by David Kudler
We all stood there listening, eyes open wide.
“So, I’ll brew yeh a bit if it gets real bad, Smiley, but ‘till then...” He pointed up to a net hanging beside the poppies. “Know what these are, Bright-eyes?” When I didn’t respond, he raised an eyebrow to the others, but they shook their heads. He took down the net and showed us the fingernail-sized bits it contained: they were button-shaped and golden brown, like flattened rabbit pellets, and I felt sure that I’d seen our mother buying them off of the herbalist who came through every summer. “Well, this one yeh’ll all get to know better. Corydalis root. Puts a body t’sleep and takes away aches—not as good as poppy juice, mind, but good enough, and the sleep yeh fall into ain’t as like to last a lifetime. It’s a favorite of some of the older girlies, if yeh catch my drift. And to help the lady sleep sometimes when she can’t.”
“Really?” asked Emi, scowling; I was probably scowling too, since it hadn’t occurred to me that Lady Chiyome slept at all, or that she would want to. Somehow, taking a sleeping draft seemed... human.
“Ayup.” Kee Sun grunted. Then he smiled again. “But I don’t want yeh coming in here usin’ knives when yeh haven’t slept well, so I’ll show yeh girlies how to make a good tea with this”—he let a handful of the corydalis fall through his fingers—“that’ll give even a crabby old man like me a good night’s sleep.”
—
Later that day, we went out to the stable for another lesson with Mieko-san.
As we arrived, the women were still moving the equipment out of our way. one of the women barked, “Hey! Where are all of the blankets?”
“Blankets?” asked Toumi.
“Yeah. We usually move all of the saddle blankets, but they’re not here.”
Pointing to the far wall, Fuyudori answered brightly, “See! They’re over here, already out of the way. Perhaps Masugu-san moved them.”
Emi muttered, voice low so that even standing beside her I could hardly hear, “Or maybe it’s our fox spirit again.”
Before I could begin to wonder what she meant, Mieko stood silently and led us through her dreamlike dance once again. Once again, I had the odd, disturbing sense that I knew the movements. Perhaps I had danced it as a child. Perhaps I had danced it in a previous life. Perhaps I was simply imagining it.
Now that they were sure that they knew where they were going, my limbs wanted to go faster, but Mieko-san’s steady, flowing movements lulled me into following at her pace.
My hands. My hands felt... empty.
And the air was full of the metallic scent of snow.
—
True winter closed in that night. A blizzard turned the whole world into a huge sheet of blank paper, and didn’t let up.
After several days of being snowbound, we all began to feel jumpy. We were only outside long enough to scurry from one building to another.
At meals, the women became quieter for a time, but soon some of them began to grumble—though not so loudly that Lady Chiyome could hear. “It can stay like this for weeks at a time, up here in the mountains,” muttered one of the women into her soup one night. “We won’t be going out on any trips any time soon.”
A broad-shouldered kunoichi who had come in just before the blizzard answered, “Trust me, you’re not missing anything out there.”
As the rest of us became gloomier and gloomier, only two people seemed to be merry. The first was Lady Chiyome, who said that the valley needed a good snow, and who always seemed most cheerful when others were miserable.
The other was snow-haired Fuyudori, who seemed to be in her element. At lessons, she chirped and laughed. At meals, she sat near Masugu-san and flirted shamelessly.
Mieko-san didn’t seem to find anything about the proceedings at all amusing. She glowered in the opposite direction—at Kuniko’s nightly memorial bowl of rice. At me. At the wall.
Masugu-san sat like a stone statue of himself. Then again, he hadn’t been able to take his horse out. He was never happy when he couldn’t ride.
24—Visitors
The snow did not relent for days. Every morning, Emi, Toumi and I had to break the ice that had formed atop the well in order to fill the tubs. As the snow kept piling up, Emi pointed out that we could use the drifts that had fallen in the courtyard overnight. Not only was this easier than trudging all of the way to the back of the estate where the well was, but it had the benefit of clearing the snow from the area immediately around the bathhouse, which made walking to and from the kitchen easier.
Though we never discussed it, we began to stay in the bathhouse longer and longer, letting the heat of the fires and the warming baths thaw us.
Having to trudge out into the cold again each day just as the baths began to heat up was unbearably hard. That we were able to flee to the warmth of Kee Sun’s kitchen was at least a small blessing.
Kee Sun continued to teach us about herbs. And each night, after we had finished cleaning out the tubs for the day, Emi went to the kitchens to pick up a pot of corydalis tea that the cook had prepared; he had already brewed one for Lady Chiyome, he said, so one more was no trouble, if it meant that Emi came to work in the mornings with a smile on her face. I think that he was joking.
The tea certainly helped Emi sleep. Sometimes it seemed as if she went through the rest of the next day barely awake.
—
After five steady days, the blizzard let up. Emi, Toumi and I were in the teahouse that morning with the older girls, writing out one of the Buddha’s sermons. Even when we warmed the ink stones at the small fire, it took a great deal of rubbing to get the ink sticks to mix smoothly with the water, and even then the ink was thick as honey from the cold, full of clumps that left splotches on the page. Mai just laughed when Emi’s attempt to write the Chinese character for bliss came out looking more like—as Mai said—“a kid’s drawing of a cow turd.”
Suddenly, the screened walls of the teahouse glowed brightly, as for the first time in days something like bright sun broke through the overcast. We all stumbled to the door—though the clouds were still heavy and it was still cold. “Go!” said our teacher, sighing. “I want to read some more of what the Buddha had to say about cow plops.”
We looked up, all of us, as if the mottled grey overhead were the bright blue of a summer’s day. “Hey, Risuko,” laughed Shino, “you’re supposed to be such a great climber—think you can get up into the big tree and see if the rest of the world is still there?” She pointed up at the huge hemlock that grew beside the great hall.
“No!” Emi gasped. “The tree is covered with ice! That would be dangerous.”
“Well,” sneered Mai, “I guess she isn’t such a great climber after all.”
Not waiting to hear any more—happy simply to get away from them all, if only for a moment—I leapt at the trunk of the huge hemlock. Though the bark was covered with glistening frost, it was rough and wrinkled, and the crevices were ice-free—perfect for climbing. I scampered up to the first branches in no time at all. Looking back down, I was pleased to see all of the other girls blinking up at me.
Fuyudori’s gaze connected with mine, and I knew with pleasure that she was thinking of a much more difficult climb that I had once made.
“Well,” grumbled Mai, whose sneer couldn’t quite cover her shock, “what can you see?”
I looked out over the wall. There was nothing but white. The downpour had stopped, and the clouds had lifted enough that I could see feathers of snow lofted from the ground by the soft, chill breeze. But all beyond the wall was blank and white—mountains, valley, sky. It was as if the rest of the world had been wiped away, as if nothing beyond the Full Moon still existed. “Nothing,” I said, hoarsely. “I can’t see anything at all.”
“So much for squirrels having sharp eyes,” muttered Mai, and Shino and Toumi laughed.
“Wait!” I called, as a pair of dark
shapes began to push up over the invisible line of the ridge. “Riders!”
“You’re joking!” laughed Shino again, while Mai said, “Impossible.”
Emi frowned up at me, about to say something, but Fuyudori beat her to it, chirping, “It must be the Lieutenant. He left with Aimaru-chan and the Little Brothers this morning to check on the farms in the valley.”
“I don’t think so,” I called down. “It’s two horses. And they’re riding hard.” Even in the white-on-white landscape, and even though the grey chargers seemed to be making no sound, I could see the snow flying as they galloped, the riders leaning forward.
“Flags?” called our sensei from the teahouse. I could see the ink stains on her clenched fingers.
I suddenly felt cold. “Um. None. White cloaks?”
Before I had finished speaking, the teacher began to beat a rapid alarm on the small gong at the entrance to the teahouse. “Stay up there, Risuko!” she shouted, and then began to run toward the stables.
Women burst from the great hall and from the Nunnery, some in their miko garb, and others in light trousers and jackets.
The two horsemen charged on along the ridge; they were half of the way toward the front gate. I thought I could hear their hooves tearing at the snowy ground, but perhaps it was the sound of the women’s feet or my beating heart.
“What is it?” called Mieko.
“Riders!” shouted Fuyudori, who was wringing her hands beneath me.
One of the kunoichi sprinted out of the storeroom with two long glaives, one of which she tossed to our Chinese teacher, who caught it smoothly with one hand.
Behind the two white-cloaked riders, a third now appeared, his horse much larger than theirs, charging like a bolt of black lightning. On his helmet he wore a stag’s antlers. “Masugu-san!” I shouted. “He’s chasing them!”
The first two thundered toward the Full Moon, the steam from their nostrils clearly visible now. Were they going to try to jump the wall?
The two spear-bearing women had somehow made their way to the roofs of the guesthouse and of the stable, the long blades of their glaives flashing in the winter morning sun.
“They’re splitting!” I called, as one rider veered toward the east wall of the compound while the other flew west.
“Raiders?” barked Lady Chiyome from the front door of the great hall.
“Can’t tell!” one woman shouted from the wall. “Can’t see any insignia!”
I thought of the men who had captured me and Toumi that morning on the switchbacks. Enemy raiders. Bandits.
The two riders rounded the front corners of the compound at almost exactly the same time.
Where did they mean to go? The woods to either side of the Full Moon were thick and tangled, and behind the compound the ridge quickly gave way to a sheer granite mountain slope.
Masugu was clearly closing on the rider to the west, who I could see was looking for a way through the impassable woods, his head moving left and right even as his horse charged straight ahead.
I heard a sharp slap below me. Fuyudori had her hand to her pale face. “Snap out of it!” Sachi shouted, her expression empty of its usual laughter.
Like a peal of summer birdsong, metal met metal. Over the wall to the west, I could just see Masugu’s sword crash against the white-cloaked stranger’s. The impact seemed to knock the stranger back in his saddle, but he managed to stay on his mount.
“What’s happening?” shrieked Fuyudori.
I climbed higher, hoping to see better, dreading what I would see.
Masugu’s momentum had carried him past the other horseman. He wheeled his stallion and came at the other man, his katana raised high.
A flash of movement to my left drew my eye. The other horseman had rounded the rear of the compound and was charging at Masugu’s back.
“Masugu-san!” I screamed. “Behind you!”
I looked back to the lieutenant in time to see the opponent he was facing fall from his saddle, a shower of red rain falling with him. Masugu wheeled to meet the second horseman, raising his blood-slick sword defensively.
A long black bolt suddenly erupted from the charging rider’s throat, and he was thrown backward from his saddle, a look of shock on his face.
It was Shirogawa, the man who had trussed me and Toumi up from the tree like pigs to be butchered.
Masugu turned his stallion, looked at me, and then at the Full Moon’s wall.
We both saw a figure standing atop the storeroom holding a bow taller than she was, leaning forward as if still watching the arrow’s flight. It was Mieko, her face as calm as ever.
—
By the time I made my way down, the women had all climbed off the rooftops as well. I could see that they had used the timbers that decorated most of the buildings near the gate to climb, and it occurred to me that, unlike the great hall’s, those walls were meant to be easy to climb, so that Mochizuki’s inhabitants could defend its walls—though not from the rear of the compound. Not that any enemy would ever attack from the sheer granite slopes behind us, nor the dense woods to either side. And I couldn’t imagine that old Lord Mochizuki had intended the walls to be defended by a bunch of young women in shrine maidens’ garb.
Fuyudori stood alone beneath the tree, her face as pale as her hair. Toumi trailed two older women, gazing with undisguised hunger at the long glaives in the kunoichis’ hands.
Emi looked at the gate, biting her lower lip.
“I’m sure Aimaru and the Little Brothers are all right,” I whispered.
She shook her head, but before I could ask what she meant, Lady Chiyome burst out of the great hall. “Don’t just stand there! Open the gate!”
Mieko sprinted past her mistress, moving more quickly than I had ever seen her do, and the rest of us followed her. It took eight of us to do what the Little Brothers did with so little effort, but we managed to get the gate open just as Lieutenant Masugu led his horse through the tall red torī arch.
“Masugu-san!” I shouted, and found that Fuyudori had shouted with me.
The lieutenant removed his helmet, his expression grim.
“Who were they? How did you find them? Why were they here?” Fuyudori continued, her voice shrill. “Are you all right?”
“Enemy raiders,” said Lady Chiyome, sweeping Fuyudori aside.
Masugu shook his head and shrugged, his armored shoulders lifting like broken ice in a river. “No. The same feathers on their arrows, but no insignia on the armor or on the horses. And the enemy—cavalry, scouts, even raiders—they always use chestnut mounts, not greys. Though the greys are harder to see in the snow, it’s true.” He shrugged, then looked at the circle of women around him. He shook his head again. “Villagers said they’d seen strangers sneaking around. We spotted them as we reached the bottom of the hill. I couldn’t think of a good reason for them to be on the road up here, so I called. As soon as I did, well, they ran for it, and then I knew they were up to no good. I followed and...” He held up his hands as if to say, And here we are.
“You fought well, Masugu-san,” I said. I said it quietly—not meaning to say it out loud at all—but he heard it.
He smiled grimly. “Not much of a fight. Me on the bigger horse, more heavily armed. And you to watch my back. Thank you for the warning, Murasaki-san.”
Feeling the heat rise to my face, I mumbled, “You’re welcome.”
His grin warmed, and then he turned to Mieko, who was still holding her bow. “Nice shot, Mieko-san.”
“Yes,” she answered.
In the silence that followed her flat statement, Masugu turned and patted his horse. “Well, I need to get Inazuma here back into his stall and brushed down, don’t I, boy? It’s been a while since he had a chance to ride hard like that.”
The circle of women parted to let him lead his horse to the stabl
e, looking for all the world as if he had just come back from a vigorous morning’s ride, and not from a fight to the death. Not as if he had just killed.
In my mind’s eye, I could see the spray of blood as he struck down the first rider. But they would have killed him, a voice said in my head—a voice that sounded very much like Lady Chiyome’s. And who warned him, after all?
“Enough gawking at the pretty soldier and his pretty horse,” Chiyome-sama’s actual voice barked. “Kee Sun and the Little Brothers will dispose of the ruffians later. For now, close the—”
“Chiyome-sama,” said Emi, pointing out through the open gate, “pardon your humble servant’s interruption, but the Little Brothers and Aimaru are coming.”
We all stared out into the bright, white landscape, where three more figures were in fact cresting the rise. Or rather, two figures, and another who looked like a walking wall.
“But what in the name of the gods are they carrying?” snorted Toumi.
25—To Roost
Even from a distance, I could see that they were all red-cheeked from the cold and from the climb up from the valley. None of them seemed to be injured, which made me release a breath I hadn’t realized that I was holding.
Though the shortest of the three, Aimaro looked twice as wide. As they approached, we could see that he carried a load of open boxes that were hung from a pole across his shoulders. Cages. There were birds inside—chickens.
“Oh, good,” said Sachi, “the morning’s entertainment isn’t over.”
Some of the older women laughed, the tension leaking from the assembly like water from a punctured tarp.
We stood there in two files as they entered. Aimaru looked to the chickens, who were complaining in their confinement, and then to Emi and to me, as if to say, Now what?
I shrugged. Emi frowned down at the snow-muffled gravel.