Tale of the Warrior Geisha

G. P. P
UTNAM
'
S
S
ONS

Publishers Since 1838

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

375 Hudson Street

New York, New York 10014

Copyright © 2015 by Margaret Dilloway

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The author gratefully acknowledges permission to quote, in slightly altered form, from Zoltan Barczikay's translation of “The mountains in autumn” (www.classical-japanese.net/.).

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

ISBN 978-1-101-98328-7

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The mountains in autumn

there are so many fallen leaves

Looking for my lost sister

I cannot find the path

• A
NONY
MOUS
,
FROM
M
AN
'
YŌSHŪ
(
T
EN
T
HOUSAND
L
EAVES
),
CIRCA
759

Tomoe Gozen

M
IYANOKOSHI

S
HINANO
P
ROVINCE

H
ONSHU
, J
APAN

Spring 1160

I
t began with a stick.

Had it been a thin, reedy branch off the dead plum tree, the kind of twig that crumbled into dust with a touch, Tomoe would have forgiven the quick pain. She would have gone right back to gardening, to sewing, to helping her mother forever.

Instead, the boys chose a thick length of splintery pine, sticky with sap that would stick to her kimono. A switch, for beating. And that changed everything.

A few moments earlier, Tomoe squatted in the small kitchen garden, picking green moth larvae off newborn spinach shoots, humming a tune she made up. The early spring morning air was cold, only beginning to warm. Here on the central mountains of Honshu, winter was stubborn about leaving, but this year, the snow had melted by early March. Her father allowed her to keep the worms in a straw basket, where she could peek inside and watch their cocoons forming. Once the moths appeared, she took them, at night, to the fields, where she watched them fly up toward the moon.

The spinach shoots were chewed.
Something other than a worm,
she thought. Slugs, perhaps. She moved the dead leaves from under the plants, inhaling the deep earthy smell of the black earth. Yes, those holes were from slugs. She needed water to flush them out of the ground.

This garden was the domain of seven-year-old Tomoe and her mother, Chizuru. It was also the one place she could escape the boys, where Chizuru shooed them away. Otherwise, though Tomoe was not even two years older, these boys were her charges, and she spent her days making sure they did not die before manhood.

Only last month, she had pulled her foster brother out of a frozen pond because he ignored her warnings. Kanehira, her real brother, had nearly choked on a fish bone last year. Tomoe was the first to notice his bluing skin. She leaped up and hit his back with the flat of her palm, until the bit popped out of his windpipe and he gasped for air.

“Such as it always is for women,” Chizuru told Tomoe. “You must take care of your men.”

“They're more like wild animals,” Tomoe had said. “The chickens behave better.”

As though the boys had heard her thought, something solid hit her left side, on her lower ribs. A stinging slap. She fell over, knees and hands in the dirt, pebbles embedding in her hands, so rough for a girl of seven. Her blue-black hair escaped its head wrap and fell over her eyes. All she saw was a blur of legs going past through her veil. She didn't need to see to know who was to blame.

“Ha ha!” a boy called from the other side of the garden. Yoshinaka, her foster brother. He wore a gray kimono and loose pants, his bare feet dancing. He grinned with both rows of teeth. “Taira scum, come get me.”

Her brother Kanehira stuck out his tongue. “You can't catch us.”

She didn't get up for a moment. She put her hand on her throbbing side. The flesh swelled around the bones. A strangled cry erupted from somewhere, sending birds flapping skyward in a black cloud. Tomoe stood, her heart hammering, wondering where the sound had come from.

It was her.

I didn't know my voice was so loud,
she thought. She'd never yelled like that before, from her belly, from her feet. She'd never had a reason to.

It felt good.

Tomoe screamed again, on purpose now. It echoed across the valley in a feral call. Her nerves tingled and waited.

She took off after them.

Those boys had better run.

They sprinted across the grassy meadow toward the forest, Tomoe closing in fast. She'd never been so quick in her life. She ignored her loosening obi sash around her waist, ignored her hair flailing in her face, the stones sticking into her feet. Her entire being focused on the boys.

Yoshinaka dropped the branch. Tomoe slowed to pick it up.

The boys disappeared into the pine woods.

She reached the tree line moments later, searched for footprints. All their lives, Father had taught them how to look for animal and human tracks. How to cover their own. If they were smart, they would have done this.

An azalea bush, newly budded with pink flowers, had broken branches and large bird droppings. Birds were here, not boys. Pheasant, probably. They were Buddhist, so they ate no meat, but sometimes they were allowed birds if there was nothing else. How birds were not meat, Tomoe did not know, but neither did she question it. She liked the rich taste too well.

Trampled dirt and grass lay to her left. She smiled. These boys were careless.
Boys take longer to grow up,
Chizuru said.

If they have the luxury of doing so,
Kaneto, her father, had interjected, and lapsed into a darkness Tomoe didn't comprehend.

She brushed her hair out of her eyes.
Concentrate.
She sniffed the air. That distinctive unwashed boy scent: mud and dogs and mashed grass. There. She pushed her way farther into the forest, through the bushes. It became abruptly darker here, the evergreen trees interlocking above her head. A typhoon could hit and she would feel only a few drops. Here and there were still patches of snow, untouched by sun. She shivered but didn't pause. Those boys would be cold, dressed as they were in light kimonos. She fought back an urge to call them, tell them it was all right, that they could all forget about it. No. Not this time.

They need to learn,
she said to herself. An unfamiliar eagerness flooded her, her stomach flipping. Her feet led her on as if they knew where to go.

At last, through a copse of thick short pine trees ahead, she heard voices. Sunlight. They'd found a clearing bordered by short bushy pines.

She gripped her branch tighter, quieted her steps.

What she would do, she wasn't sure.

Chomp chomp chomp.
They were eating something, their mouths open. Probably getting messy. Her stomach growled—she wasn't allowed breakfast until her chores were done.

Yoshinaka paused. “Did you hear something?”

Tomoe belly-crawled toward them through pine needles. Their filthy feet lay ahead of her, lounging. Kanehira moved his feet lazily on the ground. “It was only a bird. She'll never find us here.”

“Right. She's just a girl.” Yoshinaka chewed, swallowed, smacked his lips.

Never find them? Just a girl? Her nostrils flared, heart pounded. She combed the dirt through the pine needles until her fingers closed around a rock. She skipped it hard across their toes as it would skip across a pond.

“Ai!”
The boys jumped up. “What was that?”

She rolled out from under the trees and stood. Still silent. The boys had their backs to her. Tomoe swung the branch across the backs of their legs, collapsing their knees. The boys fell, flailing, turtles on their backs.

Immediately she put her foot on Yoshinaka's chest. He grimaced and squirmed. “Tomoe! Let me up. Please.” His eyes, the rich brown-red color of adzuki beans, ringed with thick lashes, looked up at her pleadingly. She felt a momentary surge of pity.

No. He looked pitiful only to get her sympathy. She shrugged off her indecision. “Oh, hello. Did you think you were hiding?” She turned her attention to Yoshinaka's hand, still gripping the food. Dried persimmon. She pried open his fingers and took the food. “Mmm. At least you didn't drop your treat to fight me off. Food shouldn't be more important than your life.
Baka-tare.
” Idiot.

Yoshinaka flushed.

“Let him up!” Kanehira, that scrawny younger brother, tugged at her free arm, knocking her off balance. She shoved him away.

“You just wait, Tomoe.” Kanehira took off through the copse.

“Ah, going to get Father, I suppose.” Tomoe spoke as if she didn't care, but her stomach seized. There would be a consequence to her retaliation. Father would not be happy. They were supposed to be guarding Yoshinaka, not beating him up. She might be beaten for real. Her father didn't like to hit them, but he had—as when Tomoe had almost started a fire in the house, or when her brother Kanehira teased their horses. “You shouldn't have hit me if you didn't want me to come after you.” She ate another bite of persimmon, the stickiness all over her hand now. “Calling me Taira, especially.” The Taira were the enemy.

The Taira decimated the Minamoto clan, killing Yoshinaka's father and his uncles and forcing her father, a retainer, to flee up here. To live as farmers. All of them hated the Taira.

“Tomoe.” Rough fingers closed around her ankle. She refused to glance down. His chest rose and fell under her foot. He stroked her calf. It tickled pleasantly. “I'm sorry. Forgive me.”

She sank into the damp new grass. He sat up so they faced each other. His countenance was streaked with dirt. His hair, normally pulled back, was loose around his face. He stared at the ground with a blank expression. His eyes, normally impish, were sad.

Beaten. Thoroughly beaten. She couldn't stand to see him like this. She wiped splinters from his face. He looked down. She leaned over, the last bit of fruit in her palm. For a moment he ignored it.

“Come on,” Tomoe said, moving the fruit under his nose. Always, the boy could be swayed by food. She put it to his lips.

He opened his mouth. She popped the fruit in, her fingers touching his lips only briefly.

“Yoshi?” She nudged him in the thigh gently with her foot.

He lifted his head, his face breaking into a wide smile that made her beam, too. She could never stay mad at Yoshinaka for long, nor he with her.

Yoshinaka raised his hand to shoulder height and she laced her fingers through his. She swore she could feel his pulse through her palm. She was bound to him. More so than to her brother or to her parents. Their connection was different. Still unnamed.

The corners of his mouth turned up, his eyes lighting. “I'm sorry I hurt your rib. I hope this doesn't hurt too much, either.” He lunged for her, his fingers moving. “Tickle fight!”

She shrieked, then tickled back, her own fingers finding their way into his most ticklish spot, under his chin. They giggled and laughed until she had no breath left.

“Tomoe!” a man's voice barked.

She froze. Yoshinaka rolled away from her.

Her father, Kaneto, stood at the edge of the clearing, his face shocked, his hand gripping a stick cut into a switch, her brother Kanehira close behind.