by Lian Hearn
From time to time she caught a glimpse of the bird that always followed Yoshi. Yayoi had long suspected it was a werehawk, like the one that had flown to Matsutani, the day the bandits were captured. Shikanoko had killed it with an arrow when no one else had been able to. It was many years ago, yet she still remembered vividly the creature plummeting to the ground, its blood sizzling, Shikanoko’s stance, her father’s expression.
That bird had been completely black, apart from its yellow eyes, but this one had a spangling of gold, as though its plumage were changing color from year to year. It did not seem to age or suffer. Yoshi did not care for it; he never fed it or spoke to it, yet he sometimes referred to it by its name: Kon. Kai was kind to it, as she was to all birds. It was obvious to Yayoi that, like Genzo, Kon knew the young acrobat’s true identity. Together with Kai, they were all that remained of Yoshi’s former life, a link with the past that he did not—or did not want to—remember. She had left the lute with Asagao, but Kon chose where he went and whom he followed.
“Sometimes they try to trap him,” Take told her, following her gaze. “Yoshi would love it if he stayed home in a cage. But he is too clever to be caught. I have offered to try to shoot him down, but of course they would not allow him to be killed.”
Yayoi knew the open secret that the acrobats all belonged to a sect, a kind of hidden religion, that forbade the taking of any life. There was some divine mother and child they worshipped, which she often thought must be the reason they loved children, and remained in some ways children themselves. She was also aware that they always sought a blessing before going on a journey, and that a priest of the sect lived not far from Aomizu, so she was not altogether surprised when, late in the first day, in silent agreement, Yoshi and Saru took a side track that led away to the north.
They took one monkey with them to entice the wild ones they hoped to capture to replace Yoshi’s two companions, Kemuri and Shiro, who had both died the previous winter. Saru’s favorite, Tomo, had died the year before. This monkey was a young one, captured in the forest two summers earlier. They called it Noboru. Saru led it by a long red cord, and when it was tired it sat on his shoulders. They also had one packhorse, carrying their provisions and empty baskets for the new monkeys. Toward the end of the day, Yayoi sat on the horse, perched between the baskets. The acrobats were tireless, but it was a long time since she had walked anywhere and her legs were aching. The packhorse plodded, stumbling frequently. She wished she could put on leggings and ride as she had when she was a child, astride, freely.
After more than three hours, when it was almost dark, they came to a tiny village, four or five huts huddled together at the foot of a tall hill, almost a true mountain. The way was overgrown and led through thick groves of trees and clumps of bamboo. Every now and then, Yoshi and Saru removed, and replaced behind them, the brushwood that had been laid across the path.
It must be a love of secrecy for its own sake, Yayoi thought, for she did not believe there was any real danger of attack. Many sects had sprung up in the years of difficulty and famine, as people sought to understand Heaven’s hostility and placate it. Some were followers of the Enlightened One who taught a new, austere path, others turned to the old gods of mountain and forest. Unless they caused riots and disturbed the civil peace, they were allowed to flourish, especially if they paid contributions to Lord Aritomo’s system of taxation.
The old man came out to greet them, as happy as a father meeting his children again after a long absence. A meal was quickly prepared, taro with millet, flavored with the dried seaweed Saru had brought as a gift, followed by mulberries and loquats, picked from the trees that surrounded the small fields. Before they ate, the old man prayed over the food, speaking a blessing on the visitors and on their journey.
When he came to Yayoi he said quietly, “You have not been here before, but you are welcome. What is your reason for traveling to the Darkwood?”
“I hope to gather herbs of healing,” she said. “There are many that can be found nowhere else.”
“Use them only for good,” he said. “Beware of being led into sorcery. And turn to the Secret One, for he is the source of true healing.”
She bowed her head, saying nothing, but she couldn’t help glancing at the others. Yoshi’s eyes were closed and his face calm and rapt. All this has so much meaning for him, she thought. He believes with all his heart. But the emperor is called upon to carry out rituals that bind Heaven and Earth. How would he be able to do that? Better he remains undiscovered and lives out his life among the acrobats.
She prayed now, to any god that might listen, that Fuji had not had time to report her suspicions of Yoshi before her death, that they would not be pursued, that Yoshi would be able to return at the end of the summer, and then she regretted her presumption in daring to suggest that the powers of Heaven might be turned from their purpose. He was the Emperor. He could not avoid his destiny, or the sacrifices that would be demanded of him.
The sparse food and the turmoil of her thoughts gave her a restless night. For a long time she lay, eyes wide open, alongside the women and their children, dozed eventually, and awoke at dawn. When she went outside Kon was calling quietly from the roof, and Take was standing at the entrance to the path, as if on guard, his staff in his hand.
“Have you been keeping watch all night?” she asked.
“I slept for a couple of hours. Then I dreamed Kon was speaking to me, some urgent message. It woke me up and I came outside. There is some danger, I can feel it.”
“Do you think we are being followed?” Yayoi felt her world shrink again, as though she had just escaped from prison, only to be recaptured.
He gave her a measured look, mature beyond his years. “Yoshi and Saru aren’t worried. They believe, since they threaten no one, no one will threaten them. But someone could be following us—maybe the authorities investigating Fuji’s death, or maybe…”
Lord Arinori, my so-called protector, who, if he is not going to have me executed for murder, might seek to own me completely, or Chika or his master and his brothers.
“What should we do?” she said.
“We are safer here than on the road. We should stay for a few days. I’ll see what news I can discover and return by nightfall. Tell the others where I’ve gone and wait for me here.”
She tried to persuade him not to go alone, but he was impatient and would not countenance any opposition to his plan. He set out at once before the others woke, leaving Yayoi to explain where he had gone.
Saru and Yoshi mocked his concerns but were happy to spend at least one more day with their beloved teacher. Take returned in the late afternoon, looking pleased with himself.
“I was right,” he whispered to Yayoi. “Someone did come after you—Lord Arinori.”
She felt a jolt of fear. If they had stayed on the road, he would have caught up with them.
“It’s a good thing I stuck to my decision. He has gone to the temple where you lived for a while. He thinks you would have fled there. We will stay a few more days until he has returned to Aomizu.”
She remembered the earlier search at the temple, the destruction, the nuns’ terror.
“Don’t worry,” Take said, seeing her expression. “If he does not find you there, what will he do? He is not going to hurt the nuns.”
Yayoi gave her fine robes to the village women, telling them to get rid of them or sell them at the market. She dressed in the dull, shabby clothes of a peasant, and worked alongside the women in the fields, letting the earth stain her hands and the sun darken her skin. The young men cut wood for the winter, helped build a new shed to stack it in. There was always work to do and the villagers were grateful for the extra hands. Many days passed before they were ready to move on. They laughed at the dangers that Take saw everywhere, his mind influenced by the tales and legends of the past that he so loved, their intrigues, betrayals, battles, and uprisings, and teased him until he lost his temper.
The morning
they left, they knelt before the old man to say goodbye and receive his blessing.
He smiled when he looked down at Saru. “May you find a friend to replace the one you lost.” To Kai he said, “I am glad you are staying here with us. You and your child will be safe here.”
Kai smiled, blushing a little, and reached out to touch Yoshi’s hand. He grinned, too, but the old man turned to him with a somber face. “What you seek will not be found in the Darkwood. It is not what you think, maybe not even what you desire. I told you once, all paths lead to your destiny.”
“Master your anger,” he said to Take. “It blinds you to what is real and what is best for you.”
To Yayoi, he said, “You may use your real name now. Your old life is finished.” And from that moment she called herself Hina again.
* * *
Take hurried them off the track, as soon as possible, and they began to make their way eastward, meeting the road to Shimaura some way south of the crossroads where the highway from Aomizu went on to Rinrakuji. They slept for a short time on the edge of the fields, and were woken in the early morning by two small boys who demanded to see the monkey.
“Wait a few months and we will be back with a whole troupe,” Saru promised.
They walked all day, and then took a track that turned off to the east. The two young men and Take had been here many times, but for Hina it was completely new. The forest closed around them. Cicadas shrilled in a constant shower of sound and mosquitoes whined. The air was stifling, the track stony. For a while she rode the horse, but it stumbled often, its straw shoes slipping on the rocky ground, and she felt safer walking.
She thought they would sleep in the open air again, but in the late afternoon she saw they were approaching a derelict hut. Take had gone ahead to scout, and came running back.
“There are people in the hut,” he said in a loud whisper.
Hina stopped, Yoshi beside her.
“I don’t like this place,” Yoshi said. “I’ve been past it many times, and it always makes me tremble.”
“Did something bad happen here?” she asked.
His face closed and she knew she was right, but he would never tell her.
Saru, with the horse and Noboru the monkey, went blithely on, calling out a greeting.
There was a slight noise from inside and a tall woman stepped out, holding a broken plank of wood in both hands, as if it were a club, a look of fear on her face. Her head was shaved, her tattered robe a dull brown color.
Hina thought she recognized her but could not believe it was the same woman. Was it a ghost or an illusion? “Reverend Nun?” she questioned, walking forward.
Astonishment, then anger, replaced fear as the woman lowered the plank. “You are one of Lady Fuji’s girls. The one we called Yayoi. What are you doing here? It is on your account that all these disasters came upon us. What have you done?”
“What happened?” Hina said.
The monkey was screaming loudly from Saru’s shoulder and showing its teeth. The nun looked at it, and then back at Hina. She swayed slightly. The plank dropped from her hands. She crouched down, her face in her palms, her shoulders heaving.
Hina knelt in front of her, the others waiting a few paces behind; Yoshi and Saru silent and concerned, Take turning constantly, his eyes raking the forest and the track they had come along, as if suspecting a trap. There was a clatter of wings and Kon alighted on the roof. It called in its fluting voice, silencing the birds of the forest. In this hush, a voice came from inside.
“Who is there?”
Hina would never forget that voice. “It is the Abbess,” she whispered. The nun nodded, without speaking.
“Shall I go in to her?”
Take rushed forward. “It may be a trap. Let me go.”
“There is no one inside but our lady,” the nun said, her voice hoarse with tears.
Nevertheless, Take, holding the pole ready, stepped inside. Hina followed him. There was no door—it had warped and fallen years before—and the hut smelled of damp and mildew and of something else, a sweetish, stomach-turning whiff of flesh rotting.
“She’s telling the truth,” Take said. He moved back to the door as Hina went forward and knelt beside the small figure lying on the ground. She was about to take one of the Abbess’s hands, when her eyes adjusted to the gloom and she saw the injuries.
The skin had been seared away. The flesh was raw and swollen. Yellow and black streaks of infection ran up both arms. The fingers were turning dark.
“It is Hina,” she said softly. “I used to be called Yayoi. I lived at the temple.”
“Yayoi, dear child,” the Abbess said. Her voice was calm and clear, despite the fever. “Look at what has become of me! I am dying, but I am glad to see you. Heaven has sent you to me.”
“What happened to you?” Hina said. “Who did this to you?”
“I did it to myself, foolish old woman that I am. Lord Arinori came to the temple again. This time he was looking for you. Of course, I did not know where you were, nor had I heard the news of Fuji’s death. I could tell him nothing. He became very angry when none of his threats worked on us, and had his men set fire to the building. My little cat—you probably knew her mother—was trapped inside. I tried to save her, but the flames were too fierce. Poor creature, she was the victim of human rage and hatred, and I was punished for my stupid, vain attachment.”
“Don’t blame yourself,” Hina said. “Blame the cruelty of men.”
“Men will always be cruel and destructive,” the Abbess said. “We live with that as we live with typhoons and earthquakes. I could not reach my cat, but I was able to snatch one object from the flames. Now you are here, I understand it was for you. It is by my side. Can you see it?”
Hina groped around with her hands in the half darkness and came upon what felt like a smooth, rounded stone. Her palms seemed to recognize it and it knew them in return, nestling into them. She lifted it and held it up so the Abbess could see it.
“Is this it?”
“Yes.”
Hina peered at it. It gleamed slightly even in the gloom inside the hut. It was reflective, like a mirror. She could almost see her face in it.
“It is a medicine stone,” the Abbess said. “I knew it was for you when you came to the temple with the Kudzu Vine Treasure Store—do you still have it?”
“I do,” Hina said. “I left almost everything else behind, but the text I brought with me.”
A smile flitted over the Abbess’s face. “The stone and the text belong together. I should have given it to you then, but you were only a child, and you seemed destined for another kind of life. Now you are here, like a miracle. I can only conclude the stone brought you here so you could be united.”
“What is it for?” Hina asked.
“Hold it to my mouth so it catches my breath.”
Hina did so and a mist covered the polished surface.
“Now look deeply into it,” the Abbess said.
Hina could not help crying out.
“What did you see?”
“I cannot say!”
“Say it,” the Abbess commanded her. “I am not afraid. It revealed I am dying, didn’t it?”
Hina found she could not put into words what the stone had shown her: the intricate workings of the body, all failing one after another, before the inexorable invasion that was death. Tears formed in her eyes and she wept for the incurable frailty of the human body, its passage from birth and growth to decay and death, through a brief moment of passionate, striving life.
“It will show you the fate of any sick person,” the Abbess said. “Whether they will recover or if they should prepare themselves to cross the three-streamed river of death. To most people it will seem like a dull black stone. Only in cases of imminent death does it reveal itself to be a mirror.”
Her calmness added to the awe Hina felt for the magical object in her hands. She put it down carefully, leaned over the older woman, and placed her hand
on the burning forehead.
“Your hands are so cool,” the Abbess said. Her eyes closed and she seemed to sleep for a few moments. Then she said, “Where are you going?”
Hina said, “I am going into the Darkwood to find Shikanoko.”
“Shikanoko, the outlaw?”
“Your son. You called him Kazumaru. I don’t believe he became a monster, as you feared.”
“So you are going in search of him?” the Abbess said wonderingly. “He has been much on my mind, as I lie here, dying. Why are you looking for him? Is it because you love him? But how can that be? You can’t have been much more than a child when you knew him, if you knew him at all…” Her speech became more rambling and incoherent and Hina could not follow everything she said. She was afraid the end was near, and was about to call the nun, when the dying woman spoke more clearly. “When you find him, tell him his mother forgives him.”
“Maybe you should ask him to forgive you,” Hina said. “If you had not left him when he was a child … I am sorry, it is none of my concern.” But then she felt strongly that it was her concern, and her anger and pity rushed to the surface. “You abandoned him! That is what made him become a sorcerer.”
There was a long silence. She feared the Abbess had stopped breathing and leaned over her to check. The woman raised her head toward her and spoke with surprising force. “You are right. I see it all so clearly now. I thought I was seeking holiness. I so wanted to be good. But in the end I gave my cat more affection than I ever gave my son, and for that I am dying.” Her voice was filled with despair and bitterness.