at him as if he were mad, but Hiro had seen the haunted man on Mount Hiei too, and he gasped with horror. ‘Are you sure? But you could die!’
‘I’m sure. She comes to me all the time, trying to tell me something.’
‘Trying to tell you what?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Taro. ‘Her mouth moves, and there is a sound of sorts, but I don’t understand the words.’
‘Is it about the ball?’ said Hiro. ‘Is she telling you where it is? Is she trying to help you?’
Taro shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I went to Shirahama. I dived the wreck, and I brought up the ball. It didn’t work. It’s just a ball of gold.’
‘But a ball of gold?’ said Little Kawabata, unable to conceal the greed in his voice. ‘You could do a lot with—’
Hiro shot him a look, and he shut up. ‘What will you do?’ he asked Taro.
Taro looked down at his emaciated arms, the tendons and bone visible through the paperlike skin. ‘My mother’s ghost. . . it’s consuming me. I need help.’
‘Help?’ said Hiro. ‘What help? Just tell me.’
‘I need to go back to Mount Hiei,’ said Taro. ‘The priest in Shirahama. . . He told me a story about a man who went to hell, to speak to his mother who was haunting him. Maybe the abbot can help me do the same. My mother’s body will not have been burnt yet. . . I don’t think. . . Are we still in the Month of Leaves?’
‘You want to go to hell?’ said Little Kawabata incredulously.
‘Taro,’ said Hiro. ‘This is madness.’
‘Just take me to the abbot,’ said Taro. ‘Do you promise?’
Hiro sighed. ‘Yes, of course I promise.’
‘I want to know what my mother is trying to tell me,’ said Taro. ‘Otherwise I’ll die.’
Hiro put a hand out to steady Taro, as he swayed again. ‘I won’t let
you die,’ he said.
Taro shrugged. He sat down on the ash-strewn ground. ‘If I die, at least I’ll know what she’s saying,’ he said.
CHAPTER 52
LITTLE KAWABATA SUPPORTED Taro’s weight with his arm as they climbed the stone steps. The stumps of burned trees lined the sides of the path, and Little Kawabata wondered whether trees knew they were burning, and felt the pain of their loss.
Little Kawabata had to admit the place was beautiful. He could see why the monks would choose it for their meditation. The land spread out below them like tatami mats laden with seeds and bowls of water, which were lakes. The perfect dome of the mountaintop loomed above them.
Someone, though, had gone to a lot of effort to erase the mountain from the map. Everywhere, the ground was burnt, and Little Kawabata saw what looked like bloodstains on the rocks.
At one point they had passed the ruins of a building, and Taro had groaned as they walked past it. A small wooden structure was being erected in the middle of the destruction, as if the temple had the ability to regenerate, like a worm’s head, and was rebuilding itself from the inside out.
‘That’s where Hana is,’ said Hiro, who was carrying Taro on the other side.
Little Kawabata looked at the monks working, and felt a sense of wonder. In that great oblong of ash, grey and long as an enormous grave, the unburnt body of Hana lay hidden from view.
He shuddered. There was something unnatural about it. But then, thought Little Kawabata, there was something unnatural about all of this. Sometimes, when he was sleeping, he would hear noises and wake up, and Taro would be staring into the shadows of the forest, talking softly.
‘Tell me,’ Taro would say. ‘Tell me what you’re trying to say.’
The empty forest never answered.
The last few days, Hiro had been giving Taro his own blood. Taro had protested at first, but Hiro had insisted. Anyway, Taro was so weak he could barely refuse. Occasionally he would become lucid and talk about Lord Oda and the ball and Shusaku, whose ghost he seemed to have seen on a ship somewhere. Little Kawabata wondered whether something had torn in the boy’s mind, and now he saw the ghosts of his dead all around him.
Must have lost his mind, he thought, to let that ball of gold get away from him.
Most of the time, though, Taro seemed to be moving through another country altogether, peopled with different personages. He addressed trees, rocks, temples. He asked them what they wanted to tell him, sounding increasingly distressed, as if angry with these objects for not giving up their secrets.
Sometimes he called them Mother.
CHAPTER 53
THE WORLD WAS moving back and forth gently, and Taro thought, I’m back on that ship. I knocked my head and imagined everything after that.
I’m not haunted after all!
Then he opened his eyes and the abbot was before him, sitting cross-legged in front of him on the floor of the training hall, and his own hands in his lap were so thin they were like the hands of birds. It was all real, and he was still dying. Hayao stood beside the abbot. He looked at Taro with eyes full of infinite sadness.
‘Is that what I looked like?’ the samurai asked the abbot.
‘Yes,’ said the abbot. ‘But you had Taro to save you. He has no one. I fear for him.’
‘Can’t you do anything? Give him spells. . . sutras. . .’
‘I have tried everything, when he was sleeping. I have given him the charms. I have read him the texts. Nothing has helped. With you, he saw your ghost. None of us can see his.’
‘He mustn’t die,’ said Hayao. ‘He’s. . . I don’t know. He’s necessary, I think.’ This was an odd thing for Hayao to say, and Taro wondered if he was hallucinating, if this was all a dream.
‘I agree,’ said the abbot. ‘But I don’t know what I can do.’
‘Help. . . me,’ said Taro softly, and he was shocked by how weak his voice was.
The abbot looked at him, startled. ‘You hear us?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said Taro.
‘Hiro and your other friend tell me you see your mother,’ said the abbot.
Taro managed a nod. The whole world was grey and colourless, and it was an effort just to keep his eyes open. He was not aware of how he had come to be on Mount Hiei. He had a vague memory of being carried by Hiro.
‘Hmm,’ said the abbot pensively. ‘Does she grow more solid?’
Taro thought. Yes, it seemed to him that the light no longer shone through her when she appeared to him. ‘I. . . think so,’ he said.
The abbot frowned. ‘And you are weak. I can see that for myself.’
Taro croaked a ‘yes’.
The abbot sighed. ‘This gaki will kill you, if we don’t do something.’
‘I know,’ said Taro. ‘I want. . . go to hell.’
‘I’m sorry?’ said the abbot.
‘My mother. . . she speaks. But I can’t understand.’
‘She is speaking in the language of the dead.’
Taro nodded – the movement caused his neck to ache, and he wanted to close his eyes and go to sleep, but he knew it was important to get the abbot’s help.
‘Need. . . to know. . . what she’s saying.’
The abbot’s face fell. ‘It’s impossible. Only the dead know that language.’
‘Send me. . . to hell.’
The abbot blanched. ‘I don’t know what you are talking about,’ he said.
Taro sat up, gasping with the pain of straining his muscles. His mother was standing behind the abbot – she was always there now – and she was nodding at him, encouraging, and he knew this was what he had to do.
‘Mokuren. . . went to hell,’ he said. ‘I need. . . also. Tell me how he did it.’
The abbot was staring at him in horror. ‘You don’t understand,’ he said. ‘Here at the monastery, it’s said that Mokuren sat on the mountainside, and didn’t eat or drink for weeks. You want to know how he went to hell, Taro? He died.’
‘Died?’
‘The monks said he stopped breathing. They began to prepare him for his funeral, but then he opened his eyes again. And he said that he had been to hell, and had spoken with his mother.’
‘Good,’ said Taro. ‘Then I. . . will die. . . too.’
CHAPTER 54
ABIRD LANDED ON his shoulder. He was glad, because it meant he was still, and the bird did not recognize him as a threat.
At first Hiro had tried to bring him blood, to sustain him, but he had pushed it away.
He sat on a rock, overlooking a ravine that stretched down and into the far valleys below, though he didn’t look at anything but the blankness inside his head. The abbot had told him that Mokuren, when he wanted to find his mother, had sat in this exact place. His fellow monks visited him every day, and one day they found that his heart had stopped – just for a moment. When it began beating again, he opened his eyes, and that was when he told them what he must do, in order to save his mother.
Taro didn’t know how to make his heart stop, but he believed that if he could only feel every part of his body, and its joins with the world, he might be able to learn. He knew the abbot was angry with him – or disappointed, anyway. He said that Taro was suffering from kokoro no yami – darkness of the heart. He said that if Taro could only let go of his mother, stop loving her so much, everything would be all right again.
But Taro couldn’t stop loving anyone, and he knew that even if he could, not everything would be all right. Not for his mother. And of course that was the problem, that this idea bothered him, and so he was back at the start again, and could not do what the abbot wanted of him. He had seen in the abbot’s eyes that the man thought he would fail, that he would die on this rock, bled dry by his mother’s ghost.
Nevertheless, he thought, he’s curious. If I step from his mountain into hell, then he will have seen two miracles in his lifetime.
The hardest thing was ignoring his mother, who floated all night and every day now in the ravine, mouthi
ng all the time in her nonsense tongue, before melting away in the dawn light, slowly receding until she was just a dot, and then nothing. He had learned to focus on a point just in front of him, a point of nothingness, that nevertheless felt like it might just be the centre of his being.
To describe the thoughts that passed through him, or say how long he sat there, would be impossible. The only way to know would be to experience it for yourself, and even if you had, you would not be able to describe it to others.
All Taro knew was that for a long time there was blackness, and then suddenly there was a great searing pain in his chest and he clutched feebly at it, with his weak hands, and then the mountain seemed to drop away beneath him.
Taro opened his eyes. Light was beginning to glow on the horizon, and his mother’s ghost was beginning to fade backwards, as if she and the sun were somehow the same thing, and so could not manifest at the same time in this realm.
As she floated backwards, growing ever smaller, he saw that she was leaving a trail behind her, a sort of glowing mist like a thread, and he couldn’t believe he’d never seen it before.
Standing up – though he couldn’t be sure it was him standing up, and anyway the notion of what was and wasn’t him had become very blurred in his mind – he stepped off the rock and into the ravine.
He walked across the air and took up the shining thread, then followed it. He crossed landscapes that were either not of this world, or were in countries far away, and were illuminated by other suns and moons. He seemed to walk for a long time on the bottom of the sea, climbing its mountains, which are much like the mountains of the earth, only life accumulates at their tops, rather than their bottoms, and the water streams up their flanks. A great fish swam past him, bigger than a ship, and it sang a plangent note of grief.
Then, after he had walked for three lifetimes, he stepped up to the edge of a wide river and found that he was holding coins in his hand. He seemed to have conjured them up, just by thinking of them, and at the same time he understood that the coins were just a symbol. They didn’t matter, really. Before him was a bridge, glittering.