IGMS Issue 9 Read online

  And if, now and then, he awoke in the night to find the space beside him still warm but empty, or heard a rustle in the trees outside, or a sigh of the grass, that he was huntsman enough to know was no bird, no doe teaching her fawn to strip bark from Lord Kuroda's plum trees, he learned to turn over and go back to sleep, and ask no questions in the morning. For Sayuri was most often back by dawn, or very soon thereafter -- always in human shape, as she had promised him -- usually chilled beyond the bone and needing to be warmed. And Junko would warm her and never ask her to say where -- and what -- she had been.

  She did not always leave the castle: mouse and bat were among her favorite forms, and between those two she knew everything that was taking place within its walls. More than once she shocked Junko by informing him that this or that high-ranking retainer was slipping into dusty alcoves with this or that servant girl; he learned before Lord Kuroda that the Lady Hara was again with child, and that he could safely predict to the daimyo that this time it would finally be a boy. Animals know these things. As an owl, she might glide silently over the forest at night, and tell him if the deer had shifted their grazing grounds, as they did from time to time, or were lying up in a new place. In fox-shape, she warned of an approaching forest fire without ever seeing a flame; Junko roused the castle and gained great praise and credit thereby. He wanted earnestly to explain that all honor was due to his wife Sayuri, but this was impossible, and she seemed more than content with his gratitude and their somewhat unlikely happiness. So they lived, and the time passed.

  One night it happened that she returned to their bed shivering, not with cold, nor with fear -- there were several cats in the castle -- but, as he slowly realized, with anger, which was not something he was used to from Sayuri. She might be by turns as calm and thoughtful as a fox, as playful as an otter, as gentle as a deer, fiercely passionate as any mink or marten, or as curious and mischievous as a red-faced snow monkey. All these moods and humors he had come in time to understand -- but anger was a new thing entirely. He held her, and asked simply, "What is it, my love?"

  At first she would not speak, or could not; but by and by, when the trembling passed a little, she whispered, "I was in the kitchen --" by this Junko knew that she had been in mouse-shape -- "and the cooks were talking late over their own meal. And one said it was a shame that you had been passed over for the lord's private guard in favor of Yasunari Saito, since you had surely earned promotion a dozen times over. But another cook said --" the words were choking her again -- "that it made no difference, because you were a commoner with no surname, and that it was miraculous that you were even in Lord Kuroda's home, let alone his retinue. Miraculous -- after all you have done for them!" The tears of rage came then.

  "Well, well," Junko said, stroking her hair, "that must have been Aoki. He has never liked me, that one, and it wouldn't matter to him if I had a dozen surnames. For the rest of it, things are the way they are, and that is . . . well, the way it is. Don't cry, please, Sayuri. I am grateful for what I have, and most grateful for you. Don't cry."

  But later, when she had at last fallen asleep on his chest, he could not help brooding -- only a little -- about the unfairness of Saito's promotion. Unfair was not a word Junko had allowed himself even to think since he was quite small, and still learning the way things were, but it seemed to slither in his mind, and he could not get to grips with it, or make it go away. It was long before he slept again.

  As has been said, the Lord Kuroda was a wise man, though not at all handsome, who saw more at a single dinner than many were likely to see in a week or a month. Riding out hunting one day, with Junko at his elbow, and the two having drawn a little apart from their companions, he said to him briefly and directly, "Saito is a fool, but his advancement was necessary, since I may well need his father's two hundred and fifty samurai one day." Junko bowed his head without answering. Lord Kuroda continued, "But it means nothing to me that you bring no warriors with you -- nothing but your strength and your faithfulness. The next opening in my guard you shall fill."

  With that he spurred ahead, doubtless to avoid Junko's stammering thanks. Junko was too overcome to be much of a hand at the hunt that afternoon; but while the others teased and derided him for this, Lord Kuroda only winked gravely.

  Of course Sayuri was overjoyed at the news of the lord's promise, and she and Junko celebrated it with nihonshu and love, and then shochu, which is brewed from rice and sweet potatoes and a few other things. And afterward it was her turn to lie awake in the night, with her husband in her arms, and her mind perhaps full of small-animal thoughts. And perhaps not; who knows? It was all so long ago.

  But it was at most a month before the horse of the samurai Daisuke Ikeda shied at a rabbit underfoot, reared, fell backwards and crushed his rider. There was much sorrow at court, for Ikeda was the oldest of the daimyo's guard, and a well-liked man; but there was also a space in the guard to fill, and Lord Kuroda was as good as his word. Within days, Junko was wearing his master's livery, for all the world as though he were as good as Ikeda, or anyone else, and riding at his side on a fine, proud young stallion. And however many at court may have thought this highly unsuitable, no one said a word about it.

  Junko also grieved for Ikeda, who had been kind to him. But his delight in his new position was muted, more than he would have expected, by his odd disquiet concerning that rabbit. Riding in the rear, as befit a commoner (it had been a formal procession, meant to impress a neighboring lord), he had seen the animal shoot from its hole, seemingly as blindly as though red-eyed Death were on its heels; and he had never known Ikeda's wise old horse to panic at an ambush, much less a rabbit. One worrisome thought led to another, and that to a third, until finally he brought them all to his wife. He had grown much in the habit of doing this.

  Sayuri sat crosslegged on the proper new bed that the Lord Kuroda had given them to replace their worn tatami, and she listened attentively to Junko's fears, saying nothing until he was finished. Then she replied simply, "Husband, I was not the rabbit -- I was the weasel just behind it, chasing it out of its burrow into the horse's path. Can you look at your own new horse -- at your beautiful new livery -- at this bed of ours -- and say I have done wrong?"

  "But Ikeda is dead!" Junko cried in horror. "Ask rather how I can look at his widow, at his children, at my master -- at myself in the mirror now! Oh, I wish you had never told me this, Sayuri!"

  "Then you should not have asked me," she answered him. "The weasel never meant for the good Ikeda to be killed -- though he was old and should have retired from the guard long ago. The weasel only wanted the rabbit." She beckoned Junko to sit beside her, saying, "But is a wife not supposed to concern herself with the advancement of her husband's fortunes? I was told otherwise by the priest who married us." She put her arms around Junko. "Come, my love, take the good luck with the regrettable, and say as many prayers for Ikeda's repose as will comfort you." She laughed then: the joyous childlike giggle that never failed to melt even the sternest heart. "Although I think that I am more skilled at that than any prayer."

  But Junko paced the castle all night, and wandered the grounds like a spirit; and it was dawn before he could at last reassure himself that what she had told him was both sound and sensible. Ikeda's death had clearly been an accident, after all, and there was nothing in the least shameful in making the best of even such a tragedy. Sayuri's shapeshifting had brought about great good for him, however unintentional; let him give thanks for such a wife and, as he rode proudly beside the Lord Kuroda, bless the wandering arrow that had found an otter instead of a wild pig. "She is my luck," he thought often. "I should have given her that name, luck, instead of little lily."

  But he did, indeed, pray often at the family shrine erected for Daisuke Ikeda.

  Now, in time Junko came to realize that, while he had certainly been honored far beyond his origins in becoming part of Lord Kuroda's private guard, he had also attained a kind of limit beyond which he had no chance of rising.
Above the guard stood his master's counselors and ministers: some of them higher in rank than others, some higher in a more subtle manner, unspoken and unwritten. In any case, their world was far out of reach for a nameless commoner, no matter how graciously favored by his lord. He would always be exactly what he was -- unlike Sayuri, who could at least become different animals in her search for her true nature. And, understanding this, for the first time in his life Junko began to admit aloud that the world was unjust.

  "Look at Nakamura," he would say resentfully to his wife over the teacups. "Not only does he review the guard when Lord Kuroda is away or indisposed -- Nakamura, who barely knows a lance from a chopstick -- he advises my master on diplomacy, when he has never been north of the Inland Sea in his life. And Hashimoto -- Finance Minister Hashimoto, if you please -- Hashimoto holds the position for no other reason than that he is Lady Hara's second cousin on her father's side. It is not correct, Sayuri. It is not right."

  Sayuri smiled and nodded, and made tea. She had become celebrated among the ladies-in-waiting for the excellence and delicacy of her gyukuro green tea.

  And a few weeks later, Minister Shiro Nakamura, who loved to stroll alone in the castle gardens before dawn, to catch the first scent of the awakening flowers, was found torn in pieces by what could only have been a wolf. There were never many wolves in Japan, even then, but there was no question of the killer in this case: the great paw-prints in the soft earth were so large that Junko suggested that the animal might well have come from Hokkaido, where the wolves were notably larger. "But how could a wolf ever find its way from Hokkaido Island so far south to Honshu?" he asked himself in the night. "And why should it do so?" He was very much afraid that he knew the answer.

  The hunt that was immediately organized after the discovery of Minister Nakamura's still-warm body found no wolf of any species, but it did find blood in one of the paw prints, and on the blade of the antique dagger that Nakamura always carried. Sayuri was not at home when Junko returned; nor did she appear for several days, and even then she looked pale and faint, and spoke little. Junko made the excuse of illness to the Lady Hara, who sent medicines and dainties, plainly hoping that Sayuri's reported condition might betoken a new godchild. For his part, he asked no questions of his wife, knowing that she would tell him the truth. She always did.

  It took more time, and a great deal of courteously muffled scandal and outrage at court before Junko ascended into the ranks of Lord Kuroda's advisors. He did not replace Minister Nakamura, but a station was created for him: that of Minister to the Lower Orders. When Junko's first speechless gratitude began to be replaced by stumbling bewilderment, Lord Kuroda explained to him, thus: "By now, my friend, you should know that I am not one of those nobles who believe that the commoners have no reason to exist, except that we give them the privilege of serving us. Quite a few, in fact --" and here he named a good eight or ten of the castle servants, ending with Junko himself -- "show evidence of excellent sense, excellent judgment." He paused, looking straight into Junko's eyes. "And where there is judgment, there will be opinions."

  By this Junko understood that he had been chosen to be a liaison -- what some might call a spy -- between the daimyo and all those who were not nobles, priests, or samurai. The notion offended him deeply, but he had not attained his unusually favored position by showing offense. He merely bowed deeply to the Lord Kuroda, and replied that he would do his best to give satisfaction. The Lord Kuroda looked long into his eyes without responding.

  So Junko, surname or no, became the first commoner ever accepted into a world his class had long been forbidden even to dream of entering. His and Sayuri's quarters were changed once again for rooms that seemed to him larger than his entire native village; they were assigned a servant of their own, and a new bed that, as Sayuri giggled, was "like a great snowdrift. I am certain we will yet find a bear sleeping out the winter with us." The haughtiness of Lord Kuroda's other counselors, and the sense that their servant despised them, seemed a small price to pay at the time.

  Out of respect and gratitude to his master, Junko served him well as Minister to the Lower Orders. He provoked no disloyal or rebellious conversations, but only listened quietly to the talk of the stables, the kitchens, the deep storerooms and the barracks. What he thought Lord Kuroda should know, he reported faithfully; what seemed to him to be no one's business but the speakers' remained where he heard it. And Lord Kuroda appreciated his discreet ability to tell the difference, and told him so, even calling him Junko-san in private. And once -- not very long before at all -- that would have been more than enough.

  But again he had collided with an invisible barrier. Precisely because the post had been invented especially for him, there was no precedent for promotion, nor any obvious position for him to step into whenever it should become vacant. Those who had always been kindly and amiable to Junko the castle's chief huntsman, now looked with visible contempt on Junko the Minister, Junko the jumped-up pet of the Lord Kuroda. Those below him took great pleasure in observing his frustration and discomfort; when they dared, they murmured as they passed him, "Did you think you were better than we are? Did you really believe they would let you become one of them? Then you were a fool -- and now you are no one. No one."

  Junko never spoke of his unhappiness to Lord Kuroda, but he expressed it once to his friend Akira Yamagata. The horsemaster, being a silent man, much more at ease with beasts than people, replied shortly, "Let demons fly away with them all. You cannot win with such folk; you cannot ever be even with them in their minds. Serve your master, and you cannot go wrong. Any horse will tell you that."

  As for Sayuri, she simply listened, and arranged fresh flowers everywhere in their quarters, and made green gyokuro tea. When she walked with Junko in the castle gardens, and he asked her whether she felt herself any nearer to perceiving her true nature, she most often replied, "My husband, I know more and more what I am not -- but as to what I am . . ." and her voice would trail away, leaving the thought unfinished. Then she would add, quickly and softly, "But human -- that, yes. I know I am human."

  Now the most clever and ambitious of the Lord Kuroda's counselors, recently become Minister Of Waterways and Fisheries, was a man named Mitsuo Kondo. Perhaps because he was little older than Junko, only now approaching his middle years, he went well out of his way to show his scorn for a commoner, though never in the presence of the daimyo. In the same way, Junko responded humbly to Kondo's poorly-veiled insults; while at home he confided to his wife that he often dreamed of wringing the man's thin neck, as he had so often done with chickens in his childhood. "Being of low birth, I am naturally acquainted with barnyards," he remarked bitterly to Sayuri.

  It happened that on a warm night of early summer, Junko woke thirsty to an emptybed -- he was quite used to this by now -- and was still thirsty when he had drunk the last remaining green tea. Setting off to find water, barefooted and still drowsy, he had just turned into a corridor that led to the kitchens, when he heard the scraping of giant claws on a weathered sugi-wood floor, and flattened himself against the wall so hard that the imprint of the molding remained on his skin for hours afterward.

  A huge black bear was lumbering down a passageway just ahead. It must surely have smelled his terror -- or, as he imagined, heard the frantic beating of his heart -- for it hesitated, then rose on its hind legs, turning toward his him to sniff the air, growling softly. He saw the deep yellow-white chevron on the creature's breast, as well as the bright blood on its horrific fangs and claws, and he smelled both the blood and the raw, wild, strangely sweet odor of the beast itself. Even armed he might not be the creature's match; weaponless, he knew this was the moment of his death. But then the bear's great bulk dropped to the floor again, turning away, and his forgotten breath hissed between his teeth as the animal moved slowly on out of his sight, still growling to itself.

  Junko did not go back to his quarters that night, but sat shivering where he was until dawn, tracing a trail of dead m
oss between two floorboards over and over with his forefinger. Then at last he slipped warily back into the new bed where Sayuri had laughingly imagined a bear keeping them company. She was sound asleep, not even stirring at his return. Junko lay still himself, studying her hands: one partly under her head, one stretched out on the pillow. There was no blood on any of the long fingers he loved to watch moving among her flowers. This was not as reassuring to him as it might once have been.

  The hunt for Minister Kondo went on for days. The blood trail was washed away by a sudden summer rain, except for the track leading from his private offices, and other indications that he had been carried off by some great animal, or something even worse. For all his dislike of Kondo, Junko took a leading part in the hunt -- as did Lord Kuroda himself -- from its earliest moments to the very last, when it was silently agreed that the Minister's body would never be found. Lord Kuroda commanded ten days of mourning, and had a shrine created in Minister Kondo'smemory on his own summer island. It is still there, though no one today knows whom it was meant to honor.

  Even after the proper period of remembrance had passed, the empty place among the daimyo's counselors remained unfilled for some considerable while. Few had liked Kondo any more than Junko did; all had feared his ambition, his gifts, and his evil tongue, and many were happy that he was gone, however horrified they may have been at the manner of his departure. But Lord Kuroda was clearly grieved -- and, more than that, suspicious, though of what even he could not precisely say. Wolves and bears were common enough in Honshu in those days, but not in Honshu gardens and palaces; nor was the loss of three important members of his court, each under such curious circumstances, something even a mighty daimyo could easily let pass. The tale had already spread through the entire province, from bands of half-naked beggars huddled muttering under bridges to courts as great as his own. There was even a delicate message from the Shogun in Kyoto. Lord Kuroda brooded long over the proper response.