Heart of the Ronin

by Travis Heermann

  “Kazuko,” Hatsumi began, then paused.

  “What is it?”

  “It is difficult to speak of such things.”

  “What is it? We can talk about anything, can’t we?”

  Hatsumi kept her voice carefully neutral, perhaps matronly. “I know you have feelings for him, Kazuko, and if it embarrasses you to talk about it, I’m sorry.” Kazuko blushed deeply, just as Hatsumi expected. “But you must listen to me. You mustn’t fall prey to those feelings. You must put them aside.”

  Kazuko looked away, her eyes glassy with tears.

  “You are meant for a better man than him,” Hatsumi said. “You must guard against those feelings, cast them out. I know it is painful. I only wish to spare you more pain. You and this man cannot be together.”

  Hatsumi paused, waiting for Kazuko to respond, but the girl lowered her gaze to a spot at her feet, unmoving.

  “Your father would not approve.”

  Kazuko stiffened, but still said nothing.

  “You must listen to me. You are too free with your love, my dear. It has already caused you trouble.”

  Kazuko’s gaze snapped up to stare at her. “What do you mean?”

  “I think you know what I mean.” Hatsumi kept her voice kind, but firm.

  Kazuko sniffed and looked away. “I know no such thing!”

  “I’m sure you remember Yuta, who was so in love with you.”

  Kazuko’s mouth fell open.

  Hatsumi smiled and patted her cheek. “Yes, I knew about him. And I know you had feelings for him, too. You must guard the chambers of your heart and your body, my dear, because they do not belong to you. They belong to your family, to your father. Your feelings have consequences for those you favor with them. If your father had found out about Yuta, the boy’s life might have been forfeit, and you would have been disgraced.”

  Kazuko’s expression changed from surprise to shock and dismay. Tears burst into her glistening eyes, and Hatsumi felt a pang of remorse. “I am sorry, Kazuko, for opening up old wounds. I know you pined for him for a while. But rest assured that it was for the best.”

  “How could you!” Kazuko gasped. “How could you do that to me? For so long I wondered what happened to him, and no one would tell me! And that was your doing?”

  “I’m sorry, my dear. It was for the best. He is alive and well, but far away. And you will never see him again.” Hatsumi looked into her, and saw a storm of emotions, hurt, sadness, and more than a hint of anger. It would take some time for Kazuko to get over this, Hatsumi knew, but she would. She was a resilient girl. “Do not hate me.”

  Kazuko looked for a moment as if she would collapse.

  “Please believe me when I say that it was for the best. It could only have ended badly for everyone. Do you believe me?”

  The girl looked toward the ground, her mouth agape, seeing nothing, tears trickling down her cheeks.

  “Please tell me you will think about what I have said.”

  Kazuko wiped at the tears in her eyes, then she turned away.

  When they returned to the rest of the party, Hatsumi tried to discern the girl’s thoughts. She seemed solemn now, taciturn, with a faint wrinkle visible between her brows. Hatsumi sighed and resumed her place on the stretcher. That expression usually meant that the girl had resolved herself to disobey. Kazuko had a reasonable nature, but she also had a strong will that had never before had cause to be broken. The bitter darkness crept back into Hatsumi’s mood as she contemplated what to do next.

  * * *

  Ken’ishi waited for them on the path, wondering why the kami were whispering to him so incessantly. He looked at Akao to see if the dog was feeling it as well, but he looked calm. Akao stayed close to Ken’ishi. The villagers carrying Hatsumi’s litter made the dog nervous. Ken’ishi’s uneasiness started this morning soon after they departed the last village.

  The dog sensed Ken’ishi’s uneasiness and looked up at him quizzically.

  Ken’ishi said, “The kami are whispering to me. Something is wrong.” For the hundredth time today, his eyes scanned the road, the forest, with the strange sensation of being hemmed in by the closeness of the trees. He sensed danger coming, but could not see from where. When it came, there would be no warning.

  Akao said, “Foolish man. Nothing on the wind. Only her.”

  “Kazuko?”

  “No. Not right. Not good, that other one. Beware.”

  Perhaps that was why the kami were whispering to him so incessantly. Something was wrong with Hatsumi? After that look in her eyes, he could believe that she wished him ill, but what harm could a poor wounded woman do to him?

  When Kazuko and Hatsumi returned to the road, Kazuko was upset. She would not look at him, or at Hatsumi, and her eyes were red as if from weeping. He could only wonder what transpired between them while they were out of sight.

  When Hatsumi was situated on her stretcher once again, Kazuko was terse. “Let us go.”

  They walked for a while in silence again, until he could bear it no longer. “How far?”

  She thought for a moment, and the chilliness of her demeanor seemed to thaw slightly. “Perhaps by this evening.”

  “Are you weary?”

  She nodded.

  “I could carry you.”

  The last of her sadness melted away into a giggle. “Now that would be absurd! You? Carry me?”

  He smiled back. “That is what I wanted.”

  Her smile became a blush, and she bit her lip.

  “A smile,” he said. “All I wanted was a smile.”

  She smiled again, and the conflict and tension he sensed in her was gone.

  “Would you like me to tell you more about my master?”

  She nodded. “Yes, please!”

  “Very well.”

  Seventeen

  Dewdrop, let me cleanse

  In your brief sweet waters . . .

  These dark hands of life

  —Basho

  The eight-year-old boy trudged up the steep mountain path with his bucketful of river water. He had nearly reached the cave, wending his way through the early morning shadows of the towering pine trees. The air was cool and still. The sun had only just appeared, and a still, ghostly mist clung to the ground. He was hungry. He had not eaten yet today. This water would be used to make the rice for his breakfast.

  The blow came out of nowhere as something small and hard ricocheted off the crown of his head. The pain exploded like a burst of hot ashes, and the tears erupted from his eyes. The bucket of water tumbled out of his hand, dumping its contents and bobbling back down the narrow rocky path. He was powerless to stop it, almost paralyzed with pain, curled into a ball on the ground, clutching his pate with both hands. He could hear the bucket bouncing down the mountain. Through the haze of tears, he saw his teacher standing above him, with one gray-feathered hand holding a fresh, green bamboo tube as long as his arm.

  “I’m sorry I dropped the water!” the boy said.

  “Bah! Who cares about the water, monkey-boy! It only turns to piss!”

  The boy stared up at the bird man, trying in vain to read his round, black eyes. The tengu did not move and just stared down at the boy as if expecting something.

  The boy picked himself up and turned to go after the bucket. He heard a deep breath and a puff of air, and another searing pain on his left buttock tore a howl out of him. A smooth round stone the size of his palm landed a couple of paces away. He threw himself down the mountain path, glancing over his shoulder to see Kaa lowering the tube from his mouth. A few step later, he looked again. The path was deserted. The tengu and his tube were gone.

  He stopped and listened. Was his master trying to sneak up on him? He backed down the path, his senses tuned. His pate and his buttock burned with pain, and he rubbed each with one hand.

  He heard another hiss, and another impact tore between his shoulder blades. He squealed like a wounded rabbit and threw himself into the bushes, his back arched with
pain, sobbing. “What have I done?” he cried. “Why are you doing this?”

  Again, the tengu was gone. Had the boy not brought water fast enough? Had he displeased his teacher somehow? He stole out of the bushes, his eyes scanning the path above and below, then he hurried down the slope to where the water bucket had lodged in a thicket. He snatched it up and ran back down the slope toward the river. His teacher had never punished him like this before.

  As he knelt in the shallows of the river with his bucket, he spared a moment for a concerted look around. No one was in sight. He lowered his gaze to fill the bucket. Then he felt a sudden urge to duck. Ducking saved him from the first stone, but not the second. The second glanced off his back, causing little pain. Anger helped dull the pain of the purpling bruises. He spun and saw his master standing thirty paces away along the riverbank, smacking the tube against his palm, grinning. The old bird was fast.

  Kaa said, “You are starting to listen to them. Listen harder.” With that, he spun on his bird-like foot and ran up the trail.

  The boy watched him go, puzzled and hurting. Listen to whom? To what? He was afraid to go back up the mountain. He wanted to crawl into a tiny cave with his back to the wall so that he could see anything that came at him. But if he did not complete his chores, his master might beat him even worse. After a while, the churning hunger in his belly roared anew. If he was to be pummeled with stones, he would prefer a full belly. He picked up his full bucket of water and started up the path, wary as a rabbit in the open. Twice on his way up the mountain, stones whizzed from bushes, so fast they were tiny gray blurs. The first time, he managed to spill only a little of the water. The second time, the water went flying, and the bucket went rolling back down the mountain again. With growing stubbornness, he refilled the bucket and stomped back up the mountain.

  Somewhere nearby, the boy could sense the tengu laughing invisibly, hiding behind a bush or in a tree. His teacher was such a master of concealment that it was like magic.

  It was mid-afternoon before he reached the stone shelf of the cave, and he was so jumpy that he did not want to eat anymore. As the cave came into view, Kaa was sitting in front of the opening with a small fire lit and a pot of rice hanging above it. The boy scowled and winced, trudging with weariness and limping from his many bruises. Kaa stood up. The boy stopped in front of him. The tengu reached out for the bucket. The bamboo tube was on the ground beside him.

  The boy bowed curtly and handed the bucket to him.

  Kaa took the bucket and threw the water in the boy’s face.

  The boy gasped in shock and choked back the mouth and nose full of water.

  “You look hot, monkey-boy,” Kaa said. “You should cool off.”

  The boy gaped before him, speechless and dripping.

  “Now, sit and eat.”

  The boy obeyed and took up the bowl. He ate ravenously, and the tengu watched him.

  When the boy was finished, he followed another sudden urge to duck. The blow that would have clubbed across his ear hissed over his head instead. The boy leaped to his feet and ran away, stopping several paces from his master.

  “Why?” he cried.

  “It is the only way to learn this lesson.”

  “What lesson?”

  The tengu ruminated for a while, and the boy waited for him to speak. “You must listen to them.”

  “Listen? Who?”

  The tengu continued as if he had not spoken. “You must train yourself to listen to the voices of the world around you, the voices of the kami, the spirits that inhabit every breath of air, every rock, every tree. When the kami speak to you, you must listen. They will tell you when danger is coming, if you know how to listen.”

  From that day forward, the boy never turned his back on his teacher. He went around corners and passed trees very carefully, always trying to hear the quiet voices of the spirits of the world. The attacks could come at any time, when he was carrying water, or wood, or sitting in the river bathing. That vicious tube was his nemesis, along with the master's seemingly endless supply of smooth round stones that all seemed to fit perfectly inside the tube. Until he was ten years old, his body wore cratered patterns of red, black, and yellow bruises.

  As time passed, however, the number of marks became fewer. In the early months, whatever he was carrying often went flying as he scrambled for safety, but later he managed to keep a grip on his bucket of water or his bundle of wood.

  His teacher became ever more ingenious at laying ambushes, sometimes waiting submerged under the water while the boy approached with a fishing spear. Wet stones were easier to hear coming, but they hurt worse. The tengu knew the boy’s habits, where he went and when, attacking sometimes from above or below, so the boy changed his habits, taking different paths up and down the mountain at different times. This spared him some bruises. But as soon as the boy tried something new to outwit his master, the tengu found some new way to trick him. The stones flew so fast that the boy suspected him of using magical powers to propel them and to hide in the shape of a bush or a stone. The boy knew every stone, every tree trunk, and every bush on the face of the mountain, but sometimes those things looked different or out of place, and at those times he was the most wary.

  As the marks on his body became fewer, his pride in his ability to avoid them grew. And as his teacher found new ways to inflict pain on him, so his pride in his teacher grew. Kaa was an ingenious old bird, cunning beyond compare. And in those instances of decreasing rarity, the boy was able to match wits with him and avoid the incoming sting. Without a word of instruction, the boy learned the difference between true alertness and mindless panic. He no longer passed by a bush or a tree while thinking of something else. He discovered the Now, and in that Now, he heard the quiet voices of the kami.

  One day when he was ten years old, he was sneaking through the forest, his senses and awareness honed to sliver sharpness, and he came upon his teacher laying in ambush behind a tree, facing the direction from which the boy would have come, if not for his awareness of the kami. The boy felt a strange mixture of pity and jubilation. Pity for his teacher, who now would be dead if the boy had been an enemy, and jubilation that his skills had come to match his teacher’s abilities.

  The boy turned and stole away again, silent as a passing shadow.

  That afternoon Kaa came to him with a strange scowl on his face and placed a wooden sword in his hands.

  * * *

  Ken’ishi was alerted by a sound like thunder on the road ahead.

  Akao stood beside him, bristling, his shoulders hunched into a crouch, a low growl in his throat. “Beware!”

  The forest had given way to fields, and dry rice paddies flanked the road on either side. Farmers worked the soil in the warmth of the late afternoon sun. A few moments after he noticed the sound, a column of mounted samurai rode out of the forest ahead, galloping toward them. One in the front carried a banner, lofted above his head. They bore down upon Ken’ishi and his small procession with startling speed. He stepped in front of Kazuko and gripped the hilt of his sword. Akao edged behind him, peering past his legs, growling softly.

  Kazuko’s voice was filled with relief and happiness. “No, Ken’ishi, those are my father’s men!”

  He took his hand from his sword, but he did not relax. The kami buzzed in his ears like a swarm of cicadas. He stepped away from her, knowing that they might perceive him as a threat to their master’s daughter. These were Nishimuta clan samurai. A few days ago, he had slain one of their brethren. Would news of that deed have reached this far? He thought for a moment about the kind of death that lay in store for him if he was captured, but he did not have long to think before the riders were upon them.

  The column reined up. Its leader was a middle-aged man with grim features, whose eyes flicked back and forth between Kazuko and Ken’ishi. “Lady Kazuko, is it you?”

  Kazuko bowed. “Yes, Captain Sakamoto.”

  “Your return was overdue, so your father sent us to find yo
u. Where is the rest of your entourage?”

  “They are all dead. Bandits attacked us. My bodyguards and bearers were killed. Hatsumi and I were the only survivors.” She gestured toward Ken’ishi. “This brave ronin saved our lives. Captain Sakamoto, this is Ken’ishi.”

  Ken’ishi bowed deeply.

  Captain Sakamoto’s voice dripped with cautious disdain, with an underlying thread of suspicion that put Ken’ishi on guard. “A ronin. Little more than a bandit himself.”

  Kazuko’s voice was firm. “Captain Sakamoto, this man is a brave and capable warrior. After the bandits killed all of my bodyguards, he single-handedly defeated them and slew their leader, an oni. Hatsumi and I would have suffered a horrible fate if not for him. He has been our sole protector.”

  Captain Sakamoto grunted, and Ken’ishi felt the eyes of all the samurai upon him, sizing him up. Sakamoto said, “Forgive me, my lady. He does not look so fearsome as that.”

  Kazuko continued, “I intend to ask my father to take him into service.”

  “As you wish, my lady,” Sakamoto said. “Please allow us to escort you home. I regret that we have no carriage for you. I will send one of my men for a carriage and bearers.”

  “I have walked this far. I will walk the rest of the way.”

  “Is Hatsumi injured?”

  “She was badly hurt by the oni during the attack and cannot walk.”

  “An oni, eh? What did it look like? Was it Hakamadare?”

  Kazuko described the creature.

  Captain Sakamoto’s voice gained a tone of respect. “I have heard tales of this monster and his pack of bandits. They have been attacking villages and travelers across several domains.”

  Kazuko said, “Yes, Captain. The body has been burned to ashes. Its death was neither quick nor easy.”

  For the first time, Sakamoto turned to Ken’ishi. “Then you have done this land a great service, sir. And you have done my lord a great service in the safe return of his only child.”

  Ken’ishi bowed deeply and tried to keep his voice from quavering. “Thank you.” A wave of elation such as he had never felt rushed through him like a warm waterfall. His heart hammered in his breast like the clapping of a water mill. Gooseflesh rippled up and down his arms and legs. He turned to Kazuko and said, “Thank you, Kazuko.”