Spirit's Chosen (23 page)

“So you just … 
walked
into the village?” Kaya was confounded. He bobbed his head, his grin growing impossibly wide. “But—but once you were inside, how did you know where to find Himiko’s little brother?”

“I didn’t, but I knew who did. Lord Ryu is chieftain, and chieftains know everything. I went into his house. He was asleep too, and his family.” Telling about his midnight adventure made Oni very excited. He began to speak faster and faster, everything pouring out at once: “I got down next to him, and I took my knife and held it to his neck, and I put my hand over his mouth, and he woke up and wanted to shout and bite me, until he felt the blade touching his skin, and then he lay still.”

I took this the wrong way: “You killed him?”

Oni’s expression said
I thought you were
smart,
Himiko!
“If I killed him, he couldn’t give me Noboru. And he did that, so why would I kill him after he gave me what I wanted? Oh! This is funny: Noboru was right there in Lord Ryu’s house! We didn’t have to go anywhere else to find him. I told you it was easy!”

“It would’ve been easier if you’d killed the wolf while you had the chance,” Kaya grumbled. “What kept him from raising an alarm as soon as you were out of knife-range?”

“I thought of
that
too.” Oni was growing more and more self-satisfied by the moment. “I made Lord Ryu walk out of the village with us, all the way to the edge of the trees, and then I hit him. I hit him harder than I hit you,
Kaya, and when he fell down, I put Noboru on my shoulder and we ran and ran and here we are!” His grin had grown impossibly wide. “And we can all go home.”

“Quickly,” I said. “Unless you cracked Ryu’s skull open, he’s going to come back to his senses, and when he does … We have to leave
now
.” I held Noboru with one hand and grabbed my travel bag with the other. Kaya followed my lead.

“Why are you in such a hurry?” Oni asked in his small, frightened voice. “Are you going to run away from me? But you said I could come with you! You called me Big Brother! You promised that I—”

The arrow whizzed out of the trees and hit him in the throat with a sickening sound. Oni dropped his club and pawed at the feathered shaft helplessly, the whites of his eyes showing. A second dart took him in the back, a third in the chest. They were coming from all directions. He dropped to his knees, then pitched sideways, and still the arrows found him.

I threw Noboru to the ground and shielded him with my body. He shrieked, terrified, and I whispered countless bits of nonsense to calm him, swearing that everything would be all right, that I would not let anything happen to him, that we were going home to see Mama. When he tried to wriggle away and look around, I clapped one hand over his eyes and sang to keep him from hearing Oni’s gasps and groans. Kaya was calling my name, but her voice was growing fainter, swallowed by the sound of a struggle somewhere among the trees.

A hand closed on the back of my neck with a grip like
a falcon’s claw. I was hauled away from my brother, whose small face crumpled with grief as he stretched out his arms to me. An instant later, he was snatched up by one of the hard-faced men now swarming the forest clearing. His cries receded rapidly as he was carried into the woods until all I could hear was a ghost’s mournfully fading “Himiko! Himiko! Save me!”

I struggled in my captor’s grasp and got a hard slap for it. A second man joined us and whipped a length of thin rope around my wrists, then shouted back over one shoulder, “We have her, my lord!”

Ryu of the Ookami stalked into the clearing, a bow in his hands. The arrows in the quiver on his back were fletched with the same-colored feathers as the first one to strike Oni down. His face was as handsome as I remembered it, and as hateful. He paused to glance at my fallen friend’s body and muttered, “Still breathing? Tsk.” I tensed when I saw him draw his knife.

“Leave him alone!”
I yelled. “Coward! Let him die in peace!”

He gave me a sidelong look. “Welcome, you troublesome girl,” he said. “You haven’t changed much, have you? Still pretty as a summer rainbow and foul-tempered as a winter storm. You can’t imagine how shocked I was to wake to this beast’s ugly face and hear
your
name on his lips!” He indicated Oni, whose only sign of ebbing life was the slight, fitful clenching and uncurling of his thick fingers. “Did you use your beauty to make the poor simpleton serve you? Is that why he came barging into my house, holding a sword to my neck, stealing what belongs to me?” He made
a disgusted sound. “I should thank you for it. We ought to have rid ourselves of this monster a long time ago.”

“
He
is not the monster!” Pushed past my limit by Ryu’s callous words, I made a sudden, enormous effort to wrench free of the men holding me. I kicked and twisted violently, taking them both off guard long enough to break away and throw myself between Oni and Ryu. “You … will …
not …
touch him.” I spoke with a warrior’s fiery courage and a menacing tone that did not make empty threats, but deadly promises.

The young chieftain backed away three steps before he realized what he was doing. Then he glanced nervously at his men, to see if they had noticed the fleeting shadow of fear that had crossed his face when he met my gaze. He had once fled from me in terror, and I could read on his face how close he had come to doing so now.

Ryu threw back his head and laughed, too loud and too long for it to be natural. “Don’t be frightened, little princess,” he mocked me. “I won’t touch your beloved. We will leave him here, but you may say good-bye if you’re quick about it.”

I shut my ears to his spite and stroked Oni’s cheek softly with the back of one of my bound hands. Leaning close, I began to sing his mother’s lullaby.

His eyelids fluttered. A faint smile made his face beautiful. “I remembered, Himiko,” he whispered. “You won’t have to give me a new name; I remembered. I am Mori … Mori … Mori …”

Mori: Forest
. He died where he had lived, and where his spirit had always belonged.

 

They took all I had.

They took my bell and my mirror. They took my little brother Noboru and the life of my friend Mori. They took my hope of saving Mama and my dream of seeing our family reunited. They took my right to say no.

As the last breath left Mori’s body, Ryu barked an order. His men dragged me upright and gave me a hard shove between my shoulder blades, sending me staggering in the direction they wanted me to go. I never had the time to utter a single word to comfort my friend’s spirit or let him know that now he was free.

The Ookami warriors who had Kaya in custody were waiting for us not far from the clearing. She was furious, but I was relieved to see that she looked otherwise untouched. When she tried to speak to me, one of the men slapped her face, deliberately aiming for the livid bruise
Mori had given her. I could do nothing to ease her pain or help dry her tears.

The men in charge of Noboru must have gone ahead of us, because I did not see my little brother again that day. Kaya and I were marched down out of the mountains and brought through the gates of the Ookami village as curiosity-seekers crowded around us, pointing and muttering. We attracted puzzled looks, leers, and even one or two pitying glances.

We were taken to one of the pit houses in the center of the village and pushed roughly through the doorway when we didn’t move fast enough for our captors’ liking. I failed to duck and banged my forehead so hard that a burst of stars dazzled my eyes. Dizzy from the blow, I lost my balance and fell forward, taking the impact on my right side. The Ookami warriors laughed at me as I sprawled in the darkness.

“Stop your yapping, you flea-fouled curs!” Kaya shouted at them. The same man who had slapped her earlier growled a curse and would have stormed into the house to do it again, but his companion grabbed his arm.

“That one might be prettier without a bruised face,” he said. “How are we going to find out if you keep hitting her?”

“You
care
what the girl looks like, Hiroshi?” The first man laughed crudely and shook off his grip. “Well, I guess you would, at your age. Wait until you’ve got whiskers on your lip instead of milk before you talk about such things to a
true
man. Next you’ll be claiming you want to marry her!”

“I would, if Lord Ryu ordered me to do it,” came the
measured reply from the younger warrior. “He
did
order both of us to stow them here and stand watch. Nothing more.”

Something ugly crept into the first man’s voice: “Why don’t
you
stand watch and let me have a little fun?”

“
Or
I could leave you to your ‘fun’ and go ask Lord Ryu if that was what he had in mind for these girls.”

“Then do it, you double-tongued snake!” the older guard exploded. “He’ll strip the skin from you for deserting your place, wait and see! If you’d fought in half the battles I have, you’d know our chieftain doesn’t care how we treat our slaves.”

“Maybe I haven’t seen as much fighting as you, but I did see what happened in the ogre’s clearing today,” the one called Hiroshi said. “Lord Ryu
knows
one of these girls. Who’s to say he doesn’t know the other one as well? Can you say for certain that he doesn’t have plans of his own for them?” He finished with a meaningful: “What happens to anyone who touches
his
property?”

The first guard cursed louder, calling Hiroshi countless names, but he soon subsided into grumbles, then sullen silence. I wished that I could have thanked the younger man for how cleverly he had protected Kaya and me from the unthinkable. He had given me an unexpected realization that not all of the Ookami were as vicious as their leader.

We spent the day awaiting our fate. Though we were free to converse, we were so beaten down in spirit by our capture that we maintained mutual silence. That was a mistake. I should have spoken. I should have shared my
grief for Mori’s death with Kaya. I should have told her of the relentlessly growing sense of responsibility and guilt in my soul. I should have let her know how hopeless, helpless, and useless I felt, and I would have listened to her speak about her own fear, sorrow, and despair.

Such talk had the power to cleanse our minds of their swiftly gathering shadows. A rushing mountain stream is clear, healthy, and full of life, but a stagnant pond soon chokes on the uncleanliness it breeds. It would have been better for us both to talk.

With dull, indifferent eyes I stared at the doorway and watched the daylight fade. I wondered where my little brother was, and if he had stopped crying. I prayed that he had not seen Mori die, though I knew it was impossible for him to have missed all the violence that had devastated us that day. Was he in Emi’s care? I implored the gods to make it so. If he could be with our stepmother and her son, Sanjirou, he would be comforted even if they were all slaves.

Slaves like us.

The world beyond the doorway of our prison became noisier as the day turned to evening. I heard the bustle of people returning home from the fields, the sounds of neighbors greeting neighbors, dogs barking to welcome their masters home, children squealing happily at play and being scolded for neglecting their small tasks and errands.

I caught snatches of excited chatter from villagers who were only now finding out about their chieftain’s victory over the “mountain ogre.” Silently I urged the gossipers to walk faster, taking their witless jabber far from where I had no choice but to hear it. Only once did a woman’s voice
murmur “But he wasn’t a real
oni
, was he? His mother was my friend. He was such a sweet-faced, gentle child …” I yearned toward her kindhearted words, willing her to linger, but she moved on.

The dying day also brought the Ookami slaves back into the village. Five of them came into our hut, all women, filling the cramped space with the smell of mud from the planting fields and the reek of sweat. Three of them looked about the same age as my mother, one was a thin, white-haired elder, and one was a young girl with an old, old face and the rounded belly of a mother-to-be.