Cloud of Sparrows (36 page)

All around him was fire. He was in Edo, and Edo burned. Instead of clouds, winged cylinders filled the sky. From them fell canisters that broke apart into glowing embers, which in turn exploded into flames as they hit the city.

Winds whipped by the firestorm sucked the air from his lungs.

Half-charred people copulated in the ruins as they died.

Shigeru gripped the reins of his horse and trusted it to lead him on.

If one more night passed before he rejoined his nephew, it would be too late.

When they saw the horseman in the distance, the seven shoddily dressed men scurried into the nearest thicket to hide. They carried a random assortment of weapons—three pikes, four spears, an old-fashioned double-edged longsword, and two flintlock pistols without flint, powder, or bullets. Though they were more boys than men, fear and privation had marked their haggard faces with the signs of terminal old age. Fourteen eyes sank back into the dark hollow pits of their sockets; jawbones and teeth jutted against nearly fleshless skin. Their skulls were all too apparent behind the thin veils of their faces.

“If we killed him, we could eat his horse,” one of them said wistfully.

His nearest companion snorted derisively. “Like we ate the other two horses?”

“How was I to know they had a gun?”

“And such a gun,” another said. “It fired many times without being reloaded once.”

“I’m sure Ichiro and Sanshiro are impressed, too, whether they are in the Pure Land or some demonic realm.”

A short sob escaped the first man. “We were from the same village. We grew up together. How can I face their parents? Or Shinichi’s?”

“Shinichi’s been dead a long time. Why think about him?”

“He should have jumped into the woods with us. He was a fool, running away down the road like that.”

“His arm was chopped off.”

“His skull was split in two.”

Though weeks had passed, the incident was fresh in everyone’s mind. It had begun their current streak of deadly bad luck. Taken from their villages, they had been marching to join Lord Gaiho’s main army on the Inland Sea when they came across a handful of samurai from another domain. Those samurai were as ferocious as they were few. In a brief battle, ten of their number were killed and the troop shattered. With all of their own officers dead, they didn’t know what to do. So they ran away. They had barely survived by foraging like deer and rabbits. They were farmers, not hunters. Every effort to bring down wild game failed miserably. Then two days ago, desperate with hunger, they had attacked a gentle-looking samurai and his outsider companion for their horses, and Ichiro and Sanshiro had been shot dead.

The first man fingered the ring of wooden prayer beads around his neck. “I thought I’d return these to his mother, and apologize for living while he died.”

“It’s not his mother you want to see. It’s his sister. A real beauty, she is.”

“None of us will see anybody’s mother or sister, including our own. We’re deserters, fool. They’ll be executed for our crime, along with the rest of our families, or sold into bondage, if they haven’t been already.”

“Thank you. That’s truly comforting.”

“Maybe this one doesn’t have a gun.”

“He’s a samurai with two swords. That’s bad enough.”

“Maybe not. Look. He’s wounded.”

His clothes were dark with bloodstains. Clotted gore covered his face and hair. As they watched, he harshly pulled the reins and brought his horse to a sudden halt.

“No, no,” the samurai said. “Not that way. There are too many of them.”

“What does he see?”

“Something that’s not there. He’s lost a lot of blood. I think he’s dying.”

“Then our luck has changed at last. Let’s get him.”

“Wait. He’s coming this way. We can take him by surprise.”

“Behind those towers,” the samurai said. “We’ll sneak past them.” He pulled his horse away from the clear trail ahead. Looking fearfully over his shoulder, he rode toward the rock-strewn slope where the seven men hid.

“I can taste it already,” one of the men said, salivating.

“Quiet. Steady. All together. Now!”

A belt across his lap kept him from escaping the seat into which he was strapped. An unknown force pressed him backward. His ears were filled with a faint and persistent whine, like the sound of a high wind, only dead, not alive. The walls curved toward a low ceiling barely higher than a man’s head. The room was narrow and very long. Seats like his were in front, behind, and to the right. Each one he could see held a prisoner like himself. To the left was a small window with rounded corners. He didn’t want to look through it, but a will stronger than his forced his head to turn.

He saw a huge city ablaze with light. It was rapidly falling away. Either it was sinking into the pit of hell, or the compartment containing him was rising from the earth. Neither was possible.

He was not yet a slave. But soon he would be. His mind was in the tightening grasp of demons.

He saw the world through mists of blood. A sword in each hand, he no longer bothered to hold the reins. Let the horse go where it will. He would kill demons as long as he could, then he would die.

He no longer knew where he was. Stone and steel were everywhere. Here and there a few trees, a few hedges, sprouted through like unwanted weeds. In the distance, foul gases billowed into the air from giant smokestacks. Joyless swarms filled the streets of the endless city, the broken slaves of unseen masters. An extensive and elaborate system of smooth stone roadways ran in every direction. But this did not make travel easier. Vast multitudes of metal carriages jammed into every space. They moved with excruciating slowness while emitting noxious fumes from small pipes at the rear of each vehicle. Surely the people within were dying a slow death. Sunlight barely seeped through the gray haze. Not even a heap of burning corpses would create a fouler stench.

No one else seemed to notice. People sat in their vehicles and walked the streets, inhaling poison with every breath. They stood in good order upon platforms, packed tightly against each other body to body, in neat rows, waiting their turn to be devoured by metal worms.

Shigeru stopped. He stood waist-deep in snow. A beast snorted behind him. He twirled quickly, his swords ready to strike, expecting another demonic assault. Instead, he saw only his horse a short distance away, following the trail Shigeru had plowed with his own body. He looked around. He was halfway up a ravine. He saw snowdrifts, trees, nothing else. Were the visions gone? It was too much to hope for. Yet so it seemed.

Wait.

Something dangled from his shoulders.

A human head. No, not one. Eight of them.

“Ahhh!”

He slashed wildly at the extra heads sprouting from his body. Demonic possession was transforming him into a hideous mockery of human life. The only escape was death. He dropped his katana and turned the shorter wakizashi’s blade toward his chest, the point aimed at his heart.

The last head rolled against a small pile of fallen branches mostly covered by snow. The dead face stared at him. It was Kudo. Shigeru lowered the blade. After decapitating Kudo, he had tied the head to his saddle. He didn’t remember slinging it over his shoulder. He looked down at his torso. There were a few superficial wounds where had slashed himself. Nothing else. He wasn’t undergoing any kind of metamorphosis. He picked up one of the other heads by its hair. No topknot. Not a samurai. An emaciated face he didn’t recognize. Not anyone he remembered killing. The other six heads told him as little.

Shigeru looked up at the sky. It was a blue of the purest kind, seen only in the winter, in the countryside far from human habitation. He saw no monstrous dragonflies. He heard no demons wailing. The visions were definitely gone. This was the first time he had experienced a spontaneous remission from so virulent an episode. Perhaps Genji had not been responsible the last time either. Perhaps it was some kind of mysterious internal mechanism that periodically relieved the torture, if he survived each barrage of insanity long enough. This slew of visions had been brief compared to the ones that had led him to confinement at Mushindo Monastery. Perhaps they would soon cease altogether on their own.

Shigeru walked down the slope to where Kudo’s head had rolled.

There was something odd about that mound of snow. Branches stuck out of it too evenly. Someone had placed them there.

Shigeru put the head down. He drew his sword and approached the suspicious shape. It was roughly triangular. A sniper might build a blind in such a way. But why here? He stood away from the likeliest lines of fire and scraped at the snow with the tip of his sword. A chunk fell inward and a hole appeared.

The mound was hollow.

Two bodies were inside.

Also, avoid beautiful women. They are too dangerous for you.

To her great relief, for she was not good at lying, she had not had to say anything at all to justify her continuing presence in Japan. When Lord Genji announced that they would leave Edo for Akaoka, his domain on the southern island of Shikoku, he simply assumed she and Matthew would go with him.

Now she alone traveled with the soft-spoken young lord. Matthew went on another path with Lady Heiko. The uncle, Shigeru, had gone back the way they had come. Hidé stayed behind at the junction of the parting ways. Though nothing was said, it was apparent that their hosts were concerned about possible pursuit. Following the naval bombardment, had one of the imperial perpetrators—Britain or France, or perhaps Russia—invaded Japan in an attempt to expand its colonial empire? She knew the United States would not be involved in such an immoral act. America, once a colony itself, abhorred the subjugation of independent peoples. It favored the Open Door Policy, which allowed all nations to interact freely as they chose, with no recognition of any empire’s claim of proprietary spheres of influence. She remembered Zephaniah teaching that lesson. Of course, he had been Mr. Cromwell then, not Zephaniah. May he rest in peace.

It was not as cold in the valley as it had been higher up in the mountains. Earlier in the day, they had turned toward the southwest. She could tell by the direction of the sun’s movement across the sky. They followed a path beside a shallow stream that moved just enough not to freeze over completely. Their horses’ hooves made soft crunching sounds as they stepped through the thin crust of ice that had formed on the surface of the snow.

Emily said, “What is your word for snow?”

“
Yuki
.”

“Yuki. A beautiful word.”

“You will not think so if we must remain in it much longer,” Lord Genji said. “There is a small hermitage not far from here. It is rough and rustic, but a better place than a camp in the woods.”

“I grew up on a farm. I am used to rough and rustic.”

He smiled in amusement. “Yes, I can almost picture it. Surely you did not grow rice?”

“We grew apples.” She was silent for a while, remembering the happiest times of her childhood, her handsome father, her beautiful mother, her sweet young brothers. She refused to let the more recent past destroy all the joy she had known before. “Orchards and paddies are quite different. Yet it seems to me that the nature of farmwork is the same whatever the place, whatever the crop. We are tied to the seasons and the vagaries of weather, and that is the essence.”

“Vagaries?”

“‘Vagaries’ are unpredictable changes. The singular is ‘vagary.’ ” She spelled the words out.

“Ah. Vagary. Thank you.” He would remember the word. So far, he had done so with every new one that had come up. Emily was impressed.

“You are a quick learner, Lord Genji. Your pronunciation and your vocabulary have improved markedly in just three weeks.”

“The credit is yours, Emily. You have been a most patient teacher.”

“A good student always makes the teacher look good,” Emily said. “And certainly if any credit is due to teachers, then Matthew deserves it, too.”

“For Heiko’s progress, yes. For mine, you are solely responsible. I find Matthew’s way of speaking more difficult to understand than yours. Am I mistaken in thinking your accents are quite different?”

“You are not mistaken.”

“Your words are clipped, which is somewhat like Japanese. He talks more like this, with a kind of odd melody.”

He imitated Matthew’s leisurely slur and twang with such exactitude, Emily burst out laughing.

“Excuse me, my lord. You sounded so much like him.”

“There is nothing to excuse. Your laughter does raise a concern, however.”

“It does?”

“Yes. In Japan, men and women speak quite differently from each other. If a man were to speak like a woman, he would be the object of much ridicule. I hope I am not committing that kind of error with your language.”

“Oh, no, Lord Genji. I assure you, you sound very much like a man.” She blushed. That wasn’t quite what she had meant to say. “The differences in speech between Matthew and me are solely a matter of region, not gender. He is from Texas, in the south of our country. I am from New York, which is in the northeast. The regional differences are quite strong.”

“That is a great relief to know. Ridicule is a particularly powerful weapon in Japan. Many have died, many have been killed, because of it.”

They hold life in low regard, Zephaniah had said. They will kill and die for the most ridiculous of reasons. If two samurai passing in the street should accidentally bump their sheathed swords, a duel is immediate and terminal. Someone must die.

Surely that is an exaggeration.

Do you know me to exaggerate?

No, sir.

Not sir. Zephaniah. I am your betrothed now, remember.

Yes, Zephaniah.

Their prickly sense of honor is utterly outrageous. If a samurai is spoken to with insufficient politeness, he will take it as a deadly insult, an attempt by the speaker to ridicule him. If he is spoken to with excessive politeness, the result is the same. Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before the fall.

Amen, Emily said.

By our own example, we will teach them humility, and lead them to redemption thereby.

Yes, Zephaniah.

Lord Genji said, “Then when English comes into more extensive use in Japan, I can be confident that I am speaking it properly?”

“Yes, without any doubt whatsoever.”

“Thank you, Emily.”

“You are welcome, Lord Genji. May I make a correction in your usage?”

“Please.”

“You said, ‘when’ English comes into use in Japan. ‘When’ applied in such a way suggests inevitability. A better choice in this case would be ‘if.’ ”

“I meant to suggest inevitability,” he said. “My grandfather predicted it.”

“He did? Forgive me for saying so, my lord, but that seems highly unlikely. Why would significant numbers of your people learn our language?”

“He didn’t say why. He might not have foreseen the cause, only the result.”

Emily was sure he wasn’t using the right word. “To foresee is to know in advance.”

“Yes.”

“Surely he didn’t know of events before they took place?”

“Yes, he did.”

His answer chilled her. He was claiming a power for his grandfather that was given only to those chosen of God. That was blasphemy. She tried to lead him away from that terrible sin.

“Lord Genji, only Jesus Christ and the Prophets of the Old Testament knew of things to come. Our duty is to seek an understanding of their words. New prophecies cannot occur. Christians cannot believe such a thing.”

“This is not a matter of belief. If it were, I would choose not to believe. Life would be less difficult.”

“Sometimes people guess, and coincidence makes the guess seem prophetic. But it is an appearance only. By the grace of God, the Prophets alone foretold the future.”

“I wouldn’t call it grace. It has been more like a family curse. We have borne it because we have had no choice. That is all.”

Emily said no more. What could she say? He spoke as if he believed himself to have the gift as well. If he persisted in such thinking, not only was he damned for blasphemy, he was in danger of madness as well. His delusions would make him see portents and signs where none existed, and his actions would be shaped by those misleading figments of his imagination. She must be patient. And diligent. The delusions of centuries would not fall away in a day or a week or a month.

A warm radiance of righteousness filled her bosom. There was a reason Christ had placed her in this place and time. That reason was clear to her now. She made a silent vow to Him. She would save Lord Genji’s soul though it cost her life. May God show His divine grace and infinite mercy to them both.

They proceeded for a time in silence.

When the shadows of the mountains completely covered the valley, Lord Genji said, “We won’t reach the hermitage before nightfall by the usual route. Let us go this way. We will have to lead our horses rather than ride them. Do you think you can manage? The distance is much less.”

“Yes, I can manage.”

They veered away from the stream and went straight up the steep hillside. Near the top, they came to a small open meadow. The scene sparked her memory. It looked so much like a similar meadow in Apple Valley. Even the snow blanketed it the same way. Was it coincidence that she had come upon a scene so reminiscent of long-ago days? Or had her longing recast the alien landscape into shapes and shadows more familiar to her?

“It’s perfect for snow angels.” She hadn’t meant to speak. The words just slipped out.

“What are snow angels?”

“Have you never made them?”

“I never have.”

“May I show you? It will only take a minute.”

“Please.”

Emily sat down on the snow in as ladylike a manner as she could manage. She reclined, and stretched out her arms and legs as far as they would go, being careful to keep the hem of her skirt from rising above the ankles of her boots. Then she vigorously brushed the snow with her outstretched limbs. She giggled, realizing how silly she must look. When she was finished, she got up without disturbing the shape she had made.

“Do you see it?”

“Perhaps the angel’s image must be in mind before one can see it.”

Emily couldn’t hide her disappointment. It was really a very fine snow angel. “Perhaps.”

“Emily?”

“Yes?”

“May I ask your age?”

“I will be seventeen next month.”

“Ah,” he said, as if that explained something.

He said it in the way adults often did when dismissing a child. She let her irritation get the best of her. “And what is your age?” Normally, she would never be so rude.

Lord Genji didn’t have a chance to answer.

Several men leaped out from behind the trees. Shouting loud war cries, they rushed forward and stabbed at him with spears and pikes. He managed to turn the first attacker away with his hastily drawn sword, but the two behind him drove their blades into his back. The circle around him tightened.

Emily was too stunned to move.

Triumphant shouts rose from their attackers as Genji went down. Blood splattered the snow around him.

“Genji!” Emily cried.

The mention of his name stopped them. The men—there were nine of them—pulled away, fear in their faces. She heard Genji’s name repeated. She also heard another name she knew.

“Oh, no. He’s Shigeru’s nephew.”

“This is terrible. We manage to surprise a samurai, and it turns out to be Lord Genji.”

“A lord’s horses are as tasty as anyone else’s.”

“Shigeru will come after us. And he won’t kill us quickly. I hear he loves to torture first.”

“We need those horses. There’s many a meal on those haunches. I’m not going hungry any longer.”

“I’d rather be hungry than dead.”

“I agree. Let’s apologize and go.”

“Look.”

The lord lay where he had fallen. The ugly outsider woman tended to him, murmuring in her harsh, ungraceful tongue. The snow beneath him was crimson.

“We can’t stop now. It’s too late.”

“Let’s use the woman before we kill her.”

“What are you saying? We’re not criminals.”

“Yes we are. We might as well go all the way. They can chop our heads off only once.”

“Aren’t you curious to see what she looks like? I’ve heard their bodies are covered with coarse hair, like a wild boar.”

“I heard it was more like the fur of a mink, down there, in her nether regions.”

The men looked at her.

“Wait. Make sure the lord is dead first. Samurai are strange creatures. As long as he breathes, he can kill, even if he has to rise from his deathbed to do it.”

“He’s dead. See? She speaks to him and he doesn’t answer.”

“Take no chances. Slit his throat.”

Emily didn’t know what to do. She felt Genji’s blood go from warm to cold to ice within moments after it seeped through his clothing and into hers. He was wounded in his chest and his back. She had to staunch the bleeding soon, or he would die. With his clothing on, she couldn’t determine the exact location or nature of the wounds. She had to undress him first. But if she did that, would he not die from exposure before he died from loss of blood? It was a terrible dilemma. If she did nothing, he would die anyway.