Spirit's Chosen (35 page)

My advice surprised him. “You care about my reputation?”

“Ryu would love to see you covered in mud and dragged down to his level. I care about thwarting him.”

Daimu smiled. “I’m glad you’re honest with me.”

“I hope you’re honest with me too.”

Ashi returned with our dinner, which she had brought from the central cookhouse. The shrine could contain a few small fire-holding vessels to keep off the cold, but the building was too important, too sacred to risk the larger, more frequent flames needed to prepare meals. A guarded
silence enveloped Daimu and me as we ate, and it remained settled over us like a bird’s wing until we went to our separate chambers.

As I prepared for rest, I saw Ashi laying a bedroll across the entrance to my quarters. “Is that where you sleep?” I asked her.

“It’s where I sleep tonight, and where one of my friends will sleep tomorrow. We all share a cozy little house in the shadow of the shrine, but Master Daimu has requested this arrangement.” She chuckled.

I made a doubtful face. “What’s so funny about it?”

“As if a miserable, weak woman like me could keep a strong young man like him out of your room if he
really
wanted to get in? Even if he
weren’t
my master? What could I do? Shriek and slap at him, as if he were a lizard trying to climb my skirt? But he still insisted that we play this game. ‘She will be able to sleep peacefully, knowing someone stands between her and me,’ he said. Oh my, men are all the same when they’re trying to be gallant: silly things. But at least they can make us laugh.” She stretched out on her bedroll and yawned. “Good night, Lady Himiko.”

I slept well that night, although it was not on account of the “watchdog” at my doorway. The muted chime of a bronze bell lured me from my dreams. I rose, dressed swiftly, and followed the sound, stepping over Ashi’s snoring body. The floorboards of the shrine were like ice under my naked feet. The sun had not yet risen, but gray, watery dawn light filtered through the roof and crept in at the edges of the door curtain.

Daimu knelt in the center of the shrine, holding the
bronze bell high. His softly chanting voice was as clear and sweet and resonant as the bell’s soul-stirring note. The skin of my forearms tingled to hear him, and a thread of fire trickled from the back of my neck all the way down my spine. I shuddered with joy as I sensed the presence of the spirits, summoned by Daimu’s spell.

He spoke to them with love, awe, and gratitude. His prayers were respectful requests for the welfare of his people. Some were mentioned by name—the sick, the sad, the broken. I heard him mention Ryu: “O gods, let him be the good man who dwells in the dragon’s heart! Let him find wisdom!”

Then I heard him speak my name: “Spirits, you know what a great gift I have brought you by having Lady Himiko enter your holy place. All I ask in return is that you show your thanks by granting the chief desire of her heart. Protect her, body and soul. Preserve her family and her clan. Provide her with the countless blessings of freedom and peace.” He struck the bell once more and set it down. His prayers were finished.

I stole back to my room before he could look around and realize I was there.

Later that morning, over breakfast, Daimu asked me, “How will you spend the day, Lady Himiko?”

“I—I hadn’t thought about that,” I replied. “What do you want me to do?”

“What would
you
want to do if this were your home? You no longer have to obey anyone but yourself.”

I laughed. “Then it’s nothing at all like my home. Mama, Emi, and Yukari were always finding work for me
to do. My teacher, Lady Yama, was also very keen about giving me chores.”

“Was she the one who recognized your calling?”

I nodded. “She said I had a talent for gathering plants and preparing salves and potions.” I cast a sidelong glance at the curtained room containing all that the Ookami shaman needed to care for his clan and serve the spirits. “Will you trust me to make medicines for you?”

“Trust you?” He thought I was joking.

“Your warriors took the lives of my father and two of my brothers,” I said, unsmiling. “It would be easy for me to avenge them by making a ‘cure’ that kills.”

“You would never do such a thing.” He spoke with conviction and led me to the room where dried herbs, roots, and the rest of his supplies awaited. That was the beginning of my work assisting the Ookami shaman.

On the fifth morning of my new life, Daimu told me, “I’m going away today. Don’t worry if I’m not back before nightfall.”

“Where are you going?”

“Not on another pilgrimage, if that’s what you’re afraid of,” he teased.

I put on a fake haughty expression. “As if
that
would bother me! Just tell me if there’s any specific chore you need me to do while you’re off chasing butterflies.
Some
of us want to do
necessary
work.”

“Then perhaps it’s time
some
of us left this house to find that ‘necessary work,’ ” he rejoined, grinning. “You’ve done nothing since you got here but brew potions and mix remedies. It’s time you put them to use. This winter has brought
us a heavy share of sickness. Too many people are afraid to bother me with their aches and pains, and some who are too ill to leave their homes still don’t dare to send for me. Go to them, Lady Himiko.”

“You think they’ll allow me to tend to them?” I asked. “You may trust me, but will they?”

“Why not? After all, I was speaking of the slaves.”

That was enough for me. I gulped my breakfast, packed an assortment of cures and treatments in a large basket, and set out to find the people who most needed my help. I went from house to house where the slaves lived and discovered more than enough sufferers. My appearance always startled them until they stopped being fascinated by my fine new dress and looked at my face instead.

“Himiko?” There would be a moment of dread as they recalled Ryu’s ban on speaking to me, but I was soon able to set their minds at ease:

“The wolf clan shaman can overrule their chieftain. It’s safe for me to share your company; Master Daimu will protect you. Now tell me what hurts.”

I did not return to the shrine until after dark. My only regret was that the day did not contain enough time for me to visit all the people in need of my care. I consoled myself by thinking about how much good I had managed to accomplish, and how much more I might do tomorrow.

Daimu was waiting for me. He was seated on the floor with Ashi at his side, setting down his dinner. She frowned when she saw me.

“About time! I was afraid you were going to eat cold rice.”

“Let that be the worst thing that ever happens to me,”
I said cheerfully, taking my place opposite Daimu. As the older woman handed me my plate, I thanked her and added: “Ashi, why don’t you sleep under your own roof tonight?”

“Lady Himiko?” Her brows knit in confusion and she looked to Daimu for help. He only shrugged.

Later on, after Ashi left us, he spoke to me: “Are you sure about this?”

It was my turn to shrug. “You trusted me to make medicine for your people, even if I’m not the one to give it to them. Now I must trust you.”

“Thank you,” he said solemnly. “I want to be worthy of that trust, Lady Himiko.”

“And I want you to call me Himiko, Master Daimu; nothing more.”

“Because you want me to remember that some think of you as my slave? I never—”

“No.” I held up one hand to silence him. “Because I want you to think of me as your friend.”

“Then you must call me Daimu.”

“I will, except when there are others present,” I said. “It wouldn’t be proper, then.”

His smile was so very much like Reikon’s that it made me draw in a short, sharp breath of wonder. I had crossed into the spirits’ realm in my dreams many times since coming to the Ookami shrine, but I had not encountered my lost prince there even once. “Still defending my reputation?” he asked.

“As a friend should do,” I replied.

“In that case, I have something to give you … as a friend.” He stood and went into the storeroom, returning
with a small bundle. Placing it in my hands, he said, “This was the reason I left the village today. I wish I could have done it sooner.”

I felt the chill of cold metal through the cloth and knew what I held even before I unwrapped it. The shining bronze surface of my mirror winked at me the instant that I pulled aside one corner of the fabric, and the sturdy, graceful shape of my bell conjured memories of its music.

“I thought you should have these close at hand, now that you can use them openly again,” Daimu said.

I laughed through tears of joy and gratitude. “How funny! This is the second time I have received this gift under this roof from an Ookami shaman. Master Rinji was kind enough to restore them to me once. May the gods be praised, I won’t have to hide them anymore!”

“Rinji …” Daimu sighed. “I don’t know why he left the shrine. He said he had no true calling as a shaman, but I know that isn’t so. I hope he’ll come back.”

I touched his hand lightly with my fingertips. “So do I. He was also my friend.”

Winter waned. The snow melted even from the upper slopes of the mountains and the sun grew stronger. Each day I found more and more joy in the new life I had been given. Even if I did not have my freedom, I was still free to follow the way of the spirits and perform the functions of a shaman. I compounded medicines, made offerings, and lifted my voice to invoke the goddesses while Daimu called upon the gods. When the earth waited to receive her first plantings and the Ookami held their great spring celebration, I danced.

It was a strange time for me, a time of contrasts as vivid as light and darkness. I lived both free and captive. I could come and go as I wished, but only inside the village walls, and even so, there was still one house where my presence was forbidden. I could not set foot outside the settlement gates, for Ryu had grown warier and doubled the guard in the watchtower. Did he fear that I no longer
cared about rescuing my family and that I might take advantage of Daimu’s lenient ways in order to save myself? Or was he having second thoughts about the security of his clan? Spring was opening the roads that led the Ookami to victory over their neighbors, but those roads ran both ways. Was Ryu troubled by Daimu’s warnings that today’s conqueror might become tomorrow’s captive? I did not know.

I lived both happy and heartbroken, because although I was following my heart’s chosen path, I was still far from home and no closer to fulfilling the task that had brought me to the Ookami village in the first place. Noboru remained a captive. So did Emi and Sanjirou. So did I, and I did not dare to think about my mother’s fate. For all I knew, Kaya had failed to persuade our elders to delay carrying out their verdict and she was already dead. I could not face such black thoughts. Whenever they arose, I sank myself in work, exhausting my body in order to exhaust my mind.

Daimu could not understand why I volunteered to be part of the spring planting when I didn’t have to do so. “We have enough hands for this labor,” he said.

“Slaves’ hands, and I am still a slave,” I reminded him. “And among the Matsu, every able-bodied person helped plant the rice, including my father.”

He considered this. “Our own chieftain should follow such a good example.”

“Don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen,” I said. “Some things never change.”

But some things did.

Spring was a season of joy, but also a season that bred illness and injury. Winter food supplies dwindled before
fresh food could be found, giving many villagers bellyaches and sluggish bowels. Work in the fields became more intense, which led to aching backs and a host of accidents when the people were clumsy or simply unlucky wielding their iron tools.

It was at this time, when Master Daimu seemed to be constantly busy with one healing after another, that I was first approached by one of the Ookami women. She came to the shrine seeking help for her husband, who had cut his foot while hoeing weeds from the millet field.

“Master Daimu isn’t here right now,” I told her. “He’s taking care of one of your elders who’s got a bad fever.”

“I don’t want to wait for Master Daimu,” she told me. “I want you.”

Mystified, I went with her and was soon treating her husband—changing the bandage, cleaning the wound, and covering it with a layer of herbs to speed healing. When I was done, I asked how she’d known I could help them.

She rolled her eyes as if I’d asked
Why is water wet?
“You are a shaman, Lady Himiko. Who ever heard of a shaman who wasn’t also a healer?”

“But I am not an
Ookami
shaman. I am a member of the Matsu clan.”

“What’s the difference? You’ve been working among the slaves and not all of them are Matsu, yet your cures and spells still heal them.”

“To be honest, I did not expect an Ookami family to trust me.”

She waved away my words. “We did not trust you as a Matsu girl, but as a shaman. We have been watching you,
Lady Himiko. We saw you perform the chants and the dances for the spirits. Nothing bad happened. We also see how our Master Daimu respects you. That’s good enough for us.”