Thousand Shrine Warrior

by Jessica Amanda Salmonson

  She started toward the place along the floor where she had previously located the hidden door. But Ittosai was at her back, forcing her to spin about and block a blow that stung her to the elbows. Ittosai’s excessive power only caused his sword to break centrally. The sharp end whisked by Tomoe’s face and clattered far along the floor.

  She blocked another cut from the much-shortened blade. It was a less powerful blow, for Ittosai had performed it one-handed; and as the Sword of Okio blocked, Ittosai’s free hand sprung forth like a serpent, latched onto Tomoe’s throat, raising her so quickly that she was flung high into the air before realizing what had happened. She struck the floor at an angle and slid through rubbish, whirling to a stop upon her back, winded, vision dizzied.

  Gagging and catching her breath, she found the broken tip of Ittosai’s sword. She grabbed it and flung it at the big man who stalked near, taking him in the thigh.

  The injury might not have slowed him even had he not been possessed with stranger strength. But this whole encounter had been observed by Yuki-onna, who moved about the periphery of the room, watching especially Ittosai with an aspect of curiosity. Green Fire Devil may not have been concerned about the broken swordtip that sank into Ittosai’s upper leg; yet he turned aside to look hard at Yuki-onna.

  For long moments, Yuki-onna and Green Fire Devil were locked eye to eye. Then the demon spoke with Ittosai’s booming voice:

  “I have striven longer than a hundred years to return to Yuki-onna. But you are not the one who was endeared to me. What are you to watch me so, if not the sweet demon I once loved?”

  “I am Shin-yuki-onna,” said the Snow Woman, her tinkling voice weighted with sorrow. “Your fiery lust killed my mother after all; for the half of me that is fire burned within her womb, and birthing me was her first and final agony. For long decades unaware, I lay beneath the snow, a motionless child of ice, neither dead nor living. One warm summer, the snow level rose higher than ever before. My tiny body was uncovered and began to cry. Lord Sato, upon a hunt, heard the cry; and finding a perfect white infant, recalled his beloved wife’s empty womb. Soon I was placed into the hands of Lady Sato, who raised me as her daughter, teaching me human sentiment, never knowing how much strangeness was dandled on her knee.

  “These things being as I have said, you can have no grudge against humanity. These long years, there has been no Yuki-onna for you to return to as a lover.”

  “Can my eternal Hell be made the deeper?” asked Green Fire Devil, making Ittosai’s face expressive and sad. “By the testimony of my unknown daughter, I am the slayer of my love.”

  “You have helped Priest Kuro trouble people dear to me,” said Shin-yuki-onna. “Because I could not fight my unwitting and cruel father, I pined and grew thin, shedding much of my human aspect. I struggle to remain human in my heart! The half of me that is fire is able to warm the half of me that is my mother; and my one wish has been to care for Heinosuke, who is now blinded by Kuro’s hatred—and by you.”

  Tomoe Gozen heard this strange exchange, still dazed from being dashed along the floor. She crawled upon her belly, unnoticed by the supernatural father and daughter, lost as they were in the woes of one another.

  Unfocused eyes found the place upon the floor where the Lotus monks had made a door, had hidden Nichiroku’s terrible grave. She rose to knees, using her sword to brace herself, then found unsteady feet. She stabbed downward, the Sword of Okio passing through the floor and into the pit beneath.

  Ittosai Kumasaku threw his sword straight upward in an uncontrollable spasm. It stuck deep into a rafter beam. He lumbered backward, away from Shin-yuki-onna, tearing at his chest as though burning from inside. The green flame played through his eyes, appearing and disappearing, two uncertain beacons scanning wildly and finally shining upon Tomoe Gozen, who hunkered beside the secret door.

  She tried to draw her sword back out; but it became an inadvertent handle, and Tomoe Gozen raised the door upon its hinge.

  Green Fire Devil was too weak to escape from the big man’s body. Ittosai fell to his knees with unnatural force, cracking the floorboards as though he had increased many times in weight and might sink into the world. Tomoe Gozen could not guess whether the man who had been Ittosai Kumasaku would be alive after the grim exorcism by steel. Once already he had died a freezing death. Now he might be doubly destroyed by fire.

  Shin-yuki-onna’s complexion became more and more blue, the light of her intensifying with upset emotions, as blood of humans reddens cheeks. Her father had caused loved ones pain; and now he was dying. Maybe she was torn between filial regret and a revenge-inspired glee that it was done.

  Searing cold blue eyes turned upon Tomoe Gozen. The nun was uncertain of the Snow Woman’s feelings. The bikuni wrenched her sword from the open trapdoor. Curiosity drew her attention down. There was no literal hole beyond the shallow pit from which Nichiroku’s corpse had issued the year before. But there was a glimmering sort of darkness collapsing upon itself. A miniature green flame in the shape of a hunchbacked old man writhed at the center of the shrinking dark cloud. The shade of Green Fire Devil grew tinier and tinier, until he was but a pinpoint of light. And then that light winked out.

  Several paces away, Ittosai Kumasaku plunged from knees to face without a sound, and lay still.

  The hall remained bathed in underwater-light, the hue having changed to aquamarine. Shin-yuki-onna was a shimmering, transparent gem in the shape of a woman, cold light shining out of her. Her sweet, bell-voice inquired, “Why have you slain my father? I might have convinced him to return to Hell.” Then she raised one hand above her head and held her fingers as though upon the hilt of an invisible sword.

  From those fingers sprung a two-edged sword, the one edge blue ice, the other edge green fire. As she brought the sword down from above her head, she placed her other hand upon the hilt and said with a lilting menace:

  “This is more purely my soul than your steel is yours. It means I have invested more into the fight.”

  Tomoe Gozen struggled to comprehend the full depth of meaning to each event. With a dawning which held no certainty, she said, “Do not fight me, Snow Woman. The more you use your power, the less you can remain human. Even if you kill me, you may lose. Consider Heinosuke, lying there like a useless rag. Look at moaning Mirume, who has worshipped you so long, and would serve you unto death, and after. What will become of them if there is never again a Princess Echiko? Think even of your foster-father, who loves Echiko as his own. I have slain Green Fire Devil, who had no claim on you. I have saved your truer father. At this moment, Lord Sato will be awakening from his year-long nightmare, becoming himself once more. Who will he seek first, if not his daughter, with apologies, and tears, and relief?”

  “Think how you would reply,” said the tinkling voice of the Snow Woman, “if you had seen me slay your sire, and I said to forget.”

  Tomoe backed away from the pit, ready to defend herself. She said, “I am bad luck for lovers, I assure you. It’s the end for you and Heinosuke if you persist. Savor the earthly passions denied other supernatural beings!”

  Shin-yuki-onna approached, her sword of fire and ice creating strange shadows. Tomoe took a ready posture, sword pointed down and held halfway behind herself. Across the room, Mirume moved one leg, then a hand went to her blindfolded face. Ittosai Kumasaku’s huge body gave a lurch, whether death throe or painful spasm, the bikuni could not tell. Heinosuke was the quietest of all. Between these three people, Shin-yuki-onna and Tomoe Gozen held one another at point of sword.

  The Snow Woman took another careful step and raised her shining sword a little higher. The bikuni bent her knees and slid one foot forward the least amount, her sword still held pointing behind. She began to chant the Kwannon Sutra as taught her by monk Kasha:

  “Thy merciful heart is a wonderful cloud

  From which falleth sweet dew extinguishing

  The flames of earthly passion.”

  For the first time, Tomoe G
ozen knew this was truly her fate, as prophesied by the salamander. She felt that she was one among the many arms of merciful Kwannon, the hand that bore the saber. Even Otane’s stoic grandmother had mistaken the bikuni for an avatar of Kwannon. Who could judge how much in error widow Todawa may have been?

  The bikuni ceased her chant and said, “Yuki. Your two-edged soul is beautiful and strange, but you handle it mistakenly. If you attack, I’ll destroy you, even at cost of my sword. Merciful Kwannon will dissolve your earthly passions. What will remain afterward, but everlasting emptiness in a colorless limbo outside of time?”

  The Snow Woman came forth with alarming speed, snowy garments swirling. Tomoe dropped to one knee and felt the cold of mountain glaciers, and the heat of mountain bowels, sweep above her head. At the same moment, the Sword of Okio went forward in a deadly streak. Shin-yuki-onna passed on her own momentum, stopping at the bikuni’s back, motionless, her strange sword melting into dew, which doused its flame.

  The Sword of Okio had stroked the Snow Woman’s body for the least possible moment, yet was rimed and chill. Tomoe Gozen could not remove even the hand that was not tied to the hilt, for both hands adhered by frost. The nun watched the blade, afraid that it might shatter.

  The blue light behind her faded. As it did, the rime upon the blade became fluid, darkened, and dripped as common blood. At her back, she heard the rustle of court costume, not blowing snows. There was a final sigh devoid of the otherworldly tinkle, and the sound of a frail body falling. Tomoe Gozen swept her sword over her own head, flicking away blood as she stood. With slow purpose, she sheathed the Sword of Okio and slipped her swollen hand from the knotted cloth.

  Mirume was crawling across the floor on hands and knees. She had removed the blindfold too late to see Shin-yuki-onna, but in time to see Echiko collapse and Tomoe sheath her weapon. The maiden crawled onto her mistress and clung like an infant to a murdered parent.

  “Mirume,” Tomoe whispered in the dark hall of the temple. “Your goddess has achieved perfect bliss. But you can still serve her, for she worried about Heinosuke and was sad to leave him helpless.” Mirume looked up from the corpse to which she clung. Timidly, she gazed toward Heinosuke, new and stranger fantasies forming in her mind. Tomoe encouraged her. “Go to him, Mirume. Help him find his way through endless night.”

  The maiden struggled to her feet. She went to Heinosuke and knelt at his side. Heinosuke stirred and Mirume bent near to whisper something in his ear, which Tomoe Gozen never heard. The bikuni had gone to see about Ittosai. He breathed, and she decided he, too, had survived.

  She slipped out the back way into the graveyard, moonlight paling monuments. She breathed cold air, striving to calm her spirit and her beating heart.

  To her surprise, the monk named Kasha stood near a mausoleum, grinning as though he kept a funny secret. As nothing in the world was funny to Tomoe Gozen just then, she started away from the cemetery, trying to ignore the homely monk. But he ran across the snow to catch her; and as always, his manner was meant to suggest that he knew more than he could possibly know.

  “I got him at last,” said Kasha.

  “Who?” said Tomoe, not really caring who.

  “My good friend Nichiroku.”

  Tomoe stopped and looked the short, ugly man in the face.

  Kasha said, “A few moments ago, he lost his powers, all at once. He was playing checkers with Lord Sato. Was Lord Sato surprised! His religious tutor and saintly-looking friend turned into a wormy corpse before his eyes! Nichiroku was surprised, too. You would have liked it!” Kasha laughed. “Realizing that you must have slain Green Fire Devil, the pact they had forged was effectively nullified, and the goryo would have to return to this temple, never to venture from it again. But he tried a desperate action, to tear Lord Sato’s throat with the gray bones of his hands. Lord Sato, though possessed of his wits for the first time in a long year, was yet confused. He knew only that he was confronted by a monstrous thing. The checkerboard was kicked over and Lord Sato scrambled toward his sword upon a stand. He couldn’t possibly have made it in time, and it’s doubtful that hacking up Nichiroku would have been enough. That’s why I stepped out of a dark corner, quick as you please, and exclaimed, ‘Nichiroku! You’ve evaded me a hundred years! Isn’t it time you gave up?’ Then I made myself ten feet tall and wrapped my arms around him and dragged him off to Hell. Just his bones, you understand. I’m not a collector of souls, just corpses. If you ever come to Hell yourself—there are stories that you’ve been there a couple of times already—please remember me and drop by to see my collection.”

  “Kasha,” said Tomoe. “That’s the most foolish story anyone ever told me.”

  “Oh? I’m sorry you think so! You would have been no good at all if I hadn’t helped. By the way, I converted Nichiroku’s spirit to the worship of Kwannon. If you feel guilty about spoiling the completion of his revenge, you might burn incense for him in various places where Kwannon’s image is kept. He’s around here somewhere—just his spirit. But he’s feeling better now and won’t linger long, not after you and I and the merciful Bodhisattva saved him from himself. Vengeance, too, is an earthly passion.”

  “It’s too confusing for me, Kasha,” said Tomoe. “I refuse to believe a word you say. I’ll leave Kanno soon and in the meantime, I would like to be alone.”

  “How rude to say so! But all right. I’ll see you again someday, I’m sure. Add you to my collection!”

  So saying, Kasha sprinted ahead. Tomoe was surprised to note that he made no indentations in the snow. Also, rather than growing smaller in the distance, it seemed that he got bigger. It must have been a trick of moonlight, but it seemed as though he disappeared before she could have lost sight of him.

  After scant hours sleep, she awoke beneath the shelter of an open-fronted woodcutter’s shed. A winter wren called misosazai shared the shelter. He made a weaving-and-shuttle sort of sound and ruffled his feathers at the bikuni.

  She rose, heavy and weary.

  By early afternoon she had left the province, glad at least to have seen the people acting cheerier. They did not know why they enjoyed the wintery day. As crops had been poor, autumn short, and the majority of winter before them, life would not be easy between now and spring. Yet the pall had risen from the land. The atmosphere was less deathly.

  She alone remained a shadow on the countryside, and even she had wandered on. When she passed the border station, there was the least possible interference from samurai who were in good moods, though they could not as yet have had news from the castle regarding the disappearance of Kuro the Darkness and the recovery of Lord Sato’s intellect. But they could not help but sense that they were no longer preyed upon by something unseen. Things bright and pleasant in the world were no longer drained into some deep, dark pit.

  Months later she overheard how things were in Kanno. Lord Sato, due to his lack of heir, had been coerced into adopting a boy of the Shogun’s clan. This established Kanno’s connection with the Kamakura military government. The benefit to Lord Sato was that he could remain the nominal ruler of the province until he selected his own time of retirement, and his clan name would survive. The bikuni could not imagine that Lord Sato was exactly happy; for he might always grieve the loss of his daughter. Yet, in the material sense, things had not come out badly for him. As for self-serving but basically innocuous Chamberlain Norifune, Tomoe Gozen never heard what became of him and scarcely cared. Ittosai, Heinosuke, Mirume … the survivors for whom she felt concern were unknown to the national gossip, so she had no information. An eagerness to forget Kanno altogether kept her from traveling to that region in order to learn more about their situation.

  She never did decide how many of the events in that mountain region were the result of hellish magicks, and how much had been heavenly intervention. In time she clung more securely to an esoteric worship of Merciful Kwannon, though otherwise remaining partial to the Shinto pantheon. She ceased to be surprised when acts of gods an
d acts of devils were indistinguishable, just as the hearts and motivations of human individuals could never be completely fathomed.

  EPILOG

  Duel at the Beach of Tears

  One spring evening in Seki province, the mendicant nun paused at a roadside shrine and knelt before the humble structure, intending to play her shakuhachi. The shrine consisted of a box with a thatched roof and stood upon four stilts. In the box was a statue of the goddess Benten, indistinguishable from certain of the many-armed aspects of Kwannon. Two of Her hands were held in prayer. In the other six She held: sword, wheel of punishment (or knowledge), bow, arrow, rope, and lotus flower. The goddess had once been gilded but only a little gold was left above Her breasts. There was even less red paint remaining on Her weapons. Her face was gentle, unlike many carvings of the dragon-taming Benten. The wood-carver must have been thinking of Senjin-Kwannon to make her face convey a kindly disposition.

  Despite its age-cracks and worn appearance, the statue must have been a treasure in some temple long and long before. Now it had fallen on hard times, sitting in so rustic a shrine, a few dried out food offerings on a rock, and no recent incense.

  It was the nature of the Thousand Shrine Sect that its members paid homage to the humblest as well as greatest holy places. But before she could raise the flute to her lips, the bikuni was distracted by the worn plaque hanging from the lip of the stilt-box. Carved into the wood was the simple legend:

  This world of dreams

  passes in a twinkling

  of one’s eye.

  The maxim put the bikuni in a reflective mood. She could not play her instrument, for her mind was uneasy. She returned the shakuhachi to its place under her dark vest, in the back of her obi where it did not show. Holding up the handles of her swords so that they would not touch the dust, she leaned forward with her free hand flat upon the ground, and remained bowed a long while in apologetic obeisance. Then she rose and started in the direction of a knoll, from whence the sea was visible beneath the evening sky.