The Harsh Cry of the Heron (58 page)

She heard snatches of
conversation from the maids, but they never spoke to her. Apart from trips to
the privy she hardly saw them until one day a young woman came in Akio’s place
to bring her meal.

She was about Shigeko’s
age, and she stared at Maya with undisguised curiosity.

Maya said, ‘Don’t
stare at me. You know I am very powerful.’

The girl giggled but
did not look away. ‘You look like a boy,’ she said.

‘You know I’m a girl,’
Maya retorted. ‘Haven’t you seen me pissing?’ She used boys’ language, and the
girl laughed.

‘What’s your name?’
Maya asked.

‘Nori,’ she
whispered.

‘Nori, I’ll prove to
you how powerful I am. You dreamed about a wrapping cloth: you had folded some
rice cakes in it, and when you unwrapped them they were crawling with maggots.’

‘I told no one!’ the
girl gasped, but took a step closer. ‘How did you know?’

‘I know a lot of
things,’ Maya replied. ‘Look in my eyes.’ She held the girl’s gaze for a
moment, long enough to see that she was superstitious and credulous, and
something else, something about Hisao . . .

The girl’s head
rolled forward as Maya withdrew the power of her gaze. Maya slapped her on both
sides of her face to waken her. The maid looked at her dazed.

‘You’re a fool if you
love Hisao,’ Maya said bluntly.

The girl flushed. ‘I
feel sorry for him,’ she whispered. ‘His father is so harsh with him, and he is
often unwell.’

‘In what way, unwell?’

‘He gets terrible
headaches. He vomits, and loses his sight. He is sick today. The Kikuta Master
was angry, as they were to meet Lord Zenko - Akio has gone on his own.’

‘Maybe I can help
him,’ Maya said. ‘Why don’t you take me to him?’

‘I cannot! Akio would
kill me if he found out.’

‘Take me to the
privy,’ Maya said. ‘Close this door, but don’t fasten it. I’ll go to Hisao’s
room. Don’t worry; no one will see me. But you must look out for Akio. Warn me
when he returns.’

‘You won’t hurt
Hisao?’

‘He is a grown man. I’m
only fourteen years old -hardly even a woman yet. I have no weapons. How can I
hurt him? Anyway, I said I would help him.’

Even as she spoke she
was recalling all the ways she had been taught to kill a man with her bare
hands. She ran her tongue over her lips; her throat was dry, but otherwise she
was calm. He was unwell, weakened, possibly blinded by illness. It would be
easy to disable him with her gaze; she touched her neck, feeling her own pulse,
imagining his under her hands. And if that failed, she would summon up the cat.
. .

‘Come, Nori, let’s go
to Hisao. He needs your help.’ When Nori still hesitated, Maya said quietly, ‘He
loves you too.’

‘He does?’ Nori’s
eyes brightened in her thin, pale face.

‘He doesn’t tell
anyone, but he dreams about you. I’ve seen his dreams in the same way I’ve seen
yours. He dreams he is holding you and he cries out in his sleep.’

Maya watched Nori’s
face as it softened; she despised the girl for her infatuation. Nori slid the
door open, looked outside and beckoned to Maya. They went quickly to the rear
of the house, and at the door of the privy Maya grasped her stomach and cried
out as if in pain.

‘Hurry up, and don’t
spend all day in there,’ Nori said, with sudden inventiveness.

‘Can I help it if I’m
sick?’ Maya replied in the same vein. ‘It’s the foul food you give me!’

She touched Nori on
the shoulder as her shape faded.

Nori, used to such
strangeness, stared stolidly ahead. Maya went swiftly to the room where Hisao
slept, slid the door open, and stepped in.

The bright sun
outside had closed her pupils, and for a moment she could see nothing. The room
smelled stale, the faint odour of vomit hanging in the air. Then she saw the
boy curled on the mattress in the corner, one arm covering his face. From the
even rhythm of his breathing he seemed to be sleeping. She would never get
another chance like this. Holding her breath she flexed her wrists, called up
all her strength, crossed the room, knelt beside him and seized him around the
neck.

The effort weakened
her concentration so that she lost invisibility. His eyes opened, and he stared
at her for an instant before twisting underneath her in an attempt to break her
grip. He was stronger than she had anticipated, but she directed her gaze into
his eyes and for a moment made him dizzy; her fingers tightened like tentacles
as his back arched and his arms flailed in his struggle to break free. She
clung to him like an animal as he rose on hands and knees. His skin was sweaty,
and she felt her fingers lose their grip. He also sensed it, and shook his head
backwards away from her as he twisted again. He grasped her and slammed her
into the wall. The fragile screens splintered and tore, and somewhere she heard
Nori, she thought, call out. I’ve failed, she thought, as Hisao’s hands closed
round her throat, and she prepared to die.

Miki! she said
silently, and as if Miki answered her she felt her rage against Hisao possess
her and the cat came into being, spitting and snarling. He screamed in surprise
and let go; the cat backed away, ready to escape but not yet willing to give
up.

The pause gave Maya a
moment to regain her control and concentration. She saw that despite the
swiftness of his immediate reaction something was still disabling him. His eyes
went out of focus; he staggered slightly. He seemed to be trying to look at
something just behind her, and listening to a whispering voice.

She thought it was a
trick to get her to look away, and she continued to stare fixedly at him. The
smell of decay and mould increased; the room seemed unbearably hot: the cat’s
thick pelt was stifling her. She heard the voice whisper again to her right;
though she could not make out the words, she heard enough to know it was not
Nori. There was someone else in the room.

She glanced sideways
and saw the woman. She was young, perhaps nineteen or twenty, her hair cut
short, her face pallid. She wore a white robe, crossed on the opposite side to
the living, and she floated above the ground. Her face was set in an expression
of such anger and despair that even Maya’s hard heart was touched. She saw that
Hisao both longed to look at the ghost and feared to; the cat spirit that
possessed her moved freely between the worlds and for the first time she sought
its knowledge and wisdom.

So this is what Taku
meant, she reflected as she recognized her debt to the cat and how it might be
fulfilled, and, immediately after, the power it gave her and how she might use
it.

The woman called to
her, ‘Help me! Help me!’

‘What is it that you
want?’ the cat said.

‘I want my son to
listen to me!’

Before she could
respond to this, Hisao came closer to her.

‘You came back!’ he
said. ‘You have forgiven me.

Come here, let me
touch you. Are you a ghost too? Can I hold you?’

He put out his hand,
and she saw the change in it, how it had softened into a curved shape that
longed to fit itself round the denseness of a cat’s fur, and to her amazement
and not altogether to her liking, the cat responded as if to its master,
lowered its head and flattened its ears, and allowed him to caress it.

She obeyed the wisdom
of the cat. His touch united something innate in both of them. Hisao gasped.
Maya felt the pain as if inside her own head: then it receded. She saw through
his eyes, the half-blindness, the spinning lights like cogwheels of some
machine of torture, and then the world came into focus in a new way, and Hisao
said, ‘Mother?’

The ghost woman
spoke. ‘At last!’ she said. ‘Now will you listen to me?’

His hand was still on
the cat’s head. Maya sensed his confusion: his relief that the pain had gone,
his dread of entering the world of the dead, his fear of half-glimpsed powers
awakening. At the edge of her own mind hung a similar terror, of a way forward
that she did not wish to take, a path that she and Hisao had to tread together,
though she hated him and wanted to kill him.

Nori called from
outside. ‘Quick! The Master is returning!’

Hisao took his hand
from her head. Maya returned with relief into her own girl’s shape. She wanted
to get away from him, but he caught her arm; she thought she could feel his
grip all the way through to the inner marrow of her bones. He was gazing at
her, his eyes amazed and hungry.

‘Don’t go,’ he said. ‘Tell
me. Did you see her?’

Nori, on the
threshold, gazed from one to the other. ‘You are better,’ she exclaimed. ‘She
has cured you!’

They both ignored
her.

‘Of course I did,’
Maya said as she slipped past him. ‘She’s your mother, and she wants you to
listen to her.’

He will tell Akio,
she thought, as Nori hurried her back to the concealed room. He tells him
everything. Akio will learn about the cat. Either he will kill me or they will
use me in some way against Father. I should run away; yes, I must go home; I will
warn Mother about Zenko and Hana. I must go home.

But the cat had felt
its master’s hand on its head, and it was reluctant to leave. And Maya wanted,
against her better judgement, to feel that moment again when she walked between
the worlds and talked to ghosts. She wanted to know what they knew, what it was
like to die, and all the other secrets the dead keep from the living.

She had slept
fitfully for weeks, but as soon as she got back to the small stuffy room an
irresistible lassitude came over her. Her eyelids grew heavy; her whole body
ached with weariness. Without speaking to Nori she lay down on the floor and
fell instantly into the deep river of sleep.

She was awakened, as
if dragged up from underwater, by a command.

Come to me.

It was the darkest
time of night, the air still and humid. Her neck and hair were damp with sweat.
She did not want to feel the cat’s heavy fur, but its master was calling: it
had to go to him.

The cat’s ears
pricked; its head swivelled. It flowed easily through the inner screens and the
outer walls into the yard at the back of the house, across the yard towards the
workshop where the fire of the forges burned all night. The household was used
to Hisao being here in the early morning, before dawn. He had made the place his
own and no one disturbed him.

He held out his hand
and the cat went to him, as if longing for the touch, the caress. He rubbed its
head, and it licked his cheek with its rough tongue. Neither of them spoke, but
there flowed between them an animal need for affection, a yearning for
closeness, for touch.

After a long time
Hisao said, ‘Show your true shape.’

Maya realized that
she was pressed against the boy’s body, his hand still on the nape of her neck.
It was both exciting and repulsive to her. She broke free from his embrace. She
could not see his expression in the half-light. The fire crackled and the smoke
made her eyes sting.

He lifted the lamp
and held it close, gazing at her face. She kept her eyes lowered, not wanting
to challenge him. Neither of them spoke, as if they did not want to return to
the human world of language.

Finally Hisao said, ‘Why
do you come as a cat?’

‘I killed a cat with
the Kikuta gaze, and its spirit has possessed me,’ she replied. ‘No one among
the Muto knows how to deal with it, but Taku had been helping me master it.’

T am its master: but
I don’t know why or how. It dispelled my sickness, being with me, and it
quietened the spirit’s voice so I could hear it. I like cats, but my father killed
one in front of my eyes because I liked it - you are not that cat?’

She shook her head.

‘I still like you,’
he said. ‘I must like you very much; I can’t stop thinking about you. I need
you with me. Promise you will stay with me.’

He put the lamp back
on the floor and tried to pull her close to him again. She resisted him.

‘You know we are
brother and sister?’ she said.

He frowned. ‘She is
your mother? The ghost woman? Is that why you can perceive her?’

‘No, we do not share
the same mother, but the same father.’

She could see him
more clearly now. He did not look like her father, or like herself and Miki,
but his glossy hair with its birdwing sheen was like theirs, and his skin had a
similar texture and colour, with the same honey tone that had been such a trial
to Kaede. Maya had a sudden memory of childhood - sunshades and lotions to
lighten the skin: how stupid and frivolous all that seemed now.

‘Your father is Otori
Takeo, who we call the Dog.’ He laughed in the sneering way she loathed.
Suddenly she hated him again, and despised herself for the eagerness and ease
with which the cat surrendered to him. ‘My father and I are going to kill him.’

He leaned away, out
of the lamp’s glow, and brought out a small firearm. The light glinted on the
dark steel barrel. ‘He is a sorcerer, and no one has been able to get near him,
but this weapon is stronger than sorcery.’ He glanced at her and said, with
deliberate cruelty, ‘You saw how it dealt with Muto Taku.’