by T. Cook
Shin sighed. “If you cannot accept that, you should also reject the explanation of my parentage.”
And with those words, he pinned me with my own hypocrisy. I had willingly believed him a god and yet I could not accept a similar explanation of my origins. Could there really be any truth in it? My breath came sharp, but I replied, a wordless answer into his mind. “I believe you.”
“You are like no other daughter of Orihime. Near the time of your conception, your father and mother had enemies—gods, jealous of their love. These combined to thwart your parents’ already rare meetings by sending floods of rain on the seventh lunar month. This went on for some time, and your mother began to despair. In her desperation, she made an ally of the Earth Kumo, who for their part, had had no prior access to the sky.
“Orihime gave you to my mother, to be your godmother, and blessed you with her defenses. She made you the only one of Orihime’s daughters to carry a few of my mother’s traits. Orihime never regretted the poison for your sake. She believed it you would become a magnificent weaver and change the balance in the immortal realm.”
It was a strange tale, and yet not strange. Accepting it washed a flood of emotions to the surface. “What it must have been to know your mother,” I whispered.
Shin almost winced at my saying, then softened. “That is how you became the Nagaishi clan’s hope, and the crucial ally to the Earth Kumo—if you will accept. And though you don’t know your mother, you were always known and loved…“ He paused without a breath. When he spoke again, his voice was a whisper. “I spent much of my childhood watching you strive, and many nights since.”
I drew a sharp breath. “The spider at the spring?”
I nodded.
“That is how you came into the house and escaped notice. That is how you found Satomi’s cane!”
“It is how I looked after you, even after leaving Lady Ozawa. And on that point, I have something more to confess.” Shin bent over a small cabinet in the corner of the room and removed a package. Then he handed it to me. “Open it.”
I peeked inside and my mouth fell open. “The silk I buried in the garden! Then you were there?”
“I hoped by taking it you would understand it was me, and not you, who was responsible for the blood and violence there.”
I blinked back tears. “I was confused by its disappearance, but I didn’t understand. I thought I had done it.”
Shin cast his gaze to the floor. “It was unnecessary—what I did. You could defend yourself.”
“Was it the same with Master Nobu’s younger brother?”
“Your venom was enough to defend against his attack, but I was on hand just the same. My uncle was there too, and we took him to the river to prevent his body’s discovery.”
My knees weakened and I sank slowly to the floor. Shin knelt beside me, holding my shoulders with his hands. “You are permitted to defend yourself. You did nothing you need feel ashamed of.”
“There were others.”
“Unavoidable.”
“I was responsible.”
“By your venom pestilence withers, but life flourishes.”
I knew he had not meant what sounded to me like a shallow placation. Earth Kumo lived and prospered by this frightening form of justice. And yet I knew better of Shin. “You were patient. And now you really expect to change the world?”
“We all abide the time of our calling.” He stood and opened his arms to me. “But no. I don’t expect to change the world. I am inviting you to do it.”
53
I knew neither how to refuse Shin, nor how to accept him. Both choices were unthinkable. I would not destroy him, and yet I could not will myself to walk away from him, either.
We wasted eighteen hours debating the consequences of our union while Whitegrain lay upon his futon in a stupor. He would not awaken without the help of an antidote Shin had developed himself. It would not cure him, but it would extend his life. And this was the nearest thing to a compromise we could come to.
“You have a partial antidote. Couldn’t you improve it?”
“Furi, you may not think I care to preserve a life with you, but I do. I have spent every spare moment of my past trying to develop a complete antidote. All my efforts have failed. I don’t think it can be done.”
I remembered Shin’s experimental journals and recognized their significance.
“But you haven’t given up.” I said, voice rising.
“No. But to be honest, I believe further pursuit of a cure would waste valuable time and distract us from what is most important.”
I gasped in disbelief. “What could be more important than saving your life?”
“Furi, you are an immortal. I will only die once. Time only keeps us apart. We will always return to one another. Your parents do the same.” Besides,” he added hesitantly, “an extraordinary child’s life is at stake.”
“But we might grow our space for happiness. We might raise a child together.”
“We all fall to the demands of nature, Furi.”
“Nature is cruel.”
“Not cruel. Stark. Remorseless in its demands. But beautiful in its extremes.”
“If our roles were reversed, would you be so ready to take my life?”
He conceded the point. “I don’t know that I would be able to do it at all. And I would never force you, but I will use every device I can find to persuade you.
Shin proved very persuasive, but it would take more than persuasion to bring me to any violence against him. He delivered there too.
54
We did the only thing we could agree to. I wouldn’t marry Shin with the obligations of a traditional wife, but we contracted a union with vows I believed I could keep, Shin taking my name, Orihime. I had been so long the subject of so much strategizing; I wished not to be acted upon, but to act myself. And so I negotiated my own terms. What I asked was trifling, really, and Shin accepted all with characteristic patience.
* * *
The inn’s mistress approached hesitantly, the silk obi trembling in her hands. “I can manage my own kitsuke without help,” I said, excusing her to leave. “You needn’t endanger your life for a frivolity.”
She left me.
I could handle a simple knot of the obi, tying it first in front, and then slipping the knot around behind. I wanted to look well for Shin, but I knew a gorgeous kitsuke was unnecessary adornment. He didn’t care so much to have a splendid bride. The rite would be spare, simple, but Shin insisted, legal. I thought legality a strange insistence, considering our sedition, but Shin believed time and justice would ratify his treason. I didn’t know, but I had hoped for audacious things before, and I had not stopped hoping them then.
When I finished, I stepped outside where Shin waited.
We would have only the inn’s master, a professed revolutionary, for a witness. We would not implicate anyone new to our treason.
An Otopponese priest performed the rite. And thus, we were united in a ceremony we did not quite understand, making vows not quite matrimonial.
The owners of the inn were sympathetic to the revolution, and invited us to remain there, but I had agreed to be with Shin on the understanding that he would develop an antivenin, and wouldn’t go near him without it. Staying at the inn was choosing impasse.
* * *
“Do you remember the first night we first talked under the eaves?” I asked.
Shin inclined toward me beside the small room’s kotatsu table, his mouth pulling into a shy smile. “You nearly knocked me off the veranda, I was so surprised to find you there watching me.”
“That seems fair.”
“Indeed.”
“You talked about my parents’ love story.”
“Ahh,” he sighed. “The records.”
“How far is the journey?”
His brow creased. “A fair distance. Mountainous. And dangerous.”
I paused, waiting to see if he would offer.
“You w
ant to go.”
I averted my eyes because I knew he would not like the idea, and I couldn’t deny my opposite wish.
“I don’t think it best to risk our lives for the records now. And the journey would only delay my resuming work on the antivenin.”
I nodded agreement with this. The antidote to my poison was all-important.
* * *
We returned to his own home outside of Western Capital where he also kept a small apothecary adjacent to the house.
The house was nothing…a small, spare cottage with very little space. But the garden, even in its wild overgrown state, was paradise. Shin and I spent happy hours working there together. As long as we worked, we preserved a smooth veneer of contentment, but it was surface deep. Any relaxation—any rest at all—brought us continually into conflict.
Argument with Shin was dangerous because it aroused my passion. I would not let him goad me into lovemaking, so I began to avoid him. Shin remained patient, even hopeful. He often returned from bathing at the spring alone, chest gleaming, subtle fragrance of sandalwood oil wafting about him, and looking every inch the demigod he was. How many times had he approached me this way, only to have me turn away?
Eventually, however, I saw little of him. He threw himself to work in the apothecary, working through much of the night and then curling up in a corner of the shop on a thin futon mat.
He gave me the only bedroom in the tiny house, a simple room with a tatami floor and shoji doors. Several cabinets lined one wall. One was sufficient to store everything I had to my name, but he offered me all, except one.
“This one is my private cupboard,” he had said, gesturing to a small cabinet. “I would keep it private, but it has no key and I would rather trust you than lock it up.”
“I have few possessions. I see no reason to invade your private storage.”
I said this, and meant it, but the promise was hasty. Soon, I would be very tempted to break it.
55
Patience is not always the virtue we credit it for. Nor restraint. This, I had exercised over a rigorous lifetime and I was proud of how well I could thwart nature to keep Shin safe from me. I was always learning, however, that life is not safe, and cannot be made perfectly so.
I thought I was alone in the garden, as I often was. The fruit trees were ripening and I sampled the flesh of a white peach while wandering in the shade of a row of young maples when I almost stumbled over Shin, stretched out, and sleeping deeply in its shade. He had probably not slept the night prior; he looked so weary—exhausted with the impossible work I had given him.
On impulse, I stooped to kiss him on the cheek. Before I rose, his eyelids flashed and his hands had fastened to my navel. “I almost thought you were a dream,” he whispered.
I jerked away, a little too hard. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
His hands released me at once and I stepped unconsciously backward. Provoked, he rose to his feet and closed the distance again. Pulling me in, he whispered, “Furi. I’ve been waiting for you since we were children.”
Unbidden images surfaced in my mind, both strange and familiar. At once, I realized Shin had planted them there: a doleful-eyed boy, standing at the edge of the Ishiyama farm. Me, sitting beneath the eaves, eating that strange apple Shin had given me. The sting of pine salve upon my damaged neck. Shin’s voice in my ear pleading for me to wait.
Shin would willingly perish only to love me. I couldn’t rationalize any selfish motive. He couldn’t vouchsafe a high position in a post-revolutionary Otoppon—he would never live to accept the rank, nor any other benefit in exchange for his valor.
Resisting, I whispered back, “I cannot be the cause of your death, Shin.”
“Should I cling to my own life and not give way for a child?”
“How will I stand it when you are gone, and at my own hands?”
“You will destroy me all the same…and waste my life in the process.”
So few months ago, our hearts had been stars aligned across a universe of space. Now, beating inches apart, they were mere flesh organs, dissonant pumps without hope of agreement.
It was several minutes of impasse before he released me, and went away over a pathway into a wood.
I didn’t see Shin again that evening, nor at all the following day. I wondered if he had finally left me, and I couldn’t blame him. However, by the third morning of his absence, my anxiety for him was steadily climbing. I couldn’t sit and sew, work in the garden, or even eat or drink. By midday, I had invaded his apothecary, searching for clues of his whereabouts. I searched thoroughly and found nothing.
Failing everything, I knelt down on the tatami floor in the bedroom to think of where else I might look. I had searched everywhere within the house, the garden and apothecary. I might go farther afield in search of him, but if he had fled any distance, I was unlikely to find him. He may have changed into his arachnid form, in which case, I would never see him.
Only then did it occur to me to try Shin’s cabinet. I had promised him privacy, but he had been gone so long. And he might return to his uncle. He might have given up and resigned himself to a war of violence. What use would honoring his privacy be then?
I stood in front of the old, rosewood cupboard, my heart beating in my tightened throat. I tried the latch. Against my expectations, the door swung swiftly open on a well-oiled hinge. I peered inside and flinched in surprise. Only one garment hung on a small hook within, and it was not Shin’s.
It was almost certainly of his making, however, and I lifted it out gently to examine it in the light. The sun caught its fibers and shone through them, throwing a kaleidoscope of iridescence against the wall. The technique was exquisite, the most delicate weave I had ever seen, and must have taken many days to accomplish, but a close study did not reveal how he had achieved its effect. I smiled in creative curiosity and wonder, and forgetting myself completely, slipped out of my robe to try it on.
The gown opened at the side. Adjusting it slightly, the closure fused sleekly together until it hugged me like a second skin. I ventured a peek at the glass, then froze. I had never seen the woman staring back at me then.
For the first time since discovering my mother’s identity, I felt what it must be like to be the daughter of a legendary beauty. I flushed at the reflection, but one glance was already too much. I sank to the floor, curled into fetal position, and ached for Shin to the point of physical pain. The spasm passed, however, and I recovered enough to recollect myself. I had to get out of the gown.
I had thought I could simply pull the opening apart again, but when I tugged at it, I found that the webbed fibers had fused snugly closed. The tiny fibers were deceptively strong. I could not get out of them. I tugged harder, but had no heart to tear Shin’s work.
I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
56
I paced the floor, up and down, anxious that Shin would not return, frantic that he would, and to find me, a moth, caught in his web—guilty of having violated the only request for privacy he had ever made of me. Perhaps he had always known I would break that promise. If this had been a deliberate trap, it was excellently laid, and what did I expect, having fallen in love the son of an Earth Kumo?
I slowed my restless legs and watched my breath in practiced relaxation. After all, I was caught, and what was the use of worrying now? What spider lays a trap and never returns to check it? Shin would be back.
* * *
He met me waiting for him at the genkan, and stopped at the sight of me. He stood so still, I detected even the slight escalation of his breath, and the dilating of his eyes.
I lifted my chin, fighting for dignity I did not feel. “Was this what you meant when you said you would use every technique of persuasion?”
He betrayed a sly smile. “It wasn’t quite fair; I admit. And some day far in the future I might be capable of feeling shame for having resorted to it.”
“You asked me not to open your cabinet. I see wh
y now. Once having seen your work, I was hypnotized. “
He shook his head slightly. “I can sympathize with the feeling. I must say; I wove it precisely, didn’t I?” He stepped up from the genkan, eyes never deviating a fraction.
“You made it well. I cannot get out of it.” I said, tugging at the seam.
“Nor will you be able to,” he paused, “…without help.” Then he stopped short of me, waiting for my consent.
And what does a cornered moth say? “I am your prey,” I made this concession, but not without bitterness, and it disarmed Shin entirely.
He averted his gaze. When he spoke, the warmth was gone. “We have one chance. I won’t spend it this way.”
A tremor ran through my chest and I groaned, “I don’t know how to navigate this path.”
“It was my mistake. I will free you, but I am afraid it will take a little time, and it will be difficult for both of us.”
* * *
I don’t know which of us suffered more during the gown’s removal. If he had asked me again, I could not have refused him, but having once acknowledged the trap unfair, he never spoke another word.
He took his revenge on what remained of his masterpiece next morning, swallowing the fibers like rice. I remained closed indoors, crying the floods I had forced back during the night.
57
When I had cried my last, I rose from my futon and stared at the glass, eyes swollen and skin raw.
I was a coward, and could not stand the thought of facing Shin. I would snap into pieces without relief from the tension pulling me to two irreconcilable ends. Nor could Shin endure our stalemate much longer. It was impossible. After all the years of waiting…after all the agonies he had suffered for me….he would leave at last. He could not bear up forever. He would go away to fight a revolution robbed of its bloodless solution.