The Harsh Cry of the Heron

by Lian Hearn

  “I’ve noticed it tries to approach you closely, whenever you are near,” Hiroshi replied. “It will indeed miss you. I am surprised you can bring yourself to part with it.”

  “I have only myself to blame! It was my suggestion. It is a consummate gift—even the Emperor must be astonished and flattered by it. But I wish it were a carving, in ivory or some precious metal, for then it would have no feelings, and I would not worry about it being lonely.”

  Hiroshi looked intently at her. “It is, after all, only an animal. It may not suffer as much as you think. It will be well looked after, and well fed.”

  “Animals are capable of deep feelings,” Shigeko retorted.

  “But it will not have the same emotions that humans have when they are separated from those they love.”

  Shigeko’s eyes met his; she gazed firmly at him for a few moments. He was the first to look away.

  “And maybe the kirin will not be lonely in Miyako,” he said in a low voice, “because you will be there too.”

  She knew what he meant, for she had been present when Lord Kono had told her father of Saga Hideki’s recent loss, a loss that had left him, the most powerful warlord in the Eight Islands, free to marry.

  “If the kirin is to be the consummate gift for the Emperor,” he continued, “what better gift for the Emperor’s general?”

  She heard the bitterness in his voice, and her heart twisted. She had known for some time that Hiroshi loved her as deeply as she loved him. A rare harmony existed between them, as if they knew each other’s thoughts. They were both trained in the Way of the Houou, and had attained deep levels of awareness and sensitivity. She trusted him completely. Yet there seemed no point in speaking of her feelings, or even fully recognizing them—she would marry whomever her father chose for her. Sometimes she dreamed that he had chosen Hiroshi, and woke suffused with joy and desire. She lay in the dark, caressing her own body, longing to feel his strength against it, fearing that she never would, wondering if she might not make her own choices now that she was ruler of her own domain and simply take him as her husband; knowing that she would never go against her father’s wishes. She had been brought up in the strict codes of a warrior’s family—she could not break them so easily.

  “I hope I never have to live away from the Three Countries,” she murmured. The kirin stood so close she could feel its warm breath on her cheek as it bent its long neck down to her. “I confess, I am anxious about all the challenges that await me in the capital. I wish our journey were over—yet I want it never to end.”

  “You showed no sign of anxiety when you spoke so confidently to Lord Kono last year,” he reminded her.

  “It’s easy to feel confident in Maruyama, when I am surrounded by so many people who support me—you, above all.”

  “You will have that support in Miyako too. And Miyoshi Gemba will also be there.”

  “The best of my teachers—you and he.”

  “Shigeko,” he said, using her name as he had when she was a child. “Nothing must diminish your concentration during this contest. We must all put aside our own desires in order to allow the way of peace to prevail.”

  “Not put them aside,” she replied, “but transcend them.” She paused, not daring to say more. Then suddenly she was seized by a memory: the first time she had seen the houou, both male and female birds together, when they had returned to the forests around Terayama to nest in the paulownia trees and raise their young.

  “There is a bond of great strength between us,” she said. “I have known you all my life—maybe even in a former life. Even if I am married to someone else, that bond must never be broken.”

  “It never will be, I swear it. The bow will be in your hand, but it is the spirit of the houou that will guide the arrows.”

  She smiled then, confident that their minds and thoughts were one.

  Later, when the sun was descending toward the west, they went to the stern deck and began the ancient ritual exercises that flowed through the air like water, yet turned muscle and sinew to steel. The sun’s glow tinged the sails, rendering the great heron crest of the Otori golden; the banners of Maruyama fluttered from the rigging. The ship seemed bathed in light, as though the sacred birds themselves had descended on it. The western sky was still streaked with crimson when in the east rose the full moon of the fourth month.

  37

  A few days after this full moon Takeo left Inuyama for the East, farewelled with great enthusiasm by the townspeople. It was the season of the spring festivals, when the earth came alive again, sap rose in the trees and in men and women’s blood. The city was possessed by feelings of confidence and hope. Not only was Lord Otori on his way to visit the Emperor—a semi-mythical figure for most people—but he left behind a son—the unhappy effect of twin daughters was removed at last. The Three Countries had never been so prosperous. The houou nested at Terayama, Lord Otori was to present the Emperor with a kirin. These signs from Heaven confirmed what most people already saw in their plump children and fertile fields—that the evidence of a just ruler is in the health and contentment of the people.

  Yet all the cheering, the dancing, the flowers, and the banners could not dispel Takeo’s feelings of unease, though he attempted to hide them, maintaining constantly the calm, impassive expression that was now habitual. He was most troubled by Taku’s silence, and all that it might imply: Taku’s defection or his death. Either one was a disaster, and in either case, what had become of Maya? He longed to return and find out for himself, yet each day’s journey took him farther away from any likelihood of receiving news. After much deliberation, some of which he shared with Minoru, he had decided to leave the Kuroda brothers in Inuyama, telling them that they would be more use to him there, and that they were to send messengers immediately if any news came from Taku.

  “Jun and Shin are not happy,” Minoru reported. “They asked me what they had done to lose Lord Otori’s trust.”

  “There are no Tribe families in Miyako,” Takeo replied. “Really, I have no need of them there. But you know, Minoru, that my trust in them has been eroded—not through any failing of theirs, simply that I know their first loyalty will be to the Tribe.”

  “I think you could have more confidence in them,” Minoru said.

  “Well, maybe I am saving them from a painful choice, and they will thank me one day,” Takeo said lightly, but in fact he missed his two Tribe guards, feeling naked and unprotected without them.

  Four days out of Inuyama they rode past Hinode, the village where he had rested with Shigeru on the morning after their flight from Iida Sadamu’s soldiers and the burning village of Mino.

  “My birthplace lies a day’s journey from here,” he remarked to Gemba. “I have not been this way in nearly eighteen years. I wonder if the village still exists. It was there that Shigeru saved my life.”

  Where my sister Madaren was born, he reminded himself, where I was raised as one of the Hidden.

  “I wonder how I dare appear before the Emperor. They will all despise me for my birth.”

  He and Gemba rode side by side on the narrow track, and he spoke in a low voice so that no one else would hear. Gemba glanced at him and replied, “You know I have brought from Terayama all the documents that testify to your descent: that Lord Shigemori was your grandfather, and that your adoption by Shigeru was legal—and endorsed by the clan. No one can question your legitimacy.”

  “Yet the Emperor already has.”

  “You bear the Otori sword, and have been blessed with all the signs of Heaven’s approval.” Gemba smiled. “You probably weren’t aware of the astonishment in Hagi when Shigeru brought you home—you were so like Takeshi. It seemed like a miracle—Takeshi had lived with our family for some time before he died. He was my elder brother Kahei’s best friend. It was like losing a beloved brother. But our grief was nothing to Lord Shigeru’s, and it was the final blow of many.”

  “Yes, Chiyo told me the story of his many losses. His life seem
ed full of grief and undeserved ill-fortune, yet he gave no sign of it. I remember something he said the night I first met Kenji: I am not made for despair. I often think of those words, and of his courage when we rode to Inuyama under the eye of Abe and his men.”

  “You must tell yourself the same thing. You are not made for despair.”

  Takeo said, “That is how I must appear, yet, as with so much of my life, it is a pretense.”

  Gemba laughed. “It’s lucky your many skills include mimicry. Don’t underestimate yourself. Your nature is possibly darker than Shigeru’s, but it is no less powerful. Look at what you have achieved—nearly sixteen years of peace. You and your wife have brought together all the warring factions of the Three Countries; between you you hold the realm’s well-being in perfect balance. Your daughter is your right hand; your wife supports you completely at home. Have confidence in them. You will impress the Emperor’s court as only you can. Believe me.” Gemba fell silent and after a few moments resumed his patient humming.

  The words were more than comforting; they acted as some kind of release, not allaying the anxiety but enabling Takeo to dominate it, and eventually to transcend it. As the man’s mind and body relaxed, so did the horse’s: Tenba lowered his neck and lengthened his stride as the miles were swallowed up, day after day.

  Takeo felt all his senses awaken: His hearing became as acute as when he was seventeen; the eye and hand of the artist began to reassert themselves. When he dictated letters at night to Minoru, he yearned to take the brush from him. Sometimes he did, and in the same way as he wrote, supporting the maimed right hand with the left and holding the brush between his two remaining fingers, he would sketch quickly some scene imprinted on his mind during the day’s ride: a flock of crows flying among cedars, a chain of geese like foreign writing above a curiously shaped crag, a flycatcher and a bellflower against a dark rock. Minoru gathered the sketches and sent them with the letters to Kaede, and Takeo recalled the drawing of the flycatcher he had given her so many years ago at Terayama. The disability had prevented him from painting for a long time, but learning to overcome it had honed his natural talent into a unique and striking style.

  The road from Inuyama to the border was well maintained and broad enough for three to ride abreast. Its surface was trodden smooth, for Miyoshi Kahei had come this way just a few weeks previously with the advance guard of the army, about one thousand men, most of them horsemen, as well as supplies on packhorses and oxcarts. The rest would move up from Inuyama over the next few weeks. The border country was mountainous. Apart from the pass through which they would travel, the peaks were inaccessible. To keep so large an army in readiness throughout the summer would demand huge resources, and many of the foot soldiers came from villages where the harvest would not be brought in without their labor in the fields.

  Takeo and his retinue met up with Kahei on an upland plain just below the pass. It was still cold, the grass splashed with white in places with the last of the snow, the water in streams and pools icy. A small border post was established here, though not many travelers made the journey from the East by land, preferring to sail from Akashi. The High Cloud Range provided a natural barrier behind which the Three Countries had sheltered for years, ignored by the rest of the country, neither ruled nor protected by their nominal Emperor.

  The encampment was orderly and well prepared: the horses on their lines, men well armed and trained. The plain had been transformed, with palisades erected in arrowhead formation along each flank and storehouses swiftly constructed to protect the provisions from weather and animals.

  “There is enough room at the head of the plain for bowmen,” Kahei said. “But we also have sufficient firearms when the foot soldiers come up from Inuyama to defend the road for miles behind us, as well as the surrounding countryside. We will set up a series of blockades. But if they fall out into the surrounding terrain, we will use horses and swords.”

  He added, “Do we have any idea what weapons they have?”

  “They have had barely a year to acquire or forge firearms and train men to use them,” Takeo replied. “We must be superior in that. We must have bowmen too—firearms are too unreliable in the rain or wind. But I hope to be able to send messages to you. I will find out all I can—except that I must at all times appear to be seeking peace; I must not give them any excuse to attack. All our preparations are in defense of the Three Countries; we do not threaten anyone beyond our borders. For this same reason we will not fortify the pass itself. You must remain on the plain in a purely defensive position. We cannot be seen to provoke Saga or challenge the Emperor.”

  “It will be strange actually to set eyes on the Emperor,” Kahei remarked. “I envy you—we hear about him from childhood; he is descended from the gods, yet for years I for one did not believe he actually existed.”

  “The Otori clan is said to descend from the imperial family,” Gemba said. “For when Takeyoshi was given Jato, one of the Emperor’s concubines, pregnant at the time with his child, was also bestowed on him, to be his wife.” He smiled at Takeo. “So you share the same blood.”

  “Somewhat diluted after so many years,” Takeo said lightheartedly. “But maybe since he is my relative he will look on me kindly. Many years ago Shigeru told me it was the weakness of the Emperor that allowed warlords like Iida to flourish unchecked. It is my duty therefore to do all I can to strengthen his position. He is the legitimate ruler of the Eight Islands.” He looked out toward the pass and the ranges beyond, which were turning deep purple in the evening light. The sky was a pale blueish white, and the first stars were appearing. “I know so little of the rest of them—how they are governed, if they prosper, if their people are content. These are all matters to find out about—and discuss.”

  “It is Saga Hideki with whom you will have to discuss them,” Gemba said. “For he controls two-thirds of the country now, including the Emperor himself.”

  “But we will never allow him to control the Three Countries,” Kahei declared.

  Takeo did not disagree openly with Kahei, but privately, as always, he had been thinking deeply about the future of his country and how he might best secure it. He had overseen its recovery from the destruction and loss of life of the civil war and the earthquake. While he had no intention of handing it over to Zenko, he also had no desire to see it torn apart and fought over again. He did not believe the Emperor was a deity to be worshipped, but he recognized the essential place of the imperial throne as a symbol of unity, and was prepared to submit to the Emperor’s will, to preserve peace and increase the unity of the whole country.

  But I will not give up the Three Countries to Zenko. He returned over and again to this conviction. I will never see him rule in my place.

  They crossed the pass as the moon waned, and, before it was full again, approached Sanda, a small town on the road between Miyako and Akashi. As they descended into the valleys, as well as surveying their return route—and where a small force of men might turn and fight a pursuer if necessary—Takeo studied the state of the villages, the systems of agriculture, the health of the children, often riding off the road into the surrounding districts. He was amazed to find that he was not unknown to the villagers—they reacted as if a hero from a legend had suddenly appeared among them. At night he heard blind singers recount tales of the Otori—Shigeru’s betrayal and death, the fall of Inuyama, the battle of Asagawa, the retreat to Katte Jinja, and the capture of the city of Hagi. And new songs were made up about the kirin, for it was waiting for them at Sanda, with Lord Otori’s beautiful daughter.

  The land had been badly neglected—he was shocked by the half-ruined houses, the uncultivated fields. He learned on the way, by questioning the farmers, that all the local domains had been fought over savagely in the last stand against Saga before they capitulated to him two years earlier. Since then, compulsory armed service and labor had sapped the villages of manpower.

  “But at least we have peace now, and we can thank Lord Saga
for that,” one older man told him. He wondered at what cost, and would have liked to have asked them more, but, as they approached the town, felt it was a mistake to appear too familiar, and rejoined his retinue in a more formal manner. Many of the people followed him, hoping to see the kirin with their own eyes, and by the time they reached Sanda they were accompanied by a huge crowd, made even larger by the townspeople who flocked out to meet him, waving banners and tassels, dancing and beating drums. Sanda was a town that had grown up as a marketplace and had no castle or fortifications. It showed signs of damage from the war, but most of the burned shops and dwellings had been rebuilt. There were several large lodging houses near the temple; in the main street in front of them Takeo was met by a small group of warriors, carrying banners marked with the twin mountain peaks of the Saga clan.

  “Lord Otori,” said their leader, a large, thickset man who reminded Takeo unpleasantly of Abe, Iida’s chief henchman. “I am Okuda Tadamasa. This is my eldest son, Tadayoshi. Our great lord and Emperor’s general bids you welcome. We have been sent to escort you to him.” He spoke formally and courteously, but before Takeo could reply, Tenba whinnied loudly and above the tile-roofed wall of the garden of the largest inn the kirin’s fan-eared, huge-eyed head on its long patterned neck appeared, causing the crowd to shout in one excited voice. The kirin’s eyes and nose seemed to search for its old companion. It saw Tenba and its face softened as though it smiled; and it seemed to the crowd as if it smiled at Lord Otori.

  Even Okuda could not help glancing toward it. An expression of amazement flitted briefly across his face. He clenched his muscles in an effort to control himself, his eyes popping. His son, a young man about eighteen years old, was grinning openly.

  “I thank you and Lord Saga,” Takeo said calmly, ignoring the excitement as if a kirin were as ordinary a creature as a cat. “I hope you will honor me by eating with my daughter and myself this evening.”

  “I believe Lady Maruyama is waiting inside for you,” Okuda said. “It will give me the greatest pleasure.”