The Way Of The Sword (23 page)

‘He’s got no chance,’ he heard Tadashi say. ‘He’s not even looking the right way!’

It was then that Jack recalled Sensei Kano’s words:
‘To see with eyes alone is not to see at all
.’ Using the sensitivity skills he’d been taught during the past couple of months, Jack listened to the crowd’s whispers, judging where the paper face was in relation to the changes in background noise. Turning until he found the blank spot among the chatter, he figured he was now facing the wall. He then visualized the face in his mind’s eye, took three confident paces forward and stuck the mouth on.

‘Good work, Jack. Now the eyes and nose.’

Yamato spun him again, then handed him the other features. Once more Jack ‘listened’ for the face, using all his other senses to judge where to go. Once he finished, a stunned silence filled the air. Then everyone applauded.

‘How did he do that?’ exclaimed Tadashi to Yamato. ‘He must have cheated. Jack, you couldn’t see, could you?’

Shaking his head, Jack lifted the blindfold. In front of him was the picture of a perfectly proportioned face. Sensei Kano’s
chi sao
training was clearly working.

‘Beginner’s luck,’ explained Yamato, giving Jack a conspiratorial nudge with his elbow. They went back to the table to rejoin the others. Akiko was no longer among them.

‘Where’s Akiko?’ Jack asked.

‘She said she wasn’t feeling very well and went to bed,’ replied Kiku. ‘She thinks it’s something she drank.’

‘Has anyone gone and checked on her?’ said Jack, recalling how pale she had looked during the ceremony and her lack of appetite.

They all shook their heads. Worried, Jack excused himself and made his way over to the Hall of Lions.

Akiko wasn’t in her room. He checked the bathhouse and toilets. She wasn’t there either. He wondered if she had gone back to the party. Jack was about to return to the Hall of Butterflies, when he spotted a lone figure leaving the school via the side gate.

Jack ran out of the school gate and into the midst of a carnival.

Kyoto’s streets were full of revellers and each temple brimmed with worshippers. The entrances to every house were decorated with pine boughs, bamboo stalks and plum-tree sprigs as an invitation to the protecting spirit
toshigami
to bless the home; while the doors had been hung with plaited ropes festooned with strips of white paper to keep away evil spirits.

Jack spotted Akiko stumbling down the street. Although conscious of the monk’s warning to respect his friend’s privacy, he was more concerned at this moment about where she was going in such a sickly state. Pushing through the crowds, Jack tried to catch up with Akiko, following her down a side alley, across a market square and into a large tree-lined courtyard thronged with people. A group of drunken samurai bumped into Jack and he lost sight of Akiko among the mass of worshippers.

‘Get out my way!’ slurred one of the samurai, grabbing Jack by the lapel of his kimono.

The samurai lent close, his breath reeking sharply of
saké.

‘A
gaijin
,’ he spat into Jack’s face. ‘What you doing here? This isn’t your country.’

‘You’d best leave him be,’ advised another in the group, who pointed an unsteady finger at the phoenix
kamon
on Jack’s kimono. ‘He’s Masamoto’s. You know, the young
gaijin
samurai.’

The drunken man let go as if Jack’s clothing were on fire.

‘I’ll be glad when
daimyo
Kamakura cleanses Kyoto, like he’s doing in Edo,’ snarled the samurai before staggering off into the crowd with his friends.

Jack was shaken by the encounter. Until now, he hadn’t truly realized the danger he’d put himself in, wandering alone through Kyoto’s backstreets. He was comparatively safe within the school grounds. Outside it was only Masamoto’s reputation that protected him and he couldn’t rely on everyone recognizing his guardian’s family crest. He needed to find Akiko before he got himself into even more trouble.

Jack looked around nervously, but the majority of revellers were too wrapped up in their celebrations to give him more than a cursory glance. Then he recognized where he was. In front of him were the stone steps and arched green roof of the Temple of the Peaceful Dragon.

‘Why are you following me?’

Jack spun round.

Akiko’s ashen face stared at him out of the crowd.

‘Kiku said you were sick…’ replied Jack.

‘Jack, I can look after myself. I’ve just drunk something that didn’t agree with me, that’s all.’ She studied him severely. ‘Anyway, you’ve followed me here before, haven’t you?’

Jack nodded, feeling like a criminal caught red-handed.

‘I appreciate your concern,’ continued Akiko, though there was no warmth in her voice, ‘but if I had wanted you to know where I was going, I would have told you.’

Jack realized that he’d lost Akiko’s trust in him. ‘I’m… so sorry, Akiko,’ he stammered. ‘I didn’t mean to. It’s just…’

Words failed him and he found himself staring at his own feet to avoid her gaze.

‘It’s just what?’ she persisted.

‘I… care for you and was worried.’ The words blurted out of him without warning, then his feelings for her spilled over. ‘Ever since I’ve been stranded here, all you’ve ever done is look after me. You’ve been my only true friend. But what have I ever done for you in return? I’m sorry for following you, but you were sick and I thought you might need my help. Can’t I watch out for you too sometimes?’

The coldness in Akiko’s eyes thawed and the icy distance that had come between them melted.

‘Do you really want to know where I was going?’ asked Akiko softly.

‘Not if you don’t want to tell me,’ replied Jack, and he turned to leave.

‘But I should tell you. You need to know,’ insisted Akiko, laying a hand upon his arm to stop him going. ‘It’s my baby brother’s birthday today.’

‘You mean Jiro?’ said Jack, surprised, remembering the cheerful little boy he had befriended in Toba over a year ago.

‘No, I have another brother. His name is Kiyoshi.’ Her eyes misted at the mention of his name. ‘Sadly he’s no longer with us, so I was going to the shrine to pray for him. He would be eight today.’

The same age as Jess, thought Jack, and he felt a pang of anguish in his heart for his sister.

‘I’ve missed him greatly this past year,’ Akiko went on, ‘so I’ve been seeking spiritual comfort from a priest, one of the monks at the Temple of the Peaceful Dragon.’

Jack now felt doubly guilty. This was the real reason behind her mysterious disappearances. She was mourning her baby brother.

‘I’m sorry… I didn’t know -‘

‘Don’t be, Jack,’ she interrupted, motioning with a nod of her head for him to follow her up the entrance steps of the temple. ‘Why not come with me now to the shrine and make a blessing for my brother? Then we can climb Mount Hiei together in time for
hatsuhinode
.’

Akiko huddled closer to Jack for warmth.

They sat alone, in the shelter of a ruined temple wall at the edge of Enryakuji, overlooking Kyoto, which was hidden by early morning mist in the valley below. The frigid mountain air made them both shiver, but inside Jack was feeling a warm glow.

They had visited the little shrine within the Temple of the Peaceful Dragon. Akiko had briefly spoken with the monk in private and then together they had made their peace offerings and prayers to Kiyoshi. This shared experience was the first time Jack had felt included in Akiko’s personal life. It was as if a screen had been pulled back to reveal a delicate tapestry that once seen would never be forgotten.

With Akiko’s night excursions now explained, Jack felt at ease with her again. The monk with the knife-like hands seemed an unusual choice for a comforting priest, but who was he to question her choice. Jack still wondered at Akiko’s inexplicable tree-scaling skills, but perhaps she had been telling the truth and had always been good at climbing. Whatever the explanation, Jack was just content to be feeling close to Akiko again.

Having wound their way up the steep mountain slopes of Mount Hiei, they now waited for
hatsuhinode
, the first sunrise of the year.

‘New Year’s Day is the key to unlocking the year,’ Akiko explained dreamily, her breath fogging in the chilly air. ‘It’s a time of new beginnings. We think about the past year, bury the bad and remember the good, then make our resolutions for the New Year. We always pay special attention to the first time something is done, whether it’s the first visit to a temple, the first sunrise or the first dream.’

‘What’s so important about your first dream?’ Jack asked.

‘It foretells your luck for the forthcoming year.’

Akiko looked up at Jack, her eyes sleepy, and yawned, the tiredness from staying up all night finally taking hold. Her face, though still pale, had lost its deathly pallor since visiting the monk, and her health appeared to be returning with the onset of a brand-new day.

‘Dream well tonight,’ she whispered.

Akiko drew closer to him and soon fell asleep on his shoulder.

Jack sat in silence, listening to the dawn chorus, as the first rays of the New Year sun began to warm them both.

Akiko lay motionless at the foot of the mountain.

But it was not a mountain Jack recognized. A great black volcanic cone thrusting out of the ground, its peak capped in ice and snow, the mountain dominated the landscape.

Jack stood upon a stony path that wound its way tortuously across broken ground towards the prone body of Akiko, who held a large lobed leaf in her left hand. Between the two of them scurried four black scorpions, their barbed tails twitching, their black beady eyes shiny with malice. A lone hawk soared across an empty sky, emitting a mournful rasping screech. Then suddenly one of the scorpions scuttled over to Akiko and arched its back to strike its stinger into her chest.

‘AKIKO!’ he screamed…

‘Jack, I’m here,’ came her reply, soft and gentle by his ear.

Jack’s eyes snapped open.

Branches hung over him in a bower so thick with pink-white cherry blossom that they blotted out the bright blue sky and shaded him from the hot spring sunshine.

Jack sat up.

Akiko was beside him. Yamato and Kiku were there too, leaning against the trunk of the tree and observing him with concern. Now he remembered where he was. It was the middle of spring and they had gone to one of Kyoto’s many gardens for
hanami
, a flower-viewing party.

A southerly wind blew through and the blossom fell like teardrops on to the ground, some of the petals catching in Akiko’s hair.

‘It’s all right. You were dreaming,’ she soothed, brushing the blossom away. ‘Was it the same one?’

Jack nodded, his mouth dry with dread. Yes, it was the same dream as his first of the year. He had told Akiko about it the day after New Year, though he still couldn’t bring himself to reveal her part in the vision. At the time, he had sought Sensei Yamada’s advice and the Zen master had divined, ‘The mountain you see is Mount Fuji. Being our highest mountain and the home of many great spirits, its appearance in your dream signifies good luck. The hawk represents strength and quick-wittedness; while the leaf you describe sounds like that of an eggplant. Its name,
nasu
, can mean the achievement of something great. This bodes well for the future.’

Not a believer of dream divination until his experiences in Japan, Jack had breathed a sigh of relief at the sensei’s positive reading. But then the old monk had continued, ‘On the other hand, the presence of scorpions often symbolizes an act of treachery preventing such greatness. Moreover, the number
shi
is considered very bad luck. The word for “four” can also mean death.’

‘You have to see this!’ Saburo shouted, disrupting Jack’s thoughts.

Saburo hurried breathlessly over to the cherry-blossom tree with Yori in tow. He was pointing to a large wooden sign being erected in the street. They all got up and left the garden to get a closer look.

‘It’s a declaration,’ Yamato explained for Jack’s benefit. ‘It says, “Whoever wants to challenge me shall be accepted. Leave your name and place of abode upon this sign. Sasaki Bishamon.”’

‘Nice,’ said Kiku in a sarcastic tone. ‘A samurai on his warrior pilgrimage and he’s named after the God of War!’

‘Do you think we’ll get to see a duel?’ enthused Saburo, acting out a fight against an imaginary opponent.

‘We won’t be here,’ Akiko reminded them as another gust of wind blew blossom from the trees, carpeting the ground in white. The fall of the blossom meant that the time for the Circle of Three had finally arrived.

Jack could not wait to go. He was desperate to discover what the three challenges were. Having trained so hard since his selection, he felt like a rope stretched taut and ready to snap.

‘But the sign’s just gone up,’ persisted Saburo. ‘We’ll only be in the Iga mountains for a few days. Surely we’ll get back in time to see at least one of the fights.’

Kiku gave Saburo a grave look. ‘That’s if he survives the first one.’

Jack sensed the lunge punch without seeing it. He deflected it neatly past his ear, while countering with a back fist to the head.

Yamato gauged the move, pulling back out of reach and sweeping his hand across in a combined block and knife-hand strike. Jack caught it, trapped the arm and drove his fist forward. Yamato disengaged, slipping the punch and retaliating with a hammer fist to the bridge of the nose.

All the time they maintained contact with one another.

All the time they sought gaps in each other’s defence.

Throughout they were blindfolded.

‘Excellent, boys,’ praised Sensei Kano, who leant nonchalantly on his white staff in a side garden of the Eikan-Do Temple where the
chi sao
lesson was taking place. ‘But I sense you’re playing with one another. Go for the kill!’

Sensei Kano had been training them rigorously in the run-up to the Circle of Three and both boys had become adept at the Sticky Hands technique as well as the use of their other senses. Jack could now pick out sound shadows whether in a forest or a Kyoto side street, though he still found the task impossible in a silent room.