Spirit's Princess (8 page)

“Cowards! You can’t do anything right. Here!” She got up and plopped her baby sister into the weeping girl’s lap. I’d forgotten how tall Suzu was, and how big. Her body made mine look like a tangle of thread next to the gnarled roots of a full-grown cypress tree. She strode toward me, a mountain ogre hungry for my bones, her upraised fist a club, ready to strike me down. “I told you,
go away!
”

I punched her in the stomach before she could hit me. I put as much strength as I had into it, and was astonished to see how just one blow made my formidable enemy topple, doubled up on the ground. Suzu gasped, tears swimming in her eyes. Her face contorted into a mask scarier than any demon, and when she caught her breath, her sobs roared out like a windstorm.

I didn’t wait to see anything else; I spun around and hobbled off as swiftly as I could.

“Demon!”
Suzu screeched after me. “That’s why you can’t walk like real people, because you’re a demon! The spirits hate you, and they hate your family for not punishing you, and
that’s
why your baby brothers died! You’re cursed, and your family’s cursed, and it’s all your fault that—!”

I pressed my hands to my ears and strained to go even
more quickly, to escape the words that burned my heart to ashes. It was no use; I couldn’t summon up a faster gait. I was shackled by my injured leg, forced to endure Suzu’s cruel accusations for almost longer than I could bear.

I drove myself on until I was beyond the reach of her voice. I hadn’t consciously chosen which way to go, only to
go
, so that when I did stop, I found myself deep underneath one of the village storehouses. Alone among the piles of empty clay pots, I leaned against a pillar, panting. My injured leg ached so badly that I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. Suzu’s hateful words throbbed in my ears and tied my belly into knots, but left my eyes hot and dry.

I remembered how she’d come to visit me when I was recovering from my accident. We didn’t have much to say to one another, but she’d smiled sweetly and told me that all my friends hoped I’d get well soon. The rest of the girls smiled and added their agreement and nodded at everything she said.

They’d nodded even more energetically today, when she’d turned against me. What had changed? What had I done? If she hated me for climbing our guardian pine, why had she come to visit me at all? I felt dizzy. A huge storage pot lay on its side near my pillar. It was half sunk into the earth, so it must have been there a long time, discarded and forgotten. I sat down cautiously on its curved side and tried to figure out what had just happened, but not a single answer came.

“Himiko? Are you here?” A low, shaky whisper came from just beyond the shadows under the storehouse. I thought I recognized the voice, except it couldn’t be—

“Ume?” Why had she come after me? She was Suzu’s creature, and I’d bloodied her nose.
She’s going to bring the rest of them here
, I thought, and prepared to defend myself a second time.

“Yes, it’s me.” She crept nearer. “I’m glad I found you.”

“Did Suzu send you?” I asked suspiciously. “Are you going to tell her where I am?”

In the darkness under the storehouse, I could just make out Ume shaking her head. “When you ran away, she told the rest of us to let you go. When our parents come home, we’re supposed to tell them that you don’t believe in the gods, and that’s going to be better than teaching you a lesson ourselves.” She dropped her voice even lower and muttered, “I think she was afraid that if she chased you, you’d hit her again. You hit
hard
.”

She was trying to hit
me,
Ume
, I thought.
And so were you
. But what I said was “Does your nose still hurt?”

She shrugged, and the shadows made it look like she was a huge, black bird lifting its wings. “Not much, now. Not enough to cry about.” She paused. “I thought I heard
you
crying, under here.”

“I wasn’t,” I said firmly. “I don’t care how much you and Suzu and everyone else hates me, I’m not going to cry about it.”

“We don’t all hate you, Himiko,” Ume protested. “Only Suzu.”

“Why? I didn’t do anything to her.”
Not until today
, I thought.
And I’d do
that
again!

“I know. I don’t understand it. Her mama likes you. She’s always telling Suzu how smart and pretty and special
you are, and if Suzu can’t be more like you, she should at least try to play with you every chance she gets, because you’re going to be real important one day.”

“Important? Me?”

“Oh yes!” There wasn’t a flicker of doubt in Ume’s voice. “The whole clan knows how much your brother Aki likes you. Everyone says that when it’s time for him to marry, he’ll pick a wife you like too, and when he becomes chieftain, she’ll be the highest lady in the village. That’s what makes you so important, see?”

I did see; I wished I didn’t. “Suzu pretended to be my friend so she could be a chief’s wife one day. How stupid! When he’s ready to get married, Aki might listen to Father or Mama, but me?” I laughed bitterly.

“Suzu thought it was a stupid idea too,” Ume said. “But her mama didn’t.” I heard her let out a long sigh. “Now Suzu’s happy, because if enough people hear what you said—you know, about the spirits not being real—no one will like you, not even your brother Aki. You won’t be important anymore, and then her mama won’t want her to be like you or play with you or even talk to you at all.”

“And that’s exactly what Suzu’s always wanted,” I concluded.

Ume came closer. I heard her feet kicking aside pieces of broken pottery. “Don’t be unhappy, Himiko; I’m going to tell my parents that you never said one word against the gods, and that you
do
believe in them, and that Suzu probably imagined the whole thing.” Her hand closed over mine. “I want to be your friend. We can play whenever you want”—her voice dropped—“as long as Suzu doesn’t find out.”

“Are you
that
afraid of her?” I asked. “Because I’m not.” The only reply I got was an uncomfortable silence. Finally I said, “All right, Ume. Do you want to come play tomorrow?”

“Yes, please!” She was overjoyed. “What would you like to do? Should I bring my doll? Will it be early enough if I come after breakfast?”

“Early enough for what?”

“For Aki to see that now
I’m
your best friend, not Suzu. Ohhhhh, I wish I was older. By the time we can get married, he might already have one wife, maybe two, and I don’t want to be a junior—”

I pulled my hand away from hers and staggered out into the daylight. I heard her calling after me, but I kept going, never looking back. I didn’t stop until I was up the ladder, inside my house, and curled in a corner, crying.

Mama and my stepmothers flocked around me, demanding to know what was the matter. I refused to explain, and so they waited until Father and the boys came home and begged them to discover the reason for my misery.

By that time, I’d stopped crying. Suzu’s meanness and Ume’s offer of false friendship were buried, no longer a sharp pain but a lesson and a memory. I was able to turn a smiling face to Father when he sat down to question me about my tears.

“It was nothing,” I told him cheerfully.

“Ah.” He stroked his chin. “All right, then. Let’s eat.”

“Is that all you’re going to say?” Mama objected. “If you could have heard how loudly she was sobbing when she came home this afternoon, it would have broken your heart.”

“Probably so. Children
cry
, woman. They cry and they
stop crying, and unless they’re sick or injured, it’s nothing for us to bother about. She’s not crying now, is she?”

“It doesn’t mean—”

“Then that’s that. It’s over.” There was no further argument allowed when Father used
that
tone.

But it wasn’t over.

In the days that followed, I stayed close to home. I wasn’t afraid of encountering Suzu and the others, but I was scared of running into their parents. What if they had tattled about me to the grown-ups?
Himiko hurt our guardian on purpose! Himiko says the spirits don’t exist! Himiko’s going to make the gods angry and curse us all!

Would any of our clanfolk believe them? And if they did, what would they do about it? What would they say to me if we met? In my mind, I conjured up one outcome after another, all of them terrifying. The grown-ups of my imagination did everything from scream at me to throw stones.

The worst part was knowing that some of what Suzu and the rest said was … true. Since my fall, I hadn’t heard the voices of the spirits in my dreams. I no longer called the ancient pine Grandfather. I saw it as nothing more than just an old, empty tree.

If one of the grown-ups were to ask me straight out whether I believed in the spirits, what would I do? Tell the truth or take refuge in a lie? I didn’t know, and that made me even more afraid. I chose to hide from the village instead, in my home or under it.

You can learn many things from a good hiding place. It
wasn’t long before I had the luck to overhear Father confronting Suzu’s parents when they came to tell him what I’d done. The three of them stood at the foot of the ladder leading up to our house’s platform and never knew I was taking in everything from behind one of the pillars.

Father let Suzu’s parents speak freely. Her mother did most of the talking. Her father put in a word now and then, but mostly he just nodded.

When they were done, Father spoke. “Is that so?” he said. “Your daughter tells you that mine rejects the gods?” He sounded calm, the way the air feels right before a thunderstorm breaks.

“We thought you should know about it,” Suzu’s mother said primly. “This is
very
serious. We’re concerned about the child.”

“You should be,” Father replied. “She’s a liar.”

Suzu’s father sucked in his breath sharply. “You can’t mean it! A sweet-faced little girl like Himiko, a liar?”

“I’m not talking about Himiko,” Father said, and without warning burst into a fierce rant, berating Suzu’s parents for taking the word of an eight-year-old about something so important. “By the gods, do you let your
child
rule the house? Do her words drive you here and there, like chickens? Little girls quarrel all the time; even I know this! And when they do, they try to turn their enemies into monsters. But you took your daughter’s wild words
seriously
? Incredible. Are you fools, or have you lost your minds?”

Suzu’s parents fled. Her mother was wailing. I couldn’t help hoping that things would go badly for Suzu when they
got home, but I never heard anything about it. More days passed, and no others came to accuse me; that was all that mattered.

Winter drifted over our village with a light dusting of snow and a faint chill that turned breath to mist. I played alone, except for those times when Aki could spend time with me, or when Masa and Shoichi were so bored that my company was better than nothing. When the weather wasn’t too cold and while sunlight lasted, I continued with my plan to exercise my leg, trying to walk more steadily, working hard toward the day when I’d be able to run.

That day didn’t come, and no matter how diligently I practiced, I never quite lost a small hitch and hobble when I walked. At last I realized that if a broken walk was the best I would ever be able to manage, why should I even try to dance? I turned away from my dreams.

My home and my family became my world. They were all that I could trust to never let me down—not like my own body, or my so-called friends, or the supposed spirits. If I’d said such things aloud, other people might have thought that my life had grown empty and sad. The truth was, I felt relieved. Everything was simpler. Why break my heart trying to reach a goal that might always remain beyond me? It was better to enjoy the things I
knew
I could have. That was what I told myself, anyway.

I wasn’t a hunter. I wasn’t a dancer. I wasn’t someone who wasted time fretting over the whims of beings who might or might not exist at all.

I was Mama’s helpful, reliable child. I was Father’s good, obedient girl. I was Aki’s favorite. I was Yukari and
Emi’s darling, indulged and cuddled and fussed over and told twenty times a day how pretty I was.

I smiled and laughed and sang and did what was expected of me. I didn’t ask questions. I was Himiko, the chieftain’s daughter, and someday I would be a Matsu nobleman’s senior wife.

I was supposed to be happy.

Two full turns of the seasons passed. I didn’t miss having friends. After all, I hadn’t spent much time with them before Suzu showed her true nature. If our paths happened to cross, I made sure to give my former playmates a smile that shouted in their faces,
Who needs you? Not me!

I saved my real smiles for my family, Aki above all. When it became clear that I had no more friends among the village children, he took every opportunity to fill that empty spot in my life. I was so pleased to have more of my beloved brother’s attention that I never told him how little I missed Suzu and the rest. I treasured each moment he spent with me, but some occasions were more special than others.