The Harsh Cry of the Heron

by Lian Hearn

  They were followed by a small woman who seemed to be instructing them in the appropriate courtesies. At her whisper they both bowed in a strange, rather ostentatious manner, and then spoke in their harsh language.

  Her father acknowledged them with a slight gesture of the head. He was no longer laughing; he looked stern, magnificent in his formal robes, embroidered with the heron, and black lacquer hat, his features composed and impassive. The foreigners might be taller and of larger frame, but to Shigeko’s eyes Lord Otori was far more impressive.

  The woman dropped to the ground before him, but he, with great graciousness Shigeko thought, indicated that she might stand and speak to him.

  Shigeko was holding the silk cord that was attached to the kirin’s collar, and her attention was taken up by the marvelous creature, but as she listened to her father speak a few words of welcome to the strangers and the woman translate, then reply, she thought she heard something unusual in the voice. She looked at the woman, at her gaze, which was fixed on Takeo’s face. She knows Father, Shigeko thought. She dares to look directly at him. There was something in that look, some familiarity bordering on insolence, which troubled her and put her on her guard.

  THE CROWD AT the quayside were then faced with the vexing question whether to follow the extraordinary kirin, which Ishida and Shigeko led toward the shrine, where it would be shown to Mori Hiroki and presented to the river god, and where an enclosure would be prepared for it; or the equally extraordinary foreigners, who with a line of servants carrying a large number of boxes and bales, were escorted by Shizuka to the tiny boat that would take them across the river to their lodging alongside the old temple building of Tokoji.

  Fortunately the city of Hagi had a large number of inhabitants, and when the crowd divided more or less in half, each procession was composed of a sizeable throng. The foreigners found this more annoying than the kirin—they showed signs of ill-humor at the constant staring, and would be even more irritated by the distance of their lodging place from the castle and the guards and other restrictions placed on them for their protection. The kirin walked as it always did, with a deliberate, graceful step, aware of everything, alarmed by nothing, inexhaustibly gentle.

  “I am in love with it already,” Shigeko said to her father as they neared the shrine. “How can I ever thank you?”

  “You must thank Dr. Ishida,” Takeo replied. “It is his gift to us—a precious gift, too, for he is as attached to it as you are, and has been acquainted with it for a long time. He will show you how to look after it.”

  “It is a wonderful thing to have in Hagi,” Mori Hiroki exclaimed when he saw it. “How blessed are the Three Countries!”

  And Shigeko thought so too. Even Tenba seemed captivated by the kirin, running to the bamboo fence to inspect it and touching noses gently with it. The only sad thing was that Hiroshi was leaving. But when she remembered the moment earlier that morning, she thought perhaps it was for the best that he was going home.

  19

  When Takeo returned to the residence after the welcome of the kirin, he went straight to Kaede, concerned for her state of health, but she seemed recovered and was seated on the veranda on the northern side of the house, where the sea breeze brought a certain coolness. She was talking with Taro, the eldest son of the carpenter Shiro, who had returned to Hagi with his father to rebuild the city after the earthquake, and who now spent his time carving statues from wood.

  Takeo greeted him cheerfully, and Taro replied without undue ceremony, for their past history had bound them together in friendship, and Takeo deeply admired the other man’s skill, unequaled in the Three Countries.

  “For some time I have had an idea of how I might create a figure of the Goddess of Mercy,” Taro said, looking at his hands as though he wished they might speak for him. “Lady Otori has a suggestion.”

  “You know the house near the seashore,” Kaede said. “It has been empty for years, ever since Akane died. People say it is haunted by her spirit, that she used spells to try to bind Lord Shigeru to her and in the end was trapped by her own dark magic. Sailors say she lights lamps on the rocks to give false messages to ships, for she hates all men. Let us tear the house down and have the garden purified. Taro and his brother will build a new shrine there for Kannon, and the statue he makes of her will bless the seashore and the bay.”

  “Chiyo told me Akane’s story when I was a boy,” Takeo replied. “But Shigeru never spoke of her, nor of his wife.”

  “Maybe the departed spirits of both women will find rest,” Taro said. “I picture a small building—we will not need to cut down the pine trees but will build among them. A double roof, I think, with deep curves like this, and interlocking elbow joints to support it.”

  He showed Takeo the sketches he had made of the building. “The lower roof balances the upper, giving it an appearance of strength and gentleness. I hope to give the Blessed One the same attributes. I wish I could show you a sketch of her, but she remains hidden within the wood until my hands discover her.”

  “Will you carve from one tree?” Takeo asked.

  “Yes, I am in the process of choosing the piece now.”

  They discussed the variety of tree, the age of the wood and such matters. Then Taro left them.

  “It is a fine plan.” Takeo said to Kaede when they were alone. “I am delighted with it.”

  “I believe I have a special reason to be thankful to the goddess,” she said quietly. “This morning’s sickness, which has passed quickly…”

  He grasped her meaning and felt again the familiar mixture of delight and terror, that their deep love for each other should have created another life, launched another being into a new cycle of birth and death. It was the thought of death that caused the terror, awaking all the fears from the past when twice his children had threatened her life.

  “My dearest wife,” he murmured, and since they were alone, he embraced her.

  “I am embarrassed,” she said, laughing a little. “It seems so old to be bearing a child! Shigeko is already a woman. Yet I am so happy too. I thought I would never conceive again, that our chances of having a son were gone.”

  “I have told you many times, I am happy with our daughters,” he said. “If we have another girl, I will be delighted.”

  “I don’t want to speak the words,” Kaede whispered. “But this one I am sure is a boy.”

  He held her against him, wondering at the miracle of the new creature already growing inside her, and they remained in silence for some time, breathing in each other’s closeness. Then the sound of voices from the garden, the maids’ tread on the boards of the veranda, drew them back to the everyday world.

  “Did the kirin arrive safely?” Kaede inquired, for Takeo had already revealed the nature of the surprise to her.

  “Yes, its appearance was everything I could have hoped for. Shigeko fell in love on the spot. The entire populace was silenced in astonishment.”

  “To silence the Otori is no mean feat!” Kaede replied. “I expect they have recovered their tongues and are already making up songs about it. I will go and see it for myself later.”

  “You must not go out in the heat,” Takeo said swiftly. “You must not exert yourself at all. Ishida must come and see you at once, and you must do everything he tells you.”

  “Ishida also arrived safely. I am glad. And little Chikara?”

  “He was very seasick—he is ashamed about it. But very happy to see his brother.” Takeo was silent for a moment, and then said, “We will delay the question of adoption until the birth of our child. I do not want to raise expectations that cannot be met later, or to create complications for the future.”

  “This is wise,” Kaede agreed. “Though I fear Zenko and Hana will be disappointed.”

  “It is only a delay, not an outright refusal,” Takeo pointed out.

  “You have grown wise and cautious, husband!” she said, laughing.

  “Just as well,” he replied. “I hope I h
ave mastered the rashness and thoughtlessness of my younger self.” He was weighing what he should say next, and, coming to a decision, said, “There were other passengers from Hofu. Two of the foreigners and a woman who interprets for them.”

  “For what purpose have they come here, do you think?”

  “To increase their opportunities for trade, I suppose; to see a little more of a country that is a complete mystery to them. I haven’t had a chance to speak to Ishida yet. He may know more. We need to be able to understand them. I hoped you might learn their language, with the help of the woman who has come with them, but I do not want to place any extra demands on you at this time.”

  “Studying, learning a language is one of the things I delight in,” Kaede replied. “It seems an ideal occupation at a time when other activities must be curtailed. I will certainly do it. But who is the woman who has come with them? It interests me that she has mastered a foreign tongue.”

  Takeo said in a distant voice, “I do not want to shock you, but I must tell you. She is from the East, and had lived for some time in Inuyama. She was born in the same village I was, to the same mother. She is my sister.”

  “One of the two you believed to be dead?” Kaede said in astonishment.

  “Yes, the younger girl, Madaren.”

  Kaede frowned. “It is a strange name.”

  “It is common enough among the Hidden. She took some other name, I believe, after the massacre. She was sold into a brothel by the soldiers who killed her—my—mother and sister. She ran away to Hofu, and worked in another brothel, where she met the foreigner called Don João; she speaks their language well.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “We happened to see each other in an inn in Hofu. I was in disguise, meeting Terada Fumio in the hope, vain as it turned out, of intercepting smuggled weapons. We recognized each other.”

  “But it must be years…?” Kaede was staring at him, partly in sympathy, partly in disbelief.

  “I am sure it is she. We met one more time, briefly, and I was convinced of it. I had inquiries made about her and learned something of her life. I told her I would provide for her, but I did not want to see her again. The gulf between us had become too vast. But now she has come here…. It is natural that she should be drawn to the foreigners, for their religion is in essence the same as the beliefs of the Hidden. I will not recognize her as my relative, but rumors may well spread, and I wanted you to hear the truth from me.”

  “Presumably she may be very useful to us, both as an interpreter and as a teacher. Can you prevail on her to become a spy?” Kaede seemed to be making an effort to master her surprise and speak rationally.

  “I am sure she will be a source of information, wittingly or not. But information flows in both directions. She may prove a useful way to plant ideas in the minds of the foreigners. So I must ask you to treat her accordingly, with kindness, even respect, but do not reveal any secrets to her, and never speak to her of me.”

  “Does she look like you? I am longing to see her now.”

  He shook his head. “She looks like her mother.”

  Kaede said, “You sound so cold. Was it not a thrill to find her alive? Do you not want to bring her into your family?”

  “I thought she was dead. I grieved for her with the others. Now I don’t know how to treat her—I have become someone quite different from the boy who was her brother. The gap between our rank and status has become huge. Moreover, she is a fervent believer; I believe in nothing, and will never adhere to our childhood religion again. I suspect the foreigners want to spread their religion—to convert people. Who knows why? I cannot let any one of the many ways of believing hold sway over me, for I must protect them all from one another in case their arguments tear our society apart.”

  “No one watching you conduct the necessary ceremonies at temple and shrine would be convinced of your disbelief,” Kaede said. “And what about my new shrine, and statue?”

  “You know my skills as an actor,” Takeo replied, with a sudden note of bitterness. “I am perfectly happy to pretend belief for the sake of stability. But if you are of the Hidden, there can ultimately be no pretense where belief is concerned. You are exposed to the all-seeing, pitiless gaze of God.” If my father had not converted, he would still be alive, he was thinking. And I would have been someone else.

  “Surely the god of the Hidden is merciful?” Kaede exclaimed.

  “To believers, maybe. Everyone else is damned to hell for eternity.”

  “I could never believe that!” Kaede said, after a moment’s deep thought.

  “Nor can I. But it is what the Hidden believe, and so do the foreigners. We must be very wary of them—if they think us damned already, they may feel justified in treating us with contempt or malice.”

  He saw Kaede tremble slightly, and feared she had been touched by some premonition.

  20

  In the eighth month came the Festival of the Dead. Seashore and riverbank were filled with throngs of people, their dancing shapes stark against the blaze of bonfires, and countless lamps floated on the dark water. The dead were welcomed, feasted, and farewelled with the customary mixture of sadness and joy, dread and elation. Maya and Miki lit candles for Kenji, whom they missed deeply, but their genuine grief did not keep them from their newest pastime, tormenting Sunaomi and Chikara. They had overheard the adult conversations and knew of the proposal to adopt one or both of the boys, and they saw Kaede’s fondness for her nephews and imagined she preferred them because they were boys.

  They were not told directly of Kaede’s pregnancy, but in the way of alert, watchful children they discerned it, and the fact that it was not openly spoken of troubled them all the more. The summer days were long and hot; everyone grew irritable. Shigeko seemed to have advanced effortlessly ahead into adulthood and to have become distant. She spent more time with their father, discussing the visit to the capital the following year and other matters of state. Shizuka was occupied with the administration of the Tribe.

  The twins were never allowed outside the castle grounds alone, and only on special occasions when accompanied, but they were already extremely skillful in the ways of the Tribe, and though they were not supposed to use these skills, because they felt bored and neglected they tried them out.

  “What’s the point of all that training if we never use our talents?” Maya grumbled quietly, and Miki agreed with her.

  Miki could use the second self long enough to give the impression that Maya was in the room while Maya took on invisibility in order to creep up on Sunaomi and Chikara and terrify them with a ghostlike breath on the back of the neck, or sudden touch on the hair. They had obeyed the rule against roaming outside, but it irked them—both of them longed to explore the bustling, fascinating town, the forest beyond the river, the area around the volcano, the wooded hill above the castle.

  “There are goblins there,” Maya told Sunaomi, “with long noses and eyes on stalks!”

  She pointed up the hill, where the dark trees formed an impenetrable mass. Two kites wheeled above them. The four children were in the garden at the end of the afternoon on the third day of the Festival. The day had been stifling; even in the garden, under the trees, it was still unbearably hot.

  “I’m not afraid of goblins,” he replied. “I’m not afraid of anything!”

  “These goblins eat boys,” Miki whispered. “They eat them raw, bit by bit!”

  “Like tigers?” Sunaomi replied, mocking, irritating Maya even more. She had not forgotten Sunaomi’s words to her father, his unconscious assumption of superiority: They are only girls, after all. She would pay him back for that. She felt the cat stir inside her, and flexed her hands.

  “They can’t get to us here,” Chikara said nervously. “There are too many guards.”

  “Oh, it’s easy to be brave when you’re surrounded by guards,” Maya said to Sunaomi. “If you were really brave, you would go outside alone!”

  “I am not allowe
d to,” he replied.

  “You are scared to!”

  “No, I’m not!”

  “So go outside. I’m not afraid to. I’ve been to Akane’s house, even though her ghost haunts it. I’ve seen her.”

  “Akane hates boys,” Miki whispered. “She buries boys alive in her garden so the shrubs grow well and smell sweet.”

  “Sunaomi wouldn’t dare go there,” Maya said, showing her small white teeth in a half-smile.

  “In Kumamoto I was sent to the graveyard at night to bring back a lantern,” Sunaomi said. “I didn’t see a single ghost!”

  “So go to Akane’s house and bring back a spray of flowers.”

  “That would be so easy,” Sunaomi said scornfully. “Only I’m not allowed—your father said so.”

  “You’re afraid,” Maya said.

  “It’s not very easy to get out without being seen.”

  “It’s easy if you’re not scared. You’re just making excuses.” Maya stood and went to the edge of the sea wall. “You climb down here at low tide and walk over the rocks to the beach.” Sunaomi had followed her, and she pointed to the clump of pine trees where Akane’s house stood, empty and forlorn-looking. It was half-dismantled in preparation for the building of the new shrine—no longer a dwelling, not yet a temple, it suggested the in-between world of spirits. The tide was half full, the partly exposed rocks jagged and slippery. “You could go tonight.” She turned and looked at Sunaomi, holding his gaze for an instant until his eyes began to roll.