by Fuyumi Ono
Part Five
Chapter 32
[5-1] Shushou opened her eyes.
She drew a breath and felt a fierce ache in her chest. But she was able to sit up so she couldn’t be injured that badly. The only illumination in the dimly-lit cave came from high overhead.
“At least I’m alive,” she said, staring up at the sliver of light leaking through the crack in the massive rock walls.
Although she spoke in barely a whisper, her voice echoed off the surrounding stone. She must be at the bottom of a fissure in the shoulder of the bluff. She could speak and see. It hurt when she moved, but she could move. Her injuries were confined to scrapes and bruises.
“That is a surprise.”
When the youma, turned into a raging ball of fire, faced her and raised its forelegs, Shushou was sure she was finished.
On one side of the cavern, a big round boulder slanted down from the stone wall. Opposite it, two boulders piled atop each other to form a stepped slope. Beneath the slanting fissure formed by the two walls of rock, wisps of dead, dry grass had collected over the eons, forming a thick carpet over the damp earth. The space was a bit wider than Shushou could stretch out lying down.
She got to her feet, placed her hand on the sloping wall, and peered up. The crack in the ceiling was bigger than she’d thought at first. The protruding boulder continued without a break, meaning it emerged above the ground. Water running beneath the boulder had carved out the opening.
“Huh,” Shushou exclaimed, and climbed the stone staircase. The boulders were smooth and mossy and dusted with dry grass but she made her way to the top without falling once.
She poked her head out of the hole and was bathed in warm sunlight. Right outside the hole, the base of the boulder was hollowed out like a big grinding mortar, the pit overgrown with weeds. Shushou grabbed a thick clump of grass and hauled herself out of the hole.
Lying on this circular patch of wild lawn, her spirits lifted. She looked up at the blue sky, took a deep breath, and stood up. She hoisted herself out of the depression and pushed through a thicket of bushes. The broad savanna reached out before her.
It was a scene she’d become well-accustomed to the past several days: the undulating land shimmering beneath the sun, parched patchworks of white rock and earth interrupted by great expanses of shrubbery and grasslands. Far in the distance she could make out the edge of a forest.
She scanned her surroundings and didn’t recognize a thing. Not a human being. Not Kiwa’s abandoned wagon.
What to do? Shushou thought as she clambered atop the big boulder. The apex formed a flat shelf of rock perched not very high above the savanna. From that vantage point, the wrecked wagon was nowhere in sight.
The youma had somehow snagged her with its claws and carried her off to who knows where. One sleeve of her kimono jacket was torn all the way up to the shoulder. So the youma must have caught her by the sleeve and taken her along for the ride until it ripped free.
She fell into the pit and tumbled down into the gap between the boulders and the earth. That was the only thing that made sense.
“What a stroke of good luck—for the time being, anyway.”
That stroke of good luck surely saved her, except that right now she had no idea where she was. Or where the rest of the Shouzan was—or rather, the servants left behind by those going on the Shouzan. Not to mention that she didn’t have any food or water. More reasons not to be so upbeat about the situation.
She tore a strip of fabric from the ripped sleeve and tied it to the bush. With the pitted boulder so marked, she decided to do a little scouting around.
“I couldn’t have gotten so lucky if that youma was still alive. It definitely must be dead.”
She was additionally fortunate that every other youma so feared the monkey demon they’d think twice about wandering about these parts. She could put worries about youma out of her mind for now.
Her shadow stretched out on the ground. She didn’t feel like she’d slept that long but evening must be approaching. After memorizing the shape of the boulder, she walked straight away from it. She still couldn’t see the wagon.
Any further and the boulder would sink out of sight beneath a knoll. She kept going until it was barely visible and using that distance as her radius, traced a wide circle around it. The wagon remained out of view. She tried calling out and craning her ears for a response. There was no answer, nothing like a human voice.
“I might be in more trouble than I thought.” She should go back to the road, if she had the foggiest idea where the road was. “Everybody always says when you get lost, you should stay right where you are.”
The problem was whether anybody was searching for her in the first place. She’d been carried off by the youma. It’d be logical for them to conclude that she was dead, give up, and keep going. That’s what they’d been doing so far. Anybody who went missing was considered long gone by the time anybody noticed. Sticking around waiting for them to show up was the dumbest thing they could do.
“I guess the only thing I can do is go as far as I can.”
She examined the arm exposed by the torn sleeve. Though it hurt, she wasn’t bleeding anywhere. The flesh wasn’t torn. More evidence that the youma’s claws had snagged only the fabric of her kimono. The beast carried her for miles like that. It was hard to believe.
If she could only get back on the road again she could surely catch up with the rest of the caravan.
“There’s nothing left for me to do but try.”
She nodded to herself. After making her way back to the big boulder, she piled up some rocks, stripped a branch from a nearby bush, and planted it in the rocks like a flag.
“I should be able to keep this boulder in sight.”
As long as she didn’t lose sight of it, the cavern would never be out of her grasp. The bottom of the cave was damp enough that if she dug down, she might hit water.
Based on the position of the sun and the shape of the land, she started off in the direction that struck her vaguely as the most likely to yield results, counting her steps as she walked. With the boulder still in view, she heaped some rocks into another mound.
She walked further, gathered more stones and built another mound. By leaving these markers along the way, she could make her way back to the boulder. The shadows grew longer. The sun was setting. She built her fourth mound, her fifth, and walked as far as she could keeping the last one in sight—
And gave up. She must be headed in the wrong direction.
She trudged back to the boulder. This time she headed out along a line exactly opposite, doing the same thing she had before. And with the same depressing results.
The sun had set by the time she returned to the boulder. The gray veil of evening settled across the savanna. But she didn’t have a way of starting a fire and had nothing to eat or drink.
“If I abandon hope now, I’m dead,” she said aloud, doing her best to convince herself as she sat on the boulder and rested. She waited for the crescent moon to rise and set off walking again.
Searching for stones in the moonlight presented a vexing challenge, not to mention the difficultly in seeing the way ahead, which meant she had to build the mounds all the more frequently.
It was nighttime now and her current direction was yielding her nothing. Neither did her next attempt. On her third try, having walked as far as she could from the fifth mound, she spotted the outlines of Kiwa’s wagon off in the distance.
Shushou didn’t see any campfires and didn’t sense any people in the vicinity. “What a heartless crew,” she grumbled to herself.
But her steps quickened. She darted across the savanna, ran until her breathing grew ragged and her sides hurt. She stopped.
“Huh—?”
The only thing in front of her was an ordinary outcropping of rock, not a wagon. From where she was standing, there was nothing resembling a wagon in view. She whirled around, but the last mound had vanished into the darkness
behind her.
“Oh, wonderful. Now I really am lost.”
Chapter 33
[5-2] Gankyuu looked at the silent, sullen men sitting on the ground. They were a crestfallen bunch, overcome by emotions that straddled the line between anger and despair.
Among them was a middle-aged man by the name of Shoutan. A member of Kiwa’s retinue, he appeared to be the most profoundly discouraged.
Kinhaku took in the group with a vexed expression of his own. “It’s been a whole day since the girl disappeared. We’ve spent all of today looking and haven’t seen hide nor hair of her.”
They’d spent the day searching along a line from the wagon and the fire—used to lure the shuen into the trap—to the sloping side of the bluff the shuen had last been seen racing down.
Before Gankyuu and the others arrived, the remnants of Kiwa’s company had gone over the same ground with a fine-toothed comb. One man even continued down the side of the bluff. He soon caught sight of a flat shelf of rock. It hadn’t occurred to him that the stumpy outcropping of stone might be hollowed out inside, or that a child could easily conceal herself behind one.
So he didn’t walk around it but stood there and called out to her. Of course, she couldn’t have heard him if she was unconscious.
So their focus turned back to the bluff. Supposing the shuen cast her off when it tumbled over the edge of the bluff, she would have fallen onto the hilly slope. It wasn’t steep and was thick with bushes and tall grasses. They clawed through the undergrowth and turned up nothing.
“That means—” Kinhaku said, his voice trailing off.
“Please, go on ahead,” Shoutan said. “I’ll stay behind and resume the search tomorrow. Just leave enough food and water for Shushou-sama and myself.”
“But—”
“When we were abandoned in this wilderness, Shushou-sama was the only one who came back for us. I cannot abandon her the same way we were. Heaven would never forgive me.”
“He’s right,” several others quietly chimed in.
Kinhaku sighed and turned to Gankyuu. “Well, what do you think?”
Gankyuu jerked his chin at Rikou. “Ask him. He’s the one footing the bill.”
Now the center of attention, Rikou grinned. “Let’s do this—we’ll stay. Gankyuu and I began this journey with Shushou, after all. It was the three of us from the start. We’ll find Shushou and bring her to Mt. Hou. That was the plan all along, so everything will be back to normal.”
When Shoutan raised an objection, Rikou interrupted him. “See, we have a haku and a suugu. As soon as we find her, we’ll catch up with you soon enough. Go with Kinhaku and his men and drag your feet the best you can.”
“Drag our feet?”
“Chodai and the others are itching to put as much distance behind them as possible. Slow things down a bit and we shouldn’t get left too far behind.”
“Yes, but—”
“Shushou will be okay. That little kid not only led all these people without a goushi in sight but went on a youma hunt to boot.”
“That’s right,” Shoutan said proudly, prompting a smile from Kinhaku. Shoutan cocked his head to the side. “Though it sure was scary walking at night.”
Kinhaku chuckled. “When moving through wide open areas, you always do it at night. If Gankyuu didn’t clue her in, then she must have thought it up on her own. She has a good head on her shoulders. I don’t think we need to worry too much about her.”
He said to the rest of the seated men, “Speaking of which, lets make as much progress as we can manage before daybreak. Shushou will be safe in the capable hands of the shushi master. But with Chodai taking the lead and a rattled Kiwa racing to Mt. Hou behind him, our first priority is join up with them and pull back on the reins a bit.”
Shoutan nodded at length. “All right,” he said.
Around him people were getting to their feet. Kinhaku gave Gankyuu a relieved look. In reply, Gankyuu raised his hands and muttered in exasperation, “What a farce this turned into—”
“Shushi usually cross the Yellow Sea in small bands, don’t they?” Rikou soothed him. “Just like old times, eh?”
“The old times never included bringing a couple of amateurs along for the ride.”
“Since I’m the boss here, there’s no point arguing about it. What do we do next?”
“Build a fire and take a nap. There’s no sense looking for somebody except in the full light of day. If we’re lucky, she’ll see the firelight and saunter right up to us.”
“I wouldn’t bet against her doing just that.”
Chapter 34
[5-3] The remaining members of Kiwa’s company left with Kinhaku and the goushi. Gankyuu and Rikou stayed behind. They slept resting against their kijuu—that had swapped owners—awoke at daybreak and made breakfast.
“Shushou doesn’t have food or water. Would there be a watering hole around these parts?”
“If you dug a well, I suppose.”
Rikou scanned the environment around them. “Considering the extent of yesterday’s search, there’s certainly nothing on that slope below the cliff.”
Gankyuu cast him a puzzled look. “You are—how should I put this—an odd duck.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. Who are you exactly? I never have gotten a satisfactory answer to that question.”
“A simple traveler.”
Gankyuu smirked. “What I thought you’d say. And why is a simple traveler so intent on finding Shushou?”
“What? You’d leave her behind?”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
“You’re a hard man, Gankyuu. But despite everything, right up to today, you’ve stuck with the caravan.”
Despite everything, Gankyuu echoed to himself.
“When Shushou fired you, weren’t you going to take off on your own and go hunting? Why are you still sticking around? The bellyaching notwithstanding, I think the girl’s grown on you.”
“Hardly the case,” Gankyuu muttered. “I’ve got reasons of my own. When it comes to hunting, some place are better than others. Sticking around for the time being is simply more convenient.”
“Is it? Well, I’ve got reasons of my own too.”
Gankyuu said with a mighty sigh, “Listen, Rikou—”
Rikou grinned back at him. “That’s crafty of you, Gankyuu, keeping your own true intentions close to the vest while conniving others to open up about theirs. Though if that’s your strategy, you need to work on it.”
“That’s for sure,” Gankyuu said with another sigh. “It’s not like I care all that much about your true intentions. But—”
“But—?”
“I don’t get you. Nothing you do makes a particle of sense.”
“I’ll grant you that. It probably doesn’t.”
“Now and then you come across as a perfect scoundrel.”
“That’s fine by me.”
Confronted by Rikou’s bright, smiling face, Gankyuu held his head in his hands in mock anguish. “You’re the one who took a shine to Shushou and came all the way to the Yellow Sea. And yet, when Shushou ran off with Kiwa, you just let her go. That makes the two of you anything but a pair. You said you held your life too dear. I get that. Then why put your life at risk to go searching for her?”
“Where’s the risk? Shushou hunted down the shuen.” Rikou chuckled. “That girl is something else.”
“With the shuen gone, more youma will be coming to fill the void. If you really valued your life, you wouldn’t be wandering around here. You’d be hitching a ride with Chodai to Mt. Hou. Instead, you left the caravan and even swapped your suugu to go look for her. If she’s worth searching for, why not go with Kiwa in the first place?”
“That’s a problem of a different sort.” Rikou smiled. An amiable smile, to be sure, though Gankyuu was beginning to think it belonged more on the face of a scoundrel.
“I met Shushou in Kyou. The fancy struck me so I helped her out. When I heard she was g
oing to Mt. Hou, I somehow knew that if she made it to Mt. Hou, she would become empress. Perhaps the youngest in recorded history. Like I said, that’s why I came.”
“To see Shushou become empress?”
“Well, that’s the boring way of putting it. To tell the truth, before Shushou was chosen, I was curious to see the Yellow Sea for myself and learn what kind of journey the Shouzan was.”
“So that’s what it comes down to,” Gankyuu said with a sardonic smile.
Rikou laughed aloud. “Sorry, Gankyuu. Whatever you’re thinking right now is probably wrong. I’m not a man motivated by such simple self-interests.”
“Sure, sure. You’ve got reasons of your own.”
“That is correct. I’ve got plenty of ulterior motives up my sleeve. As you said yourself, I’m a man who deals freely with suugu. I do not need an audience with an empress to raise my status or expand my wealth.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“But I did wish an audience with Shushou.”
“Why’s that?”
“Haven’t I explained myself already? It wasn’t my specific help that was critical in this equation. It was that she specifically happened to meet me. And because I was the one she happened to meet, rather than parting ways, I thought it’d be more interesting to forge a friendship out of that happenstance. That’s what it comes down to.”
“An explanation as clear as mud.”
Rikou only grinned. “Sure. That’s what I mean by having reasons of my own. But if Shushou doesn’t become empress, my actions in that regard would be rendered meaningless. Whether to continue on with the koushu or join Kiwa seems to have become a turning point as to whether Shushou will ascend the throne.”
“If she isn’t chosen, it wouldn’t have mattered one way or the other to her.”
“Like I’ve been saying, you’ve got that backwards. If she isn’t chosen, then it has no meaning to me. I came to the Yellow Sea with a set of expectations concerning Shushou. Her ascending the throne will impart substance to those expectations. If she doesn’t, it reduces them to a flight of fancy. I’m not about to lose my life to a flight of fancy.”