Traitor's Hope

by Virginia McClain

  Nine days after leaving Rōjū City, more than a day’s travel away from the road they had taken north, they arrived in a clearing that was nestled in a small valley, amongst the broad-leafed trees of a dense forest. A stream trickled nearby, and there was a strange woven mat lying against a rock face that joined the steep incline that shaped the valley.

  “It’s still daylight,” Mishi said, as they rested against a thick log that had been flattened on top and seemed like it had been moved to the clearing just for the purpose of making a table or backrest. “Why are we stopping?”

  She feared she wasn’t exhausted enough to hold off the visions.

  “It’s a shame that Taka-san isn’t here to show it to you,” Mitsu said, “but this is the home she has known for the past eight cycles.” Mitsu walked up to the woven mat as he spoke, then pulled it aside, revealing a small cave that contained a much-used fire circle near the entrance and a low, flat stump that looked as though it might be used as a table. When Mishi stood and went to look more closely at the cave, she saw a stack of woven mats at the back of the room that likely served as a futon.

  “We won’t have to sleep in the rain tonight,” Mitsu said.

  The sky was still clear above them, but it had drizzled on them the night before and Mishi thought that she had seen clouds behind them before the mountains had cut them out of her view as they had come into the valley. The prospect of staying dry through the night was a pleasant one, but she didn’t like the idea of sleeping so close to Mitsu and leaving him without an easy escape if she should wake up to one of her dreams.

  “You can have the cave,” she said. “I’ll sleep beneath the stars.”

  “You’ll be sleeping beneath the clouds,” Mitsu replied. “I promise to be on my best behavior.”

  Mishi didn’t laugh, though she could see the mischievous twinkle in Mitsu’s eye.

  “It’s not your behavior I’m worried about,” Mishi said.

  “You won’t hurt me, Mishi-san,” Mitsu replied, his eyes no longer twinkling.

  Mishi didn’t dignify that with a response. She wouldn’t argue with him, she would simply sleep outside. There was another fire circle in the small clearing in front of the cave, where she could keep warm enough without shelter.

  “I’ll make a fire,” she said. She didn’t wait for Mitsu’s reply, but exited the cave and started searching for kindling and fallen branches that would be dry enough to catch, even after the light rains of the past few days. She needed to keep busy and, if at all possible, to tire herself out enough to keep her from being a danger to Mitsu. She would search very thoroughly for deadfall in hopes of using up more energy.

  She wished they had needed to run farther today. She could already feel the tightness in her chest that often accompanied her visions.

  Eventually, she had collected enough wood and kindling that she could no longer put off starting the fire. She was dismayed to see that Mitsu had already returned from his hunting excursion and prepared a small brace of hares for cooking. She had hoped he would still be busy.

  Mishi knelt by the fire circle in the clearing, deciding that the weather would likely hold off long enough to let them cook the hares and eat, and began assembling the kindling and smaller pieces of deadfall. Then she took out her flint and steel and struck sparks into the cradle of kindling. It didn’t take her long to get the small fire blazing, and then she added more and more wood until the fire was large enough to cook the hares Mitsu had brought down. It would take some time for it to reach a temperature appropriate for cooking, but she had collected enough wood to fuel the fire through the night.

  She looked up to find Mitsu staring at her intently.

  “Why not use your kisō to start the fire?” he asked. His voice was casual, as though the question were of little consequence, but she could see from the set of his jaw that it wasn’t an idle query.

  Mishi took a deep breath. How to answer without lying?

  “Why use kisō when I have a perfectly effective flint and steel? There are far better uses of kisō than starting a simple campfire.”

  There, Mishi thought, a question couldn’t be a lie, and the statement was true enough. Perhaps that answer will appease him.

  She tried not to catch Mitsu’s gaze, but found her eyes caught by his as she went about setting up the crossed branches that would support the spit for roasting the hares. His gaze told her that he was unconvinced, yet he didn’t press her any further.

  Eventually they set the hares to cooking and it wasn’t long before Mishi was inwardly cursing how little they had run that day. The smoke alone had brought memories too close to the surface, but once the hares were set above the fire, the smell of searing flesh pulled even harder at her mind.

  She heard screaming in the distance and told herself that it wasn’t real. She looked at Mitsu, just to be certain that he hadn’t heard it as well, but he was calmly rotating the hares over the flames.

  She began to take deep breaths, and to put herself on the far side of the fire. She didn’t want to be too close to Mitsu. Perhaps she should walk into the forest…but no, he might follow her.

  “Mishi-san, are you all right?”

  She blinked and tried to focus on what was in front of her instead of the distant screams that she was fairly certain were only in her mind.

  “Mishi-san?”

  Suddenly, Mitsu’s face was right in front of hers. She blinked again.

  “Yes?”

  “What can I do to help?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” she replied, because it was the truth. She had never yet stopped the visions from coming once they had started.

  “Do you want to hold my hand?” Mitsu asked.

  Mishi thought about that. She could still hear screams in the distance, and the smell of smoke and cooking rabbit was being replaced with the smell of blood and battle.

  “I might attack you,” she replied, shaking her head. Her vision was still clear, but the sounds of battle were getting stronger. “You should get away from me.”

  Now Mitsu was the one shaking his head.

  “I won’t leave you alone when you’re like this,” he said. “You could hurt yourself.”

  Mishi might have laughed at that if she had been capable of feeling any humor at that moment. Instead she simply said, “I’m far more likely to hurt you. You should get away.”

  Mitsu shook his head once more, and began to reach for her.

  Panic took hold. She wasn’t lost in a vision yet, but she knew it was only a matter of time. She didn’t want to hurt Mitsu at all, but she knew that if he followed her and the vision got worse he would be in real danger. In this moment she could still control her actions.

  So, she grabbed his wrist, turned with his body weight, and threw him to the ground. She made sure the impact was hard enough to knock the wind from him, and then she did the only thing she could think of to protect him. She ran.

  ~~~

  Mishi stopped running when the muscles in her legs felt like wet sand instead of charged lightning and the sounds of battle had receded back into memory and were no longer playing in her ears. She collapsed then, heedless of the underbrush still wet from snowmelt that lay beneath her, and simply stared at the tree branches that obscured the sky above her as she took in staggered breaths of damp, spring air.

  “You know, when Taka-chan runs through the forest like that she doesn’t generally stop to lie on the ground,” a voice that sounded like shifting earth and wind blowing through trees rumbled, as willow branches moved into her line of sight. “But I think she should rethink this. It is always good to stop and appreciate the earth from time to time.”

  A face—was it still a face when it consisted of bark and moss?—came into view then, and Mishi knew that she must be meeting Yanagi-sensei, Taka and Mitsu’s longtime mentor. She sat up and slowly took in the bark that shaped itself into a nose and mouth, eyes the color of hardened tree sap, bushy eyebrows of moss and lichen, and the body of w
hat looked like a willow tree. It had as many long, arced and trailing branches as would be found on any normal willow, but also seemed to have legs, or something approximating them.

  “You must be Mishi-san,” the talking tree continued, and Mishi found that she was struggling to reply. Somehow, even though she was good friends with a dragon who resided on a mountaintop and came forth from a small statue only when the sun went down, the marvel of this walking, talking tree held her speechless. She managed a nod.

  A wide smile cracked the gnarled face of the tree.

  “It is a true pleasure to finally meet you, Mishi-san. I have heard much about you! How wonderful that Taka-chan finally found you once more. At least, I assume she has found you once more even though she is not here with you. Friends are one of the best parts of life, ne? How do you like my forest?”

  Mishi laughed. She couldn’t help it. She wasn’t sure what she had expected when she thought of meeting this thousands-of-cycles-old kami, but she was fairly certain that an effusive and expressive moving tree hadn’t been it.

  “The pleasure is mine, Yanagi-sensei,” she said, the tree’s chatty nature seeming to unblock her tongue. “You aren’t what I expected,” she added, before she could stop herself.

  “And what did you expect, youngling?”

  To her relief, the bark and lichen face was still smiling.

  “Well….” She wasn’t sure how to explain her expectations. “The only other being I know who is as old as you are is a somewhat ornery dragon.”

  “Ah, yes, Tatsu-san mentioned that he had a new student.”

  Mishi had been training with Tatsu-sama since the age of ten, so she wasn’t sure what it meant that he “had a new student.” She supposed that with beings as long-lived as a tree-kami and a dragon, her entire lifespan would be considered recent.

  “Do you and Tatsu-sama speak to each other often?” she asked.

  “Hmmm…difficult to say.”

  Mishi wasn’t sure if the walking tree was being evasive, or was simply struggling with human time frames.

  “But Tatsu-san spoke very highly of you, as has Taka-chan,” he continued.

  Mishi didn’t know what to say to that. She had never thought very highly of herself, and lately…well, lately she considered herself a danger to the world around her. After all, she was here because she had just run away from a friend she was worried she might kill. She certainly didn’t consider herself worthy of anyone’s praise.

  “Hmm…” Yanagi’s large eyes studied her, and the humor seemed to have left his face. “What troubles you, youngling?”

  Mishi shook her head. She knew better than to try lying to someone like Yanagi, but she didn’t know what to say. How could she explain that she was a danger to all of her friends and the world in general? If she told Yanagi-sensei the truth, wouldn't he condemn her? She felt certain she would deserve it, but she wasn’t anxious to find out what the tree-kami might do to someone like her. After a long moment of silence, in which Mishi could think of no safe reply, Yanagi spoke once more.

  “You are skittish like a sparrow, youngling. Do I frighten you— ah no, but you weren’t frightened when you first saw me, and Tatsu-san is your mentor, so it can’t be that. Hmm…what then?”

  The tree paused briefly, but Mishi made no effort to help him. She simply sat on the forest floor and gazed up at him, her emotions in turmoil.

  “You are not afraid of me, and, judging by what Tatsu-san told me about his newest student and her ability to fight, you are unlikely to be afraid of most things that a youngling would be frightened by…and you only began to act like a startled swallow when I asked what troubled you…oho! That’s it! You are frightened of yourself! It is your own troubles that scare you, ne?”

  The tree’s face lit briefly at seeming to have solved a puzzle, but when his gaze met Mishi’s again it had lost all of its briefly held triumph.

  “And why should one as young as you be so haunted?”

  Mishi’s throat caught as she tried to find words…and couldn’t. She stood up, finally, but no answer came to her save the hot tears that streamed down her face. She wasn’t sure why she was crying, but she supposed it didn’t matter. Her eyes flowed freely and she didn’t bother to wipe at them. She didn’t think they planned to stop anytime soon.

  “Hmmm…Child…no that’s not right. I call many creatures children, but one who has as much darkness around them as you do can no longer be called a child…”

  Darkness? Was that what was wrong with her? Had she absorbed too much darkness? Had it made her evil?

  “Will you let me take a look at you, Mishi-san? I understand that you fear yourself, but what I cannot understand is why. And if I do not understand why, then I cannot begin to help you. I would like to help you. Would you like that?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  She hadn’t meant to speak, but the words were out, and as she said them she knew them to be true. She wasn’t sure that she wanted to be helped, or rather, she wasn’t sure that what little help could be offered would be worth the risk of someone truly understanding what was wrong with her. She was very afraid of what lay beneath the visions that haunted her dreams, both waking and sleeping.

  Yanagi-sensei seemed to think for a long moment, and Mishi realized that a face of bark was very difficult to read.

  “If what Taka-san and Tatsu-san have told me can be relied upon, along with what little I can know of you from our brief encounter here…then I think it is safe to assume that what would frighten you most is the idea of hurting the ones you love. After all, you are afraid, but instead of seeking solace from your companion you run alone into the woods. And why would you do that, if not to protect your friend?”

  It was true that she feared hurting the people she cared about more than anything, and the fact that she had already hurt them once left her with a guilt she thought she would never be without.

  “What if I can help you protect your friends, Mishi-san? Would it not be worth it, whatever it is you fear I will discover, to know that they would be safe?”

  Mishi thought about that, and was too busy hoping that what Yanagi-sensei offered was true to worry about how closely he had guessed what she had been thinking. Could he really ensure that she would never hurt the people she loved the most? No matter how bad the darkness got, if she could be sure of that, she thought she might be able to manage.

  She nodded, finally, the tears still streaming down her face from too many emotions to name.

  “Yes. Help me protect them.”

  ~~~

  Having Yanagi-sensei inspect her kisō was similar to, and yet quite different from, having Taka do it. The brush of Taka’s kisō was so familiar that having her lifelong friend follow the ebbs and flows of her energy to the deepest well within her did not seem like any kind of an invasion.

  Yanagi-sensei’s presence didn’t feel like an invasion either, because she was allowing it, but it felt quite foreign. She supposed that shouldn’t be surprising, considering that he was a who-knew-how-old tree-kami and not her lifelong friend…but she couldn’t quite fathom how it was different, simply that it was. Perhaps she could sense the age and power behind his touch, or perhaps she only thought that she could because she knew that he was old and powerful. One thing she was certain of was that the kisō that joined with her own felt of earth and wind and even water…she’d never sensed three elements in one being before, and the sensation startled her.

  She felt Yanagi-sensei’s kisō touch her own, pausing to await her permission for further contact, and then became distinctly aware of a presence not her own, information, ideas, and identity flooding her senses.

  Male yet female, old, as old as the mountains that surrounded them, and ever dying, yet constantly renewing, and always new. At first she was surprised that he had allowed her to know so much about him, but then it occurred to her that it might have just been a simple way to distract her from what might otherwise be an overwhelming experience. She had r
arely connected with Tatsu-sama this way, and the few times she had, it had been while she was in desperate need of healing and in no state to notice what his consciousness felt like. Now she wondered. Would it be overwhelming? Would the connection trouble her?

  Slowly, the tide of “otherness” that was Yanagi-sensei’s initial contact reduced until it felt more like the kind of contact she was used to establishing with Taka. She was surprised, however, to find that his kisō already permeated her own. It normally took Taka longer to reach all the way into her fuchi and begin assessing her.

  She took a deep breath to maintain her calm. What had Yanagi-sensei already learned about her in that short period of time? Did he know what was wrong with her? Could he truly help her? Or would he simply discover the terrible truth about her and then let others know that she was not worth helping?

  She inhaled deeply through her nose, the cool air bringing with it the scent of pine needles, wet leaves, and still lightly frozen earth. She let it out, trying to focus on her too fast heart to slow its pace.

  She felt Yanagi’s earth kisō reach for her own fire. What did he hope to discover that way? His kisō prodded hers gently, and she felt the fire within her respond, wishing to play.

  No. She couldn’t. It wasn’t safe. She could hurt someone. She wouldn’t allow it. She hadn’t allowed it for so long.

  Then she felt Yanagi-sensei’s kisō unlock something within her.

  The world exploded.

  Mishi screamed.

  ~~~

  Mishi looked up at the trees around her and wondered why there was no fire above her. Had the whole thing been a dream? Had she collapsed while running away from the camp? Perhaps she’d never met Yanagi-sensei at all. Perhaps the whole thing was a creation of her mind and nothing more.

  “Hmm…well, that was impressive, I must say.”