Shadows on the Moon (2 page)

“Well, why have they come, then?”

“Perhaps the prince has seen some of Father’s poetry, and has found it so beautiful that he intends to invite him to court,” I said, not really believing it.

“That would please Oba-san!” Aimi said with a laugh.

“But not Father. Mother says he is the least ambitious person she knows.” And whenever she said it, she made a face like a woman who has bitten into a sweet dumpling and found fish guts inside.

“Well, there’s only one way to find out for sure.” I jumped to my feet. “Come on!”

I caught her hand, and when she rose, I began to run, forcing her to trot after me. She protested breathlessly, laughing as she tried to pick up the hem of her kimono.

“Suzume! I’ll rip something. I’ll fall.”

“Run faster then,
baka,
” I said.

But I was much more used to running than Aimi was. I was punished for it all the time.

A thrush sang in the trees above us, and I slowed to a walk as I listened, letting Aimi get her breath back.

I opened my mouth to make some comment about the bird — and heard a scream.

We jerked to a halt, Aimi catching her balance on one of the trees. The screaming voice was cut off as suddenly as it had started, but I had already recognized it. It was the little serving girl Chou. The iciness touched my back again, colder and more insistent this time. I looked up through the dancing leaves and flowers at the blue sky, as if there might be reassurance there.

A cold voice spoke inside me:
Something is wrong. . . .

“An accident?” Aimi asked. Her fingers tightened on mine.

“I don’t know. Come on.”

We ran properly now, our hands still clasped. The thrush was still singing, but now there were other noises. Noises that made my mouth dry.

Metal clashing. Horses screaming. People crying out.

My father’s voice, raised in anger.

I ran faster, almost towing Aimi along, but she held me back when I would have burst out of the trees onto the open area of moss and flat stepping-stones before the house.

“Let go —” I began angrily, but Aimi pressed her clammy fingers over my mouth and shook her head, eyes wide. She put her face close to mine and whispered, “We mustn’t make a sound.”

I took a deep breath and nodded. She took her hand away from my lips, and together we crept around the edge of the orchard, keeping behind the thick tree trunks.

Our few servants were nowhere to be seen and the human screaming had stopped. I could still hear, distantly, the sound of whinnying and kicking from the stables. Someone was hurting the horses. Why?

So we cannot get away,
said the cold voice. My stomach turned.

We stopped dead when we saw the black-clad soldiers ranged by the side of the house. Their horses were tethered at one of the long stone garden basins.

Aimi made another shushing gesture, and I nodded. I could not have spoken now if I had wanted to. Where was my father?

What had they done to him?

As if in answer, I heard his voice again. He was shouting. He never shouted.

“This is ludicrous!”

Two soldiers dragged him into view. They held his arms bent painfully behind his back; his tall, lean frame and pale gray kimono made him look weak and vulnerable between the black-clad men. My heart seemed to struggle in my chest, fighting against my ribs just as Father fought against their hold.

The leader of the troop, with his white-feathered helmet, made a movement with his hand, and the two men forced Father down to his knees and held him there.

“You are Hoshima Daisuke-san?” the leader said, formally, emotionlessly.

“You know who I am.” Father bit the words out, his eyes burning like coals in his white face. “I want to know exactly what I have been accused of and who has laid the charges, so that I may defend myself. I am innocent, and I intend to prove it.”

“You have been found guilty.” The leader’s voice was final. He nodded at the men holding Father, and they released his shoulders. Father sprang to his feet.

The leader unwrapped a bundle in his hands and held it out to Father. Father recoiled as if the man had offered him a hissing snake.

I bit deeply into my lip, whimpering. It was Father’s
katana.
I recognized the green wrapping on the hilt. They wanted him to kill himself, to commit
seppuku
with his own sword.

That was the way a man died when he had been utterly dishonored. When he had forsaken his house. When the only way to regain his honor was to destroy himself.

It was a traitor’s death.

They were accusing Father of plotting against the Moon Prince.

“Oji-san,” Aimi whispered, her voice breaking.

“I refuse,” said Father, proudly. “I am innocent.”

“Very well.” The leader dropped Father’s sword as if it were trash.

One of the men unsheathed his own sword. Sunlight gleamed on the blade as he lifted it. Father did not see. He was still staring at the leader.

I wrenched my hand away from Aimi’s and stumbled forward, screaming, “Father! Look out!”

He turned as he heard me, his face filling with relief. His lips moved as if to speak my name.

The sword behind him flashed out. I screamed again, a cry of horror, as Father crumpled to the ground.

“Get the girl,” the leader ordered.

The soldier who had killed my father took a step toward me, bloodied blade still drawn.

“Run!” Aimi reached out from behind the tree and grabbed my hand, crushing my fingers with the urgency of her grip. “They’re going to kill us. Run, Suzume!”

She dragged me with her, running under the cover of the trees. After a few faltering steps, my legs began to work and I caught up with her.

“Father . . . Father . . .” I sobbed. I turned my head, stray strands of hair whipping across my face. The black-armored soldiers were coming after us, spreading through the trees like monstrous shadows, petals scattering across their path.

“Don’t look,” Aimi panted. “Don’t look —”

There was a low whistling noise, and something flashed past my face.

Aimi grunted. Her fingers spasmed around mine, then slipped away as she sagged down onto the grass.

A black fletched arrow protruded from her back.

She did not move. Her hand lay in the grass like the brittle white branch of a dead tree. She did not move. There was another whistle. An arrow thudded into the tree trunk next to my head. I did not blink. I could not look away from my cousin, my sister, my friend.

Something shifted inside me. It was like a candle flickering to life. Suddenly I was very hot, and the sunlight was very bright, and everything was slow, as if the world had stiffened. I turned to look at the soldiers, and they seemed frozen in that bright, hard light, like insects trapped in amber.

Heat thrummed under my skin, pulsing, demanding to be let out, making me twist and bend with the strength of it.

“Run!”
Aimi had said.
“Run, Suzume!”

I must run.

As if a star had exploded in my mind, I knew it. I pulled the heat and the brightness out, drew them around me like a cloak. They surrounded me and I felt as though I changed: became small and fleet. My clothes seemed to fall away. My feet were silent on the grass. I was like a hare.

Run, little white hare. Run and run, and no one will catch you.

The trees towered around me. Leaf shadows dappled my naked back. The only sound was the soft hum of my own heart. Black shapes moved around me, but they did not see me. They were too slow.

I ran.

Soon I was out of the trees again and by the squat, brick-built kitchen. It was set a little way from the house. My house.

As I saw it I seemed to burst upward, out of the small, silent place, and suddenly there was noise again, and fear. Men shouted behind me. My breath rasped. I was shaking, exhausted, as if I had run a hundred miles, and my mind was fogged with grief.

All I knew was that I had to hide.

I went through the open doors of the kitchen. The interior was dark and deserted. The fires had gone out. The massive, low stove, built of stones and clay, sat in the center of the room.

I went down on my knees, the packed earth floor ripping away skin as I scrambled into the biggest hearth. I burrowed into the ashes. Sparks glowed around me like dying orange suns. They burned and stung my hands, my arms, my back, my belly. Black debris rose around me like a pall of smoke.

The space inside the fireplace was just big enough to hold me, if I curled up, pressing my legs tightly to my torso, burying my face in my knees.

I closed my eyes and waited.

The ashes settled around me, drifting over my skin with feather-light touches. The heat in the stove’s clay walls made sweat trickle down my back and legs and sting the burns. Outside, the soldier’s voices grew louder, closer. My throat scratched, and I bit down on my already bitten lip, trying to stifle the cough with pain.

“Search that place.” It was the leader’s voice.

I cowered, curling myself into a tighter ball.

Metal clinked and heavy footsteps crossed the dirt floor toward the stove. My muscles twitched and shuddered, like a chicken with its neck wrung. My throat burned. I dug my teeth in harder, trying to hold my breath.

“That little —!” a deep voice suddenly spat. “Where is she?”

Footsteps moved closer. I saw again the bright red spurting from Father’s neck. I saw the arrow sticking out of Aimi’s back. I waited for the man to see me, to hear me. I waited to die.

The ashes seemed to sigh, moving, surging up and swirling into a thick, furry blanket. Their darkness settled over me, concealing the whiteness of my skin. They stroked me soothingly, as if to say:
It is all right. Do not fear.

The soldier swore again, as if in surprise. There was a resounding slap, a heavy thud, as if someone had fallen.

“Where were you hiding, old man?”

The answer came from nearby, as if the speaker was lying on the ground, too. The voice was weak and quavering with fear. “I — I was not hiding, honored soldier-sama. My apologies. I always sleep behind the stove.”

“Where is the girl? The little one? She must be in here; there’s nowhere else.” There was another harsh thud and a choked grunt of pain. “This house has the mark of the traitor on it, do you understand? We can kill anything that moves here, right down to the fleas in your bed. If you lie to me, I’ll slit you open.”

“I — I do not know — no, no, wait! Perhaps . . . perhaps I can help you.” The old man gasped painfully. I squeezed my eyes shut.

“I heard that the younger girl is punished sometimes for climbing and hiding in the orchards.” He wheezed again. “She is very small, and the trees are in bloom. . . .”

In my hiding place, I jerked with shock. I hated heights. I had never climbed a tree in my life. The old man was protecting me.

The mantle of ashes seemed to tighten, as if in warning.

The soldier drew in a sharp breath. “That must be it. No wonder she seemed to disappear. Search the trees!” he shouted out. “She must be hiding in the flowers!”

Hasty footsteps crossed the floor, and the door banged open and shut.

There was another pained wheeze and a shuffling noise, and the old man’s voice came again, much closer this time. “Little Mistress, come out. You must hurry. They will come back soon.”

“Than-thank y-you,” I choked out. I scrabbled at the rough ground, pulling myself forward against the drag of stiff, protesting limbs. A hand, dirty and callused and wiry with muscles, thrust into the hearth to help me. As he dragged me out of the tiny space, I felt the strange blanket of ash flutter and fall away.

The old man was surprisingly broad and strong looking but bent with age. His hair was wispy silver and his eyes bright. He was nearly as covered in ashes as I was.

Before I could feel shamed at kneeling there, naked, before the stove — and it was blurry now, what had happened to my clothes — he shrugged off his filthy outer
haori
and put it around my shoulders. The man grimaced with pain at the movement. He had taken so many kicks lying in front of my hiding place, lying to protect me.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, clutching the
haori
to me. It covered me from neck to knees. My voice was a low, toneless croak. “Are you all right?”

“I will live. Can you stand? We must find a better hiding place.”

I nodded, though I was not sure. Supporting each other and terribly conscious of the time it took, we both managed to gain our footing.

“This way,” he said, moving ahead of me. To my surprise, he seemed to be leading me into the blank wall of the kitchen.

“This is where the cook hides most of the ingredients, in case of a theft,” the old man said. He slipped sideways and somehow disappeared into the wall. I lurched after him, scared of being left behind, and found that this wall had been built about a foot out from the real, outer wall. The narrow space between was filled with boxes, bottles and sacks. It was just wide enough for a man to sit down — or a man and a small girl, if they were desperate.

We crushed ourselves inside. The only light came from the slim gap through which we had entered; we had no candles and would not have dared to light them if we did. We worked by feel, bumping elbows and stubbing toes as we shoved boxes and sacks up, blocking the entrance as best we could and clearing a space in the corner, while trying desperately to be quiet.