Lord Oda's Revenge (39 page)

Nevertheless
, he thought,
he's curious. If I step from his mountain into hell, then he will have seen two miracles in his lifetime.

The hardest thing was ignoring his mother, who floated all night and every day now in the ravine, mouthing all the time in her nonsense tongue, before melting away in the dawn light, slowly receding until she was just a dot, and then nothing. He had learned to focus on a point just in front of him, a point of nothingness, that nevertheless felt like it might just be the centre of his being.

To describe the thoughts that passed through him, or say how long he sat there, would be impossible. The only way to know would be to experience it for yourself, and even if you had, you would not be able to describe it to others.

All Taro knew was that for a long time there was blackness, and then suddenly there was a great searing pain in his chest and he clutched feebly at it, with his weak hands, and then the mountain seemed to drop away beneath him.

Taro opened his eyes. Light was beginning to glow on the horizon, and his mother's ghost was beginning to fade backwards, as if she and the sun were somehow the same thing, and so could not manifest at the same time in this realm.

As she floated backwards, growing ever smaller, he saw that she was leaving a trail behind her, a sort of glowing mist like a thread, and he couldn't believe he'd never seen it before.

Standing up – though he couldn't be sure it was
him
standing up, and anyway the notion of what was and wasn't him had
become very blurred in his mind – he stepped off the rock and into the ravine.

He walked across the air and took up the shining thread, then followed it. He crossed landscapes that were either not of this world, or were in countries far away, and were illuminated by other suns and moons. He seemed to walk for a long time on the bottom of the sea, climbing its mountains, which are much like the mountains of the earth, only life accumulates at their tops, rather than their bottoms, and the water streams
up
their flanks. A great fish swam past him, bigger than a ship, and it sang a plangent note of grief.

Then, after he had walked for three lifetimes, he stepped up to the edge of a wide river and found that he was holding coins in his hand. He seemed to have conjured them up, just by thinking of them, and at the same time he understood that the coins were just a symbol. They didn't
matter
, really. Before him was a bridge, glittering.

He walked over death's bridge, which was inlaid with jewels, and which was exactly as it had always been described, even though it was completely different. He would not be able to explain how this was, if he was asked. He would not be able to explain how it felt, to be in this place – the closest thing he could think of was a dream, that strange state of being where it is logical to be one moment on a mountaintop surrounded by white peaks and then the next in the sea, and yet having the sense of following a path. He was aware of the souls of evil men, struggling below him in the dark waters, and yet he was not afraid. His body was numb – he didn't even know if it was his body, or if it was just an image projected by his mind. When he touched his skin his fingers didn't pass through it; but he didn't feel them either.

On the other side of the river, he passed by a great throne made of bones, and on it sat a man with long horns who could only be Enma.

Enma was the judge, the one who decided which realm of Samsara each deceased person would be consigned to. In this way it could be said that he was a god presiding over death – for he and he alone could choose, after weighing a person's deeds, to send that person to be reborn as an ox, or to languish in hell, or to pass into the light of the Pure Land.

But Enma was not a god, not truly. The priests and monks taught that he was always a man, chosen from among men, to judge his own kind. The name Enma, in fact, was a title, a crown – many had worn it. Taro peered at the current incarnation. He seemed a smallish sort of man, a thin moustache joining a long white beard. His eyes were bright and black, though veiled by boredom. At his sides were Horse-face and Ox-head, his retainers, and in his hands were the scroll and pen with which he recorded the names of all the dead.

Enma looked at Taro, then down at the scroll in his hand. ‘You are not dead,' he said.

Taro shook his head.

A smile twitched at the corners of Enma's mouth. ‘Interesting,' he said slowly. Then he waved Taro past, already turning to the next shade to cross the bridge.

Taro steadied himself, and proceeded into death. He should have been terrified to see Enma, he knew, but instead he felt nothing – it was no worse than facing a tax collector. Enma was not Death, he was human, and one day he too would die – his own name would be written in that scroll, by Enma-taka, the Death of Death, and then another person would be chosen to be Enma for a while.

Once, the priest in Shirahama had explained to Taro how death could die. There was a story, he said, of a monk in Tibet who knew that if he meditated for fifty years without pause he would achieve nirvana. Yet on the forty-ninth year, and the eleventh month, and the twenty-ninth day, he was disturbed by bandits, who wished to steal his robe and jewels. ‘Please, wait until tomorrow and I will give you all the gold you wish,' he told them. He was a footstep away from eternity. But the bandits would not wait, and they hauled him out of his cave and killed him.

Furious, the monk felt himself changing. A sort of satori, a moment of enlightenment, seized him, and in an instant he realized that the old Enma was gone and he was the new one. He grew tall and terrible. He tore the two bandits into small pieces, scattering them on the mountainside. Then he descended into the valley, and began slaughtering its inhabitants, such was his anger. He had the power not just to judge the dead but to kill, too, and he wasted no time in using it.

But the abbot of his monastery, seeing this, also felt a change come over him – and suddenly he was Enma-taka, the Death of Death, and his stride encompassed mountains. He walked to his old disciple, his countenance appalling to behold, and he reached down and touched Enma, the gatekeeper of death, and Enma looked up and realized that his own death had come for him. He sank down and was a monk again, lying still on the ground. And after that the abbot shifted again, changed, and was himself Enma.

Taro wondered if this was still the same Enma that he had just passed – if it was still the abbot who had been forced to bring death to his own monk. He wasn't sure if he believed the story anyway, though he did like the idea that death could die –
he would kill death himself if he could, for one more day with his mother. He turned, but already he couldn't see Enma any more. He saw only mist behind him.

The thread led him onward, and soon he was walking through a landscape made of heartbreak, in which ran rivers of tears. He crossed a vale of devastation, and then he was in the realm of the hungry ghosts. This was as the priest had described – although at one and the same time it was completely different.

For one thing, it didn't burn – and it didn't burn in such a way that it made Taro understand it was his own world that was always burning. He lived in a realm that was on fire everywhere you looked, being destroyed at every moment, and the name of that fire was time.

Here there was no time, and so nothing was on fire. Instead everything was still. That was why there was no food, because nothing could grow, thrust itself out, become fat, be eaten, and in being eaten, die. There was nothing to eat or drink because nothing changed, ever.

Taro walked through this landscape – or it would be more accurate to say that he remained entirely static, and the landscape did too, but somehow he arrived at last at his destination.

The demon was not a demon and the pot was not a pot, but otherwise everything was exactly as the priest described in the story of Mokuren, and his mother was there with hunger in her eyes and in the emaciation of her frame.

‘At last,' she said.

Taro bowed. ‘Mother,' he said. ‘I am so happy to see you again. I love you so much.'

His mother nodded. ‘I know,' she said. ‘But after this, you must let me go.
Ko wa sangai no kubikase
.'

Taro felt a sadness the exact same size and shape as his body settle itself over him, and knew he'd have to bear it the rest of his life. What his mother had said was this:
a child is the yoke that ties us to this world
. The abbot had used the expression too, the day that Taro sat down on the rock and asked to be left alone.

Taro understood, finally, that it really was his love for his mother, and her love for him, that was keeping her in this terrible place.

‘You were trying to tell me something,' he said.

‘Yes,' said his mother. ‘I tried to tell you before I died, but that girl cut me off.'

Taro smiled. It was precisely like his mother to make a joke at this moment.

‘But what was it?' he said. ‘What did you want to tell me?'

‘You were looking in the wrong place,' she said. ‘I dived the wreck the day the ninjas came, but not to hide the ball. I only wanted anyone watching to think so.'

‘So. . . there's another one? A real one?'

‘Yes.'

‘Then where is it?'

Taro's mother smiled. ‘Have you heard the story of the ama and the prince?'

‘Yes,' said Taro. ‘The prophetess told me.'

Taro's mother nodded, as if the prophetess were known to her, and not a complete stranger, but Taro thought that perhaps all the dead knew one another. ‘And where did the ama put the ball, when she recovered it from the wreck?'

Taro's eyes widened. ‘In her chest.'

‘There you have it,' said his mother. ‘I'm sorry for haunting you, and stealing your strength. But perhaps now you
can see why I needed to tell you, before you went ahead with my cremation.'

‘But. . . if it's in you. . .'

‘Then it's smaller than the fake I put on the reef. Yes. A thing doesn't have to be big, or made of gold, in order to be precious.' Joy burst in Taro's chest; the sensation was of his heart starting again. The ball was real. He could take it, and he could make Hana wake.

Taro had a hundred more questions, but just then his mother started to shine – it was the only word for it – and then it was as if she were wearing a robe of light. She looked down at herself. ‘Ah,' she said, as if her appearance explained something.

And then she was dazzling – again, there was no other word for it – and it seemed like she couldn't possibly belong to this still world with its lack of movement and growth and nourishment, and then – just like that – she didn't belong to it any more.

She was gone, and only an impression of light, fading fast, remained.

Taro then felt a similar light enveloping him, and he looked down at himself. He had seen his mother disappear from this spot. Now he saw the mountains that were not mountains and the clouds that were not clouds dimming, and he knew that he was returning to life; that really had been his heart starting, and now he was going to leave this place. His own body was growing faint, indistinct. As everything faded, so something exploded in his mind, bright as a sunburst, and suddenly he found that he understood. . . everything.

He thought, dimly,
So that's what it means
.

And then he didn't know what ‘it' was any more, and soon he didn't know what the word ‘means' meant, and then finally he didn't know what a word was.

And then there was nothing.

 

H
IRO WAS HOLDING
Taro's wrist, and so he felt it the moment the pulse stopped. He seized the abbot's hand and said, ‘Do something!' but the abbot held his hand up in a soothing gesture.

‘Wait,' he said.

Hiro opened his mouth to speak, but then he felt a twitch beneath his fingers, and it came from Taro's wrist – he felt as if he had lifted a dead chick from a broken nest after a storm, and it had come back to life in his hand.

Taro opened his eyes and smiled at him with something like the old light in his expression. ‘Am I alive?' he said.

‘Yes,' said Hiro. ‘But you scared me, you idiot.'

‘Sorry,' said Taro. He turned to Hayao, who was sitting to one side. ‘I'm glad to see you again,' he said. ‘Hana. . . did you keep her alive as you promised?'

‘Yes,' said Hayao. ‘I fed her with water and honey.'

‘Good,' said Taro. ‘Good.'

‘Where did you go?' asked the abbot.

‘I don't know,' said Taro. ‘I can't remember. But I remember what to do.' He put his hands on the rock, palm down, and pushed himself up into a position roughly approximating standing,
and then he accepted Hiro's arm under his as he staggered off the rock. ‘Take me to my mother,' he said. ‘And someone get me some blood.'