Spirit's Princess (38 page)

My face fell. “Because my father doesn’t want me to do what I’ve been trained to do or to follow the path I love. I’ve known it for some time.”

“Yet he allowed you to purify that place? Surely he would have wanted the fields cleansed first.”

“He didn’t allow anything; he caught me. I studied with Lady Yama in secret. My father—” I sighed. “My father doesn’t like shamans.”

Michio tilted his head back and gazed into the sunlit branches of the oak. “Your father has a very good reason for that.”

“Lady Tsuki,” I said softly. “Yes, I know. But Lady Yama wasn’t like that, and you’re not, and I—”

“A child whose belly aches from eating a green peach won’t want to taste a ripe one,” Michio observed. “And you
are
his daughter. He thinks he’s protecting you.”

“From what? From living my own life?” I cried.

Michio shook his head. “No; from living
her
life.”

I sat down beside the shaman and leaned forward to run my fingertips over the silky blue petals of the bellflowers. “I wish he could trust me enough to know that I would never misuse my skills the way she did.”

“So do I, Lady Himiko,” Michio said softly. “My sister never would have taken you as her apprentice if she’d glimpsed the tiniest hint that you would follow your aunt’s unhappy road.”

I tilted my head and looked at him. “My aunt died years and years ago. Why didn’t you come home sooner? You would have been safe, and Lady Yama would have been happy to have you back.” On second thought, I added, “I guess she didn’t have any way to send you the news.”

“Yes, she did.” He sighed. “She asked one of your
father’s finest hunters to seek me out and let me know Lady Tsuki was gone. The man she sent was someone very special to my sister. I think that they were going to be married. I know he loved her dearly because he told me so when he reached the Todomatsu village with her message. ‘Come back with me and we’ll have the finest wedding you ever saw!’ he said. But I’d made a life for myself among my father’s people. I had a lovely wife, a dear daughter, and a reputation for bringing the best luck to any ship that carried me.

“I told him, ‘I’m accepted here, but if I come back with you, can you guarantee that my family will be welcomed among the Matsu? Besides, what would I do? I’m no hunter, I’m too slow and clumsy to be much help in the fields, you don’t need a luck-bringer for your ships because you have none, and you already have a shaman. You don’t want two. It makes the people nervous, not knowing which one of us to trust. Give Yama my love, and may you be as happy with her as I am with my dear ones.’ ”

I frowned, puzzled. “I never heard that Lady Yama was married.”

“Didn’t she?” Michio sighed again. “He must have died. Judging by the way he spoke about my sister, only death would have kept him from sharing his life with her.” He lowered his eyes and contemplated the flowers at his feet. “No matter how adept we are in the healing arts, the gods always have the last word. I learned that within the year.”

“What … what happened?” But I could guess the answer even before he replied:

“They died. My sweet little girl and my beloved wife both fell ill, and nothing I could do was enough to heal them. I suppose I could have come back here that spring, after I’d lost them, but I was too broken. I told myself that I might as well stay where I was. Why burden the Matsu with a second shaman?”

“Do you really think it’s a bad thing for a clan to have two shamans?”

“No, but why would they want to support two when one of them is useless? If I wasn’t good enough to save those dearest to me—”

“Master Michio, you said it yourself: the gods have the last word.” Without thinking, I reached out and slipped my fingers through his and squeezed his hand. All my envy, all my bitterness, had flown, leaving behind nothing but the urge to comfort this kindly man.

He placed his other hand atop mine. “So you are a healer after all. And as for your place on the spirit path—” He looked deeply into my eyes. “Yes. Yes, I think I understand why my sister chose you. You sense
them
, don’t you? They speak to you whether or not you call out to them, they come to you whether or not they’ve been summoned. They know who you are, and they know that you stand in perfect balance on the strand that links you to them and to all the rest of us and this bright, beautiful, terrifying, awesome world.”

I bowed my head, unsure of what to say. His words had confirmed my unvoiced feelings about my need to serve the spirits, to walk with them, to know that they were always with me. They were more than forces to be feared and
placated; they were a part of me, comforting and welcoming, taking me for who I was. I didn’t want to be a shaman because I yearned for power. I wanted it because I yearned to draw closer to them, and because that yearning was something I couldn’t deny or set aside no matter how hard I tried.

Master Michio understood my silence. He let go of my hand and got to his feet, puffing out his cheeks as he stood up and brushed dirt from the back of his clothes.

“Well, what are we going to do about you now?” he said. “If you’re performing rituals on your own, your studies are over.”

“It wouldn’t matter if I hadn’t finished my studies,” I said. “How would I be able to learn from you, Master Michio? I’d have no excuse to come to your house and study. Father knows I was doing more than housework and chores for Lady Yama. He wouldn’t be fooled twice by the same ruse.”

“Then it’s a good thing you
are
a full-fledged shaman already, isn’t it?” Michio said.

His overly cheerful manner irritated me. I didn’t begrudge him his place as our shaman anymore, but I wished he’d show me more sympathy. He was a well-fed man living snug in a warm house, and I was a starving wanderer outside in the rain. When he saw me, he said,
Why such a long face, my friend? Be happy! Life is beautiful!
but left me where I was, wet and hungry.

“Oh yes, it’s a wonderful thing,” I said dryly. “I’m free to help my clanfolk by sitting home and doing nothing.”

“Very good,” he replied, matching my peevish tone exactly.
“You’ll be able to accomplish a great deal by grumbling and sulking.”

Once more his humor was disarming. “You’re making fun of me.” I couldn’t help giggling, then added, “I guess I deserved that, but this is so frustrating!”

“I’m sure it is. If it will help you, feel free to make fun of me when I need it.” In a more serious tone, he said, “We have to hold on to laughter, Lady Himiko. We have a lot of work ahead of us, and a massive, steep mountain to climb. If we reach the peak, it will be thanks to laughter. Laughter will save us from despair, laughter will keep us from becoming discouraged, laughter will hold us back from tumbling into the darkness. If we can’t laugh, we cry, and if we cry too long, we lose sight of what we’re trying to achieve.”

He looked at me very solemnly for a man who had just been speaking of laughter. “You know, it does help if you can give a name to the mountain you want to conquer. There’s a world of difference between declaring
I must climb
a
mountain
and
I must climb
that
one
. Names have their own magical power. They can set boundaries, but they can also set goals. My mother knew that when she gave my sister her name. A mountain is strong but beautiful, and it always stands firm.” He smiled. “The magic worked. Yama proved that many times when we were growing up together. What a stubborn woman!” The corners of his eyes crinkled. “Of course, if she’d been a man, I suppose I’d have to call her strong-minded.”

“Father is
very
strong-minded,” I muttered.

“So he’s your mountain. Would you like to hear me name mine?” I shrugged, not in the mood for riddles. “You.”

That got my attention. “Me?”

“Yes, Lady Himiko. If I can see you recognized as the next shaman of the Matsu clan, I won’t need any more peaks to scale. And if that means I must return to my father’s clan once more, so be it. I’ll be quite content to live a restful life in your shadow or far from it.”

I found his words to be incredible. “You’re offering me a wondrous gift, Master Michio. But why? How do you know I’m worth so much trust?”

He spread his hands as if to show how obvious the answer was. “I don’t. But my mother chose to name me
man on the right road
, in hopes that I would find the wisdom to make good choices in life. I never make such choices blindly. If I choose to believe in you, it’s partly because I know my sister never would have wasted her time training someone without promise.”

“Only partly?” I asked.

“Well, as for the rest, I
could
claim that I’ve had a mystic revelation and foresee a fantastic future for you, but that would be a lie. The gods have never once granted me the blessing or curse of prophecy.”

I remained silent, recalling Yama’s deathbed visions. “Maybe Lady Yama only trained me to be a healer,” I said quietly.

“Then why do you call yourself a shaman?” he countered. “
That
, Lady Himiko, is what decided me. To be a shaman is to stand between your clan and the spirits, to stand undefended, with every eye upon you! No one lives their life without encountering failures along the way, but a shaman’s failures are there for everyone to see. Who would be
willing to take on such a burden, such a responsibility, such a chance to be the object of blame, humiliation, even punishment? You would have to be possessed by demons.” A half smile curved his lips. “Or by the gods.”

The days passed, and my friendship with Michio became stronger, though it was never the same as my bond with Yama. I had no excuse to spend as much time with our new shaman as I’d had with his sister—Father saw to that. I felt as if he was always watching me, making sure that I didn’t cross paths with Michio unless it was absolutely necessary and unavoidable. I regretted this because even if Michio hadn’t been a shaman, I’d have enjoyed sharing his company.

There were some times when even Father couldn’t keep me from associating openly with our shaman. When my brother Masa married our blacksmith’s daughter, I contrived to sit near Michio at the feast. Even though we couldn’t speak about my future, I was simply glad to hear his booming laugh and applaud him just as wildly as everyone else when he got up to do a comic dance to make the newlyweds blush.

He wasn’t the only guest out to embarrass someone else. The rice wine flowed freely, and some of our kin let too much of it flow down their throats. One man stood up, wobbled badly, and shouted, “First it’s Shoichi, then it’s Masa, but when are we going to see
you
get married, Aki? Better still, when’s some lucky man going to take
that
pretty little thing home with him, hey?” He waved his cup at me, sloshing his neighbors’ clothes.

“Why are you asking about Himiko?” Aki replied with good humor. “Do you have someone in mind who’s worthy to be her husband?”

“Huh?” The man stared at Aki with bleary eyes. “Nah, nah, she’s still got a few years to go before she’ll need someone else to find her a man. But you—! What’s the matter? None of our girls good enough for you?”

“Ah, my friend, you’ve hit the mark exactly!” My oldest brother was enjoying this conversation, probably because he’d had a few cups of rice wine himself. “I can’t choose any of the Matsu girls because—can you keep a secret?—I’m waiting for a sign from the gods themselves telling me when I’ll be able to have the only woman I’ll ever love!”

“Ohhhhhhh.” The man nodded as if he understood all of Aki’s nonsense, then shook his head violently. “Wait, wait, so if the gods are gonna talk to you, does that mean they’re gonna talk to
her
too?” He gestured my way again. This time his neighbors were able to lean back far enough to dodge more wine droplets. “That’s not right. How do you know if they’ll ever say anything to either of you?”

“I suppose that’s a chance we’ll have to take.” Aki smiled. “Right, Little Sister?”

“Leave me out of this,” I said. “Can’t you talk about something else?”

I didn’t care whether the villager persisted in asking when I’d become a bride. I could laugh at his questions, ignore them, or play along, but what I
had
to do was stop them before they got out of control and swerved back to why
Aki
had no wife. I wanted to silence the fellow’s drunken foolishness before my oldest brother took his next sip of
rice wine, the crucial sip that well might extinguish his lighthearted mood and inflame the bitterness smoldering in his heart.

I knew it was there, and I knew why. In the time since Father had found out about my training with Yama, I’d been unable to leave our village and accompany Aki on his continued visits to Hoshi and her clan. I’d noticed that when he came home from such excursions, he no longer looked content. Rather, the more time he had to keep his beloved bride a secret, the more irritable and impatient he seemed to grow with the arrangement. He might not resent Shoichi and Masa for being free to marry the girls they loved, but he had to envy them. I could almost hear him thinking,
Why can’t I celebrate
my
wedding too? Why do I have to conceal it from everyone, as if it were a sin or a crime?

I wanted to shield Aki from his own unhappy thoughts. I also wanted to keep Father out of this. While my oldest brother and the drunken man had been trading words, I’d glanced in Father’s direction. The look on his face was too ominous for my liking.

Springing to my feet, I raised my own cup high and declared, “Good health and good luck to the new bride and groom!” It wasn’t a very inspired toast, but I only wanted it to be a distraction. With luck, it would provoke other people to voice their own joyful wishes for Masa and his wife, and the tipsy villager’s outburst would be lost and forgotten.

Unfortunately, the man in question proved to be persistent. “Good health, good luck, and lots and lots of babies!
Someone
better make our chieftain into a grandfather before too long, or who’s going to be our leader when
my
kids
grow up? Hey, Shoichi, you’ve been married long enough. Any of
that
news yet?”