Fudoki

by Kij Johnson

  A shout took me by surprise. I did not see who spoke, or where they were. I leapt to my feet and fled the way I had come: the panic of prey. Whoever it was did not follow me, no doubt was interested only in protecting his fields. When I stopped, I waited until my heart stopped hurting in my chest, and then I turned north and east, toward court and my uncle’s residence.

  Three days north and east, following the path of the defeated Abe forces. Takase drove the Osa Hitachi war band hard, hoping to intercept their enemies. In any case there was little to slow them down—no food or horses to claim—for the Abe were as destructive in their flight as the war band ever had been.

  But a band in retreat will always travel faster than those pursuing, and there were tricks the Abe played to slow them down. Takase’s men found a path seeded with jagged iron caltrops half-hidden by dirt and underbrush; three horses and an attendant on foot were injured before they realized what was happening, and it took nearly half a day for the band to work its way past.

  The pursuit crossed a mountain river at the bottom of a small gorge. Rocks and wooded slopes overlooked the gorge: a perfect place for an ambush. Takase sent scouts out to search for Abe archers, but Kagaya-hime and the others found none, and no sign that any had been left behind. The war band broke its loose ranks and threaded across the water one at a time, the men leading their horses up the steep slope opposite. No attack.

  This was repeated at the second river they came to, and the third. By the fourth the scouts were careless (and the archer well hidden); and four men and two horses were struck before Kagaya-hime’s sharp senses showed her the movement in a tree upstream, and she killed the sniper.

  The wind was from the north and east and blew the smoke from the fires set by the Abe straight into the war band, making the horses choke. Men wrapped scarves over their mouths, and the lucky ones, the horsemen, closed their streaming eyes, relying on their mounts to get them through. The smoke was nearly unbearable the first night, when they trampled a field of hemp to the ground to make camp; the village nearby was still alight, the surviving peasants so crazed with grief and rage that they shook their hoes and bear-claw rakes at Takase’s men. When horses panic, mice are trampled; to the mouse, it does not much matter which horse did the trampling.

  By morning the wind had changed, and they were able to make better time, despite the second batch of caltrops.

  Takase had (in his word) “borrowed” a man from gen to tell him the lie of the land. The man, Yui, was tall, strong-armed, and young: enough used to having things his way that he argued with Takase instead of begging. “I have a wife, children. And my fields—haven’t you done enough, without taking away our only chance to survive? I’ll have to replant—”

  “Serve well, or your family will be fatherless as well as fieldless,” Takase had said at his dryest; and took the man.

  Now Takase brought Yui forward. “They’re off the path for their estate,” Takase said. “Where are they going?”

  Yui had become somewhat more accommodating after Takase left five horses for the people of gen, an exchange for the food he took and the trouble. “I’ve been wondering this myself, my lord. There’s not much this way: a hot spring, this crazy old hermit who’s been living under a rock. There used to be a ki-stockade out here; my mother’s sister married a man from a family that kept their mares in what was left of it during foaling. There, maybe.”

  Takase nodded. The ki-stockades had been bases for the men who conquered the northern barbarians a century and more ago. So long ago; but the dirt walls and earthworks might still be in place. There would have been great logs set upright to make a spiked wall; even if it had collapsed, most would not have rotted away. A good place to fight from—a place where the battle would not destroy your crops, nor frighten your animals into flight. “How far to the stockade?” Takase asked.

  Yui pursed his lips. “Ten, twelve miles. In land like this, a group like yours—a day’s travel. A little more for the injured to catch up.”

  It was the monkey’s hour, midafternoon. Arriving after dark was not a good idea. “Have you seen it?” Takase said.

  “When I was a boy, once,” Yui said.

  Takase said, “We will stop here, and move tomorrow.”

  I went back, of course. Kagaya-hime may be strong enough and resourceful enough to find her own way, but I was the daughter and sister of emperors, and in the final reckoning, this turned out to be less useful than being able to find your own food, and knowing how to sleep safe and warm.

  I was lost, but I found the Red Sparrow gate and then recognized Seisenden park across Nij avenue. I had been there a number of times, though always at night; by daylight it looked tawdry, full of rubbish people had dumped there. I stumbled around the northeast quarter until I recognized a thunder-struck magnolia that I had passed many times on my trips between my uncle’s residence and court. I’d never seen the entire tree. I rode in palm-leaf carriages for the (I saw now) short journey; the magnolia had never been more than slivers and squares, glimpsed through the woven walls or the grille at the carriage’s front. It was larger than I had imagined, the patterns of its burning more complex. Hidden in my cloud of carefully mixed scents, I had not smelled its earthiness: charcoal and bark. I laid my hand on it, and then my cheek. There, I thought. I will go back, but I will always have this with me.

  Another block. Another. My uncle’s residence and grounds filled a city block. I walked around it—four identical walls—and I saw seven gates. This was a problem I hadn’t even considered. I didn’t remember what the servants’ gate looked like, so I could not slip back in unnoticed—even supposing it were possible. Had that guardsman been disgraced?—that woman, the one who had wished me good luck, turned away from her work? How could I not recognize my own gate, the gate my carriage had entered and exited a thousand times? All those years, and I had never actually looked at it, always thinking of something else. I knew I might slip into any gate, but the last thing I wanted was to enter the one my uncle and cousin used most often and possibly meet them. It would be hard enough to deal with their anger without stumbling into it unprepared, unwashed, and unfed.

  And whichever door I entered, there would be guards. They would see me looking like this. I would have to tell them who I was, since they’d never seen my face; and then I would have to wait there, ragged and barefaced, until one of my women came and got me. I would be a mockery.

  I had run away from my marriage; humiliated my future husband, my family, and even, perhaps, my half-brother Shirakawa; disgraced myself by behaving like a peasant, a child, a badly trained dog. By now, the entire court would be aswarm with this scandal. All this, and what I was really worried about just then was a servant laughing at me. I straightened my shoulders and limped to the nearest gate.

  There are not many mercies in this world, and they all seem to be small ones—hot wine on a cold day, fresh-washed hair, a kaze-cold that finally lets go. It was a little-used gate, and there was only one guard, and he too young for me to take seriously. I stepped onto the covered walkway, kicking off the hated ill-fitting clogs. Young maybe; but I still could not quite bring myself to meet his eyes. “Please find Shigeko for me,” I said, my face averted to inspect the blisters on my feet. He hesitated a moment, probably worried about leaving his post unattended, then he was gone, feet drumming across the gardens toward the north wing, my wing.

  I tipped my head back, looking into the small eaves of the gate. In the eaves’ light I saw movement: a spider, one of the brown-and-silver ones I had called in my notes (when I was still interested in spiders) Lady Teishi, for a woman at court who favored those colors and displayed certain familiar characteristics. And there was a fly the iridescent purple-green of crow feathers, caught in the spiderweb: trapped. The web was too high to reach, and there was nothing to stand on. “I am sorry,” I whispered to the fly. “I cannot help you.”

  More feet drumming: lighter sounds this time, women’s bare feet running on walkways. T
hen the gateway was crowded with women laughing and crying and talking: “We thought we’d lost you, my lady, that you were drowned, murdered, assaulted.” One of the women had snatched up a robe, and she threw it over my filthy clothing—a gesture that would have been even more thoughtful, had the robe not been one they were stitching together, and had both sleeves been in place. Another threw a scarf over my head; another fell to her knees and touched my blistered feet with soothing cool hands, exclaiming.

  Shigeko said nothing and helped the other women not at all. She stood a little aside watching all this, her hands tucked in her sleeves. I thought perhaps she was angry until I saw tears slip from her jaw, and leave widening circles on the collars of her robes.

  Another mercy: my uncle and cousin were away from the house just then, no doubt at court or my husband-to-be’s house, trying to find me or (more likely) to contain the scandal. I returned to my rooms. My women bathed me and combed the dirt from my hair and clothed me in clean silk. They fed me ayu-trout and little salted birds, and rubbed herbs onto my blisters, and then they left me to sleep in my familiar little enclosure. I fell asleep immediately, and awoke once, when I felt Shigeko’s tears on my hand, and heard her voice whispering, “Never leave me again. Please.”

  I was let off lightly. I had caught a kaze-cold while I was running away—convenient since my uncle had told the boy (and, the next day, his insulted and infuriated family) that I had been taken suddenly, frighteningly ill, and that all anyone could do was pray that I lived. Within a day, I was sent out of town, to recover somewhere no one could report on my true state of health.

  “We will attempt to patch things up with his family,” my uncle said before I left. “My lady,” he snapped as an afterthought; for I was still a princess, after all.

  “I will not marry him,” I said, and coughed.

  “If you do not marry him,” he said, “or he does not want you, you will become a nun, and there won’t be any more of this childishness. My lady.”

  “Out,” Shigeko said. “My lord. The healers have said she must not be disturbed.” She had no authority over this man—quite the contrary—but she has a certain way of speaking that I think would bring all the demons of Hell into an eager, servile line.

  And out he went. And by sunset, off I went, to the temple at Uji.

  Uji, while distant enough from the capital to be considered exile (and for most of us, this means anywhere outside the walls, with the possible exception of our summer homes on Biwa lake), was close enough for frequent visits from anyone with a carriage and half a day free, so I had a number of visitors from court. Since I was in disgrace (or might be, anyway; there had been no formal statements, of course, but I had fled the city, a sure sign that someone thought I was in disgrace) their visits were purportedly to leave offerings at the temple; but their perfunctory prayers were followed by long visits in my rooms.

  My uncle and cousin were frequent visitors, though it was clear they could barely speak to me, so angry were they at the failure of their plan—for my erstwhile husband’s family expressed no desire to overlook the slight. Visits with them varied between icy silence meant to express displeasure; bitter animad-versions on the ruin I had wreaked on their family, my good name, my half-brother’s and nephew’s patience, and the court’s sympathy; and furious shouting: what had I been thinking? Was I mad?

  I knew they could not see me well through the screens, so I learned to slip a small notebook into my sleeve, to have something to read during these visits: if they had nothing useful to say, I saw little reason to attend carefully. I actually read all the way through the Diamond Sutra in this fashion, which I am sure did more for my soul than any remorse they might have hoped to engender.

  My nephew Horikawa was emperor by now, but I heard nothing from him beyond a short note expressing regret that “illness” had taken me from the city. It meant nothing, though it was well expressed; my nephew was always very elegant in his phrasing. My half-brother and I exchanged many short letters. I ached to be the little girl who could tell him all and then cry on his shoulder, but we were adults now. Nothing was stated clearly anymore. Our obliquities depressed me, and I stopped reading his letters, leaving them to Shigeko.

  Shigeko behaved with kindness and restraint throughout all this. I was grateful, for I think a harsh word from her would have broken down my careful strength, and left me crying for a hundred days.

  In many ways, my life changed little. One set of walls looks very like another; a set of chrysanthemum-colored robes do not lose their intensity when one is disgraced. My women were still with me, if somewhat prone to weeping as they served. Shigeko still oversaw them all, and harassed the temple’s cooks into providing meals not appreciably different from those at court. The temple was a prosperous one, and its courtyards were as elegant as anything at home—and better maintained, for there were a vast number of young, otherwise useless acolytes set to such things as removing fallen leaves from the graveled areas.

  I developed quite a liking for the abbot of this place. He was a cousin of some sort, but had gone into the temple so young that I had met him only a few times, when we were both young. He had grown into a witty, articulate man, and he visited often. We discussed doctrine whenever he felt compelled to do so by his position; but mostly we played sugoroku-backgammon and gossiped about mutual acquaintances.

  There was a day when we spoke of life at court: my nephew the emperor’s flute-playing; the rain in the galleries; the mice that seemed to be everywhere; the snow-mountains my half-brother and his consort oversaw a winter ago, before he had retired. When we were done, the abbot said, “I am told you are to stay, and we would gladly offer you shelter from the annoyances of court if you wish it. But you don’t belong here, do you?”

  “No,” I said, in that moment wishing I did. “Not yet.”

  “I will see what I can do.” He left me; eight days later, my half-brother wrote requesting my company at the i residence, one of his homes. The emperor my nephew could not have done this: he was too young, and not strong in resisting the desires of my uncle—who was still infuriated, and even went so far as to argue with Shirakawa. But Shirakawa had disregarded my uncle’s advice back when he was emperor and my uncle his regent; he had no difficulty in doing so now.

  Shirakawa was everything kind to me, but we did not speak of the failed marriage, nor of why he had rescued me (nor indeed how). After a year, my nephew the emperor summoned me to court, and except for a private coldness on my uncle’s and cousin’s part, life returned to what it was.

  Some years later, I saw the boy I was supposed to marry, when he was grown and wed to a niece of mine. We did not speak directly, but I overheard enough of his conversation to learn that he grew up well mannered, polite, and kind—everything I had tried to comfort myself with when I still thought I must marry him. In spite of this, I went back to my rooms that night, and wept with gratitude that I had not married.

  I asked my half-brother once why he had brought me back without urging that I reconcile with the boy. “Why should you marry him?” he said. “It seemed foolish to punish you for not wishing to do something you hadn’t chosen in the first place.” I thought then that, himself a retired emperor and constrained by ritual and the demands of others as I was, he sympathized with me for the restrictions of my life, and offered this one small freedom, the right not to marry someone I did not choose for myself.

  But now I think that he also understood about Dmei.

  14. The Bamboo-Paper Notebook

  The ki-stockade was near the Abe’s main estate, but sturdier and better-placed for launching or defending against an attack. The stockade was small, just large enough for six buildings and a courtyard with a square well. It has been a long time since the northern barbarians have been a nuisance to anyone but themselves, so the place had been abandoned, and the thatched roofs and even some of the original walls were gone. The walls around the stockade were a rank of tree trunks upended into earthworks; it was
obvious that many of these had tipped and been repositioned, for there were signs of hasty construction everywhere. Several of the upright logs were new, so fresh that green leaves still hung from the scars left by lopped-off branches.

  The Abe had nearly a day in the ki-stockade before the war band arrived: enough time to throw up hasty entrenchments and create sturdy platforms behind the upended logs, high enough for archers to fire over the walls. When the war band approached the stockade, arrows whistled down, and curses; and when they got closer, large stones and boiling water, though Takase’s men were not near enough for these to have any effect.

  The only injury was someone who had not tightened the laces on his armor since the battle at gen; an arrow slipped through a gap and lodged itself in his shoulder.—And the men’s pride, of course. No one likes having things thrown at them, especially if one cannot retaliate.

  The war band withdrew out of arrow-range. “Fine,” said Takase, and set the men to establishing two camps on the little plain around the stockade, one on each side, both just out of range.

  Takase sent Kitsune and a squad to explore Abe no Norit’s estate; Kagaya-hime rode along. They found it abandoned by anyone of rank, none but peasants and servants left to defend the tumble-down walls—for what country estate does not have collapsed walls? There is always something better to do with one’s time: mares to foal, crops to oversee, stories to share; sleep. Walls keep some (but not all) animals out, and they offer a certain sense of protection from robbers and undefined enemies, but they do little more. A single enemy within the walls makes them frail as grass.