The Golden Naginata (20 page)

“You are right a little, and you are wrong a little,” said Old Uncle Tengu, preening his feathers, wings and tail. He was still blue from the dye Tomoe had once landed him in, except where new feathers had grown in, and in those places he was white. He carried a sword through a narrow obi belt, and it was longer than the swords tengu usually carried, but he made no motion towards it. He said,

“I told you once before that the oracles of the tengu tribe consulted among themselves and decided you were the Patron of Demon Children. It is at their request that I have found you, although it wasn't easy to track you down, with your recent pilgrimage and everything.”

Tomoe did not like such talk. A patron, or
kami,
was a tutelary deity, and to be called that made her uneasy. “It is stupid to call me
kami
,” she said. “I am a mortal samurai.”

“Nonetheless,” said Old Uncle Tengu, “the oracles have said so, and I cannot doubt their advice, for that would be the greater blasphemy among my kind. Now I am sent here for two reasons, and one is important to your mission, while the other is important to a half-breed
bakemono,
a monster-baby.”

“If I must hear you chatter,” Tomoe complained, “speak faster and more plainly. The night is cold and I would rather go to an inn than stand talking to you.”

“Be more patient, Tomoe Gozen. I will not keep you long. But you should not go to any inn tonight. You can reach the Twin Mountains by morning if I tell you a shorter way through the forest. You will come out at Lost Shrine, where a woman lives in misery and poverty. She will give you a place to rest before you climb the first mountain, Kiji-san, abode of the yamabushi. The woman of Lost Shrine will even provide you with a bath. You will find out about the half-bakemono child which she birthed.

“The second thing that brings me to you is this: I want to give you a certain sword, the one I am wearing. Since you have broken the one you chose at random this morning, you may require the one I have to offer … unless you prefer to risk the curse of stealing one from these burnt brigands and vassals. The sword I bring you is a better one in any case.”

Tomoe did not seem enthused. She said, “It is an honor to be given a sword, but also an honor for you if I accept it. Why should I want such a gift from a long-nosed devil?”

“Do not be prejudiced, Tomoe Gozen!” Old Uncle Tengu was indignant. “Remember, we are pretending to be friends. If you cannot accept it as the gift of a tengu, think of it as coming from your late friend Madoka Kawayama, the young samurai buried in Shigeno Valley Cemetery in a double-grave.”

Tomoe stepped forward a little bit, remembering the beautiful samurai who had died in a terrible war, at the hand of his blood-brother who became a foe. “It was Madoka's sword?” she asked. “How have you gotten it?”

“There is no need to ask how tengu get things. It will not be missed by anyone. It was not really my idea to get it for you. I bring it at the request of the priestess Shan On, groundkeeper of the cemetery you visited. I met her only this morning while I was trying to find where you had gone; and she told me that a scarred fortuneteller came to her in a dream last night. In the dream the fortuneteller said, ‘Tomoe Gozen requires something special to give Ushii Yakushiji as a present.' So Shan On asked me to bring you a couple of things, one of them this sword.”

It was curious that Shan On had dreamed about Tsuki/Naruka; but Tomoe had already learned, a year earlier in Isso, that the fortuneteller wandered in her sleep, her spirit unaware of its own doings. It was not a story the tengu could have made up, so Tomoe did not doubt the explanation. She said, “I believe you, because the fortuneteller visited me in a dream as well, and the necessity of some special gift for Ushii was implied by the dream. But you say there is another thing Shan On commissioned you to deliver?”

“I could not fly here with the second thing,” he said, “so it awaits you at Lost Shrine. You will have to go there to get it.”

Tomoe scowled. “You fool me after all,” she said.

Old Uncle Tengu shrugged his shoulders and rustled his wings. He confessed, “I have tricked you a very little bit by leaving the second present there. But the trick is for the bakemono child, not for myself. You will surely take pity if you see the unhappy mother.”

The severe look on Tomoe Gozen's face had mostly gone away. She said to Old Uncle Tengu, “Perhaps I should not be so stubborn. For the sake of Madoka Kawayama's sword, which is indeed a suitable gift for Ushii Yakushiji in Hell, I will offer you our pretended friendship as an honest one.”

Old Uncle Tengu tried not to show any sign of happiness, but it glistened in his eyes. He took the longsword from his obi and handed it to Tomoe. “It is good of you,” he said. The tengu and the samurai bowed to one another on that nighted road in the early part of autumn; and then Old Uncle Tengu told Tomoe Gozen how not to lose the forest path to Lost Shrine, and they parted.

She leaned back in the stone hot-tub, relaxing aching muscles, smiling to herself. Vapors of steam snaked through the rickety structure. “It feels good,” she said, but there was no one close enough to hear. The only sounds were those of her own graceful motions in the deep tub, and the fire built in an outside wall's masonry nook, where it heated the bathhouse's simple duct system. Tomoe Gozen had slept the entire morning and into the afternoon, too weary to have bathed the instant she arrived at Lost Shrine. On waking she had felt stiff and filthy; happily, Oshina, the woman of Lost Shrine, had prepared a bath for her visitor. Tomoe was grateful.

After lengthy ablutions, she climbed from the bath, dried herself, oiled her hair with something sweet-smelling which Oshina had left for her, and clad herself handsomely in the clothing Oshina had brushed clean and folded while Tomoe had slept. Taking up her swords, and a cloth which wrapped a few possessions, she thrust these into her obi and stepped out of the tiny bathhouse.

The air was chilly off the snowcapped Karugas. The mountain range surrounded the place on three sides, with an especially notable pair of identical peaks looking larger than the others because they loomed so near. These were Kuji-san of the yamahoshi sect, and Kiji-san of the yamabushi sect, the two places Tomoe must visit. The Buddhist warriors dominated the prefecture, which might partly explain the neglect of the Shinto shrine.

A cold, cold stream ran nearby. Oshina sat on her knees on a flat, mossy bridge washing a child's clothing in the icy water. They were the size and design for a small boy. The woman was rag-clad, but the little kimonos she washed were in good repair, suggesting that the young mother took better care of her son than herself.

Tomoe had hardly looked at the grounds on arrival. It had not quite been sunrise, and she had been too weary even for decent amenities, much less for exploration. On waking, she had been so eager for a bath that again she scarcely took in her surroundings. Now she looked over the landscape, and though it had the individual elements of a pretty country place, there was in fact nothing charming about Lost Shrine. The bathhouse she came out of leaned so much that it was surprising it did not collapse. The torii gate was broken near its top. The path from the gate to the shrine's chief building was weed-grown from disuse. The shrine-building itself looked more like a weathered storage house than a holy place. From any distance, the site would be invisible, hidden by the overgrowth of flora and the shadows of the trees.

There was only one area not left wild. A cleared patch sported a healthy crop of cucumbers and autumn squash. The crop helped take the edge of eeriness off the surroundings, as did the comforting sight of a woman washing clothing in a stream. Oshina was silent in her work and, because of the stream's babbling, had not heard Tomoe come out of the bath.

“It's a good day!” Tomoe shouted. The woman on the bridge raised her head, looked at the samurai without an emotion on her face, then bowed to her work again.

Tomoe looked at the twin peaks and the Karuga range again. As viewed from Lost Shrine, the mountains were too much like the walls of a cage to be appealing. Tomoe thought the whole area was like an exceedingly finite dish-scene, and one arranged by someone with a melancholy disposition. The samurai turned full circle and mumbled to herself, “Lost Shrine could be more pleasant.”

A white dog who had greeted her also before sunrise came from behind the shrine, straight to Tomoe Gozen, and licked her hand. The dog was the one named Taro, belonging to Shan On; and he was the second thing Old Uncle Tengu had been asked to deliver. Tomoe understood Shan On's reason. Since the samurai planned to enter Buddhist Hell, a Shinto dog might well be an extraordinarily beneficial companion. Tomoe said,

“Hello, Taro; do you want to fight some demons pretty soon? We will do it together. But I must go for the Golden Naginata by myself, there atop Kiji-san. See how the mountain lights the bottoms of the clouds? That is not the activity of a volcano, but the shining of the miraculous weapon I seek. I will come back here and get you before going to the second mountain, Kuji-san; and we will enter the Gate of Hell side by side and unafraid.”

The dog wagged his tail as though he understood and was eager for the chance. Oshina had finished with her wash and was coming along a path with a dripping basket in her arms. Nearby, several poles had been braced across each other, on which clothing could be hung to dry. That was where Oshina went, so Tomoe walked up the path to the same spot, Taro close at her heels.

“Thank you for the fire-warmed bath. I am a new woman this afternoon.”

Oshina bowed briskly and kept working, her mood not improved by the samurai's pleasantness.

“Oshina,” said Tomoe. “Do you know who I am that visits you?”

“Yes,” she said. “You are Tomoe Gozen. The tengu who flew here with the white dog told me you would be coming.”

“But do you know me besides that?” she asked.

“Of course. You are famous.”

“I do not mean that either. I think I have seen you somewhere before, maybe a few years ago.”

Oshina finished with hanging the child's clothing. Before Tomoe could grill further, the young woman had grabbed the emptied basket and hurried toward the crumbling shrine-house, in which she lived. Tomoe looked down at the dog and said,

“It seems I cannot say the proper things today, Taro. You go make her happy for a little while.” Taro ran after Oshina, wagging his entire bottom like a miraculous happiness-charm. Both the woman and the dog vanished into the shrine-house's dark interior. Tomoe walked about the ruins of Lost Shrine for a while, trying to remember where she had seen Oshina before. The woman was no outstanding beauty, and her weariness leant more to a plain appearance; but even in her poverty, Oshina had a dignity and uniqueness which made her familiar to Tomoe. Tomoe said to herself, “I cannot remember,” and looked puzzled.

Behind the shrine, chickens were kept under big, loosely woven reed-baskets so that they could not wander away or be taken by predators. Baby chicks came and went with more freedom, for they fit through the strands of woven reeds. They would hurry back to hide beneath their restricted mothers at the slightest sign of danger, as when Tomoe Gozen approached. There was a big rooster who lived by himself under a separate basket, although the baby chicks were evidence that the fellow was let with the hens from time to time. The rooster seemed to be a clue to the identity of Oshina, but still Tomoe could not recall.

It seemed as though Oshina had managed to make herself a reasonable home in the run-down place, with garden and fresh eggs and a dry floor to sleep on. But it was a lonely, deserted kind of place and Tomoe suspected she might well be the only human visitor Oshina had had since coming here. “It's sad,” said Tomoe, still talking to herself, it being hard to strike conversations with her hostess.

There was something Tomoe had been putting off; but soon she must face up to her duty. She had promised Old Uncle Tengu that she would look in on the half-bakemono child. Oshina had not offered Tomoe the opportunity to see the child so far, and he never made a sound in the room of the shrine-house which was his and Oshina's sleeping quarter. An intrusion might not be welcome, and she might be blamed for curiosity, but she could not escape her promise to look upon the child and his situation.

She stood in the shrine's entrance a long time, making no sound. She heard Taro's long tail banging the floor, and Oshina saying something pleasant to him. There were none of the sounds of a child playing or moving about. If not for the clothing drying outside, one might suspect there was no child here at all.

“Oshina?” called Tomoe. Oshina immediately fell silent, although the dog's tail continued to thump lightly. “Oshina, please do not refuse me, for I would see your child. The tengu told me about him, so I will not be surprised; I do not come to revile you or your son.”

There was no permission forthcoming, but there was no refusal either. Tomoe Gozen slipped off her sandals, pulled the longsword and sheath from her obi, and entered the shrine-house. She approached a sliding door along the partition, waited there a moment, then slid the door aside. Taro looked up from a comfortable position. Oshina had her back to the door, her body blocking the view of a child on a futon mattress. Tomoe moved sideways and saw the child lying there, and immediately she remembered where she had seen Oshina before. It was the homely face of the halfbreed bakemono which reminded her. The child's mouth was a crooked rent from center of jaw upward to the left ear; there was only one bakemono Tomoe knew about who ever had such a mouth, so the half-monster had to be his get.

“You are the Rooster Clan's daughter who was saved from a haunted swamp five or six years ago!” exclaimed Tomoe.

Oshina bowed. Her small voice said, “I had hoped you would not remember after so long. It was nice of you to help me at that time, and to help in the slaying of the monster who kidnapped me to that terrible place. You could not have known my shame had begun rather than ended; for I carried the monster's child. When he was born, I was cast out with him so that both of us would die. We wandered as beggars until finding this place. My son will be five years old in two days, but has no family to bring him presents.”