I’m afraid to say that this is another short chapter. I did try and make it longer, but everything I wrote felt like a superfluous addition to what I wanted to do with this chapter. Also, I will be honest with you. I never have terribly much time to write, and I’d rather post a short chapter of one of my stories every week than a long chapter every month or two months. ^.^;

Anyway, everyone belongs to Toei. I’m not making any profit off of this.

Your comments are always read and worshipped. I’m thinking of setting up a shrine to your comments in my room, where I will offer them Digimon action-figures and chocolate Pocky everyday. *Hint hint*

THE TALE OF HIKARI

CHAPTER 6

TANGLED THOUGHTS

When he came down the hillside path that led from the Yagami’s estate, Takeru found Sora waiting for him by his hut. He felt a sharp pang of guilt when he saw how tired and worn she was looking. He had wanted to protect her, but he must have failed miserably for her to look like this. Her shoulders were slumped, her arms hung heavy at her sides and her eyes seemed centuries too old for her face. The curve of her swollen stomach was clearly visible through the thin fabric of her robe. She rested one hand on it, as if to support a burden too heavy to bear.

Awkwardly, she hurried forward to meet him, “Takeru, where have you been?”

“I-I’ve been drawing,” it was only half-a-lie, but he still stumbled over it. He loved Sora, and he hated that he could not tell her the full truth about where he had been. He removed one of his paintings of chrysanthemums from his papers and held it up for her inspection. He knew it was not the best he had done that morning, but it was still his favourite. The ink was slightly smudged from where Hikari had leaned across to look at it and her hair had brushed over it. Even though she had coloured and apologised for her error, he thought it had improved the picture. It seemed like the chrysanthemums were dissolving into mist, like there was no difference between plant and air.

She barely glanced at it, “At the Yagami’s estate? Takeru! What if one of them had seen you?”

Takeru started, even though there was no way that Sora could have known what happened that morning. He had been turning to walk away from Hikari, when she had called for him to wait. He had looked back at her and had been shocked to see her parting the translucent veils that hid her face from him. She had been even more beautiful than he remembered her. White and pink, she had reminded him of a day at winter’s end when the spring blossoms appeared for the first time in the trees. And, even though he had not been able to understand why she had to veil her face, he certainly had grasped the significance of her revealing it. I can see you, she had said, and you can see me.

He had not known what to say to her in reply. In the end, he had simply walked back to their makeshift table to spread out a new sheet of paper for her. She had seated herself next to him, picked up her discarded paintbrush, and their lesson had continued as if nothing had happened. However, he had sensed that everything had changed between them; that they could no more return to the way they had been than the moon at dawn could travel back across the sky. (1)

While she had been drawing, he had not been able to keep his eyes away from her for long, or to keep himself from memorising every feature like a sutra he could never write. The curve of her white neck. Her pink-stained lips. The dark line of her eyelashes against her pale cheeks. The tilt of her nose. One part of him had wished he could paint her; the other . . . the other had wanted to trace the lines of her face with the tips of his fingers.

He pushed the thought away from him. There was no point of hoping for what could never be, and they could never be.

“Takeru?” Sora sounded concerned, “What’s wrong? One of them didn’t see you, did they?”

“N-no, of course not,” he hastened to reassure her, “I’m always careful.”

She frowned, unconvinced.

“Sora, please don't worry about me,” he gave her a smile, although it was a false one, “It can’t be good for the baby.”

Sora looked away from him and he instantly regretted his words. Even though he had not meant them to hurt her, he should have thought before speaking them. He knew how Sora felt about her baby, how she awaited its arrival as other women might the news of a death. No one in their village had been able to discover the identity of its father. Sora had refused to reveal it, and none of the men had claimed responsibility for it as honour demanded. The superstitious among them believed that it had been a fox-spirit who had come to her one night, or even that her dead husband had returned from the world of the spirits himself to father it.

Takeru knew that last rumour hurt Sora more than all the other gossip that swirled around her. As greatly as he had loved his brother, he knew that Sora had loved Yamato even more. On the day of their wedding, she had been as radiant as the midday sun that casts everything into shadow beside it. He remembered watching her and thinking that he would be lucky if he could find someone he loved a fraction as much as she had loved his brother.

They had had three happy months together before Yamato had come down with the same plague that had cut a swathe through their village. It had been a terrible time for everyone. Every day, another body was carried out of a hut. The air smelt so sweet with decay that people were afraid to breathe. The village was never quiet - the sounds of weeping and ineffectual chanting carried on from sunrise to sunrise. When Yamato had realised he too was dying, he had made Takeru swear to take care of his wife for him.

He felt new tears prick his eyes, but he blinked them back. The loss of his brother was a constant, hollow pain in his chest, made only worse by the knowledge that he had failed to live up to his promise to him.

“I’m sorry, Sora,” he said quietly, “That was thoughtless of me.”

“This isn’t your fault,” her eyes were as hard and shiny as river-polished rock. They always were when she spoke about her pregnancy. Whatever had happened to her, however the child had been conceived, it could not have been pleasant. Anger flared inside him.

“Yes, it is!” his fists clenched at his sides, “I should have done what Yamato wanted. I should have . . . .”

“Married me?” Sora shook her head, “No, I wouldn’t let you. You don’t love me in that way, any more than I love you. You deserve to know what it is like to be with the woman you love.”

“But I could have protected you!”

Sora’s mouth twisted in a bitter smile, “Takeru, you could not have protected me from this, any more than a fisherman could hope to turn back the waves that crash against the shore.”

Cryptic as her words were, it was the closest she had come to talking about the conception of her child. He opened his mouth to ask her what she meant, but she lifted a hand to caution him to silence, “You better put your stuff back in your hut, because we need to head for the fields. We’re late enough as it is.”

“One day, will you tell me what happened?”

“One day.”

It was not a promise, but then he had not expected one.

***

‘All too suddenly, I fear,

the same wind that sweeps

across this rocky shore

has blown away the clouds

and left me sun-dazzled.’

Hikari set aside her brush to look at her poem. She had painted it in pale, watery ink on light-grey paper, so that it seemed the words themselves were just beginning to emerge from the concealing clouds. There was something comforting about seeing her feelings reduced to the oblique, elegant lines of a waka. It made her believe that she might be able to understand what had happened that morning between herself and Takeru; that there might be some way out of the confusion in which she found herself. Her thoughts and emotions felt like seaweed tangled together by the waves and cast onto the shore.

She did not understand why that should be. She knew where she was meant to stand in relation to him, how she was meant to feel about him. He was a peasant. He had dirt beneath his fingers from working her father’s fields; he spoke with the uncultured, inelegant tones of the provinces; he was incapable of understanding the thousand intricacies of which her world was composed. He was meant to be as far beneath her as the earth was from the white moon. Yet, she had parted her veil for him and allowed him to see her face. With that, all certainties had vanished.

With a sigh, she drew another sheet of paper to her, and frowned to see that it was one of the drawings he had sent her early in their relationship. It was a graceful sketch of the shore - the waves were grey and still, broken only by a reef of sharp rocks, and black specks of gulls hovered high above them. She did not remember removing it from her box of paintings, but she must have done so and forgotten to put it back in place. Regardless, it would serve her purpose perfectly.

Touching her brush to her inkstone, she painted five, simple lines of verse against its blank sky:

‘My boat rows across a sea

of trackless waves,

and I cannot tell where I am bound -

black rocks rising in the spray;

or a safe but distant shore.’ (2)

***

Sora watched Takeru with worried eyes as he ducked into the low entrance of his hut. She knew that he had not told her the whole truth about where he had gone that morning, or any of the mornings before it when she had met him coming down the hillside path. That was unlike Takeru. He was usually as honest and true as divine law itself. She had thought there could be no deception in the clarity of his eyes or in the innocence of his smile, yet she had seen it there a few minutes ago and it troubled her. There had never been anything he had been unable to tell her before this, let alone anything that he had willfully concealed from her.

All the same, she was not sure why she should be so disturbed by the strand of dark hair on his shoulder, the faint but lingering smell of perfume.

***

NOTES:

(1) Another allusion I should explain. Ariake - or the waning moon at dawn - was a commonn symbol in Heian love-poetry. That is, it was a sign that a woman’s lover had to leave her bed and return to his own chambers, or else he would be discovered.

(2) Based on a poem of Princess Shokushi’s. The original reads: “Guide me on my way - My boat rows on across a sea Of trackless waves, And I cannot tell where I am bound - O wind that blows up on all sides.”

***