Risuko (17 page)

Her smirk ceased to bother me soon enough, however. First, it became clear that moving quickly was not the point—the more Toumi rushed, the more Mieko seemed to slow down, flowing from one movement to the next so that you could not tell where one movement ended and the next began.

Second, my mind was fully occupied. Between the movements themselves, which became slowly more challenging, though always as slow and flowing as if in a dream, and the fact that there seemed no point to what we were doing, I had no room in my head to think of Toumi at all.

Dance. It was a dance. We had learned other dances at the Full Moon—dances that I recognized as going along with some of the ceremonies and songs that we were learning. Yet this dance was so slow and so unlike any that I had ever seen that I was bewildered.

I was bewildered too because as much as it didn't seem like any dance that I had ever seen, nonetheless, after a time of following the ice-slow flow of arms and legs, I began to feel as if I knew the movements—as if I could anticipate them before Mieko began to lead us into the next step, the next sweep of the arms, the next gentle lunge.

As the lesson went on, I found that, no matter how quickly Toumi raced, I had always anticipated the movement that Mieko was about to show us, and reached the next shape before Toumi could.

Was I simply growing accustomed to this peculiar dance? In the moment I could only have told you that I felt as if I were remembering it from another lifetime, which made me think of
Otō-san
, and that it gave me a deep feeling of peace.

As we moved, I found myself remembering the couple whose voices I'd heard outside in the woods. Masugu
-san
, perhaps? And who else?

After a time, Mieko returned us to the first position—
The Two Fields,
feet wide, hands before our bellies. “Again,” she said, and lead us back into the flowing pattern of movements that felt as comfortable to me as walking or as climbing a tree.

—

She led the whole company through the dance eight more times, so that after a while even Emi and Toumi were beginning to move with the rest of us, rather than looking to see what the next movement might be. In the end, Mieko stood for a moment in the beginning posture, but instead of saying “Again” and continuing, she brought her feet together, placed her hands on the fronts of her thighs, and bowed. We all bowed with her, as if we were her mirror. It was a startling feeling—that some twenty people were moving, not as individuals, but as a single being. We straightened and stood.

There was no sound but the hiss of the wood burning in the little stove.

Without a word, Mieko left, followed by the Little Brothers, with Aimaru trailing behind them, blinking.

The rest of us stayed to return the stable to its normal, cluttered state. We had just finished when Masugu
-san
rode in, his horse sweaty and covered in mud, his eyes bright as I had not seen them in weeks.

—

As soon as we left the stable, Toumi snarled, “What kind of idiotic nonsense was that?”

Mai and Shino pulled her aside, whispering urgently—clearly trying to help Toumi avoid one of the older women overhearing—but they needn't have bothered. One of the older
kunoichi
made a sour face and clicked her tongue before turning toward the great hall. Looking like a dog that's just been hit, Toumi ran toward her least favorite spot in the Full Moon, the kitchen.

“Well,” whispered Emi as we followed in Toumi's wake, “I guess she could have found a more polite way to ask, but I have to say I'm just as confused. You knew the moves. Do you know what that was about?”

I shook my head. “I don't even know that I really knew the dance, or whatever it was. It just felt... as if I just knew what she meant us to do.”

Emi stopped and looked at me, frowning. Of course, Emi was always frowning, so it wasn't easy to know what she was thinking. “You've really never seen that.”

“No. At least, I don't think so.”

Emi nodded, but as we both walked up toward Kee Sun's domain, her frown hadn't lessened at all.

T
he following day, after the midday meal, Emi and I were taking the remains of a dozen chickens out through the gate in the back of the compound wall to the rubbish pit when we heard a sharp hiss from behind our dormitory. She and I blinked at each other, dull and incapable of thought after the long ordeal of plucking and butchering the birds.

“Emi! Murasaki!” It was Aimaru's voice, whispering as loudly as he could manage.

Blinking at each other again, Emi and I scanned the compound. It was not snowing—it hadn't in over a week—but it was bitterly cold as only those mountains can be, and everyone seemed to be indoors, shutters closed. I led the way back to where Aimaru was hiding.

Our friend was wearing what looked to be every piece of clothing he could pull on—he could barely bend his arms to gesture.

“You look silly,” Emi said, her scowl lightening slightly. He looked like a rag doll.

“Very funny,” he said, and Emi and I choked on our laughter, unable to cover our mouths since our hands held baskets full of bones, feathers, intestines and beaks.

“Look, I've been waiting out here forever since the end of the meal. It's cold!”

We laughed again. It wasn't very kind of us, but after all of the dismal and odd things that we had been doing, it felt good to laugh.

“We apologize, Aimaru
-
san
,” I said finally with a giggle, bowing as deeply as I could without spilling the chicken offal onto his feet.

“Fine! Fine! I've wanted to talk to you two for days! But if you're having such a lovely time, clearly you don't need to talk to me,” Aimaru grumbled, and I tried to settle myself as much as I could. Emi was scowling so fiercely that I was certain that she was biting her cheeks. He peered into our baskets. “What are you doing?”

“Well,” I grumbled, “now that we've butchered these lovely chicken carcasses so that you can have some stew tonight, we're taking the bits that even Kee Sun can't figure out how to make edible out to the offal pit.”

Aimaru frowned—the expression seemed wrong on his face.

“Would you like some feather soup, Aimaru?” Emi asked. “I'm sure Murasaki and I could whip some up for you in no time.”

He snorted, the frown gone again. “Not just now, thank you.”

Emi scowled—at least, I think she did—and said, “What a shame. I was looking forward to seeing if you really would eat anything.”

Sighing, Aimaru said, “Close enough. The Little Brothers have me working and training so hard, I'm ready for the mid-day meal before the sun has cleared the horizon.”

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Oh, working with a spear and on my strength. It's mostly pretty boring.”

I giggled. “Really?”

He shrugged as much as he could in all of that clothing. “We do hours of meditation, just like when I was at the monastery. They have been taking me out on their rounds, though.”

“Rounds?” I asked.

“Yes, the Little Brothers serve as Lady Mochizuki's bailiffs, making sure that her farmers are all well, and collecting...” Suddenly, Aimaru grew thoughtful, his brows contracting toward the center of his usually smooth face.

“What are the villagers like?” I had hardly thought about the outside world in weeks, except as a map covered with pebbles and pins; it seemed odd to think that there were farmers and tanners and scribes down in the valley, living very much as my family had always done in the shadow of the Imagawa castle. “What do they think of Lady Chiyome?”

“Fine. Very respectful.” He was staring down at the guts and feather in our baskets.

“You didn't change you mind about the soup, did you?” Emi asked. She held the basket up as if to let him smell.

“No,” Aimaru said, no smirk at all this time. “No, I was thinking. You've been butchering chickens?”

“Yes,” I said. “We just told you. And pigs. And the cow the other day. That was horrible.”

“Yes,” he said, but I couldn't tell what he was agreeing with. “The thing is, the farmers usually butcher the animals before presenting them to us. I hadn't even thought about why they were presenting them to us unprepared.”

“Well,” I said, shrugging, “it could be the storms?”

“Butchering is indoor work,” Emi muttered, “and not exactly cold. I'd think we'd want the meat separated from the offal as soon after the animal was slaughtered as possible.”

“I suppose,” I said, though I knew that they were right. “Maybe it's just Kee Sun?”

“Maybe,” answered Emi, wrinkling her nose.

After a moment of silence in which all three of us stared into the nauseating stuff in the baskets, I asked, “Why would they care so much about
us
doing the butchering?”

Another moment of silence followed.

“Perhaps they want to train us as cooks,” Emi said, chewing on her lip.

Aimaru shook his head. “Murasaki, Chiyome
-sama
told you that she wanted you to be a... what was it? A...?”

“A
kunoichi
.”

“Yes. Isn't that what the older women are?”

“Yes,” Emi said firmly.

“Huh.” He patted his stiff, padded arms against his body to warm himself.

Another silence followed, this one even longer. I tried to imagine Mieko
-san
plucking, gutting or boning a chicken. I couldn't.

“It was nice to see you yesterday morning at the dance lesson,” said Emi.

Aimaru nodded and shuffled his feet. “That's why I wanted to talk with you. I thought we were just going to clear out the stable. I had no idea we were going to join you....”

Emi scowled at him; it seemed almost a relief to watch her face return to its normal expression. “So you don't have any idea what the point of that lesson was?”

“None!” he answered, eyes wide. “Is that what you've been learning?”

We both shook our heads. Emi grumbled, “Oh, no. We've been learning to play bad music and pour cold tea.”

“That sounds... interesting,” he said, looking perplexed again.

I laughed. “Hardly. And it isn't as bad as Emi is making it sound—at least it's better than skinning cows and plucking chickens.”

Aimaru favored us with a smile. “Well, I suppose that's true. Though at least, in the kitchen, you get to stay warm!”

Emi and I joined his smile, but she shivered, and I became aware of the chill.

At last I sighed. “We need to get back. Tonight's
mizutaki
won't cook itself, yeh know!” I said in something vaguely like Kee Sun's sharp-edged accent.

That broke the spell. They both laughed.

Emi and I began walking toward the gate to the offal pit and Aimaru stomped straight-legged and straight-armed toward the stables. Before we'd gone more than a step or two, Emi laughed her strange laugh. “Look!” She was staring down at the patch of snow where we'd been standing. “It's the Chinese character for
goat!”
she giggled.

There in the white, trampled snow the blood dripping from one of the baskets had drawn what did indeed like a Chinese
kanji
character. All I could seem to see, however, was the blood.

—

After we had emptied the baskets, Emi and I were on our way back to the compound when we both heard a noise.

“What was that?” Emi's brows pursed.

I listened, but heard nothing but the sound of the wind swirling through the tangled woods. “A... a horse? Maybe?” I was thinking of the voices I'd heard when I'd climbed through the oaks.
Masugu? And
...
Mieko?

“Emi
-chan
! Risuko
-chan
! You should not be out here speaking to this
boy!”
Fuyudori seemed to have appeared out of nowhere just inside the Full Moon's rear gate. Her white hair disappeared into the snow, which was falling again, and her cheeks glowed red.

“Yes, Fuyudori
-senpai
! Sorry, Fuyudori
-senpai
!” Emi and I both spluttered, hurrying back inside under her glare.

—

Late that night, as Toumi, Mai and Shino all began to snore in a sort of odd, grating musical chord, Emi and I whispered quietly about Mieko's lessons—and about Aimaru's questions concerning our work in the kitchen.

“Do you think they have anything to do with each other?” whispered Emi, looking thoughtfully at the thin door to Fuyudori's room.

“I can't imagine what,” I answered. Stifling a yawn, I whispered, “Maybe you should ask Aimaru.”

Her eyes got round and she looked at the door again. “We're not supposed to talk to boys,” she answered loudly. Then she turned over. “Good night, Murasaki.” As always, she was asleep before I had even finished answering.

As I tried to follow her, I remembered the sound we had heard outside the gate. Had it been a horse? Had it been Inazuma, Masugu
-san
's charger? I drifted off to the image of black hair and white snow.

E
v
idently, Emi did not sleep as well as usual. When we three walked into the kitchen the next morning, Kee Sun looked at her and scowled. “Smiley, yeh look like the demons have been chasing yeh.”

Emi frowned her most ferocious frown, and her neck turned pink. “I... could not sleep.”

“And yeh, there, Falcon-girlie?” the cook asked Toumi, who was slumped against the big wooden cutting table.

“Stomach ache,” muttered Toumi, though I couldn't think why the previous day's work would upset anyone's stomach—thankfully, it had just been chickens, not a pig or another cow.