Chapter Seven Sen #2
Kura’s skin pulled taut and gray against her skull, wrinkled as worn leather hide.
Her baby teeth hung loose from her gums, tethered by thin ligaments, jingling like wind chimes.
Maggots crawled out of her ears and nose, their tiny fangs leaving scars on her face.
And worst of all, her eyes had gone cloudy, like she was lost in a dense fog and would never find her way out.
Satō , Kura said. Satō Satō Satō Satō .
Sen could do nothing but hold tight to the pieces of herself and wait.
After many years, her father returned and hauled the box back to the surface, removed the lid, and plucked her out.
“Thank you, Chichiue,” Sen said as he set her on unsteady legs. “Thank you for showing me this.”
“And what have I shown you?” her father said.
Sen remembered Kura’s jingling teeth, wet globs of bloody drool that fell to her feet. “That life and death are one and the
same,” Sen said. “That I exist because I am strong, and if I give in to fear, I will no longer exist.”
Her father nodded, then turned and gestured for Sen to follow him.
“Wipe your face,” he said. “We have work to do.”
Sen quickly scrubbed her face with her muddy sleeves. It was the last time she ever cried.
The Sen who had tasted death remained in the dirt among the worms, while the rest of Sen followed her father back to the house.
In the morning, Sen pushed the dresser away from the door.
She slid it open a crack, but to her relief, there was only cement behind it.
But there, at the bottom of the door, a mark caught Sen’s eye. She crawled closer and squinted at the scrawl. It was messy and uneven, like something one of her younger brothers would write.
How did you die?
Sen frowned; she reached out to touch the words to make sure they were real, but they were painted on the other side of the
door, and she could only touch their echo. What kind of trick was this? There was a ghost in her house, asking her how she died?
She looked down at her hands, traced the lines on her palm, the calluses from gripping her katana, the crooked fingernails
that hadn’t grown back correctly from all the times her father struck her with the hilt of his blade. Her hands looked broken
and pieced back together, but they were warm and real and alive. That was what pain meant—that there was still light left
in you.
I am not dead , Sen thought, closing her fists. Not yet .
Sen cut a piece of paper from her desk and practiced writing her answer backward. Then she bent down and wrote her answer
in tiny, elegant script just below the question.
I will tell you tonight.
Whatever game this ghost wanted to play, she would end it. If light glowed behind the door tonight, as it had last night,
Sen would be ready. This time, she would not miss.
Sen moved in a haze through the rest of her day. The sun broke over the horizon just as the tide retreated out to sea, and
Sen chased after it with a bucket, digging for sand crabs in the shore. She found nothing but sea glass and stones, so she
returned before high tide could sweep her away.
Her arms felt so stiff from chopping wood that she could hardly move them, but her father showed no mercy when sparring. His blade sliced lines into her dry hands until she couldn’t hold her sword anymore because the handle was wet with blood.
“Do you want to die?” he said evenly. “Is that why you fail me again and again? You want me to end you?”
Sen panted for breath, rising to her feet to look her father in the eye. She knew the answer he wanted.
“I am already dead,” she said. That was the heart of the samurai’s work. To be so resolved to die in battle that she felt
as though she had already died.
“So you say,” her father said, sheathing his katana.
He sent her out to the forest to practice alone, and she obeyed even though she wanted nothing more than to fall asleep across
the rocks in the shade and coolness of the riverbank. But if her father caught her sleeping out in the open, he would kill
her, and she would deserve it.
She trained until she could barely lift her arms anymore, and then she dragged her sword as she returned to the house, carving
a line in the dirt while the sun bled behind her. She slipped on her house shoes and headed down the hall, passing by her
parents’ bedroom. Their shadows stretched tall across the closed door, where her mother was whispering to her father.
“Maeda is gone,” her father said.
Sen held her breath, clutching her katana to her chest. Her father’s friend Maeda had helped them find safe passage to the
house behind the sword ferns. He had been a samurai once, but had quietly allowed the government to strip him of his title.
He was a coward, but his guilt prompted him to care for Sen’s family, so they had accepted his help. He was the only person
who knew where her father had hidden. If he kept his word, their family would be safe.
But Maeda was not a samurai anymore. He did not know the face of pain, had not promised honor above all else like Sen and her father had. If he had disappeared, he had either run away or been taken.
“Do you trust him?” Sen’s mother said.
Her father let out a long breath. “I trusted him in life, but Maeda feared death,” he said. “If they threatened him, I don’t
know how much he might have said.”
“Should we leave?” her mother whispered. Her shadow wrung its hands.
“No,” her father said. “There is no safer place than this. We would have to identify ourselves to find any other housing,
and any innkeeper would report us.”
“So we sit and wait for death?” Sen’s mother said.
Her father’s shadow shook its head. “We are already dead,” her father said.
Sen sighed and turned down the hall, entering her room and closing the door behind her. She had heard similar conversations
hundreds of times since they came to the house behind the sword ferns. It was always the same—her mother wanted to run, but
her father wanted to stay and fight, and his word was law. Sen didn’t understand why her mother agonized over a decision that
wasn’t hers to make.
Sen fell into bed and stared at the ceiling as she gathered her strength. Though her bones felt impossibly heavy, she could
not fall asleep. She recalled the pale face of the foreigner in her window, his crooked shadow cast across her wall.
Her mother wanted to run because she was certain that if they stayed and fought, they would lose. That was what the foreigner’s
omen foretold. That was what Maeda’s disappearance would indicate. It felt as if the whole universe had conspired against
her family, that they were fated to end here, the age of the samurai along with them.
But Sen of Shimazu did not believe in fate.
She had worked too hard and too long to die here, among the sword ferns. No spirit or soldier would be her end.
She lay still and watched her candle burn down. Darkness fell deeper over the house, and Sen began to wonder if the ghost
would ever return.
The night grew darker, and once more, the shadow with curly hair appeared.
With her sword ready in one hand, she opened the door.