Lord Oda's Revenge (30 page)

‘My name is Kawabata,' said the man ingratiatingly. ‘I see you wear the
mon
of Lord Oda, may the Amida Buddha preserve his spirit for noble rebirth. I wish to tell you that when Shusaku and the children left to go and kill your lord, I sent a messenger to warn Lord Oda. I failed, I know – but I did try to prevent his death.'

Yukiko raised her mask. ‘I know who you are, Kawabata,' she said.

‘Yukiko,' he breathed, stunned. Then he smiled with relief. ‘So you know me! You know that I am not loyal to Lord Tokugawa, like the rest of these ninjas.'

Yukiko smiled back. ‘Unfortunately, Kawabata, you make two mistakes.'

‘Mistakes?' he stammered.

‘Your first mistake,' said Yukiko, ‘is to believe that Lord Oda is dead. Nothing could be further from the truth.' She leaned forward. ‘Lord Oda is a vampire now,' she added.

Kawabata's mouth dropped open and for once, he was
rendered speechless. Yukiko savoured the moment.

‘Your second mistake is more grave,' she said. She saw him tremble. ‘You say you are not loyal to Lord Tokugawa. But the ninjas of this mountain are sworn to serve him, are they not? Certainly they were when Shusaku was in charge.'

He didn't reply.

She impaled his heart with her sword. ‘Really, Kawabata,' she said indulgently. ‘What use could I possibly have for disloyalty?'

 

T
HE GHOST OF
Taro's mother raised her arm to point at him, then shook her head slowly. Taro blinked. What did she mean? He wanted to ask her, but when he rushed forward to where she stood, she was no longer there. Ama women and children looked at him strangely as he turned round quickly, trying to spot her. She
was
gone – but it had been her, he was sure of it.

The
obon
festival had brought her back, and rather than returning to the hut, she had followed him here to the cliff. As soon as he had seen her, though, she had disappeared, as if her existence were so delicate that the weight of his attention – like the touch of a hand to a spider's web – had made her unravel into nothingness. Even when she had been standing there, she had been as insubstantial as smoke, the leaves of the trees visible through her flesh.

Ignoring the stares and questions of the others, he hurried back down to the village, hoping that she might have gone there instead. But when he came to the hut, he found it empty and cold. Only moments ago he had been dismissing everything he had once believed in, and the world had seemed devoid of gods and ghosts. But now he had seen his mother standing before him, even though her body had burned weeks ago.

She looked sad,
he thought.
Sad, and hungry
.

He shivered. If his mother had returned at
obon,
it was because she was in the realm of hungry ghosts, and had not been reincarnated. That meant either that she had accumulated bad karma in life, or that something was tying her to this realm. He was suddenly filled with horror at the thought that she was somewhere cold and unfriendly, doomed to never be satisfied, either by food or warmth.

She can't find the place,
he realized suddenly. Spirits were no longer used to the geography of the physical world, and had to be guided to their homes. People placed blue lanterns in their windows, to light the way back for their relatives. Hurrying to the store cupboards against the wall, he rummaged among the dusty items there until he found two small lanterns. Taking a flint from by the fire, he lit them and placed them within the paper windows.

Now if she comes to look for me, she will find me
.

Looking around the small space of the hut, he was powerless to prevent memories of the last time he had been here from swimming to the surface of his mind. He looked at the open curtain that led to the sleeping area, and saw the mat on which his father had been lying when the ninja killed him. The blood was gone from the floor, but he could see it as if it were still there, staining the house forever. The fire he had built flickered and crackled just like the fire he had warmed his mother by, when she returned from the wreck.

Until he'd found her again at Mount Hiei, that had been the last time he'd seen her – a frail woman, huddling by the fire for warmth. He remembered their conversation, how she'd reminded him that
ame futte ji katamaru
– ground that is rained on hardens – to stop him worrying about his father. So much
had changed since then, though, and Taro was no longer convinced that hard events hardened a person in turn. There came a time when rain and gravity only wore the ground down, and caused it to slide downhill, bearing everything with it.

But that was a trick to make himself feel better, wasn't it – to blame it on the rain, or fate, which is outside human power?

The truth was, it was
his
fault. If it wasn't for him, Yukiko would never have come to the mountain, and his mother would never have been killed. Her very death was an act of revenge against him. Tears blurred his vision. Grief seemed to expand inside him like a great balloon. He missed Hana, but he didn't feel about her this colossal, all-encompassing ache – he felt, he realized, as if she wasn't really dead, but would wake up again. Her body had to have been saved for a reason. But his mother was different. He just wanted to speak to her again, to say sorry, to tell her he loved her.

He wanted also to talk to her about the things that had remained unsaid – the prophecy that he himself would one day be shogun; what she knew about the ball. Ever since he had been aware of the world around him, he had looked to her for advice. It was she who had taught him to swim, she who had told him the stories of samurai heroism that had filled him with such a yearning for adventure, until he had found himself in the middle of one, and learned the obvious but unteachable lesson that blades, like noble actions, might be beautiful – but above all they are hard, sharp, and can cause great pain. He would give anything to hear his mother's stories again, the way she told them, rather than be in one.

But maybe he could.

When his father had died, he had been struck – and it literally felt as if he had been hit by something heavy and hard –
by the sudden realization that he would never ever see him again, and it had physically buckled him. But this time he had
seen
his mother, standing in the rain. And it was
obon
. He might see her again. . .

Brushing away his tears, he checked that the lanterns were still burning in the shoji windows, then went over to the corner of the room devoted to the
kami
and put his hands together.
Princess of the Hidden Waters,
he said under his breath.
If my mother is a ghost, let her come and speak to me
.

Amida Buddha, let my mother come and speak to me
.

 

T
ARO SPENT MOST
of the next day sitting on the beach, watching the boats going in and out, and the amas diving from their platforms. He couldn't dive for the ball until night, when no one would see what he was doing. The people of Shirahama feared the wreck, and they were kind and compassionate and meant well.

That meant they would try to stop him.

His eyes on the boats, he tried to contain his impatience. He was itching to get out there over the water, shining now in the afternoon sun, and dive down. He had loaded the offering shelf in the hut – the
shoryodana
– with rice and rice wine, so that his mother could eat, as if she were at home again, and among her own things. He had laid out her diving belt for her, and the bag in which she used to collect abalone, for the dead liked to enjoy their old pursuits while they were back on earth. Taro wondered if even now her ghost was flitting among the mountains and valleys of the reef, frightening the fish.

As always, the fishermen and diver-women avoided the north side of the bay, where long ago a ship had gone down, its drowned passengers contaminating the waters. There was only
one way for the ghost of a drowned person to find release, and that was to drown someone else in the same place.

Taro knew now, though, that the wreck was no ordinary ship. The prophetess had told him that it had been a Chinese imperial ship, carrying three treasures from China, priceless gifts from the Japanese princess who had married the emperor of China. Just as they reached the coast of Japan, though, the ship was beset by storms – it was said that Susanoo himself, the
kami
of storms, desired the Buddha ball, one of the three treasures. Fearing that all aboard would drown, the captain had flung the Buddha ball into the sea, and the sharks of the sea
kami,
who was in league with Susanoo, had taken it into their guard, and thus it had been lost.

One day some years later, the prince, named heir of the emperor, brother to the princess who had sent the ball, had come to Shirahama and fallen in love with an ama diver. They were married and had a son together. Then one day, the prince told his wife the story of the ball, and how it was meant for his family, and seeing how much it meant to him, she dived down to recover it. Except that the sharks and demons still guarded it for the jealous
kami
of the sea, and she was wounded by them, her chest bitten open. Using her last reserves of strength, she placed the ball inside the hole in her chest and rose to the surface, where her husband plucked his prize from her dying body.

For years, once the prince acceded to the throne (and with the Buddha ball in his grasp, that had not taken long), he ruled Japan with inflexible authority, the ball giving him control over all of nature.

But there are greater powers even than the Buddha ball. The prophetess had told a story about a curse placed on the imperial family by the ama who had died in the process of recovering the
ball – for her husband, blinded by his infatuation with his newfound power, had forgotten to perform any of the funeral rites that would have given her soul rest, and had passed over her son, making another woman's offspring his heir.

Her ghost remained by the seashore a long time, until one day her son – the one she had borne with the prince – came to Shirahama, to see the place his mother had come from. Revealing herself to him, she learned from him that he had been disinherited, his father the emperor choosing as his heir the son of one of his concubines. Her fury was like the sea in a storm – deep, violent, and implacable. When her son at last performed the
nenbutsu
rites and gave her peace, she used her moment of enlightenment – her melting into all of
dharma
– to gather the force required for a final, unbreakable curse.

She declared that the emperors would no longer rule Japan, and that one day the country would be governed by the son of a simple ama diver like herself, that this boy would be the rightful holder of the Buddha ball.

According to the prophetess, that son was Taro.

Now Taro watched the restless, silvery waters above the wreck. If he were to make his way there, the amas and the fishermen would try to stop him. The superstition surrounding that part of the bay was so strong, they would never let him dive there. Anyway, he didn't have a boat, and the site was too far to swim to and dive as well. The wreck was deep, and diving was exhausting. He'd make it out there and down to the ship – but he'd be drained of energy on rising again to the surface, and then he'd be stuck out there, prey to the currents that would eventually carry his flagging limbs, and his body with them, far out to sea.

Yet his mother had risked it and gone there on the day they
were attacked by ninjas, when this whole nightmare had begun. She had been prepared to die when she approached the wreck. At the time, Taro had not understood it – but now he knew she had been hiding the ball. She had heard rumours of vampires in the vicinity, and she was willing to sacrifice herself so that it would not fall into the hands of evil men. Why she had it in the first place, Taro didn't know – but that ancient ama's curse must have worked in some strange way to bring it into her possession, when everyone else thought it was lost, or only a myth.