The Golden Naginata (46 page)

“We have a new friend!”

Then he bowed to the bikuni, showing his gratitude, while the birds on his shoulders were unsettled only a little bit. He said, “You have saved this serpent's life and enriched this shrine by far.”

The six white birds returned to their nests and their peeping chicks above. The priest set the white serpent on the floor and let it crawl off wherever it desired, to search the cracks and cubbies of the shrine-house for crickets and spiders. Perhaps it would decide to hibernate beneath the floorboards of the house and not come out until spring, when the gardens would be their liveliest and most beautiful; or it might choose to live near the warmth of the fireplace and not hibernate at all, losing track of seasons as the mating birds in the rafters had done.

Though the bikuni had saved the snake within the context of Shinto belief, it was at the same time an act of Buddhist compassion. The bikuni and the Shinto holy man sat together before the firepit in the center of the room, understanding one another well enough. He was old, shriveled, bowlegged due to rickets in childhood, a trait which lent him a sort of monkey-grace when he was running through the gardens trying to catch the children. He said,

“I am originally Yano of Seki, but the village children call me Bundori-sama, ‘Honored Mister Paddy-Bird,' because I live with sparrows in my house. It has become my favored name.”

The Buddhist bowed and addressed the priest by his favored name, then introduced herself somewhat cryptically. “I am a retired warrior upon an endless pilgrimage to pray for those who've died in battles. I have given up my station and family ties, thus I have no name to offer you in return.”

“Ah. I see,” said the old man, handing the nun a bowl of soup, then sipping from his own. “I had thought you might be a famous person I have heard about: Tomoe Gozen of Heida, who fought in the great battle of Heian-kyo, where her husband died. Of course, there are more widow-warriors than just that one in this sad world, but an old man such as myself sometimes dreams of meeting a few famous people before he dies.”

The bikuni seemed uneasy, so the priest laughed at himself and added, “It is rude of me to pry into your past! Please forgive me.” He set his bowl aside and bowed. The bikuni said,

“If it pleases you in your old age, feel free to think I am a famous warrior. And my sword by the door is famous, too.”

“Ah,
soka
,” said the priest, and laughed at himself again. “Will you take some more soup?” His spidery hands moved to the ladle, then to the pot hanging above the firepit. The bikuni held forth her emptied bowl between two hands. They spoke of various matters of varying importance as they ate, and afterward, she sat as near the firepit as possible, holding her hands over the glowing coals. The Shintoist had been watching how she used her hands, how presently she kneaded each finger one by one. At last it caused him to remark,

“Your hands appear to ache. I've knowledge of herbs if you need something.”

“It's a minor thing,” she said, drawing away from the firepit and placing her hands on her knees, sitting more formally than before.

“Don't mind me at all,” said the Shinto priest as he scooted on his knees and came close enough to reach for her left hand. She let him take it, though it made her uncomfortable that he was solicitous. He poked at her knuckles, finding them slightly puffy, then bent her fingers backward until she winced. He shook his head a little and said,

“I sympathize with you. It must hurt a lot.”

“It doesn't.”

“You must use your hands for hard work,” he said. “Usually hands don't wear out like that until someone is older.”

She could not hide a startled emotion. “Worn out?” she asked.

“Joints creak and get stiff every morning, especially in cold weather. The fingers sometimes swell up, not so most people could notice, but it's a nuisance.” He wiggled his own gnarled fingers as if to say he shared the problem. “It happens to all of us when we get old. Sometimes it happens to younger people, too, especially if they use their hands more than average for hard labor. Perhaps you practice with your swords too much!”

His last remark seemed partially in jest, but the bikuni was silent for a while. The priest looked at her with a kindly expression, and his concern unsettled her more than the pain she had experienced off and on during the last two years or so. At length, she felt compelled to ask, “Will it get worse?”

The elderly fellow nodded. The bikuni cupped her hands one inside the other, looking upset. The Shinto priest said, “I'll give you an ointment that will help; and I can counsel you to rest your hands as much as possible, and keep them warm. It could be that the problem will not progress too rapidly. But I'm afraid I cannot tell you the pain will ever go away.”

After a while, the wandering nun took her leave in order to visit the village. She had arranged to return to the shrine at a later time, with Bundori's promise to aid her in the task of carving a stone lantern for the sake of the three men she had killed the night before. Her immediate concern was with her shakuhachi, which by some means would need to be repaired.

When Bundori was certain the nun was far enough along the path to the village that she could not possibly hear anything untoward within his house, he became an industrious fellow indeed. He went bowlegged about the interior of his dwelling double-checking locks, doors, and windows. He hung a large kettle over the firepit for tea. He gathered up a few utensils and set out a tray of small cups. He unrolled a long, narrow straw mat. He put everything into a precise if puzzling order.

He dragged a storage chest out into the middle of the floor and climbed on top of it so that he could reach inside the nests of the birds who had hatchlings. Two of his three pairs of birds had one youngster apiece. The parents did not mind that he was handling their babies. He took the tiny birds—one with pinfeathers, the other still a homely thing with bulbous red eyes on its featherless head—and placed them with utmost care on the woven straw mat. They seemed tinier than tiny at the mat's center.

The mother birds and father birds, as well as the pair who had no hatchling, flew down to the mat to be with the chicks. They preened their feathers, devoid of surprise regarding current affairs.

Bundori pushed the storage chest back into its proper place. Then he took out a special box and set it beside himself on the floor. He gazed upon the six adult birds and two babies on the mat, and his expression was one of extreme delight.

Removing the lid from the small wooden box, Bundori took from it a brass bowl and a little mallet carved of wood, a bit longer than a chopstick. The mallet was intended to strike the bowl for the sake of a pure, sweet knell. The old priest looked comfortable on his knees before the bowl-bell, striking it over and over again, as rapidly as he could manage. The birds enjoyed the knell, matching the note with their chirping.

At the same time, Bundori chanted a pretty Shinto incantation, quite different from most incantations, which had a more dour sound to them. The combined effect of the knell, the chirping, and the chanting caused the interior of the shrine-house to feel warmer and more pleasant. The very floors and rafters resonated. The walls of the place began to shine in a subtle manner. A glittery substance rained down from nowhere, disappearing before it struck the floor.

Priest Bundori recited his spell so swiftly, and beat the brass bowl so fast, it did not seem possible that he could increase the pitch or pace. Yet he did so. It was a mad, merry sound. The birds, with their two small chicks, bobbed their heads up and down and from side to side in time with the rhythm of the priest's activity.

The raining glitter began to swirl about the happily peeping chicks and the twittering adult birds.

The birds began to grow.

Caught in the vortex of a powerful magic, the white birds were nevertheless devoid of fear. They acted as though this strange business was something to which they were accustomed, something they found to their liking. Perhaps they were helping to cause the event, rather than being the passive recipients of Bundori's talent.

Bigger and bigger they became, growing up and up. As they grew, they changed in shape and substance. Their contours altered by degrees until they looked no longer like birds, but like human beings. Their feathers became regal finery. Kimonos were of the most extraordinary, shimmering quality.

The mother bird named Shiumi, whose chick was youngest, became a beautiful woman holding a sweet infant. The infant was clad in a child's kimono, embroidered white on white with crane designs. Shiumi's strong husband Omo looked on with pride at the nicely clad infant.

Iwazu was somewhat older, and her child was near the toddler stage. As she held her son, the tiny fellow gazed about with wonder as he grew and grew. Iwazu's husband Guma laughed at their child's surprise.

The childless couple were younger than the other four birdfolk. Uda was as handsome as a castle page. Akuni might well have been a famous courtesan instead of some bird's wife, and in fact had a courtesan's coiffure. The manner of them both tended to the sensual. They were vain but gentle.

The white hair of the two mothers was arranged like that of court ladies. The fathers wore high-peaked hats shaped like the black hats of noblemen, except these hats were white. Uda wore no hat; his neatly tied topknot stood up straight like the crest of a bird.

When they ceased to grow and metamorphose, six adults and two children of utterly human appearance sat on the long mat before Bundori. The raining glitter began to fáde away as the priest slowed the pace of his frantic spell. In no time at all, he had fallen silent, and gazed with a grandfather's affection on his six friends and their children. These men and women gazed at Bundori with equal love, eerie only because their faces were so pale and eyes so red. As one, they bowed to the patriarch of the holy sanctuary.

“How glad I am to see you,” said Bundori with tears in his eyes.

“It is good of you to invite us here today,” said Guma, senior among the bird-folk. He was a Lord among birds and held himself regally. He was handsome in a mature manner completely different from the attractive Uda, who was practically a boy, or Omo, who was strong and calm and silent like a warrior.

Iwazu, wife of Lord Guma, was, through association with Guma, boss among the women. She indicated to young Akuni that she ought to prepare tea for everyone, for the water was steaming. Pouting a bit, Akuni nudged her husband Uda, who yawned as though he didn't notice she wished he would help, but then he got up and helped her anyway. Soon everyone had nice cups of tea before their knees, but none began to drink until Priest Bundori had taken the first sip. When he had done so, everyone laughed merrily and drank leisurely from their teacups.

Akuni had settled down next to Bundori, leaning toward the priest in a sexy way. As he sipped his tea, he tried not to let his eyes linger on the back of Akuni's lovely, slender white neck. It was hard not to admire the faint tracings of blue veins beneath her perfectly alabaster complexion. Bundori felt somewhat flustered. Uda seemed not to mind Akuni's flirtations. He was not of jealous propensity and may have been himself a bit like his wife.

Bundori was a gray cloud amidst the ethereal snowiness of his friends. To an outsider, his strange company might look all alike; but to Bundori, the whiteness of their skin and the redness of their eyes provided the most superficial of similarities. They were as different from one another as any other group of people could possibly be. Flirtatious Akuni and her girlish husband Uda; haughty Iwazu and her imperious husband Guma; contrary Shiumi, attentive of her infant, next to her quiet husband Omo. The child of Iwazu and Guma was in some ways Bundori's favorite. He took the fellow onto his knees and grinned at the cherubic, laughing face. Tiny fingers clung to the priest's old gnarly ones. Bundori realized the power of childhood was greater than any magic of his own! When the boy wiggled and wanted to go exploring some more, Bundori was sad to let him go.

Everybody talked of many things and were generous with compliments for one another. It was a nice party. After a while, Bundori bacame serious and asked everyone if they would help him with some important business. They became quiet and attentive so that they could find out what the business was about.

“I thought this might be my last chance to speak with you for a while,” he said, looking sad about it. “The nun who was here today is liable to find it difficult to travel beyond this mountain province, for the freezing storms will start soon. I have it in mind to ask her to stay at this sanctuary until after winter, when it will be easy to travel again. That would mean I could not beckon you to visit me, it being against the rule of Shinto priests to let this magic become known. I will be lonely without you, especially since the nun is of melancholy disposition and won't help cheer things up.