The Disfavored Hero (17 page)

The old woman was deaf when Tsuki spoke. Tomoe repeated the query, and there was a better but still poor response: “The boy is half Buddhist, pah! Has Naipon forgotten who made the land from jelly? A big egg without any shell, that was all that floated in the sea. It was made into Naipon the Eternal Isles. What did the Buddhas ever make, but silence beneath a tree?”

“He is half Shinto, too,” said Tomoe politely. “So you might help us halfway?”

The old woman sat her gnarly cane aside, which visibly eased Tsuki who relaxed her grip on her staff. They all squatted around the hibachi. “First eat,” said the old woman, committing herself to nothing.

It was a peasant tradition—and the old woman was clearly a peasant, more ragged and wretched than most—to tell stories while sitting about the hibachi to feast. Tomoe wondered who would tell a tale to whom (she did not feel up to it herself, after the tiresome day). She asked, “Who are you, Grandmother, to live here all alone? Are you priestess to this forgotten shrine? What kami do you serve?”

“To answer,” said the old woman, “I must tell a story.” And thus the old woman fulfilled the tradition with this tale:

“Izanami, mother of the eight hundred myriad of Shinto deities, loved the mortals of the Eternal Isles. She taught them the Way of the Gods that they might become wise and valorous, just and merciful, loving and artistic. When she had done this, the Moon darkened, the Sea slapped, the Storm rose fast, and they said, ‘Mother! You have made these mortals into gods!' And the eight hundred myriad deities grew wroth with their mother.

“The deities drew up a scroll of official condemnation and read it aloud, ‘Thou so Loveth the Children of the Eternal Isles, therefore, Descend, and abide with Them!' Izanami made this appeal, ‘Can my own offspring truly condemn their mother, who has never done them evil?' Then spake the eight hundred myriad of deities in a single voice: ‘You have dragged your mortal vesture in the mire of earth. Goddess of mortals, go down. Go among them to dwell in the abode of death, where your immortality will wither and you become as dust.'

“And thus Izanami came to Naipon to dwell a mortal.”

This seemed a scriptured sermon, which surprised Tomoe, for Shinto had no texts. Tsuki had listened with curiosity and dread, eating all the while from the bowl in her palm. Tomoe had eaten half her bowl of rice and gobo, tasting also something sweet which she did not recognize, but liked. She stopped chewing long enough to ask, “You serve Izanami, goddess of death and of love, in this decrepit shrine?”

“The story is not finished!” the old woman said sharply, then went on,

“Amaterasu also loved the mortals, and said to her mother, ‘Upon each night, you will age one hundred years, to fulfill the letter of condemnation drawn by your other children. But each morning, on my rising, I will melt away those years as I melt away the darkness. Therefore will you never die, though cloaked in mortal vestments.'

“Izanami was glad, and said, ‘Many are the children of my loins. Of all these multitudinous offspring, the fairest is you, O Shining Amaterasu.' And thereafter Izanami lived and wandered a never-dying mortal, young by day and elderly by night.”

Tsuki Izutsu had set her emptied bowl aside, and started to whisper some warning to Tomoe, for the nun had understood the tale better. But she closed her eyes instead, and did not speak. Tomoe had finished her meal as well, but their hostess had touched nothing, having told the tale without eating.

The story closed, the old woman raised herself with the aid of her gnarly cane, and looked down into the faces of Tomoe and Tsuki. The women did not rise as had the crone. Tomoe realized she was irresistibly drowsy; and though it was expected she would be tired, this seemed an unnaturally compelling sleepiness. Tomoe said, “Grandmother, we are on an important mission.” Her eyes were weighted with a thousand ryo. “How could you feed us sleep?” She was disheartened, because her trust had been misplaced.

Tsuki Izutsu sat crosslegged with eyes shut, breathing deeply, already asleep as in a trance. Tomoe Gozen struggled to her feet; an ordeal it was. She staggered and fell down, her rice bowl scooting across the floor, rattling unbroken. She lay with her head in Tsuki's lap.

Tomoe and Tsuki shared a dream.

They were nowhere near the shrine.

In the swamp was a rich lord's mansion. It was set on a hill surrounded by marshes, high above the water level. An ornate iron gate held miraculously against moisture, devoid of rust. Beyond the gate was a carefully laid path of flat stones and wooden slats, leading through pleasant gardens without a vagrant weed or untame bamboo to be seen. Beautiful lanterns atop posts cast their warm glow throughout the nighted gardens. From the leaves, moisture from the recent rain clung like glistening stars, and dropped like meteors. At the far end of the path stood the mansion. It had a carved, teakwood door and no hint of windows, but in some way it remained no less friendly.

Tomoe and Tsuki did not question why so beautiful a house should come to be built in the midst of a dismal land. They did not even think to wonder how they came here in the first place. It was a dream, after all, and no one could question a dream.

The two women stood in water to their knees, gazing as might beggars through the gate to a wealthy estate. The gate was invitingly ajar.

In the gardens they saw the five warriors who had declined the name of samurai. They were practicing their skills. Tomoe witnessed some of what she had missed by not attending their festival performance, and was impressed. As might be predicted, their two-edged swords were handled quite differently than any modern sword, since they could be swung forward and back with sharp edges in either direction. The style of these warriors was yet, in its way, as conventional as any other, but their footwork and motion was more reminiscent of a dance or a play than the deadly game it truly was.

When Tomoe waded out of the marsh and went through the gate, Tsuki followed, although she murmured discontent and suspicion about Shinto magic and a dream. Tomoe approached the exercising warriors, and shouted up the path, “You must come with us!”

The leader was taller and more slender than the others, almost regal, like a prince, but deathly white as she had never noticed previously. He looked at Tomoe and the nun, and asked, “Why must we?”

“Because,” Tomoe answered, “seven oni guard the home of the bakemono and you must help us kill them. You five and we two will make the number even.”

“How do you know where they are?” asked the leader of the non-samurai.

Tomoe was not sure how to answer. She said, “I do not know how I know it, but I do. This is only a dream. Anything is possible in a dream.”

“It is not a dream,” said the non-samurai leader. “Do not say it is. We dream, my men and I, the whole year long. We wake from dreaming for three nights and two days during the festival of Great Lord Walks. Do not say
this
is the dream, or we will be sadder than we are. When the sun rises, we must return to dreaming for another year—and perhaps someday the dreams will have no interlude, if the festivals should ever end.”

The other men had continued their dance-fight until they came to still postures to the right and left of their leader. They had silently sheathed their swords, and stood listening, nodding dour agreement as their leader spoke.

“You
must
help us,” Tomoe insisted.

Tsuki dared not add, though she might have dared to think, “Yes, you must. If there is some curse on you, which makes you sleep so long, a good deed may free you. Buddha is merciful.”

She had not said these words aloud, but the warriors stepped back from her in alarm, and the leader replied, as though she had spoken, “Buddha is weak! The Great Lord loved Buddha, and still does, yet we are imprisoned in the haunted marsh of angry Shinto gods and monsters!”

“Then fight the monsters of Shinto!” Tsuki cried angrily.

Tomoe was confused, and was tempted to say, “No, appease them! Make them love you again!” But she did not say this. Instead, she said, “Nonetheless, you must help us save the sister of a young hero, and the hero himself, who has been delivered to the bakemono by the clever kappa.”

The non-samurai leader looked away. He said, “Once, I offered friendship. You turned your back on me.”

In the doorway of the mansion an old man appeared. Old did not describe. He was ancient beyond reckoning. But he was strong for all his evident years, his spine straight and supple, his eyes bright and serene, every wrinkle tracing a visage of wisdom. Tsuki saw him first, and was overcome. She fell to her knees, and cried out, “Venerable! Great Lord!”

The non-samurai turned around and fell upon their knees before their master. Only Tomoe remained standing.

The venerable spoke more to Tsuki than to the others, “I am the one the villagers call Great Lord Walks.” His voice was very gentle. “But not the great lord you suspect, Tsuki Izutsu, favored of the North Land Buddha. Soon, you will obtain what I cannot; you will blend with the universe; you will achieve sublime oblivion. But before then, you have deeds to perform.”

He looked harshly at his warriors, though harshness from him was but a loving pat. “Haniwa-san,” he said, using the suffix of respect usually reserved for equals, despite the fact that Great Lord Walks was both the elder and the master. “Haniwa-san, you and your men will help the strolling nun and Tomoe Gozen. Remember, you must return to me by dawn.”

Obedient as would be true samurai, the five warriors followed after Tsuki and Tomoe who fled back down the path, upon a desperate errand.

Here the dream parted a little bit in a strange way, so that they did not see how it was they arrived at the awful lodge of the bakemono. Suddenly it was before them. The night's mists separated so that the moon revealed a house of mud and filth, windows barred with bamboo, one candle shining from a single window.

In the light of that only candle, Tsuki, Tomoe and the five non-samurai saw Yabushi's sister. They saw how sad she was. Her sadness made the five warriors seem happy by comparison. Her sadness could drain all the happiness from the world, and not fill the well of her unshed tears. Pretty she was, though not in the way of the supernatural beauty who had led Tomoe and Tsuki madly through the marsh. Hers was a different kind of loveliness, a tragic kind which allures no one, but makes all look on empathetically.

Two women and five men did look on, did feel empathy, were stricken to the very center of themselves.

Tomoe led the others, sloshing through the reeds, each trying to make less noise than various things which hopped and croaked around the area. They saw into the lit window better. They saw Yabushi lying fevered on a pallet. His sister doctored him and wept without tears.

“The vampirish magic of the kappa made him ill,” whispered Tsuki. “If we can get him away from the swamps, he may recover.”

Tomoe motioned left and right so that Tsuki and the five men began to spread out and surround the bakemono's lodge. Yabushi's sister looked up with her sad, sad face, and saw dark shapes moving among the reeds, with even darker visages staring at them through the window. Not knowing them as friends, she cried out and slapped the shutter tight against the bars of the window, against the haunted, horrid night.

The noise wakened the oni, who slept in trees, despising the wet ground. They lived in the marshland only because their master bid them do so, not because they wished. In the mountains, they were feared monster-warriors, skilled with a variety of weapons. Only the yamahoshi, or warrior-priests in mountain sanctuaries, were capable of besting them regularly. It was to be hoped that the swampy ground would hinder their considerable abilities.

Seven oni fell straight away from heaven, it seemed, though really from the swamp trees around the bakemono's lodge. The battle was engaged.

Two purple-skinned oni landed side by side, each with a
kusarigama
sickle-and-chain. The weighted ends spun around, whirring like the wings of gigantic insects. The oni stood monstrous against the night. When they let loose of the chains, the ends shot forth into darkness and wrapped around the arms of one of the soldiers said to be of the Haniwa clan.

The two oni pulled him forth, a fish from the sea. It was a struggle. The warrior fought hard to hold his place. Though both arms were entangled in the chains, he did not drop his two-edged sword. He showed no fear, but went through the motion of struggle as though it took place on a stage: calmly, precisely, according to script.

When the oni had drawn their captive in range, they raised the sickles on the other ends of their chains, in opposite hands. But the warrior parried form one side to another, swinging his sword on a horizontal plane between his two purple attackers, then brought the sword around in a vertical circle and plunged the point into the heart of his right-hand captor. It dropped its sickle, clutched its bleeding chest, and stood with life going slowly out.

Oni died hard.

The warrior and the uninjured oni were left standing in a tug-of-war at each end of the chain. Sword and sickle were held high, against each other. The second sickle, dropped by the dying oni, dragged in the mud, its chain still wrapped around the warrior's arm, offering the fierce oni too great an advantage.

A second warrior was coming across the top of the bakemono's lodge, preparing to leap at the oni's back, deciding the battle.

Elsewhere, Tsuki Izutsu met a scarlet oni, redder than her own kimono, and it bore a barbed
yari
spear. She parried its thrust, held the
yari
by its barb, then slid her bo loose, swung it around—hard into the oni's stomach. It began to double forward with pain, but she caught it in the chin, making it throw its head backward. The barb of the yari had caught hold of the yellow prayer-tabard Tsuki had rolled up. The end of her pole thrust fast against the underside of the oni's jaw, and it stumbled back with such force that the packed tabard was torn from her back.