The Harsh Cry of the Heron

by Lian Hearn

  Hisao felt that he had grown up knowing these things; yet he had forgotten how he had learned them. Had he dreamed them, or had someone told him? He remembered his mother more clearly than should have been possible—he had been only days old when she died—and was aware of a presence at the edge of his conscious mind that he connected with her. Often he felt she wanted something from him, but he was afraid of listening to her demands, for that would mean opening himself up to the world of the dead. Between the ghost’s anger and his own reluctance, his head seemed to split apart in pain.

  So he knew his mother’s fury and his father’s pain, and it made him both hate Akio and pity him, and the pity made it all easier to bear: not only the abuse and punishment of the day, but the tears and caresses of the night, the dark things that happened between them that he half-dreaded, half-welcomed, for then was the only time anyone embraced him or seemed to need him.

  Hisao told no one of how the dead woman called to him, so no one knew of this one Tribe gift that he had inherited, one that had lain dormant for many generations since the days of the ancient shamans who passed between the worlds, mediating between the living and the dead. Then, such a gift would have been nurtured and honed and its possessor feared and respected, but Hisao was generally despised and looked down upon. He did not know how to tune his gift; the visions from the world of the dead were hazy and hard to understand. He did not know the esoteric imagery used to communicate with the dead, or their secret language—there was none living who could teach him.

  He only knew the ghost was his mother, and she had been murdered.

  He liked making things, and he was fond of animals, though he learned to keep this secret, for once he had allowed himself to pet a cat only to see his father cut the yowling, scratching creature’s throat before his eyes. The cat’s spirit also seemed to enmesh him in its world from time to time, and the frenzied yowling would grow in intensity in his ears until he could not believe no one else could hear it. When the other worlds opened to include him, it made his head ache terribly, and one side of his vision would darken. The only thing that stilled the pain and noise, and distracted him from the cat, the woman, was making things with his hands. He fashioned water wheels and deer scarers from bamboo in the same way as his unknown great-grandfather, as though the knowledge had been passed down in his blood. He could carve animals from wood so lifelike it seemed they had been captured by magic, and he was fascinated by all aspects of forging: the making of iron and steel, swords, knives, and tools.

  The Kikuta family had many skills in forging weapons, especially the secret ones of the Tribe—throwing knives of various shapes, needles, tiny daggers, and so on—but they did not know how to make the weapon called a firearm that the Otori used and so jealously guarded. The family were in fact divided over its desirability, some claiming that it took all the skill and pleasure out of assassination, that it would not last, that traditional methods were more reliable; others that without it the Kikuta family would decline and disappear, for even invisibility was no protection against a bullet, and that the Kikuta, like all those who desired to overthrow the Otori, had to match them weapon for weapon.

  But all their efforts to obtain firearms had failed. The Otori confined their use to one small body of men: Every firearm in the country was accounted for. If one was lost, its owner paid with his life. They were rarely used in battle: only once, with devastating effect, against an attempt by barbarians to set up a trading post with the help of former pirates on one of the small islands off the southern coast. Since that time, all barbarians were searched on arrival, their weapons confiscated and they themselves confined to the trading port of Hofu. But the reports of the carnage had proved as effective as the weapons themselves: All their enemies, including the Kikuta, treated the Otori with increased respect and left them temporarily in peace while making secret efforts to gain firearms themselves by theft, treachery, or their own invention.

  The Otori weapons were long and cumbersome: quite impractical for the secret assassination methods on which the Kikuta prided themselves. They could not be concealed or drawn and used rapidly; rain rendered them useless. Hisao listened to his father and the older men talking about these things, and imagined a small, light weapon, as powerful as a firearm, that could be carried within the breast of a garment and would make no sound, a weapon that even Otori Takeo would be powerless against.

  Every year some young man who thought himself invincible, or an older one who wanted to end his life with honor, set out for one or another of the cities of the Three Countries, lay in wait on the road for Otori Takeo or crept stealthily at night into the residence or castle where he slept, hoping to be the one who would end the life of the murderous traitor and avenge Kikuta Kotaro and all the other members of the Tribe put to death by the Otori. They never returned. The news came months later of their capture, so-called trial before Otori’s tribunals, and execution—for assassination attempted or achieved was one of the few crimes, along with other forms of murder, taking bribes, and losing or selling firearms, punishable now by death.

  At times Otori was reported wounded and their hopes rose, but he always recovered, even from poison, as he had recovered from Kotaro’s poisoned blade, until even the Kikuta began to believe that he was immortal, as the common people said, and Akio’s hatred and bitterness grew, and his love of cruelty increased. He began to look more widely for ways to destroy Otori, to try to make alliance with Takeo’s other enemies, to strike at him through his wife or his children. But this, too, proved almost impossible. The treacherous Muto family had split the Tribe and sworn loyalty to the Otori, taking the lesser families, Imai, Kuroda, and Kudo, with them. Since the Tribe families intermarried, many of the traitors also had Kikuta blood, among them Muto Shizuka and her sons, Taku and Zenko. Taku, like his mother and his great-uncle, had many talents, headed Otori’s spy network, and kept constant guard over his family. Zenko, less talented, was allied to Otori through marriage: they were brothers-in-law.

  Recently Akio’s cousin Gosaburo’s two sons had been sent with their sister to Inuyama, where the Otori family had celebrated the New Year. They had mingled among the crowds at the shrine and had attempted to stab Lady Otori and her daughters in front of the goddess herself. What had followed was unclear, but it appeared the women had defended themselves with unexpected fierceness. One of the young men, Gosaburo’s eldest son, was wounded and then beaten to death by the crowd. The others were captured and taken to Inuyama castle. No one knew if they were dead or alive.

  The loss of three young people, so closely related to the Master, was a terrible blow. As the snow melted with the approach of spring, opening the roads once more, no news came of them, and the Kikuta feared they were dead. They began to make arrangements for funeral rites to be held, mourning all the more that there were no bodies to burn and no ashes.

  One afternoon, when the trees were shining with the green and silver of their new leaves and the flooded fields were alive with cranes and herons and the croaking of frogs, Hisao was working alone in a small terraced field, deep in the mountain. During the long winter nights he had been brooding on an idea that had occurred to him the previous year, when he had seen the crops—beans and pumpkins—in this field wither and die. The fields below were watered from a fast flowing stream, but this one was viable only in years of great rainfall. Yet in all other ways it held promise, facing south, sheltered from the strongest winds. He wanted to make the water flow uphill, using a water wheel in the stream’s channel to turn a series of smaller wheels that would raise buckets. He had spent the winter making the buckets and the ropes; the buckets were fashioned from the lightest bamboo and the ropes strengthened with iron-vine that would make them rigid enough to carry the buckets uphill yet much lighter and easier to use than metal rods or bars.

  He was concentrating deeply on the task, working in his patient, unhurried way, when the frogs suddenly fell silent, making him look around. He could see no one, yet he kn
ew there was someone there, using invisibility in the manner of the Tribe.

  He thought it was one of the children, come with some message, and called out, “Who’s there?”

  The air shimmered in the way that always made him feel slightly sick, and a man of indeterminate age and unremarkable looks stood before him. Hisao’s hand went immediately to his knife, for he was certain he had never seen the man before, but he had no chance to use it. The man’s outline rippled as he vanished. Hisao felt the invisible fingers close over his wrist and an immediate paralysis in his muscles as his hand opened and the knife fell.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” the stranger said, and spoke his name in a way that made Hisao believe him, and his mother’s world washed over the edge of his; he felt her joy and pain and the first intimation of his headache and half-vision.

  “Who are you?” he whispered, knowing at once that this man was someone his mother had known.

  “Can you see me?” the man replied.

  “No. I can’t use invisibility, or perceive it.”

  “But you heard me approach?”

  “Only from the frogs. I listen to them. But I cannot hear from afar. I don’t know anyone who can do that among the Kikuta now.”

  He heard his own voice say these things and marveled that he who was normally so reticent should speak so freely to a stranger.

  The man came back into sight, his face barely a hand’s breadth from Hisao’s, his eyes intent and searching.

  “You don’t look like anyone I know,” he said. “And you have no Tribe skills?”

  Hisao nodded, then looked away across the valley.

  “But you are Kikuta Hisao, Akio’s son?”

  “Yes, and my mother’s name was Muto Yuki.”

  The man’s face changed slightly, and he felt his mother’s response of regret and pity.

  “I thought so. In that case, I am your grandfather, Muto Kenji.”

  Hisao absorbed this information in silence. His head ached more fiercely: Muto Kenji was a traitor, hated by the Kikuta almost as much as Otori Takeo, but his mother’s presence was swamping him and he could feel her voice calling, “Father!”

  “What is it?” Kenji said.

  “Nothing. My head hurts sometimes. I’m used to it. Why have you come here? You will be killed. I should kill you, but you say you are my grandfather, and anyway I am not very good at it.” He glanced down at his construction. “I would rather make things.”

  HOW STRANGE, the old man was thinking. He has no skills, either from his father or his mother. Both disappointment and relief swept through him. Who does he take after? Not the Kikuta, or the Muto, or the Otori. He must be like Takeo’s mother, the woman who died the day Shigeru saved Takeo’s life, with that dark skin and broad features.

  Kenji looked with pity at the boy in front of him, knowing how hard a Tribe childhood was, especially on those of little talent. Hisao obviously had some skills; the contraption was both inventive and adroitly executed, and there was something else about him, some fleeting look in his eyes that suggested he saw other things. What did he see? And the headaches—what did they indicate? He looked a healthy young man, a little shorter than Kenji himself, but strong, with a mostly unblemished skin and thick, glossy hair not unlike Takeo’s.

  “Let’s go and find Akio,” Kenji said. “I have certain things to say to him.”

  He did not bother dissembling his features as he followed the boy down the mountain path toward the village. He knew he would be recognized—who else could have gotten this far, evading the guards on the pass, moving unseen and unheard through the forest?—and anyway Akio needed to know who he was, that he came from Takeo with an offer of truce.

  The walk left him breathless, and when he paused on the edge of the flooded fields to cough he tasted the salt blood in his throat. He was hotter than he should be, though the air was still warm, the light turning golden as the sun descended in the west. The dikes between the fields were brightly colored with wildflowers, vetch, but-tercups, and daisies, and the light filtered through the new green leaves of the trees. The air was full of the music of spring, of birds, frogs, and cicadas.

  If it is to be the last day of my life, it could not be more beautiful, the old man thought with a kind of gratitude, and felt with his tongue for the capsule of aconite tucked neatly into the space left by a missing molar.

  He had not known of this particular place before Hisao’s birth, sixteen years before—and then it had taken him five years to find it—but since then he had visited it from time to time, unknown to any of its inhabitants, and had also had reports on Hisao from Taku, his great-nephew. It was like most of the Tribe villages, hidden in a valley like a narrow fold in the mountain range, almost inaccessible, guarded and fortified in many different ways. He had been surprised on his first visit by the number of inhabitants, well over two hundred, and had subsequently found out that the Kikuta family had been retreating here ever since Takeo began his persecution of them in the West. As he had uncovered their hiding places within the Three Countries, they had gone north, making this isolated village their headquarters, beyond the reach of Takeo’s warriors, though not of his spies.

  HISAO DID NOT speak to anyone as they walked between the low wooden houses, and though several dogs bounded eagerly toward him he did not stop to pat them. By the time they reached the largest building, a small crowd had formed behind them; Kenji could hear the whispering and knew he had been recognized.

  The house was far more comfortable and luxurious than the dwellings around it, with a veranda of cypress boards and strong pillars of cedar. Like the shrine, which he could just see in the distance, its roof was made of thin shingles, with a gentle curve as pleasing as that of any warrior’s country mansion. Stepping out of his sandals, Hisao went up onto the veranda and called into the interior. “Father! We have a visitor!”

  Within moments a young woman appeared, bringing water to wash the visitor’s feet. The crowd behind Kenji fell silent. As he stepped inside the house, he thought he heard a sound like a sudden intake of air, as though all those gathered outside had gasped as one. His chest ached sharply and he felt the urge to cough. How weak his body had become! Once he could demand anything from it. He remembered with regret all the skills he had had; they were a shadow of what they had been. He longed to leave his body behind like a husk and move into the next world, the next life, whatever lay beyond. If he could somehow save the boy…but who can save anyone from the journey that fate maps out at birth?

  All these thoughts flashed through his mind as he settled himself on the matted floor and waited for Akio. The room was dim; he could barely make out the scroll that hung on the wall to his right. The same young woman came with a bowl of tea. Hisao had disappeared, but he could hear him talking quietly in the back of the house. A smell of sesame oil floated from the kitchen and he heard the quick sizzling of food in the pan. Then there came the tread of feet; the interior door slid open and Kikuta Akio stepped into the room, followed by two older men, one somewhat plump and soft-looking whom Kenji knew to be Gosaburo, the merchant from Matsue, Kotaro’s younger brother, Akio’s uncle. The other he thought must be Imai Kazuo, who he had been told had gone against the Imai family to stay with the Kikuta, his wife’s relatives. All these men, he knew, had sought his life for years.

  Now they tried to hide their astonishment at his appearance among them. They sat at the other end of the room, facing him, studying him. No one bowed or exchanged greetings. Kenji said nothing.

  Finally Akio said, “Put your weapons in front of you.”

  “I have no weapons,” Kenji replied. “I have come on a mission of peace.”

  Gosaburo gave a sharp laugh of disbelief. The other two men smiled, but without mirth.

  “Yes, like the wolf in winter,” Akio said. “Kazuo will search you.”

  Kazuo approached him warily and with a certain embarrassment. “Forgive me, Master,” he mumbled. Kenji allowed the man to feel his clothe
s with the long deft fingers that could slip a man’s weapon from his breast without him noticing a thing.

  “He speaks the truth. He is unarmed.”

  “Why have you come here?” Akio exclaimed. “I can’t believe you are so tired of life!”

  Kenji gazed at him. For years he had dreamed of confronting this man who had been married to his daughter and deeply implicated in her death. Akio was approaching forty; his face was furrowed, his hair graying. Yet the muscles were still iron hard beneath his robe; age had neither softened nor gentled him.

  “I come with a message from Lord Otori,” Kenji said calmly.

  “We do not call him Lord Otori here. He is known as Otori the Dog. He can send no message that we will ever listen to!”

  “I am afraid one of your sons died,” Kenji addressed Gosaburo. “The oldest, Kunio. But the other lives, and your daughter too.”

  Gosaburo swallowed. “Let him speak,” he said to Akio.

  “We will never make deals with the Dog,” Akio replied.

  “Yet even to send a messenger suggests a weakness,” Gosaburo pleaded. “He is appealing to us. We should at least hear what Muto has to say. We may learn from it.” He leaned forward slightly and questioned Kenji. “My daughter? She was not hurt?”

  “No, she is well.” But my daughter has been dead for sixteen years.