by Kij Johnson
For me, releasing in sex used to be sweet and hot, like heated syrup suddenly spilled. I would shudder, throat to thighs, and then my body would float, as if in blood-warm water. I have seen cats mate; I do not think they release like this, and even Kagaya-hime, in a woman’s shape, may not feel it as I do (or did: it has been so many years).
Kagaya-hime and Kitsune joined at the entrance to the shrine, in the rain-shadow of the eaves. This was her first time, as woman or cat, and she knew little of what it should be like. Her instincts and the lessons of the cousins and aunts made it seem a savage thing, rage and pain and desire dancing together. But Kitsune was a merry lover, with the enthusiasm of youth and the experience of an attractive man who has spent some time in the capital. Kagaya-hime mewed under his touch, panted and writhed and cried out at the end. He released, and her body relaxed somewhat; but the itch was not gone. It burned on, and she left him quickly, to pace the slopes above the village of gen, trying not to howl.
12. The Mashi-Hemp Notebook
Did I decide to run away, or was it fated from my birth and before? Was this boldness unique to me, or have other princesses tried? Do all women run from their fates? Do all men? I am old now; I am dying. I still do not know.
To get rid of Shigeko, I faked an indisposition of the bowels—not such an unlikely thing, after my vomiting of the day before. I ordered her to leave me alone with a chamber box, and to remove any of my women who might be within hearing distance.
Certainly it was strange for a noblewoman to refuse assistance at such a time, but I have always been self-conscious about such things. I suppose to my women this might be considered the least of my eccentricities.—And even this is gone in these my dying days: I need help more than I need my pride, it seems.
In any case, Shigeko withdrew to a distance that, if not quite out of earshot, was still distant enough to offer the illusion of privacy, which is as much as a princess can expect.
What would I need to run away? I looked down at my robes of rose and pale blue-green—eleven layers of stiff silk, not to mention the sashes and cords and the amber gauze Chinese-style jacket—and my hakama-trousers, so long that I stepped on them when I walked. I would need clothing, obviously, something not so obviously regal. Clogs for walking. Food, I supposed: fruits, perhaps, or rice balls.
“I am running away,” I whispered to myself. I felt cunning as a monkey, full of possibility. I opened a trunk (the bound-cedar trunk with the bronze chrysanthemum lock; we emptied that one and sent it away more than a month ago) looking for clothing, and found rolls of unsewn silk in autumn colors. Useless. The next trunk held old monogatari tales, left over from my childhood.
I opened a dozen trunks, I think. I’m not sure what Shigeko thought of the noise from my rooms—for she must have been near enough to hear the thumps and scraping. I thought, really, I must clean these out sometime, and then laughed aloud, converting the sound to a realistic groan. Let Shigeko empty them.
It was the monkey’s hour—midafternoon. Soon my women would come to me, find me robes for the last night of my wedding, feed me anise-water and ginger hoping to ease my indisposition. Come on, come on, I breathed, panicky now, not sure whether I was more afraid they would stop me, or catch me looking like a fool.
A small trunk held summer robes. It was daunting to think of changing all my robes without assistance, so I stripped off all but two of my rose-colored under robes. None of the robes in the trunk matched properly, but I selected three in shades of pale gold, in a rough gauze that I thought looked rather countrified. This made me laugh, even through my nervousness: I did not often care about my robe combinations, but now people—strangers—might see me.
The men tied their hakama-trousers up and out of the way of their feet when they played at archery games or kemari; but I had never seen just how this was done. I eventually contrived something with cords I pulled from two scrolls. The silk clumped in unruly bunches at my knees and ankles, but at least my feet were bare. I tied my hair into a heavy club that hung over one shoulder and down to my waist. I would have to steal a hat and some clogs at the gate—and food, wherever I could find it, for there was nothing to eat here, and I did not feel much like calling an attendant.
I had a notion that people traveling carried things with them, in little bundles on their backs. Clothes, I supposed, and—writing materials, perhaps. Books? The room was a tangle of fabric and carved wood and paper, heaped knee-deep in places. I should bring a sutra, I knew; then, if I stumbled into a monastery, I could at least become a nun. But didn’t they demand that a novitiate bring presents? I knew noblewomen always did so.
My bare foot was hot. I looked down and saw that the sun had moved while I was fretting, and a tiny square of light had crawled onto my toes. I clumped up a second set of summer robes with my notes on mantises and an unused ink stone and brush. I needed an ink stick still, and more paper, and—No time, I thought, and ran.
Poor child. I was thirty, but that seems so young to me now. Run away, and you leave the tiger behind you, where you can no longer see it—and it is still faster than you. Unpleasant truths are there whether you look at them or not. I did not realize this yet. Death is like this, and I find I face it better than I ever did my marriage.
Shigeko must have seen me slip from my rooms. Perhaps she thought I threw on these mismatched robes to creep to an outhouse, where I could be ill in true privacy. This is a question I have never asked her: Did you know?—For if she knew, and let me go, anyway—well, this is a Shigeko I have not imagined.
It is late and she is asleep on the other side of the crab-painted screen, the snore she has developed over the years as familiar as my pulse. I could awaken her and ask, this and a thousand other questions I suddenly realize I have never been arrogant or courageous enough to ask. But sleep is as precious as silver to old women—and perhaps my courage (or arrogance) is not what it once was. I will leave her to sleep.
I had no plans that day, except away. The boy would come for the third night, and there would be more of those hopelessly inane poems, but I would not be there. I would be free—free of him, of the poems, of a world that had more interest in robe combinations than moths’ wings. Away.
Panic and excitement feel the same; I could not tell which was stronger in me. I padded down the walkway to the west gate—the path the boy had taken at dawn. What was he feeling just now, in whatever rooms he laid claim to? Was he lonely, even as he fended off the well-meant advice of older, more experienced attendants? Did he long to flee? For a moment I entertained myself with the idea that neither of us might show up for the third night, that many years later we might meet again. We would laugh over our disastrous wedding, a wise old nun and a clever monk. But I could not reconcile this with the gawky boy who had taken me so angrily at dawn.
As a child I had many times tried to escape my residence to join the boys at their games. I was not often successful, though the gardener-boys had shared with me their secret paths: a break in the east wall, a conveniently bent plum tree that overhung the north wall. But that was years before; surely the gaps had been plugged, the tree pruned. The boys would have found new escapes by now. In any case, I was grown: larger, harder to conceal, not so quick to crawl under walkways or up trees.
But I had an advantage. Children are expected to run away. See a child somewhere she does not belong, and you know she is escaping from something unpleasant, and should be sent back to it, whatever it is. But an adult found somewhere unexpected—and, in my case it was the kitchen garden: really, I had no idea how many different plants we eat!—is assumed to be lost.
I was picking my way along a walkway cluttered with baskets of dirty greens when a voice snapped, “What are you doing here?”
I jumped and whirled. A young woman knelt among something leafy and dark green; her indigo-and-white cottons and her dirty feet and hands had concealed her somehow, made her a part of the lengthening shadows that stretched across the vegetable beds. “Oh, you’re
from the north wing,” she said, and flushed. “I’m sorry, my lady, I shouldn’t have been so—You’re looking for the way out, aren’t you?”
I nodded, afraid to trust my voice. Did she recognize me? I had nothing to do with my uncle’s servants; she would never have seen my face. She could hardly imagine I was the princess Harueme, barefaced and alone along the radishes. She said nothing more, only led me to the servants’ eastern gate, which I had never seen before, even as a child.
The little gatehouse was crammed to the eaves with straw hats and rain capes, and bits of wood that to my inexperienced eye might have been anything. She offered me a basket-shaped hat that covered my head on all sides, nearly to my jawline. The weave was coarse enough that I could see through it: yet another screen between me and the world, I thought. She eyed the clogs I’d found next to a storeroom entrance, for so long that I was afraid she recognized them, but she said nothing.
“Watch out for rain,” she said, and waved me past the bored-looking guardsman. I could have embraced her, this excellent woman who had no interest in me. Instead we exchanged smiles, and I stepped past the guard and into Nij avenue. Away.
Did she know who I was? Later, when the story could not be concealed, did she realize? Did she care? Perhaps I am not the only one who has run away from my life. Perhaps she had tried, or dreamt of it. Perhaps everyone does.
“Shigeko?” I ask, “Did you ever wish you were somewhere else?”
“Where?” she asks. She is awake now, and feeding an old scroll of bad poetry into a brazier. She amuses herself by trying to burn it as a single long roll without setting fire to her sleeves.
“Anywhere. Away.”
“Ah.” She nods wisely. I have not shown her this tale I write, but I think she can guess at least some of what I write from the questions I ask her, or whichever notebooks we’ve recently unearthed. “Oh!” Distracted, the flames have licked at her fingers, and she drops the entire roll onto the coals. They flare up, and we watch nervously, two small girls afraid that they will set fire to the eaves. The flames die down. We sigh in unison.
“Never,” she says.
“Really?” I say a little enviously. “Why not?”
She blushes. “I was well content here, with you.”
It is my turn to blush. Perhaps I will show her these notebooks I write.
The night before the battle at the village of gen.
“We’re outnumbered,” Takase said. He sat with Kitsune and his captains at a fire laid in the center of the farmhouse’s kitchen yard, a place high enough that the ground had drained. The fire was large, not for warmth but to keep off mosquitoes, and the bitter smoke eddied into their eyes as they spoke. Takase had ordered Kagaya-hime to stay close to camp that night, and she fidgeted restlessly outside their circle, pulling an eagle-fletched arrow through her fingers, again and again. “Ideas? I have no desire to die without getting something accomplished first.”
“Night attack is useless,” a captain said. Abe no Norit’s warriors camped at a temple just north of the village. The temple grounds were surrounded with a high wall of tree trunks set upright in berms of mountain rocks. The monks inside, hardened by robber gangs and the almost constant fighting that Mutsu province seems to breed, were at least as warlike as those near the capital. So: it was unwise to launch a surprise attack on the sleeping camp.
Other ideas were tossed back and forth. Sharp-eyed archers in the mountains could cut down the enemy during the battle, but Takase did not have so many men that he could spare even a few from combat. This was also the problem with sending a small force to assault the Abe from behind; in either case it was unlikely that the Abe would be caught unawares. The rice fields above the valley were still filled with water; if the war band’s attendants broke down the terraces the field would be flooded, but there was not enough water to do more than swamp the fighting ground fetlock-deep with mud—and it was already close to that, after two days of heavy rains.
“What else?” Takase said.
From behind the circle Kagaya-hime spoke. “Sheathe our claws.” Few men from the north had seen a cat, and none knew of this ability they have. But Takase knew cats, and had seen this. “Go on,” he said.
She stepped through the circle, and stood beside the fire at its center. “You are smaller than they, yes?”
Takase nodded, eyes tight—though there was no saying whether this was because of the smoke, or annoyance, or the pain of his unhealing wound.
“Then there will be no bite to the back of the neck. You must trick them.” She curled her back a little, remembering the feel of defiance. “Look larger than you are. Look fierce, and you may not be worth it.”
The captains muttered among themselves, but Takase held up a hand. “We cannot look larger: by now they know how many we are. We can look fierce, but that won’t stop them. Not this time. What else?”
She stared out over the heads of the council. “The hind legs are what kill,” she said absently. “Your front claws pull them close, and then you gut them with your hind legs.”
“What good is this?” one of the captains snapped. “If I want to listen to babbling, I will return to my wife and children.”
Another said, “She shoots well, but—”
“She thinks in ways we do not,” Takase said. “Four legs instead of two; hidden knives until they’re needed. Run away; turn to fight. I see a way. Summon your chief attendants.”
“The servants?” a captain said.
“The standard bearers, the grooms—yes, the servants. They have claws and teeth, just as we do,” Takase said. “And I have orders for them.”
So often we forget the servants. I say, “I was alone,” as if I walked or read or slept out of sound of voices, isolated. I may say, “I have spent my life alone,” but this is a lie—more of a lie than it would be for the baby in a family of six. I am never alone. Except for a handful of times in my life, the closest I have been is in the outhouses, and even then (unless I give orders otherwise) there is someone within earshot, just in case. There were always other women, and there is always Shigeko. Even when we were younger and she or I left court because of our monthly courses, I knew she was there, like the roof over my head at night, like the wind I breathed.
We share much, Shigeko and I. We have shared books, and laughed at the monogatari tales’ excesses, or the egregious lies in certain court diaries that have fallen into our hands. She has corrected my paintings of insects and moths and mice with her own delicate brush. She drew the line at millipedes, but she held dead birds for me, even though touching them was impure, so that I could better observe an outstretched wing or the tiny feathers that ringed their eyes.
She knows my face better than I do: has plucked my eyebrows and painted the new ones on since I was barely a woman. It was she who knew my monthly courses, and told me when I would be well advised to retire from court, or to avoid pale fabrics. She has held me more times in the night than any lover, than even my nurse.
Do we share, or does she share? She has aided me in all these things, but what would she read if left to herself? Soon enough she need read nothing (save sutras) she does not care to. What books and scrolls will she beg to have sent from the capital? More: what will she think about? What favorite foods of mine will she gladly stop eating? Which women (and men) of the court will she drop acquaintance with?
—When I wrote those words, she was kneeling across from me, staring absently into space, one long hand holding her place in a scroll that (I realized) I didn’t recognize. “What are you reading?” I asked her. Had I ever asked this before? I must have—five and forty years is a long time: most questions are asked in such a time—but I cannot remember ever hearing her response. It is true that most of us are more interested in our asking a question than in the answer: this must be even worse for a princess.
“It is nothing, my lady,” she said. “Do you need something?”
“No; except to know your answer.”
“We
ll, then,” she said, a little defiantly. “Poetry.”
Poetry? I hate poetry, I managed not to say. She had heard me say it a thousand times, in any case. I was curious, yes? I wanted to discover what was inside Shigeko’s mind, not my own. “Tell me what you see in it,” I said.
“But you hate poetry,” she said.
“You have listened to me for the reigns of five emperors,” I said. “I can listen to you this once.”
So she spent the afternoon explaining what she sees in it. Her observations were not the clever interpretations of image and meaning I expected. She told me, This one reminds me of when I was ten, and: My first lover used to recite this in bed. I won’t write everything she told me. They are her stories to tell if she chooses, not mine.
After a time, I said, “Do you keep notebooks?”
“Yes,” she said, and laughed a little, as if embarrassed. “I started when I was a child. I suppose there must be a hundred of them by now.”
“Really,” I said. Amazing.
“Or were,” she added. “I’ve been destroying them. I won’t need them in Kasugano, my lady.”
And, old woman that I am, I cried. I haven’t cared about the burning of my own notebooks, but I had a thousand objections to her burning hers. What parts of herself has she hidden away or destroyed, only for my convenience? And now I may never know them.—Unless I ask, of course.
How could I have forgotten? Shigeko is more than an accessory in my life, a trunk I put things in, a notebook to record my thoughts. She is, and has always been, herself.
The war band’s men set watch and sharpened their weapons and drank cold sake, and talked.
Armies have a fudoki of sorts. There are tales stretched so far as to become lies, familiar jokes a thousand times repeated, a list of the names of those now gone and how they died. There are childish pranks played (a hat marker replaced with a nonsense name, Prince Rabbit-toes or My Lady Blue-loins; an arrow’s fletching changed from hawk feathers to rows of white down), and these, too, become part of the army’s tale.