Spirit's Princess (36 page)

Mama, Yukari, and Emi sat as if stunned. From his place under the bedroll, Sanjirou found the courage to whimper loudly enough to be heard. I glanced at our waiting dinner, now completely cold.

“Emi, your son is
hungry
,” I said. “If you don’t feed him now, I will.”

“But shouldn’t we wait for Masa to come back?” she asked timidly.

“He won’t care if we eat without him,” I replied. “And if he does mind, it’s my fault. He can yell at me until his voice cracks. Now
please
give Sanjirou his dinner.”

We were all eating when Masa returned. He looked shaken and made no remark about the fact that we hadn’t
waited for him. Mumbling his way through the prayer of thanks for food, he fell into a brooding silence, eating as if it were an unwelcome duty. Mama and our stepmothers darted so many anxious looks his way that he twitched every time he caught them at it, as though every glance were a flea’s stinging bite.

“May the gods have mercy on us, Masa, what’s the matter with you?” I burst out. “Are you keeping some nasty piece of news from us? Was that man telling the truth about Father, or has something happened that’s so bad he thinks we have to learn about it gradually?”

“Of course not, Himiko,” Masa said, trying to speak with confidence. “Why think that?”

“Because I know him. He’s the same man who told Ume’s mother that her first husband had been killed in a hunting accident. I was just a little girl, but I was there and I remember how he did it. He started by saying her husband twisted his ankle when he slid down a hill and kept ‘remembering’ fresh details until the hill was a cliff, the slide was a fall, and the twisted ankle was a broken neck! He thought he was being kind; he was wrong.”

Masa looked like a little boy caught telling his first lie. “You’re very smart, Little Sister—too smart for me. You’ve got Lady Yama’s way of seeing through people. No wonder she took you as her apprentice.”

“What?”
Yukari’s voice was the loudest, Emi’s the shrillest, but Mama’s was the most stricken when the three of them all exclaimed that single word in unison.

“So Father spoke about it,” I said flatly. It was good to
have my secret out in the open, but I couldn’t enjoy feeling free. There would be consequences. “Who knows this?”

“He went to all our nobles and told them everything,” Masa said. “They’re aware that you’re calling yourself a shaman—”

“I’m not
calling
myself a shaman, Masa; I
am
a shaman. No matter what Father would prefer to believe, I’ve learned everything Yama could teach me.”

Everything but how to dance for the spirits
, a niggling inner voice reminded me.
Even if your clan does accept you, how will you serve them if your skills are flawed?

I gritted my teeth and pushed the troubling words from my mind.
I’ll worry about that if
—when—
they accept me
, I thought.
One step at a time
.

“All right, Himiko, all right, if you say so.” Masa clearly didn’t want to argue.

“No, it’s
not
all right!” Mama exclaimed. “Himiko, tell me this is a joke, a game, even a lie! You can’t be a shaman; you
mustn’t
! So this is why your father’s risking his life hunting Master Michio. He’s desperate to find him so that you’ll
have
to back down. No clan has two shamans. Oh gods, if anything happens to your father because of this, what will we do?” She began to sob wildly, and Noboru took fright and cried with her.

“It’s no game, Mama; it’s true that I’m a shaman. Why shouldn’t it be?” I spoke soothingly, though her words hurt me more than I could say. This wasn’t the time to shout or rant or fight for her acceptance. She was so distraught that I could feel her pain even more than my own. “I’ve sensed
the spirits’ presence in a special way since I was a little girl. Lady Yama saw that and nurtured it. I’ll always be grateful to her for setting my feet on their proper path. Why do you and Father act as though I were walking barefoot over blazing thorns and dragging everyone else along with me?”

Mama looked at me and sniffled, her eyes already rimmed with red. “It’s not me, Himiko,” she said, slowly relaxing her hold on Noboru and letting the baby move to a more comfortable position on her lap. “I—I would be proud to see you as our shaman. You’re a chieftain’s daughter and granddaughter. Your ancestors led the Matsu to these lands so long ago that no one remembers where we used to dwell, but everyone knows that you come from the most nobly born family in our clan. A family”—she looked sharply left and right, as though fearing eavesdroppers in the shadows—“a family whose chieftains were also our shamans until—until
she
died.” Her voice dropped to a whisper: “Lady Tsuki.”

She lowered her eyes to my baby brother. “She was your father’s half sister. I hardly remember her. I was younger than you are now when she died, but my grandma told me all about that woman. Lady Tsuki was our chieftain’s only child for a long time. She lost her mother when she was five years old and became the center of your grandfather’s existence. He lived for her, pleasing her, lavishing attention on her, educating her as our future chieftess and shaman. Whatever else people may say about her, she had a brilliant mind. She was barely out of girlhood when she mastered all the arts she’d need to guide and help our clan. She might have become the greatest leader the Matsu had ever known.”

“What happened?”

“Her father took a bride. The years of loneliness finally conquered his devotion to his first wife’s memory. Perhaps if he hadn’t waited so long, he might have made a more sensible choice. The girl he wed was a pretty little butterfly, and young;
too
young. She might have been Lady Tsuki’s sister! She did love him and bring him joy, but his newfound happiness blinded him to everything but her. She became his world. Nothing and no one else seemed to matter, not even his once-beloved daughter.”

“And then Father was born,” I said. How would that have made Lady Tsuki feel? She’d already been edged aside by her father’s love for his new bride. Now that his adored young wife had given him a healthy son, was there any room left for her in her father’s heart?

“Yes,” Mama said. “He was welcomed into this world with so much rejoicing that my grandma claimed the feasting lasted for five days. His childhood was perfect, his every wish was fulfilled.”

“That doesn’t sound perfect to me,” I said. “It sounds like a good way to spoil a child.”

“Oh, he wasn’t allowed to run wild. His parents saw to it that he was given guidance as well as gifts. And it lasted for such a short while.” Her eyes turned sad. “In the winter of his sixth year, his father died and Lady Tsuki became our chieftess. That was the end of your father’s happy days. Wherever she could, she put stones in his path. Whenever she had the chance to make him feel small and stupid and a burden to the clan, she did it. His mother did what she could to shield him from Lady Tsuki’s sly attacks, but she
was too good-hearted to grasp how a cruel mind works. You can’t win if you’re fighting an enemy you can’t understand.”

Why did you do it, Lady Tsuki?
I thought.
My father wasn’t at fault for the way your own set you aside. Why punish an innocent child? Did it help soothe your old sorrows? Did it undo even one moment of the unfairness and neglect you endured? You were wrong, Lady Tsuki, so wrong that you crippled your soul
.

“Father wasn’t the only one she mistreated,” I said. “Master Michio will testify to that, if he returns.”

“
When
he returns,” Mama corrected me strictly. “Your father will find him even if Aki and the others can’t. He has to. He
has
to.” Her voice trembled as her faith fled. “If he doesn’t find Master Michio, he won’t come back at all. What will become of us then?”

“Oh, Mama, of course Father will come back, and soon!” I didn’t want her to start crying again. “He knows we need him. Even if he’s empty-handed, he’ll come home.”

My brother was glum. “I hope you’re right, Little Sister, but Father isn’t the kind of man who can live with failure.”

“He won’t fail,” I said. “He set out to bring us a new shaman, and he’ll come home to find one waiting.” I folded my hands on my chest and looked at my family with a triumphant smile. “He might not like it, but what choice will he have? And I promise I’ll do everything I can so that someday he’ll be glad Lady Yama made me her heir.”

“No, Himiko.” Mama’s eyes were dry, and this time she shook her head most emphatically. “That will never happen. You may think you’re following in Lady Yama’s footsteps, but your father will only see you taking the same ill-fated path as Lady Tsuki. She used her power as chieftess
and
shaman to hurt him too deeply to be forgotten. He was only a little boy, and she terrorized him constantly. She relished telling him that their father’s spirit despised him and threatened to summon the dead chief to haunt him. When I first became his wife, he still had ghastly nightmares. It was years before he could think of a shaman as anything but a monster in human shape. He’d die before he’d accept the thought of you becoming what
she
once was. What parent could stand to see his beloved child make a choice he sees as evil?”

“Did he think
Lady Yama
was evil?” I couldn’t believe that.

“That was different. She wasn’t someone special to him, and he knew that our people needed a shaman.”

“We need a shaman
now
.”

“We do.” She sighed. “And we will have one. But as long as your father is our chief, it can’t be you.”

“Himiko, I’m sorry,” Masa said, patting my back. “One of the commands Father left behind was that I must get you to swear to tell no one outside of our family about your formal training with Lady Yama.”

“Is that how he described it?” I asked. “He didn’t call it foolishness, delusion, rebellion,
stupidity
?” I realized how sarcastic I sounded, but I couldn’t help it and I didn’t want to. When Masa blushed and looked uncomfortable, I knew I’d hit the mark.

“Please, Little Sister, I know you’re unhappy, but give me your word.”

“Why? What are you supposed to do to me if I refuse?”

My brother squirmed even more. “Himiko, I’m not the
only one who’s here to follow Father’s orders in his absence. The noble council members know about you. They’re the ones who’ll react if you won’t keep your training hidden. I don’t know what they’d do if you reveal yourself to the rest of our clan, and I don’t want to find out.”

“This is madness,” I said. “Did Father command his men to
kill
me if—?”

“Oh no, not that!” my brother exclaimed hastily, holding up his hands to reject the ugly thought. “Never that,
never
.”

“How can you think such things of your father, Himiko?” Mama asked, her eyes once more filled with tears.

I wanted to cry
How can he think such things of
me,
Mama? How can he behave as if all my seasons of hard work and study were some kind of atrocious crime? When Father was small, he suffered because his half sister had suffered. She used her power over him wrongfully, to avenge how she’d been hurt, even though he was innocent. He
knows
how unfair that was, so why doesn’t he see that he’s doing the same thing to me? Oh, Father, you’re a better person than this! Open your eyes and see it!

Instead, I kissed my mother’s cheek and said, “I’m sorry. Our clan has enough problems now. I won’t cause us any more.”

A shaman stands between her people and the darker aspects of their lives. Lady Tsuki had betrayed that trust. Instead of making peace between the living and the dead, she’d conjured fear and left a legacy of pain. I wouldn’t set one foot on that path. If it lay within my power, I resolved that I would banish the ghosts of fear, resentment, and family
troubles that her life had summoned from the shadows to haunt us all.

Turning toward Masa, I added, “You have my word that as long as Father’s gone, I won’t let anyone else in our village learn that I’m a shaman. I swear this by the sun goddess in all her glory and by everything dear to me. I’ll only break my silence if you release me from this oath, Masa. Otherwise, no one will know. Is that good enough?”

A bright smile broke across my brother’s face. “Better than good enough, Himiko. The look in your eyes when you swore yourself to secrecy—! It was breathtaking, like facing Lady Yama at her most impressive, when she spoke for the gods! I guess you are a shaman after all.”

He meant that as a joke, but I was in no mood for it. “Thank you
so
much for your approval.” My icy voice could have withered whole fields of rice.

Masa recoiled, wounded. “Little Sister, what did I say?” His distress was real, and it made me repent my harshness immediately. He had my apology before he could draw another breath, and for the rest of that night, our home was restored to precious harmony.

Six days later, as I sat on our porch dandling little Noboru, I heard an ecstatic shout go up from the sentry in our lookout tower: “Our chieftain returns! He returns! He’s coming back, and all our men are with him!”

The news shot through our village like a fiery arrow. Men, women, and children flocked out of the gates. Everyone cheered when they saw Father come marching up the
road, Aki and Shoichi at his sides, but the real focus of their attention was the short, stocky, round-faced man who came walking behind them with a rolling gait. The front of his hemp robe was almost entirely covered with strand after strand of beads, charms, and pendants, and his belt flashed with half a dozen bronze mirrors.

My hopes of persuading Father to let me use my gifts were dead: Master Michio had arrived.