Blood Ninja (15 page)

“Oh,” said the old man from the ground, where he had not seen Kira’s gesture. “Oh, thank you, my lord. Thank you for sparing m—”

One of the lower-ranking samurai cut through the man’s neck even as he spoke, and the head as it rolled along the mossy ground continued to utter a wheezy, whistley
eeeee
sound as it finished its final word.

The riders departed.

Shusaku released Taro. “Don’t worry,” said the ninja. “They’re looking for us, but they’re going the wrong way.”

Taro broke away. “You think I’m worried for
myself
?”

“Then what—”

Taro turned away. He didn’t want to see the ninja’s cowardly face. He thought if he looked at Shusaku he would be sick. “I’m thinking of this man, who died for no reason.”

“Now you know what the samurai you admire so much are really like,” said Shusaku.

“Really?” asked Taro, still not turning. “Because he would still be alive if it weren’t for you.”

Trembling, Taro walked over to the old man, still not looking back. He kneeled by the corpse and whispered
“Namu Amida Butsu”
eight times, hoping that this prayer to the Buddha of Compassion might help the old man’s soul on its way to Sukhavarti, the Pure Land. The man had died suddenly, with no time to prepare himself. He would be lucky not to descend to the realm of the hungry ghosts.

For the past few days Taro had thought only of his parents—of finding his mother, of the pain of his father’s loss. He had even started to warm to Shusaku a little, to admire him for doing a little more than would have been expected—giving his mother that pigeon, or how, as they passed through the blighted countryside, the ninja had stopped where an emaciated old woman sat by the road and handed her a coin. When Taro had commented on it, Shusaku had put a finger to his lips and shushed him. “Don’t go telling anyone,” he’d said. “I might lose the respect of my fellow ninjas. We are an amoral sort, you know. Assassinations, secret missions, murder. A man has a reputation to uphold.”

Now, though, Taro saw in his mind only the old man falling.

As if it came from another world, he heard Hiro say to Shusaku, “He was looking for us. And he wore the
mon
of Lord Oda.”

“Yes,” said Shusaku. “I think they must have found the men from the palanquin.”

“They’re going to a lot of trouble to hunt us down,” said Hiro.

Shusaku grunted. “It would seem so.” His tone did not invite further comment.

Taro was surprised when Shusaku knelt beside him and began reciting the same prayer to Amida Buddha. Taro stood, tears welling up in his eyes. “Why did you stop me from helping? We could have saved him.”

“Because we would have had to kill the samurai,” Shusaku replied, his voice as calm as ever. “And a missing patrol would have raised suspicion, forcing us to kill whoever came looking for
them
. And what if one of them got away, to tell Oda that you live, still?” He clicked his tongue. “Better that we keep you hidden, that you be thought dead, than have to kill all those men. And who says a farmer is worth more than a soldier? It is only your head full of romance and honor that tells you so. The leader, Kira, was cruel, I’ll admit, but I would bet you that the others are only ordinary boys, far from home and without anyone to guide them. So which would you rather on your conscience—one dead farmer or six dead soldiers?”

“I would rather neither,” said Taro. Above the tops of the pines, a cloud moved to uncover the moon, causing a dull light to glow. It suffused the old man’s corpse and the flowers, making the scene eerily beautiful.

“That is not your choice,” replied the ninja. “We are not in a
monagatori
tale here, boy. Leave an old man to die, so as not to have to kill many more. That is the best we can do.”

Taro nodded. But he didn’t agree. The best they could do was better than that, and he was going to find a way to achieve it. He would find his mother, and he would avenge his father.

And then he would go looking for those who preyed on the weak, and he would make them pay.

Clouds parted over the waning moon, illuminating the world with dull light.

Taro was growing to enjoy this itinerant life. His muscles were taut from walking, and the journey gave him a sense of purpose he had never before experienced. Shusaku pointed now to smoke, rising on the other side of a clump of trees. “That is the village where the abbess lives. We’ll stay there for a day or two. Then, from there, the mountain where I live is only a night’s walk.”

Despite knowing that once they reached the mountain they would with luck learn where his mother had hidden, Taro couldn’t help feeling a guilty pang of disappointment. He loved life in the open countryside. The blood of a rabbit sang in his veins, from yesterday’s meal, not enough to tide him for long, but enough that hunger didn’t stab his stomach; the land beneath his feet was springy, seeming to want to help him on his way.

As they approached the little village, they had no choice but to step out from the trees and onto the road, but they had left Kenji
Kira far behind and traveling in the opposite direction. Shusaku was confident that they could enter the village safely—and anyway, they needed a place to stay for a while before going on to his mountain home. Taro needed new string for his bow, and all of them needed new clothes. Taro was still dressed in the too-long trousers and robe of the ambassador whose palanquin they had stolen.

As they passed the first houses, Taro looked around at the blue lanterns. Where the plain around Nagoya had been half-emptied of people, this village seemed warm and welcoming. Smoke rose from the little houses, all of them seeming inhabited.
Gaku
charms had been hung on the eaves of the houses to ward off bad spirits, and the charms chimed softly in the breeze.

As they had walked,
obon
season had begun in earnest. In every window burned a light to guide departed loved ones home. Taro felt a pang of longing for his old life, for his mother, who always sought his help in collecting and arranging the food for the spirits, laying out bowls of rice on the
shoryodana
shelf, and lighting the
obon
lamp for the first time.

He wondered if anyone would light a lamp for his father in the hut by the shore in Shirahama.

Shusaku crept toward the outlying houses, navigating by the light of the lamps—these paper lights guiding a different spirit from the ones intended, as he slipped into the village.

Taro and Hiro followed. Their senses were improving all the time, and they could now walk almost as soundlessly as the ninja. Then a snatch of melody carried on the night air toward them—a girl, singing the
obon
song.

Obon is a joyous season!

On this day my beloved ones

Who have departed—

Even they return to this place
.

Shusaku paused, listening to the voice. “That’s Yukiko,” he said. He led Taro and Hiro down a side alley and to a door set
into a wall. Here the singing was louder, and Taro could hear another girl joining in. “And that’s Heiko,” said Shusaku. “Her sister.” Glancing up and down the street to check that no one was watching, he took the long black scarf from a fold of his kimono, and retied his mask.

“I thought you said you knew these people,” said Taro.

“I do. But they don’t know I’m tattooed. It’s a long story.” Shusaku finished arranging the folds of black fabric, then pushed open the door, gently.

Taro looked in to what seemed a scene from an
ukiyo-e
painting, and couldn’t help letting out a soft gasp. In the moonlight the garden could have been a dream. A miniature landscape of pool and stream and trees, it seemed perfect and glowing in the bluish light, and Taro felt that if he stepped forward it might vanish, revealing itself to be nothing more than an illusion painted on the air by a playful spirit. Suffused with the light of the moon, the scene was also lit by candlelight that shone from inside the house, throwing a soft glow through tall shoji panels onto the grass and moss.

In the center of the garden a heron stood very still in the middle of an ornamental pond, as if admiring its reflection, cast clearly onto the water by the moon. Across the pond a weeping willow touched the soft grass with its fronds. At the far end of the garden rose a rock garden that resembled mountainous scenery, even down to small bonsai pine trees.

Between the mountains and the pool ran a stream, its waters gurgling quietly. A bridge arced over it, elegantly curved, and on the bridge stood the slender silhouettes of three women—or rather, Taro realized, a woman and two girls.

As Taro watched, the girls knelt by the stream. They held oblong lanterns, windowed by shoji paper, each side painted brightly with a different primary color to represent the four elements. The
shoryo-nagashi
, able to carry messages to the dead. Inside the lanterns candles flickered, casting colored light on the cold water of the stream, and the mossy forest floor.

“I call on the spirits of my father and mother, and all unresolved karma, to accept these messages,” said one of the girls, her voice a little choked. She placed her lamp in the stream and it floated, spinning, away. Speaking the same words, the other girl placed her lamp in the water, and it raced after its companion.

Taro felt a wave of pity.
They’re sending
shoryo-nagashi
to their parents
, he thought.
They must be orphans
.

Having waited for the floating lanterns to spin away down the stream, and out of the garden through a hole in the wall, Shusaku stepped forward into the garden. The heron turned its head to look at him, then launched itself, ungainly yet somehow graceful, into the air.

Taro and Hiro followed Shusaku into the garden, as the taller of the girls turned and stifled a gasp. “A ninja!”

Shusaku put a finger to his lips. “It’s me, Shusaku,” he hissed.

“Uncle Shusaku!” said the girl, no quieter than before.

Both girls left the bridge and ran over, and Taro saw that the one who had spoken—she seemed to be the elder—was slim and tall, with an intelligent, kind face. Her sister was more muscular, her hair shorter and her face more guarded.

Shusaku closed the door behind him as the girls walked over, followed by the most beautiful woman Taro had ever seen.

Shusaku bowed. “Abbess,” he said.

“Shusaku. You have returned.” The woman’s voice was neutral, betraying no pleasure or pain. “But why do you wear the mask in my home?”

Shusaku shook his head. “I can’t explain right now. Later.”

Taro stared. Could this really be the “old woman” Shusaku had spoken of? She was so elegant, so smooth-skinned, so graceful …

But then the woman beckoned him forward, and Taro saw that her face was lined with fine wrinkles, and her hair was not dyed by the moonlight but was actually white.

The woman turned to Shusaku. “The boy. It is he? It is the—”

“Yes,” said Shusaku, cutting her off. Taro wondered what she had been about to say about him. “Is it so obvious?” he asked.
“How did you know it was not the other?” He indicated Hiro, who fidgeted, squirming with embarrassment.

The woman looked at Hiro, and laughed. “No. He is a fine boy, but …”—she turned back to Taro—“destiny clings to this one like smoke.” She examined Taro, then turned back to Shusaku. “You have made him a vampire,” she said. It was a statement, but it was also a question.

“Yes,” Shusaku almost sighed. “It was unavoidable.”

The younger girl—Yukiko—sucked in a sharp breath, frowning at Taro. He took a step backward, seeing the hostility in that look, but she composed her face into a smile, and he relaxed.

The woman nodded slowly. “If you say so, then it must be so.” She looked at Taro. “Later I will read his fortune. It should be interesting. In the meantime perhaps you had better tell me why you have come.”

“We needed a safe place to stay.”

“You will always have that here,” said the woman. “But your mission was only to save the boy. Why bring him with you?”

“Things became … complicated. They sent many ninja against him. I had to turn him to save him.”

“So you said.” She spread her hands. “Well, you’re always welcome here, as I said. We have food and we have fresh clothes, and rooms to sleep where the sunlight cannot enter. Stay as long as you like. The girls will be pleased to spend some time with their uncle and protector.”

Shusaku nodded, then looked at the taller girl. “Heiko. It is a pleasure to see you again.” He turned to the other. “Yukiko. You have grown.”

“That is what girls do, is it not?” said the girl. She was pretty despite her more athletic build, and had a cheeky look about her.

“I suppose it is,” said Shusaku, smiling. Then he turned to Taro and Hiro, introducing them to the girls. Yukiko gave Taro a warm smile as she bowed to him, and he thought he must have imagined that sharp look when Shusaku had revealed that he was a vampire.