Spirit's Princess (3 page)

I inhaled deeply, drawing the pine tree’s power into myself. Then I clenched my fists and ran.

I had never run so fast in my life. I didn’t stop running until I had my arms around Grandfather Pine’s trunk, my face pressed against his black bark. Looking up, I saw the first branch I would need to grasp in order to begin my climb. It was just out of reach, even when I stood on my toes. I squatted like a frog, then leaped as high as I could, stretching out my arms the way I did when I wanted Aki to let me ride on his shoulders. My try fell short. My fingertips barely brushed the bottom of the branch before I tumbled back on my rump onto the thick layer of dead needles at the foot of the tree.

A fresh breeze rustled the pine tree’s branches, and my ears heard the sound of the great spirit’s laughter:
Ah, Himiko, is
that
the best you can do? Look at you! Are you truly
trying
to climb me, or are you only going to whimper and hope I’ll bend down my branches, just to please you? Little beetle, rolling on your back, waving your legs in the air, did you really think you could conquer me? Never mind your foolish dreams and your silly promise. We make no bargains with beetles! Go home and hunt the grains of rice that fall from your mother’s cooking pot. You will never
—

I
will!
Don’t laugh at me!
I couldn’t risk shouting aloud, for fear of discovery, but my defiant thoughts were fierce and furious.
I’ll show you that I will!

Scowling, I retied my sash to make my tunic even shorter, freeing my legs. Then I crouched again and sprang, flinging myself at the tree with all my might! I was no frog, no beetle, but a squirrel, lithe and clever. I leaped forward and up, up,
up
, and though my hands still couldn’t quite reach the lowest branch, my feet found a lucky toehold on the trunk. One kick, and my hands were holding the branch. Grinning, I pulled myself up to mount it.
Who’s a beetle now?
I thought, triumphant.

After that, my ascent was long and tiring, but simple. Once off the ground, I found that the old tree’s branches grew strong and close together. I dug my small fingers into limb after limb, my brow furrowed in concentration as I pulled myself higher and higher. I scraped my palms on the rough bark, my face gathered more than a few scratches from passing twigs, my arms and legs began to tire and ache, but as long as my endurance held out, there was nothing to keep me from reaching the topmost branches.

At last, I reached a place where the old pine tree’s branches grew thin and began to snap off in my hands. I had climbed as high as it was safe to go. I straddled the sturdiest branch I could find and rested my back against the venerable tree, savoring victory. I was weary and sweaty, my tunic was stained and in tatters, my legs were bruised and scraped, my hands were tingling, but I had won. Now all I needed was for Aki to see me and confirm my accomplishment.

I wasn’t afraid to be alone at the top of the pine. While
I’d been making my way up through those dark branches, daylight had returned to the world. The sun goddess was already sweeping away the mists of night with the sleeves of her golden gown. When I looked down from my perch, all I could see through the lower branches were a few small glimpses of the distant ground, but when I turned my eyes to the brightening sky, looking out and around me—ah!

There were the rooftops of our village—the nobles’ houses like our own, tall and stately on their pillars; the homes of the common people, trim thatched roofs sheltering snug pit dwellings dug deep into the earth; the raised storehouses where we kept the heavy jars of rice after harvest time; the watchtower where the village men took turns as lookouts in the daytime hours; the wooden palisade and wide ditch that protected our settlement. Beyond our village in one direction were the cultivated fields and the shimmering water of the rice paddies; in another were the wild lands where Aki hunted game. I could see them more clearly with every passing moment as the sun goddess’s smile banished the last wandering ghosts. How beautiful those thickly forested mountains were, clothed in a pattern of countless shades of green!

I glanced at my own clothing and frowned. Even if it hadn’t been torn and dirty, my little cotton tunic was a dull thing, the faded tan of aged wood. Not a single splash of brighter color adorned it. Even the sash was plain. How badly I wanted to reach out and capture the rich, brilliant hues of the distant mountains, the trees, the flowers, and wrap them all around me! And there, in the distance, I saw a mountain so magnificent that it seemed to stand alone. I
knew it well, having seen it many times before, when clear days let it stand revealed, but from my perch I could see it as never before. Its solitary snow-topped peak crowned graceful slopes that seemed to have captured the color of a cloudless morning sky. What wouldn’t I have given to possess a shaman’s magical power and steal just a touch of that brilliant blue?

I leaned my head against the old tree’s trunk and whispered, “One day I’ll have a dress that holds the sky. I will, Grandfather; you’ll see.” If I closed my eyes, I could picture it, a marvelous garment made out of clouds and wind, the shades of sunrise trailing from the sleeves, the softer tints of sunset dancing around the hem.

Wait until Aki sees me up here!
I thought, smiling.
He’ll be so proud of me
. I could almost hear him bragging about my feat to all the other men:
My little sister Himiko is as brave as any of us. I say we take her with us wherever we go, even when it’s time to go hunting in the mountains
.

My happy daydreams didn’t last. The longer I sat there, the more impatient I became.
What’s keeping him? Is he
so
lazy? Is he going to sleep forever?
An empty stomach added to my irritation. I refused to wait for Aki any longer. If my brother wasn’t going to come out of the house and acknowledge my great deed, I’d
bring
him out!

“Aki! Aki, come and see! Look at what I’ve done!
Aki!
”

I shouted as loudly as I could, calling my brother’s name until my throat felt raw. Why didn’t he come? Was he so deeply asleep, or had I climbed
too
high, so high that the wind stole my voice and swept it off into the clouds?
Maybe I should climb down, just a little
, I thought, and was about to do
it when I heard the welcome sound of someone running toward the tree from the direction of our house. The branches below me hid the person from sight, but I knew who it was. Aki
had
heard me! I leaned forward on my branch, ready to enjoy my brother’s praise.

“Himiko! Oh gods, how did you manage to get up there? Himiko, hold on, don’t move! Someone—anyone—hurry, run, bring help! Himiko,
don’t move
, do you hear me?” My mother’s voice sounded loud and harsh as a crow’s cry. I heard her trampling the earth as she dashed back and forth futilely, as if she were a dog tied to the old tree’s trunk. Her cries rose to shrieks: “Someone come! Someone please
help me
!”

Other voices answered hers from our clan’s many houses, high and low: “What’s going on?” “We’re coming!” “What’s the matter?” From where I sat, I could see many people come rushing from their doorways.

Mama greeted them with fresh cries of distress: “It’s Himiko! She’s up
there
! Save her! Save my baby!”

“Baby”?
I thought indignantly.
I’m no baby! She’s making a big fuss over nothing
. I made a disgusted face. Even with the whole clan coming, Mama still kept calling for help again and again, until her words turned into sobs.

“Mama, don’t cry!” I called. I grabbed a thin branch to steady myself as I leaned even farther forward, trying to catch sight of her face. “I’m all right. I climbed up here by myself, and I can—”

The branch snapped off in my hand, my balance deserted me, and I pitched headfirst into thin air.

I couldn’t even find the breath to scream as I crashed
through the web of twigs and frail branches below. Green needles clawed my face as I plummeted. The wind of my fall filled my ears with my mother’s voice shrieking my name.

A sharp blow knocked the breath out of my body, and a harsh shock brought my fall to an abrupt end. A hard line of pain radiated across my back, another under my knees. My head dangled backward over emptiness. I’d fallen, but I hadn’t dropped the fatal distance all the way to the ground. Dizzy, aching, sick to my stomach, I slowly realized how close I’d come to disaster. My small hands met the rough, familiar bark of the pine tree.

I sat up slowly and saw what had stopped my fall and saved my life: two thick branches grew in graceful, uplifting curves like a pair of welcoming arms. The shock of what had happened to me ebbed as I caught my breath and felt a spiderweb of aches begin to spin itself over my body. I hurt in so many places that I couldn’t begin to tell which were slight and which severe. Cradled in Grandfather Pine’s embrace, I flung my arms around his trunk, leaned my head against his bark, and began to cry. I was still weeping, my cheeks sticky with streaks of resin, when one of my clansmen climbed up to bring me the rest of the way down.

He set me on my feet in front of Mama, but before she could take me into her arms, I felt a searing pain in my right leg, and it collapsed under me. I sprawled at Mama’s feet, wailing. It wasn’t just the agony of my shattered bone that made me yowl, but the fearful certainty I felt about
why
this had happened. All of Father’s warnings about the maliciousness of the spirits crowded into my mind. Because I’d
fallen, I’d failed to make Aki see me as worthy to become a hunter. Because of that, I would never be able to bring the spirits the offerings of game I’d promised them.

Because I’d broken my promise to the spirits, the spirits had broken me.

There was a great flurry of activity as I was carried into our house, stripped of my torn, filthy clothes, and washed with great care and tenderness by Mama and my stepmothers. They took turns scolding me for what I’d done, exclaiming in alarm over my injuries, drying my tears as I sobbed over how badly my leg was hurting, and assuring me over and over again that there was nothing to worry about and that I’d soon be better. It all made my head spin so much that I stopped listening to them altogether.

One of our clanfolk fetched the shaman, a thin-faced old woman named Yama. At that age, I was still a little afraid of her, with her wild, tangled hair, like a midnight sky streaked with lightning, and the array of clattering beads and bones she wore looped around her neck and dangling from the sash of her white dress. She swept down upon me and set a cup of warm, bitter liquid to my lips. I was so
startled that I swallowed the whole thing in one gulp. Almost at once the pain knifing through me grew dull enough for me to bear without tears. Even when she smiled at me and touched my broken leg so gently that I felt only the faintest twinge, I found myself staring at her, speechless with awe, my thumb in my mouth as though I were an infant seeing a monster.

Yama applied a salve of honey and crushed herbs to my leg, then wrapped it securely with strips of cloth. She told me that I was a very lucky little girl to have broken only my shin and not my neck, and instructed Mama to keep me completely still until the stars said it was all right for me to move again. At her orders, my bedroll was moved into the snuggest corner of our house, out of the way when Mama, Yukari, and Emi were busy with their chores, far from all of the family comings and goings. I might as well have been a broken pot, useless and shoved aside until someone remembered to repair it or throw it away.

As soon as Mama had me settled according to Yama’s directions, my three older brothers came to see me, kneeling in a row beside my bedroll. Mama tried shooing them away so that I could lie undisturbed, but they persisted. I heard Aki murmur to her, “I think Masa and Shoichi are scared by what happened. They won’t believe Himiko’s all right until they talk to her. And I—I can hardly believe we didn’t lose her. I
need
to sit with her for just a little while. Please, Mother?
Please
.” His words persuaded her and she gave in.

Shoichi and Masa gaped at my bundled-up leg and had
a hundred questions for me about how it had felt to fall so far.

“Did you think you were going to die?” Masa asked eagerly. He was a boy who loved to hear tales where the hero’s life was always dangling one breath away from catastrophe. Now that he saw I’d survived it, my morning’s taste of disaster was just another adventure story to him.

Shoichi punched him lightly in the arm. “Don’t be stupid. Of course not! It happened so fast, she didn’t have
time
to think.”

Undaunted, Masa pressed on: “Well, then, what did you think when you were climbing the pine tree? Were you scared? Did you wonder what would happen if you lost your grip? Didn’t you get tired? How long did it take you to—?”

“That’s enough, Masa,” Aki said. “If you have to bother our little sister with questions, better ask her what you can do to make her comfortable, or if there’s anything she wants to eat or drink.”