by Zoe Marriott
“It does seem strange when she is so very restrained in her clothes and hair,” I said.
Akira sighed. “When she first came here to marry Tsuki no Ouji-sama, she was fifteen, and he fourteen. They had never met before, and although their families were cousins, they had been raised very differently. It is hard to find wives of high enough rank for a Moon Prince, you see; that is why the current prince is not yet married. Only another princess will do. My prince was very conscious of his dignity then, as the young often are, and although his wife was a princess in her own right, she was loud and merry and much enamored of garish things in the style of the Old Empire. She adored him, but he was embarrassed by her. He told a friend that it was like having a parrot for a wife. Unfortunately they were overheard, and the remark became a court joke. My prince was sorry then, but it was too late. The Moon Princess left court for a long time, feigning illness, and had her son while still hiding. She would not see my prince, even though he followed her, sending apologies to her again and again. When she eventually returned to court, she had become as you see her now. No one ever laughed at her again — my prince made sure of that — but she never forgave him. He never forgave himself, either. I think that was the true reason why when he met me, he was willing to look beneath the surface to my heart. He had learned a hard lesson about what happens when you judge another person only on appearance.”
“How sad for them both,” I murmured. “I feel sorry for her now.”
“Do not feel too sorry,” Akira said. “She may have been wronged, but she made him suffer for his foolishness every day for the rest of his life. She will make you suffer, too, if she can. She clings to her resentment, that one. I hope it is a comfort to her.”
“She will not find it easy to visit suffering on me,” I said with a small smile. “I am not at all sensitive to it anymore.”
Before Akira could answer, there was an excited stir in the crowd. The prince came into view, conveyed on his throne, on the shoulders of the two guards we had seen with him earlier. His advisers trailed behind, headed by the old princess — who I now realized was not old at all but only in her midthirties. Her eyes were fixed on the back of the carved chair. They forged through the room toward the raised dais. Behind us, servants were drawing the screens and the doors of the hall closed.
The guards hefted the throne up the steps of the dais with no difficulty, and the princess followed, though the advisers stayed in the crowd. The guards put the throne down, and the princess took her place beside it.
The prince raised one hand, smiling into the sea of faces, but it was the princess who spoke.
“Welcome, honored guests, to the Palace of the Moon. You are gathered to witness an ancient tradition, which is at the same time the first of its kind. The first Shadow Ball of the Twelfth Prince of the Moonlit Land. You are the finest and best of the prince’s subjects, and your daughters are the most virtuous, accomplished, and beautiful women of our country. They have each had the chance to meet and speak with Tsuki no Ouji-sama tonight. A very few will be lucky enough to dance for him. One alone will be chosen as the Shadow Bride — the Kage no Ohime. May the Moon smile on the prince’s choice, and may we all pray that she be worthy.”
Her eyes settled on me, but her expression was as blank as ever. She looked away and continued, “If the prince wishes you to dance for him, you will be given a little while to prepare. The first girl chosen will dance in half an hour.” She inclined her head, and the guards picked up the throne again, carrying it back down the stairs and positioning it directly before the dais. Servants appeared, and tall, painted screens of wood and paper were drawn into place before the dais, hiding it from view.
“No servants are coming for me,” I observed.
“Silly,” Akira said. “You are the most beautiful girl in the room. He will save you for last.”
Within my voluminous sleeves, I ran my fingers over the scars that no one but I could see.
At that moment, Sasaki-san walked past us toward the dais, following a servant. Her father walked behind her, looking proud and nervous.
“Ah,” Akira said, leading me to an ornate carved bench. All around us, other people were finding places near the stage to sit and wait. “I do not think you have much to fear from Hinata-chan.”
I thought about Aimi, and how much she had loved to dance. “She might surprise us,” I said.
When the music started, it was soft, a sweet trill on a flute that sounded like birdsong, a brush of notes from a biwa that reminded me of wind moving through trees. The paper screens were carefully drawn back to reveal Sasaki-san facing the crowd. She held a deep orange-and-gold fan in each hand. With a slow, teasing movement, she brought one of the fans up to shield her face — telling us that her character in the dance was a shy maiden — and stretched her other arm out to flutter the second fan gracefully in the air. These were the same gestures that Akira had taught me to begin my fan dance. The dance of a young woman, alive with joy in the warm winds of spring.
Sasaki-san was a much more precise dancer than I usually managed to be. Each hand and foot was placed perfectly, each tilt of her head exactly timed. She handled the fans with confidence and complete skill. Straightaway, though, I could tell that she did not have what Mie-san would have called the soul of a dancer.
Watching Akira go through this routine had made me feel her joy, had made me want to get up and dance with her, had made me imagine those soft breezes on my own skin. Sasaki-san was very enjoyable to watch, but she did not share any emotions with her audience. Her face stayed in its unchanging expression of sweetness throughout. I decided that she was not so like Aimi after all. Aimi had always shown just what she thought on her face.
Sasaki-san threw both her fans up and, as she caught them, spread them out to cover her face again. She held the posture, and the music came to an end.
The audience applauded enthusiastically. Sasaki-san moved a little closer to the edge of the stage and bowed deeply to the prince, and then the painted screens were drawn back into place, concealing her from view.
“She was better than I expected,” Akira said, “but not so good that I think you need worry particularly.”
“You have a great deal of faith in my costume of many layers,” I said.
“I have faith in you.”
I watched the prince, who was talking to Lady Yorimoto about the dance — if the fluttering fanlike gestures of his hands were anything to go by. I knew I should be quivering with nerves, but I still felt as calm as ever, and I was glad. The numbness helped. Doubts would only distract me.
Moments later Sasaki-san reappeared, her face pink but free of sweat. She was escorted to the prince. The two talked for a little while, with Sasaki-san turning even pinker and blinking shyly, and then she bowed and left him.
“He has not yet made his choice,” Akira said. “I wonder who will be next.”
“Ito-san,” I said.
“Oh? What about Arakaki-san? Or Oshiro-san?”
“No. It will be Ito-san,” I said. “She is more beautiful than either of them, and he has just glanced at her from the corner of his eye. She is next.”
I felt instinctively that she was the one I needed to be careful of. Sure enough, Ito-san passed us around a quarter of an hour later, again following a servant toward the dais. As she passed us, she cast me a triumphant look. I pretended not to see it.
Ito-san’s music began with the low, haunting cry of a flute. Bells chimed mournfully, and then the screens were pulled back.
“Chu No Mai,” Akira said.
Ito-san danced the part of a noblewoman who has lost the one she loves and is driven mad with longing for him. The look of sorrow on her face made the skin on the back of my neck tighten; there was no doubt that she was sharing her emotions with her audience. The way her movements became frantic as her character lost her grip on sanity, the way her long red uchikake swirled around her — she was magnificent.
I managed to take my eyes o
ff her for a moment to look at the rest of the audience. Where Sasaki-san’s performance had produced smiles and approving nods, Ito-san had her audience rapt: saddened and wide-eyed. I glanced at Akira. I was surprised to see that rather than looking either spellbound or perhaps worried on my behalf, she instead looked interested but cynical.
“What is it?” I whispered.
“She is carried away by her passion,” Akira whispered back. “She is very talented, but she does not have enough discipline for such a dance. Look at the way she places her foot — there. Oh, look at her arm. That is an ugly angle. It is important to use one’s emotions in dance, but equally important not to let them overwhelm you. Technically Sasaki-san is better. So are you.”
“Will anyone care?” I asked. “She has won them over completely.”
“They will care, if you combine the strengths of both Sasaki-san and Ito-san. You can be as careful and precise as the first, when you really try. And as for the second — what can she know of sorrow that you do not? What can she know of love that you do not? You have the skill and the heart to defeat both of them, and if you do, the prince will be yours.”
I bit my lip, feeling the first thrill of nerves as Ito-san’s dance came to an end. Could I do that?
Ito-san emerged from behind the screen, her uchikake robe discarded, her hair smoothed back into place. She was flushed and smiling, and this time she did not even bother to look at me as she passed. She spoke animatedly to the prince, holding his attention for rather longer than Sasaki-san.
I watched the two of them so intently that I did not notice at first when the servant appeared before me. Akira pinched my arm, and the servant bowed as I looked up.
“Tsuki no Ouji-sama requests the pleasure of a performance from you, Kano-sama.”
Nerves squeezed my breath again. It was time. It was really happening.
“See?” Akira said. “The best for last. I will speak to the musicians for you.”
As I stood she caught my sleeve, making me look back.
“Good fortune, sister.”
I nodded. “Thank you.”
I followed the servant toward the screened area, feeling dozens of pairs of eyes — covetous, envious, hostile, curious — fix on me. At the edge of the dais, there was a tiny gap between the wall and the edge of the screen, and a set of wooden steps. I went through the gap, and the servant pulled the screen closed behind us.
“Is there anything that you require, Kano-sama? A drink of water or some other thing to help you prepare?”
“Take this,” I said, already out of my uchikake. “And this.” I grunted with effort as I began unwinding my obi, flinging the material at him. He caught it reflexively, and then stared at it as if he thought it might bite him.
“What would Kano-sama wish me to do with these things?” he asked, averting his eyes but holding his arms out for more layers.
“Keep them safe, of course,” I said. “I will need to put them back on again after the performance.”
I took off the pink kimono and the nagajuban, and bundled them into his arms, and then reached up to pull the two tall combs and their matching pins from my hair. It fell down around my face, soft and wavy from the pomade, and slightly wild. I shook it out, and then put the combs on top of the pile in the servant’s arms.
“Will . . . er . . . that be all, Kano-sama?” he asked. He was staring at the winking swirls of stars and clouds on the black kimono and its brilliant red sash.
“Yes, thank you,” I said as I turned away and ran up the stairs onto the stage.
I positioned myself not in the middle of the dais, as Ito-san and Sasaki-san had done, but at one end, and took my beginning stance there. I went through the movements of the dance in my head one more time. No room for mistakes now. Akira had said I could do it — that I could be as precise as Sasaki-san — and I had no intention of proving her wrong.
There was a high-pitched cry from somewhere beyond the dais. A bird’s cry.
Mirkasha?
I startled, losing my stance as the sound brought with it a flood of memories.
The eerie cry came again. But — it was not quite right. The sound was too low, too musical. It was not the noise of an animal, I realized, but of a flute, skillfully played. Then the slow, solemn beat of the drums began, and I understood. Akira. She had told them to do it. She was telling me what I must do. I shuddered, forcing my arms back up into their correct position.
The flute cried out again, mixing with the sounds of the familiar music as the screens began to draw back. What can she know of love that you do not?
I closed my eyes and let myself remember.
The crowd murmured when they caught sight of me, but I was not thinking of them now. I was thinking only of him.
I hardly knew it when I began to move. Distantly I was aware of the singing in my body, the exultation of arms and legs as at last I let them do what they had always wished to do. I let go of my control and allowed them to lift and twist without hesitation or fear. The music wrote paths of sorrow in the air, and my body followed them, flowing seamlessly from shape to shape, writing my own message of mourning in the space around me for all to see.
My body said:
I still belong to him.
I will always belong to him.
I reached for the red sash and pulled it away, stretching out my arm as I let it go so that it billowed up above the heads of the watchers like a living flame. They gasped, and gasped again as I shrugged off the black-and-silver gown and left it behind. The leaves fluttered around my face, mingling with my hair as I raised my arms.
The audience let out exclamations of shock when the golden sash flew above them and I stepped out of the silver gown. Now I danced before them clad only in shining white.
I had reached the last movements of the dance, the moments when the ghost accepted that she had lost life and love forever and would always be alone. My back arched into a line of unutterable pain, a physical representation of a cry of agony, and I pulled away the white sash. In too much turmoil to even aim it, I let the piece of fabric fly.
It seemed to hover above the prince, shifting in the air like a cloud. One of the guards made to catch it. He was too slow. The prince’s hand shot up, and it landed in his grasp, seeming to curl around the exposed skin of his forearm and embrace it.
I sank into my final pose as the music ebbed and faded away. The flute cried out one more time, and then the music stopped. I drew in a deep breath. The intense emotions that had taken control of me began to drain away into the pit where my heart had once been, and left me cold and empty again. The emptiness ached now. It was a hundred thousand times worse than it had been before, and I knew in that moment that just as I no longer played the shamisen, I would not be able to dance again, either. This was the last time. Any more would destroy me.
I held my pose in those seconds of ringing silence that followed my performance. Almost without interest, I watched the prince. He had spread the sash over his lap and was running his fingers over the flowers and smiling. He picked it up and lifted it to his face, closing his eyes.
I let my own eyes close. It was as Akira and Mie-san had said it would be.
The crowd began to clap — thunderously, deafeningly — louder than for Sasaki-san and Ito-san combined. I unfolded myself and stood, and bowed to them. I let my gaze meet the prince’s, and he smiled rapturously, as delighted as a little boy with a new toy. I felt again that twinge of pity. He was older than me, and yet he was so very young.
Well, if he is mine now, I told myself tiredly, I suppose I will just have to take care of him.
I looked away. Behind the throne, the Moon Princess was the only person present not staring at me. Her face was downturned, her gaze on the floor. At the front of the crowd, Akira, tears on her face, was glowing with pride. She nodded at me vigorously, her hands a blur.
And then, as the screens drew into place and hid me from view, there was a stealthy movement on the stairs at th
e side of the stage. For a moment, even though I had just seen her in the audience, I thought it must be Akira; it was a woman in a formal black kimono, a woman that I instinctively realized I knew.
Then the woman turned her head to look at me, and I saw a face that had haunted my dreams. The face of a dead woman.
Mother.
Breath turned to stone inside me. The blood stood still in my veins.
She was dead.
I had killed her.
But she was there. Standing before me. Walking across the stage with her own graceful walk. She had a red lily kanzashi in her hair that matched the red flowers on her dress. She was a little plumper, a little pinker than when I had last seen her, her cheeks rounded now instead of sharp. She looked well. Better than she had before — before — I killed her.
I had killed her.
“Suzume.”
The sound of her voice — the voice I knew best in the world, the first voice I had ever heard — made me realize that what I saw was not a dream or a hallucination. She was real.
Youta had been wrong.
“I thought you were dead,” she whispered, and I swayed as it seemed that she plucked the words from my mouth.
“I thought the same of you,” I said through numb lips. “How did you survive?”
Her brow wrinkled with confusion. “Shujin-sama would not harm me. He would never —”
I cut her off, uninterested in the blatant self-deception. “You were poisoned.”
She gave me a dazed look, as if I were speaking in riddles. “Do you mean — you mean the sangre? It was only a careless mistake in the kitchen. I was ill, it is true, but I was not pregnant, so I was not in danger. How do you know about that? You had already run away when that happened.”
“Run away?” I demanded, incredulous. “I fled for my life, with Terayama on my heels like a hunting dog.”
“No,” she said, wringing her hands as she moved closer to me. “You were frightened. You misunderstood. If you had come home again, we could have explained: he did not want to hurt you. He only wanted to stop you. To make you listen and understand.”