by Zoe Marriott
She had been the Shadow Bride! The whole court had followed her with their eyes, and the prince had loved her. Yet she was not a woman.
“How?”
She gave me an amused, sidelong look. “I was one of many, many children. Some strange accident of fate gifted me with this face and this slender frame, and my parents knew that a child who looked as I did would be valuable. Of course, I would have been more valuable as a girl . . . so they raised me to talk, move, and even think as a girl would. I barely realized that I was any different from my sisters. When I was eight, they sold me to a kabuki theater.”
She sighed. “By the time I was twelve, I was onstage as a bishounen, one of the beautiful boys who take the female roles. I was much admired and had many patrons. One of them was the Moon Priest who taught me to shadow-weave in secret. Yes, many Moon Priests love other men. They believe it allows them to remain faithful to their true wife, the Moon, you see.” She laughed. “I wonder if She agrees.”
I thought of Youta, and the men who had killed his wife. How could they punish Youta for being unfaithful when they did the very same thing themselves? How was it different to love a man than a woman? “I hope not,” I said grimly. “I hope She is very angry at them indeed.”
Akira gave me a surprised look but continued: “One of my patrons was a minor lord who thought it would be a very fine joke to arrange for me to dance at the Shadow Ball. He said I would be more beautiful than any “real” woman there. He thought he was paying me a compliment and had no idea how those words pained me.”
I breathed in deeply, awed. “You were chosen. Out of everyone there. I cannot even imagine how you must have felt.”
“I have already told you that! Terrified! I was convinced I would die. A man pretending to be a woman in the Moon Prince’s chamber.” She smiled again, and its brilliance was like a warm golden dawn rising over newly fallen snow. “Later, when I knew him better, I asked him if he ever wished I had been born a real woman. He said that my heart was a real woman’s heart, and that was all he was concerned with.”
And you did love him, I thought. You loved him with the whole of your woman’s heart, Akira, you sly thing.
“Was it a secret at court, then? Did anyone else know?”
She made a restless motion, as if shrugging something away. “Why do you think the Moon Princess hated me so much? That her husband should fall in love with his Shadow Bride was enough of an insult. That the other woman should be, in fact, an oyama? She loathed the thought that anyone might find out. That is why I would have been safe if I had stayed at court. If I had died there, the court doctors would have examined me, and court doctors are not known for their discretion. Half their income comes from trading gossip.” She gave me a long look from those piercing eyes. “You still have not answered me. Are you happy?”
“No,” I said before I thought about it. Then, in a rush: “I do not expect to be. How can I, after everything that has happened?”
I do not deserve happiness.
She frowned, not in anger but as if she was thinking deeply. “If you could do anything now, Yue — have anything, change anything — what would it be? I do not mean impossible things, or wishes granted. I mean something you could work for and gain with your own efforts. What do you want?”
I stared out over the calm silver ripples of the lake and thought about her words. As I thought, something sparked inside me. Something I had pushed away because I had thought it impossible. Something I wanted. Something I would do, if only I could.
“Vengeance,” I said finally. “I would avenge my family and ruin my stepfather as he did us. If I could do anything, it would be that.”
She nodded. “I suspected as much. I have been wondering for a while whether I should speak to you about this — but I do not think it will harm anything to tell you another secret. It is not even much of a secret really, since everyone at court knows of it. It is called the Shadow Promise.”
“Promise?”
“Yes. It is the most ancient part of the tradition of the Shadow Bride. Ouji-sama believed it was originally a simple vow of fidelity between the Shadow Bride and the Moon Prince, but whatever its origin, this is what the promise is now: on the morning after she is chosen — the morning after she has lain in the prince’s bed for the first time — the Shadow Bride is granted one boon.
“She may ask the prince for a promise, and by law he must keep it for as long as he keeps her. The minimum time is one year, but, as in my case, it can be much longer. You see how valuable such a thing is for a lord if his daughter is chosen? That is why all the lords scramble for an invitation to the ball. If the girl is well coached, she can obtain any concession for her family that does not actually break the law. That is important. She cannot ask for her father to be made Moon Prince or to have her father’s enemy assassinated. If the wish is not legal, it cannot go ahead. But if she wishes to specify that all the government storehouses buy rice from her family before any other, it will be done, as in the case of Shimada Naoko-sama. If she wishes to charge tolls on every road in the nation and direct that money to her family’s coffers, as Toyoda Ran-sama did, it can be done. For a minimum of one year. A clever person could become incredibly rich in such a year.”
“And a girl who wished to destroy a man . . . ?” I asked, feeling the spark flutter up inside me and become a flame.
“Could simply tell the Moon Prince all that she knew about her stepfather’s actions and wish for an official announcement to be made to that effect. If Tsuki no Ouji-sama’s seal was upon the announcement, it would be accepted as truth, even if there was not enough evidence to have the man arrested. It would ruin his house’s name forever. His friends would turn on him. No one would ever be willing to deal with him again. He would lose all power and influence and probably his fortune shortly after.”
The flame became a funnel of fire, sucking air up out of my lungs. I felt the heat of it thrumming through me, bones to veins. There was a way. There was a chance. I could do it.
“But —” And as she said the word, I knew what she would say next, and my elation was checked for a moment. “In order to gain the promise, you must first be chosen. You must attend the Kage no Iwai and be the most beautiful, the most talented, and the most memorable woman there. You must force the new prince to forsake all the careful political alliances that his advisers and his mother will be urging on him and choose you instead. More than that, Yue, if you are chosen, you must fulfill your duties as the Shadow Bride. You must be prepared to become the lover of a man who is a perfect stranger to you and live in the court with the hangers-on and lords — many of whom will despise you — for at least one year. You will have to deal with the dowager princess. You may bear a child. I know ways to avoid this, but none of them is perfect. Once you are retired, you may never marry. I was born to such a life, brought up to accept such limitations. You were not. Can you bear it? Can you really make such a sacrifice with vengeance as the prize?”
The fire was back, and its crackling and roaring almost drowned out her words. I waited a few moments, so she would be reassured that I had considered carefully what she said, but inwardly I pushed it all aside. Akira did not understand what I had done, what I had to make up for. No matter what happened, even if I had to wade through molten rock, I did not care. I would live with it. For such a prize, I could bear anything.
Slowly, pressing my hands down onto the veranda, I bent until my forehead touched the wood.
“I can,” I said. “I can. Please.”
One of her hands came to rest on the top of my head.
“Very well. It will be done.”
We started the next day. The schedule Akira made up for us was punishing and rigid, and I began to see how she had become the most admired and sought-after oyama of her day. She worked at it. Hard.
“You have a lovely voice, and you play superbly. That will count for something,” she said severely as she seated herself opposite me in the room that I thought of
as the music room, with its sliding doors and view over the lake.
I concealed my surprise. How did she know I played superbly? I had not even known that she listened to me, let alone that she liked it. Had my skill improved so much since she gave me my new instrument?
“However, they do not forgive mistakes at court, so you will practice for between an hour and two hours a day. You must also learn to dance. That I can teach you.”
“Wait. Why?” I asked. “Noble girls do not learn to dance. They will not expect me to dance at the Kage no Iwai, will they? Surely none of the other girls will be dancing?”
“You are not going to the Shadow Ball as a noble girl. You are going as Kano Yue, my sister — and any sister of mine will be expected to dance.”
“I am to be your sister?”
“You are a little too old to be my daughter, and I cannot think of any other explanation as to why I should be escorting a young girl to the Shadow Ball, can you? I suppose we could tell them we met in prison, if you like . . .”
“Thank you, no,” I said dryly. “I will be proud to be your sister.”
“Which is as it should be. Something else I will teach you — or try to, as I have never attempted it before — will be to shadow-weave as I do. Your music and dancing will be important in gaining you attention, but that is not enough. We are working against the odds, my dear. You must be the most beautiful woman at the Shadow Ball in order to catch and hold Tsuki no Ouji-sama’s attention. The only reason I believe it to be possible is that this is his first Shadow Ball. He has only just come of age and will have been very sheltered. This will make him much more susceptible to seduction. So you must seduce him. You must be a credit to me.”
Her pretend glower surprised a laugh out of me. She sat back, the glare turning into a look of pleased surprise.
Discomfited, I picked up my shamisen. I did not deserve to laugh. Akira did not know this, and hiding it from her made me sick, but the thought of telling her the truth made me even sicker.
“I had better begin my practice, then,” I said.
She rose. “I will be back in two hours.”
She kept her word, and I was very grateful to see her arrive, along with a servant who bore tea and plates of sweet higashi and anpan, for by that time my hands had become stiff and cramped to the point that playing caused me pain. I had never practiced for such a long period before. I had never really needed to. At home, once my mother was satisfied that I had learned the basics and had dismissed my teacher, no one ever listened to me play. Mother said I was not good enough for company.
Akira was sympathetic to my suffering, but not very impressed. “Gijo do not stop for tea unless a patron requests it. And oyama do not stop at all, until their performance is finished. Be grateful.”
I was, once the warmth of the tea bowl had eased my fingers. When I had finished my tea, Akira began to teach me the two dances that she said I must learn.
“There is no time for me to educate you properly,” she said. “Instead I will drill you in just two quite short, simple dances: a fan dance and a formal Chu No Mai. You will practice them until it will seem that you are a complete mistress of dance who has chosen simplicity only to display that mastery.”
First of all we stripped off our heavy outer kimonos and put on thin cotton yukatas, although I would have to learn to dance in elaborate clothes later on. Then, taking up a rather beautiful pair of painted silk fans, Akira demonstrated a dance which seemed neither simple nor short to me.
There was no music. She moved around the room to a rhythm that was all her own, with such liquid grace that it was hard to believe there could be actual legs and arms beneath her yukata. The dance was delicate and joyful, and her face radiated peace. She threw, caught, fluttered, and swirled her fans, making each one seem alive but at the same time a part of her. I never, for a single moment, believed she would drop one. They flew back to her as if they were birds that she had trained to eat from her fingers.
“This dance is to symbolize a young girl finding joy in the warm winds of summer, and the fans represent both the wind and the girl’s emotions,” she said when she had finished. “It was a little stiff. My side still pains me, and I am out of practice. Now you will shadow my movements and begin to learn.”
When we had finished I was panting for breath, and despairing. I was a rank amateur, and it showed. I had barely managed to keep up with her, and I had dropped my plain wood-and-paper fans too many times to count.
“Well, that was a good first try,” she said, apparently unfazed. “Now for the Chu No Mai. This is a little trickier. I have thought about it and decided that this will be a sad dance. You have an air of . . . of not belonging about you. Cultivating it will add to your mystery and your allure. So you will be the ghost of a woman who longs for love.”
And once again Akira demonstrated. The dance showed the ghost searching, with increasing sorrow and loneliness, for someone to see her, and love her. It began with broad, beseeching movements that moved Akira around the room, but gradually the gestures became smaller and tighter as the ghost lost hope, lost the ability to reach out, until she curled in upon herself and sank to the floor. Such was Akira’s air of misery and longing that I almost expected to see her crying. I wanted to go forward and comfort her, but held myself still, because of course the point of the dance was to make the watcher long to offer comfort. She held herself in the position of mourning for a moment, and then sat back and crossed her legs. “Well?”
“Perhaps it would be easier if you merely killed me now. Then I really could be a ghost and would save myself the sorrow of trying to look as much like one as you did.”
Akira laughed as if she had not been making my eyes prickle with unshed tears a moment before. “No, no, we of the Kano family do not take the easy way out. You will learn.”
After Akira had finished torturing me, we bathed and ate another meal together — I noted that the cooks had prepared an unusually filling meal of beef motsunabe, and sent them silent thanks. Then we began shadow-weaving lessons.
We moved to Akira’s sitting room for this, as the evening was drawing in. The servants came to light the lamps, and we made ourselves comfortable on cushions, facing each other.
At first Akira tested me by asking me to create simple illusions, much as Youta had done. Holding out my arms in front of me, I made my hands disappear into shadow, made them appear to be covered in coarse fur and then in white and pink cherry blossoms. I looked at my efforts afresh, realizing that to a critical eye, they were crude indeed. They relied too much on people seeing what they wished to see — but as I had already learned with Terayama-san, sometimes people wish to see exactly what you wish to conceal. And the only full body illusion I could do was my clumsy, though versatile, cloak of shadows.
As the petals melted back to plain skin, Akira ran her hands gently down my forearms. I realized she was tracing my scars and forced myself not to pull away.
“You must learn to hide these,” she said finally. “A Shadow Bride’s skin is flawless.”
In answer, I pulled that most basic illusion, the one of normal pale skin, over my arms. She nodded in approval and said no more, but I caught a considering look in her eyes and knew that she had not dismissed the marks from her mind.
“I do not think you will need much instruction from me,” she said finally. “Your gift is strong, and so you have learned to create illusions in broad strokes. You need only learn how to be more attentive to detail, and you will be able to create illusions that will fit a little better, that will be undetectable in the sunlight as well as in the darkness. And in making your illusions finer, you will be able to create larger ones, and maintain them longer.”
I practiced this by creating a single cherry blossom, this time concentrating intensely on each individual tiny detail, on the red veins in the velvety petal, on the golden fur of the stamens: its faint translucency and the way it trembled under your breath, almost as if it wished to fly away.
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As I worked, I felt a strange sensation of heat begin to flutter under my skin. I tried to ignore it, but it grew more and more intense, until I was sweating. Then there was a tiny spark — a flash of fire — and a cherry blossom was sitting in the palm of my hand.
My skin was chilled now. I could feel the slight weight of the blossom as it rested on my hand, although I knew it was impossible.
Wasn’t it impossible?
Akira’s hand was shaking as she reached out. Slowly, she laid her palm over mine, on top of the illusion flower. I could feel the petals spread out and press flat, soft, and faintly warm against my palm. I heard Akira’s sharp intake of breath, and I reminded myself again that it was impossible.
“Yue, when I was ill, I had a dream. . . .” she said, her voice low and hesitant. “I dreamed that I could barely breathe and that I knew I was dying. Then something hot touched me. It felt like a brand, and the heat of it should have set fire to my flesh, but it did not. Instead it swept through me, burning away the illness, and left me weak but healed. When I opened my eyes, I saw that the brand was your hand and that the heat came from you.”
I stared at her, very aware of the silence and the shadows in the corners of the room. “I — I had a dream like that, too.”
Her eyes searched my face, her pupils huge despite the lamp burning nearby. “Hundreds of years ago, when the Old Empire still governed Tsuki no Hikari no Kuni, there were men who had a power like ours, a gift . . . But these men could do more than weave illusions. They could change their shape, see the future, heal. They called these men Akachi. It means ‘Hand of the Gods.’”
That word ran through me like a rumble of thunder. Akachi. That was the word they had used to describe Otieno.
I shook my head. “I am only a shadow weaver.”
“How would you know that?” Akira asked. “If shadow-weaving is all you are trained to do, how would you know you could do more? Unless you reached out to a friend in need and somehow healed them? Unless you did things that you did not even know you were capable of until they were already done?”