Shadows on the Moon (23 page)

Akira-sama shuddered and twitched and cried out, and as she opened her mouth, a long black trail of smoke left it. I was very glad this was a dream. That smoke danced and coiled over her body like some awful living creature. The shapes it made reminded me of claws and scales and lashing tails. I could almost see glinting eyes in the blackness, eyes that saw me, too, and hated me. My imagination was more powerful than I had ever realized.

Go away,
I told the blackness.
I want to wake up, and I cannot until you are gone. Go on. Disappear.

The smoke writhed again and dissipated, leaving a sickly charred smell behind. Abruptly I was cold. Akira-sama’s skin beneath mine felt warm and comforting.

She breathed in, and my whole arm was lifted up with the depth of that breath. As I lay there, hanging on to her wrist, she turned her head on the pillow to look at me.

“Yue? What is happening?”

I didn’t have the energy to explain. I managed a sleepy smile. My dream was slipping away now, going gray and distant at the edges. In a moment, I would wake up. . . .

I opened my eyes.

It was daylight, but early, and a soft yellow light was filtering through screens into the room. I felt weak and hungry, and there was a disgusting taste in my mouth. My eyes were crusted and flinched from the light, as if I had not opened them for a long time.

Next to me, Akira-sama was lying peacefully, her deep, slow breaths telling me that she was asleep. There was no one else in the room.

I lifted up one of my hands, and my arm felt slow and heavy. My palm and fingers were clean and the nails were neatly pared, and when I put that hand over my face to block out the light, my skin smelled of flowers. I had managed to get away from prison alive. I was clean and safe.

And I had killed someone. I had killed my mother.

My actions lay before me now, like a path of little white stones on the surface of a still, dark pool. I made myself look.

She had chosen Terayama-san. Even after she knew what he had done, she had chosen him. She had betrayed Aimi and my father. She had killed my love for her, banished me, and forgotten me. But I had stolen her life. I had committed a cold and cowardly murder, against a woman who had no way to defend herself. Just as Terayama-san had taken my family’s lives, I had taken hers.

I did not have the right.

She had ceased to be a mother to me long before — but she had not ceased to be a human being. I had killed her.

I was a murderer.

Hard, dry sobs racked my body. My ribs ached and jabbed. I endured it.

After a while my sobs died down, and I took my hand from my face. Akira-sama was still breathing evenly next to me, and the morning light was still yellow and warm. I felt as if I had run a long, long way and gotten nowhere. There was a kind of peace in that. I would never get anywhere. I would never get away from what I had done.

If there was justice in the next world, I would be punished. If not, then I would simply turn to dust. But I would not fling myself into a river to escape. I would not take refuge in madness.

I would carry this secret, this burden, for the rest of my life, and I would never forget.

I would live with it.

Forever.

Akira-sama and I had been in the
okiya
above Mie-san’s teahouse for over a week before either of us woke up properly. Mie-san said that we were both nearly unconscious with fever by the time she managed to get us upstairs that first night. She said that I had probably caught the fever while wandering the streets and given it to Akira-sama in the cell. Akira-sama said that she had been in the cell longer than I had and had probably caught prison fever and given it to me while I was trying to help her. Either way, it had nearly killed us both.

What followed the illness was a strange, not entirely comfortable time, despite the fact that I was offered more physical comfort than I had known in a long while. Mie-san looked after us very well. She had a doctor in to examine us every day. She arranged for the young women living in the house to visit us, to play music for us and sing, and talk and play games if we wished. Mie-san’s second in command, Yoshi-san, arranged all our material needs from clothing to food with a smile, and begged us to tell her if we ever needed anything. It was almost like I’d gone back in time and was Lady Suzume of Terayama House again and wanted for nothing.

I am not dishonest enough to pretend I did not enjoy being truly clean and sleeping on a fresh, thick futon. I enjoyed having comfortable clothes, even if they were borrowed. I enjoyed having all the food I could eat, and not constantly having to hurry about menial tasks. I especially enjoyed not worrying about starving to death, or where I would sleep when it got dark.

The problem was that all these privileges were lent to me by the goodwill of Akira-sama’s friends, not for my sake but for hers. I knew it, and so did they. Akira-sama was the only one who did not seem to notice. I thought she was so used to being loved and wanted wherever she went that the idea of being a hanger-on and barely tolerated would simply never occur to her. Once again I was an outsider, lurking on the edges of a world which had no real place for me. The women who lived in the
okiya
were
gijo,
a kind of female entertainer, and their world seemed very strange to me indeed.

Because we were both aching and exhausted and forbidden to shift about and use up any energy during the day, we convalescents often sat up very late into the night, drinking tea and talking. It was during these nighttime conversations that Akira-sama explained to me a little about
gijo.
The
gijo
had only recently come into fashion in the city but had found favor with many because they practiced shorter, less formal versions of many of the traditional
oiran
arts, like dancing, singing, and playing musical instruments. They were highly skilled and the more popular ones were highly paid, but the
gijo
did not leave their
okiya
in grand processions to visit their patrons as the
oiran
did. Instead they entertained men in the teahouse attached to the
okiya,
and the tea ritual was part of the services they offered. Unlike
oiran,
who could take their pick of lords, and would not even see men of low rank, anyone with money was welcome to visit the
gijo
in the teahouse. However, like the
oiran,
the
gijo
often had
danna,
particular patrons with whom they had a special relationship.

These faithful patrons, most of them married, came to the teahouse not just to drink tea, watch fan dances, and be soothed, but also to make love with “their”
gijo
. No
gijo
was obligated to offer herself to a man in such a way if she did not want to, but many of them did. Some had several such special men, others only one.

“I do not really understand it,” I said slowly, leaning against the window frame and staring out into the busy nighttime street below. Laughter and music were coming up through the floor and from the houses all around, but after what Akira-sama had said, it seemed to me that all of it had a sad, desperate air. “If — if I did not have to lie with these men, I do not think I
could.
”

Akira-sama, who, still weaker than me, was reclining on heaps of pillows rather than sitting up, gave a husky little laugh. “
Gijo
are living, breathing women with beating hearts — and yet they may not take lovers, may not marry or fall in love. The
danna
visit them often, talk to them, bring them gifts . . . they grow fond of them. When they are alone together, holding each other, for a little while
gijo
and
danna
cease to be, and they are only man and woman. For a little while they can both pretend. Pretend to be in love.”

She turned her head away. “You see, that is why it is so easy to fool people with our illusions, Yue. In this world, illusions are usually much kinder than the truth.”

It was clear that she thought I was being either judgmental or dense. I did not have the words to explain what I really meant. How could a
gijo,
knowing that her
danna
would leave her in a few hours and return home to his wife, simply pretend? Wouldn’t such an illusion, when it was shattered, cause more pain than the simple, bleak truth ever could?

Those stolen, golden minutes with Otieno . . . how they hurt me now, remembering . . . what if I had known all the time that by my own actions I would destroy that fragile relationship and be forced to leave him? What if I had known that every second was precious, and limited? Would I have had the courage to cherish my moments with him, or would I have cringed from the coming pain, and run all the sooner? I shifted uneasily, and winced as my ribs twinged.

The next day, Yoshi-san came to sit and talk with Akira-sama, and to bring her a gift of a polished metal mirror — in case Akira-sama wished to brush and arrange her own hair. Later I gave in to the temptation to look into that mirror, and wished that I had not.

It was a stranger who looked back at me: a gaunt, hard-faced woman with grayish skin and a look in her eyes that spoke of both fear and dissatisfaction. I wondered how anyone could ever have thought me beautiful. The knowledge that I could shadow-weave color into my cheeks and sparkle into my eyes only made it worse.

“You are very unhappy, aren’t you?”

I jumped at Akira-sama’s voice. I put the mirror away and looked up to see her staring at me gravely.

“I do not know,” I said. It was true. I did not know what I felt.

My sense of being lost and out of place was not helped by the discovery, a few days later, of who my savior really was. Everyone who had visited us up until then had called her Akira-sama, as I did. Then a very young
maiko
— a trainee
gijo
— came to bring us our lunch one day and called her Kano-sama.

It took me several moments to make the connection in my mind. By then I had a mouthful of
gy
za
— a pan-fried dumpling filled with pork and vegetables — and nearly choked on it.

“Kano Akira?” I sputtered. “You are —?”

Akira-sama, who was serenely sipping a broth of fish stewed in sweet soy sauce, smiled. “We never did properly introduce ourselves, did we?”

I gaped at her. Aimi’s favorite story, the one that she had whispered about in bed at night before falling asleep. Kano Akira-sama was known to little girls all over Tsuki no Hikari no Kuni. Ten years ago, when I was a mere baby, the old Moon Prince had held the Kage no Iwai — the Shadow Ball — to meet all the most lovely and eligible women in the country, and he had chosen Kano Akira to be the Shadow Bride, his most favored companion.

It had been a scandal.

Though technically the Shadow Bride was nothing more than the most prominent of the prince’s lovers, her social status was second only to the Moon Princess, the prince’s legal wife. It had even been known for a child of the Shadow Bride to become heir to the crown if the Moon Princess was barren. That was why it was an unwritten law that the prince should chose a wealthy, well-bred young woman. And also the reason that the Shadow Bride, once chosen, could never marry: the mother of a potential heir could have no other man in her life. Nor could the prince ever marry her himself, even if he chose her before he took a wife.

Kano Akira had not been the wealthy, well-bred daughter of a lord. She had been a penniless entertainer of obscure birth, who was only at the ball to dance for the guests. What was worse, instead of retiring this scandalous Shadow Bride at the end of a year and then holding more Kage no Iwai to form new political alliances, as was traditional, Tsuki no Ouji-sama had refused to give Kano-sama up. He had never held another Shadow Ball, and Kano-sama had stayed with the prince for the rest of his life, reigning as the Shadow Bride until he died in an accident four years ago.

It was then that the beautiful Shadow Bride had disappeared. Rumor hinted that the Moon Princess, enraged at the favor shown to a mere commoner, had done away with her rival by some secret means.