Gloria Oliver (13 page)

Mitsuo said nothing as he stopped what he’d been doing and took a step back. Miko clapped happily from the corner in which she’d chosen to sit. Before long, she was laughing as well at the continued expression of wonder etched on Toshi’s face.

“Miko-san, if you would take these?” Mitsuo pointed to Toshi’s blankets.

Still too amazed to protest, Toshi didn’t stop the geisha as she took all of his blankets and pulled the futon to the side. He scrambled to put on his sandals, already shivering from his lack of protection from the cold. With prickles of excitement, he emulated the position Mitsuo showed him.

The old samurai had him repeat the patterns he taught over and over again. The seemingly simple maneuvers worked muscles in his arms and legs he’d never used before. Each movement demanded his absolute concentration. Mitsuo insisted he mimic him perfectly.

By the time they stopped for lunch a thin sheen of sweat covered Toshi from head to toe. Shivering beneath his returned covers, he tried hard to dispel the cold that had seeped into him despite his exertions. He praised the gods for the warmth of well-made tea.

After lunch, he repeated the maneuvers he’d learned that morning. He followed through each of them, frustrated by his lack of grace and skill. He felt like a monkey trying to pretend he was a crane. Miko encouraged him and sometimes outright embarrassed him. Mitsuo didn’t dissuade her from doing so, or ever complain when he fumbled the routines. Instead, he would smack Toshi’s arms and legs into their correct positions with his boken. He had him do the routines over and over, smacking him without a word to correct his movements and then changing to another pattern without warning.

By dinnertime, Toshi felt thoroughly achy and sore. Mitsuo left him then, pausing at the door to tell him he had done tolerably well.

The praise barely registered in his brain, though a part of him was pleased by it. Mostly, he wanted nothing more than to give in to his aching weariness.

“Your bath water should be almost ready,” Miko said. “I’ll go get it for you. I’ll only be a moment.”

“Hai.” He took the subtle hint and began undressing. Once she returned with the water, he felt her gaze on him throughout the entire bath. It made him feel flattered and embarrassed all at the same time.

As he dressed, Miko placed a fresh cup of tea on the table. Gratefully drinking it down, he sat still as she stepped around him to comb out his hair. “Miko-san?”

“We’ll be exploring a second island tonight,” she said. “What we sought wasn’t to be found on the first.”

Though he tried to fight against it, his curiosity overcame him. “Does everyone know what we’re looking for?”

Miko sighed. “Yes and no. We know what it is, but not why it’s important. Our mission was solely to find the object and deliver it, not actually understand what it is for. We heard many rumors of strange things going on when we arrived to receive our mission, but it is hard to say if the two are related. You see, the
Daimyo
, the great lord of the area, had vanished months before. Many said he had been killed, while others thought he had purposely disappeared as a test to see what his three main vassals would do in his absence. We weren’t there long enough to learn much more than that, though. And only Asaka-sama was allowed to see the missing Daimyo’s main vassal. I believe Asaka-sama was told what purpose the object holds; but even after all this time he has never spoken of it, though it has already resulted in more spilled blood than any item should ever be worth.”

He searched for some way to ask what it looked like without seeming to. He’d come no closer to finding a way to do so when he felt the telltale sensation announcing the surfacing of the ship.

“Come. We’ll want to get you above before they’re ready to leave.”

He put on his sandals as Miko took charge of his blankets. Feeling a little awkward, he still made sure to bring his boken along.

Toshi followed Miko out of the room and said nothing as Mitsuo joined them. Toward the end of the small hallway, they were met by three of the crew. They surrounded him as they all exited into the starry darkness outside.

Nervous and a little tense from both the guards’ presence and the boken in his hands, he climbed up onto the higher deck. All of them bowed to Asaka, who was seated; and he acknowledged them with a small nod.

The skiff was already being brought up from below even as the rest of the crew readied themselves to go to shore. As he waited for Miko to set out his blankets, Toshi turned to look past two of his guards to try to catch a glimpse of the island before them. He couldn’t make out much about it in the darkness, but he doubted it would amount to much in daylight. This brought a suddenly disquieting thought to him. How long had it been since he’d seen the sun? How long had it been since he’d felt its warming rays on his skin? How much longer might it be before he would do so again, if ever?

He slumped down onto his blankets, looking at no one. Surely, he only felt like this because he was so tired. Yet, what he’d give to sit for an hour under an open sunlit sky. He would be free soon; his time would come. He just had to remember that. He told himself this over and over until he started to believe it. At least he’d be able to sleep under an open sky. It would have to do for now.

Lying down, he couldn’t help but notice when Miko left him to have some quiet words with Asaka. His ears burned with curiosity, but he couldn’t even catch a hint of what was being said. Their conversation didn’t last long. She returned to his side, and the samurai stood to go to the deck below.

Toshi stood up, his muscles protesting, and took a deep lungful of the pre-dawn air. He stared for a moment toward the east, knowing he was about to miss another sunrise. “Miko-san?”

“Yes?”

Her eyes flashed toward him making him wonder if she already sensed this would be one of his uncomfortable questions.

“Why don’t you stay up during the day?” He’d asked her this once before but hoped this time she would choose to answer.

Miko didn’t reply immediately, but instead busied herself for a few moments with the folding of his blankets.

“That’s a little hard to explain. You see, we don’t know if it’s possible for us to withstand the touch of the sun. None of us has ever tried it. We’ve always instinctively felt it would be bad for us, somehow. How and why, I do not know. But an inner dread against doing it has been in all of us from the very beginning.

We were made in darkness, and it’s to darkness we belong.”

He felt a chill run down his spine.

“So, since we don’t want to test the mercy of the gods,” she added. “Let’s get you below before we push our luck too far.”

How could Miko and the others stand to live that way? He hoped the gods would have mercy on him and not allow him to become one of them.

He, Miko and the guards had just descended to the lower deck when the last of the crew returned from the third island. Asaka was the last to board, his twisted mask scanning the horizon as if looking for something only he would be able to see.

Toshi followed the geisha into the ship’s interior. Mitsuo led the way, while the other three guards stayed by the entrance to the hallway.

“Go on ahead without me, Toshi-kun,” Miko said. “I’ll join you in a few minutes with some breakfast.”

“Hai.” After watching her disappear into the room next to his, he followed Mitsuo to his own quarters.

Mitsuo double-checked his room and then left him alone. Hurrying to his futon, he piled his blankets about him. He wondered about the type of life that had been forced on all those here, not only by their duty but also by their lord. One was supposed to give his life, if necessary, for his lord, but to be expected to serve him even after death? He wished he could understand all this better.

As he drank the miso soup Miko brought for him, he realized with a chill the number of times he’d come close to joining the ship’s crew on a permanent basis. If the ninja had killed him, would he have been trapped here as well? Or did his death have to be by Asaka’s hand so that the samurai’s strong will would keep him from going on? And which would he prefer?

From these questions rose another, one he’d not yet had a chance to ask. Finishing his soup, he stared at his empty bowl in apprehension as he tried to figure out the answer for himself. Eventually, he gave up, knowing he couldn’t.

“Miko-san?”

“You have a question, Toshi-kun?” She looked over at him, a teasing tone lacing her words.

He hesitated. He decided rather than blurt out his question as he usually did he’d try to work gradually up to it.

“There’s something I don’t quite understand. I’ve tried to figure it out, but I can’t. I was hoping you might be able to help me with it.”

“No. You can forget it,” she said. “I won’t divulge my age to you. I have a reputation to protect.”

He stared at the geisha in open-faced confusion. “What?”

Miko began to laugh. “I’m sorry, Toshi-kun. I just couldn’t help myself. You looked so serious I just couldn’t resist. Though, in reality it doesn’t seem like I’ve brought about much of an improvement—that is, unless you were thinking of going out and catching flies.”

He realized his mouth was hanging open. He snapped it closed. He felt his face redden as he sat beneath her amused stare.

“Go ahead, Toshi-chan,” she prompted. “You can ask me your serious question now. I promise to behave myself.”

It took him several seconds to gather his scattered wits. He didn’t miss her use of the personal endearment on his name. He decided to stop trying to work up to what he wanted.

“Miko-san, why would the ninja decide to try to kill me once we’d reached the islands? Why didn’t he try before, when I was still sleeping here? He could have done it easily then. He could have done it when he stole the map, but he didn’t. Why? There was no reason to wait, was there? Even without me here, I’m sure the steersman could have probably gotten you all back. Why try now?” He held his breath, waiting to see what the geisha would say.

“That’s more than one question.”

“Miko-san!”

Her laughter filled the room, her soft bells ringing as her body quivered with merriment. Though her laughter eventually subsided, he didn’t hold much hope his questions would be answered. He was wrong.

“I have pondered these very questions for some time myself,” she said seriously. “To be honest, I had expected you to ask me about them before now.” There was a tinge of amusement mixed with mischief in her voice. “Why he didn’t try to kill you before is something I can only speculate about. No one ever truly knows the mind of the ninja.

“I had thought at first the ninja believed, as many of us had, that our lord’s idea of using the gaijin techniques to help us reach our goal would never work. You ended up proving the assumption wrong.

Yet, by destroying the map, he would have stopped us from reaching our goal. He didn’t kill you, believing the destruction of the map would be enough. It also left him someone to pin the blame on, and this would keep us from guessing one of the crew had been working against our mission from the start.”

He shifted as he listened to her and gathered his blankets closer around him.

“You have to admit, if not for the fact you’d made a copy of the map, we might not have thought of blaming someone else. It would have been extremely difficult for us to believe without proof that one of us was willing to keep himself and the rest of us from going to the next life. It would have been much more comfortable to believe you had done the deed,” she said honestly. “But, if the ninja had killed you outright, we would have had no choice but to face the fact one of us was a traitor.”

The geisha grew silent for a moment as she took the time to smooth out her kimono. “Now, even after it was obvious his plan had failed, there was still a chance your copy of the map might be destroyed before we reached the islands or that the copy wouldn’t be detailed enough to get us here. Mitsuo’s presence also made it difficult to get at you, and all the crew were watching each other, trying to figure out who the traitor was.

“When we reached the first island, however, all things fell into place for him. Everyone but the three of us was supposed to go ashore. No one was watching anyone anymore. We’d been trying to get here for so long, we didn’t consider that in the confusion that ensued we’d given him the perfect opportunity.”

Deftly, the geisha lifted the still-steaming teapot and refilled his cup. He drank it slowly, giving himself time to think.

“But, Miko-san, since we were already here, why try and kill me? Like I said before, the steersman could get you back. And I can’t believe he’d kill me out of spite.”

“That, Toshi-kun, is easy,” she said. “Though we are here, without you we would still be unable to claim our prize.”

“
What
?”

The geisha raised her sleeve to cover her mask’s lacquered mouth at his outburst. He was too startled to care.

“I don’t understand.”

“You’re not supposed to.”

“Miko-san!”

She laughed out loud. He let his shoulders slump forward as he realized he would learn nothing she didn’t want him to know.

“Do not despair, Toshi-chan, you will know all there is to know when our lord deems you’re ready.”

“But, Miko-san—”

She leaned languidly forward, her eyes twinkling with mischievous merriment. “If you do well today, I might just deign to give you a few hints.”

Having a feeling those promised hints would tell him a lot of nothing, he gave up and made a face at her.

Miko howled with laughter as he stuck out his tongue. She made a grab for it, but he pulled it back before she could catch it. It wasn’t long before he was laughing as heartily as she was.

A short while later, Mitsuo knocked on the door and came in. Leaving him to help Miko move the things out of the way, Toshi filched one more cup of tea in an attempt to fortify himself against the cold that would shortly be embracing him. As soon as Mitsuo was ready, he wove through the patterns taught to him the day before.

Miko was even more rambunctious than yesterday and used him as the object of jokes and rather graphic dirty stories. It was all he could do to continue his movements without falling into the trap of listening to her words. His sweeps began to falter as it proved more and more difficult to concentrate on what he was doing. He couldn’t help but wonder why Mitsuo allowed her to do it. How was he supposed to learn if she distracted him all day long? Mitsuo always acted as if he heard nothing, though, of course, that didn’t keep him from smacking Toshi every time he did something wrong.