Spirit's Princess (16 page)

“Because of
you
.” Father’s voice dropped, sounding like the rasp of a snake’s scales passing over stone. “She never would have strayed if not for you. From the time she was small, you bragged to her about your exploits as a hunter and reveled in the way she idolized you. We all saw how she tagged after you, as though she weren’t your little sister but your companion! I never said a word about it, because I held on to the false hope that you’d grow up and act like a man, not a girl child’s playmate. You filled her days with fine-sounding stories of adventures in the woods and her head with dreams of joining you someday.
You’re
the reason she nearly died from that fall, years ago. Would the thought of climbing the sacred pine ever have crossed her mind if she weren’t seeking your praise and attention?”

“Father, it wasn’t Aki’s—” I began.

“Hush, let your father talk, child,” Emi said urgently, taking my hand and pulling me closer to the huddled women.

“You’re also the reason she could have died, lost in the forest,” Father went on grimly. “She never would have gone there except for your influence.”

“This is mindless talk,” Aki muttered. “Do you even hear yourself? I won’t put up with being accused of hurting Himiko.” He started to rise, but Mama shook herself free of her co-wives, dug her fingers into his arm, and dragged him back down.

“He doesn’t mean it,” she whispered desperately. “He’s tired; he’s been so worried about her, he has to blame someone. You know he’s a good man. He can’t help it if he believes that being gentle means being weak. That’s her cursed
doing—Lady Tsuki’s. Wait, I beg you. He’ll rid himself of this poison and apologize to you before another sun rises.”

“How can I sit here while he says such things about me?” Aki protested. “Mother, how can you expect me to bear it?”

“It’s not his fault that I went off and got lost, Father!” I cried. The good food I’d eaten had become a hard, burning lump in my belly. My first night home was turning into a nightmare. “He had nothing to do with it; it was all my idea.”

Father’s rage softened to amusement. “Pff! Ridiculous. You’re my sensible girl, my good daughter. You’d never come up with the notion of leaving the security of our home and safety of our village for no reason.”

“I had a reason,” I maintained. “I wanted to go see the cherry trees. Aki was supposed to take me, but he had to help drive off the wolves. I didn’t want to wait for him to return because I was afraid the blossoms would be gone by then.”

“You’re only saying such things to defend him.”

“I’m saying them because they’re true. And climbing the sacred pine was all my idea too! I thought that if I did it, it would show Aki I was as brave and strong as Masa and Shoichi so that he’d teach me to be a hunter as well.”

“Is that so?” Father stared at me with an unreadable expression, then turned to Aki. “So it wasn’t enough for you to have the child worship you; you had to have her prove how deeply she adored you by making herself over in your image. And now that you’ve achieved that, you turn your
back on her and all of us, bleating after a girl whose people wouldn’t think twice about destroying us if war came.”

“Father, that’s not how it is at all!” I cried, but he was past listening and acted as though I were no longer there.
He must have been holding all of this inside him since we left the Shika village
, I thought.
Maybe longer than that
. I would have sacrificed our peaceful journey home a thousand times if that would have spared me from hearing the hurtful, twisted things he was saying now.

“May the gods witness the truth, Aki; you’ve made it clear that you don’t value the mother who gave birth to you, the family that raised you, the clan that fed you. You’d burn this house to the ground in a heartbeat if that simpering deer girl said so. You are my son, my firstborn, the next chieftain of the Matsu, but all that means nothing to you, next to her. Well, let her have you! She’ll get a bad bargain if she expects love from someone who’s never known the meaning of it. Go to her! But if you do, you go from
us
forever.”

I gaped at what I was hearing. When had my home become such a tangle of wild claims and assumptions? How could our father find it in him to attack so ferociously, so
unjustly
, the son I knew he loved so much? I thought about what Mama had said: this wasn’t the first time I’d heard Lady Tsuki’s name. What awful powers had she possessed over my father? I looked at Aki, Mama’s arms laced tightly around his neck, holding him so closely that he’d have to knock her down to move. There was no need for that: my oldest brother was too stunned to stir. Mama’s haggard face
streamed with tears. Yukari and Emi had moved to offer comfort to my younger brothers. The two boys crept into their arms as if they weren’t nearly grown men but children cowering from a thunderstorm.

I looked at what I’d come home to, and the warm memory of Kaya’s family taunted me with everything that mine was not. A strange realization touched my mind:
This is broken
. Another followed:
I need to fix it. I
have
to fix it! If I don’t, no one will, and then
—I didn’t have the courage to follow where that thought led.

But how?

I stood up. “
Listen
to me!” I shouted. “I’m the one you’re angry at, Father, not Aki.”

“Are you telling me I don’t know my own mind,
child
?” he asked in a warning tone. It didn’t stop me; I had too much at stake to heed it.

“You’re angry because I went off and got lost. Why can’t you just say so? Why do you have to do things like walk in near silence for two days, and stop Mama from giving me special helpings at dinner, and turn Aki’s story about Masa and Shoichi’s exploits on the wolf hunt into … into”—I threw up my hands—“into a war
you
started? I’m sorry for what I did! I’m sorry that I was the reason you had to deal with outlan—with people you don’t like or trust.”

“ ‘Deal’ with them?” Father echoed, still in that soft voice that was so much more chilling than his shout. “Better to say that I’m now trapped in debt to them. They saved my only daughter’s life. How can I forget that?”

Slowly I sank to my knees before him and leaned forward,
stretching out my arms until my forehead touched the floorboards. “If my life is the debt, let me pay it. Send me back to the Shika as a slave.”

I felt strong hands grasp my wrists and yank me to my feet. Father’s eyes blazed into mine. “Have you lost your mind, Himiko? How can you make such an outrageous offer?”

I fought the urge to squeak out that I hadn’t meant a word of it, that it was all a joke, that I was sorry yet again, that I’d be good, and quiet, and never stand up to him anymore. It would have been so easy to do! All I wanted was peace in my family. I longed for the time after my accident when Father had been all smiles and kindness. I knew I could regain that if I went back to being the girl I’d been then.

That girl wasn’t me. I took a steadying breath, silently bid her farewell, and said, “I mean it, Father. All this is my fault, not Aki’s. Send me back to the Shika as their slave, to cancel the debt that
I
owe them for saving me.”

“This is nonsense,” Father snapped. “You’re an infant. What do you know of slaves?”

“I know that people become slaves when there’s war between the clans,” I replied. “The losers become the captives of the winners and have to work for them forever.”

“Exactly! And you’d still make yourself the Shikas’ slave willingly, when there’s been no war between us?”

“Does that mean war will
never
come?” I said calmly. “When it does, I’ll end up as their slave anyway, so why should I wait for it to happen?”

“Even if there were a war between our clans, don’t you think I could defend my people and protect my family?” Father’s indignation was growing by the moment, the way a ball of mud gathers size rolling down a mucky hillside.

“And don’t you think I would fight to the death before I’d let anyone lay one hand on you, Little Sister?” Aki’s voice broke in.
“Anyone.”

I saw the look that passed between my father and my oldest brother, and it lifted my heart. Father was a man waking from tainted dreams, and Aki was waiting to welcome him back into the healing light of reality.

A last scrap of suspicion still held Father back. “What—what about the girl?”

“I love her,” Aki said simply. “I was with her for only a little while, yet what I feel for Hoshi is still—”

“Enough of that.” Father raised one hand to cut off Aki’s declaration, but his tone was now weary rather than enraged. “Such things are possible; I know it.” He looked at Emi, who blushed, while Mama’s face showed no emotion at all. “What I need to hear from you, my son, is what you intend to … to …” He seemed hesitant, even fearful of finishing that sentence.

Aki stood up. This time Mama did nothing to hold him back. Three strides took him to Father’s side. “I love Hoshi,” he said. “But I love you too and our family. I am faithful to our people. If a war comes, no matter which clan brings it, I will live and die fighting beside you for the Matsu. I swear by all the gods and by the life you gave me, I will do this and whatever else is necessary to prove what I tell you now.”

We all heard the dry sob tear its way out of Father’s
throat. We all saw the two men embrace, tears bathing their faces. “Then I forgive you, my son,” Father said.

Aki bowed his head. “Thank you.”

I had never loved and admired my oldest brother more than in that moment. He should have been the one who granted pardon, not the one who humbly, gratefully received it. He’d endured so many undeserved insults and such ill treatment from Father, yet been able to set aside all of his hurt and pride in order to restore peace.

If I were in his place, would I be able to find the determination to do that? To my shame, I knew that the answer was no.

We resumed our meal. Father fetched a small jar from one corner of our house and filled our cups with the milky brew of last year’s rice wine. The argument that had nearly ended in Aki’s banishment was itself banished. Even though I’d been allowed just a dribble of the wine, I went to sleep with my head spinning and woke up joyful to be home again.

My happiness lasted only a little longer than the effects of the rice wine. At first, I was the focus of everyone’s attention, both within my family and among the rest of the Matsu. People swarmed up to me whenever I went outside, wanting to hear about the deer people. Mostly they wanted to hear about all the ways they differed from us. Every difference I could recall—and there weren’t very many—was seized upon and repeated as evidence that the Matsu way of living was much better than the Shika path, and that was why the gods would always favor us more than them.

“Did you hear that?” one of our young men asked the
crowd that had surrounded me. “They have a woman who’s both their chief and shaman!” He spoke triumphantly, as though he’d discovered a great prize.

“And what’s the matter with that?” Lady Yama barked. “The part about her being a woman, the part about her being chief, the part about her being a shaman, or the whole bale of rice?”

“Er …” The young man quailed before our shaman’s fierce demand. “The part about her being both chief and shaman?” came his wavering reply.

Lady Yama snorted. “Does no one teach these chicks anything? Do they think the world began when they pecked their way out of the eggshell? You idiot!
We
were ruled by a woman who was both chief and shaman!”

“Oh.” The young man bit his lip. “Long, long ago?”

“She was our chief’s older sister. How ‘long, long ago’ do you think
that
was? No, don’t answer. There’s only so much stupidity I can listen to in one day.” She stamped off, beads clashing.

As day followed day and the chores of springtime occupied our clan, people lost interest in tales of my journey. I was perfectly content with this. I never asked for the attention, never wanted it, and was glad to be free of it. I didn’t mind testifying to the kindness of the deer people, and speaking about Kaya was the closest I could get to spending time with her again, but I was always afraid that I’d say
too
much. It wasn’t such a big leap to go from describing Kaya’s family to mentioning Hoshi, and from there it was a very small step indeed to saying,
She was so nice and so pretty that it’s no wonder Aki liked her as much as she liked him!

A very small step is all it takes to leave the edge of the riverbank and plunge into the rushing water. If I uttered one breath about my oldest brother’s attraction to Hoshi, word of it would flash through our village like lightning and set Father’s temper ablaze. If I even
hinted
that Aki had liked a Shika girl, evil tongues would become arrows flying straight into our home to slay our hard-won peace. I was happy to be liberated from worrying about such things.

That is, I
thought
I was happy.

Early summer turned the rice fields a brighter shade of green, and evening insect songs grew louder with every passing sunset. Ever since my return, Mama had stopped objecting to my going to work in the paddies with everyone else. She was probably afraid that if I didn’t have enough tasks to keep me busy (and where most of the village could keep an eye on me), I’d wander away again. I didn’t care
why
she’d changed her mind as long as I got to be as much a part of my own clan’s life as I’d been a part of the Shika’s.

That wasn’t the only change I witnessed that summer. At the beginning of the season, Aki took Masa and Shoichi with him on his hunting trips, but as the weather warmed, he began taking only Shoichi. Poor Masa! I knew how he must have felt, but he didn’t want sympathy, just an explanation. None came, and he never found the courage to ask Aki outright
why
he was being left behind. I think he feared that Aki would tell him, and it was something he didn’t want to hear.

One morning, Aki stayed home while Shoichi went into the mountains on his own. He came home with the body of a kamoshika slung over his shoulders. The deerlike
beast wasn’t very big under its bushy coat of brown and white fur, but from the fuss our parents made, you’d think he’d killed a creature whose meat could feed our whole village. Masa gazed longingly at the face of his brother’s first kill—the two small horns just above the death-glazed eyes, the ruff of white fur edging the jaw—and went into a sulk, refusing to eat anything but vegetables for as long as we enjoyed the kamoshika’s meager meat.