A Darkly Beating Heart

by Lindsay Smith

  “Because it’s too brittle,” I say. “And you think our life under the shogunate is much the same.”

  “It’s already happening.” His gaze drifts off toward the mountain peaks. “We’re already fracturing into a dozen shards. Some people want the shogunate gone and the emperor returned. Some want to remove the emperor. Some want to trade with the foreigners, others, to kill them all—sonno joi—death to the barbarians, all that rot. Some say we should go to the foreign lands ourselves and conquer them, others, that we should keep to ourselves…”

  As he lists all these conflicting factions, each plucks like a muffled chord inside me. A distant familiarity. I know these things, but how I learned them, I couldn’t say. Was it through Miyu? Through whatever bits and pieces of history I’d managed to accumulate as Reiko? After all, I know how the conflict between the emperor and shogun turns out.

  What would happen if I gave it away? I don’t want to be responsible for altering the course of history, certainly. It hadn’t even occurred to me—is that why I’ve come to the past? To change its fate?

  Don’t be an idiot, Reiko. You can’t change the world. I clench my teeth; it is the truth. I am a nothing girl, a no one, a weed in the cracks of time. But maybe as Miyu, I do have the chance to be someone. If I have the power to become someone powerful. Someone truly in control.

  I take a deep breath and steady myself. “You’re the samurai. The front lines—the shogun’s sword. What is it that you think should happen?” I ask Jiro.

  Jiro laughs his hollow, rattling laugh again. “That doesn’t mean much anymore, either. Do you know?” He pops the hilt of his katana so that I can see a few fingers’ width of blade glinting in the lantern light. “I’ve never even used this in real combat. Only training exercises. Drills. I sit at a desk all day back in Kyoto. I review records and talk to all the other useless bakufu men. The shogunate has brought peace, yes, but back before the shogunate, we had a real purpose.”

  “Sure,” I say. “Because there was more violence. More upheaval.”

  Jiro’s gaze turns brittle. “Maybe that’s the price of progress. Of taking risks. Friction is a natural part of change. Now we have … nothing. We stagnate, and float along. Violence isn’t inherently evil. It’s part of nature,” he says. “Restorative. Cleansing.”

  I hold my breath, letting it burn in my lungs. A dangerous feeling creeps over me when I look at him, a feeling like when I’m making a new cut on the inside of my thigh.

  “Cleansing. Like a forest fire,” I say.

  “Yes.” Jiro smiles softly. “Like that.”

  We both fall silent. I study Jiro—the soft, short lashes that frame his eyes and the subtle slope of his cheeks. The way his nimble fingers play along the diamond pattern on the hilt of his sword. He seems content for now, but with a restlessness beneath it. Maybe he itches to use that sword one day, if he finds a cause righteous enough. He is seeking a purpose.

  I gesture toward the book sitting between us. “Would you … could you read me some of the poetry?”

  Jiro’s cheeks darken; he looks like he is fighting back a grin. “Of course I could. But I—I mean, I’m no actor—”

  “You don’t have to be. I just want to hear the sounds and words. I’m trying to … to understand the world around me better.” To decide if this world really suits me, I think, though I can’t explain that to him. To decide if the possibilities of Miyu’s life are worth continuing Reiko’s life for a little bit longer.

  “Yes. Yes, of course.” Jiro flips through the pages while he clears his throat. “Gracious. This is not the best collection … Well, here we go.”

  He sits up straight and stares hard down into the book.

  The three friends of winter—

  Bamboo, plum, and pine.

  The wind, cold and bitter,

  But inside, warm and ripe.

  Plum to warm our bellies,

  Pine to shield from snow.

  Bamboo to support us,

  As skin begins to glow.

  Both my eyebrows shoot up. Jiro’s cheeks look as warm as embers.

  Your warmth holds me closely,

  Your breath beats my heart.

  The three friends of winter

  Shelter us from harm.

  My skin tingles as his words rippled over me. His voice is cool and flowing, cascading like a waterfall, breaking only as embarrassment trips him up. But he is earnest as he speaks. Enraptured with the words, even if they are a little cheesy. I wonder if I can even explain cheesiness, as a concept, to a nineteenth-century samurai.

  “Well,” I say. “I, ah … I take it that was written by a man, seeing as how a woman would probably get scorned to no end for speaking so frankly.”

  “Yes. Yes, it was.” His whole face is a deep shade of scarlet now. “Actually, ah … that’s one of my own works.”

  The wind rushes out of me. A poet philosopher samurai? Maybe we are both people out of time, destined for another life to take as our own. He certainly doesn’t belong to this rigid world. “It’s—it’s lovely.”

  “You don’t have to say that,” he starts.

  “No, really, it is. It’s honest and gentle, and…” I pause with a faint twinge in my heart. “It must have been about someone truly special to you.”

  “I thought so, at the time.” His words curl inward on himself, though he glances away. “It turned out she did not share the sentiment.”

  I remember the look on Chloe’s girlfriend’s face when she opened the door to me. Chloe shouting for her in the background, then her face going white as bone as she peered past the doorway to where I stood. The rage inside me was a monster, another creature, something trying to escape. The anger feels as fresh now as it did the day it happened. I feel the same urge to put my fist through something. To break the world around me.

  The urge to break myself came later. It’s what happens when the anger can’t get free. Looking at the taut muscles of Jiro’s neck, the whitened knuckles around his sword’s hilt, I wonder if he feels the same thing. The same need to break free.

  “Tell me another one,” I say, turning toward him. I tuck my legs under me. “One that’s not about … her.”

  It takes him a moment to bring himself back to me. From the darkened expression on his face, I know he’s left something of himself in the past memory. But then he smiles again. Studies me. And closes his eyes.

  A flower bud is a sealed world, unknown, packed with possibility.

  What color will it be when it unfurls? What secrets will it expose?

  What fragrance will it leave upon my hands, lingering through my day and echoing in my dreams?

  “I think I like that one much better,” I say.

  “Are you certain?” He props his chin in one hand. “I only wrote it earlier today. It still needs some altering.”

  My heartbeat rises in my ears.

  “It’s not a very fitting hobby for a warrior, I realize,” he says.

  I smirk. “Well, you said yourself you’re not much of a warrior, either.”

  Jiro laughs fully at that. I like his real laugh—rich and earthy, not the dried-out sad little laugh he made before. “Not by choice!”

  “At least you chose poetry,” I say. “At least you continue with it, regardless.” My own past hobbies stung and I wasn’t strong enough to continue them. I feel the absence of the art I’ll never make and the photos I’ll never splice together like a missing tooth. “I … I used to paint.”

  Now it’s Jiro’s turn to raise both eyebrows. “Really? That’s very impressive—more so than my silly words. Why did you stop?”

  “It wasn’t proper for a girl.” I think of Jiro and his swords; Jiro and his wish for battles bygone. “They … other people didn’t like what I chose to portray.”

  He cants his head to one side. “Why? What did you paint?”

  I remember the black-and-white photographs glued to the canvases. The class picture heads detached from their shoulders, the chee
rleaders’ legs heaped in a pyramid. The magazine cutouts and printouts from the internet of guns and knives and burning effigies. My grin comes from somewhere deep inside of me, painted on with a thick brush, dipped in red. “Violence,” I say. My voice is molten; it makes me glisten from within. “Upheaval. Renewal.”

  Jiro meets my gaze from the corner of his eyes. “Progress,” he says slowly.

  I nod. The pounding in my heart has turned to thunder, and my skin crackles like lightning strikes.

  “You know, Miyu…” He hesitates, and clutches the poetry book, fingers running along its edges. “I could teach you to read the kanji. If you wished.”

  I meet his gaze.

  “Then you could read all the poetry you liked. You wouldn’t have to rely on me and my poor recitation.”

  “Nonsense. You recite wonderfully,” I say. “But … but yes. I’d like that very much.”

  His grin splits his face in two. “There are books I don’t have memorized.” He looks sheepish; hesitant. As if he knows he is speaking heresy. “Unusual books. Ones that I think you might find fascinating, once you’re able to read them.”

  Finally, I catch his meaning. He’s talking about forbidden texts—ones that challenge the shogunate, perhaps, or at least the status quo. Dangerous ideas that have been locked away. Maybe he’s even been forced to try to stamp out those ideas, once. Violence. Upheaval. Renewal. The three words play a new chord in my heart. “I—I think I’d like that very much.”

  Jiro beckons me over to him. I slide across the wooden walkway and nestle beside him, our thighs nearly touching, the book open between us. He flips through the poetry book, squinting, then flattens out a page toward the front. “Here we are. One of the easiest ones—mountain. San. See how it looks like a range?”

  It looks like a trident to me, but I suppose I could see it as a mountain range, as well.

  “And then river. Sen. These three lines, like a stream rushing past.”

  He coaches me through a dozen or so of the simplest characters. Moon and day, woods, earth, wind. I point to one with a triangular roof that seems to be swinging two parcels back and forth, like scales. “What’s this one?”

  Jiro smiles again. “Fate.”

  Fate. I’ve never believed in fate. Maybe briefly, when Chloe’s juicy mouth first crashed into mine, I tried to believe that there was a plan for me. That I wasn’t forever doomed to loneliness and Hideki’s cruelty. But now I have no fate. No future. No purpose.

  At least, Reiko doesn’t.

  But maybe Miyu could.

  The lights in the house on the other side of the gardens snuff out; overhead, the sky is a deep indigo wash, speckled with thousands of stars. I forgot how beautiful the world can be when you get far enough away from other people, when you clear all of their junk out of the way. I imagine that starlight washing over me.

  Jiro taps two fingers against the back of my palm. “I’m sorry, Miyu,” he says. “I didn’t mean to keep you out here so late.”

  “Why be sorry? It’s the most interesting conversation I’ve had all week,” I say.

  Jiro’s fingers brush against the top of my hand again, hovering, as if he were trying to decide something. Finally, he clenches his hand into a fist and stands. “I’ll have to try harder next time,” he says. “See if I can make it the best of the month.”

  I laugh despite myself. “Something to aspire toward.” I stand as well; my kimono’s hem falling heavy against the wooden planks. “Good night, Jiro-sama.” I kneel to him before backing away. “If you require anything for your stay, you … well.” I smile. “You know where to find me.”

  “And you know where to find me,” he says.

  The garden air thickens between us. Warmth cuts through the autumn night. For the first time in months, I imagine how it might feel to close that gap—to feel arms wrapped around me again and fingers in my hair. Ones that don’t belong to Chloe. Ones that I don’t have to imagine in my head, coaxed out of the text on a screen from my internet boyfriend on the Legends of Eldritch Journey RPG forums. But it is a useless dream. I can’t go flinging myself at some samurai I’ve only just met. What could Jiro even want with me?

  “Good night, Miyu,” he says. His shoulders fall, and I turn and slide open the screen.

  CHAPTER TEN

  As I am coming up the staircase, Father passes me on his way down. His meeting is all finished, then. His features are contorted, keyed up by whatever he and his friends have discussed; he beckons me to follow him into the thick-walled kitchens.

  “Where have you been?” Father hisses, packing a lot of force into his quiet words.

  I stand up straight. “Distracting the samurai. Like you asked me to,” I add, just now remembering a conversation I’m not certain I’d been present for.

  Father frowns. “I thought they went to the tavern. Drink themselves away for the night.”

  “The older one did. Jiro—ahh, the younger one remained here.” I raise my eyebrows. “I thought you might appreciate my aid, since you aren’t watching out so closely for yourself.”

  Father slaps the back of my hand. I rear back, more out of shock than pain; the sleeves of my kimono fall forward to cover the bared skin he touched. He moved so fast, and yet he was careful. He’s hurt me this way before, where no one can see the marks.

  “Do what you must to keep them busy,” he says finally. “But don’t get too cozy. Remember—I’m selling you to Tsurube as soon as his sankin kotai concludes.”

  While I have no idea what a Tsurube or a sankin kotai are, I understand the message all too clearly. I am property. I swallow hard and circle around my father toward the kitchen exit. Even in Miyu’s body, I will never truly be free.

  Upstairs, I sit in Miyu’s bedroom for several minutes, legs curled under me on the pallet, and try to sort out my thoughts. I can make Father pay. He wants to sell me off to someone named Tsurube? I can make the price far too steep. Or make myself worthless to Father. A dark image flashes through me—a knife in my hand, stolen from the samurai, perhaps, carving deep gashes in my face. I wonder what the kanji for freedom is. The kanji for rage.

  But no good solution comes to me. The cavernous room, half-empty, echoes around me with nothing but my own racing thoughts. Half-empty. I stare through the grayish dark.

  That’s what is wrong with the room.

  I am meant to share it with someone else.

  Whom had I lost? A sibling? A husband? The villagers treat me like a traitor, like someone who’s committed some horrible crime. But that can’t be true. If I’d really done something so dishonorable, I’d be dead, or imprisoned. Like Jiro said, women had no freedom, no rights—any crime I might have perpetrated would have sent me far from here.

  I pull the stone from my pocket. The stone seems to be the key for moving between this life and my own. If I can go back to my time, maybe I can find more answers for Miyu there. Maybe if the stone is the key, I can use it to gain more control. I look at the stone in my fist. I pry one finger away, then another …

  The moment I let go, the world around me shimmers and fades.

  I grasp the stone once more and all the colors come searing back. The nighttime crickets are growing louder around me. Interesting. So it is my touch—I wasn’t just imagining that. I start to release the stone again, though it throbs with regret inside me to even think about letting go. But I have to be sure. I have to be in control.

  With a heavy sigh, I release the stone.

  * * *

  I’m back in our room in Mr. Onagi’s ryokan. The weak evening light is just starting to fade; on the western wall of rice paper, the sunset leaves a harsh orange glow. As if hardly any time at all has passed since I first gripped the stone.

  I check the clock on my phone. Correction. No time has passed.

  Shit. This is worse than being stuck in my life as Reiko: having to live each day twice. I guess I assumed time would skip ahead—like I had been asleep. But it looks like the stone pauses my life
here while it pulls me back into the past. As long as I’m making physical contact with it, it seems, then I’m tossed back into Miyu. But the moment I let go, my life here resumes.

  I’ll leave Miyu alone for now. I have work here to do. I need to find some way to help her escape from her father’s arrangement with Tsurube. Maybe if I learn what the shogun are planning—there might be information about it at the historical museum—then I can ensure her father’s plans succeed. Then I could barter with him for my freedom.

  For Miyu’s freedom, I mean.

  Fuck. I’m getting way too caught up in this other life. I need a benzo, but I just flushed them all down the toilet. They’re probably somewhere out in the East Sea now, making some asshole fish very happy. Or very dead.

  I slump back down on the pallet. My gaze skids over the stone. All I want is to go back. But I need to gather information first.

  Akiko and Mariko stomp into the room, interrupting my thoughts. “Oh! Hey, Reiko!” Mariko smiles sweetly, so sweetly it stings, when she notices me still awake. “Are you feeling any better? Do you want to come to the club with us tonight?”

  “It’s been a long day,” I reply. “I think I’ll get some rest.”

  The girls turn away from me and start dressing to go out, talking in hushed Japanese. “She’s so boring. Look at her, just lying there like a skeleton.” At first I think it’s Akiko saying it, but then I recognize the shy tone. Mariko. She sounds completely different in Japanese. More bitter, vengeful.

  “At least she knows to watch her figure,” Aki snaps.

  Mariko swallows hard. “I hope your parents are right. That she does kill herself.”

  Part of me wants to snatch her by the neck, right here and now, and rip her throat open with my bare hands. But I look from her face to Aki’s; she’s completely desperate to gain Aki’s approval no matter what evilness she has to do to get it. Maybe she’s not cruel by nature, but so weak she’ll do it for Aki’s love. She’s not even worth the effort it would take me to wrench the life from her.