Waters Under Earth
A Ranma 1/2 Fanfic by Alan Harnum
-harnums@thekeep.org
-harnums@hotmail.com (old/backup)
All Ranma characters are the property of Rumiko Takahashi, first
published by Shogakukan in Japan and brought over to North
America by Viz Communications.
Waters Under Earth at Transpacific Fanfiction:
http://www.humbug.org.au/~wendigo/transp.html
http://users.ev1.net/~adina/shrines2/fanfics.html
Chapter 25 : What Rose In Darkness
"I have told you not to call any more."
Mousse paused as he walked by the door to the sitting room
on his way towards the stairs in the Kuno house. Kuno's voice
sounded calm, but there was an undertone of deep anger to it.
"For the last time, I will not sell to you. Under any
circumstances."
There was a moment of silence. Mousse stood in the long
corridor of the hallway, realizing he was eavesdropping, but
somehow unable to continue walking.
"Are you threatening me?" he heard Kuno say, his tone
disbelieving.
Again, a silence, and then the sound of the phone slamming
down into the cradle. "Damnable woman, why doesn't she get the
message?"
Not wanting to intrude, Mousse began to walk towards the
stairs again. Kodachi had gone to bed several hours ago, and he
had passed his time, as he had for most of the last few days, in
the expansive library the house possessed. The weariness finally
upon him, though, he was now making his way towards the guest
room provided for him.
Hearing footsteps, he paused as Kuno walked out into the
passageway, a look of intense irritation on his face that shifted
into a smooth mask as soon as he saw Mousse.
He nodded. "Good evening."
"Evening," Mousse said, nodding in return. He was still
uncertain about Kodachi's older brother; he seemed far less
thick-skulled in private than previous evidence had shown. Like
his sister, there was an aloofness to him much of the time; not
truly arrogance or unfriendliness, but simply the sense that he
was beyond or outside most normal concerns.
"My sister is asleep?"
"Yeah," Mousse replied. Kodachi seemed to sleep a lot, and
the few times he had talked to her, it had been much like
speaking to someone in the midst of a dream.
"Her behaviour startles me," Kuno said softly. "She is not
as she was."
"People change," Mousse answered, even more softly.
The slightest smile traced Kuno's face for a moment. "Aye.
That they do."
He stared past Mousse's shoulder, as if at something only he
could see. "You leave tomorrow afternoon. I have arranged it."
Mousse nodded. Kuno had told him that he and Kodachi would
leave for China as soon as arrangements could be made. The
announcement was sudden, but not unexpected.
He leaned back against the wall and folded his arms, looking
at Kuno appraisingly. "You are different from what I had
expected."
"I will admit that I am perhaps more inspiring of awe once
one grows to know me," the older boy said seriously. There was
no glint of humour in his eyes, no smile on his lips.
Mousse remembered Kuno sitting across from him, discussing
in that calm, cool voice of the murder of his own mother,
detached as if it had had no effect upon him. And he remembered
all the times before when he had watched Kuno play the buffoon.
He could not reconcile those two things, no matter how much
he tried. He stared at Kuno intently through the thick frames of
his glasses, studying him, probing the eyes with his own.
Kuno stared back. His eyes held no hint of what lay below
the surface. "Does something trouble you, my friend?"
Finally, Mousse shook his head and turned to go. "Nothing."
Kuno's hand upon his shoulder stayed him. "Wait."
He looked back. "Yes?"
Kuno smiled at him, a faint smile. "I cannot give you the
answers to your suspicions. But you deserve some hint, for what
you do for my sister."
"I require nothing," Mousse murmured softly, embarrassed at
the topic. "You have been more than generous in giving me a
place to stay and paying for my passage home."
Kuno went on as if he had not spoken. "All the world's a
stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their
exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many
parts."
He paused for a moment. "One of the wisest and finest men
that the world has ever seen wrote that. He saw that truth lay
as much in unreality as it does in reality, and stated it in such
a way that any could grasp it who cared to try."
Mousse looked at him in silence, confused.
"Think of it," Kuno said softly. "To an outside observer,
what goes on upon the stage can seem as real as what goes on
beyond it. An actor may know that he acts, but one who watches
him may not know. We go through life changing ourselves, how we
speak, how we behave, how we think; we do not even realize that
we are actors all of us, for we cannot see the stage nor the
audience."
He swept out a hand. There was a strange look in his eyes,
intense and almost frightening. "Once you realize that truth is
nothing but another deception, it becomes easy. Nothing is
beyond you then."
"Is everything false, then?" Mousse murmured softly.
"There are different kinds of falseness," Kuno replied,
barely a whisper. "All that we call lies contain fragments of
the truth, and what we call truth bears shreds of lies. It is a
matter of degrees."
He smiled, then, and turned away, as if conversation were
finished. Indeed, Mousse had no questions that he knew how to
ask, as he watched Kuno walk away from him, a few murmured words
drifting back, as if the older man spoke them aloud without truly
realizing that he did.
"I will preserve myself; and am bethought..."
Mousse watched until he turned round a darkened corner, and
then began to walk up the stairs, shaking his head slowly from
side to side.
**********
Genzo Shimaju was feeling lucky, and ever-so-slightly
inebriated. He hadn't meant to drink as much as he had, but,
then again, he hadn't intended to meet such pretty young women
when he went out for a drink with his partner, Yoshiji.
Genzo and Yoshiji were pilots for a small charter plane
company that catered to the wealthy. They flew their clients
anywhere, on short notice, and in great comfort. Tomorrow, they
had a flight out, one of the strangest Genzo had yet seen. They
were taking two passengers out to an isolated, out-of-the-way
airstrip that lay near a tiny town within a hundred miles of the
China-Tibet border.
The Chinese were usually very restrictive with their
airspace, but in the five or so years he'd been working at the
job, Genzo had realized that money was the greatest opener of
doors for anything, no matter what ideology the government might
claim to possess.
He glanced over at the young woman he currently had his arm
around, watching the play of the flashing lights from the bar
they passed across her slim face. Her eyes were liquid and dark,
swimming with bright pinpoints of light.
She smiled at him, and said something that he couldn't quite
hear over the mild buzzing in his head. Out of the open door of
a bar, the slurred voice of a salarymen belted out karaoke to a
throbbing beat.
What was her name again? He couldn't remember. Miho, or
was that her friend, the long-haired beauty currently giggling
and leaning her head against his co-pilot's shoulder as they
walked down the crowded streets?
"Our apartment is this way," she said again, and smiled at
him, teeth white and straight. There were streaks of dull red
dyed throughout her shoulder-length hair; a silver hoop glimmered
enticingly in each ear.
Genzo stumbled slightly over a tilt in the sidewalk, and the
girl steadied him, surprisingly strong for her size. "Careful."
He nodded. "Thanks."
Next to them, Yoshiji laughed, a little too loudly for the
tastes of the passing people, who looked at them slightly
disapprovingly and continued on their way, faces and clothing
scarred with the lights of restaurants and bars.
"What's your name again?" he asked the girl next to him.
"Noriko," she said, and laughed, a clear tone like a bell.
Her eyes sparkled like deep pools.
The night was still young, only a little after the dinner
hour. Genzo tightened his arm slightly around Noriko, and kept
on walking, subtly guided by the motions of her lithe body
against his.
They turned a corner, and then another, getting a little
further away from the hustle and bustle of the crowds in the main
areas. In time, they came to a long street block of tall, modern
apartment buildings. The hum of night traffic, cars and people,
was still all around them.
Noriko opened the door to the lobby with her key, and the
four of them stood, chattering and laughing, as they waited for
the elevator to descend.
A sharp ping and a light indicated its arrival, and they
walked in as metal doors opened, leaving behind the spacious,
plant-filled lobby.
As the elevator rose into the upper reaches of the building,
he could see Yoshiji was already kissing the other girl, leaning
over her as she pressed back against the wall, her slender hands
twined around his neck.
He glanced over to Noriko, and soon found her lips on his.
He gently put his hands on her shoulders, feeling a pleasant
warmth spread throughout his whole body at the intimacy of the
contact. Her left hip, clad in a dark skirt, brushed against
his, and a spark seemed to jump between them.
The elevator opened to the floor they wanted, and the group
made their way down the narrow, tall hallway, making fleeting
contact again and again as they did.
Rounding a corner, Genzo saw the face of an old woman
peering out from a barely-cracked door, wrinkled and brown as old
leather. The door closed as they passed it, a soft sound like a
sigh.
At the door to the girl's apartment, the other girl, who he
was fairly sure was Miho, fumbled her keys in the lock and
giggled as Yoshiji stood behind her, a hand lifting up her hair,
his lips whispering against her neck.
You shouldn't be here, a tiny part of Genzo's mind
whispered. You have a flight tomorrow, and you need to rest,
and you've only just met this girl.
That part, however, was very small next to the alcohol and
the aching desire he felt, primal and animal. His eye could not
help following the curves of Noriko's body, until he found his
gaze drawn to her beautiful dark eyes.
She said something. He laughed. The door to the apartment
clicked open, and the four of them stumbled inside, one of the
girls turning on a light and revealing a tastefully decorated
living room, a couch and two chairs arrayed around a coffee table
piled with magazines and books.
He and Yoshiji were seated on the couch by the laughing
girls, who departed the room for the nominal purpose of making
coffee. Genzo felt he could really use some coffee now; he was
feeling slightly dizzy from what he'd drunk in the bar where he
and Yoshiji had met the girls.
His friend's face swam before him. "Some luck tonight, eh
Genzo?"
Genzo laughed. "Yeah," he muttered. "Guess so."
The sound of soft footsteps made them raise their heads.
The girls walked back into the room, with another woman clad in a
silky robe of dark grey. Opaque black glasses covered her eyes,
and her black hair was held back with a single long silver pin,
the point glimmering sharply in the lights from the ceiling.
"Who are you?" Genzo asked, confused, looking at the woman.
His eyes fell to her hands, and at the sight of them, wrinkled
and so out of place against the smooth, unlined skin of her face,
a feeling of terrible wrongness began to fall over him.
"This is our sister," Noriko said reassuringly. She
smiled. How white her teeth were, Genzo realized.
"Our eldest sister," Miho said, and smiled as well, almost
predatory.
"Yoko," the third woman said softly, settling back into a
chair as the two girls sat down on the couch. Genzo found it
crowded with four of them, his body pressed against Noriko's, but
he did not mind in the least. The sense of wrongness was
beginning to be overwhelmed by lust, though some small part of
him was still frantically screaming a warning from somewhere deep
and dark.
Noriko's lips pressed softly against the side of his mouth.
He reached out and softly stroked her side, moving his hand up as
he did.
"Hold them," he heard Yoko say, from somewhere beyond the
lightless void of desire that he was currently swimming in.
And Noriko's hands clamped hard around his head, tilted it
forward to stare at Yoko as she stood, the robe she wore
whispering, gathering darkness in the folds.
He tried to speak, but his tongue seemed a thick, fat thing,
like a worm, no longer a part of him. Colours seemed to swim
into each other, the dark of Yoko's hair, the pale smoothness of
her skin, the white wall behind her, wickerwork of the chair she
had sat in.
Yoko put a hand to her glasses, and raised the other
languidly to the air. She waved it lazily, as if dismissing
something not worth her time.
Every light in the room went out, but just before they did,
the last thing Genzo saw were her eyes.
**********
Kuno stepped into the spacious kitchen, flipping the switch
on the wall as he did. The darkness broke immediately; light
gleamed across cool tile and polished wood, reflected in window
glass and the burnished metal of cooking pots, and split across
the edges of the shining blades arrayed in the knife rack on the
wall.
The smooth wooden floor was cool under his feet as he walked
to the sink and opened the cupboard above it. He gazed up at the
rows of bottles, their fanciful labels. All of them were almost
entirely full. They had been here since his father had left, his
mind finally gone completely.
He grabbed a bottle at random, uncaring of the contents, and
a small glass. Uncapping it, he poured amber liquid into the
delicate shape of the glass, then returned the bottle to the
shelf and closed the cupboard.
He lifted the glass between a finger and a thumb, turned it
from side to side, watching the light trapped within it. Then he
poured it down the sink, rinsed the glass twice, and took a long
drink of water. The faintest tinge of the liquor still clung to
the inside of the glass, flavouring the water just slightly
beyond the normal purity of the taste.
He put the glass on the tiled counter, and sat down heavily
at the kitchen table. He wasn't sleeping well these days, ever
since Kodachi had begun to change.
He placed his hands flat on the table, palms up, and studied
his fingers intently. They were long and powerful, callused from
daily hours of gripping a sword. A few beads of water from when
he'd rinsed the glass still clung to them, and he wiped them off
against the pleated folds of his hakima.
The phone on the kitchen wall rang.
Kuno stood quickly from the chair and answered it before it
could disturb the sleeping members of the household. Familiar
rage was already growing in him; he knew who it would be.
"Hello?"
"Tatewaki?"
It was not. That did not make the rage die.
"I told you never to speak to me again."
"Tatewaki, please..."
"Never."
"Tatewaki, you have to sell to her--"
"Stay out of my affairs."
He slammed the phone down. His hands, usually so steady,
shook; his body shook in time, a trembling that ran throughout
his very being.
"Damn you, old man," he whispered, sinking down to his knees
and resting his forehead against the cool tiles at the edge of
the counter, fighting back unwanted tears, cracks in the mask.
"Damn you to hell."
The phone rang again a few moments later. He rose and
picked it up, disconnected the call with his finger, and left the
handset off the hook on the counter, the faint sound of the
dialtone ringing in his ears long after he had left the kitchen.
**********
A light spatter of rain was dotting the tarmac of the
airport the next day, a few thin tendrils of mist clinging to the
late afternoon air, muting the sun behind the drifting grey
clouds.
Mousse stood under the sheltering cover of an umbrella,
near the bottom of the metal steps leading up into the small
private aircraft. Further away, much larger plane rested on the
runways in preparation for taking off, and the tall shape of the
control tower rose against the pale skyline.
Nearby, Kodachi was making her farewells to her brother.
Rain had spotted Kuno's dark blue hakima black in places, as he
stood looking down at his younger sister.
"...and be sure to feed Midorigame," Mousse heard her say.
Kuno nodded. "Aye."
Kodachi nodded as well, dark ponytail bobbing, slightly damp
with glistening rain. "I won't be gone long, brother. Only as
long as I need."
Kuno reached out and put a hand on his sister's shoulder.
Mousse looked away, staring at the ground and listening to the
drops of rain spattering on the canvas shell of his umbrella.
"As long as that may be," he heard Kuno say softly.
"When I return, things will be better," Kodachi replied, her
voice mingling with the sound of the rain falling. "I promise
you that."
"So long you as you return. That will be enough."
There was a silence. Mousse looked up to see the two of
them embracing, Kuno stiffly returning a hug that Kodachi
appeared to have initiated. He turned his head away again,
embarrassed, feeling he had somehow interrupted something.
A moment later, he felt a touch at his elbow. A glance up
locked his eyes with Kodachi's.
She smiled at him. "Shall we go now?"
He nodded slowly. To his surprise, she slipped her arm
through his, and they walked beside each other up the metal
stairs, footsteps resounding on the thin structure.
Conscious of the feel of her body close to his, Mousse
stared straight ahead as they went up towards the door that led
into the interior of the plane. He still did not fully
understand what was there between him and Kodachi, but there was
something, some sense of connection that went deeper than it
should have.
Mousse carefully folded the umbrella as they stepped inside.
The pilot, a thin, tall man, closed the heavy metal door behind
them and nodded a greeting.
"Welcome aboard," he said, bowing slightly, his eyes hidden
behind dark sunglasses. "I hope you shall have a pleasant
flight."
He opened the door to the cockpit, exposing an interior
filled with the flashing lights of instrument panels and two
seats. In one of them, a stocky man with a wide grin, also
wearing dark sunglasses, waved a greeting.
"I'm Genzo Shimaju," the pilot said. "My co-pilot is
Yoshiji Hatoshi."
Kodachi slipped her arm from his and nodded. "Good
afternoon, captain," she said in a slightly brittle voice, a
trace of formality slipping in.
The pilot didn't seem to notice, and indicated the curtained
passage that led into the back of the plane. "The passenger area
is through there. Whatever's in the fridge or the bar is yours
for the taking. If you've got any questions, feel free to come
up to the cockpit."
He took a step towards the cockpit, then paused, his hand on
the doorframe. "You'll need to be strapped into your seats for
take-off, but after that, you can unbuckle. It's going to be a
long flight, so you might want to sleep if you can."
"Thank you," Kodachi said quietly. "You may go now."
The pilot nodded, stepped into the cockpit, and closed the
door behind him with a click. Mousse glanced to Kodachi. "Is
everything alright?"
She nodded stiffly and stepped by him, pushing the curtain
out of the way and letting it fall into place behind her.
Mousse's face quirked in a frown for a moment, and then he
followed her through.
The passenger area beyond the curtain was luxurious, the
front of the interior of the small plane taken up by a half-dozen
wide and comfortable seats in three rows of two, and the back
part containing a table with four bolted-down chairs, a small
fridge, and a wooden cabinet with a marble top.
Kodachi was already taking a seat and belting herself in,
and Mousse, after an impressed glance around the cabin, sat down
next to her. "Are you sure you're okay?"
She glared at him, dark eyes narrowing. "What concern is
that of yours? You are a guide, not a nurse."
Mousse blinked, and then looked away, leaning back into the
plush comfort of the seat. "Sorry."
He heard Kodachi draw an inhalation of breath. "No. I am
sorry. I should not speak to you in such a way."
She sighed. "I feel sometimes as if my life now is an
awakening from some long nightmare, the lingering memories of
which are still with me."
On the ceiling overhead, a light flashed on, and the voice
of Captain Shimaju came from the speakers. "Fasten your
seatbelts, please. We'll be taking off shortly."
Mousse silently examined his seatbelt for a moment, and then
managed to figure out how it fastened. Finished with that, he
glanced to Kodachi. "A nightmare?"
She shrugged her slender shoulders. "I cannot explain it
any better than that. It is as if I was in the throes of some
dark dream, and am only now awakened to the light of day. I
feel... different these days. As if... as if there is something
awaiting me, something that will make everything right."
"At Jusenkyou?"
She frowned slightly. Mousse felt the plane begin to roll
into motion. "Perhaps."
Out the window, he could see Kuno walking towards the
airport building, a tiny figure at this distance, striding
through the falling rain.
It had rained the night Shampoo had left.
The thought was unwanted and unneeded, and he viciously
shoved it away. "Your brother..."
He trailed off, not knowing how to ask, not knowing even
what it was he wanted to ask.
Kodachi smiled slowly, as if she somehow understood. "He
has played the buffoon well, has he not?"
With the tiniest of jolts, the plane's wheel left the
ground, and it rose into the air. "Too well, perhaps. Any mask
may become indistinguishable from your face, if it is worn long
enough."
She closed her eyes. Her smile faded, and she was silent.
Rain spattered in thin drops on the windows of the plane, leaving
streaking trails on the glass.
Mousse sighed, and gripped the arms of his seat. He was
slightly wary of flying in a plane; he trusted his own wings, but
was not so sure about these ones. "And what if you don't find
what you're looking for where we're going?"
"I will," Kodachi answered softly, eyes still closed, and
with the utmost conviction. "I have dreamed it."
And all dreamers wake in the end, Mousse thought silently,
and all dreams are dreamt only to be broken. A sudden sadness
fell over him, and he took off his glasses and tucked them away
into the depths of his robes, not wanting to look at Kodachi's
serene face, or at the rain marking the windows.
"Such dreams," Kodachi murmured. "There is a woman, and an
ocean, so vast that it shall encompass all things in beauty, and
the beckoning, the gathering of all things, the end of pain, oh,
such love... such a great, great love..."
She went quiet then, her breathing soft as she slipped away
into sleep. Mousse closed his eyes, but could not find the same,
no matter how much he might have desired it.
**********
The night was falling slowly outside the kitchen window as
Kuno sat at the table and ate his plain rice. The silence, the
sense of solitude, felt incredibly peaceful. There was a certain
freedom entailed in knowing that he was unlikely to be disturbed
for a long time.
He did not know how long Kodachi would be gone. He would
carry on as he had before. When his dinner was finished, he
would complete his schoolwork. When that was finished, he would
practice with the blade until he was ready for bed. Simplicity,
practiced routine. A waiting.
He finished his rice, laid down his chopsticks on the table
beside the bowl, and looked at his hands, as he had last night.
He turned them back and forth, studying the way the light moved
across them, defining the folds of the skin, the minute details.
He rose from the table, rinsed his bowl in the sink, rinsed
his hands, dried them, rinsed them again, enjoying the feel of
the cool water running over his hands, between his fingers,
rolling across his palms.
The phone rang. He glared at it, as if that could somehow
make it stop. He wished he'd gotten one with a call display as
soon as this whole mess had started. Kontongara seemed
implacable; she would not leave him alone. It was always her;
never anyone else from her company.
It rang again. There was nothing he could see doing to make
her stop beyond legal action, and in his opinion, it was too
petty a thing to bring the courts or the police into.
He reached out and snatched up the phone. Perhaps it would
not be her.
"Hello?"
"Tatewaki, I am running out of patience."
It was her. His grip tightened almost imperceptibly, and he
had to force down an angry response. He was very good at hiding
things, very good indeed, but she was truly trying him.
"You are not the one being forced to have patience in this
affair," he coldly replied. "It has gone beyond a mere matter of
business into the realms of harassment. If this does not
stop--"
"Oh, what then?" Yoko's voice interrupted, crackling from
the phone, cynical and amused. "The police? Oh, yes, they are
most effective, are they not?"
He winced, glad that she could not see. The barb had struck
home, though he was sure she could not know why, or how deeply.
"I ask that this cease, Miss Kontongara. I will not sell the
land to you. I do not know your reasons for desiring it, and if
I did, still I would not sell to you."
"You do not need to know reasons," she said, voice measured
and calm. "What cares the seller for what the buyer does with
the sold? Is it your responsibility?"
"Yes," Kuno said vehemently. "Good day."
He began to move the phone away from his ear.
"Wait."
The single word cracked out like a whip, harsh and cold,
commanding. He paused in his preparation to hang up, listening.
"Did you not receive a call from my associate?"
"He holds less sway over me than even you," Kuno snarled,
something rising bitter and broken to the surface in his voice.
"He is nothing to me."
"You stupid little buffoon," Yoko hissed back, her voice a
bare edge of anger, all pretension of friendliness or patience
gone. "I have given you enough chance. No more games, Tatewaki.
You shall learn the price of this misplaced pride."
The phone line clicked, and then the dialtone was buzzing in
his ear, blank and empty. He let the phone handset drop from his
shaking hand and dangle by the cord a few inches above the
kitchen floor, swaying gently back and forth.
He laughed, shakily, trying to dispel his own feelings.
What could she do to him, truly? She was only a businesswoman,
powerful in that sphere, ruthless perhaps, but her threats held
no weight. He would not submit to her.
He ran water in the sink, and again washed his hands.
**********
Mousse was not sure how, but after what seemed like hours of
sitting in the comfortable seat, his eyes closed, thinking of
nothing but unable to find sleep, he had managed somehow to slip
away into an easy and dreamless slumber.
When he awoke, the world outside the windows lay in inky
darkness, and Kodachi was gone from her seat. He tried to sit
up, and was jerked back into his seat, having forgotten the
presence of the belt.
Unbuckling himself, he stood up and stretched the kinks out
of his aching arms and legs, just as Kodachi came back through
the curtain that led towards the cockpit.
"The captain says we crossed into Chinese airspace a few
hours ago," she said conversationally, stepping by him and going
to stand in front of the low cupboard near the back of the plane.
She crouched down and opened it. "Do you want anything to
drink?"
Mousse turned and walked down the aisle to the table,
resting his palm atop it. He was surprised to find that he could
detect very little sign of the plane's motion. "What is there?"
There was a rattling of glass from the cupboard. "A quite
astonishing variety of liquor. I believe there is water and soft
drinks in the fridge."
She pulled out a bottle and glanced up at him. "Shall you
indulge with me?"
Mousse shrugged. "Why not?"
She rose, bringing the bottle and two small clay cups to
the table. As she sat, a sudden bump of turbulence rocked the
plane, sending one of the cups rolling off to land gently on the
ground.
"Let me get that," Mousse said quietly, kneeling down and
putting on his glasses. He grabbed the cup, his fingers brushing
against the thin blue carpet that covered the floor of the plane
as he did. Standing, he took a seat across from Kodachi and
placed the cup before him.
"Sake," Kodachi said, indicating the bottle. "A good brand,
as well."
Mousse frowned slightly. "Do you drink a lot of it?"
"Occasionally," she said softly, pouring a measure into her
cup and his. Her eyes were shadowed, unreadable.
Mousse cradled the clay cup of rice wine in his hands for a
moment, and then sipped gently from it. The room-temperature
liquor was sweet going down his throat. "Just why did you want
to go to Jusenkyou, anyway?"
Kodachi looked at him for a moment, sipped her own drink in
silence before she spoke. "Because of Ranma."
Mousse gave a slight nod. "I'm not surprised."
Kodachi smiled, somewhat bitterly to his eyes. "I hid from
the truth for so long, of what he was."
"People do that," Mousse said. "You... don't want to face
something that's painful, so you won't believe it's true."
He put down his cup and stared out the nearest window, into
the rushing darkness. "If you want someone to love you, you can
convince yourself that they do, no matter what evidence there is
against it."
"No," Kodachi said softly. "Not that. I always knew that
he did not love me. I simply believed that I could change him,
if I tried hard enough. I realized that I could not at the same
time I realized that he and the pig-tailed girl were one and the
same. Perhaps the two were tied together, somehow, in my mind.
I cannot say for certain."
She looked down at the table, at her hands, clasped around
the shape of the sake cup. "As I have said, much of life seems a
dream these days."
Raising her head, she caught her eyes with his. "Tell me
about yourself, Mousse. How you came to be in Japan."
"You probably already know why," Mousse replied quietly.
Kodachi nodded. "To some extent."
A silence fell between them. Mousse looked out the window,
saw a far-off point of light that vanished almost before his eyes
had time to register it, retreating somewhere back into that vast
expanse of dark sky.
He drained the last of his sake. "I loved Shampoo as long
as I could remember. Even as a child, I wanted nothing more than
to have her as my wife. She was everything to me. Nothing
mattered but her."
He shook his head fiercely. "None of that matters anymore.
I'm not... I'm not..."
He bowed his head, closing his eyes and trying to force down
an unwanted tide of emotions. "I'm not going to let her hurt me
anymore. Not even the memory of her."
Hands closed around his, cool and soft. He looked up at
Kodachi. She was smiling, softly and gently, and there was
understanding in her dark eyes. "Pretending that it does not
hurt you will not make the hurt any less."
He stared at her, wondering, drew a shuddering breath that
seemed to wrack his entire frame. "Lady..."
The word rose unbidden from him, and yet somehow seemed to
embody everything, impossible as that might be, all feeling, all
grief, all regret.
His neck bent, and he felt her hands, linked with his, touch
his forehead. "Oh, lady, it hurts so bad."
"Shh," Kodachi said, a barest whisper, like a mother to a
child. "Accept what is past, guardian. Only when the pain is
realized can there be an end to it."
He raised his head and stared across the table at her, as
she held his hands in hers. Lady. Guardian. Those two words.
They had no source. They had no reason to call each other
those things, no reason even to be in each other's presence. And
yet he felt as if he knew Kodachi Kuno, truly knew her, her pain,
her pride, knew her and understood her, realized that she knew
and understood him. He felt as if he had always known her, but
had only realized it now.
She let his hands go, reached up and brushed his hair away
from his forehead, looked deeply into his eyes. "Soon, we shall
be there."
The table, the chairs, the confines of the metal shell of
the plane, all of those might well have not even existed. There
was only him, only her.
"What is happening to us?" he heard himself whisper. "Why
are we..."
"We are called," Kodachi replied before he finished. "We
are called, and we go."
Things seemed to fall back into focus. He felt the tiniest
whisper of wind across his face, fluttering his bangs, caressing
his skin.
Suddenly, he felt embarrassed, self-conscious. He tucked his
hands into the sleeves of his robe and stared at them, feeling a
hot blush tinge his face.
"Tell me about Jusenkyou, Mousse," he heard Kodachi say.
"Tell me what your home is like."
"It is very beautiful," he said quietly, unable to look at
her. "There are many mountains."
Finally, he managed to raise his eyes. "From wherever you
stand, you can see the mountains."
**********
Yoko frowned, and lowered her hand. The space between the
octagonal frame was still black, a mirror reflecting darkness.
She reached out and pressed her fingers against the
unyielding expanse of black, frowning. There was a lot of pain,
anguish, and the girl was still unconscious. Hako had obviously
hurt her very badly, but she hadn't killed her, and she hadn't
touched her since last night. Odd.
Shrugging pragmatically, she waved a hand again, and the
blackness faded from the mirror, leaving the glass reflecting
normally. The mirror hung on the wall of her bedroom, an
eight-sided shape of polished metal and glass.
On to other business. She reached down and picked up one of
the objects resting on her bedside table. She held it up and
turned it back and forth. The eyeball inside the glass sphere of
water bobbed slightly with the motion, half-hidden by the tangle
of golden and silver wires that were wrapped, seemingly at
random, around the sphere.
She raised the baseball-sized object up in both her hands,
and began to chant the words of power, the ecstatic rush of the
magic coursing through her, the tiny connection between her and
the vast might that was the master forcing her body to sing, to
bend in time with the power, or be consumed by it like a leaf by
flame.
Her reflection in the mirror fell away, into jagged motes of
colour that swam and flickered and reformed themselves into
another scene, a panel of instruments, dials and lights and
buttons, dozens of them. She studied them, hands gripping the
sphere tightly. Not close enough yet. A few more hours.
There was a certain irony in the situation, she supposed.
She hadn't been able to find out why the boy's sister was going
to China, to the area that she knew held Jusenkyou. Knowing why
would not have changed her intentions at all, however, so perhaps
it did not matter.
She had given him adequate time to come around, adequate
warning. He had been stubborn and prideful, and now he would pay
the price. She had toyed with him too long anyway, and the time
was coming close that they would need to have possession of the
land Ryugenzawa occupied, so as not to arouse suspicion when it
would be necessary to bring it under her control.
Ritter had warned her to leave Ryugenzawa for now. But
Ritter was in China now, far away from Tokyo, far away from where
he might be able to physically threaten her. Still, she was wary
of moving too fast. It was foolishness not to be wary of one
with his power.
She shook her head, cast the thoughts away. The image in
the mirror faded as she lowered the sphere in her hands, and
placed it back upon the bedside table. Now she would wait. Soon
enough, it would be time.
**********
Kodachi cupped her chin with one hand and gazed at him
intently across the table. "And the women of your tribe marry
outsider men who defeat them because?"
Mousse gave a small yawn and took his glasses off to rub at
his eyes. Kodachi seemed to want to know everything about
Jusenkyou, everything that he could possibly tell her about the
history of the area. He wasn't sure how many hours they'd spent
talking. "Lemme think..."
His voice sounded slightly slurred, and he realized he also
wasn't sure how many cups of sake he'd drunk. Perhaps one too
many, in hindsight.
He put his glasses back on and stared at Kodachi, his sight
still slightly blurry. Her eyes were bright and questing as she
waited for him to answer.
"The way my grandmother always told the story to me," he
said quietly, resting his elbow on the table. "A long time ago,
over a thousand years, some warlord came to the Valley of the
Waters..."
"Valley of the Waters?"
He shrugged at the interruption. "Old name for the area.
Never thought about it much, but I guess it's got to do with
Jusenkyou."
He drew himself up slightly from the slump he'd fallen into.
"He came down from the northern mountains with an army of
warriors unlike anything anyone had ever seen... The legend says
that they drank the blood of those they killed, and ate their
flesh. They destroyed several villages before anyone realized
what was happening..."
He sighed gently, remembered when his grandmother had first
told him the story when he was only a child, sitting at her feet
as the light from the fireplace shone in her eyes. "An outsider
man came to the Joketsuzoku and asked their help in stopping the
warlord. The stories say he wasn't from the area, wasn't even
Chinese, hardly spoke the language at all. Some of the women
wanted to execute him immediately; the Joketsuzoku were very
hostile towards outsiders then."
He sighed again. "Even moreso than they are now. But it
was decided that he would be allowed to fight a champion, the
greatest of the young warriors, to decide if he deserved the aid
he requested. He defeated her after a long battle, and the
Joketsuzoku marched to battle. They defeated the warlord and his
army, supposedly about a mile north of Jusenkyou; grandmother
took me to the spot once."
"Are you very close to your grandmother?" Kodachi asked
quietly.
"Not anymore," Mousse said, a twinge of regret in his voice.
"She... did not approve of my choices in my life for the past few
years."
He shook his head. "That's not important, though. The law
came into being soon afterwards, as it was judged a good way to
strengthen the bloodline..."
The plane tilted to the side, suddenly and shockingly.
Mousse's hip slammed hard against the arm of the wooden chair,
and Kodachi gave a cry and nearly tumbled from her seat. The
nearly empty bottle of sake and the clay cups fell from the table
and went rolling across the floor, tilted nearly forty-five
degrees to the right.
Mousse heard the sound of glass bottles shattering in the
cupboard, and then the plane abruptly righted itself, as he clung
desperately to his seat to keep from falling. It had been tilted
for but a few seconds.
"Sorry about that," the pilot's voice said, echoing from the
ceiling, oddly dull and flat. "Turbulence."
The floor dipped sickeningly forward, sending Mousse, still
disoriented, into the table. The air rushed from his lungs as
his stomach slammed against the wooden edge.
"What's going on?" he wheezed, as the interior of the plane
spun madly about him. Kodachi was holding onto the table to stop
herself from falling out of her chair.
A chill ran down his spine, sharp as an electric current.
He looked out the window into what had once been a
featureless expanse of dark sky.
"Oh my god," he whispered, sickly realizing that he was
about to die.
**********
*Tanzei.*
She woke instantly at the voice in her mind, the clear,
sweet tones of the Lady resonating with power, a sound like the
ringing of a great bell.
"Lady?" she whispered into the darkness of the room.
*She comes, Tanzei,* the voice said, stroking lovingly
through her very being, gentle and ancient. *She comes.*
Tanzei gestured, and the lamp flared to life on the wall.
"How soon, Lady?"
*Soon, daughter,* the Lady said inside her head, the beauty
of the voice undiminished even after such long service, so pure
and lovely that it made her want to weep. *He seeks to destroy
her. He seeks to tear the threads and weave them anew in his
pattern. Even his tools do not realize the truth of his ends.*
Tanzei swung out of bed, an arc of fear tracing through her.
The Lady sounded calm as always, but her words were terrifying.
"What can we do?"
*Gather them. Go now. There is not much time, beloved.*
A breeze touched her face like a hand, and she felt the
presence of the Lady fade. The lamp on the wall stabbed its
light into all the corners of the room.
Tanzei opened the door and ran into the hallway, raising her
voice to wake the sleepers in the dark.
**********
Yoko groaned with the effort and clutched the orb she held
in her right hand so tightly that she feared it might shatter.
The other was a mess of water and glass and wire on the floor,
the ruined, blackened eye sitting obscenely in the middle.
The image in the mirror was tilting madly, mountains
spinning out of the darkness towards the glass, as hands trembled
on the controls of the plane. Even a few minutes of control like
this was incredibly draining, absolute and total mental
domination a near impossibility, even with the sympathetic power
of the objects she'd made. The co-pilot was a babbling wreck; on
the edge of her mind, she could hear the sound of his voice. His
mind had broken when she'd broken the sphere that held his eye.
There was blood running down her hand from where the shards
of glass had cut her, but that was a pain very small compared to
the strain upon her mind. The air of the room was buzzing,
wavering with the effort, with the power being expended.
Yoko reached out across the link, and forced the pilot's
hands to tilt the plane towards a jutting spire of stone.
**********
Tanzei threw the door open and stepped into the chamber
beyond, into a rounded room filled with the sound of chanting and
the hum of power, and a half-dozen dark-robed women surrounding
the circular stone basin of glass-clear water in the centre. The
room glowed with the light of lamps on the walls.
A pale-haired novice with a weary face turned from the pool,
pausing her chant and lowering her hands as the others continued.
The glow of power still wreathed her palely, fading slowly as she
let her power die. "Honourable Tanzei..."
"Stop the ceremony," Tanzei said shortly, striding into the
room, more than a dozen other women following behind her, eyes
still slightly fogged with sleep, wearing hastily belted robes or
thin nightgowns. "We need the Nightpool."
Shock lit the face of the girl. "But if the ceremonies are
stopped he will..."
"If they are not, then there is no reason for him to live,"
Tanzei snapped back. "Stop the ceremonies."
The other women stopped. The hum of power in the room began
to slow, and the water in the pool began to darken. The novice
took a hesitant step forward. "Please..."
"Ring the pool," Tanzei said to the assembled women,
ignoring her. "Open yourselves. The Lady needs us."
At the words, a hush seemed to fall. Silently, the women
began to circle the pool, which was beginning to be striated with
bands of darkness through the clearness. Tanzei made her way to
the front, paused at the edge of the pool.
A hand touched her arm. "Honourable Tanzei, why..."
"Later, child," she said, gently as she could. "Please,
later. Only trust in the Lady and I."
She raised her hands. The other women did the same.
"We are ready, Lady," she said softly.
**********
The mountain peaks loomed outside the window, seeming only a
few feet away, dark and jagged in the night. Mousse's voice died
in his throat. He felt a moment of terror so absolute and pure
that before it, all fear he had ever experienced seemed nothing.
The plane tilted again, and he was flung from his seat,
sent spinning through empty space like a leaf. His shoulder
clipped the top of a seat, and he slammed hard against the wall.
Blackness swam before his vision, and he heard Kodachi say
something in a soft voice, but he words were lost to the
darkness.
**********
*Lift,* the Lady said, and they lifted, directing their
power at the pool, making themselves the vehicle of her will.
The water heaved like a living thing, a furrow parting it down
the centre and sending water up in two waves to lash into the
air, hissing and crackling with power.
The lanterns went out, as a wind howled through the chamber,
shrieking across them, threatening to drown out their voices.
Tanzei watched as the furrow in the water deepened, and on either
side, the waves rose even higher, dancing in the air, forks of
black lightning coursing through them.
*Lift,* the Lady said again, and Tanzei heard with fear that
there was the faintest note of apprehension in her voice. The
Lady was afraid as well, she realized.
The wind grew in pitch, a keening wail, whipping her robes
about her, blowing hair in front of her face. The very air
seemed heavy, so impossibly heavy, threatening to bring her to
her knees, to break her like a twig.
She heard a cry, saw one of the women drop and fall, another
follow moments later. There was so much power arrayed against
them, so much hate.
*Lift,* the Lady called a third time, weakly, so faintly it
was almost inaudible, with such love, such fear. *Lift, dear
ones, lift, beloved daughters, oh, lift.*
**********
Yoko screamed and forced her will upon the pilot. He should
not have been able to fight so hard. The mountain peak loomed
ahead in the mirror, impossibly huge at so close a distance.
Gasping with pain, she sank to her knees, gritting her teeth
and summoning all the power she could, sending it out through the
thousands of miles in a great wave, all her hatred, all of
herself.
The mirror turned dark and shattered, at the same time the
wire-wrapped glass sphere in her hand exploded, ripping through
the flesh of her palm. She screamed again, real pain in it this
time, curling into a ball on the floor as convulsions wracked her
body.
She was smiling, though, through all the agony, because it
had been enough, and she fell into the soft embrace of
unconsciousness with the smile still upon her face.
**********
The plane should have hit the peak dead on, but it did not.
At the last moment, it flew upwards, as if some great hand had
lifted it and flung it away.
The tip of the mountain spire scraped like a finger across
the belly of the aircraft, nearly tearing through the metal
shell. No one aboard the plane realized it, but they had been
only a few miles from Jusenkyou when the disaster had hit.
And now, like a wounded thing, the plane soared without any
guidance towards the north.
**********
Somewhere amidst the pain of being bounced around the
interior of the plane like a rag doll, Mousse heard a shrieking
sound of tortured metal, and the plane shook as if it might break
into fragments.
As he reached desperately for some purchase, his left elbow
slammed into the edge of something hard, and a numb shock coursed
up his arm and shoulder.
Somehow, he managed to grab a seat arm with his right hand,
and hang on as the plane tilted almost vertically upwards, and he
dangled like a man on a precipice.
There was a scream, and he saw Kodachi come tumbling down
towards him, arms flailing. He swung himself out and held out
his still numb left hand; the jolt as she grabbed onto it nearly
broke him free from his hold on the seat arm.
"Hold on," he said through clenched teeth. The world rolled
drunkenly to the side, and he clung desperately to her hand and
to the seat arm.
And then, impossibly, the plane began to dip back towards
normal orientation. He only realized after a few seconds that
his feet were on the floor again, his white-knuckled hand
gripping the plastic arm of the seat hard enough to hurt.
He listened, anticipating some announcement from the pilot,
telling him that everything was fine now. There was nothing.
"You can let go of my hand now," Kodachi said shakily. He
did so absently, adrenaline and fear still coursing through him.
"Something's gone wrong," he said, and began to run up the
swaying aisle towards the cockpit, pushing past the curtain and
banging on the thick door.
"Why aren't they opening?" Kodachi said from behind him. He
banged again, called out for them to answer.
There was no answer. He grabbed the handle, found it
locked, and began to draw a weapon to break it down. Then the
world broke apart, with a sound of tearing so great it drowned
out every sense beneath it.
**********
The left wing of the plane clipped the top of a high
mountain in a way that would have looked almost gentle to an
outside observer. It snapped off like a twig broken by a man's
hand, the impact ripping open the metal shell and sending
hydraulic fluid and fuel spraying out from the wound. With a
muffled boom, the engine on the wing caught fire and exploded,
flaring into the night.
**********
The chamber shook, and the water twisting in waves from the
pool shook in time, but did not fall. The other women were
fallen all around Tanzei, only the novice who had questioned the
interruption of the ceremony still on her feet, hands raised and
flaring almost blindingly as she continued to chant. There were
tears streaming from her eyes, and Tanzei could see that the
girl's nails had dug into her hands hard enough to draw blood,
which ran in a thin stream down the inside of each wrist.
*Lift,* the Lady said, but her voice was a bare whisper,
dying wind through dying grass.
Tanzei was on her knees, struggling to rise to her feet, to
even remain conscious. "I'm sorry, Lady," she whispered, grief
in her voice.
And the Lady said nothing, but the grief was there as well,
so deep, so impossibly deep. The Lady did not question, did not
ask for it, but Tanzei staggered to her feet, understanding
without having to be told.
She pulled dagger in its sheath from her belt, a curving
blade, the pommel topped by an egg-sized oval moonstone, and
dropped it to the stone floor, knowing that it would be taken up
by the one required.
Stepping forward, feeling as if she bore all the weight of
the world upon her back, she knelt by the pool and bowed her
head. Her hands gripped the lip of it, and she felt the cool,
damp stone.
"I am ready if it is necessary, Lady," she said quietly. "I
am not afraid."
*Truly?*
"No," she said, closing her eyes. "No, I am very, very
frightened, Lady."
There was silence for a moment, seeming to hang heavy in the
chamber. Still standing, the young girl gave a soft cry of pain
from behind where Tanzei knelt.
"I love you, Lady," Tanzei said finally, and she did, oh,
she did, so much, so much that it overcame all the fear.
*I love you, child,* the Lady whispered, and there was
sadness in her voice. *Now come.*
There was a glorious sense of freedom in her, as if she were
turning from flesh to light, weightless, beautiful. It didn't
matter if she was afraid, because she loved, was loved, and that
made it alright. She had given all of her life to the Lady, and
this was only the culmination, only the final step.
She dipped her hands into the cool water that lay between
the two rising waves, raised them cupped to her mouth, and drank.
*Rest, daughter,* the Lady said gently, and Tanzei felt
fingers brush gently against her face. *I shall do what must be
done now.*
And she was drifting, gloriously free, into a lapping,
gentle darkness, oceanic and vast, free of pain, free of desire,
free of suffering, free of fear.
**********
Mousse heard the explosion, felt the plane rock, heard the
shriek as the wing was torn away, felt a booming pain inside him
as the pressure in the plane dropped.
Things seemed to slow, the rushing stream of time become a
gentle trickle. He turned in time to see the curtain flapping
madly, ripped away by the howling wind tearing out through the
jagged rent in the side of the plane.
Kodachi opened her mouth, but no words came out.
The door that they had entered onto the plane from opened.
He heard the bolts click back, saw the handle turn. The plane
rocked nauseatingly, and he smelled the smoke of the burning
engine.
Outside the open door was darkness and mountains, a range of
them, so close it seemed he could reach out and touch them with
his hand.
Like a great hand, the wind picked him up and flung him out
through the door, into the night, tumbling madly, towards the
jagged mountains a thousand feet below. Despite the slowness of
everything, he could not seem to move his limbs.
He saw Kodachi for a moment, a spinning shape nearly a
hundred feet away, flung clear from the plane like he had been.
Then the wind tore his glasses away and sent them off into the
darkness, and everything was a blur, the flare of light as the
plane smashed into the side of a mountain and exploded in a
fireball, the wave of heat and shock that sent him into a mad
somersault through the empty air.
As he plunged, the wind grabbing at his body like a claw,
his vision seemed to clear for a moment, and he saw, as if it had
been granted to him before he died, a sight of such beauty that
it somehow made the hurting less, a lake as clear as the purest
crystal, nestled between the curve of two peaks in the mountain
that was rushing up towards him.
"Lady..." he whispered softly, feeling tears in his eyes,
and then there was only the darkness and the pain and the end of
remembrance and the end of pain.
**********
Kodachi felt the wind pluck at her body like a harpstring,
blow the strands of her ponytail across her face, obscuring all
sight. But she was not afraid, somehow, because the wind was
gentle, for all that it sent her flying to and fro.
The land was so beautiful. Mousse had spoken true; there
were so many mountains. She saw them below her, the edge of a
long chain of them that bordered a flat expanse of rolling dunes,
the sand painted in the dark colours of the night and the stars.
She felt as if she were floating, flying, realized that she
might die at any second, still not feeling any terror. There
seemed no room for it.
*You have come,* a voice said, and it was Tatewaki's voice,
her mother's voice, her father's voice, Ranma's voice, the voice
of everything she had loved, had ever wanted to love her, and it
spoke from within her and without her.
"Brother," she said, gently and sadly, and then there was
nothing left to say.
**********
He woke in the night to a long and terrible silence.
Tatewaki Kuno lay there, gazing up into the darkness, and
listened to that silence, as if it should be filled with
something.
Then he sat up, and reached over, and turned on the light by
the futon. He walked to the bookshelf and grabbed a volume at
random without looking at the spine, sat down crosslegged on his
disarrayed blanket, and turned to a random page, and read.
*The powers whose name and shape no living creature knows*
*Have pulled the Immortal Rose;*
*And though the Seven Lights bowed in their dance and wept,*
*The Polar Dragon slept,*
*His heavy rings uncoiled from glimmering deep to deep:*
*When will he wake from sleep?*
A great sorrow fell over him. Wind from the cracked window
fluttered the pages of the book.
*Great Powers of falling wave and wind and windy fire,*
*With your harmonious choir*
*Encircle her I love and sing her into peace,*
*That my old care may cease;*
*Unfold your flaming wings and cover out of sight*
*The nets of day and night.*
The tears gathered in his eyes, and he let them come now,
splashing down upon his hands, upon the blanket, upon the pages
of the book.
*Dim Powers of drowsy thought, let her no longer be*
*Like the pale cup of the sea,*
*When winds have gathered and sun and moon burned dim*
*Above its cloudy rim;*
*But let a gentle silence wrought with music flow*
*Whither her footsteps go.*
The book dropped limply from his hands and settled on the
crumpled blanket. Even before the phone rang a few moments
later, he knew that his sister was gone.
**********
Nodoka was never sure what woke her that night. If it had
been dreams, she could not remember them. But something made her
rise out of the too-large bed, the one that she had intended for
Genma and herself.
She got up, clutching the thin sheet to herself, and walked
to the sliding doors that led out onto a tiny balcony. It looked
down across the yard and at the houses and streets beyond, and as
she stepped out onto it, she saw a single figure walking out of
the front gate of her neighbour's house.
For a moment, she thought it was a prowler, and then he
walked under a patch of light cast by a streetlamp, and she saw
it was Taikazu. His shoulders looked slumped, his gray hair that
had seemed so dignified before thinning and old.
He turned his head, looked up to where she was, and though
she was sure he could not see her, she felt a moment of
connection as she watched him turn and walk to the edge of the
sidewalk.
The night was still, without any sound, not even cicadas, no
far-off noises in the darkness. The click as her neighbour
opened the door of a car and stepped inside was loud in the
silence, the bang as he closed it almost shocking.
A moment after he'd entered the car, the headlights
flickered on, and he drove off smoothly down the empty street.
Nodoka shivered slightly, wrapped the sheet tighter around
herself, and stared off after him long after the car had turned
the corner and disappeared.
**********
When Kuno stepped into the training hall, the lights were
out. He closed the door behind him, stood in the darkness for a
moment, and then his hand found the lightswitch.
The banks of lights in the ceiling came on all at once,
taking the darkness from the expansive training hall. Light
gleamed across polished wooden floors, across vases and the suit
of ancient samurai armour kept in a wall niche, across the length
of the blade in his left hand.
He strode to the northern wall, his footsteps echoing, and
stood before it. He did not bother with the switches. A few
strokes of the blade demolished the hidden doorway he had built,
and he stepped inside, as light flooded from the dojo outside
into the secret hallway.
He stepped into the hallway, strode down it to the small
door at the end, and pushed it open. He could feel the tracks of
his dried tears on his cheeks, feel the threat of more that he
savagely forced down.
As he stepped inside his sanctuary, he turned on the
flashlight he held in his right hand, and cast the powerful beam
about the tiny room. In the candlelight, the place had seemed
comforting before, but now the smile of the stone Buddha was
mocking, and the eyes of the wooden Christ upon his wooden cross
held no compassion, and the face of his mother in the photograph
was the face of a woman ten years dead.
"Why?" he said, glancing from wall to wall. "I believed. I
was faithful. Why? I kept my promises."
He felt a thin, keen smile, a razor's smile, grow on his
face. "Why?"
He looked around, at Buddha, at Christ, at the kamidana.
There was no answer, nothing.
There was a moment of long, heavy silence for him.
And then he screamed, and the sword came up, and everything,
all sense, spiralled down into a long dark abyss of pent-up rage
and pain, and when he dropped the sword from his white-knuckled
hand moments later, everything had been ruined, the statue of
Buddha sliced in half, the wooden cross lying broken into two
pieces on the floor, the contents of the kamidana scattered
across the ground, chopped bits of greenery that had been plants,
broken containers spilling salt and water and rice, crinkled
rice-fibre ropes sliced into bits and scattered like snow, the
glass of the frame that held his mother's picture shattered.
The sword clattered on the boards, and the flashlight fell
from his hands, the beam spinning madly through the darkness of
the room, across the gentle smile of Buddha where his upper body
lay upon the floor, upon the sad eyes of Christ where he lay
broken, upon the scattered shards of glass from the frame of his
mother's photograph.
He fell to his knees, remorse and guilt almost overwhelming
him. With shaking hands, he tried to fix things, to make them
right, but the salt had mingled with the water, and he could not
put the broken crucifix together again, and nothing was right,
nothing was good, and everything was broken.
In the beam of the flashlight, he saw something sparkling on
the floor, and picked it up, a tiny golden crucifix on a golden
chain. It had been on the kamidana altar, the altar now
shattered and destroyed, had belonged to his mother.
He moaned and clenched his fist around the shape of it until
it dug into his palm painfully, his eyes closed. When he opened
them, he saw what he had done, and could not stand it, staggering
to his feet and running, down the hallway, down out into the
harsh and unforgiving light of the training hall that lashed down
upon him like a scourge, that would not let him hide his sin, his
wrongs, his lies.
He fell to the floor, and wept, his face in his hands, wept
for his sister and himself and his mother and for everything
beautiful and broken.
And that was how his grandfather found him, sobbing like a
child. He did not even realize the man was there until he felt
arms enfold him, heard someone speaking softly.
"Tatewaki, Tatewaki, it's alright..."
And the voice, the voice he hated so much, was so gentle,
and he clung to the old man, to his mother's father, as if he
were the only thing keeping him from a long, long fall. He
clung and wept, and said things, swore vengeance for everything,
and his grandfather held him, and when he was done, after what
must have been hours, his grandfather let him go and held him by
the shoulders, and looked into his eyes.
"You can't fight her, Tatewaki," he said gently, his eyes
sad. "You can't fight her. I've talked to old men who knew
Kontongara in their youth, and she looks the same now as she did
then. There's others like her, Tatewaki, all throughout Japan.
They control us. They use us as their pawns. They don't age,
and they don't die."
He looked at the floor, and for a moment there was immense
guilt scrawled across his face. "We were proud, Tatewaki. We
were proud until our mothers and our fathers and our sons and
our daughters began to die. And no matter how many of us there
were, or how strong we were, they were stronger, because we were
only yakuza, criminals, and they are beyond that."
Kuno looked at his grandfather, and forced out the words.
"Why did you only try to tell me once?"
The old man looked shamed, his still handsome face agonized.
"Because she only let me do it once," he whispered finally.
"How would she have known?"
His grandfather closed his eyes. "She would have," he said
with absolute certainty.
Kuno closed his eyes as well. He had no strength left in
his body. "Kodachi's dead, grandfather."
"I know," his grandfather replied. "She called me and told
me."
"Why?"
"Because I think it brings her pleasure to bring suffering."
Kuno opened his eyes, felt a sudden surge of rage and
conviction. "I'm going to kill her," he said, not even a
whisper.
His grandfather slapped him, hard.
"Don't talk like that," he hissed. "Don't even think of
that. Have you listened to a word I said, Tatewaki? You can't
fight them, Tatewaki. In the end, you'll only lose everything
you've ever cared for."
Face stinging, Kuno opened his hand and showed his
grandfather the tiny golden cross. His grandfather picked it up
and dangled it by the chain, swinging it back and forth between
them as they knelt on the wooden floor of the training hall.
"This was your mother's, wasn't it?" he asked softly.
Kuno nodded silently.
"It was one of the reasons she left, you know," his
grandfather continued. "When she started to believe, she...
could no longer stand to be in my house. She thought she could
leave it behind."
He shook his head. "You can't leave what you are behind.
When... when I wouldn't give in to them right away, she paid the
price I should have paid."
He handed the chain back to Kuno, and sighed. "Why do you
have it?"
"Because I thought I could believe it too," Kuno replied.
"If she could, then why not I?"
His grandfather touched his face gently, where he'd slapped
him. "Oh, Tatewaki. It didn't save her here, and it can't save
you. If there are gods, or a god, then a god is a crueler thing
than any of us can ever comprehend."
Kuno nodded slowly. "I will sell the land to her. Pride
blinded me. It cost Kodachi her life." He closed his eyes
against tears, though he was sure he had no tears left to shed.
"What does it matter in the end anyway?"
"Yes," his grandfather said softly. "What does any of it
matter?"
His grandfather stood, and held out his hand. After a
moment, Kuno reached up and took it, and let the old man help him
to his feet.
**********
Taikazu Ongaku, who was still oyabun of Zensha-yumi, who had
seen his wife die to illness and his daughter die because of his
pride, watched his sleeping grandson for a few long minutes.
He felt very old, and very tired, moreso than he had ever
been before. He looked at Tatewaki, his face finally peaceful in
sleep, the chain dangling from his hand, spilling across the
blanket, the golden cross on the end a tiny, glinting shape.
"Oh, grandson," he said softly, his heart aching with grief.
"I'm sorry."
He walked to the door out of the room and paused, staring
back with his hand resting against the frame. He would go home
now, and go to sleep, and in the morning he would continue as
Yoko's pawn, gathering the information that filtered to him and
passing it onto her, keeping an eye on the boy's mother, doing
whatever was asked of him.
His eyes fell to the cross again, and he remembered his
daughter wearing it, trying to convince him that there was a
merciful god in the world, that there was some great master plan
that made all the suffering and pain and loss necessary.
He shook his head, closed his eyes.
"God forgive me," he whispered softly, and turned and began
to walk away.
**********
The girl sat on her bed and held the sheathed dagger in her
hands, resting them on her lap. Her shoulders were bowed
wearily, and her face was a mask, ready to crack at any moment.
There was a knock at the door. "Come in," the girl said
dully.
It opened, admitting a tall girl with coppery hair, wearing
the black dress and shawl of those who served the Lady, a yellow
cord belt at her waist holding a straight dagger. "The horses
are ready, Honourable Wiyeed."
Wiyeed looked up. It was Shiynju. They had been friends as
long as she could remember. "You don't have to call me that,
Shiynju."
Shiynju looked uncomfortable for a moment. "You are the
leader of the Daughters of the Night now, Wiyeed."
Wiyeed nodded slowly, brushed a lock of pale hair away from
her face and struggled to maintain control. She was still numb
over the loss of Tanzei, over the Lady's choice of her successor.
"I know."
"She was on the shore of the lake," Shiynju said. "The Lady
brought her."
Wiyeed nodded again. "I think she was supposed to die.
That was why the Lady took Tanzei instead."
She stood up, tucking the curved dagger into her belt and
smoothing out her skirts. Reaching up, she tugged up her shawl
to form a rudimentary hood over her hair. "There was another as
well, but I do not know what the Lady intends for him. I think
he should have died as well, and that is why she took..."
And then grief overcame her, and she wept, and Shiynju held
her, the distance between them now narrowing, at least for a
little while, to what it had been before.
"You need to go now, Wiyeed," her friend said when she was
done. "You have to reach the territory of the Musk by morning."
"I'll save him," Wiyeed murmured as she opened the door and
stepped into the hall. "If it can be done, I will."
"And if it can't?"
Wiyeed drew a shuddering breath. "Then I will make sure he
at least dies quickly."
(
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