Spirit's Chosen (20 page)

“Neither would you and the little ones,” I coaxed. She only shook her head.

“We are
Taka
, not Inoshishi. The children and I have managed to reclaim one of our clan’s fields. We raise enough food to get by, and we know how to forage for more. It will get easier as they get older and can do more work.”

If they survive to get older
, I thought, but decided not to press the point any further.

A little while later, Kaya and the children returned. My friend was so relaxed she looked as if the hot spring had melted the bones right out of her body. “You have to go there, Himiko,” she said. “It’s much nicer than that other one.”

“No snakes?” I asked mischievously.

“Why do you think I said it’s nicer?”

“Do as your friend says, my dear,” our aged hostess urged. “We will eat after you bathe.”

“Don’t you want to come with me, Lady Ayame?”

“I used the spring this morning. Go, go! It’s not too hard to find. The children and I have beaten a path to it, you’ll see.”

It was as she said: the winding woodland path was easy to follow and soon I was chin-deep in beautifully hot, soothing water. My hair floated around me, my travel-weariness wafted out of arms and legs, back and shoulders, the trees arching above the pool were filled with sweetly twittering birds, but my mind remained a blazing, clamoring knot of anxiety.

There must be a way to convince Lady Ayame to leave this place
, I thought.
I have to find it! That woman is dancing with survival, her feet balanced on a single blade of grass above a chasm, but her first misstep will take down
three
lives. She is devoted to Yuri and Isamu, but clan pride and loyalty to the dead are hard ties to sever
.

I crawled out of the water and dressed, preoccupied. Before I rejoined the others, I placed my goddess on the edge of the hot spring and offered her a prayer: “Lady of the sun, lady of the dragon stone, help me. If I can give Lady Ayame an honorable reason to leave her ancestral lands and join Nazuna’s new family, I think she’d take it, if only for the children’s sake. Have mercy on them, and guide me. Let me find what I seek!”

That night, as we all lay uncomfortably close together in the shelter of Lady Ayame’s hovel, I whispered my worries to Kaya.

She failed to see the problem. “Tell them you’re a
shaman and that if they don’t pack up and leave, you’ll make them sorry.”

“I can’t do that!”

“Why not? Because it’s false? Would you rather have these children pay the price for your honesty?”

“Kaya, suppose I do what you suggest: I scare Lady Ayame into going to the Inoshishi and living with Nazuna’s family. Fine. But how long do you think she’d
stay
there? Hunger and isolation haven’t made her run to a more comfortable life. If I force her to leave, she’ll just wait until she’s sure I’ve moved on and then come back.”

“Yes, but I doubt she’d drag the children back here with her. And if she dies, it won’t be so bad, because she’ll do it on her own terms and because—because—” Kaya was suddenly quiet.

“—because she’s old?” I supplied.

“I didn’t say that.” My friend sounded cross. We both knew she had been about to voice those very words without thinking, and she was ashamed of it. “I know that all their lives count, but we’ll lose every one of them if we don’t find an answer
soon
. We’re moving on in the morning!”

“Lady Ayame is strong willed,” I said. “The decision to join the Inoshishi must come from her, or it won’t endure. How can we persuade a resolute woman to change her mind?”

“How does anyone make you change
your
mind?” Kaya quipped, then yawned. “If
I
had your skills, we wouldn’t be losing sleep, trying to untangle this. First I’d summon Lady Ayame’s ancestors to talk some sense into her, then
I’d make the spirits fetch that mountain ogre and have him carry the old woman and her grandchildren all the way to the boar clan village. But I’m no shaman, just tired. At least I can solve
that
problem myself. Good night, Himiko.” She turned onto her side and was soon asleep.

I lay awake, listening to the sound of Kaya’s slow, steady breathing, Lady Ayame’s light snores, and the children’s uneasy snuffling.
She’s right
, I thought.
We have to leave tomorrow. Maybe I’ll have better luck persuading Lady Ayame when we pass through here on our homeward road. If she has some secret reason for not wanting to live dependent on Nazuna, I might be able to have her join us and come live with my clan, or Kaya’s, or …

The day’s long trek caught up with me. I began to lose myself in the first fog of sleep, but before dropping out of the waking world completely, something unexpected happened: my mind opened like a flower. I saw the goddess shining at its heart and heard her sweet voice, answering my prayers.

A spring morning high in the mountains was cold, waking everyone in the little house before sunrise. By unspoken agreement, Kaya and I dipped into our own supplies to provide breakfast for Lady Ayame and her family. When the old noblewoman tried to refuse, out of pride, Kaya stepped in:

“I made this meal. Are you saying that I
—your guest!—
am not worthy to cook your rice?” She put on such an implausible expression of wounded dignity that Lady Ayame cackled and conceded.

“Lady Ayame, we will leave you soon,” I said as we ate. “Before I go, there are two things I must do, with your help.”

“Name them, Lady Himiko.”

“I have told you the name of my clan, but not our history. It is very much like your own: the Ookami attacked us, defeated us, and enslaved many of our people.”

“I am sorry to hear it. The wolves’ road leads them through here whenever Lord Ryu sets his sights on fresh conquests. We have often watched from hiding as the warriors march over the mountain, and we have witnessed them coming back with captives and plunder.”

“Then you might have seen their return from our lands when three of my closest kin were taken as their hostages,” I said, and told her the true purpose that had brought Kaya and me so far from home.

Lady Ayame was aghast. “Are you serious?”

“Serious enough to try.”

“But you’re so young! You should be choosing sweethearts, marrying, having children, not walking into the dragon’s mouth!”

I did not ask her where she thought Yuri and Isamu would find
their
mates, if they survived long enough to reach that age. This was not the time. Instead I said, “I gave my word, Lady Ayame. If you cannot make me break it, will you help me keep it?”

“I?” Her hands flew to her chest. “What can I do?”

“You have lived here a long time, since the days before the wolves turned wild. Was there ever a time when your people traded with them, or were able to cross their
lands unmolested? Did any member of the Taka clan see the Ookami settlement and speak about it when he came home? If you can reveal anything
—anything
about what’s waiting for us at the end of our road, please speak. Your words may make a great difference.”

“I … I will try.” Lady Ayame closed her eyes and summoned distant memories.

Her words confirmed what I imagined: there
had
been better times between the Taka and the Ookami. In her father’s day, young men often visited back and forth, all of them convinced that the
other
clan had the prettiest girls. From these scraps of remembered travelers’ tales, Lady Ayame stitched together a fine description of the Ookami village and the land around it.

We thanked her so enthusiastically that she blushed with pleasure. “Who would imagine that those old stories would be useful?” she said. “Or this old woman?”

“Oh,
Grandma
!” Yuri gave her a mighty hug. “Don’t talk like that. It makes me sad.”

“Then I will never say such things again, my precious one,” she replied, pressing her cheek to Yuri’s. Satisfied, the child released her. “You see, girls?” Lady Ayame said to Kaya and me. “
This
is what you should seek: the blessing of love from your children’s children, not the road to a monster’s lair. Lord Ryu of the Ookami was rightly named; he is as dangerous as any dragon. But if you are still determined, heed my counsel: when you approach his lair, don’t rush in. Watch and wait. Learn which blade will shatter against his hide and which sword has the power to slay him.”

“I’m not going to try to kill Ryu,” I said. “All I want is my little brother.”

“Anyway, Himiko’s not good with swords,” Kaya put in. “Now, if you want to kill a dragon by dropping a rock on his head …”

I shot my friend a nasty look and went on speaking as if she hadn’t said a word: “Thank you again for what you’ve told us, Lady Ayame. Now I have one last small thing to ask of you.” I reached into my bag and placed the sacred bronze bell and mirror on the ground between us. “I am a shaman. Let me be the one to offer comfort to your dead.”

I chanted for the spirits of the brave hawk people who had fallen to the spears and arrows of the wolf clan. I danced in a field of flowers somewhere between the ruins of the Taka village and Lady Ayame’s tumbledown woodland house. Beneath the bright overgrowth of grass and blossoms lay what was left of her clan’s ancestral burial ground. If I looked hard, I could see the remains of grave mounds, now little more than grassy hillocks. Had the Ookami knocked them down when they devastated this settlement? I could not bring myself to ask Lady Ayame such a painful question, but I would not be surprised if the answer was yes. What was it she had told us about Ryu’s attack?
“He wanted us to
become
a warning to the other clans.”
To achieve that, he had not hesitated to strike down the dead as well as the living.

I sang for the dead, but the song that the spirits carried to my lips was a song of life. My mirror caught the rays of
the ever-living sun and I sang about how joyfully all living things greeted the light of sun or moon and stars. I struck my bell, and I braided the words of my chant with those deep, warm notes to conjure images of kin gathered together to celebrate happy occasions—births, weddings, harvests. I opened my arms and spoke to the hawk clan spirits, setting them free from the graves that held them, offering them a better resting place.

“The earth turns to dust and blows away, the rivers run dry, the mountains crumble,” I sang. “But the heart whose spark you kindled with your life, with your love, that is your enduring home. Wherever it dwells, you dwell, and before the day comes when it no longer beats, it leaves behind a new heart that will hold its spirit and your own! The earth turns to dust and sets you free, the rivers run dry and let your spirit bathe in light, the mountains crumble, but the living breath of love carries you higher than any hawk, beyond this place, beyond this earth, this sky, beyond every tomorrow. Let the gods be my witness, this is so, now and forever!”

I struck the bell one last time and let the fading echoes fall around me like cherry blossoms.

Lady Ayame approached me, Yuri clinging to her hand, Isamu walking stiffly beside her, striving to hold back tears. “This was what we could not give them,” the old woman said softly. “Lord Ryu’s one act of mercy was letting his new slaves bury our dead, but there was no reverence allowed. When the work took too long he lost patience and marched away. I buried the few he left behind, but I never felt my task was done until now. I think”—she gazed over
the field—“I think I would like to go tell Nazuna what you did for us, Lady Himiko.”

I held her free hand. “She will like that.”

Lady Ayame and the children were busy gathering their meager belongings when Kaya and I took up our interrupted journey. Before we parted, the Taka noblewoman advised us to leave the well-traveled mountain path as soon as we saw a pair of rocks shaped like a wild boar’s tusks. It was a landmark that Lord Hideki had mentioned too, though his instructions were to go straight through.

“Of course, he was trying to
encounter
the Ookami,” I told Kaya. “We’ve got to circle
around
their valley, find a spot with a good view of what’s below, and pray that we haven’t picked a place that lies along one of their hunters’ favorite game trails.”

“Don’t speak of game,” Kaya said. “I saw
five
fat rabbits since we started down this path, and what could I do about it when my bow’s little more than a stick of firewood? I swear, I heard the biggest one laughing at me!”

“You were going to make a new bowstring from Gori’s hair,” I reminded her. “Why don’t you try that with mine? If you don’t need a
lot
of it, that is.”

“No, thanks.”

“Why not? Do you
want
the rabbits to laugh at you?”

“Ha-ha-ha. Very funny. For your information, human hair makes a poor bowstring. It’s not durable enough; too stretchy. Sorry to disappoint you.”

“And the rabbits.”

Following Lady Ayame’s directions and advice, Kaya and I left the main path and plunged deeper into the wilderness high above the Ookami village. We were close enough that the breeze sometimes brought us the faint, smoky smell of cooking from below, but far enough away that we could kindle our own campfire, as long as we kept it small.