by Lian Hearn
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Frail indeed must be
Cross threads of frost and drawn threads
Fashioned of dewdrops
For brocades in the mountains
Are woven only to scatter
—from Kokin Wakashū: The First Imperial Anthology of Japanese Poetry, translated by Helen Craig McCullough
THE TALE OF SHIKANOKO LIST OF CHARACTERS
MAIN CHARACTERS
Kumayama no Kazumaru, later known as Shikanoko or Shika
Nishimi no Akihime, the Autumn Princess, Aki
Kuromori no Kiyoyori, the Kuromori lord
Lady Tama, his wife, the Matsutani lady
Masachika, Kiyoyori’s younger brother
Hina, sometimes known as Yayoi, his daughter
Tsumaru, his son
Bara or Ibara, Hina’s servant
Yoshimori, also Yoshimaru, the Hidden Emperor, Yoshi
Takeyoshi, also Takemaru, son of Shikanoko and Akihime, Take
Lady Tora
Shisoku, the mountain sorcerer
Sesshin, an old wise man
The Prince Abbot
Akuzenji, King of the Mountain, a bandit
Hisoku, Lady Tama’s retainer
THE MIBOSHI CLAN
Lord Aritomo, head of the clan, also known as the Minatogura lord
Yukikuni no Takaakira
The Yukikuni lady, his wife
Takauji, their son
Arinori, lord of the Aomizu area, a sea captain
Yamada Keisaku, Masachika’s adoptive father
Gensaku, one of Takaakira’s retinue
Yasuie, one of Masachika’s men
Yasunobu, his brother
THE KAKIZUKI CLAN
Lord Keita, head of the clan
Hosokawa no Masafusa, a kinsman of Kiyoyori
Tsuneto, one of Kiyoyori’s warriors
Sadaike, one of Kiyoyori’s warriors
Tachiyama no Enryo, one of Kiyoyori’s warriors
Hatsu, his wife
Kongyo, Kiyoyori’s senior retainer
Haru, his wife
Chikamaru, later Motochika, Chika, his son
Kaze, his daughter
Hironaga, a retainer at Kuromori
Tsunesada, a retainer at Kuromori
Taro, a servant in Kiyoyori’s household in Miyako
THE IMPERIAL COURT
The Emperor
Prince Momozono, the Crown Prince
Lady Shinmei’in, his wife, Yoshimori’s mother
Daigen, his younger brother, later Emperor
Lady Natsue, Daigen’s mother, sister of the Prince Abbot
Yoriie, an attendant
Nishimi no Hidetake, Aki’s father, foster father to Yoshimori
Kai, his adopted daughter
AT THE TEMPLE OF RYUSONJI
Gessho, a warrior monk
Eisei, a young monk, later one of the Burnt Twins
AT KUMAYAMA
Shigetomo, Shikanoko’s father
Sademasa, his brother, Shikanoko’s uncle, now lord of the estate
Nobuto, one of his warriors
Tsunemasa, one of his warriors
Naganori, one of his warriors
Nagatomo, Naganori’s son, Shika’s childhood friend, later one of the Burnt Twins
AT NISHIMI
Lady Sadako and Lady Masako, Hina’s teachers
Saburo, a groom
THE RIVERBANK PEOPLE
Lady Fuji, the mistress of the pleasure boats
Asagao, a musician and entertainer
Yuri, Sen, Sada, and Teru, young girls at the convent
Sarumaru, Saru, an acrobat and monkey trainer
Kinmaru and Monmaru, acrobats and monkey trainers
THE SPIDER TRIBE
Kiku, later Master Kikuta, Lady Tora’s oldest son
Mu, her second son
Kuro, her third son
Ima, her fourth son
Ku, her fifth son
Tsunetomo, a warrior, Kiku’s retainer
Shida, Mu’s wife, a fox woman
Kinpoge, their daughter
Unagi, a merchant in Kitakami
SUPERNATURAL BEINGS
Tadashii, a tengu
Hidari and Migi, guardian spirits of Matsutani
The dragon child
Ban, a flying horse
Gen, a fake wolf
Kon and Zen, werehawks
HORSES
Nyorin, Akuzenji’s white stallion, later Shikanoko’s
Risu, a bad-tempered brown mare
Tan, their foal
WEAPONS
Jato, Snake Sword
Jinan, Second Son
Ameyumi, Rain Bow
Kodama, Echo
1
KAZUMARU
“Did you see what happened?”
“Where is your father?” Two men were standing above him, their shapes dark against the evening sky. One was his uncle, Sademasa, the other Nobuto, whom he didn’t like.
Kazumaru said, “We heard a funny noise,” and he mimed placing stones on a board. “Clack, clack, clack. Father told me to wait here.”
The men had come upon the seven-year-old hidden in the long grass, in the sort of form deer stamp out for their fawns. The horses had nearly stepped on him. When his uncle lifted him up the grass had printed deep lines on his cheek. He must have been there for hours.
“Who brings a child on a scouting mission?” Nobuto said quietly.
“He can’t be separated from him.”
“I’ve never seen a father so besotted!”
“Or a child so spoiled,” Sademasa replied. “If he were mine…”
Kazumaru did not like their tone. He sensed their mockery. He said nothing but resolved to tell his father when he saw him.
“Any sign of his horse?” Sademasa asked Nobuto.
The older man looked toward the trees. “The tracks lead up there.”
A small group of stunted trees clung to the side of the volcanic mountain. Some were dying, some already stumps. The air smelled of sulfur, and steam hissed from vents in the ground. The men went warily forward, their bows in their hands. Kazumaru followed them.
“Cursed-looking place,” Nobuto said.
The larger tree stumps were crisscrossed with faint lines. A few black stones, a handful of white shells were scattered on the ground.
“Something bled here.” Nobuto pointed at a splash on a pale rock. He crouched and touched it with his finger. “Still wet.”
The blood was dark, almost purple.
“Is it his?” Sademasa whispered.
“Doesn’t look human to me,” Nobuto replied. He sniffed his finger. “Doesn’t smell human e
ither.” He wiped his hand on the rock and stood, looked around, then suddenly shouted, “Lord Shigetomo! Where are you?”
You, you, you, came back the echo from the mountain, and behind the echo another sound, like a flock of birds beating their wings.
Kazumaru looked up as the flock passed overhead. He saw it was made up of strange-looking beings, with wings and beaks and talons like birds, but wearing clothes of a sort, red jackets, blue leggings. They looked down on him and pointed and laughed. One of them brandished a sword in one hand, a bow in the other.
“Those are his weapons,” Nobuto cried. “That is Ameyumi.”
“Then Shigetomo is dead,” Sademasa said. “He would never have surrendered the bow alive.”
Afterward, Kazumaru was not sure what he remembered and what he had dreamed. His father and his clever, witty mother often played Go in the long, snowbound winters at Kumayama. He had grown up with their sounds, the quiet clack of stones on the boards, the rattle in the wooden bowls. That day he and his father heard them together. They had ridden far ahead of the others. His father always liked to be in the lead, and the black horse was strong and eager. It had been a present from Lord Kiyoyori, to whom the family were vassals and on whose orders they had ridden so far north.
His father reined in the horse, dismounted, and lifted him down. The horse began to graze. They walked through the long grass and almost stepped on the fawn, lying in its form. He saw its dark eyes, its delicate mouth, and then it was on its feet and leaping away. He knew the other men would have killed it, had they been there, but his father laughed and let it go.
“Not worth Ameyumi’s time,” he said. Ameyumi was the name of his bow, a family treasure, huge, perfectly balanced, made of many layers of compressed wood with intricate bindings.
They went stealthily toward the trees from which the sounds came. He remembered feeling it was a game, tiptoeing through the grass that was as tall as he was.
His father stopped, holding his breath, so Kazumaru knew something had startled him. He bent and picked him up and in that moment Kazumaru glimpsed the tengu playing Go beneath the trees, their wings, their beaked faces, their taloned hands.
Then his father was striding back to the place where they had found the fawn. He could feel his father’s heart beating loud through his chest.
“Wait here,” he said, placing his son in the trampled grass of the form. “Be like the deer’s child. Don’t move.”
“Where are you going?”
“I am going to play Go,” he replied, laughing again. “How often do you get the chance to play Go against tengu?”
Kazumaru didn’t want him to. He had heard stories about tengu, mountain goblins, very clever, very cruel. But his father was afraid of nothing and always did exactly as he pleased.
The men found Shigetomo’s body later that day. Kazumaru was not allowed to see it, but he heard the shocked whispers, and remembered the beaks, the claws as the tengu flew overhead. They saw me, he thought. They know me.
When they returned home, Sademasa reported that his older brother had been killed by wild tribes in the north, but Kazumaru knew, no matter who actually killed him, that he had died because he had played Go with the tengu and lost.
* * *
The news of his father’s death plunged Kazumaru’s mother into a grief so extreme, everyone feared she could not survive it. Sademasa pleaded with her to marry him in his brother’s place, saying he would bring Kazumaru up as his own son, even swearing an oath on a sacred ox-headed talisman.
“Both of you remind me of him all the time,” she said. “No, I must cut my hair and become a nun, as far away from Kumayama as possible.” As soon as the winter was over, she left, with hardly a word of farewell, beyond telling Kazumaru to obey his uncle.
The family held a small parcel of land, confirmed by Lord Kiyoyori, on the side of the mountain known as Kumayama. It was made up of steep crags and deep, sunless valleys, where a few rice paddies had been carved out on either side of the rivers that tumbled from the mountain between forests of cypress and cryptomeria, full of bears, wolves, serow and deer, and boars, and groves of bamboo, home to quail and pheasants. It was seven days’ journey east of the capital and four days in the other direction from the Miboshi stronghold of Minatogura.
As the years went by, it became apparent that Sademasa was not going to keep his oath. He grew accustomed to being the Kumayama lord and was reluctant to give it up. Power, along with unease at his own faithlessness, unleashed his brutal nature. He treated his nephew harshly, under the pretext of turning him into a warrior. Before he was twelve years old, Kazumaru realized that each day he lived brought his uncle fresh disappointment that he was not dead.
Some of Sademasa’s warriors, in particular one Naganori, whose son was a year older than Kazumaru, were saddened by the harsh treatment of their former lord’s son. Others such as Nobuto admired Sademasa for his ruthlessness. The rest shrugged their shoulders, especially after Sademasa married and had children of his own, thinking that it made no difference, as Kazumaru would probably never be allowed to grow up, let alone inherit the estate. Most of them were surprised that he survived his brutalizing childhood and even flourished in some ways, for he practiced obsessively with the bow and from his rages came a superhuman strength. At twelve years he suddenly grew tall, and soon after could string and draw a bow like a grown man. But he was as shy and fierce as a young wolf. Only Naganori’s son, who received the name Nagatomo in his coming-of-age ceremony, was in any way a friend.
He was the only person to whom Kazumaru said goodbye when, in the autumn of his sixteenth year, his uncle announced he was taking him hunting in the mountains.
“If I don’t come back, you’ll know he has killed me,” Kazumaru said. “Next year I come of age, but he will never step aside for me. He has grown too fond of being the lord of Kumayama. He intends to get rid of me in the forest.”
“I wish I could come with you,” Nagatomo said. “But your uncle has expressly forbidden it.”
“That proves I am right,” Kazumaru replied. “But even if he doesn’t kill me I will not be coming back. There’s nothing for me here. I’ve only the vaguest memories of what it was like before. I remember not being afraid all the time, being loved and admired. Sometimes I daydream about what might have happened if my father had not died, if my mother had not left, if more of the men were loyal to me … but that’s the way it turned out. Don’t grieve for me. I can’t go on living in this way. I pray every day to escape somehow—if the only way is through death, so be it.”
2
KAZUMARU/SHIKANOKO
The summer storms had abated and every day the stain of red leaves descended farther from the peaks. That year’s fawns were almost full grown but still followed their mothers through the shade-dappled forest.
There was a famous old stag with a fine set of antlers that Sademasa had long desired, but the creature was cunning and cautious and never allowed itself to be encircled. This would be the year, Sademasa declared, that the stag would surrender to him.
He took his nephew, his favorite retainer, Nobuto, and one other man. They went on foot, for the terrain was too rough even for the sure-footed horses that grazed on the lower slopes of Kumayama. They lived like wild men, gathering nuts and berries, shooting pheasants and setting traps for hares, every day going farther into the pathless forest, now and then catching glimpses of their prey, then losing it again until they came upon its tracks in the soft earth or its brown compact scat. Kazumaru expected his uncle to grow impatient, but instead Sademasa became almost jovial, as though he were about to be relieved of a burden he had carried for a long time. At night the men told ghost stories about tengu and mountain sorcerers, and all the ways young boys had disappeared. Kazumaru swore he would not let himself be killed along with the stag. He hardly dared sleep but sometimes fell into a kind of waking dream and heard the clack of Go stones and saw the eagle eyes of tengu turned toward him.
Th
ey came one afternoon to the summit of a steep crag and the stag stood before them, its antlers gleaming in the western rays of the sun. Its flanks were heaving with the effort of the climb. The men were panting. There was a moment of stillness. Sademasa and Kazumaru both had their bows drawn. The other two men stood with knives ready. Sademasa gestured to Kazumaru to move around to the left, and drew his bow. Kazumaru was about to draw his, seeing where he would aim, right at the heart. The stag looked at him, its eyes wide with exertion and fear. Then its gaze flickered toward Sademasa and Kazumaru followed it. In that instant he saw his uncle’s bow was aimed not at the stag but at him. Then the stag was leaping straight at him in its desperate lunge to escape. The arrow flew, the stag collided with Kazumaru and sent him crashing down with it into the valley below.
The animal broke his fall. As they both lay unmoving, winded, he could feel the frantic beat of its heart beneath him. He reached for the antlers and grasped them, then stood, fumbling for his knife. The deer was wounded, its legs broken. Its eyes watched him, unblinking. He prayed briefly and slit its throat, the hot blood pouring from it as its life slipped away.
Thick bushes hid him from the men above. He could hear their shouts but made no sound in response. He wondered if his uncle’s desire for the antlers would be so great that he would follow him down the cliff, but the only way was to jump or fall. When silence returned he dragged the stag as far as he could, finding a small hollow under a bank filled with dry leaves. He lay down with the dead beast in his arms, slaking his thirst in its blood, reliving the moment on the cliff. It would have been easy to tell himself it was an accident, but it seemed important to face the truth. His uncle had aimed at him, but the stag had taken the arrow. It had saved his life. And then he felt again his own fall, the astonishment of flight, his hand gripping the bow as if it would hold him up, too young to believe in his own mortality yet expecting incredulously to die.
All night he sensed wild animals circling, drawn by the smell of blood. He heard the pad of their feet, the rustling of leaves. The sky was ablaze with stars, the River of Heaven pouring light.