Lord of the Darkwood (13 page)

“Lord Arinori has become our protector. It is just as I hoped. But, Yayoi, you look so thin, you must not lose weight. Eat, eat, it's the sweetest rice we've had all year. Don't fret, don't dwell on what might have been. This is your life now and, while it may not be what your parents might have hoped for you or what you would have chosen, it is better than being dead. Enjoy it, strive to please Lord Arinori, and one day he may even buy you from me for his own.”

Yayoi could not imagine anything worse. When Arinori's duties took him back to the capital, she began to choose men from the visitors that came aboard at Majima, Kasumiguchi, Kitakami, and the other market towns around the lake. She learned their desires and their foibles, their needs and their strengths. Some she liked more than others, some became almost friends. But not one of them ever knew that, when she embraced him and gave herself to him, in her heart it was not him she was holding but the wild boy who had ridden into her father's lands on a brown mare all those years ago.

 

8

MU

The fox girl laughed when Mu asked her name, as she laughed at most of his questions.

“You can call me Shida, if I have to have a name,” she said, tickling him with a dried fern. She liked to drape herself in the leaves and flowers of the forest as they came into season, making garlands from strands of berries and the brown fronds of bracken for herself and Kaze, and for the child, when it came.

They had been together for four winters. The child was a girl, as slight and delicate as a fern leaf herself. They called her Kinpoge, after the celandines that starred the forest floor around the time of her birth. She did not seem to have any fox attributes, apart from her animal-like agility and her rapid growth, though in certain lights her thick hair had a russet gleam to it and her eyes were amber.

During those years, Shida taught Mu the bright playful magic of the fox people. It seemed to have no purpose other than to make life amusing. She cast a spell on Ban's skull, to Kaze's utter delight, that sent the horse flying through the air. She summoned up shape shifters, tanuki, cranes, turtles, and snakes, just for the fun of startling Ima or Ku. They never knew if an iron pot was really a pot or a grinning fat-bellied tanuki, or if an old robe, thrown on the ground, might not suddenly sprout wings and launch itself, squawking, into the air.

Her presence seemed to revive many of Shisoku's fake animals. One of the creatures, a cross between a dog and a wolf, which had been Shisoku's water carrier, raised its head from where it had fallen by the stream and Shida ran to help it to its feet, chuckling at its awkward gait.

“You should make a companion for it,” she said, when it tried to lift the water vessel on its own and the water spilled out lopsidedly.

Mu had to admit he did not know how to and that all he did not know overwhelmed him. The forest and the mountain were home to thousands of plants, flowers, trees, and grasses, and myriad creatures, insects, birds, and small animals as well as deer, monkeys, foxes, bears, and wolves. There was no one who could teach him their names. Shida did not understand his need to label them. They were all instantly recognizable to her, she did not need words. Mu realized she lived like an animal, in each single moment, observing, feeling, enjoying, but not reflecting or recording. Sometimes he felt himself slipping into the same way of being, and days would pass when he hardly had a single thought. Then he would wake in the night from a bad dream in which a stranger who was at the same time familiar accused him of wasting his life. He would lie there in the dark, hearing the others breathing around him, alarmed and uneasy at what he was leaving undone, yet ignorant of what it might be.

He became preoccupied and silent. Shida accused him of being gloomy and turning into an old man before his time. There were no mirrors to look in; he could not check his appearance, yet he felt she was right. He was aging rapidly. He could see the same thing happening to Ima and Ku. Kaze grew like a human child, but the brothers seemed fated to have lives as short as insects'.

And as pointless
, he thought.

Even before Kiku returned, Mu and his fox wife quarreled. Her playful magic no longer enchanted but irritated him. She began to spend time away, with her own people. He missed her with a kind of agony, but was angry with her when she came back.

And then one day Kiku rode into the clearing with Chika and an older man, a warrior with missing fingers and one eye.

They had an air of prosperity about them; their cheeks were fat and their hair sleek. The horses were sturdy, with bright eyes and round haunches. Mu saw the hut and the clearing through his brother's eyes and felt ashamed.

Kiku made no comment, hardly even greeted his brothers, but said as he dismounted, “I have come for the skull.”

“Do you remember where we buried it?” Mu said, thinking of the day when its owner, the monk, Gessho, had died.

“Oh, yes!” Kiku said.

“What will you do with it?” Mu asked.

Kiku cast a look at Ban, the horse skull he had tried to infuse with power, which stood on its post, motionless. “I know what I'm doing now. Our father, Akuzenji, had other sorcerers in his service. Tsunetomo took me to one who was familiar with these old matters. He taught me what I have to do. I'm going to try again.”

“Ban can fly,” Kaze told him. “Shida did it.”

Kiku turned his gaze on Shida, who sat by the fire staring at him with frank interest. “You can do magic, Lady Shida?”

“A bit of this, a bit of that,” she said carelessly. “Why do you call me
Lady
?”

“You're a beautiful woman. Are you my brother's wife?”

“No!” she said, laughing, even as Mu said, “Yes!”

Kiku said, “I need a beautiful woman to infuse the skull with power.”

“Find your own wife,” Mu said.

“I have come for my wife,” Kiku replied. “I am going to take Kaze as my wife, sister of my dearest friend. Isn't that right, Chika?”

Chika nodded without speaking. Mu noticed he stayed by Kiku's side, as close as a dog.

Kiku went on, “But the ritual demands something different, some other woman, one more like our mother.”

“If you touch her, I will kill you,” Mu said.

“Don't be silly,” said Shida. “You can't dictate what I can and can't do. I don't belong to you. If he wants me to join him in some magic, where's the harm in that?”

Kiku said to Chika, “Go and dig up the skull. Ima will show you where it is. Then boil a pot of water, Ima. We will clean it tonight, and tomorrow we will start the ritual.”

“No!” Mu cried and leaped at his brother, not knowing what he intended to do, driven only by fear and frustration. But his arms were seized by the warrior, who up to this time had not spoken and who moved faster than Mu would have thought possible. He was strong, too, and held Mu with no effort. Mu struggled to use the second self, to turn invisible, but it was so long since he had used either that he was not quick enough.

“What shall I do with him?” the warrior asked.

“I don't know,” Kiku said impatiently.

“Do you want me to kill him?”

“No, not really. I don't want him interfering or distracting me.”

“He won't distract you if he's dead,” the warrior said with a laugh, and tightened his grip on Mu's neck, as if he would break it with his bare hands.

“But it would be an inauspicious start to the rituals,” Chika said. “Take him to the other side of the stream, Tsunetomo, and tie him up there.”

Tsunetomo picked Mu up and strode across the stream. Then, despite Mu's struggles, he trussed him like a goose, in a kneeling position, his hands tied to his feet behind his back. His knots were expert; there was no way Mu could wriggle out of the ropes. After an hour his joints and muscles had set up a scream of pain that dulled his hearing and his senses to everything else.

As night came, Ku brought water and stayed beside him, helping him to drink, whimpering like a dog.

“Untie me,” Mu begged, unable to keep himself from whimpering, too.

“They say they will kill you if I do.”

“I would rather be dead, for then I would not feel.”

He could hear all night long the hiss and bubble of the water that was boiling the skull clean.

*   *   *

The rituals lasted for several days, during which time, as far as Mu could tell, Kiku and Shida were alone in the hut, with the skull. Every now and then he heard the others talking, smelled the food Ima and Kaze prepared—he himself refused to eat—and saw the horses come to the stream to drink. The sight of him alarmed them, as if they could not determine what he was, and they gazed at him with huge eyes and pricked ears. Often, a silence descended on the clearing, a sudden hush as if the whole forest held its breath in awe at what was taking place within the hut, the transformations that were occurring. Nothing, no one could help being affected by it. When sounds and voices returned, they were solemn and muted. Under Mu's tormented eyes, the hut seemed to glow with light, transformed into an enchanted palace in a garden of wisteria.

Kiku finally emerged and held the skull aloft. It was lacquered now and gleamed black and red with brilliant green jeweled eyes and cinnabar lips, the teeth inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Mu saw it clearly, because his brother brought it to the side of the stream to wave it in his face.

It was midday. The sun sparkled on the water, on the wet stones, on the mother-of-pearl.

They began to make preparations to leave. Mu heard Kiku's voice.

“Ku and Ima, you will come with me. From now on we must all be together. I have taken everything I need from this place, its treasure, its knowledge.”

“What about Mu?” Ima said.

“He can stay here and become like Shisoku,” Kiku replied.

“I'm not leaving the animals,” Ku said stubbornly.

Kiku turned the skull toward him and went closer. “I am your older brother and you will obey me.”

Ku tried to take a step back, but Kiku lowered the skull, grasped his arm, and forced him to stare into his eyes. Mu could not see what happened, but within seconds Ku had slumped to the ground.

“Pick him up and put him on your horse,” Kiku ordered Tsunetomo, and the warrior obeyed, screwing up his face in a sort of unwilling admiration.

“Now you,” Kiku addressed Ima, but Ima shook his head.

“I need to look after things here. I'll stay with Mu and Kinpoge.”

Mu saw Kiku repeat the same process, and stare intently into Ima's eyes. But Ima stared back. Whatever power the skull had given Kiku did not work on him.

Kiku's eyes flashed with anger and for a moment Mu feared Tsunetomo would be ordered to kill them both. The warrior had his hand on his sword, as eager as a hunting dog.

Kiku turned to the horse, which Chika held ready for him. As he mounted, and Chika lifted Kaze up behind him, he said, “Stay, then. You can untie Mu now.”

Mu screamed as the blood flowed back into his cramped legs. It was a long time before he could stand. When he finally managed it, on ankles that kept bending the wrong way beneath his weight, the clearing was empty, apart from Ima, and Kinpoge, who flitted around him like some ghostly spirit.

“Where is your mother?” he said to her, and her amber eyes filled with tears.

“She is in the hut,” Ima said awkwardly. “I have tried to rouse her but…”

Mu hobbled slowly toward it, seeing it clearly in the afternoon light. The magic had all fled. It looked as dilapidated as usual, the roof sagging, the walls subsiding, revealing no trace of what had happened within it. He slid the door open and stepped in, his eyes adjusting to the dimness.

Shida lay on the ground, half-naked still, her legs apart, her arms above her head. He thought for a moment that she was dead, but when he knelt beside her she stirred and said something he did not understand. He took her in his arms, helpless to avoid his own clumsiness and the pain it caused them both, but even as he held her he knew her shape was changing.

The fox snarled and snapped at him. He embraced all its loveliness for one last time and then he released his grip and the creature ran from the hut and from his life.

He crawled out after her and saw her disappear into the forest, her tail burning as if with foxfire. He collapsed on the threshold.

Kinpoge knelt beside him, her hand like ice on his brow.

Ima brought rags steeped in hot water to bind the joints, and rocks from the fire to lay against his muscles. The heat seemed to enter his entire body and he burned like the fire itself, until it fled from him, like steam evaporating, and a chill followed that made him shake and shiver uncontrollably. When the fever subsided, it left him weak and in despair. At first he did not recognize this new emotion, but then he realized it was grief, and he knew that he had loved her and love had changed him.

*   *   *

For a long time, he limped like a cripple and had to use a cane. Winter came early, with the first snow in the eleventh month. It drifted waist-deep around the hut and continued to fall for the next two months. If Ima had not been there, Mu and his daughter would have starved, or frozen to death, drifting into their long sleep without noticing. But Ima kept them both alive, going out daily to track hares or rabbits, occasionally bringing down, with an arrow, a squirrel or a pheasant, once even a serow, whose skin made a warm cape for Kinpoge. In some ways, hunting was easier, for against the white snow there was nowhere to hide and neither humans nor animals could conceal their tracks.

Ima kept the fire going, too, coming home with armfuls of dead wood, and cooked meals, roasting the tender joints, stewing the rest. Maybe it was the tempting smell of food, or Ima's tracks clear in the snow, that showed the tengu where they were.

The tengu came in the late afternoon, when a blood-red sun was sinking rapidly behind the western mountains, and it was already freezing. The light from the fire and from the lamps in the hut looked tiny against the great snowy mass that the Darkwood had become.