Chapter Nine Sen
CHAPTER NINE
Sen
Sen had been with the crow monk for three months, and had yet to touch a sword.
“We’ll get to it,” the crow monk said.
“When?”
“When you’re ready.”
He stopped at that. His master offered nothing more, only clasped his hand on the prayer staff and moved on down the trail.
They were high on the Godspath, carrying water back to Kannagara. Usually, Sen would do this task alone – his duties were to gather firewood, carry water, and clean the temple with the monks – but today Jobo had decided to join him.
“Are you in such a hurry, now, to kill?” he asked. “First lesson: I will tell you about a strange experience I had, when my eyes began to open.”
“I came to learn to fight,” Sen said. “Not listen to lessons of faith.”
“What’s the difference?”
“I’m a warrior.”
“And you already know how to fight. Why waste precious time to train you in something you’re already good at?”
“I’ve seen what you can do,” said Sen. “You have powers.”
Jobo chuckled. “Many people think that way.”
“Then why am I here, if you’re not going to train me? You said, ‘learn’.”
“I did. You want to be a warrior? Want to kill? What do you think a warrior is?” Jobo trudged on a moment, and said:
“I learned, after I lost everything in the great earthquake, people thought the Serpent had come again to shatter the dragonfly islands into the sea…
One day, there was an eerie light in the sky, and the earth shook again, and from the east, waves rose higher than mountains and swept themselves across the land.
“After the shaking of the earth, I had a revelation. It was not just the earth that shook, it was the entire universe. I saw: all things contain the universe inside themselves… and I felt it quake, everything quaked, and my body changed; my mind changed in an instant. I saw the source of the Way is love, protection, for all beings… It is not a means to kill and destroy. It is a way of peace. The teachers say, ‘All the deities of the ten-fold universe traverse the path to the one right road. Where does it begin?’”
He pointed with his prayer staff, waiting for Sen to answer. “Come. We’re not there yet.”
The outvillage lay ahead of them, and no’in could be seen, toiling on the paddies for the late harvest.
“We’re here to work,” Jobo said. “Just as we are born, and grow and take our place among the waters of the world: the gentle stalks take their place among the water-beds.”
Sen paused, reluctant. “I’m not a farmer.”
Jobo tapped him on the head with his staff, just hard enough to sting.
“Once, in ancient Souchou, there was a king who called his followers to pay in tribute. One person offered a beautiful young deer from the temples. ‘What a magnificent horse!’ the emperor declared – and, fearing his wrath, the courtiers agreed: yes, it was a fine horse that had been paid. The deer had no say in the matter.”
“What are you talking about?” Sen muttered.
“Such a one who cannot tell the difference between a horse and a deer – what do we call that?”
Sen blinked. He waited.
Jobo bopped him on the head.
“Ow!”
“Your head is full of stars. Hurry up.”
They went the rest of the way out of the Godspath and found themselves in the open river valley of the no’in outvillages that lay dotted around Kitano.
The sun rose high, unmarred by clouds, and about them, in a gentle wind, Sen tasted something like willow sap, fresh herbs, and the late-summer berries that grew along the trail.
He sat by the older farmers as Jobo blessed the fields. A series of benches had been erected, and no’in and ge’in were taking their rest, sipping twig-tea from wooden casks. Others stood ankle-deep in mud at the edges of the paddies, banging drums and keeping rhythm for the song.
“Wanna help?”
Sen looked up to find Rui Misosazai, in the robe and bound-shin pants of farmers, standing before him. She had a bamboo hat on her head, and whatever anger she’d felt that day with the serow seemed to have evaporated. She gave a little bow. “Lord Hoshiakari.”
“I… wouldn’t know how,” Sen said, honestly.
Rui grinned. “Come on.”
For the no’in, harvest-time was almost like a celebration.
She showed him how to brush the stalks, letting excess water drip from the ends; how to cut them, how to tie them into bundles.
“It’s not difficult,” she said, rolled bundles dripping as they hung over their ties.
“Just hard. I guess you get used to it.”
They helped each other pull the bundles onto drying racks, tall triangular structures the shape of sawhorses with long horizontal poles made from bamboo for the bundles to hang.
Rui, being nimble and young, climbed the ladder and caught bundles that a farmer named Koroku tossed; the others formed a chain to pass the remaining bundles along, and Rui hung them upside-down to dry in the sun.
Even the youngest no’in helped. They ran scurrying about, laughing in high voices, small fronds in their hands. A boy showed him an emerald grasshopper, proud as if he’d discovered the turning of the world.
The jangling sound of the bells continued, as did the dun-dunn tapping of the drums. Sen couldn’t believe how these farmers kept the pace they did without any food or drink. Rui smiled at him, briefly, then looked away: he felt a flutter in his chest. What’re you doing? he thought. She’s no’in.
But he smiled back.
Later she joined him on a long oak bench, and sat in silence as the sun went down.
His shoulders screamed at him, his legs ached, and he’d only done half the work of the farmers.
It filled him, somehow, with an immense feeling of satisfaction, of thankfulness – at the town, at the beauty of the fields, the green, bright light, fresh wind in the air; at Rui, for helping.
But something at the end came through to him, a truth he wasn’t sure he knew how to say.
“They said we used to play together, when we were little,” Rui said suddenly. “Do you remember?”
So she knows, he thought. About us. When we were found.
“Do you?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I think I do, but…
” She paused. He felt the fragment of a memory come back, harsh and grating as a splintered oar, fighting itself out of the darkness of his past, like it was trying to remind him of something too; bringing him back to himself from wherever it was that he’d been buried.
Then Rui seemed to remember herself – no’in didn’t speak so casually to someone of status, and a kijin at that. “I’m – sorry. Lord.”
“How come we’ve never met before?”
“I’m no’in,” she said, and gave a shrug, as if that was the only answer there was. “I’m to work the castle now,” she continued. “Your lord-brother. He told me. And I thought that…”
She stopped suddenly, as a shout caught their attention. It was Jobo, trampling along the path.
“Ho! Star-boy!” he called. “Something we must do.”
“The holy must lower their head,” Jobo said, leading Sen to a farmhouse under the shadow of the trees.
“We in this fleeting world, no matter our birth, high or low; we’re all one people.
That’s why they say kings and farmers are the same.
” He drew a long knife from his belt. “Sen. The harvest is done. We must offer something to the gods who have blessed us, and pray their protection for the planting in spring.”
Before them, in a hay-covered pen, lay a beautiful waist-height serow from the woods. The animal blinked as they entered, tied to a stake by a single coiled rope: a lithe, agile body, mottled brown-gray fur, a gentle face with wide, goat-like eyes, long ears, two small horns on its head.
“This animal must die,” Jobo said. “It is up to us to do it.”
Sen balked. “I can’t do that…”
“No? You hunt.”
He thought of the royal men, who killed that serow in the hills: “They’re sacred.”
“You want me to teach you about war. You hunt but you don’t butcher what you catch.
Would you let the lowborn do this work, that you look down on, and then enjoy the flesh?
This is life. All things are sacred. And in the earthly world of animals and beasts…
you must kill. A life must be taken if a life is to eat. ”
He left Sen to kill the animal alone.
The stench, the pale knife in his hand, the fear in the serow’s eyes.
It knew. It bucked against the stall, squealing, kicking at him, and Sen cut poorly, because he’d never killed an animal, not like this, not a creature with no way to escape.
His hands shook, the knife went out of true, and the serow rammed and scampered off, leaving specks of blood on the hay.
Enough of this. Sen thought of those men from the royal city once again, the so-called monks who’d killed a sacred serow for its hide, its skull to mount in trophy.
He fumed at Jobo, at his lessons. Let him kill this if it’s so important.
He threw the knife into the dirt.
But when he went back, declared he wouldn’t kill an animal just to complete his lesson, Jobo shook his head. “You’re a good person, Sen Hoshiakari. But sometimes, I have fears.”
He went to the pen, prepared a cleansing barrier with salt, and found the knife on the hay where Sen had left it. Speaking in low tones, he calmed the serow, eventually getting it to come to him. “You beautiful soul,” he said. “What a wise animal. He hurt you…”
He sang, softly, a song of forgotten love. Then, in one move, he cut across the serow’s throat so quickly that Sen only realized it was done when the body jerked, and a spray of bright red spewed across the stall.
It died in moments.
It died before it even knew.
Jobo didn’t look at Sen. He cleaned the knife; no’in tanners chuffed in, offered a bow, and when he’d washed his hands, Jobo took the no’ins’ in his own. The man and his brawny son hauled the body to their cart.
Later, Sen asked, “I thought it was against the gods for you to take a life.”