A Darkly Beating Heart

by Lindsay Smith

  Miyu may disappoint these people when I’m not around, but she’ll live up to them on my watch. I thrust my shoulders back and meet his stare. “I won’t forget.”

  I slip into my geta and wind my way toward the village square, an eerie sense of déjà vu falling like a shadow over me. I can’t help but notice all the ways this Kuramagi compares and contrasts with my own world’s version—the buildings fresh with still-green wood and new paint, and delicate hand-stitched banners and lanterns, but also the dim, grimy shops that bear no electric lights or modern food storage techniques. I have to give the people credit, though, for their attention to cleanliness; even without modern water heaters and indoor plumbing, they smell better than your average Seattle hippie.

  But there sure are a lot of them. A teeming salmon spawn of humanity, crawling over each other as they go about their business preparing for the festival, from the venerated farmers hauling in rice and Asian cabbage and persimmons to the lowly merchants hawking their wares on every street corner and beneath every awning. And once again, all the people—no matter their age, their rank, the number of children in tow—part around me like I am a cold no one can afford to catch. I am untouchable. I am diseased.

  For once, it doesn’t bother me.

  I feel powerful. Like some kind of vengeful goddess. It makes me feel alive to see their stares, their fear, their wide-eyed whispering.

  It makes me want to be alive.

  In the distance, the drummers practice for the coming festivities: first the festival performance, then the purification ceremony. I imagine the thudding of my heart falling in sync with them, of each hammer fall striking like a blow. I am Reiko and I am Miyu and I am powerful, and no one can ever make me feel tiny again.

  Finally I reach the village square, where dozens of workers are assembling the platforms and makeshift shrines. Buddhist monks and Shinto priests work side by side to issue blessings on the new construction, warding them from malicious spirits and from the earthly yearnings of man. I make a mental map of the area, like I used to make in my head when preparing a photo shoot—noting all the objects in the space, the way the light falls on them, the risks they pose in sticking out from behind people’s heads or casting a strange shadow.

  Then I spot the soldiers.

  Jiro and Goemon are huddled with one man, wearing the plated armor of a bakufu officer. Behind him, an uneasy collection of soldiers in less elaborate garb scan the crowd. I follow their line of sight; one of the builders, I notice, isn’t actually doing any assembly, but instead is watching the crowd and occasionally looking back to the soldiers with a subtle nod. Another merchant, curiously uninterested in shouting down the other peddlers in the square, behaves similarly.

  So the shogun’s servants haven’t come here to review some stupid records at the feudal lord’s castle. They are here to monitor us.

  To monitor my father, perhaps—and whatever it is he and his friends mean to do.

  I study the soldiers’ faces, quickly, trying to keep my face angled away so Jiro and Goemon won’t recognize me and the others won’t catch me staring. I make a note of the man whose face droops like a horse and the broad-bellied man with the dangerous hawk eyes. Then I hurry on to the brewer’s shop.

  “Miyu, Miyu, Mad Miyu,” a little girl chants, maybe four or five years old, darting across my path. Her soft slippers make a whispering echo as she runs—mi-yu-mi-yu-mi-yu.

  “Watch yourself,” I mutter at her, but she’s already disappeared back into the throng. I shake my head and raise my chin high. Miyu is powerful, confident—there’s no disguising her hate or hiding it away in her thoughts. As Miyu, I let it boil over. I am a goddess of vengeance. No one can threaten me. Certainly not a little child.

  The brewer takes one look at me, plops a wire rack of four sake bottles on the counter, and taps two fingers against the surface. Apparently not everyone wants to taunt me endlessly. Some would rather have nothing to do with me at all. I grab a fistful of coins from my pocket, fingers brushing up against the heavy black stone. It feels hot, like I left it out to bake in the sun. The warmth strengthens me.

  As soon as the brewer has counted out the coins—twice—he nods and shoos me away.

  Great. Thanks so much. I grip the wooden handle and hoist the rack off the counter, muscles pinching as I lift. I’m not used to carrying anything much heavier than my camera bag these days. But I remind myself I’ve carried around way more than this, back before everything—that I am stronger than I know.

  I head back into the square. Brightly colored rectangles of fabric flap in the wind where they’ve been strung up around the periphery. “Miyu, Miyu, mad Miyu!” This time a little boy goes whizzing past me, right in my path, nearly making me trip over the hem of my own stupid kimono. I catch myself, slide back into my wooden sandals, and grit my teeth.

  Laughter rings out behind me, then melts into the background noise. Through the corner of my eye, I scout for Jiro and Goemon again, but they aren’t in my periphery.

  “Miyu, mad Miyu!” a chorus of children’s voices shout, from behind me.

  I swivel on one foot. “Okay, seriously now—”

  Splat.

  Hot, oozing stink runs down the side of my face and coils around my throat. I stagger backward, the sake carrier slipping from my hand. Red and brown blur my vision. The warm goo soaks through my skin and slithers through my hair. With shaking hands, I paw at the—the thing that now slides down the side of my face and onto my shoulder.

  My hand comes away slick with blood, and my fingers tangle with pink, lumpy tubes.

  Oh, God. Miyu’s breakfast lurches up toward my throat as the stench overwhelms me. Some sort of animal’s organs—intestines, blood, slop all tangled together. I peel it off my shoulder and scrub the blood from my face. Yet I am outside of myself, calm, focused, determined. I am Miyu now. I know precisely how to handle this.

  Scrub it away from me.

  Find the kids who did this.

  And rip their own goddamned organs out to see how they like wearing them draped around their necks.

  The drumbeats from the square build and build under my skin; the red marring my vision comes from inside of me now. The maniacal laughter around me—children and adults alike—pinches with an anxiousness, then fades completely. I clench one hand into a fist, and spin, looking for the closest target to strike—

  “Miyu.” Suddenly someone is cupping their arm around my other shoulder and steering me away from the small crowd that has formed. “Miyu, you’re all right.”

  Jiro’s voice. I barely recognize it through my rage. Everything sounds jagged and threatening, a world of sharp corners. I want to shred myself apart.

  No, first I will shred everyone else.

  “Come on, Miyu. Let’s get you cleaned up.” Jiro’s grip is firm on my elbow as he guides me through the square. He doesn’t have to do much; people trip over themselves to get out of our way. “It’s fine. You’re going to be all right.”

  “Let her suffer!” someone shouts after us. “Make her suffer like she’s done to all of us!”

  But no one takes up the invitation to pile on.

  I imagine my dream of the town square—the rivers of blood pouring down the dais. The one we pass looks just like the one in my Kuramagi, which also looks like the one in my dream. A need both rabid and frightfully calm rises inside me.

  The honjin is empty when we return; Yodo is off doing her other odd jobs, and Father is probably conspiring with his friends. Jiro leads me straight to the bathing room and sets the coals aflame around the spare bucket of bathwater.

  “Let’s get your outer robe off first,” he says, gesturing to the obi, now slimy with offal, tied around my waist.

  My fingers fumble with the complex knots and bows that hold it in place. I am trembling; I feel like I can shudder and shake right out of my skin. I feel like one of the coals, hissing and cracking open, crumbling into ash. I want to catch flame.

  “Shh.” Jiro cups
his hands around mine. “Let me.”

  Somehow, I manage a weak nod.

  Jiro frowns a bit, but finally manages to thread one wide end of the obi out of the other, and tugs the belting loose. It crumples to the ground. He opens one flap of the outer kimono, then the other, then eases them both off my shoulders, taking care not to let the soiled exterior touch the undergarment robe beneath, then drapes the kimono over a wooden rack nearby.

  “There. Much better already.” He smiles at me, but it looks so sad it makes me furious all over again. It is all I can do not to strangle him—strangle anyone foolish enough to get in my reach. I don’t want his pity, or anyone else’s.

  I want revenge.

  Jiro dips a towel into the waterbasin while it heats and begins to scrub my face—roughly enough to strip away the crust of viscera that has begun to dry, but not so roughly that he tears my flesh. I sit, silent and seething, while he works. A furrow appears in his brow as he scrubs; his fingers cradle the rag with loving precision. There is something tender in the way he works. A care that I suspect I don’t deserve.

  “Don’t you want to know?” I ask, unable to stand it any longer. “Doesn’t it matter to you why everyone hates me so?” I want to know, after all. Surely he does, too. If he knew the darkness in Miyu’s heart—in my heart—would he run from me? Or draw even nearer?

  He scrubs at my temple and into my hairline. “Should it?”

  I press my lips into a thin line.

  “We are all defined by our past,” Jiro says. “Our choices and circumstances have made us who we are. It’s all there, carved into us indelibly. But … it is not our present. Nor our future. That’s what we control. It’s what we choose to do with the past that is entirely up to us.”

  “Well, some people have more options than others.” I fold my arms and fight back a fresh surge of tears. My past. Chloe had turned my feelings, a momentary inspired spasm of hatred, into my present and my future. Hideki had always tormented me, and then, when I needed him most, tried to remove himself from my life entirely. Who knows what threads of Miyu’s past are forever closed off to her? The past is like the hungry fog of my dreams, forever creeping back over us when we think we are in the clear.

  Jiro’s fingers brush against my lip; his gaze moves from my skin to my eyes. “You seem like the sort of woman capable of shaping her own future.” He holds my gaze with the same steadiness he now uses to cup my chin, with certainty as his fingers feather against my mouth. “Of claiming what you’re owed.”

  My breath hitches in my throat. “If I ever get the chance.”

  “There’re always more chances than we realize.” He swallows, audible in the cavernous bathing room. We stare at each other for a moment as the coals crackle and hiss. “We never know when a new opportunity will come exactly where we never expect to find it.”

  I look at his lips, thin and angled, a soft hue against his lighter flesh. His warm brown eyes beg me to lose myself in them. The gentle curves of his face. He leans toward me, smelling of pine and plums.

  “Miyu,” he murmurs, like a dark curse. “You strike me as the kind of girl unable to leave debts unpaid. But also not one to leave your desires unfulfilled.” His dark eyes glisten. “You’re stronger than you know.”

  Oh, God. I squeeze my eyes shut. Oh, God. I am falling so hard for this long-dead samurai. I am falling so hard for him, and I’m not even myself, I’m not even certain how I am able to be here with him at all.

  When I open my eyes, Jiro has leaned back, but with a smile on his face. “I’ll, ah … I’ll let you get cleaned up.” He tosses the rag onto the heap of soiled clothing, then goes to dump the heated water into the tub for me. “Call if you need anything more.”

  The panel slides shut behind him, leaving me alone with the frantic hammering of my heart.

  I start to strip off my undergarments, then remember the stone. I need to keep it on me if I want to stay in this century—that’s what I have figured out. I glance around for a minute, then settle on the spare sash I wear around my secondary robe. With a few twists, I manage to secure the stone in the sash, then wrap the sash tight around my ankle. I take a few tentative steps across the bamboo mats. The sling holds firm.

  Something unfurls in my chest, like a tightly laced garment easing loose. I am safe here. I belong in this world.

  I pull the pins out of my hair and shake it loose, then begin to scrub the rest of Miyu’s body. My body now. Miyu’s body looks so strange to me—soft around the edges, where the former me had vicious jutting bones and stretch marks. The smooth expanse of her stomach and thighs where Reiko’s body was lined with perfect scars. Yet Jiro is right. She feels … strong. Powerful in a way I never felt as myself. I know she’s withstood so much—whatever cruelty caused the villagers of Kuramagi and even her own father to turn on her. Whatever put the rift between her sister and herself.

  Sturdy. That was Miyu. Formidable. Strong. Fearsome.

  She deserves to be feared and revered. I will make them fear and revere her.

  I scrub her flesh until it is pink and renewed; I soak all the blood and bits of viscera from her sleek black hair. I stand in the steamy chamber, raw, feeling reborn.

  A loose cotton yukata waits for me on a nearby hook; I wrap it around me, left over right, twist my damp hair back up on top of my head, and then leave the washroom.

  The panel of Jiro’s guestroom is cracked open, inviting. I find him huddled over a small leather notebook, a quill curled in his hand. He glances up at me where I stand, peering through the doorway, and beckons me inside. Tentatively, I poke one bare foot into his room, and then the next.

  “There you are. Just as beautiful as always.” His smile glows like lamplight. “Are you feeling better now?”

  “Much. Thank you.” I take another step toward him. “You didn’t have to help me. But thank you.”

  He lowers the quill into his book and closes the journal around it, then sets it aside. “Of course I did.”

  “And—and thank you for what you said.” I am standing close to him, now. I could reach out and wrap my arms around him, press his face against my thighs. He looks so warm and inviting. Soft and enveloping as a freshly made bed. My fingers twitch where I’d hooked them around my belt, and I see his muscles tighten, his slight inhale.

  “I, uh…” He swallows and peels his gaze from me. “I meant what I said. We all have our scars. We can—ah, we can only control how we—we heal from them.”

  That’s when I am sure—in that tremble to his voice. He feels the same for me as I do for him.

  My vision wavers; my head spins. I’ve never—I’ve only imagined, in words, in images, how it might feel to be this close to a boy. No, to a man. In many ways, this feels the same as being with Chloe—the crackle of charged air between us, the impossible weight that propels me toward him. But this is different, too. He is crisp lines where Chloe was gentle curves. He is structured and disciplined where Chloe was free-form frenetic energy.

  I want to know both. I want to heal from the scars Chloe left on my thighs and on my heart. I want Jiro to heal them.

  My breath falters; I take a step back. God. Get it together, Reiko. You are not this girl. You are not a part of this world. You have no right to interfere, to lay any sort of claim to what’s happening here.

  Jiro, too, exhales, but it doesn’t carry the lightness of release.

  “I’ll be, uh … I’ll be in my room if you need anything,” I tell him. I barely hear myself say it. Embarrassment is humming along my face, heat crowding out all sense. I turn toward the door and rest my hand on the panel.

  “Oh,” Jiro said. “All right.” His voice is tiny behind me. Then, more clearly: “But you can stay, if you like.”

  I slide the panel closed completely and turn back to him.

  In two steps I’m standing in front of him, my lips pressed against his, so velvety and sweet. I sink to my knees as my hands cup his face; his arms wrap around my waist. He tastes like smok
e and honey, rich and dark and sweet all at once; his lips feel soft as petals encompassing my own. “Miyu,” he murmurs, then pulls me in for another kiss, lips parting, our mouths reaching hungrily for each other. “Miyu.” When he gasps it, it sounds like a prayer or chant.

  I lean against him as we kiss. He topples backward onto his pallet, still gripping me; my knees slide to either side of his waist as I pin him in place. I let my fingers trail down, against the V of his chest exposed by his robe, along the ridged, scarred flesh they find there. I kiss along his cheek and nuzzle my nose against his ear, listening to his soft gasp for breath.

  His hands hook around the obi of my yukata and he glances up at me, questioning. I nod once. Yes. He tugs the sash free and slides his hands against my skin, still flush and warm from the bath. I peel his kimono open as well, sliding the thick padded shoulders off his muscled ones, and trace the old scars along his stomach. They are erratic, not orderly like my scars (like Reiko’s scars, I think), most likely from sparring practice. But I love them. I kiss each one in turn.

  Once he’s undressed me fully, he kisses my stomach and runs his hand along my bare leg. His fingers pause, hesitant, at the sash wrapped around my ankle. “No,” I say. Harsher than I mean. “Leave it be.”

  He nods. “Whatever you wish.”

  And so it is. He gives me all the power. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I figure it out as we go, moving fluidly with him, feeling his breath and his wants and his needs and denying or allowing them as I choose. I am in control. I am the goddess I’d imagined, demanding fealty, surrendering to no one even as I give myself over to this feeling. I am glorious and he is mine and together we conquer the cold, together we heal our scars.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Once Jiro falls asleep, I lie awake, staring at the ceiling of his room. As much as I want to linger with him for as long as I can, I need space to think. I need a plan. If I want to help Miyu, I have to head back into my time.

  I sneak back to my quarters, untie the stone from my ankle, and fall back into myself in the present. The electronic roar of a babbling brook at my right and the heat of the toilet seat beneath me fade into existence as the scent of Jiro’s skin fades out. The black stone lies on the bathroom tiles before me; I want desperately to snatch it back up, but no—there will be time for that later, when I’ve learned what I need to know to help Miyu.