The Disfavored Hero (12 page)

Reflections such as these were call
kikenshiso
, doubts or dangerous thoughts. Yabushi was deeply affected, but somehow not appalled.

“Now,” said Tomoe, looking upon him once more, “how do
you
come to this estate?”

“It is this way,” he began, trying to be as dramatic as Tomoe had been, and looking very sad indeed. “Although mine is a proud family with a good heritage, we are very poor. It happened that there were many daughters. Thus one was sold to a house in Ikiki so that my dojo instructor could be paid for my training and my board. That was two years ago. I have striven everyday to learn everything extremely well, and fast. I have been a student without peer, for I do not want my sister's sacrifice to be without purpose.

“I remember that I loved her very much; and it is sorrowful to me that there is not much more than fondness I recall. I have noticed that the memory of the young is like the memory of the old, that is, I am afraid I do not remember my sister anymore, but the love I had for her remains like a lost butterfly searching for a flower which had been snipped or torn away. Although I am told there is no reason, I feel shame for the plight of my forgotten yet still loved sister. So I have taken my leave of the dojo and go now to redeem her from the house of servitude.”

“And your dojo master was pleased to let you go?”

It took Little Bushi a few moments to gather the courage to reply. “It is only about now that he will have found out.”

“Then … we are both hunted samurai.”

He was undramatically ashamed. “That is so.”

“But for a noble cause!” said Tomoe, cheering him up. “Except … how can you redeem your sister? What do you have to give?”

Little Bushi stopped walking. Tomoe took two steps more, then turned and looked at him. The small samurai reached inside his kimono and withdrew a scarf, its four ends tied around a bundle. He shook the scarf, and it rattled. “Two hundred ryo,” he said.

This took Tomoe by surprise, and she drew herself up to reveal her amazement. “And how has the son of the poor Rooster clan come by this bundle of wealth?” She barely disguised her questionable feelings and suspicions.

“By honest means,” he said indignantly, and drew himself up as she. He thrust the scarf of gold into its hiding place next to his heart, and marched past her. She joined him again, and he explained, “It was sent to me when my grandmother died earlier this month. She had secretly saved and hoarded through many years of labor. It was her last wish that these funds become my endowment, meant to keep me a landed lord in Ogmya village, once I returned from school. I have prayed to my grandmother who is now my most venerated ancestor, for guidance and forgiveness. I believe she understands and endorses what I must do. I will live as ronin instead of lord, but my sister will be free.”

They walked together in silence a long while. Once they stopped so that both might pee, Yabushi against a tree, Tomoe squatting in a field. Later, they stopped to eat. Tomoe shared some bean curd which had been packed in a bamboo tube and kept in a small pouch with all her possessions. Yabushi shared his dried plums.

The road took them up a hill, where terraced paddies gave way to the woods. Near a place where the road split in two—the town of Ikiki to the left, some other town on the road that turned sharply right—Tomoe said, “Little Bushi, I think we should go in there.” She pointed to the hollow of a living tree.

“Why so?” he asked. “There is yet a little light of day, and I will walk even in darkness to shorten my journey.”

“But there are two who follow us, remaining always out of sight.”

He whirled around, saw nothing. “You are certain?”

“They may be ninja tracking me, though I have heard them too often and think they must be less skilled shadows. Perhaps your dojo instructor missed you sooner than you thought.”

They crouched in the tree's hollow, hidden by shade and gathering dusk. In a while, two rough men walked along the road and into view. Tomoe whispered to Yabushi, “You know them?”

He put his mouth to her ear and answered, “My instructor sends them after his worst students. He must be very disappointed in me to send such insults.”

The insults stopped to rest, more because they did not wish to catch up with the child and his friend who they believed were still ahead.

“I overheard our master say,” began one of the ruffians, “that the brat has a pouch of inherited gold. What do you think of that, Kobaro?”

The other man picked his dirty teeth with the point of his knife, and said, “I think we can say to our master, ‘Poor Yabushi!, we found only this pricked corpse! A bandit must have killed him.'”

Yabushi almost ran out of the hollow tree in anger, his knife-sword drawn, but Tomoe caught his collar and made a sound for silence.

“What was that?”

The two were on guard now, and looked into the woods. They found a sign of passage, and realized their quarry had wandered off the road.

“Be careful, Kobaro! We do not know who that samurai is, who walks beside the brat.”

Tomoe stepped out of the tree, like a spirit. Her sword carved down the first ruffian, while the other's eyes went large like eggs and he turned to run. Yabushi barred his path, but the ruffian was not impressed by such a tiny bundle of fierceness. He ran right on past Yabushi and had made it all the way to the road before realizing the child had cut him. The ruffian put his hand against his bloody side, then looked back at the big and little samurai standing side by side in the woods, seeming supernatural in the gloom of early night. He collapsed and never moved.

Tomoe walked to the dead ruffian and sat upon his butt. From within her sleeve she withdrew a piece of rice paper, a brush, and an inkstone. With these she began to write small characters.

“What do you do?” asked Little Bushi.

“It says, ‘Two bad men tried to kill Yabushi who is on an important mission. Yabushi will pray for their souls in his dojo when his mission is done.' There!” She stuck the note on the collar of the ruffian. “If your master is a good man—and I think he is despite who he employs, for he has trained you well—he will send no one for you anymore. He will know you will return.”

Yabushi dropped to one knee, palm on hilt of sword and head bowed low. He said, “I am in your debt.”

“We are bound by friendship, Little Bushi. No more. And now, I must take this other road, away from Ikiki. For you are no longer hunted, and I am—so my presence endangers you. Take care, my bold friend, and keep secret the gold.”

Before he could protest, Tomoe Gozen had vanished around the corner where the second road forked. Crickets sang alongside the road. A solitary nightingale charmed the leaves still. Little Bushi stood unmoving.

Nearly a year on the road alone, Tomoe had grown accustomed to her singularity, and rarely mourned friendships. But the day spent with Yabushi reminded her of other times, better times, when friends were not so rare. When she left him—for the sake of his safety, not because she so preferred independence—depression closed upon her like a cold glove, more tangible than the night. Her feet felt as though they were dragging. Her shoulders weighed too much. Her head hung like a lantern on a pole.

A ways down the road, she came upon a shrine, and went inside to pray for Yabushi's protection, then slept out the night. The next morning she felt a little better, but not greatly so.

For three days she lingered at the shrine. It had been neglected, so she worked its weedy gardens between the torii gate and the small central temple, making the place more fit, pretending herself a farmer as she served the locality's Shinto deity. She was safe for this while, for even ninja would not defile a shrine with blood. But that was not what held her. For the first time in months of travel, it seemed to her that there was nothing on the road ahead which would be different from the road behind or from the place she stood. There was no reason to go on.

Yet there
was
a reason to go on, though not a spiritual reason. She had only been able to find a little to eat in the way of vegetable matter, and one tough hare which she prepared and ate away from the holiness of the shrine. Clearly she would become gaunt upon the spare diet. For the sake of her stomach, she left the shrine after the third day.

Before coming to a village, she stood outside two separate estates along the way. Both had once been rich, but no more. At each, she was told the land-owners had no need of retainers, which meant they could afford none, or else they recognized her as the survivor of Shigeno Valley and did not want her near. But they gave her small coins anyway and wished her fortune elsewhere.

When her year began, she had been too proud to accept coins without toil. But the year taught her the fine distinction between pride and stupidity.

When the village came into view, she stood a long while on the hillside trying to feel less gloomy. The dull quaintness of the farms around the village did not improve her mood. The village itself was more colorful than the norm, made transiently gaudy because there was a festival going on.

Lest someone recognize the crest sewn on her back, she removed her jacket and wore it inside out. She arrived amidst merriment insulting to her own dark mood. People looked at her, and thought she must be famous, or she would not be wearing her shirt as a sign of anonymity. They did not guess she stayed incognito because she was “an unfavored hero.” People avoided her path, not so much from any feeling of fright, but because her dampened spirits might interfere with their holiday.

Everywhere there were colorful banners and tents and children running about screaming in groups with flags and paper toys. There were booths selling everything from swords to festival cakes. Games were being played: foot-races, archery, jujitsu. There were fortune tellers and gamblers respectively in small and large tents. The regular shops along the street had their fronts wide open, and the keepers with huge smiles leaned out windows.

There was all variety of music, and dance, and acrobats—and of special merit, a Noh play performed free by four masked actors on a platform. The play was a gift from some unnamed Lord, to the village people and all who visited. The story was “The First Buddhist Native Of Naipon And The Shinto Gods Who Punished Him.” The theme was eerie and uncommon, less dull than Tomoe had found most such dramas, but more frightening too, so she did not watch much of it.

Over everything, there was a lot of noise.

“What holiday is this?” asked Tomoe of a passerby, for she was unfamiliar with the local patrons and deities.

The man stopped and bowed several times, saying, “The festival of Great Lord Walks.” He scurried off before Tomoe could ask who this “great-lord-walks” might be or what it might mean.

Shinto and Buddhist priests nodded cordially to one another. Lords smiled at peasants. Children were allowed to ride on horses with samurai. The palms of beggars received liberal sprinkle, and teahouse girls were kind to poor farmers. There was a large pretense of prosperity, if not prosperity itself; and joy was all about.

Tomoe might have become infected with all this cheer, and ceased to be melancholy, except that the reminders of her plight were close. She caught a glimpse of a shadow moving along the roofs of shops and houses. Ninja were near.

She spotted another. It was as if they wanted her to see them, as if out of some respect they wished her to be aware that a showdown was pending. Certainly she had earned their respect, killing ninja before. Yet, they may have had other motives. They would know, by reports or fates of others, that she could hear shuriken spinning through air, that she could bat them from flight with the flat of her sword. But here, upon a crowded street, she dared not to do this, for children might take the deflected stars of steel. And if the points were poisoned, as surely they were, even a scratch would kill an innocent peasant.

She pretended not to notice them, although they would know she had. If two had shown themselves, then there must be four. She began to smile, not for any genuine pleasure, but to be misleading, and because she was feeling sly. The ninja dealt in tricks, and she would have to trick them better. Thus she behaved as though the festival were pleasing, and stopped at a booth which sold poor weapons.

“How much for this spear?” she asked, and the seller was alarmed. Samurai never looked at his poorly crafted stuff. He named a low price, which he had not done for any other, and still it took all the coins she had. She bowed as though grateful, and the seller was ingratiating, and later made great truck from the fact that “even samurai” bought his wares.

She meandered to a place where games were being played. People were paying to shoot arrows at targets in hopes of a prize. They were very bad. Tomoe said to the woman renting arrows, “I am without funds today, and in any event do not wish to compete for any prizes. But I would be pleased to increase your business with a demonstration.”

The woman happily lent the samurai a bow and three arrows, and as a favor held Tomoe's recently acquired spear.

Hardly taking time to aim, Tomoe made a bull's eye. Several people gathered immediately, to watch her line up the second arrow very carefully. They expected her to split the first, a rare feat. But she surprised them by turning swiftly to the left and in one quick motion shot in a seemingly random direction.

A ninja cried out, lurched from the roof of a nearby building.

Half the gathered crowd fell at once upon their faces. The other half gazed about without comprehending what was going on. Tomoe wheeled around and let the third arrow fly, but the ninja jumped up, somersaulted in mid-air and landed on his feet on the next building. In his hand, he held the arrow. All who saw were impressed (including Tomoe), though even peasants did not like ninja.

A mounted samurai sat high upon his horse, understanding ninja well enough to know
he
was in no danger. His sword was sheathed in a rare, old fashion: across his back. And sheathed it remained. He did not become involved, but only watched.