Emperor of the Eight Islands: Book 1 in the Tale of Shikanoko (The Tale of Shikanoko series) (2 page)

“Those are his weapons,” Nobuto cried. “That is Ameyumi.”

“Then Shigetomo is dead,” Sademasa said. “He would never have surrendered the bow alive.”

Afterward, Kazumaru was not sure what he remembered and what he had dreamed. His father and his clever, witty mother often played Go in the long, snowbound winters at Kumayama. He had grown up with their sounds, the quiet clack of stones on the boards, the rattle in the wooden bowls. That day he and his father heard them together. They had ridden far ahead of the others. His father always liked to be in the lead, and the black horse was strong and eager. It had been a present from Lord Kiyoyori, to whom the family were vassals and on whose orders they had ridden so far north.

His father reined in the horse, dismounted, and lifted him down. The horse began to graze. They walked through the long grass and almost stepped on the fawn, lying in its form. He saw its dark eyes, its delicate mouth, and then it was on its feet and leaping away. He knew the other men would have killed it, had they been there, but his father laughed and let it go.

“Not worth Ameyumi’s time,” he said. Ameyumi was the name of his bow, a family treasure, huge, perfectly balanced, made of many layers of compressed wood with intricate bindings.

They went stealthily toward the trees from which the sounds came. He remembered feeling it was a game, tiptoeing through the grass that was as tall as he was.

His father stopped, holding his breath, so Kazumaru knew something had startled him. He bent and picked him up and in that moment Kazumaru glimpsed the tengu playing Go beneath the trees, their wings, their beaked faces, their taloned hands.

Then his father was striding back to the place where they had found the fawn. He could feel his father’s heart beating loud through his chest.

“Wait here,” he said, placing his son in the trampled grass of the form. “Be like the deer’s child. Don’t move.”

“Where are you going?”

“I am going to play Go,” he replied, laughing again. “How often do you get the chance to play Go against tengu?”

Kazumaru didn’t want him to. He had heard stories about tengu, mountain goblins, very clever, very cruel. But his father was afraid of nothing and always did exactly as he pleased.

The men found Shigetomo’s body later that day. Kazumaru was not allowed to see it, but he heard the shocked whispers, and remembered the beaks, the claws as the tengu flew overhead.
They saw me
, he thought.
They know me.

When they returned home, Sademasa reported that his older brother had been killed by wild tribes in the north, but Kazumaru knew, no matter who actually killed him, that he had died because he had played Go with the tengu and lost.

*   *   *

The news of his father’s death plunged Kazumaru’s mother into a grief so extreme, everyone feared she could not survive it. Sademasa pleaded with her to marry him in his brother’s place, saying he would bring Kazumaru up as his own son, even swearing an oath on a sacred ox-headed talisman.

“Both of you remind me of him all the time,” she said. “No, I must cut my hair and become a nun, as far away from Kumayama as possible.” As soon as the winter was over, she left, with hardly a word of farewell, beyond telling Kazumaru to obey his uncle.

The family held a small parcel of land, confirmed by Lord Kiyoyori, on the side of the mountain known as Kumayama. It was made up of steep crags and deep, sunless valleys, where a few rice paddies had been carved out on either side of the rivers that tumbled from the mountain between forests of cypress and cryptomeria, full of bears, wolves, serow and deer, and boars, and groves of bamboo, home to quail and pheasants. It was seven days’ journey east of the capital and four days in the other direction from the Miboshi stronghold of Minatogura.

As the years went by, it became apparent that Sademasa was not going to keep his oath. He grew accustomed to being the Kumayama lord and was reluctant to give it up. Power, along with unease at his own faithlessness, unleashed his brutal nature. He treated his nephew harshly, under the pretext of turning him into a warrior. Before he was twelve years old, Kazumaru realized that each day he lived brought his uncle fresh disappointment that he was not dead.

Some of Sademasa’s warriors, in particular one Naganori, whose son was a year older than Kazumaru, were saddened by the harsh treatment of their former lord’s son. Others such as Nobuto admired Sademasa for his ruthlessness. The rest shrugged their shoulders, especially after Sademasa married and had children of his own, thinking that it made no difference, as Kazumaru would probably never be allowed to grow up, let alone inherit the estate. Most of them were surprised that he survived his brutalizing childhood and even flourished in some ways, for he practiced obsessively with the bow and from his rages came a superhuman strength. At twelve years he suddenly grew tall, and soon after could string and draw a bow like a grown man. But he was as shy and fierce as a young wolf. Only Naganori’s son, who received the name Nagatomo in his coming-of-age ceremony, was in any way a friend.

He was the only person to whom Kazumaru said goodbye when, in the autumn of his sixteenth year, his uncle announced he was taking him hunting in the mountains.

“If I don’t come back, you’ll know he has killed me,” Kazumaru said. “Next year I come of age, but he will never step aside for me. He has grown too fond of being the lord of Kumayama. He intends to get rid of me in the forest.”

“I wish I could come with you,” Nagatomo said. “But your uncle has expressly forbidden it.”

“That proves I am right,” Kazumaru replied. “But even if he doesn’t kill me I will not be coming back. There’s nothing for me here. I’ve only the vaguest memories of what it was like before. I remember not being afraid all the time, being loved and admired. Sometimes I daydream about what might have happened if my father had not died, if my mother had not left, if more of the men were loyal to me … but that’s the way it turned out. Don’t grieve for me. I can’t go on living in this way. I pray every day to escape somehow—if the only way is through death, so be it.”

2

KAZUMARU/SHIKANOKO

The summer storms had abated and every day the stain of red leaves descended farther from the peaks. That year’s fawns were almost full grown but still followed their mothers through the shade-dappled forest.

There was a famous old stag with a fine set of antlers that Sademasa had long desired, but the creature was cunning and cautious and never allowed itself to be encircled. This would be the year, Sademasa declared, that the stag would surrender to him.

He took his nephew, his favorite retainer, Nobuto, and one other man. They went on foot, for the terrain was too rough even for the sure-footed horses that grazed on the lower slopes of Kumayama. They lived like wild men, gathering nuts and berries, shooting pheasants and setting traps for hares, every day going farther into the pathless forest, now and then catching glimpses of their prey, then losing it again until they came upon its tracks in the soft earth or its brown compact scat. Kazumaru expected his uncle to grow impatient, but instead Sademasa became almost jovial, as though he were about to be relieved of a burden he had carried for a long time. At night the men told ghost stories about tengu and mountain sorcerers, and all the ways young boys had disappeared. Kazumaru swore he would not let himself be killed along with the stag. He hardly dared sleep but sometimes fell into a kind of waking dream and heard the clack of Go stones and saw the eagle eyes of tengu turned toward him.

They came one afternoon to the summit of a steep crag and the stag stood before them, its antlers gleaming in the western rays of the sun. Its flanks were heaving with the effort of the climb. The men were panting. There was a moment of stillness. Sademasa and Kazumaru both had their bows drawn. The other two men stood with knives ready. Sademasa gestured to Kazumaru to move around to the left, and drew his bow. Kazumaru was about to draw his, seeing where he would aim, right at the heart. The stag looked at him, its eyes wide with exertion and fear. Then its gaze flickered toward Sademasa and Kazumaru followed it. In that instant he saw his uncle’s bow was aimed not at the stag but at him. Then the stag was leaping straight at him in its desperate lunge to escape. The arrow flew, the stag collided with Kazumaru and sent him crashing down with it into the valley below.

The animal broke his fall. As they both lay unmoving, winded, he could feel the frantic beat of its heart beneath him. He reached for the antlers and grasped them, then stood, fumbling for his knife. The deer was wounded, its legs broken. Its eyes watched him, unblinking. He prayed briefly and slit its throat, the hot blood pouring from it as its life slipped away.

Thick bushes hid him from the men above. He could hear their shouts but made no sound in response. He wondered if his uncle’s desire for the antlers would be so great that he would follow him down the cliff, but the only way was to jump or fall. When silence returned he dragged the stag as far as he could, finding a small hollow under a bank filled with dry leaves. He lay down with the dead beast in his arms, slaking his thirst in its blood, reliving the moment on the cliff. It would have been easy to tell himself it was an accident, but it seemed important to face the truth. His uncle had aimed at him, but the stag had taken the arrow. It had saved his life. And then he felt again his own fall, the astonishment of flight, his hand gripping the bow as if it would hold him up, too young to believe in his own mortality yet expecting incredulously to die.

All night he sensed wild animals circling, drawn by the smell of blood. He heard the pad of their feet, the rustling of leaves. The sky was ablaze with stars, the River of Heaven pouring light.

At dawn the stag had cooled. He moved it into the clearing and set about skinning it, carefully cutting out the brainpan and the antlers, regretful for the way life had vanished so quickly from the eyes and face, wishing it could be restored, all the time filled with gratitude.

He found flintlike stones and spent the morning scraping the skin clean. The sun came around the valley and for a few hours it was hot. In the early afternoon he carved several strips of meat from the haunches, thin so they could dry quickly, and threaded them on a shaft cut from an oak tree, placing leaves between them. He left the rest of the carcass for the foxes and wolves and began to walk toward the north.

Mostly he walked all night; the moon was waxing toward full, bringing the first frosts. He slept for brief periods in the middle of the day, after softening the deer hide with water or his own urine and spreading it out to dry. He saw no one, but on the third day he became aware an animal was tracking him. He heard the pad and rustle of its tread and saw the green gleam of its eyes. Several times he set an arrow to the bowstring, but then the eyes vanished and he did not shoot. He did not want to lose an arrow in the dark.

It seemed to be guiding him or, he reflected uneasily, herding him. From time to time he thought it had gone, but at nightfall it always returned. Once he caught a glimpse of it and knew from its size and color that it was a wolf, drawn by the scent of the deerskin and the meat. He and his uncle had pursued the stag to the point of exhaustion and now the wolf was doing the same to him. It was driving him farther and farther into the forest, and when he was exhausted and weakened by hunger it would spring at his throat. He tried to outwit it, pretending to sleep then rising soundlessly, changing direction, but it seemed aware of his intentions even before he was. He saw its green eyes shining in his path.

One morning at dawn he stopped beside a stream that flowed through an upland clearing from a spring farther up the mountain. He had eaten the last of the dried meat a day ago. A path had been worn through the grass and there were tracks at the water’s edge. He saw that animals came to drink there: deer, foxes, wolves. He slaked his own thirst warily, gulping quickly from cupped hands. Then he hid upwind with arrow drawn.

He must have dozed off, for a sudden movement woke him. He thought he was dreaming. Two animals appeared walking awkwardly side by side, their heads turned toward each other. They were carrying something between them, in their mouths. They walked strangely, as though they were not quite alive. Their heads were lacquered skulls, their teeth sharp and glistening, their eyes bright shards of lapis lazuli. Their skins did not cover flesh but seemed to be packed with straw and twigs. He caught their smell of smoke and putrefaction; his stomach heaved and his guts twisted.

As they came closer he saw the object they carried in their mouths was a two-handled water jar. They stood in the pool and lowered the jug into the stream. When it had filled they turned and walked back along the path, staggering a little and spilling water as they went.

Kazumaru followed them as though in a dream, without questioning but not without fear. He could hear the thump of his blood in his skull and chest. He knew he was approaching the lair of a mountain sorcerer, just as his uncle’s men had described. He wanted to flee, yet he was driven forward not only by his own curiosity and hunger but also by the wolf, which now padded openly behind him.

He passed a rock that looked a little like a bear and then a tree stump with two jagged branches like a hare’s ears. Closer to a small hut, which stood in the shelter of a paulownia tree, the forms became more lifelike and precise: statues carved from wood and stone, some with the same lacquered skulls, some draped in skins or decorated with antlers; owls, eagles, and cranes with feathers; bats with leathery wings.

The hut’s roof was thatched with bones, its walls covered with skins. A strong smell of urine came from a large bucket by the door. One detached part of his mind thought,
He must use it for tanning hides
, just as his own urine had softened the stag’s skin. Two fox cubs, real, were snarling at each other over a dead rabbit. The wolf sat on its haunches, panting slightly. The two beasts Kazumaru had been following stopped in front of the hut and whined. After a few seconds the sorcerer emerged. He took the jug from their mouths and made a gesture for them to sit as if they were dogs. His skin was tanned like leather, his hair long, his beard wispy, both deepest black with no sign of gray. He seemed both old and young. His movements were as deft and free of thought as an animal’s, but his voice when he addressed Kazumaru was human.