“I can see where that would upset you.” Kaze stared blandly at the District Lord.
“Well, I must attend to some duties now. Please stay for a few days. Despite your strange ways, you’re an amusing fellow in this dreary backwater.”
“Can I ask one final thing before you go, Lord Manase?”
“What is it?”
“If I find the villager hiding a bow, would you let the charcoal seller go?”
Manase studied Kaze for several seconds. “You are a most peculiar fellow. The peasants hide their weapons, and it would take weeks to search all their filthy huts to see where they put them. That charcoal seller will be crucified in a few days, and I won’t delay things for a foolish search. But I’m a reasonable man, and if you can somehow find out what weapons the villagers have in that time, then of course I’ll arrest the one with a bow and crucify him instead. As I said, it’s all the same to me which villager is killed for this murder. It might as well be the one who actually did it.”
CHAPTER 11
Tears drip like blood on
a ghostly face. Obakes
dwell inside my soul.
It was a quiet night as Kaze made his way from Manase’s villa to the nearby village of Suzaka. Leaving the villa had been absurdly simple. Manase posted a sentry, but Kaze found the sentry comfortably asleep, sitting on the ground and leaning back against a gatepost, announcing his slumbering status with a raucous snoring.
The mist that had painted the ground the first morning Kaze entered this district was back. It was a gossamer blanket that captured the faint light of the stars and the brighter light of the waxing moon, entangling both in the swirl of its ephemeral weave. Kaze cut through the undulating blanket, the passage of his feet tearing puffy-edged holes in the surface.
Kaze looked over his shoulder and sought the image of the rabbit in the moon that Japanese children were taught to look for. He could see the familiar ears and eyes, and he smiled in recognition. He stopped for a moment to look up between the flanking pines to glory in the wave of stars that crested over the treetops and flooded the heavens. Nowhere did the stars seem so close and attainable as they did in the mountains. Kaze’s curious mind wondered why the stars seemed so flat and dull in cities like Kyoto.
The trees that bordered the path to the village meant that Kaze had no worries about losing his way in the dark. Besides, with the instinct that all people close to nature must develop, he knew the general direction to the village even without the trees to guide him. He started off again, enjoying the journey.
The night had an unnatural stillness to it, a trait Kaze had noticed before when conditions were like this. It was as if the damp air smothered the normal sounds of the forest, leaving a void in the air waiting to be filled. As he walked, that stillness was pricked by a sound so faint he had to stop to make sure he actually heard something. It was from up ahead, where the road curved so Kaze couldn’t see what was hidden beyond the corner. He still couldn’t make out what it was, but there was most definitely a sound.
Kaze reached down and smoothly loosened his sword, the sword moving past the sticking point that kept it firmly in the scabbard with a satisfying click. Walking silently, Kaze approached the corner that was flanked by dark trees. As he came to the curve in the road, he was able to comprehend the sound he had heard. It was a woman crying. Curious, Kaze rounded the corner to see what was ahead of him.
There, crouched down in the middle of the road, was a high-born woman wearing a white kimono, the color of death and mourning. Kaze could easily tell her station in life from her long hair and the cut of her kimono. Her face was buried in her hands, and her hair cascaded down around her shoulders. Kaze could hear most definitely that she was sobbing. Through a trick of starlight, the form of the woman seemed almost as misty and ephemeral as the silver blanket covering the ground around her, and Kaze rubbed his eyes because the edges of the woman seemed to blur into the night. Kaze’s eyes were especially acute, so the shifting shape of the woman made him uneasy.
He walked toward her slowly, his eyes trying unsuccessfully to focus on the form before him. Because of her eerie luminescence, he was able to make out her shape easily, and there was something so familiar about the slope of her shoulders and the way her head was bent forward that Kaze stopped walking.
He opened his mouth to speak, but his mouth was dry, and only a soft whisper emerged. The woman apparently didn’t hear him, for she made no change in her posture. The dryness of his throat surprised him, and he suddenly realized that a chill had taken hold of his bones unlike any cold he had experienced before. It was a dry, inward chill that was so intense that Kaze found himself trembling from it.
Kaze took a deep breath, and the air around him tasted dry and flat, like the dead air in an old abandoned monastery or barn. He studied the shifting shape of the woman once more and, with an awful certainty, he knew who was before him.
“My heart has no hindrance,” Kaze said to himself, reciting the Heart Sutra. “No hindrance, and therefore no fear.” He took another gulp of that dead, flat air and, repeating the Sutra to himself, he called upon his courage and approached the woman.
Stopping a few feet from the figure, he bowed deeply, keeping his back straight. “I am here, Lady,” Kaze said, greeting the obake, the ghost, of his dead mistress. The obake ceased her sobbing, and Kaze took this as a sign that he could straighten his bow. The figure before him still had her face in her hands, and Kaze was at a loss about what to do next. Suddenly, the figure looked up and removed the hands from her face. Kaze’s soul froze.
Instead of the serene face of his dead Lady, the same face he carved on the Kannons he habitually left behind him, he saw that the obake was faceless. No eyes, no nose, and no mouth; just a soft lump of flesh. Yet, even without a face, he heard her sobbing and he saw the drops from wet tears glistening on her kimono.
Kaze stood motionless before the apparition, not daring to breathe. A fear more real than any he had known gripped his heart, yet he stood his ground and didn’t flee. No hindrance, and therefore no fear, he told himself. No hindrance, and therefore no fear. This obake was the spirit of the Lady, someone he served when she lived, and someone he still served through his searching, even though she was dead. There is no reason to fear her now, even though she was a faceless entity.
“How can I help you, Lady?” Kaze said, summoning up all his courage. He was pleased that his voice sounded more normal than before.
The obake unfolded from the ground, rising like a puff of white smoke until it was standing before Kaze. It raised a hand in a languid motion, the arm floating upward gently until it pointed down the road.
“You want me to go with you?” Kaze asked, his heart chilling at the possibilities.
The obake continued to point down the road.
“There’s something down the road?”
The obake remained motionless.
“You want me to leave?”
The apparition lowered its arm.
Kaze sighed, a gripping anxiety replacing fear. He dropped to his knees and bowed before the obake, his head cutting through the low-lying mist and touching the earth. It somehow felt comforting to be so close to the damp ground in the presence of the obake, and the contact with the planet gave Kaze the courage to go on. “I know you want me to find your daughter,” he said. “Please excuse my lack of attention to my pledge! But Lady, something is very wrong here. The Lord I served, the man you were married to, always taught that it was our duty to maintain harmony within ourselves and in our society. That harmony has been destroyed here. All of Japan is in upheaval as the Tokugawas impose their will, but I feel there is some chance for me to restore harmony to this little piece of Yamato. I don’t know the cause of the disharmony, and I don’t know if I can correct it, but Lady, I would like to try. If I fail within a few days, I will continue my search. But for now, my Lady, please let me try!”