Spirit's Princess (23 page)

I’d been looking forward to being a part of all that. I hadn’t told anyone—not even Yama—but there was a boy in our village who’d caught my eye. His name was Ganju, and he was one of Masa’s age-mates. He was very good-looking and had a ready laugh, but he’d been just another of my clanfolk until the day Yama and I went to help his mother with a difficult birth. Things took a bad turn, and the shaman chased everyone out of the house, so he and I passed the time in conversation. Afterward, when the baby was safely delivered and I was packing Yama’s gear, Ganju knelt beside me and said, “I’ll look for you at the wine making.” I blushed so deeply that my cheeks burned all the way back to Yama’s house.

But on the morning of the festival, Mama dropped a boulder on top of my hopes.

“I’m sorry, Himiko, but you can’t help with the wine making. In fact, you mustn’t go anywhere near the rice or the water jars.”

“What? Why not?” I was stunned by this news, but not half as stunned as when she explained the reason for her decree. No matter how attentively I listened, I could
not
believe what I was hearing.
“Unclean?”
I echoed. “But I’m doing everything you taught me to make sure I
keep
clean!”

She shook her head and explained again that making rice wine was a delicate matter. It could go wrong in any number of ways, leaving our village with nothing to show for our labors but a lot of wasted rice. Over the years, our people had made a series of rules that covered every step of the process, both what should be done (“If you want the wine to be sweeter, make it only from rice that’s been chewed by unmarried girls”) and what must
never
be done.

Apparently, the same life change that had made Mama so happy was now going to keep me as far from the wine-making festival as possible.

“Maybe it would be best if you stayed in the house, Himiko,” Mama said.

Where else would I go? I sighed, but I didn’t object any further. I could have chosen to shout my defiance. Instead, I chose to listen, and what I heard behind Mama’s gentle suggestion that I stay away from the festival was something more than her blind obedience to a stupid rule. I listened with my heart, and heard her unspoken, fearful plea:
Please don’t make a fuss, Himiko! Everyone in the village knows that you’ve entered womanhood and that you’re still marked by that change. I don’t like this any more than you do, but if you go against our traditions, you’ll ruin the festival for everyone. I don’t think that even Lady Yama herself would take your side in this. And you know how your father will react!

I did, and I wanted to spare Mama another of his rages even more than I wanted to go to the festival and see Ganju.

“I’ll stay inside, Mama,” I said with a smile.

She embraced me. “You’re a good daughter. The gods bless you.”

After she left, I turned my hand to filling the time until the wine making was over. With three other women under our roof, there wasn’t a lot of housework left undone. I decided to take all of the family’s bedrolls out onto the platform and give them a good airing, but just as I was unfurling the last one, I heard footsteps on the ladder. The next thing I knew, Aki’s face popped into sight.

Our eyes met, and I must have looked as surprised as he was. Unless you were forbidden to attend, as I was,
everyone
was supposed to help with the wine making. This was especially true for younger villagers who had good, strong teeth and plenty of endurance for chewing raw rice into paste. I was about to ask him why he’d come home, instead of participating in the festivities, when I remembered that he wouldn’t welcome anything that came from me, even a simple question. As if to prove it, he scowled, made a small sound of irritation, and began to climb back down.

I have walked with the spirits. I know that this world holds the threads of many different kinds of magic. In the heartbeat that it took for Aki to take a single backward
step on the ladder, I learned that one of those threads governs time.

Listen, Himiko
.

Was it the voice of a spirit or the echo of Yama’s teachings that filled my mind with those words? Perhaps it was only me. The source didn’t matter. The important thing was, I listened.

I listened, and time stretched itself out like a spider’s silken thread, so fragile-looking yet so strong. Though an unwholesome silence lay heavily over my brother and me, I wasn’t listening for his words or mine. I used the lessons that I’d learned in my times of solitary forest contemplation and listened to the ghosts of the people Aki and I had been on the day that everything turned to bitterness.

I listened to the past, and I gasped as all of our long-lost words surged up around me in a storm of shining images. I heard, but I also
saw
, and saw so clearly, so keenly that it was like stepping out of the depths of a cavern to meet the dazzling face of the sun goddess.

I realized what had happened on that day, what had
really
happened to make my brother shut me out of his life. I understood why simply saying I was sorry wouldn’t be enough, and I also knew what I would have to say to restore the way things ought to be between us.

Once my path was clear, time began to race away at its old pace once more. Aki was climbing down the ladder quickly. When his feet touched the ground, he’d dash off as fast as he could. I wouldn’t be able to catch him, and what I had to say couldn’t wait.

“Aki! Don’t go!” I leaped to stop him, running so heedlessly
that my bad leg betrayed me. I let out a cry of pain as it folded under me, sending me tumbling. The edge of the porch rushed to meet me, and I shrieked as I pitched over it headfirst, into emptiness.

“Himiko, no!”

Strong hands grabbed the back of my tunic. I gagged as the neckline cut into my throat and made choking noises as I was hastily pulled back to the comparative safety of the ladder. Dark blue stars whirled before my eyes. Too many seasons of sadness fell away at the sound of Aki’s voice asking tenderly, “Little Sister, are you all right?”

I couldn’t answer right away. He shifted awkwardly so that my feet could touch the steps of the ladder beneath him and watched as I slowly made my way to the ground. He followed, but as soon as we stood facing one another, the horrible coldness came flooding back.

“Still a fool,” he snapped, and turned on his heel to stride away.

“You owe me nothing!”
I shouted. My voice rang out so loudly that it blotted away the sounds of the wine-making festival. Aki stopped and looked back over one shoulder, his face contorted with surprise.

“What did you say?”

I stood my ground. I wouldn’t be the one to close the gap between us. “I said, you owe me nothing. There’s no debt for you to pay, and there never was.” I dropped to my knees. “I was wrong, Aki. I’m sorry.”

He looked down at me as if seeing a worm. “You said that before, many seasons ago. Why again? Why now?”

“Because now ‘I’m sorry’ means what it
should
mean to
me, to you!” I spoke quickly, casting my words like tethering cords to keep him from walking away. “Because now I know
why
I should apologize for what I did. That night, when you and Father argued so bitterly and he spoke of banishing you, all the things I said to him came freely. I didn’t want anything in exchange except peace in our home. When I spoke to you about returning to the Shika and you refused, I was—I
was
a fool. You never owed me anything, Aki, but I behaved as if you did, to force you to do things my way. No wonder you looked at me and saw a shameless schemer, a selfish manipulator, a deceitful girl who never did anything for others unless she’d get something in return. I don’t blame you for shutting someone like that out of your life.”

I placed my hands on the ground. “I’m sorry, Big Brother. I wish there were a way for me to prove that
this
apology is more than words. This comes from my heart.” I bowed to press my forehead to the earth. “Forgive me.”

I barely felt the touch of soil and pebbles on my brow before I was whisked from hands and knees into Aki’s arms. Laughing and crying at the same time, he twirled us around. “Little Sister! Oh, my dearest Little Sister, forgive me too!” he cried. “Let the gods punish me for my stubbornness and stupidity! Why did I wait for you to speak? You were a child; why did I act like one?” Sighing, he set me down. “I know the real fool here.”

The rest of our clan was too deeply immersed in the various distractions of the wine making to notice when Aki and I slipped out of the village gates. We strolled down to the banks of the stream that fed the irrigation canals, and stood in the shadow of a lone willow whose leafless branches
trailed in the water. We spoke of many things that day, serious and silly. I took him into my confidence, telling him all about how Yama had made me her apprentice, and how happy I was to be learning the way of the spirits. It felt so good to be able to share my greatest joy with someone special to me! He wanted to give me his promise to keep this secret safe from Father, but I said, “If he suspects anything, I don’t want you oath-bound to lie to him.”

“Then I promise nothing,” Aki replied solemnly. “But keeping silent about it isn’t the same as lying.”

He wasn’t so solemn when I made the mistake of telling him about Ganju, teasing me gently but relentlessly until I scooped a handful of water-chilled pebbles from the stream and dropped them down the back of his neck. By the time the sun began to set and the first bats flitted through the dimming sky, I had my brother back again.

“You know, Aki, I should thank you,” I said as we returned to the village.

“Thank me for what?”

“If you’d given in to me that night, I wouldn’t be studying with Lady Yama now.” I sighed. “Isn’t it strange? I regret that it took so long for us to mend our quarrel, but not the quarrel itself. It led me to my proper place in the world and to the work I was meant to do.”

“I regret much more than that, Little Sister,” Aki said. He stopped and looked away from me. “I went back.”

“What?”

“I went back,” he repeated. “I returned to the Shika lands. More than a year had passed, and it was autumn. I was hunting in the mountains and suddenly found myself
at the edge of the trees, looking down at Hoshi’s village. I told myself it was an accident and blamed the prey I’d been tracking, but if so, it was an accident I repeated many times since then.”

“Is that—is that all?” I asked. “You never went closer? You never tried to see Hoshi even once in all the seasons since then?”

He kept his face averted, but I glimpsed a flush of red on his cheek. “I didn’t want to risk it. I was afraid that if I saw her and spoke to her again, I’d never be able to leave her. So I haunted those woods the way her face haunted my thoughts and dreams. Sometimes the gods favored me: I caught sight of her walking through the village or going out to work in the fields. Mostly, it was enough for me to know that she was
there
.”

My throat tightened. An angry voice within me wanted to shout,
You went back to the Shika village after all! You cast me aside when I asked you to bring me there, but you went back! May the gods punish—!

No
. A second voice, calmer than the first, banished it before it could utter any curse against my brother.
Himiko
, listen.
Listen to the pain in Aki’s every word. He knows he did wrong. He knows he acted unjustly toward you. He suffers for it. He doesn’t need you to reproach him; he has already condemned himself
.

I laid my hands on Aki’s back. “My poor brother, it must have been terrible for you.”

There were tears streaking his face when he looked at me. “Every time I went back, I wondered what I’d discover. Would my next sight of her be in company with another man? Would she be carrying his child? Would she be holding
a baby that could have been ours if Father wasn’t such a—” He bit his lower lip. “No. I can’t blame Father for everything. I’m responsible for the life I’ve lived, and I’ve lived it as a coward. I deserve to die alone.”

I hugged his neck the way I’d done when I was small. “Never, Aki,” I said. “While I live, you’ll never be alone.”

Autumn ended and winter was endured. If anyone in our house noticed that Aki and I were friends again, nothing was said about it. Our former closeness was back, though somewhat changed. No matter how carefully he hid the sorrows of his heart from the rest of the family, I always saw the shadow of yearning in his eyes and shared his pain. As for Aki, though he still teased and joked with me, he no longer spoke to me as if I were just a carefree, thoughtless child.

I continued my once-every-three-days lessons with Yama and began the most dangerous part of my studies, the summoning of the dead. More and more frequently, our footprints on the frost made a trail back and forth to our clan’s burial place, where the shaman taught me the songs that would draw ghosts from their wanderings. I knelt beside her on the frozen ground, a thick cape pulled tight
around my shivering body, and did my best to keep my teeth from chattering as I repeated Yama’s chant.