Spirit's Princess (9 page)

One morning of my ninth year, I awoke to a wonderful sight framed in our doorway: almost overnight the breath of springtime had blown the cherry trees on the distant hillside into a soft froth of blossom. I’d grown up witnessing this spectacle year after year, yet every time was as glorious
as the first. When I saw them at their peak like that, a splash of wind-tossed pink against the new greenery, I clapped my hands, knowing today would be wonderful.

“Oh, so you’ve finally decided to wake up, eh, Little Sister?” Aki’s familiar voice sounded behind me. My oldest brother dropped to one knee by the side of my bedroll, a quiver full of arrows on his back, his bow in one hand. “Everyone else is out of the house, and I’m about to go too.”

“Not without me!” I cried, gesturing toward the doorway. “Look there, Aki: the cherry trees are all covered with flowers. You took me to see them up close when that happened last year, so you have to do it again.”

“Oh, do I?” he asked, teasing.

“Yes.” I was firm. “This is
our
day! I know it’s a long walk to reach them, but I won’t take much time to get ready, I promise.” I reached for my clothes, spread out at the foot of my bedding, and slipped my tunic over my head.

My brother looked uncomfortable. “I’m sorry, Little Sister,
our
day will have to wait. You’re such a good girl, I hate saying no to you about anything, but we can’t do this today.”

“Why not?”

“You know why, Himiko,” Aki said soothingly. “You were here yesterday when Emi’s uncle brought word that he’d spied a wolf pack near our fields. Luckily, most of our clan was out planting the new rice, and they made enough noise to send the beasts fleeing toward Cypress Mountain. You heard Father say we’d be sending a hunting party after them.”

“Wolves—that’s all we need.”
Father’s grim words ran
through my memory.
“A bad winter’s left them hungry and much too bold. If we let them come so close to our village unchallenged, the next thing you know, they’ll be over the ditch and inside the palisade. I won’t allow it! We don’t raise our pigs and chickens to feed wolves.”

“That doesn’t mean
you
have to go, Aki,” I protested. “Father has plenty of other hunters; he doesn’t need you. He’s not even here! I’ll bet he’s already left the village!”

“I know he has,” Aki replied. “That’s the plan. I helped him work it out last night, after everyone else was asleep. He’s leading the older hunters up the eastern mountain trail right now, and I’m going to bring the younger ones around by the western way. It’s steeper, and the winter’s probably crumbled the path in places, but we have to be ready to outflank the wolf pack if they flee Father’s men by that route.”

He stood up and slung his bow over his back. “I’m
supposed
to be late to this hunt so that the wolves don’t sense too many men on the mountain at once. We want them dead or driven far away, not scared into hiding. It’ll be no good if they den up today and come back to our village tomorrow.” His teeth flashed in the shadows of our house. “Don’t you fret about any of this, Little Sister. I wouldn’t want you to be afraid that a wolf will come prowling after you.”

“
I’m
not afraid. I only want—”

He spoke on as though I’d never opened my mouth. “We shouldn’t be gone more than a day or two. You be good and wait patiently”—he patted my cheek—“and, I promise, the two of us will have our day together soon.”

I had no chance to say another word to him before he bounded out of the house. By the time I followed him onto the porch, he was down the ladder and racing through the village, summoning other young men to join him as he ran.

I knelt on the boards and watched him go. I had a fine view from up so high and saw my other brothers, Masa and Shoichi, join his hunting party. After two years, Shoichi had gotten better at handling weapons, but Masa was still unskilled. In spite of that, he was allowed to be a part of the wolf hunt, while I was left behind like a baby’s discarded toy.

I tried to console myself.
Oh, so what? This doesn’t involve me. I’m no hunter; I’ll never be one. Why should I care if Masa—?

But it’s not fair!
The words burst inside my head with such force, it was as though a mountain ogre had bellowed them in my ears.
I’m tired of being treated as if I were helpless. I hate being nothing more than the
good
girl, the
cheerful
girl, the
pretty
girl. Is that
all
I’ll ever be?

I turned my eyes toward the great pine tree. “This is
your
fault,” I muttered, before I remembered that it was only bark and wood and fragrant needles. Still grumbling, I climbed down the ladder and began to walk aimlessly through the village.

At that time of day, in that season, nearly everyone was off working in the fields. Our village was like a land of ghosts, with only the smoke from the potter’s kiln and the blacksmith’s forge to show that people lived there. I paused on the path between those two places, wondering what to do. I thought about going to watch the potter at her work, but she was a sour-tempered woman. When she was in a bad mood, she’d order everyone to go away and leave her
alone. If they lingered, she’d throw gobs of clay at them. The blacksmith was friendlier. He liked having someone there to chat with while he worked, but the forge was such a hot, noisy, smelly place that I always thought twice before paying a visit.

Rough laughter sounded at my back. “What do we have here? Has the earth given birth to fresh stones?” I spun around to see our shaman’s grinning face. “You’ve been standing here long enough to take root, Himiko. Don’t you have somewhere to be? Something to do? Or are you trying to make the Matsu clan into a smaller version of the Mirror Kingdom, where the princesses do nothing all day but sing?” The old woman forced her voice into a high, squeaky trill and warbled nonsense words, then laughed again.

“I—I don’t know the Mirror Kingdom,” I said, trying and failing to hide how nervous her presence made me feel. A shaman’s magic came from her control over the spirits. Even if I doubted their existence, something about Yama made me hesitate to question her power.

“No, why would you?” Yama reached for her sash and untied a small bronze mirror hanging from it by a silk cord. “It’s the name I’ve chosen for that vast land to the west, the place
this
came from, and many more like it.” She offered me the mirror, but I made no move to take it. My timidity made her chuckle. “Afraid, Himiko? Not what I’d expect from you. You attack our guardian spirit, you break his old bones, you declare that he’s nothing but a tree, that the spirits are smoke and dreams, that the gods are nothing more than stories, but you’re scared to touch a mirror?”
She reattached it to her sash. “Well, I suppose you have a point. If you looked into it, you might see something
truly
frightening.”

I was becoming more and more bewildered. “I didn’t—I didn’t attack the pine—I mean, our guardian spirit. I only wanted to show Aki that I could—”

Yama held up one hand to silence me. “No need to defend yourself, Himiko; I’m joking. Tell me this instead: Why are you standing here alone, little stone child? Why aren’t you in the fields with everyone else? You look as if you like to
eat
rice well enough, so hadn’t you better help plant it?”

I lowered my eyes, ashamed. “I want to, Lady Yama, but it’s not possible.”

“Ha!” Her bark of laughter made me look up sharply. “Try that excuse on someone who hasn’t known you since you were born. Oh,
that
was a day full of impossibilities!”

Impossibilities?
When I was very small, I’d asked my mother to tell me the story of my birth, but she’d never used that word to describe it. She did tell me that there had been an earth tremor, but such things were no rarity in our land, and most certainly
not
impossible. “What do you mean, ‘impossibilities’?” I asked.

“I want to tell you”—a mocking smile curved her thin lips—“but it’s not possible.”

Her gibe stung. I turned my back on her and began to walk away.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Yama’s hand closed on my shoulder like a hawk’s talons. She forced me to face her again. “Have I angered you?
Tell
me so!”

“I can’t—” I began.

“
That
again?” she spat disdainfully.

“—because you are our shaman, Lady Yama, and my parents would be angry at me if I was rude to you.”

Her frown faded. “I seem to remember a little girl who didn’t worry so much about what would make her parents mad,” she replied. “Unless she thought that climbing that pine would please them?” This time she gave me a friendly look that seemed to say,
You and I know better, don’t we?
I couldn’t help smiling shyly in return. Softening her voice, she said, “You’ve changed since then, Himiko. You used to be a bold child—not foolhardy, but adventurous. Now I seldom see you far from your house, and never at work in the fields. Is this my fault? Did I heal your leg so badly that you lost your freedom?”

I shook my head vigorously. “Oh no, Lady Yama! I can stand and walk and I
know
I can help with the crops, but—but Mama won’t let me. She told Father that I’d wear myself out tending the plants. She reminded him that I can’t run anymore and said field work would make my bad leg so stiff I wouldn’t be able to walk, either. She wouldn’t stop talking until Father agreed with her and forbade me to do it.”

“May the gods bless your home with a new infant before your mother turns you back into one. Although”—she sighed—“maybe it’s too late. Every part of a baby’s life is controlled by her parents, but what choice does she have? She
can’t
speak up, and you—” Her gaze pierced me. “Have you ever tried? In two years, have you
once
attempted to make your father change his mind?” I didn’t answer, which made her nod and say, “That’s what I thought. Your mother
must have bragged to everyone in this clan about what a
good
child you’ve become.” She shook her head glumly. “I wish she could call you a
happy
child instead.”

“I’m happy,” I said automatically.

Yama raised one eyebrow. “All alone in the middle of the village with nothing to do? Oh yes,
that’s
happiness!”

“Well, I
would
have been happy today,” I replied. “Aki and I were going to see the cherry trees.” I gestured toward the distant wave of flowering trees and told Yama all about the wolf hunt, and our broken plans, and my disappointment. I was still in awe of her position and her powers, but something about our shaman made me also feel that here was someone to whom I could open my heart.

When I was done, the shaman rested her hands on my shoulders. “Why do you let your happiness depend on what others can do for you, Himiko? Soon you’ll be grown up. Will you still spend your days then waiting for them to bring you what you desire?”

“I don’t do that!” I protested.

Yama gave me a sad smile. “Then tell me: what are you doing now? Take the easy path too long and one day you won’t even be able to tell the difference between what you want and what you’re told you
must
want. Or has that already happened?” She clapped her hands loudly, the way she did at clan rituals when she wanted to command the attention of the spirits. “May the gods grant that isn’t so!” she called out to the sky, and with that, she strode briskly away.

I wanted to follow her, but she moved too fast, slipping from my sight when she turned the corner of the nearest pit
house. How infuriating! In my mind, I saw myself doing the impossible—running to catch up to her and tell her she was wrong, wrong,
wrong
! I wasn’t an infant. I wasn’t helpless. I
could
make my own choices, I
would
live my own life. Above all, I knew what I wanted, and I wouldn’t let anyone—not Mama or Father or Aki—hand it to me as a gift or keep it out of my reach because they decided I shouldn’t have it.

What I wanted most that day was to prove myself, to be more than someone’s
good
little daughter,
good
little sister,
good
little girl. How would I do that? The answer called out to me from the distant hillside where the blushing petals of the cherry trees were dancing along the dark branches.

Two years of surrender vanished. My slumbering ambition awoke. I didn’t need Aki to take me to see the flowers. I could—I
would
do it myself!

There was no one to stop me as I left our village. If the lone watchman in our lookout tower saw me, he must have assumed I was headed to the fields, where everyone else was hard at work. I certainly acted as if that were my goal. My heart began to beat faster as I crossed the wooden bridge spanning the ditch beyond our palisade. I wanted to turn my head to see if the watchman was looking in my direction, but I forced myself to keep my eyes forward. My plan was to continue a short distance down the road to the rice paddies, then make a sharp detour and duck into the shelter of a stand of young oak trees. Only then would I look back, when there was no danger of the watchman observing such suspicious behavior.

It felt like it was taking forever for me to reach the oak grove, but at last I stood in the cool shadow of the tender
springtime leaves. I leaned against the largest tree there and peered at the top of the watchtower through the greenery. Our sentry was looking elsewhere, toward the snowy peak of that wondrous lone mountain I’d once seen from the top of the ancient pine.

“Thank you, beautiful one,” I murmured, forgetting that since I’d set my heart against believing in the spirits, that mountain could be only soulless snow and stone. I turned my eyes toward the next step in my journey—passing through a field of tall, winter-stricken grass to reach the protection of the true forest—and set out as swiftly as my legs would allow.

The grass rustled around me as I walked. I kept my head low and hoped that the spring planting was keeping all my fellow clanfolk occupied in the paddies. So many things could happen that might send someone home early—a broken tool, an ailing baby, an accident—and the road back passed alongside the wind-rippled straw. What would I do if I were spied before I was safely hidden by the trees? Keep moving? Turn back? Freeze where I stood? My thoughts became a jangle of everything that could possibly go wrong. The only thing with the power to silence them was the blessed relief I felt the instant I emerged from the dry grass and stumbled into the sweet shelter of the woods.