Thousand Shrine Warrior

by Jessica Amanda Salmonson

  The grove came out into a scant wood. The sea remained beyond view. There were a few houses, which belonged to peasants preferring a relative seclusion over village life. One striking hut was grass-walled with a shimmering black roof. The bikuni had never seen such a roof in her travels. As they passed near, she saw the thatch was made of cormorant feathers. There was an old woman on her knees in front of the house, mashing yams in a mortar. She looked at the passing boy and nun and smiled without teeth. The nun realized she was carrying her incognito-hat, not wearing it, and was embarrassed to be caught ogling someone’s house. Yet, for some reason, the morning had her feeling freer than the night before, and she returned the old woman’s smile.

  They could hear the sea though it was still hidden. As they topped a rise, where the forest had been completely cleared for various uses, the turquoise waters appeared suddenly. The smell of fresh-caught fish and by no means fresh scraped scales of fish assailed the bikuni’s nostrils.

  Women beat clothing on narrow, low docks built into a burbling, shallow river. The river spewed into the jetty-embraced cove. Beyond a bridge, she could see the rear of the sea-facing village.

  The small road would soon be heavy with foot traffic: folk coming and going to and from the markets, wholesalers selecting what fish would be carted by laborers to the nearest inland towns, officials exacting taxes, random travelers and strolling tradesmen, woodcutters on delivery rounds, and all manner of people. The bikuni tied her incognito-hat on tight. She unsheathed her shortsword and handed it to Hayo, saying, “Go cut me some nice lengths of dry grass over there.”

  Hayo took the blade and looked at it with his jaw hanging down. Then he darted for a patch of dried grass, which he hacked, striking warriorlike poses.

  They took the grass about a third of the way across the bridge, where the bikuni arranged it in such a manner that she could kneel comfortably upon it.

  “Bird’s nest!” said Hayo. “Ha ha!”

  “It’s a symbol of the noble traveler,” said the bikuni, “as opposed to a dirty hobo like you. It means poverty and sorrows, but smells sweet.”

  Hayo plumped down on the corner, sniffing the straw. The bikuni began to play her shakuhachi, the notes sometimes wavering, sometimes long and pure and sweet. The usually rambunctious Hayo became still, his head turned to one side so that he could see under her hat. He looked dreamy and pleased. In a short while, a lot of people started coming and going across the bridge. Those who were in a hurry were apt to throw a small coin into the straw, which Hayo quickly dug out and stuck in the bikuni’s alms-bag. Those who were moved by the song would linger a moment or two, misty-eyed and appreciative, then slip near when the bikuni paused. Only then would they drop some coin in the alms-bag, which hung loosely from her neck and to the side of her knee. Those who came close would hear a quiet blessing issue from beneath the hat.

  In a short while she had earned several coins of low value. It was more than she usually received in so little a time, despite that these were poor people. It did not escape her that Hayo, smudged face and all, by his very presence, gave the peasants the encouragement to make offerings to a warrior-pilgrim. Ordinarily she could expect to be noticed mainly by those few who passed with weapons of their own.

  At a quiet point, the bikuni took out seven coins and said to Hayo, “You’re good luck for me. Generally fisherfolk think it too audacious to give something to an ex-samurai.” She put the coins in his hand. “Now, go buy us something like cheap noodles. It’ll be a treat for you, since you would usually lose the broth running away quickly. Don’t go stealing things or I’ll feel sad.”

  The boy accepted the seven coins and set off running, bare feet slapping over the bridge. The bikuni took up the shakuhachi anew and played with an abandoned sort of serenity. She was in good form and tried a difficult composition, which required the fullest range of notes. By blowing harder, the octave was raised; the flute could be made to sound like two separate instruments taking turns. The tune she selected was less melancholy than was commonly composed for shakuhachi. She was in too fine a state of mind to play something typically moody. The piece was titled “Mating Calls between Buck and Doe.” Ordinarily it was not her favorite. Today she thought it fit the natural luxuriousness of spring emotion.

  A stooped old man in peasant coat drew close when she rested. He dumped a bowl of raw, quality rice in her alms-bag. She said gently, “Grandfather, I don’t deserve so much,” but he slipped away, happy with himself. She was about to play some other piece, but held the shakuhachi motionless a while longer. Through the small latticework of her hat, she had long noted a samurai standing near the foot of the bridge. The samurai might have been listening, or merely lingering.

  Without lifting her hat, she could see only the legs and lower body of the samurai, who wore hakama trousers of a faded hue but sharply pleated, and straw sandals similar to those the bikuni wore but of a weave from a further province. A traveler: dusty, slender, and strong. This much the bikuni could tell from the waist down.

  The samurai perceived the nun’s awareness and, rather than continue watching, began to cross the bridge, each step slow and weighted with purpose. The bikuni held her breath and appeared ready to perform. The samurai halted with feet apart. The bikuni did not look up. In the next moment, a large gold coin dropped into the bikuni’s nest of grass. It was an unprecedented sum.

  “The value of your life,” said the samurai, drawing steel.

  Tomoe Gozen leapt backward at an angle, to her feet, braced against the bridge railing. Her sword came forth to block; but the samurai had not tried to kill after all. Having misinterpreted the hostility, the bikuni blocked inappropriately, and the samurai was able to complete a fantastically swift upward and downward double-cut. A triangular wedge fell loose from the front of the bikuni’s bamboo amigasa. She gazed out from this rent in her hat. She saw the dark, foxlike face of Yoshimora Wada’s strongest wife.

  “Shi-u!” exclaimed the bikuni.

  Shi-u’s sword slid into its scabbard as she said, “Neroyume. I thought it was you. I’ve searched more than two years. You were to meet me at a certain place, but never came.”

  “I didn’t agree.”

  “I cannot believe you were afraid.”

  “Perhaps you misjudge my courage,” said Tomoe Gozen. “There are more things to fear than death.”

  “I was disappointed and thought you ignored our meeting as an insult,” said Shi-u, folding her arms and turning sideways. There were more streaks of white in her long hair than there had been before. “I tried to return home afterward, but my lord wouldn’t have me. Kosame’s hand, which you shattered, never healed properly. She can still fight, but not as prettily. Hayugao was brought home dead. As I was responsible for them, Lord Wada shamed me. He said I could redeem myself with one thing only.”

  “My head,” said Tomoe, pushing herself away from the railing. A number of peasants were backed up on both sides of the bridge. They were afraid to cross, but eager to see if there would be a good fight.

  “I’ve disturbed these people,” said Shi-u, conscious of her dignity. “We can’t fight here.”

  Tomoe said, “Shi-u, why must we fight at all? Why would you try for the forgiveness of Lord Wada?”

  Her low, boyish voice replied with abject simplicity.

  “Duty.”

  Tomoe sheathed her sword and picked up her shakuhachi, placed it in a slender bag, and tucked it near her back. She untied her ruined amigasa and let it fall onto the nest of grass. All the morning’s better feelings had fled so utterly that she could not remember what those fleeting moments of well-being were like. She strode from the bridge, Shi-u after, and the peasants scurried out of the way. Tomoe turned off the lane as soon as she saw a reasonable side-path. They came to a gardened viewing-station. A wooden platform, built beneath willows, overlooked a pool of iris and water lilies.

  They were alone.

  “A shame to fight in this place,” said Shi-u. “Not
much room, besides.”

  “I have no intention of fighting.”

  “I can be patient. You cannot lose me a second time.”

  “Shi-u, listen to something. I find this difficult to confess; but I have had dreams of you.”

  “How propitious.”

  “I’ve dreamed what nuns should never dream.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’ve not felt such things since I was a young woman. It was a priestess then, of the Jono Cult, her face like that of a shining goddess, the opposite of yours.”

  “It’s amusing,” said Shi-u, but her dark face was rueful.

  “I’m unlucky,” said Tomoe. “But I won’t die.”

  “It’s not for us to decide,” said Shi-u. “Our lives are over in the space of one sorrowful breath, unheard by any.”

  The bikuni answered, “Isn’t that sad enough without our dueling besides? Can’t we seek happiness now and then?”

  “You think so? As our lives are of no consequence, what then of the precious moments? They are more ephemeral than life itself. They are nothing. A nobleman once said, ‘The cherry blooms again, but in the life of a man, spring comes only once.’ It’s more true for a woman. You and I cannot be young again, Neroyume. It’s more pitiful to linger. A swift end is more merciful.”

  The bikuni sighed with resignation. “Where would you propose we meet.”

  “Beyond the cove, opposite the jetty. There’s a quiet shore called Namida. It means ‘tears.’ Will you agree?”

  “I won’t disappoint you twice.”

  “At noon, then. Neither of us will have the benefit of the sun behind her shoulder.”

  Shi-u wheeled about, her white-streaked ponytail swinging. She walked away from the riverside garden. Tomoe watched the water lilies. When she was certain she was alone, she drew her shortsword and engraved a poem in the bark of a willow. It read: “Frog upon a lily/ as enlightened as/ ever I shall be.”

  Hayo scurried up the dusty lane, a square wooden bowl of soup and noodles in each hand, slopping over the edges. When he reached the bridge, he stopped, looked surprised, then approached the pile of straw where the bikuni had been sitting. He placed the noodle-cups on the planks and lifted the bikuni’s hat. It was cut in front; it wasn’t difficult to imagine how. He fell upon the straw, looking for signs of blood, but apparently nobody had been injured. All he found was a huge yellow coin. He lifted it to startled eyes as though it might wither like a flower petal. Had she bought him off? Was it worth so much to be rid of a tagalong? The notion hurt his feelings.

  If he asked around, he could find someone who had seen which way she went. But it looked as though she hated to be followed. Hayo was reminded of his stern, unhappy father’s last words in life: “Don’t follow me!” Then the ronin’s knife plunged deep into his own belly, as Hayo’s round, tearless eyes watched in expressive horror.

  He stood, kicked the straw and damaged hat into the river, and reared back as though to toss the gold coin after. Then he lowered his arm, gazed at the coin again; and the look that played across his face suggested some odd plan. Abandoning the noodles, Hayo started back into the village.

  Alone, Tomoe Gozen walked upon the shore. She had come early in order to investigate the lay of the beach. She had walked far from Naku Jetty and was already returning. The sun never quite came overhead this time of year, so noon was difficult to judge. It looked as though it were time Shi-u appeared.

  Upon the lonesome beach, her senses heightened. Everything of nature was close to her awareness. Bladders of seaweed popped beneath her sandals. She stepped carefully between encrusted stones, avoiding a cluster of urchins. Sunlight undulated on the water—liquid gold or fire—and black diver-birds vanished and reappeared and made exaggerated gulping motions with long necks. Wind played through her shoulder-length hair, reminding her of childhood and her mother’s gently stroking fingers, moving strands from small Tomoe’s face.

  A boat beyond the tip of the jetty—with one passenger and a man standing at the stern working an oar—was not enough to spoil the solitude. It was definitely noon and Shi-u’s lateness was a welcome respite, although she was not much heartened and could not conceive that her opponent might fail to appear.

  She spied a young sea turtle washed ashore, upon its back, in visible despair. As she approached, it flapped its winglike forelimbs, terrified, and dug its nose downward between a pair of stones, striving without success to right itself. She stood over it, let the turtle’s despair become her own, and wondered if one or another god stood over her with the least sympathy. She tipped it with one toe and the turtle scurried after the tide as though convinced it had escaped some monster’s bad intention.

  At her back, the shore folded away into the distance. Before her was the jetty, the name of which meant “Wailing Sadness.” Along the edge of the jetty, stone lanterns reared between boulders or perched atop them. They were not visible from the village or the cove, but were an important feature of the landscape from Namida Beach. They had been set as beacons for dead fishermen, whose spirits sought their homes once each year. Some of the lanterns were huge, others small. Some were no older than last summer; for only in summer did souls seek guidance, and each year one or two new lanterns appeared. Other lanterns were ages old, vanishing to the wear of the sea or beneath encrustation. Toward the tip of the jetty were a special group of stone carvings, shaped not like lanterns but scowling gods. These stood in honor of soldiers who perished in a sea battle, in commemoration of a war from which heroic names survived but not the remembrance of the reason they died.

  A fishing boat drew near to the point of the jetty and a samurai stood and climbed out. The boatman immediately started away. Shi-u Morita was coming along the jetty’s length, weaving between gods and stone lanterns. Tomoe Gozen removed her sleeveless vest, folded it, set it on a beached log, and placed her alms-bag and shakuhachi upon the cloth. She hitched up her hakama and tied back the sleeves of her kimono, then started along the jetty, meeting Shi-u less than halfway.

  Shi-u’s long, handsome face conveyed neither cruelty nor tragic sentiment, merely calm, firm resolve. Tomoe Gozen could not guess what her own face revealed. In her heart, she felt the gravest sorrow. Shi-u said, more with politeness than flattery, “I am glad to have heard you play your flute upon the bridge. For one of us, it must be the last sweet sound we hear, before the clash of steel.”

  A wheeling gull cried down to the pair. Tomoe Gozen wondered if it weren’t a song intended to contradict Shi-u’s statement that they would never hear another. She drew her sword and held it outward from her side; and she said, “Please do your best.” Shi-u drew steel as well, holding the sword-guard close to her face, blade aimed straight up. The two women leapt simultaneously. Steel rang on steel. Both found new footing between crusted lanterns. Tomoe placed a foot upon a sea urchin; its spines penetrated her straw sandals. The women turned slowly to face one another again.

  For a long time they did not move. When Shi-u finally lunged, Tomoe leapt back, giving up ground, coming nearer the beach and leaving the jetty and its lanterns.

  The nun leapt high into the air so that Shi-u’s horizontal cut missed its mark; and she kicked Shi-u in the face before coming down upon her back, hurt by a rock at her spine. Shi-u staggered backward, her nose nearly broken and swelling quickly, blood spewing horridly. Tomoe started to her feet, but was forced by Shi-u’s onslaught to fall sideways over a boulder and straight into a shoal.

  The shoal was thick with colorless jellyfish. Long, blue, dangerous filaments stung her as she was standing. Shi-u pursued right into the midst of the boneless fiends, causing Tomoe to give more ground, stumbling backward through shallows; and both of them plunged from the sea’s shelf. Neither could touch bottom with her feet; neither could swim very well while dashing swords at one another. They sank as one beneath the waves, locked arm to arm, each holding off the other’s sword. Shi-u’s nose was still bleeding, a red cloud between them in the water. Tomoe pushed
away, avoiding a cut only because the sea slowed Shi-u’s quickness.

  Tomoe gave up fighting and concentrated on getting onto Namida Beach, treading through water and jellyfish, scrabbling at stone, coughing, looking like a wet rag or an unwholesome mass of stringy seaweed. The seaweed lurched, stood; behind it, from shallows, stalked Shi-u. Tomoe spat water. Her straw sandals, soaked, fell to pieces, and she scraped her foot against barnacles. She complained loudly, “A bad choice, Shi-u! Poor ground for dueling!” She scrabbled on, not looking back, avoiding the cut behind her, trying to get above the tideline where there was a narrow margin of sand between the rocky shore and the stark, dry grasses rustling in the warm sea breeze.

  Clothing hung wet and heavy. The women took up new postures in a sandy area. Driftwood, looking like the bones of monsters, impinged on three sides. Both strove for a certain dignity, despite looking like half-drowned dogs. Shi-u’s white-streaked hair sported one green streak of seaweed. Her swollen nose did not bleed as much, but was horrible to look at. Shi-u bared her teeth and rushed forward, causing Tomoe to roll away through dry sand, which adhered to her costume. She came up in a defensive posture and brushed grit from one cheek, looking annoyed.

  “I quit, Shi-u,” she said; but Shi-u pressed harder. Tomoe blocked, spun halfway around, thrust quickly, was blocked, and had to block again. Yet Shi-u’s arm had been cut, how badly was difficult to tell; it didn’t bleed a lot.

  They backed away from each other—Tomoe weary; Shi-u monstrous and menacing, even in momentary retreat. Shi-u put her sword’s tip against a bit of wood and leaned on it, panting, watching Tomoe. Tomoe turned her back, as though bored, or simply unable to look at Shi-u’s face. She heard Shi-u coming, but did not turn to face her. She heard the angle of the descending blade and moved, at the last possible moment, to Shi-u’s left, and landed a cut. Shi-u’s sheath saved her. Tomoe had cut through it, ruining it, and Shi-u pulled the remaining section out of her belt and threw it aside.