Fudoki (27 page)

It is true that I am powerless, that I am controlled by my family, by the Fujiwaras, by the gods and Buddhas; but I am also free: to think my thoughts, and dream of blue-green streams under foreign trees.

I thank the merciful Kannon for this tale I tell, where I can at last control a life, even if it is not my own.

The days of preparation collected themselves into untidy fortnights, and then a month and more. Takase spent much of his time in the main house, surrounded by low tables heaped with slips of paper listing the details of war. These he arranged into various piles and then rearranged the piles, his clerk scribbling completed lists onto other, larger pieces of paper. Discarded scraps drifted across the floor.

A courtier might have compared him to an aging poet writing among fallen cherry blossoms or snow. He reminds me more of my half-brother the emperor, who spent many days in precisely this manner—though it annoyed my uncle (indeed, most of his branch of the Fujiwaras), who thought he concerned himself overmuch with the running of the empire, which (in their opinions) might better be left in their hands.

Kagaya-hime saw Takase and the clerk and the countless, strangely attractive, fluttering papers, and saw a kitten’s game, or a mystery. She often watched him, but Takase did not seem to mind, or perhaps even notice that she was near—it is easy to ignore a cat when she is not of a mind to remind you of her existence, though otherwise it is impossible. It may also be that he sensed she was not, strictly speaking, human; or perhaps he saw that she was one of those who are born to killing, without discerning the details.

On this day—it was toward the middle of the second month, when the irises by the spider-leg stream were first showing their leaves, straight as knives—Kitsune came into Takase’s presence. He spent most of his time outside with the men and horses, where his voice was necessarily loud and his stride long; papers skittered away from his feet as he stopped and bowed. “My lord—” he began, and the eaves rang.

“Wait.” Takase raised his hand. The clerk finished the character he was writing and laid down his brush, then fussed around, placing river stones on the heaps to hold them in place. Kagaya-hime knelt half-hidden by a latticed screen leading to the veranda, binding a steel arrowhead to a shaft; she lifted her head to watch. “Now,” Takase said, when the piles were secure, and only the scraps on the floor fluttered. “What is it?”

“It” was many things, of course. I have learned that no one (not even Shigeko, whom I see a thousand times each day) has only one thing to say. Ask, “And what else?” and there is always another, and sometimes it is the most important of all. Lacquered stirrups from Musashi province had come in; one of the Osa Hitachi retainers had received news that his wife was ill, and left for home with his men; mice had gotten into some of the rice, though it was still salvageable. Takase was old (and wise, though these are not always paired) and asked, “And what else?” a number of times.

If there are no secrets at court, there are fewer within a household, fewer still within a war band. “The men have learned that my sister’s guest means to travel with us,” Kitsune said.

“And they object,” Takase said.

Kitsune nodded. “A few. Monthly courses, sightseeing, endless delays for travel tabus and heating water and looking for protection from the dew.”

“Do you feel this way?”

“Ha. She is tough enough.”

“But you do not care for her,” Takase said.

Kitsune stiffened. “I never—”

“Boy, I am old. I have no interest in listening to excuses.”

Kitsune frowned and rubbed his neck. “I—do not understand her. Who she is.”

Takase snorted. “Say that about any woman, not just her. Will you be able to travel with her?”

“If she slows us down, no.”

“Well, girl?” Takase said. “Will you keep us waiting while you cut your nails on auspicious days?”

Kagaya-hime hadn’t known that he saw her: he had not turned his head her way once in the long hours of work. Caught, she stood and entered the room, arrow and thread still in her hands. She did not meet Kitsune’s eyes, but looked sidelong at him, gauging mood, threat, posture. He was flushed red with embarrassment, defiant. “No,” she said. “Why would I cut my nails?”

Takase barked a laugh that became a cough. And later, when (perhaps) he thought she had left them, he said to Kitsune: “She is driven by fate, as are we all. It’s a waste of energy to stand in the way.”

As I write here, my cat My
b
watches me, suddenly intent, as though a fire flickered over my head. There have been many cats over the years, and I have spoken to them all in the high tones reserved for children, drunken men, and pets. They have never spoken back, but I have never thought they would. They are not badgers or foxes, after all. They are from distant godless places, beyond my most ambitious dreams.

A month later, Kagaya-hime left with the war band. It was a bright spring day, still winter-cold, except that the trees showed a haze of pale green, and the air seemed furred with moisture and the possibility of life. Nakara and Kagaya-hime had avoided one another, but now the woman joined the cat, and in silence they watched the band form an unruly line of snappish horses and hoarse-voiced men.

“Must you do this?” Nakara said again.

Kagaya-hime said, “Yes.”

Nakara sighed. “I cannot stop the wind from blowing, and I cannot stop you. I’m sorry that I was angry with you.”

Certain cats hold grudges. Shisut
ko, the little nun, was like this; she refused your embrace if she thought she had been slighted, or if you were to toss her from a veranda into the garden after a particularly wearisome morning of her face in everything; and she waited days if necessary to take a revenge as indelicate as it was surprising. I think it is possible that our cats learn how to bear grudges from people, for we can hold one for a lifetime.

Kagaya-hime was not of a resentful nature. This requires a sense of perogatives infringed, and she had no expectations to be dashed. She saw Nakara’s sorrow and did something she remembered from the aunts and cousins when they sought comfort from one another; she stepped forward and pressed her cheek into the curve of Nakara’s neck. Nakara reached out and pulled her close, held her tightly. Kagaya-hime stood taut-muscled for an instant, then relaxed and embraced Nakara: the first time she had embraced another, felt the comfort of one’s arms filled with a person one loves.

“I am—sorry,” she whispered into Nakara’s hair, “though I do not know what that means.”

They stood joined for a time, but no matter how tender the moment, a cat grows restive. Kagaya-hime moved away, still close but no longer touching.

Nakara looked at her and sighed. “There are people who cannot settle, as if they were birds born without legs. They go on and on, to the world’s end—the lands of the hairy northerners, or India; farther, even.”

“What happens to them, the ones who go?”

“I don’t know. They never return to tell us. Perhaps they never find a place to stop.”

“I am not one of those,” Kagaya-hime said. “I long for home and
fudoki
. I would stop if I could.”

“Would you?” Nakara said.

“I have a gift for you,” Kagaya-hime said suddenly. Tucked in her sash was a slim, shallow box carved of tortoiseshell, hardly larger than a fan-case. She laid it in Nakara’s hands. Inside was a knife no longer than Kagaya-hime’s hand, its blade the color of claws.

Nakara looked up. “I cannot take your knife.”

“I have others,” Kagaya-hime said, and held up her hands, though she showed only her palms to Nakara, so that the woman might not see the raw place where one of her fingernails had been until that morning.

“I have a gift for you, as well,” Nakara said. Junshi stood a few paces away; Nakara gestured, and the woman handed to Kagaya-hime a lacquered woven box, long and narrow. Inside were gold and ivory feathers as long as Kagaya-hime’s forearm: eagle feathers, feathers worthy of an emperor’s arrows. The sunlight caught them and the feathers gleamed with flecks of muted light.

Nakara continued, her voice distant, as though she chose not to feel too strongly. “My father was a warrior; my mother was the daughter of a warrior. I have learned these things. Make sure that your neckguard is low. When charging, don’t get shot in the face. Trust the men beside you.”

Cats have no way to share their sorrow. It is not in their nature that two cats sharing a
fudoki
can truly feel sadness—cats come and go, it is the tale that matters. And a cat without a
fudoki
has no one with whom she can share sorrow, and so she learns no habits of expression. But a woman understands loss, and can express it. And this, Kagaya-hime learned, was both advantage and disadvantage to being human.

Mutsu province. This is the end of the (civilized) world, the farthest reaches of the empire. My favorite Michinoku paper comes from there, though I have a difficult time reconciling my image of the place with the notion that there are workshops, perhaps even manufactories, whole families or villages devoting their lives to producing luxuries for the capital, so many hundreds of miles away. Mutsu is meant to be a land of savages (that drinking of blood! those arrows in the hair!), of peaks taller than the great mountain Fuji and snow a thousand feet deep, of springs of scalding water that rise from the very depths of Hell, of monkeys that speak and
tengu
-demons and monsters—it is meant to be the fringe of the world. The Mutsu province of my mind is filled with wonders.

My lover D
mei told me that it is not really like this, that Mutsu province is like everywhere else. There are roads and estates, towns with government offices, posting stations; hills, mountains, and hot springs; peasants and nobles; nothing extraordinary, nothing I could not find nearer to home and better designed or regulated. I have to wonder whether the entire world is like this. I have learned a bit about Korea and China, and we of course share much culture with them; but if I went to India or even beyond, would I find maintained roads and public wells, town gossips and officious village leaders, peasants happy or unhappy with their lot, rice fields in varying states of cultivation, cats asleep in patches of sun?