Chapter Three Sen #3
Perhaps that day would come sooner than any of them wanted.
Sen had heard whispers in town, people searching for Iwasaki Itaro, the name her father had abandoned. The government, for
all its demands, was not foolish. They had counted the bodies. They knew her father’s name. They knew he had fled. They would
find him, because as long as there was still a samurai, there was always a threat.
Sen’s father finished his bowl of rice without comment, then turned and looked out the window at the moonlight beyond the
trees, his sword clutched tight in his lap.
Sen woke to the sound of rain, and then arguing.
The rain felt glass sharp in its coldness, tiny shards of it pricking her feet, which lay pointed toward the open door. Sen
hadn’t closed the rain shutters, so she rolled to her feet and pulled them closed, wincing at the cut of water, the air so
humid she could drink it. Out in the garden, the world had turned gray from heavy clouds.
Then, the voices.
“Kotaro isn’t growing,” her mother said. “He needs more food.”
Sen was wide awake now. She remembered what happened the last time there wasn’t enough food to go around.
“Things will not be like this forever,” Sen’s father said, his voice so low she could feel it through the floorboards. Sen
drew closer, but her parents’ voices grew quieter. Even now, she loved her father’s voice, the way it felt like a bath of
warm water rising over her head. She stepped out into the hallway, over the servants sleeping on their futons, and crouched
down so she could listen without casting her shadow across the wall.
“Perhaps you could get another job,” her mother said gently.
“I have a job,” her father said, an edge of anger to his words, like a blade glinting in the sun. Sen could hear it, but she
bet her mother couldn’t. She didn’t understand him the way Sen did.
“The samurai are gone,” her mother said quietly.
It was the worst thing she could have said.
He would have cut Sen down for saying such a thing aloud, but her mother was not raised as she was, and her father had more
patience for her mother, only because he loved her less. His shadow seemed to swell against the paper doors, his spine curved
into a crooked arc, his fingers like talons.
But of course, only Sen could see it.
“I will always be a samurai,” he said, after a long silence. “If you don’t accept that, leave. But leave my children, because
they will always be samurai too.”
“You can’t keep telling that to Sen,” her mother said. “She’s never going to get married at this rate. She’ll scare any good
man off.”
“One of the Shimazu sons will take her, once we’re reinstated,” her father said. “They’ll reward us for our loyalty.”
Sen’s mother made a sound of disappointment but said nothing more. Sen turned back to her room, worried one of her parents would come into the corridor and catch her eavesdropping.
But she no longer felt tired. Her body felt strangely light, as if it knew her days here were limited. She grabbed her sword
and strode out into the rain.
Sometimes, when she couldn’t sleep, the only thing that would calm her was doing rounds of the house, scanning the forest
for danger, letting anyone who might be watching know that a samurai lived here, and if they took one step into her yard,
they would not leave alive. It used to be her father’s habit, but Sen had taken it upon herself in the months after he left.
The earth squished beneath her sandals as she strode toward the edge of the yard. It was harder to focus on other sounds over
the roar of rain, but it forced her to be more perceptive, to not only listen to the forest but feel it as a part of her,
sense the way it breathed, and bit, and squirmed.
Sen did not want to marry one of the Shimazu sons.
She did not want a great many things, but as the daughter of the last samurai, very few of her desires mattered. Samurai were
not honored because of the decisions they made, or the poetic depth of their thoughts. They were weapons that did not fail,
and Sen was her father’s sword arm. He was growing old, his scars stiff and painful when he walked. One day, he would fall,
and Sen would be there to pick up his sword and finish the job for him.
“My lady?”
Sen turned, and there was Youna, standing on the porch with a lantern. “The rain will make you ill,” she said from the covered
porch, holding out a blanket. “Come back to bed.”
Sen shook her head. “Don’t stay up for me, Youna,” she said. “I’m fine.”
“I can make you tea if you can’t sleep,” Youna said.
Sen smiled softly, shaking her head. The kind of demons that lived in her mind could not be driven away by tea.
“Thank you, but I’m fine,” Sen said. “Please go back to sleep.”
Youna hesitated, then bowed and placed the blanket on the porch for Sen. She headed back into the house, leaving the door
just slightly parted.
Sen did one more circuit of the house, for the rain had already washed away her footprints. Far away, the sea had crawled
back to the mountains, the shore a barren wash of white sand and sun-bleached shells, an ocean graveyard.
As Sen returned to the southern side of the house, she drew to a stop.
There, in the window of her room, was a man’s face.