Spirit's Princess (2 page)

His grip on my tunic remained unbreakable. “Worse and worse stupidity.” He shook his head and looked as if he’d bitten into a bitter root. “If you can’t be wise, try being quiet!” He dropped me and strode into the house, leaving a heavy silence behind him.

Father was gone from sight, but his hard words and the look of disgust that had twisted his face lingered over me like the ghosts of the newly dead. A knot of pain seized my chest, an ache so awful that I thought I would die. I huddled on the platform, wrapped my arms around my legs, and hugged myself small, burying my face against my knees. I was too upset to cry, and no one in our family—not even Mama—dared to offer me a comforting touch or word. They were always frightened of displeasing Father. Even when he wasn’t present, his will commanded us. His temper was a fact of life, like the sunrise or the wind that rippled through the green rice, and it dominated our existence.

With my eyes hidden, I didn’t see Mama stand up, but I felt the wooden planks of the platform shift slightly and heard her murmur, “We should all go inside. It’s time to
sleep.” The platform vibrated with everyone’s footsteps, retreating into the house, and then I heard Mama speak softly again, from just a little farther off, saying, “Come to bed soon, Himiko, dear. But come quietly.” She left me outside, alone.

I hunched my shoulders and pressed my face against my knees even harder. I wanted to bury myself in darkness. Embarrassment and shame burned my heart. I struggled to muffle my dry, rasping sobs, so afraid that Father would hear me and that I’d be in deeper trouble than before.

“Hush, Himiko. It’s all right, little one.” Aki’s soothing voice was a cool, whispering breeze in my ear. I felt the welcome weight of his hand patting my back. I wasn’t alone after all.

“No, it’s not all right,” I said, refusing to look up. “He hates me. Father hates me.”

“Of course not. What an idea!” Aki tried to take my hands, but I linked my fingers together in an even tighter grip on my legs, locking myself away from him. “Himiko, look at me. What are you hiding from? From me? Are you angry at me? Is it because I laughed at you? That was wrong, and then I made it worse for you with Father. What am I going to do if my favorite sister won’t forgive me?”

I shook my head just a little. “I’m your
only
sister.”

“Did you say something? I can’t hear you.” Aki tickled my ribs lightly. “Such a funny girl! You talk to your knees and you think Father hates you and you won’t even look at the brother who loves you best.” He sighed deeply. “How can I go on living under the same roof if you turn away from me? I’ll have to go away, far into the mountains, and live
with the wolves and the bears until I die. Good-bye, Himiko.” I heard him get up and begin to walk off.

“Aki, don’t go! I forgive you!” I was on my feet as fast as thought and leaped onto his back so suddenly that I nearly knocked the two of us off the platform. He staggered sideways, fighting to keep us from a bad fall, and managed to veer away from the edge. I squeaked with fear and held on to him tightly, my arms crossed around his neck, until his outstretched hands thudded against the side of our house and we were safe. Then I let go and slid off. He looked down at me, his face damp with sweat, but he was smiling.

“Maybe you don’t need me to teach you how to hunt, Little Sister,” he said lightly. “A bow and arrows would be wasted on you. You could simply jump on top of your prey and choke it to death!”

“Did I choke you, Big Brother?” I asked, genuinely alarmed.

He chuckled and squatted beside me. “You
tried
. And you almost succeeded. I don’t know whether to be proud of you or afraid.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” I said plaintively. “And I didn’t really want the spirits to hurt anyone. Father’s right: I was stupid.”

“You were angry.
I
was the stupid one, for laughing. I was sure you were only joking about wanting to learn how to hunt. I laughed at your joke, not at you.”

“Why did you think I was joking?” I was genuinely puzzled.

“What else could I think? I told myself, ‘Surely someone as smart as my sister knows that it’s only
boys
who become
hunters, not pretty little girls!’ I’ll bet none of your playmates ever had such a thought, did they?” He tugged a lock of my hair gently. “Now, let’s go inside before—”

“Why not?”

My question took Aki by surprise. “Why not what?”

“You said girls don’t become hunters. Why not?”

“Well … well, because that’s how it is. It’s not possible. Girls can’t do the same things that boys do. Boys are stronger, that’s all: strong enough to string a bow, to bend it, to throw a spear, and to carry home the prey.”

“
I’m
strong.” It was getting darker, and Mama was waiting for us to come to bed, but I wasn’t going to let this question go.

“Strong for a girl, not strong enough for a hunter.”

“
You
weren’t always so strong.” The more I argued with Aki, the more determined I became to make him see things my way. “You changed;
I’ll
change!”

“But, Himiko—”

“I bet you weren’t, when you were my age.” I wouldn’t let him speak. I was swept away by the force of my own words, all my recent sorrows forgotten. “Shoichi and Masa are nearly as old as you, and they aren’t strong at all, but I’ve still seen you teaching them how to use the bow! Masa’s clumsy—he drops the arrow five times for every once that he manages to shoot it—and Shoichi’s arms are so skinny, he can hardly bend the bow. Why do you give them the chance to learn and not me? Let me try!”

“Little Sister, I’m not going to let you touch any of my weapons. It’s too dangerous. You’ll hurt yourself.”

“It’s just as dangerous for Masa and Shoichi.”

“Masa and Shoichi will be men someday, and men have to deal with danger.” Aki’s smile was gone. “Women don’t have to face wild beasts in the forests. Women don’t have to go to war.”

War
. It was a word I didn’t know, not then. I opened my mouth to ask Aki what it meant, but before I could, a hand fell on my shoulder from behind and Mama’s hushed, intense voice sounded in my ear: “What are you still doing out here, making all this noise? I told you it’s time for bed. Your father is ready to come out here after you himself!”

Neither Aki nor I wanted to face Father’s temper a second time that night. We bowed our heads, making soft, hasty apologies, but before we hurried into the house, I managed to whisper, “Aki, if I
show
you I can do better than our brothers, will you give me a chance?”

“Himiko, not
now
,” he muttered. “I told you—”

“No weapons. I promise.” I grabbed his hand and squeezed it.

“All right, all right, have it your way. Now shhh!” The darkness of our house swallowed us, and we stole to our bedroll by the pale light of the moon.

I didn’t go to sleep right away; I couldn’t. My mind was whirling with plans. Aki’s words echoed in my head—
“Have it your way”
—and though he’d said that solely to hush me, I seized it as proof that we’d made a bargain. I would show him I could do something that our brothers couldn’t do—maybe even something that lay beyond Aki’s own skills!—and he would
have
to teach me to become a hunter like him.

Something my brothers couldn’t do, yet something that I could … What might that be? I couldn’t close my
eyes until I found the answer. I fought off sleep, considered and discarded dozens of ideas, groaned inwardly when plan after plan shattered, and finally, just as I was ready to give in to exhaustion, a vision came. The moonlight spilling over our threshold painted a thin pattern of shadows across the floor, a pattern that my sleep-heavy eyelids blurred into a familiar shape: the great pine tree, the one that our shaman called Grandfather, the tree that gave our clan its name and made us the Matsu, the people of the pine.

I smiled, closed my eyes, and went to sleep happy. I had my plan.

I knew what I was going to do, but not
when
I was going to do it. My dreams were filled with images of the ancient pine tree’s branches in all weathers, all seasons, all times of the day and night.
Choose, Himiko! I am waiting for you
. The tree’s voice rustled through my mind, heavy with the sound of creaking branches.
Choose, and come to me! Choose your time, your path, your fate, your future. Choose!

I woke up suddenly, that voice still soft in my ears. It seemed so real! I’d never experienced such a thing before. There had been other dreams where I found myself in the rice fields or at the edge of the forest, or beside a swiftly flowing river, hearing the voices of the spirits who dwelled in the ripening grain, the birds, the beasts, the water, even the brooding stones. My drowsing mind pictured them as men and women who wore some aspect of the thing they inhabited. The pheasant spirit was cloaked in trailing feathers, and his face was stained bright red. The water spirits danced in robes that were tied with reeds, sparkled with sunlight, and frothed lightly around their feet. Towering
above them all was our clan’s protective power, the spirit of the pine tree, an ancient man with the benevolent, wrinkled face of a beloved grandfather and gnarled hands that looked strong enough to hold all of the Matsu clan safe.

The spirits had spoken to me many times while I slept. This was the first time a spirit’s voice had followed me out of my dreams, into the waking world. I was deeply frightened. I wanted to wake Mama and have her hold me.

Shivering, I crossed my arms over my chest and hugged myself until my racing heart grew calm again. “No,” I told myself, whispering so softly that my words were only the movement of my lips. “This is not how a hunter acts. Aki says that the woods are full of strange noises, but he goes on. So will I.”

I glanced at the doorway and saw that it was still well before daylight. The sight of the darkened world outside chilled my bones. “It doesn’t matter,” I murmured. “The darkness doesn’t matter; it
can’t
matter if I’m going to succeed.”

I closed my eyes and hugged myself even tighter, and with the clear, silent voice of my heart, I cried out into the realm of dreams and spirits:
Hear me, Grandfather Pine! I’ve made my choice: I’m coming. I promise that I’ll climb your branches so high that only the wind will reach me. Spirits of the night, hear me too! I’m going to walk through your darkness all by myself, but I won’t be afraid. I’ll show you how brave I can be, as brave as Aki! And when he keeps his part of our bargain and teaches me to be a great hunter, O spirits, I promise that I’ll always share what I catch with you
.

I opened my eyes slowly. I knew that I’d taken a decisive
step. I had given my word to the spirits, promised them gifts that I would never be able to give them unless I climbed the pine, won Aki’s help, and seized the future I wanted. There was no going back from such a pact.

Like a wisp of smoke, I moved noiselessly, rising from my bedroll, slipping my tunic on over my head, tying the sash securely, and stealing outside. Our house was set high on stout wooden pillars, like the houses of all the nobles in our clan. We had to use a ladder to reach the ground from the platform outside our doorway. Its wavy steps were carved from a single log so that it looked like a gently tumbling hillside stream. Someone hauled it up every evening, to keep our home safe from any night-roaming dangers, beast or human. I’d never had to move it myself, and had no idea how heavy it might be. I’d never find the strength to maneuver it into place soundlessly and knew I’d have to drop from the platform to the ground, a daunting thought. My earliest memories were of Mama shrieking in terror whenever I crept too close to the edge:
“Himiko, no! Get away from there! You’ll kill yourself if you fall!”

Oh, what relief I felt when I saw that the ladder was still in place! It must have been Aki’s task to pull it onto the platform, but Father’s anger, my tears, and all the rest of what had happened that evening had distracted him. As my bare feet felt their way down the wooden steps, I thought I heard the voices of the spirits whispering:
See, Himiko! Here is our gift to you, proof that if you keep your word to us, you are fated to succeed
.

My joy over such good luck was like a bolt of lightning, a flare of brightness in the night that vanished the instant
my feet touched the earth. Then a fresh pang of fear rushed up my spine. Our lives were filled with spirits, but they didn’t all belong to the world of the living. There were also the spirits of the dead.

When I was alone in the night, all the dreadful stories that I’d heard the grown-ups tell about those angry ghosts came rushing over me like a stream in flood. They haunted the dark times, the dark places, and they envied us because we weren’t bound to the same grim, lightless world that held them. Their envy could sharpen to rage at any moment, then blaze up into devastating vengeance. If they couldn’t return to the light, they would drag the living into the darkness. If a hunter lingered too long in the woods after nightfall, the dead would send wolves to destroy him. If a woman was too pretty, too happy, they would wait until she was leaning over a river to admire her reflection; then they’d reach out of the shadowy waters and pull her down. And if a child strayed too far from home—

All at once I wanted nothing more than to race back up the ladder and into the house, to burrow close to my mother’s side for protection and comfort. I imagined the ghosts of our clanfolk watching me, their cold fingers reaching out, their mouths gaping wide. I could hardly breathe.

“I don’t want to do this,” I whispered. Tears stung my eyes and trickled down my cheeks. “I want to go home.” Somewhere an owl called from the treetops, and I jumped, startled. I knew that sound, but in my terror it was no longer the familiar cry of a night bird, but the voice of the wandering dead. “Oh, I want to go
home
.”

A wind sprang up, a strong gust that carried the pungent, cleansing smell of pine needles. I was suddenly wrapped in a comforting embrace of scent that worked its own strange magic. Though I heard nothing but the wind, I thought it carried the voice of the pine tree spirit, ancient and mighty:
Is this how a huntress faces the dark, Himiko? Is this how you honor your choice and keep your promise?