Spirit's Princess (28 page)

That evening, Yama came to see Father, to tell him that she wanted to have certain plants on hand in preparation for Emi’s childbirth. “They don’t grow around here, so I’m going to have Himiko fetch them for me.” She spoke as casually as if she were sending me to bring her a jar of water.

“What? Send her where? How can you—?” Father began to bluster, but Yama quickly put a stop to that.

“Do you honestly think I’d have the girl go by herself?
I may be too old for such a journey, but I’m not feebleminded. Have one of her brothers accompany her! Better make it Aki; he’s reliable, and a more experienced hunter than Shoichi. You’ll have some fresh meat for the pot, I’ll get my herbs, and your wife will have a safe birth and a healthy baby. Do you object to any of that?”

Of course he didn’t. Father grumbled a bit at the shaman’s brash way of speaking to him, but he promptly gave her what she wanted. “Aki, you will go with your sister.”

“As you wish, Father.” He acknowledged the command with a deep, respectful bow, but I still glimpsed his smile.

We set out the next morning before the sun goddess showed her face. The sky shimmered a deep silvery blue with the first thin line of pink beginning to tint the edge of the world. By the time the life-giving light drove off the last of the darkness, Aki and I were well on our way, the clear heavens no more than shards of brightness caught among the branches of the trees.

It had been some time since I’d last taken this road, or ventured so far into the mountains. My legs were longer, but my off-kilter stride held me back on the steeper inclines. Aki didn’t chide me for slowing us down, but he didn’t need to: I scolded myself.

Why didn’t I exercise more? I knew we were going to do this; I should have prepared!
I thought furiously.
Even one day would have made a difference
. I peered ahead to where Aki was already almost a bowshot away. When the ground first turned steep, he’d offered to walk beside me and let me lean on him. Smiling, I’d refused. Now I realized I’d made a mistake.

I’ve got to go faster. I have to catch up. I can’t let him think it was a mistake to bring me. He might insist we turn back. No! Never! I’m going to do this. I’m
—

I forced myself to walk at a brisker pace, climbing the hillside, striving to reach my brother. Suddenly a harsh twinge shot up my leg. I sucked in my breath through clenched teeth, biting back the pain, and hoped Aki hadn’t heard.

“Himiko? What’s wrong?” My brother stopped and looked back down the slope.

So much for hope. “Nothing. I’m all right. Keep going.”

He scrambled down the slope to my side. “This isn’t a race. We don’t have to reach the Shika village in a hurry. Let me help you.”

I tried to divert him by joking. “How? By carrying me on your back again? I’m too old for that.”

“Not too old to lose your stubborn streak, I see,” he replied.

“I
told
you, I’m fine. I can do this.”

“I don’t doubt it. I never would have undertaken this journey with you if I believed you weren’t strong enough. I’m just saying that there’s more than one path we can take and more than one way for us to follow it. I don’t want you hurting yourself just because you decided you had to outspeed the sun goddess. It won’t make any difference if it takes us two days or four or even more to get where we’re going. Father knows you’re safe with me, and he also knows my hunting trips can keep me away from home for a long time. No one’s going to worry about us.”

“That’s not why I tried to run,” I said. “We’re in this together, Aki. I want to be your equal on this journey, not your burden.”

He tugged my hair in his old way. “I never saw you as anything but my equal, Little Sister.”

The rest of our trip to the Shika village went more slowly, but if Aki was impatient to be reunited with Hoshi, he gave no sign of it. I wondered whether he was afraid of what sort of reception might await him at journey’s end. As for me, the worst I might expect was that Kaya would stare at me and not remember who I was, or that we were ever friends. If that happened, I could live with it, but how would Aki’s loyal, loving heart endure it if Hoshi saw him as no more than a stranger? If her heart had gone elsewhere during the years since they’d last met, he would be hurt, but I thought he’d understand. Time passes, people change. But what if he was nothing whatsoever to her, not even a memory? That would crush him. I prayed to the gods to spare my brother that.

It took us three days to reach our destination. I don’t know whether we would have gotten where we were going sooner if I’d been fit to match my brother’s stride or if the trip took that long because of the route Aki chose. I was glad he’d gone back to steal secret glimpses of the girl who held his heart. It meant he knew the way to the deer people’s settlement very well. I wouldn’t have been able to remember it on my own.

As much as I wanted to see Kaya and her family again, I had to admit to myself that I was enjoying the trip through
the wilderness for its own sake. Aki knew all the secrets of living off the gifts of the forest. We’d brought some food from home, but when our rice balls were gone, we didn’t go hungry or thirsty. He taught me which plants were safe to eat, how to raid the remains of squirrels’ hidden stores of nuts from last autumn’s harvest, and even to turn over dead logs and rocks to find fat white grubs. I made a revolted face the first time he held one of those squirming things before my eyes and challenged me to eat it. What choice did I have? I decided I’d rather stomach the insect than my brother’s teasing and let him pop it into my mouth, biting down hard to put an end to that sickening
wriggling
. I swallowed it so quickly that if my life depended on it, I couldn’t say what the thing tasted like.

“Well?” Aki regarded me curiously. “How was it?”

“Eat one yourself and you tell me.”

“I meant how did
you
like it?”

“Delicious,” I replied with a straight face. “The best thing I’ve ever eaten. A delicacy like that should be reserved solely for clan chieftains. Thank you, dear brother, but I’m not worthy to enjoy such a marvelous treat again.
Ever
.”

Aki snorted with laughter.

On a day when the sky was strewn with clouds and the sun goddess darted in and out of hiding, we emerged from the forest and gazed down at the village I hadn’t seen for almost five years. Aki and I stood with our backs to the trees, not saying a word. We had a clear view inside the palisade, though the cultivated fields were mostly out of sight, concealed by a curve of the land. We watched the people of the
deer clan come and go through their village gateway, saw smoke rising from their cook fires, listened to their voices on the cool, damp breeze. Neither one of us moved.

At last, I took a deep breath and began walking down the hillside. I paused after about twenty steps and turned. Aki hadn’t moved at all. He remained where he was, still as a stone.

“Do you want to wait for me here?” I asked gently. “I’ll find Hoshi, but I won’t tell her you’re here until I’ve talked to her and found out if she … if she …” I hesitated.

“If she still knows who I am?” Aki finished the thought for me. “Thank you for your offer, Little Sister. Your courage shames me. The gods should have let you be born first. You’d make a better chieftain for the Matsu.” He looked wistful. “Father is always telling me that a good chieftain leads by example. Lead me, Himiko.”

I stretched out my hand to my brother and waited for him to come away from the shelter of the trees and take it. I squeezed his fingers as hard as I could. “You will be the best chieftain our people ever had,” I told him. “And
you
will lead us all.”

We walked through the late-spring grass until we reached a narrow path of beaten earth that merged into a wider way. This broader road would have brought us across the moat and into the village, but we had no chance to follow it: we’d been seen. A trio of Shika men came running out to meet us. Their swords were sheathed, but their hands clutched the hilts, ready to draw iron in the time it takes to blink.

Aki and I stopped where we were. He dropped my hand
and stood with his arms spread, palms out, showing the men that he was not a danger. I did the same, even though I doubted they’d view a girl as a threat even if I’d been carrying a bow and arrows on my back,
two
swords at my side, and a polearm in my hands.

The man in the lead slowed his pace and squinted hard as he drew closer to us. He came to a halt and signaled his companions to do the same as he shielded his eyes to peer at us. “I know you,” he said, though with a slight note of doubt in his voice. “You’re that little girl I found years ago, in the field where the deer graze.”

“Not so little now, eh, Sora?” one of the Shika men said, chuckling. “That’s a nice-looking fawn you saved.”

“Think she’s come back to
thank
you?” a second man said with a snicker that made my ears burn.

“Shut up, you frog brains!” Sora barked. “These are our honored guests. Do you want me to ask Lady Ikumi if you’re showing them the proper sort of respect, saying such things? Or maybe I should just let him”—he swept his hand in Aki’s direction—“have a little time alone with you, to teach you the right way to talk to his sister?”

The two rude men swore they’d only been joking, babbled apologies, and begged Sora not to tell Lady Ikumi anything. He snorted and turned his back on them. “A fine welcome for you, after all these years, my friends,” he said to Aki and me. “But I hope you’ll find a better one under our chieftess’s roof. Come.”

We walked through the gates of the Shika village and soon found ourselves in the center of a crowd of curious faces. Some studied us closely and smiled as they recognized
us; others remained baffled. There was a lot of whispering, including any number of attempts to recall our names. In the five years since I’d last set foot within that village, the deer people had had more important things to bear in mind.

Then a well-remembered voice rang out to silence the murmurs: “Himiko! Himiko! You came back!” Her clanfolk scattered as Kaya dashed through their midst to greet me. I’d grown much taller than my friend, but the years had made her far sturdier, with wide hips, strong legs, and arms that held me pinned in a breath-stealing hug.

“Is it true?” Lady Ikumi arrived at a more dignified pace than her impetuous daughter. The Shika chieftess looked much as I remembered her, though there were some threads of white running through her shining black hair. “Lady Himiko! Lord Aki! Welcome back.” She opened her arms to us, and her face shone.

I wanted to laugh out loud. I wished I could dance. I longed to do both at once because I felt that nothing else was good enough to express my happiness.
Lady Ikumi knows our names! Kaya remembers me! Aki and I haven’t been forgotten! Oh, gods, grant that Hoshi still holds Aki in her memory too
.

As if in answer to my heartfelt hope, Kaya’s older sister Hoshi came trailing in her mother’s wake, accompanied by the rest of the chieftess’s children. She was still as pretty as I recalled, yet with a familiar sadness in her eyes. I recognized it far too easily: it was the same expression that had haunted my brother’s face ever since we’d parted from the deer clan.

I looked at Aki. My brother’s face was pale and his lips were parted, but he was unable to make a sound. His eyes
were fixed on Hoshi, and as their gazes met, I imagined a ribbon of light encircling them, becoming a glowing shell that held them both in a place no one else could go. My skin tingled with warmth: I knew that I stood in the presence of wondrous magic.

I was so fascinated watching the two of them that I paid only vague attention to what was going on around me. Lady Ikumi’s more formal greeting, her prayers of thanksgiving to the gods for having brought us, Kaya’s carefree chatter, the good-natured laughter of the deer clan—all these blended into one soothing current of sound, like the rustling of windblown leaves.

A sharp tap on my shoulder snapped me back to reality. “Wake
up
, Himiko,” Kaya said, nudging me for good measure. “Didn’t you hear Mother? We’re going to our house now.” She linked her arm through mine and strode away so abruptly that I stumbled along at her side.

“I’m sorry,” I said, with a backward glance to where Aki and Hoshi still stood unmoving just within the gateway. Many of the villagers remained watching them. I could hear them laughing, but it wasn’t a mean-spirited sound. “I was distracted.”

“By what?” my friend asked intently.

I didn’t want to respond. I felt that I shouldn’t have stared at Aki and Hoshi after all, no matter how pleased I was by their reunion. I could offer only a shrug.

Kaya was
not
satisfied with that.

“Hey,
answer
me! What are you doing, turning into another Hoshi?
Wonderful
.” Her sour-faced sarcasm shocked me, totally out of keeping with her usual cheery nature.
“She didn’t talk a lot before, but ever since you and your family left, she hasn’t said a word unless we pried it out of her. She doesn’t talk and she doesn’t listen, she just stares at
nothing
. We’re all sick and tired of having to repeat everything we say to her at least twice, and the sighing—!
Awful
. I wanted to dump a jar of cold water over her head to see if that would wake her up. The only reason I didn’t was Mother said it wouldn’t fix anything, and besides, Hoshi’s too tall. I can’t
reach
higher than her head unless she’s sitting down, and I don’t think pouring water on her feet would work, do you?”

I had to grin. “I think you won’t have to worry about any of that now, Kaya. And neither will I.” As we walked on, I told my friend about my brother’s long, sad separation from her sister. “That’s all over for both of them now, thank the gods. At least he went out hunting instead of sitting around and sighing. I don’t think I could have stood that.”

“Lucky you.” Kaya stuck out her lower lip, then giggled. She just couldn’t hold on to a bad mood if she tried.