Lord Oda's Revenge (28 page)

Letting go of the sword, he caught the axe as the corpse dropped it, turned in a tight pirouette, and let it fly. As he did so,
he experienced another glimpse of the room as a totality, saw blood hovering in mid-air like a terrible red constellation against the darkness of the room. The second man he'd killed – the one who'd been behind him – was still falling, and the wielder of the crossbow was only just sinking to his knees.

There was a thump, as the first of the bodies hit the ground, and at the same time the axe blade buried itself in the forehead of a man who had been starting to run at him, a rice-working tool of some kind clutched in his hand. The sound of the axe crushing his skull was awful, a crunching boom to Lord Oda's sensitive ears. The force of it threw the peasant backwards, and to Lord Oda it seemed like his trajectory, sailing back in a curve to finally hit the wall and slide down it, bloodily, was something as gradual and delicate as a swan coming to land on a body of water.

Slowly he became aware of screaming. There were others still alive, but they began to back away, spilling out of the door, leaving their companions dead on the ground. Colours still snapped and fizzled, the odour of the smoking brazier still filled his nostrils, and his eyes still twitched as he noticed, compulsively, each spot and drop of the raining blood. But it was fading, he knew – even as he looked, the slowness and oneness and elegance of things began to dissolve into random, syncopated chaos. His crippled arm slumped at his side; he felt a traitorous weakness creeping into it.

He took in a deep breath, smiling. No matter that the moment had gone – the moment of enlightenment, of satori. He could achieve it again, any time he liked. All he had to do was kill, and drink.

On his way out to retrieve his samurai's horse, he paused by the body of the first peasant, the one who had spoken to him,
who had known who he was. He observed how it hugged the ground, how totally the pull of the earth had claimed it.

‘You might not be monsters,' he said. ‘But I am.'

 

B
Y THE TIME
Taro reached the mountainous region of Atami, near Shirahama, it was the height of summer. His feet were blistered and sore, his soul heavy with the loss of his mother and Hana. He missed Hiro, too – and though he had wanted to be alone, he found himself wishing often that his friend was there to make a joke, or tease him about something, to distract him from his worries. His mind was turning with the death of his mother, but there were more immediate concerns too – he was in Oda territory here, and every day that he moved in it he was placing himself in mortal danger. He was careful to travel as much as possible by night, and to avoid dwelling places, so that it seemed all he saw of the countryside was trees, and rivers, and cold rocky places.

He had survived by hunting rabbits and birds, sucking them dry of their blood. Twice he had even overpowered travellers, when they were on their own – though he had taken only enough blood to keep him from starvation. He was careful to leave them unconscious, but not fatally wounded. He told himself he was not like Little Kawabata, that he
had
to feed on these people, in order to survive.

But he knew, deep down, that he was exactly like Little Kawabata.
He was a vampire, and nothing was ever going to change that. He told himself that it was only because he didn't want the ball to fall into the wrong hands that he was doing this, but that wasn't really true. He was doing it because he wanted to bring back the dead, and take his vengeance.

The air hung in a haze over the hills and the sea, as if the fabric of reality were thinned by the heat. At dusk, which was when he began to walk each night, the pine-covered slopes were great purple masses, looming over the endless darkness of the sea.

Though this region was only a handful of
ri
from home, Taro had never travelled through it before, and found it both familiar and strange. Torii gates and Shinto shrines dotted the hills and bays, as in Shirahama, but they were dedicated to gods he had never heard of, with evocative names such as the Dragon of the Pearl Lake.

As the days and weeks had passed, Taro was not aware that he was gradually losing his faith – his faith in the Buddha, his faith in the essential goodness of the world, his faith in others. But one morning, as he drew within two days' walk of Shirahama, he felt it break for good.

It was when he was resting for the day in the shade of a small forest, just inland from a long inlet. Taro saw a group of children catching dragonflies by the stream. From their excited exclamations, he understood that they believed these insects to be the reincarnated souls of ancient samurai, who had died in a great battle between the Minamoto and the Taira.

As he watched, Taro felt something inside him wither and die. He and Hiro had been just like those children once – only it was crabs they caught, the special ones with the horned shells, that people from Shirahama said were the souls of the Heike,
killed in the great sea battle just off the coast. The same Heike, in fact, that had stolen away the
biwa
player Hoichi, and made him sing to them the ballad of their destruction.

It's just a superstition,
he realized.
These children catch dragonflies; we scoured the beach for crabs. Probably somewhere in the west or north they hunt for butterflies
. In that moment, it all became clear to him, and he thought with a horrified shudder that he would never have understood the truth if he had not travelled so far from home. He would have believed in the same
kami
gods; he would have taught his children that crabs were samurai. But he had seen other villages now, with different gods and different samurai, and he knew in his heart it was not possible for all these things to be true and real. The only constant thing was that people told the same kind of stories,
believed
the same kind of stories.

Buddha and samsara and reincarnation – these are just stories we've told ourselves
.

Of course, if they were just stories, then the Buddha ball was a story too. But maybe it was. He knew that there were bad things in the world – ghosts and vampires and demons. But he had seen no evidence, ever, that there might be good things too. Maybe he was chasing after nothing. He thrust this thought away. At least, while he was looking for the ball, he had something to do.

No, he had to find the ball, and had to believe that it would work – and perhaps the force of his belief would make it true.

These thoughts turned in his mind every day and night, as he trudged alone through the woods and rice paddies, alternately dismissing religion and magic, then deciding once again that the ball
must
be real, and that the world
must
be ordered for the best, in the final reckoning, and if he could only find the ball, then he
could solve everything, just like that.

Then the cycle would begin again and he would lose all hope and conclude he was a fool. Only children believed the means were available to change the world, just like that, and to obtain what they desired.

In this way, he passed through the landscape without seeing it. And then, finally, he stood near dawn at the top of the cliffs to the south of Shirahama, and could see the lights of the village twinkling on the steep slopes, like fireflies. On the warm breeze he could smell pine oil and the sea, and while he had smelled these things the last several days, the scent now seemed special to this place. From various points in between the houses, steam rose into the night air from the hot
onsen
springs, which the people used for baths.

All he wanted was to get to the bay, to the taboo place where the wreck was, and dive for the ball. But it was a cloudy night, without even moonlight to guide him. The site of the wreck was unsafe as it was – no ama would dive there, for fear of the spirits that lay in wait among the coral and the seaweed-covered spars of the broken ship. With no visibility, it would be suicide.

Not that suicide was something Taro ruled out. He just wanted to get the ball first – to avenge his mother, and to try to bring Hana back. Only if he failed would he contemplate that other option.

He traced the thin path that ran along the cliff top, heading towards the village. He passed the torii gate that led to the shrine of Susanoo,
kami
of storms and the god in whose hands lay the lives of all fishermen. Men like Taro's father – when he had been alive – worshipped at the shrine almost every day, giving gifts and obeisance to this terrible entity, who could choose to sink their boats if he so wished, or dash them against the rocks. On
the other side of the bay, beyond the houses, Taro could just make out the other torii gate – the one that announced the shrine of Benten, the Princess of the Hidden Waters, who protected the amas. In both of these shrines, the very bodies of the gods were kept, in a sort of mirror called a
shintai
. These mirrors – which reflected the essence of the
kami
– were held in ornate wooden boxes called
mikoshi,
and none but the priests could open them. It was said that if you looked at the
shintai
of Susanoo, you would see a terrible creature made of thunderclouds, and that the Princess of the Hidden Waters was a beautiful woman riding a great purple dragon.

Now, though, Taro suspected you would only see yourself, staring back from the glass.

Just then, as he glanced at that far-off red gate, looming over the pine trees, Taro saw lights moving in single file towards it. They were leaving the village and winding through the trees, up the hill towards the shrine of the Princess.

It must be
obon
already,
he thought.

He couldn't believe so much time had passed. He remembered last year's
obon
. Then, as now, he had largely missed the Festival of the Dead. But he had seen the little blue lanterns in windows as they passed, under cover of darkness, with Shusaku – on their way to safety in the ninja mountain. It was that night that he had first seen Yukiko and her sister Heiko. The two girls had been setting down candlelit lanterns in the stream outside their house, marking the end of the festival by sending the spirits of their dead ancestors back to the land of the dead.

It seemed impossible that only a year later Shusaku was dead, and Yukiko, who had been in Taro's eyes little more than a somewhat bad-tempered girl, had killed Taro's mother.

If the procession was only now wending its way to the
Princess's shrine, then the festival was still at its height, and the dead were everywhere. During
obon,
the shades of one's ancestors – the
shoryo,
or shadows – were everywhere on earth, doing the things they had done in life. It was proper to welcome them, with joy in your heart and food on your table. If the person had been a painter, you laid out paint and brushes. If the ancestor had been a fisherman, you mended and put out their net, for their use. They stayed for three days, sating their hunger for rice and wine and the companionship of their living descendants. Then they left again in lanterns that floated down streams, or up to the sky – or, as was done in Shirahama, on gaily painted and lit boats, which drifted out to sea.

This procession, though, marked the end of the
ohaka mairi,
the Honourable Visit. The spirits of the dead were still here, and in their honour the villagers were going to the shrine of the Princess. For the last two days, her
shintai
mirror had been in the village, carefully protected from prying eyes by the priest, and by the wooden box it was kept in. For those two days, the people of the village – mostly the women, for the amas were particularly loved by Benten – were able to play host to their goddess and honour her with gifts of food and prayer. Hopefully, in doing so, they would raise the merit of their dead ancestors, so that they could pass smoothly to a new plane of existence and be reborn in glory.

Now, though, it was time for the goddess to return to her shrine by the sea, where she would spend the rest of the year watching over the bay and keeping its women from drowning. They said it was only because she was watching that no ama had ever been taken by a
mako
shark.

Taro quickened his pace, wanting to catch up with the train
of people. He didn't believe in these things any more, but he wasn't a gambler, either. If his mother's soul was anywhere, during
obon,
it would be in Shirahama, where she had lived and worked. His father's, too, perhaps.

Taking the quick way down to the village, then running across the soft sand of the beach, Taro came upon the children at the back of the procession as they entered the cedar woods. He ignored their gasps when they recognized him. They wore their new summer kimonos, the
yukata,
and he was painfully aware that he was still in winter garb, and sweating because of it. Some of the children carried lanterns, their flames representing the fourteen
kami
of the district.