Chapter Six Sen #3
A hundred paces off, Jobo and the crow monks had a little cart with its trappings bundled under a plain hemp cloth.
One monk was saddling their horse, a rangy, starving creature, and when Sen made to approach, Jobo offered a nod of farewell, but again said nothing, and allowed no riposte.
Then suddenly the gates were open. The cart creaked, full of sacks of rice and flour and dried herbs, and they began their ponderous journey back from the gates of Kitano to the Blue Woods.
Sen found himself standing in the threshold, watching as they left. His stewardmother’s plea – you must promise me that you will do this – seemed to ring in his ears, and the memory of how easily Jobo knocked him down sent shivers to the ends of his fingertips.
They were a dot, receding on the long road, when he decided to follow them.
He stayed as far back as he could, keeping the monks at the edge of his sight as they made their way through the wood, but once or twice he caught them glancing at him, and knew they were aware of his intent.
He followed them all the way to their monastery on the Godspath of Kannagara. He called when he reached the gate. They sent him away. The gate shut.
An elderly crow monk said, “He doesn’t want to speak with you.”
“Why not?” Sen yelled. “He saved me, he helped bring me here, now he doesn’t want anything to do with me!”
He waited outside the gate at Kannagara for three days and nights, leaving only to steal food from the local village outside the woods, until finally, in the rain, the gate opened and Jobo the crow monk was there, watching him.
“What is a warrior doing in the mud?” he asked.
“Train me,” Sen said. “I’ve learned everything I can with Yozora.”
Jobo looked at him. “No,” he said.
Sen came back again. And again. “I am a descendant of the Gensei clan! Let me in!”
“That is why you cannot enter.”
He sat on the Godspath, hallowed ground that symbolized the barrier between the physical world and the spirit realm. The crow monks above called out to him, told him to go home.
“No!” Sen shouted. “I demand to be taken as a student of Jobo. I saw him fight. I’ve never seen anyone like that before!”
“Maybe you need to open your eyes,” they called, mocking.
“Let me in!”
Another day passed. Then another. Finally, one morning, the gate opened and again Jobo stood before him. “Why do you want to learn how to kill?”
“I… What?”
“You said you want to learn to fight like we do. To fight is to be willing to take a life. You must understand what you’re asking for. You’re not ready.”
“I have training.”
“I don’t care.” He turned from Sen, walking slowly back up to the temple building within. The other crow monks gave him one small bow each, and closed the gate.
So, he sat. He waited. The gates did not open for another day.
One night he woke to find the eldest monk, a husk of a man named Jikobo, watching him from the open gate, a small bowl of rice and pickled plum in his hands.
With a nod, Old Jiko set it on the dirt at Sen’s feet, bowed once, and retreated back to the gate.
He replaced the rope barring entry. It settled on its hook with a soft click, and Sen found himself starting to go after him, to call out, hand half raised, but the gate didn’t move, and the woods were silent.
Above him, by the steps, he saw Jobo watching him, thin face set as stone, betraying nothing.
Does he ever sleep? he wondered.
Sen bowed to him, quickly. And went back to his mat. When he got to it, the rice was still warm.
The next morning, he went to the gate again. They still wouldn’t let him in. But he felt himself changing. He wasn’t so angry with them, wasn’t so upset.
“Please,” he asked, “won’t you teach me?”
The Shugenja considered him for a moment, and spoke as though soothing a child.
“Why,” he asked again, “do you want to learn the way of killing?”
“I’m a warrior.”
“I see no war,” the monk said. “I see only a human, and some trees. Tell me, lord, where is your war that you want so much?”
He left Sen with that, pondering his question.
Sen went back to his mat again. The day stretched on, wet and wilting. At some point, he must have fallen asleep, for when he startled, jolting up, Jobo was on the path before him.
“Tell me, why have you come? For the teaching, or the clothes?”
“What?”
“How we adorn ourselves.”
Sen blinked, confused. “The teaching,” he said. “I don’t care about your clothes…”
The crow monk shook his head. “When I say, ‘clothes’, I am not speaking of our clothes. Perhaps one day, you’ll be able to understand your own thoughts, and avoid thinking in binary ways. Your mind is caught in the illusion of good and evil.”
With that, the crow monk walked off into the woods.
After a moment of indecision, Sen followed him again. Followed for an hour, high into the peaks of the Blue Woods and the mountain. Blazing sun and cool shade, dappled shadows, insects buzzing in the air. Another hour passed; Jobo kept walking.
Finally, he stopped.
“One spirit, two souls,” he said. “That is the first thing to understand.
There is the wild soul. Violent, selfish, full of strength; and the tranquil soul, healing, compassionate, selfless and flexible.
They are reflections of each other. If you lean too hard into the strength and fury of your angry soul, it will take over.
If you lean too far into the tranquil soul, you lose the will to act. You must balance them.
“I can teach you the techniques to reach inside the mirror of yourself. And draw from your spirit-energy as needed. But there must always be a return to balance. If you trigger your energetic soul, you must return to peace with your tranquil soul.”
“How do you do that?”
“Through your action. It is the way of positive and negative. If you take, you must then give. If you harm, you must then heal. There are different ways we do this.”
“Like what,” Sen asked.
Jobo gave him nothing. “I cannot teach that which you will not learn.”
He walked on, in silence, until they reached the Godspath once again.
“Please,” Sen said, remembering the question. “The teaching.”
“Go home,” the crow monk said, and shut the door.
As night fell, Sen saw faint light in the woods where the other crow monks had gone, as though someone were holding torches of blue flames, only no one was there.
He followed the lights to a stream, where he saw, far off, a faint glow hovering over the water, drifting down the bend. It seemed to flicker over the trickling current; it looked like the lights were dancing.
What was his lesson? He turned it over in his mind, determined to figure out what he had to do, to meet Jobo’s terms.
So he sat and meditated on it. He stopped asking, but he didn’t leave. He waited at the side of the gate, as, each day, the monks came and went about their duties, trekking down the mountain to the local outvillages, collecting alms.
He didn’t see their master, Jobo, however. He remained inside the temple gates. Sen didn’t demand, or beg, from the crow monks anymore. He simply nodded to them, and once or twice even smiled, as they passed.
He settled back on his small square of cloth to resume his sitting.
I won’t give up, he’d told himself. They will take me, they will.
But time dragged on, and the seasons changed, and the wind grew cold and harsh.
The leaves began to turn. He worried he wouldn’t have the resolve to wait them out.
Then, one morning, bright with autumn cold, he turned from his small pallet outside the monastery, shivering and noticing the frost. The gate opened. Jobo appeared.
“It’s cold,” he said.
Sen stirred. He had no demands left, too tired to uphold the facade. “You can have my blanket if you want.”
The crow monk smiled. “The teaching,” he asked at last, “or the clothes?”
“None,” Sen said.
Jobo cocked his head. “Then what is a warrior doing in the mud?”
This time, he was ready. This time he had an answer.
“Learning,” he said.
Jobo held a bucket out for him to take. “Then learn.”
When he walked back to the temple, he left the gate open behind him. Sen scrambled to his feet.
“You have stolen from good people in these hills,” Jobo said. “You will start by repaying them.”