Spirit's Princess (32 page)

“At least I know they’ll laugh when they watch me,” I muttered.

“Have it your way, you stubborn thing: you’re as clumsy as a two-legged rabbit, and you can scarcely manage to walk from my house to yours without falling on your face at least three times. Now bring me something to drink without spilling it, and then fetch your father. I want to know if there’s been any word of Michio yet!”

I smiled at the old woman’s feigned grumpiness. “Yes, Lady Yama. I’ll be back soon.”

One of the first things that our shaman had done when she revived from her fall was to tell Father to send for her half brother, Michio. It seemed like an impossible task.

A shaman like his sister, Michio had left our village years ago for reasons Yama had never told me. Ever since I’d learned his identity, I’d paid closer attention whenever anyone spoke his name. By doing this, I discovered that even though he wasn’t a part of our clan’s daily life anymore, he was a mighty presence in everyone’s imagination. His name was mentioned most often when my clanfolk were working in the fields, harvesting the crops, washing clothes, or waiting for a community rite to begin. People lightened their work or simply passed the time by making wild guesses about why he’d gone away, though they also wondered aloud about whether he was still alive, where he was, and
when and if he’d ever return. Their idle chatter let me catch hints about the man, like wayward glints of sunlight glimpsed through wind-tossed leaves.

From what I could gather, Yama’s younger brother was a big fellow with a ready smile. His strength was incredible. Everyone called it a misplaced gift from the gods, more suitable for a man who’d follow the way of the warrior rather than the way of the spirits. He had a huge appetite and a sense of curiosity to match it. Some claimed that the moment after Michio was born and placed in his mother’s arms, the infant turned his eyes to the open doorway of his house and stretched out one hand as if to say,
And what lies over there? I should go and see
.

My clanfolk seemed to know everything about Michio except where to find him.

I didn’t want to leave Yama alone for very long, so I ran through the village, seeking Father. I found him with several of our nobles, conferring about the rice planting. I clapped my hands together in a gesture of respect before I told Father my errand.

“Please excuse me, my friends,” Father said gravely. “I’ll be back when I can.” The other men muttered assurances that there was no need for him to hurry. Any matter concerning Lady Yama’s condition pushed all others aside. Her accident had been like a dash of icy water in the face, awaking everyone in the village to the hard, indisputable facts: our shaman might have great powers, know many secret arts, call upon the gods, and be able to summon and dismiss the spirits of the dead, but she was as human as the rest of us. She was old, her bones could break, and as far as anyone
in our village knew, no one could take her place when she died. When that day came, soon or late, who would stand between the Matsu and the darkness? Who would weave spells of protection around our lives? Who would heal us, in body and soul?

Yama was lying down when I brought Father into her house. At first, I thought she was sleeping, and for one unbearable instant I imagined the worst. Then she turned her head in our direction, and the horrible illusion of death was gone.

“Well, has Michio been told?” she asked.

“I don’t know, Lady Yama,” Father replied, kneeling beside her. He sounded unnaturally subdued. “I gave your directions to my best men, including two of my own sons. Unless your brother has moved on, they’ll find him.”

“You
know
where to look for him, Father?” I was too stunned by what I’d just heard to keep from blurting out that question. “I thought no one did!”

“He knows because I told him,” Yama said. “And I know because Michio told
me
. Before he left this village, he let me know where I would be able to find him. He said he was going to his father’s people, the Todomatsu, on the sunset seacoast. Their clan is distant kin to ours, and we used to trade with them years ago.” She gave Father a pointed stare. “Some of us remember the old knowledge and can find the road that leads to their settlement.”

Father ignored her jibe. He’d isolated us from other clans, but had no obvious regrets for his actions. “I’ve done as you directed, Lady Yama. If the gods are willing, Michio will be back.”

“Why did he leave?” I asked. Yama had once told me he’d done so because one village couldn’t have two shamans, but I suspected that wasn’t the real reason.

Father and Yama exchanged a grim look. “He felt his life was in danger,” Father said. “And he was right.”

Yama sat up a bit, propping herself on her elbows, and nodded. “The day before he left, he came to me and said, ‘Yama, the Matsu lands might be a safe place for one of us, but not both.
She
sees you as a rival, but she sees me as a threat, and you know how she deals with threats.’ ”

“She?”
I echoed. “Who is she?”

“Our former chief,” Father said, and before I could ask another question, he snapped, “And the less said about her, the better.”

“But, Father—”

“I said,
enough
!” He stood up and strode out of the shaman’s house.

Once he was gone, I looked to Yama for more of an explanation, but the shaman sighed and lay down again. “I’m so tired. I think I want to sleep for a while.” She closed her eyes and was soon deep in dreams.

One of the lessons Yama taught me over and over was that sleep is a great healer. The more we rest, the better the chances of our bodies drawing their broken parts back together, whether those parts be bones or the edges of a cut or even a disturbance in our minds. If someone suffers from a pain so intense that it has the power to drive sleep away, a good shaman knows that she faces an appalling enemy and that the battle will be one of life or death.

But there are other times when the shaman’s enemy
disguises itself as her friend. Sleep that heals is a blessing, but sleep that is too deep can be something else entirely. A good sleep can be the gateway back to health, but a sleep that endures too long may be the subtle opening of another gateway, one that leads the spirit down a path from which there is no return. And because this ill-omened sort of sleep comes secretly, easily mistaken for its kinder sister, by the time the healer realizes what’s happening, it’s too late.

I didn’t see anything wrong with letting Yama sleep as long as she could. While she rested, I kept busy by cleaning her house, checking on the level and freshness of the water in the big jug, and seeing if any of her most used remedies needed to be renewed. I paid special attention to noting how much we had left of those medicines necessary to take care of the shaman herself, and breathed easy when I found that there was a good supply of all of them on hand. I wouldn’t have minded going into the forest to gather the ingredients for making more, but I didn’t want to leave Yama alone, if I could help it.

Of course, I had to leave her sometimes. I had no choice. I could have had my meals and bedroll brought to me in her house, but Mama pointed out that I wouldn’t be able to get the full benefit of food and sleep if I stayed there.

“You’d be constantly on edge, jumping at every sound,” she pointed out. “How soon before you started asking poor Lady Yama ‘Are you all right? Are you all right?’ every few breaths? I know you’re devoted to our shaman, Himiko, but it will be best for both of you if you allow others to help care for her.”

I couldn’t argue with that. I knew Mama was right,
whether or not I liked it. No one from our household could sit with Yama because my three younger brothers were too lively to let our shaman rest properly, but Mama organized a group of Matsu women who were more than capable of tending her. They all said how easy it was, although they never explained that the reason for this was that the old woman spent most of her time asleep.

The fever came four days later. It might have been lurking inside her before that, but if so, it didn’t make her skin hot enough to the touch for me to notice its presence until then. I had also been careful to keep my teacher comfortable while she rested, which included wiping her face with a cloth dipped in cool water. Had that kept the burning at bay? I didn’t know.

That morning I arose, ate breakfast, and was heading for Yama’s house as usual. I had no qualms about how she’d passed the night. If something had gone wrong, our household would have been roused from sleep and summoned in an instant. Mama had taken the precaution of assigning the night watch at Yama’s bedside to two women at once. If our shaman needed something, there was less danger of both of them dozing off at the same time. Also, though one watcher might be afraid while wakeful and alone in a house that held the possibility of magic, two could trade friendly whispers and keep their fears away. Mama chose those whose children were grown up and had families of their own. These older women were happy to feel useful and to be trusted with such an important task.

I was halfway to Yama’s house when I saw two women rushing to meet me. Their faces were pinched and pale with
terror. “Lady Himiko! Lady Himiko! Something’s wrong; she won’t wake up!” one of them cried. I didn’t wait to hear more. My feet flew as fast as I could drive them. I raced right past the frightened women and into Yama’s house, calling my teacher’s name.

Yama stirred at the sound, muttering and grunting on her bedroll. I was never so glad to hear any other sound. I dropped to my knees beside her and put one hand on her brow. It was burning.

“Lady Himiko, what’s the matter with her?” came a trembling voice from the doorway. The two women had caught up with me and hovered just outside, afraid to come in. I was younger than any of their children, but now they spoke to me with more respect than I’d receive simply for being their chieftain’s daughter. It wasn’t because I was the shaman’s apprentice—nobody in our village knew about that—but because I was the one person close to her. I had spent many days, many seasons, in this house. No doubt the women believed that I must have absorbed some of Yama’s knowledge, the way a piece of cloth hung above a fire drinks in the scent of smoke.

“She has a fever,” I said sharply. I wanted to add:
Isn’t it obvious? Did either one of you touch her even once last night? What were you doing all that time, gossiping?
The only thing that stopped me was seeing the ghastly expression on their faces and knowing that I wanted to lash out at them because I was just as terrified by Yama’s condition as they were.

“Ohhhhh, this is all my fault,” one of the women groaned. “She asked for water just before she went to sleep, and she drank so much of it, we all joked about it. I was
helping her sit up to drink. I thought her back felt warmer than it should, but then I told myself it was just because she’d been lying down for so long. I should have checked her later! I should have, but she was sleeping so peacefully, I didn’t want to risk having my touch wake her up. Oh, gods, forgive me!” She buried her face in her hands. Her friend tried and failed to comfort her.

“Please, stop crying,” I said dully. “No one’s to blame for this.” That was a lie. I was certain that somebody
was
at fault: me. Somehow I had made a mistake, done too much, done too little, done the wrong thing, done the right thing in the wrong way. I couldn’t accept that such a horrid turn of events could just
happen
. “Will you please bring some fresh water? I’m going to bathe her, to cool her skin.”

The two women sprinted off before I could tell them that I’d also need more cloth, to rebind Yama’s leg. They were so glad to escape, I could almost
taste
their relief. I sighed and looked at the shaman. “Do you think they’ll come back?” I murmured. Her eyelids fluttered, but she said nothing.

While I was waiting for the women to return, I untied the bandages. I don’t know why I decided to do that. It was an impulse, but such a strong one that I had Yama’s broken leg half bared before I realized what I was doing.

When she’d fallen, she’d suffered a break high on her thigh. Despite what she’d said about trusting me to take care of something so serious on my own, I was privately happy that she’d talked me through the process of setting it. I remembered what she’d told me as I tied the last knot in the bandages: “Now we’re going to leave that alone and let
it heal in peace. If there’s anything else that has to be done for me, I’ll tell you.” She hadn’t given me any further instructions since then, so I’d done as she directed, letting her rest and never untying the wrappings.

Never until now. I worked quickly but with gentle hands. A nagging thought rode me mercilessly:
To drown the fire, find the source! To drown the fire, find the source!
It pounded through my head, and the only thing that would silence it was doing as it bid me. I pulled away the last layer of cloth and discovered I was breathing as hard as if I’d raced all the way up a mountain.

And now I saw the reason for my teacher’s unnatural sleep, and for the fever that was blazing through her body. Even though I’d cleaned Yama’s wounds before I’d set her bone and covered them with the proper mixture of honey and herbs after, the place where she’d landed hardest and snapped her thigh had become a swollen, ugly mass of scarlet. Bright red streaks branched out from the center, and a gruesome smell rushed up my nose with so much force that it left me reeling. How had it gone unnoticed for so long? Was it the thick, sweet-scented dressing I’d slathered over the site, the bandages, or the pungent aromas of all the herbs, powders, and brews stored under the shaman’s roof?

Oh gods, I did everything she told me to do!
I thought miserably as I stared at the horror I’d uncovered.
Why didn’t it work? Why did this happen? Why—?

And then I closed my eyes and breathed in slowly, deeply.
“Why” doesn’t matter
, I told myself firmly.
The question that counts now is: what will I do to save her?