Lord of the Darkwood (5 page)

Bara walked after it. To her right, she could hear the endless babbling of the stream as it rushed over rocks and through pools. On her left, the forest rose in a steep slope, thick with trees she did not recognize, apart from maples. She had grown up in the port city of Akashi and then had worked in the house in Miyako, and the Nishimi palace, on the shore of the lake. Everything here alarmed her—the strange bird calls, the half-seen creatures that slithered away, the darkness between the trees that seemed to stretch away forever, the uncanny dappled circles where the sunlight shot through.

The ground was still sodden, but there were plenty of dead branches on tree trunks that she could reach easily, and she was breaking these off and making a bundle in her left arm when the foal, which had been walking ahead of her, stopped dead and snorted through its nose.

Pushing past it, she in turn halted suddenly. In the path stood the animal that she had noticed following the horses. She had thought it was a dog, but it did not look like any dog she had ever seen. Perhaps it was a wolf. Close up it did not seem quite real. Its eyes were as hard as gemstones and its movements awkward. The idea came to her that she was dreaming; she had fallen asleep, after all; she could almost feel the rocky floor of the cave beneath her. She struggled to wake. The wolf curled its painted lips, showing its carved teeth and its manlike tongue.

“Gen!” a low voice called, as if it were an angel or a demon, making a pronouncement. Shivers ran down her backbone. “Gen!”

The wolf seemed to sigh as it retreated. She went forward slowly, Tan's nose in her back, pushing her on.

She saw the head first and thought she had come upon a stag. The antlers, one broken, were lit up by the morning sun. Then she realized it was a man wearing a mask. She recognized the shape; it matched exactly the pattern of the burns on the other men's faces. It covered three quarters of his face, leaving his chin free. Through the sockets she could see his eyes, so black the iris and the pupil merged.

He had been sitting, his legs folded beneath him, but he stood as she approached. The antlers gave him added height and he seemed, to her, like some spirit of the forest, half man, half deer. He reminded her of the dancers at the summer festivals of her childhood. In Akashi they had danced the heron dance, wearing beaked and feathered headdress. In that garb, the men had become protective, chaste, quite unlike their usual truculent, predatory selves.

She felt no fear now, only pity, for somehow she recognized a grief as deep as her own.

He did not speak to her but addressed the foal.

“Who is this my lord has brought to me?”

She recognized the sword he wore at his hip—it was the sword the Princess had left in the shrine at Nishimi, as an offering to the Lake Goddess. He also bore a rattan bow and a quiver on his back, filled with arrows fletched with black feathers. She could see traces of cobwebs spun between them. It was a long time since they had been disturbed.

The foal nudged her, pushing her forward. She fell to her knees and said, “My name is Bara, but now I call myself Ibara. I was at Nishimi when the Princess came, with the horses and with that sword you wear.”

A stillness came over him, like a deer after the first startle. She was afraid he was going to leap away and disappear into the forest, but then a long shudder ran through him and he sank to his knees in front of her.

“With Jato?” he touched its hilt briefly.

“If that is its name. The last time I saw it was before the altar in the shrine.”

“Masachika must have taken it. It was made for me, but he had it at Matsutani. I took it back from him.”

“You should have killed him then,” Ibara said. “Swords return for a purpose.”

He did not respond to this but said, “Tell me what happened at Nishimi.”

She could see him more clearly now. How young he was! She had formed a picture of an older man, for that was what the word
lord
suggested to her. But he was not much more than a boy. How had he destroyed the Prince Abbot, in an act of such power the temple at Ryusonji had burned to the ground?

He loved the Princess. She died.
His mouth had the same shape as little Take's, and his long fingers, too. Tears welled in her eyes.

“Akihime came to Nishimi, with Risu and Nyorin. Yukikuni no Takaakira employed me to look after Lady Hina. Hina knew the horses, she knew their names.”

“Hina?” the lord said wonderingly. “Lord Kiyoyori's daughter?” And the foal came closer, nodding its head.

“I had no idea who Lady Hina was, other than that she was his ward and that he was secretive about her and didn't want anyone to know she was living with him. I guessed he'd saved her life. I would have done the same thing—anyone would. She was enchantingly pretty and so brave. She hid the Princess, and we pretended she had been rescued from the lake. After the baby was born Akihime worked in the kitchen. We thought no one would suspect her of being anything but a servant girl.”

“She had a child?” His lips were ashen.

“A son. She wanted him to be called Takeyoshi. Lady Hina often played with him and she was carrying him when Masachika came over the mountains from the west.” She halted abruptly. “This is the bit I don't understand. For he came with Saburo.”

Tan gave a low whinny.

“Yes, Tan, Saburo, the man who saved your life at birth. He must have told Masachika that the Princess was at Nishimi, but I cannot believe he would betray her. And then Masachika killed him, stabbing him in the back.”

“Masachika often works as a spy,” the lord said. “Your Saburo would not be the first to be deceived into trusting him.”

He laid one hand against the foal's neck. “What happened to Hina?”

Ibara replied, “She jumped into the water with the baby in her arms.”

Tears splashed on her arm and hand. The foal was weeping.

“What is this animal?” she cried, half-rising. “How does it understand every word and why is it shedding tears like a human?”

The lord said quietly, “The foal is a vessel for the spirit of Lord Kiyoyori, Hina's father.”

“The one who died at the side of the Crown Prince? How can that be possible?”

He looked at her. The bone mask allowed no expression apart from the eyes, but they seemed to open onto a world she did not know existed. She could not hold his gaze.

“Is it like rebirth?” she said after a long silence.

“Not quite. Lord Kiyoyori's spirit refused to cross the river of death. A man who owed him an unthinkable debt took his place. I summoned the lord back. The mare was pregnant. His spirit took over the unborn foal.”

It might have been the wild claim of a man driven mad by grief, yet, if she accepted it, so many things made sense—the foal's devotion to Hina, its ability to understand human speech, its tears.

“I don't believe Lady Hina is dead,” she said, addressing the foal. “There was a boat. I think they saved her and the baby. Don't grieve for her yet…” And then, deeply uncomfortable, she added, “Lord.”

Accepting it was true gave her new hope. “Why can't you summon the Princess back? Or Saburo? Summon him back into whatever shape you like. He died before we even held each other. I cannot stand it.” She was twisting her hands together frantically.

“I know,” he said, and, for a moment, Ibara felt their deep grief unite them. Then he said bitterly, “Don't think I haven't tried. Night after night, I attempt to walk again between the worlds and summon up the dead. But she is gone. Maybe she is in Paradise, maybe she is reborn, either way she is forever lost to me. Your Saburo must have died even earlier. He also will have crossed the last of the rivers that flow between this world and the next. I was given much power and taught many things, but I lay with her when I should not have done, and though together we destroyed the Prince Abbot, we did not escape punishment. She forfeited her life and I cannot remove the mask. I am condemned to live half animal, half human, belonging to neither world. I will go without food or sleep until I follow her into the realm of the dead. Maybe there I can find forgiveness.”

“It is not forgiveness I seek,” Ibara said in a low voice. “It is revenge.”

The foal gave a sharp neigh of encouragement.

How strange
, she thought,
I am just a girl from Akashi, a servant, but my desire for revenge is stronger than this boy's, who was born a lord, brought up as a warrior.

“No one is to blame for the Princess's death but myself,” he said. “It is on myself that I am taking revenge.”

“The baby looks like you. He is your son, isn't he? Don't you want to find him?”

“Better he died in the water,” Shikanoko said, “than grow up in this world of sorrow.”

 

3

MU

Three of the five boys who had been born from cocoons, Mu, Ima, and Ku, had been left at the mountain hut all winter. Once a messenger had come from Shikanoko at Kumayama to check that they were still alive, but after that they heard nothing of him or their other brothers, Kiku and Kuro. At first they did not worry, living day to day without much thought, like animals, but when spring came Mu began to be plagued by restlessness and a sort of anxiety. He took to roaming through the Darkwood and it was there that he saw a foxes' wedding, though at the time he did not know what it was. It was the third month, when showers chased sunshine. For several days he had been away from the hut, sleeping under the stars or in caves when it was too wet, feeling almost like a fox himself. One morning he was plucking young fern shoots, cramming the tender stems into his mouth, in one of the hidden clearings on the lower slopes of Kuroyama, when he heard curious noises, the soft padding of many feet and flute music, so high he could not tell if it was really music or the wind in the pine trees, and drums that might have been rain falling. He quickly climbed an oak tree and hid in the foliage as a procession came into the clearing.

At first, he thought they were people, dressed in colorful clothes, walking upright, playing flutes and drums, but then he saw their pointed ears, their black-tipped snouts, their precise, delicate paws. A male and a female were carried on the shoulders of the largest foxes, who were the size of wolves. Like the music, they hovered between reality and imagination, filling him with an intense longing. He did not think they were aware of him, but, as they passed beneath the oak tree, one young female looked up and smiled in his direction, a smile that seemed to be an invitation into worlds he had not known existed.

The sun shone brilliantly on the short winter grass, only recently liberated from snow, starred with flowers, yellow aconites and celandines, white anemones. The bride and groom were lowered to the ground and stood facing each other. They joined hands—
paws
, Mu thought—as the flutes played even more sweetly and the drums more loudly. Then the sky darkened, sudden rain joined in the drumming, and, when Mu could see again, they had all disappeared, as if the shower had dissolved them.

When he came home his brothers Kiku and Kuro had returned and were crouched by the fire, silent and miserable. He felt a moment of relief, as if his anxiety had been for them, but why had they come alone and why did they look like that? The youngest brother, Ku, was sitting near them, watching them with a troubled expression on his face, a bunch of puppies, as usual, crawling over him and tumbling around him. The fourth boy, Ima, was tending a pot in which a stew of spring shoots was simmering along with some sort of meat.

Ima scooped broth into wooden bowls and offered them to Kiku and Kuro. Kuro took one and drank without a word, but Kiku refused with a gesture that made Mu's heart sink.

“What's happened?” he said.

“Shikanoko…” Kuro began.

“Don't you dare speak!” Kiku shouted. “It was all your fault!” He hit Kuro over the shoulders so violently the soup flew from the bowl, scalding Kuro's face and hands. Kuro swore, grabbed a smoldering stick from the fire, and thrust it toward Kiku's face.

“Stop it, stop it!” Mu cried. “What happened to Shikanoko? He's not dead?”

“He might as well be,” Kiku said angrily. “He has sent us away. He never wants to see us again. It was all Kuro's stupid fault. I told him to leave all his creatures behind. But he had to bring the deadliest one.”

“The snake? The snake bit someone?” Mu said.

“Only a woman.” Kuro tried to defend himself.

“Only a woman?” Kiku repeated. “The woman we were meant to rescue, the Autumn Princess, the woman Shika loved.”

“I don't understand that,” Kuro muttered. “I don't know what
love
means.”

“I'm not sure I do either,” Kiku admitted.

Mu thought of the fox girl and how her look had transfixed him.
Do I love her?
he wondered.

“Shika felt something for her,” Kiku tried to explain. “An emotion so strong her death destroyed him. He has turned us away, our older brother, our father, the only one who cared for us, who brought us up.” He said all this in a bewildered voice as though, for the first time in his life, he himself was feeling some strong emotion. He brushed his hand against his eyes. “What is this? Is it the smoke making my eyes water?”

Tears were staining his cheeks. Mu could not remember ever seeing him cry, not even when the rest of them had wept after Shisoku died. “Where has Shika gone?” he said.

Kiku sniffed. “He rode away into the Darkwood, with Gen, three horses, and two men with burnt faces. He performed an act of great magic and defeated the priest. He raised a dragon child from the lake. You should have seen it, Mu, it was magnificent. Balls of lightning everywhere, a roaring like you've never heard. The priest dissolved in fire.”

“Tell Mu about the price Shika paid,” Kuro said. “Tell him about the mask.”