Thousand Shrine Warrior (34 page)

Tomoe's plan to turn back was far more firmly rooted than had been her intended and reluctant flight. Still, she must linger for the time being, lest Shi-u and Kosame detect her altered determination or hear of her return. She must not be seen in Kanno before the women samurai had left for good.

This dallying gave her the opportunity to truly ponder the fateful manner in which she came to be standing midway along the fabulous gorge. Danger awaited at either extremity. In one direction there was the promise of the duel with Shi-u, for whom Tomoe felt extraordinary empathy and whom she would hate to fight. As for the return route, it meant renewed confrontation with Kuro. All paths led to jeopardy. Her choice was not necessarily the safest.

The most fearful element had been the infeasibility of rebelling against a spirit from among her own ancestors. The fear of sacrilege had begun to ebb; for her theory regarding Kuro's power had occasioned a chink through which she might escape the dilemma. And she might do so by nobler means than running away.

She was convinced that the goryo was possessed by the fiend called Green Fire Devil, the cause of the fiery sheen that passed from time to time through Kuro's eyes. Judging by the story Heinosuke told, the whole affair could be said to have started well before Nichiroku was buried alive. Every anguishing event had actually grown from the insufficient or ill-advised exorcisms that had separated Green Fire Devil from Yuki-onna the Snow Woman. A temple should never have been built on land admired by supernatural agents. Once the wrong path was chosen, every additional step compounded the error.

The unreasonable death of Nichiroku had rendered him the hundred-year guardian, buried atop Green Fire Devil's doorway out of Emma's Hell. Who could say what agreement they had reached while locked in their obscure, other-world battle? Nichiroku's indentureship expired and he escaped from the pit, a foul corpse disguised as an angelic priest. Hell's crack was left unguarded. Yet who had seen Green Fire Devil adrift in fields or forests or swamps and up the sides of hills? Where was that demon if not held within Kuro himself, bestowing upon the resurged corpse its excessive power! Kuro the Darkness had formed an extraordinary league with Hell's fiery minion.

Thus it was Green Fire Devil who feared Buddhist exorcism. It was the Buddhists who had divided him from the object of his demonic lusts. A Shinto priest like Bundori was left relatively unmolested, since no such priest had ever interfered with the site of the Temple of the Gorge. Green Fire Devil worked within Kuro to rid the region of Buddhists. Kuro the Darkness in turn made use of his demonic attachment to pursue revenge against seven clans. Their aims were intertwined. Their manifestation was more perfectly unified than was the amalgamation of Shinji and Otane into a love-suicide ghost.

The bikuni reasoned thus: If she managed to free the vengeful ghost from its possession, this could be construed, if only in a semantic sense, as a service to her ancestral spirits. As a side-effect, Kuro the Darkness would become figuratively emasculated, a common goryo bound to the place of his death, capable of achieving his revenge only against those who disbelieved the curse and wandered close. This, however, need not be the bikuni's consideration. It was not her intent to harm the vengeful spirit. Indeed, with straightforward aplomb, her intent was to
honor
and defend that spirit. She would visit him when he was restricted to the Temple of the Gorge. She would light incense for him. She would pray for his peaceful repose.

If this meant dancing along a precipice of impiety, then she would have to take extra pains to avoid profaning the goryo. In devotional prayers she would never address him as dark Kuro but only as shining Nichiroku, the monk from Heida! Until then, she must set her mind upon the task of destroying the demon that possessed the ghost.

She had gathered her gear and fit her hat on snugly and was ready to head back; for surely she had dawdled enough to avoid Shi-u and Kosame. The sun peered into the gorge. The last of the mists had burned from the ground. Until she regained the snow-level, her route ought to be easy and pleasant. But as the bikuni was prepared to set off, she heard a lonesome, weird sound that was so high-pitched it hurt her ears.

It had begun long before she noticed, at too high a note to register. It modulated itself in a variety of fashions, arriving at an audible pitch by slow stages, and still experimenting, like a child with a tiny flute. Only in retrospect did the bikuni realize she had been hearing something for longer than she was aware.

The shrill, strange sound was such a curiosity that the nun began to seek it out. It echoed from the looming walls and confused her. As she strode about in idle fascination, it became evident that the whistling notes originated somewhere around the stagnant inlet off to the side of the river. There were numerous lurking-places around this pool, river flotsam and boulders strewn about. Yet she found nothing hiding. Her wary investigation led her to the conclusion that the sound rose from the tiny bay itself, as though the water sang.

During this minor quest, the note lowered more and more, though never ceasing to be shrill. It wavered more than it had, until syllables could be picked out. It was an inhuman voice, but still a voice, struggling to communicate. One syllable was “
neh
” and the next sounded something like “
ryo
” followed by a drawn out, awkward “
yiu
” and finally “
meh
” before starting anew. The bikuni had earlier been so intensely caught up in thoughts, and before that in the encounter with Lord Wada's wives, that she had been rendered somewhat mind-weary or slow-witted. She had been much too overwhelmed by everything and for this reason took a while to see the obvious. She had interpreted “
neh
” as “grass” and “
ryo
” as meaning “dragon.” But “dragon's grass” was utter nonsense.

But the wailing lament was actually a beckoning cry of “Nero-yu-me,” her own Buddhist name. When this dawned on her, she wondered if something were trying to beguile her by its peculiar whining, befuddling her thoughts. But she was beguiled by nothing other than her own musings. Curiosity continued to outweigh any fear of what might be found.

At length she saw the very point of origin for the cry. There were two tiny nostrils at the surface of the water. The possessor of those nostrils was incongruously large. “Neroyume,” it said more clearly, as though getting the feel of speech through its nose.

The face was that of a giant salamander, its wide, clamped mouth almost a smile. The creature was as long as a human body, but the limbs were minute. Fragments of broken ice floated about so that she could not quite see the whole body. She squatted and looked more closely, causing the salamander to cease its whistling cry and sink into the muck, away from view. A large bubble rose afterward, drifted the longest while, then popped.

The bikuni reached out and took an edge of broken ice, pulling a large sheet onto the bank. She saw the salamander's dark gray skin, wrinkled and undulating along the sides. Neither she nor it moved for a long time. She remained squatting as near the water as was practical, holding up the front of her amigasa so that her vision was not shaded. Finally the salamander raised its head again, its nostrils barely breaking the surface. The water was stirred and cloudy, so that the creature was scarcely more than a shadow of gray within gray. Its tiny eyes blinked beneath the surface. It watched the bikuni warily—or shyly.

Its frilled sides rippled as it moved to one side, neither further from or nearer to the bikuni. Its almost human, miniature hands opened and closed on nothing. The long, thick body ended in a stubby tail, slightly coiled.

This creature was known in many places as “the boneless man” and was dreaded, but without reason. The bikuni knew it was not a monster. It was an ordinary though rare animal. In Kai, the province of waterfalls, where such creatures were more common than elsewhere, it was called
samushii
on account of its noise, which was sad and strange.

The reedy voice emitting from the nostrils was less and less difficult to understand, though it took concentration, as when listening to an especially odd country dialect. It said, “You are fearful to … the spirits of the gorge.”

“Am I?” she said.

“As I am an ordinary beast and unaffected … they have elected me … to say to you, ‘Your sword … disturbs us with its holy emanations. We don't mind … its being haunted by its maker the smith; but the blessing of the Mikado … which it bears … is more painful than … sunlight in our eyes.' I hope,” the salamander added, “that you are not offended. For myself … I am not bothered by your weapon's emanations.”

“I am not offended,” said the bikuni. “I will try not to disturb the spirits of this gorge, since you ask politely. But popular authority would say those spirits are evil.”

The salamander, mastering its long unpracticed speech a bit better, said, “They do not mean to suggest … that their intentions tend always to be good ones. But repulsive creatures, too, prefer a modicum of peace. They will be relieved by your agreement. In exchange for your good favor … I am asked to make a prognostication … in your behalf.”

“I did not know,” said the bikuni, “that the samushii could tell fortunes.”

“I am special among my kind,” said the samushii in its painfully high voice. “Perhaps it comes from living … among spirits.”

“If those spirits are harmful, as they readily admit, perhaps this renders your prognostications dangerous.”

“If I may say so,” said the salamander, “I have never caused the least harm … to anyone. I cannot state so boldly whether my vision has ever … helped; for everything I see, I see through water. It is small recompense to you, therefore, that I make an observation … in exchange for your sword remaining sheathed while in the gorge. The spirits merely want to avoid … a debt.”

“Then foretell what you can,” said the bikuni.

“My prognostications … are not exactly fortunes. They are things others cannot see about themselves. In you, I see this: You have hurtful karma attached to your person … brought from previous lives. For this reason you … have always been unlucky or at least reluctant in love.”

“Love prophecies are the cheapest kind,” said the bikuni, amused by the fortune-telling amphibian's common approach.

“The aura you project … is dangerous even … for lovers who come too close.”

The bikuni stood abruptly. She said, “Perhaps I don't require you to tell me more.” Though her tone was not angry, it was strict.

“My … apology,” said the salamander, beginning to squirm backward in the pond.

“Wait!” said the bikuni. She sounded undecided. She said, “I have indeed been the death of at least one pair of lovers. The fate you would have me think is mine is subtle and horrific. Is there any way around it?”

The whole length of the salamander floated near the surface. The speaking nostrils reappeared. The salamander resembled, all in view, a corpse in an advanced state of decay, slimy patches of white scum exuding from the gray. It said, “You may break the chain of events when you become … lucky in love. It may happen in this life … or another; a salamander cannot know. Until then, you are the dew of Kwannon's mercy. You extinguish earthly passion. More than this … I do not know.”

The huge, slow, primordial creature began to swim away. With heavy step, the bikuni started back to Kanno.

A big man, powerful, competent and implacable, driven or condemned by bitter ambition ironically harmonized with despair and resignation, Ittosai Kumasaku dug another shallow grave into which a fragment of his soul lay down. He set the wooden shovel to one side and wiped his forehead. His arm, injured by Heinosuke, was tightly bound and caused no pain. The atmosphere was chill, but his labors kept him heated. Near his three horses was a pile of frozen corpses. He approached the pile and took up a twisted body at random, dragged it across dirty snow, and shoved it into the fresh-made hole. Then he stood above the grave, gazing at the corpse of an old woman. He'd found her that morning beneath snow, behind a house near the village edge. He recognized her as the hag who had come day after day to pray before the grave of a son or nephew or some such; he couldn't remember what she'd said their relationship was, but he remembered telling her which grave held the chubby vassal. She put that sloppy marker up with the name of Chojiro written so badly that it looked like Tubudu or something equally absurd.

Ittosai had been burying the dead in Kuro's graveyard for months, and had become hardened to it. He felt less shame than in the beginning, and no pity. Yet the stiffened hag struck him as especially forlorn, lying in that hole. He climbed down with her, lifted her out, and hauled her toward the grave she had often prayed before. A rustic lantern had recently appeared on that grave, and Ittosai propped the old woman against it. Taking up his pick, and then his shovel, Ittosai began to dig a grave behind the one covering the old woman's last relative.