Thousand Shrine Warrior (2 page)

The sound of the shakuhachi ended abruptly. Yojiemon's laughter behind her was much closer; of the three, he seemed to enjoy this the most. She looked back to see them as the cloud moved away from the moon. Takeno moved swiftly and with grace, making no sound. Yojiemon bounced as he ran, like a child on a lark. Chojiro huffed and puffed, red-faced and angry about his sword. When she looked forward again, she saw that she had nearly run into a toolshed at cemetery's end.

She banged on the door, hoping a caretaker or vagrant or someone was inside. She finally cried out, “Help! Help me!” She could not get the toolshed door to open, not that it was a wise hiding place if she succeeded.

“Hold there!” shouted Chojiro, coming up behind her. He grabbed her shoulder, spun her around, struck her with the back of his hand. “Where's my sword!” he demanded, but she could only stare at him, dumb and petrified. She knew she could not escape them a third time. She resigned herself to her fate, letting him strike her a second time.

“Beat her up later!” said Yojiemon. “We want her fresh right now.”

“But my shortsword!”

“Look for it,” said Yojiemon, pulling Chojiro away and looking at the woman eagerly. At that moment, the door of the shed flung open. In it stood a dark shape no one could quite make out. The three men backed away, hands to hilts of longswords.

Chojiro demanded, “Who is in there!” sounding less belligerent than he might have wished.

The dark figure stepped out.

“A woman!” said Chojiro.

“Our lucky night,” said Yojiemon. Their hands moved away from their swords. The woman who stepped out of the shed was a nun, but not of an ordinary sort. She wore dark, unpatterned hakama over a kimono neither bleached nor dyed, therefore the natural cream color of raw silk: strong cloth, and suggestive of high station before she became a Buddhist nun, yet not a pretentious cloth, nor soft. Over this she wore a long, black vest, which looked to be made of hemp but was a loose, coarse weave of silk. Her sandals were made of straw; they tied around her ankles. She carried two swords through the straps of her hakama and the obi underneath. A martial nun, then, perhaps the retired wife of a slain general.

The three men could not tell if she were beautiful, for a large
amigasa
or “incognito hat” of woven bamboo hid her face. In her hand was the shakuhachi, a thick bamboo flute nearly as long as a shortsword.

The nun was unperturbed by the three men facing her. She seemed to ignore them as she put the shakuhachi in a silk embroidered bag, then placed the bagged instrument through her belt behind her back.

“
Bikuni!
” said Yojiemon, recognizing her as an esoteric nun. “Tell me what convent you belong to, so I will know which order I defile!”

“I have no convent,” said the woman, her voice even and deeper than expected. Perhaps she was older than they thought. They could not see any feature of her face, so dark were the moonshadows beneath the large hat. “I am of Thousand Shrine Sect, a wanderer.”

“Beggar-nun!” chided Chojiro, having heard of this mendicant sect.

“I play my shakuhachi at city gates and temples, it is true, and before the kitchen doors of houses and fronts of stores. I am paid by whoever has been pleased to hear me.”

“Same thing!” Chojiro said with a childlike spitefulness. “A beggar!”

A long breath issued from under the hat, as though the woman's patience were beginning to feel tired. “If you catch me begging,” she said, “I would be grateful if you put me out of my misery. I would do the same for you.”

“Big talk for a woman!” said Chojiro, but he seemed a little cowed.

Takeno whispered something to Yojiemon, so softly no one else could hear. Yojiemon nodded, then said to the nun in a tone of magnanimity, “Since you are Buddha's woman, maybe we will let you go. But the girl at least is ours.”

The frightened woman moved away as Yojiemon tried to grab her. She scurried to the bikuni's side, then behind her, hidden by the long sleeves of the nun's kimono. “How is she yours?” asked the bikuni.

“We caught her in a tryst with a peasant,” Yojiemon revealed. “She serves the daughter of our Lord Ikida Sato. A bad example to other maids that she has mingled with the lower class.”

“It should be taken up with your Lord,” said the nun. “Perhaps she should be dismissed for her behavior, forced to marry into a peasant clan.”

“That would not be punishment enough!” exclaimed Chojiro, puffing. “She would probably be happy if that happened!”

“So you would punish her yourselves? Before your Lord and his daughter know anything? What if you are found out? It soils the honor of samurai that you become drunk and unseemly then threaten a girl. She'll lose her position in Lord Sato's house for her tryst; but if you complicate the crime yourselves, you may find that
seppuku
is your own reward. Are you brave enough to slit your bellies? Already it may be too late for you.”

“Cheeky nun!” exclaimed Chojiro, but he was beginning to sober up a little. His upper lip was sweaty and quivering. His hand moved toward his sword. He exclaimed to his two friends, “
Kiru!
” meaning, “Kill her!”

“Agreed,” said Yojiemon, flashing a smile. Three swords slid from their scabbards. The three men readied themselves to attack. The nun did not draw her sword. She said,

“I came to this place to honor one among the thousand shrines I must visit on my ceaseless pilgrimage through the sixty-six provinces of Naipon. It was my desire to play my shakuhachi for the spirits here tonight, especially for those who died by violence. It would dishonor them if I fought you in their graveyard. Please do not make me fight.”

The bikuni started to bow politely. Chojiro used this chance to try to cut her. She stepped backward so that he missed. She turned quickly and pushed the frightened maid into the cemetery's toolshed. When her back was turned, Chojiro struck again, barely missing her but clipping the shakuhachi, which she had put behind herself in the silk bag. She reeled about and her sword was suddenly in her hand. Chojiro had not seen the swift draw. He stepped backward, suddenly afraid.

The nun looked at the tip of her shakuhachi on the ground and sucked in a long, angry breath. “That was made by my instructor, who taught me to play,” she said. “He is dead now and it cannot be replaced. Your lives are like that, too. There is still time to run away.”

Her arm raised slowly. Moonlight played up and down the length of the sword's polished steel. “Careful,” Takeno whispered as he and Yojiemon attacked together. She stepped sideways, evading Takeno and slicing Yojiemon from shoulder to opposite thigh. His body fell two ways at once. Takeno was quick to attempt vengeance for Yojiemon, but the nun did not even turn to face him. Her sword reached sideways and he stuck himself on the weapon's point.

Chojiro saw his second friend spitted through the throat, saw him stand there making gagging sounds while the nun held her sword motionless, still looking another direction. The spitted Takeno dropped his own sword, reached up to grab at the blade in his voice box. He gurgled and blood gushed from his wide-open mouth. Finally the bikuni pulled the sword out and let the man fall to the ground to die. Chojiro threw his longsword away and fell onto his knees, realizing the terrible error in attacking this woman.

“Please!” he said. “I was led astray by these other men! I will abide by the Way the rest of my life if you will pardon me tonight!” He bowed several times, striking his head on the hard, cold ground.

“A tragedy that you have become a beggar,” said the nun. “I will keep my promise to you!” Her sword swept up and down and the craven samurai's head rolled between grave markers. The nun took a piece of paper from her kimono, wiped the blade of her sword clean, and dropped the paper on one of the corpses. As she sheathed her sword, the woman in the shed came out and fell before her savior, saying over and over, “Thank you! Thank you very much!” The nun picked up the clipped mouthpiece of her shakuhachi and started to walk away, but the woman she left behind ran after her, threw herself down to block the path, bowing again.

“Don't bow to me!” said the nun. “Go home!”

“I am too dishonored!” said the woman, who began to weep horribly. “I disgraced myself and my family by having that affair! Those men found me out and captured me afterward. How can I live? You must complete your duty and kill me, too!”

“Did those men touch you in the woods? No, do not tell me; no one needs to know. Why should you die for it? Once I was a samurai and as such would have killed you for the sake of your own honor. That was a long time ago. Life is too precious; so much so that I will feel compelled to build those three men a shrine to atone for what I have done tonight. But since they are dead, who will know your secret?”

“I will know!” said the woman, no longer crying, but aghast. “How can I live with it?”

“Tell your master and his daughter about your illicit affair. Maybe Lord Sato will have you beaten for it, and your family will disown you for mingling below your class. Then, divested of all privilege, you will be free to marry the peasant boy. You will work hard and your beauty will fade from struggling in the rain and sun. You will have many brats and that will be painful, too. Women suffer a thousand times in life! Do you think yourself so different from the rest? It is boastful to think you deserve to die! Now, run away and see what you can do about yourself. If you follow me again, I may kill you after all!”

The woman did not move as the nun walked away.

The night had not been quite as cold as the dawn. The path began to sparkle with frozen dew. The cold did not appear to perturb the traveler, though certainly it did not make the morning pleasant.

Deciduous trees had lost their leaves, for autumn came early to the mountain region of Kanno, and winter already approached, though in lower domains, maples were bright red and gingko yellow. The leaves that softened her path were already devoid of color, mildewed, rotting.

To the south were high hills, the tops blanketed with snow. There was a stillness in the air broken only rarely by the wind's hissed deathhhh, deathhhh, chilling the bikuni to the marrow. Her hands ached from the cold, so she kept them inside her kimono, next to her flesh.

In a while she stopped, pushed her hands out from the warmth of her kimono's interior, and looked at the ground to one side of the road, seemingly at nothing. Then she knelt near a tiny patch of brittle grass. The grass was white with morning's frost. Beside the stiff, dry stems there reposed a small serpent, coiled upon the ground. It was a white snake with pink eyes. It was scarcely able to move. Doubtless it had misjudged the weather due to the night's relative mildness, and, foraging at dawn, became ensnared by the frost.

The bikuni cupped her hands around the white serpent and lifted it to her hat-shaded face, breathing moist air between her thumbs. The pitiful, small thing coiled more tightly about itself, perhaps understanding that its life was being saved. The bikuni talked to it briefly. “The wrong day to bask in sunshine, Snake. The sky is clear but Amaterasu's light is colder than that of her moon-brother. As you are a white creature, I will take you to a Shinto shrine, where you will be honored.”

Shintoists considered unpigmented creatures of any sort to be holy and supernatural. Though tradition among warrior-widows dictated that such a woman become a nun of a Buddhist sect, in the wanderer's heart she sympathized more strongly with Naipon's older faith, and was eager to save the snake for this reason.

The wandering nun owned little. Besides her two swords, deep bamboo hat, and damaged shakuhachi, she also had a pouch, which hung loose from her neck. It was an alms-bag, in which she was supposed to receive payment for playing shakuhachi at doorways and gates. Though the alms-bag was intended to take a cup of rice or small coin or other donation, the bikuni could not expect to make her living properly until her shakuhachi was repaired or replaced. So she used the alms-bag to hold the snake. She placed the creature in the pouch with utmost care, then pushed it halfway into the fold of her kimono, to assure the small occupant warmth.

Along the way was a Shinto shrine with a
torii
gate facing the ridge highway. The bikuni stood at the road's high point, where the view was remarkable. The pretty, rustic shrine-houses formed a fairly large compound, far enough away that they could all be framed within the tall torii, which was nearer the road. The gate itself was ceremonial rather than functional, inviting rather than a barrier, consisting of two vertical poles thick as logs, and two horizontal beams near the top. There was an old, worn, moss-grown staircase leading sharply downward, the torii being halfway down the slope. There was no fence from this approach, though the shrine grounds were somewhat protected by the natural wall of the mountain's slope. She could see, far across the compound, where two sides of the grounds were protected from desecration by high walls; but there were numerous entries, as though none would really desecrate such a place, and everyone was welcome.

Beyond the torii and at the foot of the ancient staircase, there stood two stone guardians so worn by time that it was impossible to say if they had once been lions, or dogs, or foxes. The fangs of one were broken out; the other was clamp-mouthed. If the guardians had ever been fierce, their current weathered softness had erased all ferocity.

Beyond stair, torii, and featureless knee-tall guardians, the path was winding and indirect. It passed amidst blossomless lily ponds, grottos, carved bridges, and small cascades artfully improved, with numerous tiny streams rushing from high ground to lower. In spring, this place was surely gorgeously ablossom. Even now, mouldering leaves on paths or floating on ponds, naked branches twisting upward, it remained a pleasant sight to soften one's heart. As winter hurried nearer, the grounds would become more and more stark; but there were evergreens both large and dwarfed, well-situated rocks, and stone lanterns on gravel jetties, so that the sanctuary would be beautiful even at the height of winter, when everything would be dulcetly muted by blankets of snow.