He had brought her with him, as custom dictated she should visit Shigeru’s grave. He thought we should both stay at the temple while arrangements were made for the marriage. Shizuka of course accompanied her and found an opportunity to speak privately to me.
“I knew we’d find you here,” she said. “The Kikuta have been furious, but my uncle persuaded them to give you a little more leeway. Your time’s running out, though.”
“I am ready to go to them,” I replied.
“They will come for you tonight.”
“Does Lady Shirakawa know?”
“I have tried to warn her, and I have tried to warn Arai.” Shizuka’s voice was heavy with frustration.
For Arai had very different plans. “You are Shigeru’s legal heir,” he said as we sat in the guest room of the temple, after he had paid his respects to the grave. “It’s entirely fitting that you marry Lady Shirakawa. We will secure Maruyama for her, and then turn our attention to the Otori next spring. I need an ally in Hagi.” He was scrutinizing my face. “I don’t mind telling you, your reputation makes you a desirable one.”
“Lord Arai is too generous,” I replied. “However, there are other considerations that may prevent me from complying with your wishes.”
“Don’t be a fool,” he said shortly. “I believe my wishes and yours mesh very well together.”
My mind had gone empty: My thoughts had all taken flight like Sesshu’s birds. I knew Shizuka would be listening from outside. Arai had been Shigeru’s ally; he had protected Kaede; now he had conquered most of the Three Countries. If I owed anyone allegiance, it was to him. I did not think I could just disappear without giving him some explanation.
“Anything I achieved was with the help of the Tribe,” I said slowly.
A flicker of anger crossed his face, but he did not speak.
“I made a pact with them, and to keep my side of it, I must give up the Otori name and go with them.”
“Who are the Tribe?” he exploded. “Everywhere I turn I run into them. They are like rats in the grain store. Even those closest to me. . . !”
“We could not have defeated Iida without their help,” I said.
He shook his large head and sighed. “I don’t want to hear this nonsense. You were adopted by Shigeru, you are Otori, you will marry Lady Shirakawa. That is my command.”
“Lord Arai.” I bowed to the ground, fully aware that I could not obey him.
After visiting the grave, Kaede had returned to the women’s guest house and I had no chance to speak to her. I longed to see her but also feared it. I was afraid of her power over me, and mine over her. I was afraid of hurting her and, worse, of not daring to hurt her. That night, sleepless, I went again and sat in the garden, longing for silence but always listening. I knew I would go with Kikuta when he came for me that night, but I could not rid my mind of the image and memory of Kaede, the sight of her next to Iida’s body, the feel of her skin against mine, her frailty as I entered her. The idea of never feeling that again was so painful, it took the breath from my lungs.
I heard the soft tread of a woman’s feet. Shizuka placed her hand, so like mine in shape and design, on my shoulder and whispered, “Lady Shirakawa wishes to see you.”
“I must not,” I replied.
“They will be here before dawn,” Shizuka said. “I have told her they will never relinquish their claim on you. In fact, because of your disobedience in Inuyama, the master has already decided that if you do not go with them tonight, you will die. She wants to say good-bye.”
I followed her. Kaede was sitting at the far end of the veranda, her figure lit dimly by the setting moon. I thought I would recognize her outline anywhere, the shape of her head, the set of her shoulders, the characteristic movement as she turned her face towards me.
The moonlight glinted on her eyes, making them like pools of black mountain water when the snow covers the land and the world is all white and gray. I dropped on my knees before her. The silvery wood smelled of the forest and the shrine, of sap and incense.
“Shizuka says you must leave me, that we cannot be married.” Her voice was low and bewildered.
“The Tribe will not allow me to lead that life. I am not—can never now be—a lord of the Otori clan.”
“But Arai will protect you. It’s what he wants. Nothing need stand in our way.”
“I made a deal with the man who is the master of my family,” I said. “My life is his from now on.”
In that moment, in the silence of the night, I thought of my father, who had tried to escape his blood destiny and had been murdered for it. I did not think my sadness could be any deeper, but this thought dredged out a new level.
Kaede said, “In eight years as a hostage I never asked anyone for anything. Iida Sadamu ordered me to kill myself: I did not plead with him. He was going to rape me: I did not beg for mercy. But I am asking you now: Don’t leave me. I am begging you to marry me. I will never ask anyone for anything again.”
She threw herself to the ground before me, her hair and her robe touching the floor with a silky hiss. I could smell her perfume. Her hair was so close, it brushed my hands.
“I’m afraid,” she whispered. “I’m afraid of myself. I am only safe with you.”
It was even more painful than I had anticipated. And what made it worse was the knowledge that if we could just lie together, skin against skin, all pain would cease.
“The Tribe will kill me,” I said finally.
“There are worse things than death! If they kill you, I will kill myself and follow you.” She took my hands in hers and leaned towards me. Her eyes were burning, her hands dry and hot, the bones as fragile as a bird’s. I could feel the blood racing beneath the skin. “If we can’t live together we should die together.”
Her voice was urgent and excited. The night air seemed suddenly chill. In songs and romances, couples died together for love. I remembered Kenji’s words to Shigeru: You are in love with death, like all your class. Kaede was of the same class and background, but I was not. I did not want to die. I was not yet eighteen years old.
My silence was enough answer for her. Her eyes searched my face. “I will never love anyone but you,” she said.
It seemed we had hardly ever looked directly at each other. Our glances had always been stolen and indirect. Now that we were parting, we could gaze into each other’s eyes, beyond modesty or shame. I could feel her pain and her despair. I wanted to ease her suffering, but I could not do what she asked. Out of my confusion, as I held her hands and stared deeply into her eyes, some power came. Her gaze intensified as if she were drowning. Then she sighed and her eyes closed. Her body swayed. Shizuka leaped forward from the shadows and caught her as she fell. Together we lowered her carefully to the floor. She was deeply asleep, as I had been under Kikuta’s eyes in the hidden room.
I shivered, suddenly terribly cold.
“You should not have done that,” Shizuka whispered.
I knew my cousin was right. “I did not mean to,” I said. “I’ve never done it to a human being before. Only to dogs.”
She slapped me on the arm. “Go to the Kikuta. Go and learn to control your skills. Maybe you’ll grow up there.”
“Will she be all right?”
“I don’t know about these Kikuta things,” Shizuka said.
“I slept for twenty-four hours.”
“Presumably, whoever put you to sleep knew what they were doing,” she retorted.
From far away down the mountain path I could hear people approaching: two men walking quietly, but not quietly enough for me.
“They’re coming,” I said.
Shizuka knelt beside Kaede and lifted her with her easy strength. “Good-bye, Cousin,” she said, her voice still angry.
“Shizuka . . .” I began as she walked towards the room. She stopped for a moment but did not turn.
“My horse, Raku—will you see Lady Shirakawa takes him?” I had nothing else to give her.
&
nbsp; Shizuka nodded and moved away into the shadows, out of my sight. I heard the door slide, her tread on the matting, the faint creak of the floor as she laid Kaede down.
I went back to my room and gathered together my belongings. I owned nothing, really: the letter from Shigeru, my knife, and Jato. Then I went to the temple, where Makoto knelt in meditation. I touched him on the shoulder, and he rose and came outside with me.
“I’m leaving,” I whispered. “Don’t tell anyone before morning.”
“You could stay here.”
“It’s not possible.”
“Come back then when you can. We can hide you here. There are so many secret places in the mountains. No one would ever find you.”
“Maybe I’ll need that one day,” I replied. “I want you to keep my sword for me.”
He took Jato. “Now I know you’ll be back.” He put out his hand and traced the outline of my mouth, the edge of bone beneath my cheek, the nape of my neck.
I was light-headed with lack of sleep, with grief and desire. I wanted to lie down and be held by someone, but the footsteps were crossing the gravel now.
“Who’s there?” Makoto turned, the sword ready in his hand. “Shall I rouse the temple?”
“No! These are the people I must go with. Lord Arai must not know.”
The two of them, my former teacher Muto Kenji and the Kikuta master, waited in the moonlight. They were in traveling clothes, unremarkable, rather impoverished, two brothers perhaps, scholars or unsuccessful merchants. You had to know them as I did to see the alert stance, the hard line of muscle that spoke of their great physical strength, the ears and eyes that missed nothing, the supreme intelligence that made warlords like Iida and Arai seem brutal and clumsy.
I dropped to the ground before the Kikuta master and bowed my head to the dust.
“Stand up, Takeo,” he said, and to my surprise both he and Kenji embraced me.
Makoto clasped my hands. “Farewell. I know we’ll meet again. Our lives are bound together.”
“Show me Lord Shigeru’s grave,” Kikuta said to me gently, in the way I remembered: as one who understood my true nature.
But for you he would not be in it, I thought, but I did not speak it. In the peace of the night I began to accept that it was Shigeru’s fate to die the way he did, just as it was his fate now to become a god, a hero to many people, who would come here to the shrine to pray to him, to seek his help, for hundreds of years to come, as long as Terayama stood—maybe forever.
We stood with bowed heads before the newly carved stone. Who knows what Kenji and Kikuta said in their hearts? I asked Shigeru’s forgiveness, thanked him again for saving my life in Mino, and bade him farewell. I thought I heard his voice and saw his openhearted smile.
The wind stirred the ancient cedars; the night insects kept up their insistent music. It would always be like this, I thought, summer after summer, winter after winter, the moon sinking towards the west, giving the night back to the stars, and they, in an hour or two, surrendering it to the brightness of the sun.
The sun would pass above the mountains, pulling the shadows of the cedars after it, until it descended again below the rim of the hills. So the world went, and humankind lived on it as best they could, between the darkness and the light.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The main characters, Takeo and Kaede, came into my head on my first trip to Japan in 1993. Many people have helped me research and realize their story. I would like to thank the Asialink Foundation, who awarded me a fellowship in 1999 to spend three months in Japan, the Australia Council, the Department of Trade and Foreign Affairs and the Australian Embassy in Tokyo, and ArtsSA, the South Australian Government Arts Department. In Japan I was sponsored by Yamaguchi Prefecture’s Akiyoshidai International Arts Village whose staff gave me invaluable help in exploring the landscape and the history of Western Honshuu. I would particularly like to thank Mr. Kori Yoshinori, Ms. Matsunaga Yayoi, and Ms. Matsubara Manami. I am especially grateful to Mrs. Tokorigi Masako for showing me the Sesshu paintings and gardens and to her husband, Miki, for information on horses in the medieval period.
Spending time in Japan with two theater companies gave me many insights—deepest thanks to Kazenoko in Tokyo and Kyushuu and Gekidan Urinko in Nagoya, and to Ms. Kimura Miyo, a wonderful traveling companion, who accompanied me to Kanazawa and the Nakasendo and who has answered many questions for me about language and literature.
I thank Mr. Mogi Masaru and Mrs. Mogi Akiko for their help with research, their suggestions for names, and, above all, their ongoing friendship.
In Australia I would like to thank my two Japanese teachers, Mrs. Thuy Coombes and Mrs. Etsuko Wilson; Simon Higgins, who made some invaluable suggestions; my agent, Jenny Darling; my son Matt, my first reader on all three books; and the rest of my family for not only putting up with but sharing my obsessions.
I would also like to acknowledge the insights and expert knowledge of the samurai history archive on the World Wide Web and members of the discussion forum.
Calligraphy was drawn for me by Ms. Sugiyama Kazuko and Etsuko Wilson. I am immensely grateful to them.
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GRASS FORHISPILLOW
Book Two in the
Tales of Otori Trilogy
Visit the website at http://theotori.com
1
hirakawa Kaede lay deeply asleep in the state close to unconsciousness that the Kikuta can deliver with their gaze. The night passed, the stars paled as dawn came, the sounds of the temple rose and fell around her, but she did not stir. She did not hear her companion, Shizuka, call anxiously to her from time to time, trying to wake her. She did not feel Shizuka’s hand on her forehead. She did not hear Lord Arai Daiichi’s men as they came with increasing impatience to the veranda, telling Shizuka that the warlord was waiting to speak to Lady Shirakawa. Her breathing was peaceful and calm, her features as still as a mask’s.
Towards evening the quality of the sleep seemed to change. Her eyelids flickered and her lips appeared to smile. Her fingers, which had been curled gently against her palms, spread.
Be patient. He will come for you.
Kaede was dreaming that she had been turned to ice. The words echoed lucidly in her head. There was no fear in the dream, just the feeling of being held by something cool and white in a world that was silent, frozen and enchanted.
Her eyes opened.
It was still light. The shadows told her it was evening. A wind bell rang softly, once, and then the air was still. The day she had no recollection of must have been a warm one. Her skin was damp beneath her hair. Birds were chattering from the eaves, and she could hear the clip of the swallows’ beaks as they caught the last insects of the day. Soon they would fly south. It was already autumn.
The sound of the birds reminded her of the painting Takeo had given her, a little over a month before, at this same place, a sketch of a wild forest bird that had made her think of freedom; it had been lost along with everything else she possessed, her wedding robes, all her other clothes, when the castle at Inuyama burned. She possessed nothing. Shizuka had found some old robes for her at the house they had stayed in, and had borrowed combs and other things. She had never been in such a place before, a merchant’s house, smelling of fermenting soy, full of people, whom she tried to keep away from, though every now and then the maids came to peep at her through the screens.
She was afraid everyone would see what had happened to her on the night the castle fell. She had killed a man, she had lain with another, she had fought alongside him wielding the dead man’s sword. She could not believe she had done these things. Sometimes she thought she was bewitched, as people said. They said of her that any man who desired her died—and it was true. Men had died. But not Takeo.
Ever since she had been assaulted by the guard when she was a hostage in Noguchi castle, she had been afraid of all men. Her terror of Iida had driven her to defend herself against him; but she had had no fear o
f Takeo. She had only wanted to hold him closer. Since their first meeting in Tsuwano her body had longed for his. She had wanted him to touch her, she had wanted the feel of his skin against hers. Now, as she remembered that night, she understood with renewed clarity that she could marry no one but him, she would love no one but him. I will be patient, she promised. But where had those words come from?
She turned her head slightly and saw Shizuka’s outline, on the edge of the veranda. Beyond the woman rose the ancient trees of the shrine. The air smelled of cedars and dust. The temple bell tolled the evening hour. Kaede did not speak. She did not want to talk to anyone, or hear any voice. She wanted to go back to that place of ice where she had been sleeping.
Then, beyond the specks of dust that floated in the last rays of the sun, she saw something: a spirit, she thought, yet not only a spirit for it had substance; it was there, undeniable and real, gleaming like fresh snow. She stared, half-rose, but in the moment that she recognized her, the White Goddess, the all-compassionate, the all-merciful, was gone.
“What is it?” Shizuka heard the movement and ran to her side. Kaede looked at Shizuka and saw the deep concern in her eyes. She realized how precious this woman had become to her, her closest, indeed her only, friend.
“Nothing. A half-dream.”
“Are you all right? How do you feel?”
“I don’t know. I feel . . .” Kaede’s voice died away. She gazed at Shizuka for several moments. “Have I been asleep all day? What happened to me?”