The Heavenward Path (12 page)

    Suzume giggled behind her hand, and, I confess, I had to laugh as well.

    Goranu bounced up and changed back into his long-nosed young-man form. "So you see. Now, another lesson."

    And so it went. Goranu would create the illusion of a place and a situation, and Suzume and I would have to solve a problem set there. At first I did poorly, trying to see each problem as I, Fujiwara no Mitsuko, would see it. But with Suzume as an example and with Goranu's urgings, I began to learn just how differently one can see things, how different a person can be, when necessary. It was as though I had been shut in a tower and then a window was opened for me. The view from the window was dizzying, and I did not always like it, but I saw a much wider world.

    As we were leaving the grotto, I asked Goranu, "If you tengu are so good at imaginings, why is it you do not paint or write poetry?"

    "Because of Rule Number One, Mitsuko. We consider very few things important enough to waste time and feelings for, whereas you mortals shed tears over a sunset or the falling of a cherry blossom."

    "What do you consider important, then?" I asked.

    Goranu paused and gazed at me. Without speaking, he placed a finger lightly on my cheek. Then he turned and walked ahead to lead us out.

    

    

    By the time we returned to the tengu village, it was already late into the night. The tengu women-homely creatures with clawlike hands, long noses, bedraggled hair, and huge flat feet-were setting bright-colored lanterns outside every hut. I could smell soup and rice cooking, and I felt my stomach growl.

    "As you know, we cannot promise you a feast," said Goranu. "But we are willing to feed you, if you don't mind a little stew meat."

    "Stew sounds good to me," said Suzume.

    I sighed. "It is no wonder you tengu cannot find the Heavenward Path."

    "Hey," cautioned Goranu. "No more Buddhist nonsense. I'm through with that. You want to keep your purity, you can chew on grass for dinner. Me, I'm having the stew."

    "I wonder what hour it is?" I said to Suzume. "By now I have surely been gone a whole day from Heian Kyo." It seemed so strange. Had it only been that morning that I had spoken to the ghost of Lord Chomigoto? No wonder I felt so very tired.

    "Your papa must be really worried by now," said Suzume. "And my family, too."

    "Yes. I wish I could see what Papa-san is thinking and doing."

    "No, you don't," Goranu chimed in.

    "Oh, just a glimpse," I said. "You could show me, couldn't you?"

    Goranu crossed his arms on his chest. "I could. But I won't."

    "Stubborn tengu," chided Suzume.

    "It is for your own good!" said Goranu. "You Buddhists believe you have to give up ties to family, neh? Why is that?"

    I stared at the ground and kicked at the dirt. "It is so that one may concentrate on the sacred teachings."

    "Exactly. Family problems are distracting. You have much to contemplate, Mitsuko. You can't be concerned with your papa right now."

    I was angry at his dismissive tone, but I said nothing. He was only a tengu, after all. He did not understand important things. Goranu led us into one of the tengu huts, and then he left us. Suzume and I sat on the wooden floor by the plain stone central hearth.

    "This is just like my family's old house, only tidier," said Suzume, looking around.

    "Is it?" I had spent one night in Suzume's old house, and I shuddered to remember that she was right. Two tengu women came in with bowls of stew that they set down before us. Then they patted our hair and clothes with their clawlike hands.

    "How pretty you mortal girls are," one of them cawed at me.

    "What lovely hair. And your kimonos, what fine silk they are made of," said the other to Suzume.

    "But your noses are so small, poor things."

    "And your feet, too. How can you walk with such tiny stubs on the ends of your legs?"

    I was getting the feeling that the tengu women would like to tear us to pieces and throw us into the stew pot. "Please leave us," I said. "We would like to eat in peace."

    "Ooooh, but of course. We tengu ladies are too lowly for a noblewoman's company."

    "Only good enough to be servants, we tengu are. Please forgive our existence." Bobbing and bowing, the tengu women backed out of the hut, glaring at us hatefully.

    "Forgive me," said Suzume, "but do you think you could have been a bit more polite? They are feeding us and giving us shelter."

    "Why?" I grumbled. "They are hardly polite to each other."

    "So? We can be a better example to them."

    "They need no examples. They will never change."

    "My, we are a stony mountain puddle this evening. The tengu may be sour, but at least they keep their sense of humor. Besides, don't tengu believe everything is changeable?"

    "I do not know," I said with a sigh. I lay down on the floor and picked idly at the rough wood grain. "After Goranu's lessons, I hardly know what to think anymore. I will tell you a secret. I used to think that my life would someday be like a monogatari-a beautiful story. But if my problem with Lord Chomigoto had been part of a monogatari, things would be happening very differently."

    "A monogatari? You mean those stories you noblewomen write and trade among each other for fun?"

    "It is not just amusement. We write about feelings and beauty, the way the world
should
be. If this were one of those stories, the heroine would build the new shrine herself, stone by stone, until her hands bled. And she would walk to the ends of Hokkaido to bring together the last descendants of the villagers. And she would do anything necessary, even sell her family into poverty, to restore the wealth of the ghost-king's tomb."

    "Or, more likely, die trying," said Suzume, her mouth full of stew.

    "But it would be a noble death," I said, chin on my hands. "A blameless death that led to an honorable heaven, or at least a better rebirth. But instead I lie here in a dilapidated tengu hovel and contemplate baser things."

    "Life is never like stories. One thing is clear: No matter how much Goranu trains you, you will still have your head in the Clouds. You and your silly noble ideals."

    "Papa once said to lose one's nobility is to allow one's soul to be trampled in the mud. But I see you have adapted to tengu thought very well. You even seemed to trade kind words with Kuroihane, I've noticed."

    Suzume sat up straight, her eyes wide. "What! Are you saying I like him? I find him interesting, to be sure, but I am not fond of him. Not like the love you bear your Goranu."

    I sat up, too, wishing there were cushions around so I could throw one at her. "I do not love Goranu! I feel sorry for him because he studied the sutras for my sake and failed."

    "Yes, of course, I must be mistaken," Suzume said dryly, rolling her eyes. "Surely, that is all it is. Only pity. Just as well-for both of us-I suppose. There is no social gain to be had in marrying a tengu."

    "Truly, none," I agreed.

    "My family would have fits," said Suzume.

    "My family would disown me. But can you imagine," I said, reclining again on the floor, "what a world would be like where everyone could marry whomever they chose, without thought of social station or what clan they came from? What a strange world that would be-surely, stranger than any world I have visited in my travels."

    Suzume shook her head. "That dragon was right about one thing: Given a chance, people will always act foolish and make stupid choices. In my old neighborhood now and then, we would hear about some girl running off with some rogue she had taken a liking to. No good ever came of it that I knew of. My mama says that love is like cherry trees: The blossoms are pretty but they fall off quickly, and you're stuck with stony fruit. It's just as well things are the way they are."

    "I am sure you are right," I said, feeling sad.

    "Now what I could consider a wonderful world," said Suzume, "is a place where you don't have to spend all day making dinner. Or where your clothes would wash themselves. Or you could have hot water any time you needed it, without having to build a fire and put a kettle on."

    "What strange things to wish for," I said.

    "That's because you are used to servants doing all that for you. Isn't there anything you don't have that you might like? Come on, now, imagine this is one of Goranu's problems. Think like a tengu."

    "Well, I wish I could create illusions, like the tengu. It would be like writing monogatari, except you could see everything-the clothing, the houses, the beauty of the people. You could choose any kind of story you wanted to see. Or the tengu power of showing you a place far away so you could see what is happening there."

    Suzume laughed. "But in a world where anyone might have such powers, you would have to be careful, neh? Somebody might be watching you, without your knowing it."

    "Then I would throw a tengu spell so that no one could watch me; only I could watch others."

    "But what if everybody had such a spell, so that nobody could watch anybody?"

    The argument was becoming so ridiculous, I had to laugh, too. "Then you would have to pass a law that said nobody could use such a spell at certain hours, or that maybe you could only cast voices, but not visions, at certain hours."

    "How about smells?" said Suzume. We both fell over with giggles.

    "What is the noise in here?" asked Goranu, coming through the curtain door. "A good thing we tengu do not sleep at night, for your chatter would be keeping us all awake."

    "We were practicing thinking like tengu," said Suzume.

    "And doing very well at it," I added. "We were being very silly and imagining being different sorts of people in a different kind of life."

    Goranu raised his brows but said, "I am glad to hear of your progress, for we will start to put your new thinking to use tomorrow. Therefore, I suggest you both get some sleep. I don't want to be dealing with fuzzy heads in the morning."

    "Goranu," I said, "what if… what if Lord Chomigoto should speak to me in my dreams again? I may not be able to sleep if I fear that will happen."

    "If he does," said Goranu, "then you must talk back to him in your dream. You must tell him that you are staying with us and that you are working on your tasks. That should satisfy him. And," Goranu added with a wink, "it will make him worry." He turned to go when Kuroihane entered through the curtain, carrying two rolled-up mats of thick, soft reeds.

    "I brought these," said Kuroihane, bowing, "because you ladies are used to finer things than sleeping on a hard floor."

    "You are going to spoil them," Goranu said.

    "Oh no, Highness," said Kuroihane. "This way they will not ruin the nice wood floors with their lint and hair. Mustn't have the place smelling of humans after they are gone. And we can burn the mats later."

    "How very thoughtful of you," Suzume said with narrowed eyes. "This way your wood floors will not leave splinters in our hair and skin."

    "Or tear our delicate silk kimonos," I added.

    "Do you dare to insult our fine dwellings?" said Kuroihane.

    "I think I shall leave," said Goranu mildly, "before war is declared. Good night."

    "As will I," said Kuroihane, dropping the mat rolls. "Clearly, the ladies need their sleep, as they are getting snappish. Good night."

    Both tengu bowed and departed. Suzume and I rolled out the mats on the floor.

    "I think," said Suzume, "that despite all our practice, I will never manage to think as tengu do."

    "Perhaps it is just as well," I said. I lay down on my mat as Suzume extinguished the lamps. I did not believe that I would fall asleep quickly, but I must have been very tired, because I did. Lord Chomigoto did not speak in my dreams, but the mysterious woman in the old-fashioned, bulky kimonos did. Somehow I knew she was singing, even though I could not see her face or hear her words. She had a sakaki branch in each hand and waved them as she danced through the forest. It was a very soothing dream.

    

    

    I awoke to see long daggers of sunlight on the floor, slipping in under the curtain door. Sitting up, I rubbed my eyes and yawned, trying to remember where I was and why.

    Suzume pushed aside the curtain and stepped into the hut, holding a wooden tray. "Ah, good, you are awake. Say what you will about those tengu women, they're pretty good cooks. I brought us some breakfast."

    "Good morning to you, too," I murmured. I took the covered bowl Suzume handed me and lifted off the lid. I saw rice in a bean broth topped with… chopped egg. "If the tengu are bird people," I said, "how is it they can eat egg?"

    "I asked them," said Suzume, "and they told me some humans eat monkey meat, so we are not fit to judge."

    "I would never eat monkey meat," I said, picking up a pair of chopsticks from the tray.

    Suzume shrugged and held her bowl up to her mouth and began to shovel the rice in with her chopsticks.

    
Clearly, she has not yet learned that a lady, even a lady's maid, does not eat too much or too eagerly
, I thought. But I was hungry, too, and so I ate mine, though a little more slowly, egg and all.

    I had almost finished when Goranu walked in, followed by Kuroihane. They bowed, and Goranu said, "Good morning, ladies. Did you sleep well?"

    "Like a stone," said Suzume.

    "What, lumpy and cold with ants crawling beneath you?" asked Kuroihane.