Dreamlands (6 page)

“You….”

I sat up. “I think that the worst that I will do now will be to make you eat naked.”

Keno blushed as he sat up, rubbing his eyes. He knew I was wearing only a
fundoshi
―a traditional cotton loincloth. I stood up and put out a hand to help him up. Keno stared at it for a second before accepting it; I tried not to feel pleased at this small victory. I led him into the other room, where the food was.

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34

“Keno, I have arranged for more than Tan’yu-san to tutor you,” I said. “There are any number of my lady’s people who are willing to teach you. But….”

Keno’s face turned up to mine. He didn’t say anything, and I noticed how he kept his eyes on the floor, not meeting my gaze. “Due to a whim of mine, you are to be called Sakura when you are with them or when we are in public.”

He didn’t say anything, only nodding.

“Keno?”

He shivered. I had frightened him, but I wanted an answer. He looked up, eyes dull, as he remembered something unpleasant.

“When… when they took me, later… I was told that my papers had the name Watanabe Shiro on them. Not that I ever saw them.” I bit back my anger at the fact that those people had stolen his life and his name. “Names have power,” I explained. “That is why you will be Sakura.”

Keno frowned and nodded. “But like now, you’re going to call me Keno? Just when―”

I laughed. “When I escort you as my companion to any number of entertainments or with any of my lady’s people, you will be called Sakura-chan. And it is then that you will address me as Samojirou-sama. Right now, you don’t have to be that formal.”

“Oh.”

Keno seemed overwhelmed by that thought, and I motioned for him to sit down. “Eat. I assure you that the pickles are delicious.”

“Thank you,” he whispered.

I didn’t understand why; it was but a simple meal of fruits and vegetables. Not all of them were available in the real world, not that I knew of. Or they simply had not been in Japan when I was alive. I studied him while we ate; Keno seemed unaware of my scrutiny, eating slowly. I realized his slenderness was more like starvation, because he 35

DREAMLANDS

was too thin. That made me furious, but I tried to control my anger because I didn’t want to frighten him.

“Did they not feed you?” I demanded.

He winced at my tone of voice and shook his head. “There were times it was better that I didn’t go to the cafeteria. Then there were the times that it was closed, or they were serving something that I couldn’t eat because it had meat in it. I drank a lot of coffee.”

“You do not eat meat?” I suddenly remembered the untouched fish on his plate. “I will tell the kitchens that, so they know when they make a tray for you. Also, there are enough around here who have also made that choice that you will have something to eat at my lady’s entertainments.”

Keno protested. “You don’t have to….”

I leaned over and touched his ribs, avoiding the bruises. He still flinched. “This shows me that I should.” He blushed. “Thank you for the massage. I feel less sore.” I was pleased that he accepted my touch. I also didn’t miss the fact that he dropped his protests about his diet. I had a feeling he was too afraid to argue with me. I shouldn’t have been surprised since he had been a prisoner for years.

“I want to warn you that my lady’s samurai will be less well-behaved when I am not there,” I said. I didn’t miss the color draining from his face. What did he expect them to do? “You will be subjected to all sorts of advice on how to ‘handle’ me. Please do not be too disturbed about it.”

“Samojirou-sama?” Keno squeaked.

I didn’t miss the formality he used. Keno was clearly too frightened or cowed not to address me in a formal manner. “If my lady ever took a companion, he or she would be teased in the same way.

They are a rough lot. However, they will not hurt you.” FELICITAS IVEY

36

“I… I think that I understand,” he said slowly. “I thought, though―”

“What?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, hanging his head.

I knew what he was doing, submitting to me so I wouldn’t hurt him. I hoped I could coax out his true nature over time. I wasn’t still certain that he was interested in
nanshoku
―manlove―from the answer he had given me.

“You are allowed to ask questions,” I said gently.

“I thought that you and your lady were… um… together.

Married,” he blurted out and cringed, waiting for a blow from me.

I watched him thoughtfully. He had no knowledge of who he was, who I was, or what had happened. I didn’t know if I was angry or sad about it.

“At one time, in the real world, she was my consort,” I said.

“However, in this place, I seem to be hers. But we have never been involved in such a manner. She thinks of me as her older brother.” Keno smiled. It was a small one, and I liked it. He was beautiful with that smile.

“You are amused by this?” I demanded. I shouldn’t have because he flinched at my tone of voice.

“I….”

“Keno, I am not angry,” I said. “Merely curious.”

“The Americans, well, they’d call you a house-husband,” Keno stuttered. “I just thought it was funny that you two had such a modern, American relationship. A lot of men would feel threatened by the fact that your lady is in what is considered the ‘man’s’ role. You… you’re proud of her.”

“I am trapped here; she is not,” I said simply.

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I was saddened that she had lost her humanity when she was killed and banished to the Dreamlands. While watching Tamazusa extend her influence and power over the years had been fascinating, I thought it wasn’t worth her sacrifice.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

I looked at him. He truly was. Keno knew what it was like to be trapped in a place not of your own choosing. “I was banished here because I had failed to defeat those who were my enemies. That was after my lady had embraced the darkness, and I chose to reject my humanity. I… it was better than being destroyed. I am content here.” That was not the whole story, but I knew he wouldn’t be able to understand what had been done to us. Keno was innocent of the bloodshed that had soaked the
Sengoku Jidai
―the battles fought for land and power with magic and armies. His ancestor had been part of it, but the modern age seemed to be a gentler era.

“But you want to be able to walk out of the door without being shot,” he said to himself.

“I do not think that would happen,” I said wryly. “There is not a door for me to simply ‘walk out of’.”

Keno frowned. “I don’t understand.”

I laughed. “It would take years of study under the sorcerers who are here for you to do so. Just accept that it is something that you cannot control. I was trapped here because I lost to one who chose to banish me instead of killing me.”

Keno frowned but nodded. I saw he was thinking about it as he finished his meal. I didn’t underestimate his cleverness, and I knew he would try and puzzle out why I couldn’t leave.

FELICITAS IVEY

38

KENO

TAMAZUSA’S estate was huge, as in the size of several city blocks. I explored it with Samojirou over a couple of days, since he wanted to show me around. While I had thought I was living in the Tokugawa era, I was wrong. No one talked about it, but I knew it was an older era than that, even if everything felt weird and off to me.

The buildings didn’t have any kind of running water or electricity.

There was a primitive bathroom system that was as clean as anything back on Earth―or as they called it here, “the real world.” There was one long building, which was one story tall and branched off in a couple directions like branches on a tree. It was the main house, where Tamazusa’s and Samojirou’s apartments were located, as well as all the public rooms. There were also a couple of smaller buildings that were U-shaped, where the samurai and the servants lived. All of those buildings had porches surrounding them that connected the wings and buildings to one another. Further in there were a couple of smaller buildings used for tea cernonies and other things. As I said, the place was huge, and scattered between all the buildings there were a lot of styles of gardens, from tiny wild flower gardens to a huge one with a pond in it. The entire estate was surrounded by a three-meter-high thatch and white-washed plaster wall. I wondered what it was there to keep out.

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DREAMLANDS

The estate seemed bigger than the Imperial Park in Kyoto. It was so different for me, different from a small room in an underground office building. What was even more impressive to me was that Tamazusa also had a small town with a castle about eight kilometers away that she was in charge of and another estate in the capital.

There was an elegant simplicity to the life I was living now.

Tamazusa and Samojirou lived traditionally and didn’t like a lot of furniture and clutter. It wasn’t that they didn’t have a lot of things; it was that they weren’t shown all at once. A nice vase, one scroll picture, and a
kojii
screen might be all that decorated a hall the size of a lecture hall at MIT. There were murals on the walls of the public rooms, but in their living quarters the walls were usually white or tan.

I was dressing in kimono and
yukata
, like I had when I was little.

They were soft and comfortable, better than anything I had been wearing before. McGann usually dressed me in sweats and hoodies, things that were cheap and warm more than stylish, not that I cared.

Now I was relearning to move in kimono and
hakama
―the loose pants a lot of the samurai wore around here.

My days were filled with lessons on calligraphy, flower arranging, incense mixing, literature, and the tea ceremony: all traditional Japanese pursuits, which was why they had sounded familiar when Samojirou told me what he wanted me to study.

I was busy from morning to night. I’d say dusk to dawn, but I never really saw the sun in this place. I was tired in the beginning and would just curl up on the futon at the end of the day. I didn’t even stir when Samojirou joined me. Eventually I stopped wanting to scream when I woke up with him curled around me, thinking he wanted more than just to sleep with me. It was comforting in a weird way. I had been lonely before, and no one ever touched me except to hurt me. Heiseg didn’t count with the not-hurting touching thing because he made me feel dirty even before he hurt me. Samojirou acting the same way made me feel safe, in a strange way. It might be because he never hurt me in the weeks we were together, even though we both knew he could just hold me down and do
that
to me.

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40

I didn’t see much of Samojirou. We had breakfast together, and he would stop by my lessons once in a while, but nothing more than that. I ate lunch and dinner alone or with the samurai. They teased me a lot and called me Samojirou’s “Blossom,” because to them, I was Sakura. But they didn’t hit me, and they weren’t mean to me, even if I didn’t understand all the jokes they made.

In the evenings, sometimes we spent time sitting together, with Samojirou and Tamazusa asking me what the real world was like now.

I learned they had been here for centuries, and that thought just overwhelmed me, causing me to spend a morning trying to understand being alive for that long. In Samojirou’s case, being a prisoner for that long. I didn’t think I could ever understand it.

Samojirou had his own routine, and I wasn’t part of it, yet. I found out from the samurai that Samojirou was a scholar, and he spent a lot of time studying the classical literature of Japan and other cultures of the Dreamlands. I knew I was being trained to join his life as his companion, which was why I had to study everything I was. It didn’t anger me as much as it should have, because I actually enjoyed my lessons.

I knew from Heiseg and Boylston Street that it could be worse.

Samojirou kissed me a lot, and there was some―a lot―of touching, but he didn’t hurt me. He talked to me and expected me to answer him.

He didn’t mind if I had opinions about something. There was something else going on that I didn’t know about, but after the last four years, I wasn’t questioning my good fortune. I had enough to eat and the illusion of freedom. I had learned not to want more than that.