Chapter Twelve Rui
CHAPTER TWELVE
Rui
She ran until her legs gave out. Ran from the hollow, and the echo pond, into the woods, brambles scratching at her face. To a rocky turn in the trail, trees all around her and night fading fast. She was panicking, she knew. But there was no choice. They were coming.
He led me here, she thought, he led me to this place and let them find me. She shook, starving, dirty, and afraid.
“Rui, wait!” Sen called, but she didn’t stop.
I’ll never stop. I’ll keep going, I’ll run and run, and take what I have to, and I’ll never come back to this place again. They wanted nothing from me when I was their servant. They want me to be nothing now. They want to preserve their stupid pride.
No. They want justice because you killed a man. You did it. You can’t escape that.
You can’t escape.
She slipped, twisting her ankle, cursed again.
She could see the young guard’s face as the spear went in him.
She could see how the fear, and the pain, had come.
How he fell and his blood spilled on the dirt and polished wood, and it was because of her.
A spirit cut off, because of her. Because of what she’d done.
She wiped tears from her eyes.
I thought I was making something of my life, she thought. That was what she wanted. But it all went wrong. It always went wrong.
I didn’t have a choice.
Dappled moonlight came through the trees. It was colder now, her clothes were nearly frozen. She shivered so badly she could barely walk. Her ankle was on fire, each step an agony.
“Not gonna get far on a broken foot,” she mumbled. But she took another step. And another. And the night wore on.
In the icy dark, she thought of how Sen held out a hand, how she’d refused it, how he’d looked at her with something in his eyes she couldn’t read. Their fight came back, sure as the echo on the water. The little dock, the deepening woods, ice above and below; the light of the moon.
She ran for a time, with no direction. She ran with nothing but the terror at her back. She fell again. Collapsed, gasping at the pain in her foot, and knew: there was no way out. She needed to get out of the freezing, sodden clothes.
She made her way to old Goro’s hut at the end of the village, by the barren hill. She wasn’t sure what she would do. Wake him? Ask for help? But when she found the yard, she saw a heavy cotton overcoat on his clothesline, a pair of pleated pants.
She moved on instinct. Pulled them from the line, saw a paper had been folded underneath the coat.
On it, someone had drawn the image of a bird.
He left these for me.
It was too much. She broke down, sobbing as she ran.
Near the stream, she changed from her old clothes and hurled them down the hill into frozen dirt by the water.
There the creek made a fork, and she took the higher path.
The clothes might keep the hunters off her scent, but it wouldn’t be for long.
At the end, she found a small hollow cave in the side of the great mountain, and hid there, huddled in her stolen clothes. She couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened.
I’ll be cursed to hell. The gods will see what I’ve done…
“The souls keep track of your doings in life,” Koroku told her once, “and bring them to the gods for judgment.”
“The gods don’t judge,” Rui said.
Koroku chuckled. “Don’t they?”
Now, shivering in the darkened cave, only half protected from the snow, she couldn’t help but wonder: What if he was right?
Every spirit has two souls, the old monks said. The wild soul and the peaceful. And the heart of the mind that gives them balance. Will they tear us apart? Will they unite, in one spirit under heaven?
At the cave entrance, the north star shone dimly through a shattered, icy sky.
The world fell still. She had no answers.
And when she cried out, that night, freezing in torment, the gods were silent.
No answers came. Perhaps they never would.
This is what they made me, she told herself. I didn’t mean to do anything wrong…
The boy’s face floated before her. The boy she killed. The small, wet sound from his mouth; the spear sliding through his gut.
He came to her in the freezing night, when she tried to sleep.
He came to her in the morning, in the blood of the small bird she killed for food. “Forgive me,” she whispered. After she ate, she vomited it up again.
Who am I, she wondered, when the world says I’m one thing, but I feel I’m something else? Who will I become, if what the world makes of me is not what I want to be?
It’s too late, she realized. I did it. I killed that boy. I didn’t mean to, but I did. And that will never go away.
This is who I am. These tears, these marks on my spirit. This injured leg. I can’t change the past. But I can change what I do now, I can still be good in the future, can’t I?
What if they won’t let me?
Her leg ached. She woke early the next morning, dizzy, half frozen.
I’m sick. The gods are cursing me. They send me a fever so I’ll die.
The world does what it wants, she thought.
With me, with everyone. Tomorrow is gone, there are just the watchers, the ones who say, You’re no one.
And now, she thought, now there is a young boy who was a guard, who tried to do what they told him; and in her darkest moments she hated him, for being there, for being stupid, for getting in her way.
I didn’t mean to, she found herself mumbling again.
I didn’t mean to. But there was no difference.
What she meant or didn’t mean, it was the same.
Because in him, the boy who slept on earth, who slept in her heart now like a scar, she thought, I see her.
I see the Rui I once was. And I see what the future will be.
She spent another day hiding in the cave, afraid to start a fire. She ate icy winter berries and was sick again. Then, on the third day, she forced herself to rise. She couldn’t bear to think that the other villagers would be punished for her crimes.
What is wrong with us? We all make choices. Why do we do such evil things? Why did this happen? The ghost of him still lingered, waiting, accusing her each time she closed her eyes. I didn’t choose the path I’m on, she thought again. I can’t change the past.
But maybe I can change what I do now.
The gate at Kannagara seemed unoccupied when she approached; she stepped through, as she had so many times before, when she’d gone to the monks and their school. Now it seemed a lifetime ago. To her surprise, the crow monks smiled when they saw her. One started banging on the iron bell.
“Come in, young one,” they cried. “Come in from the cold.”
But there were horses in the courtyard. A glint of light on lacquer: one of Iyo’s warriors came before her, towering on his stallion, armor black and purple and the color of the moon. He stared over an iron mask, sculpted in the figure of a demon-fox with horsehair whiskers. His eyes burned red.
She felt, in his glance, the fate that awaited her, thought, I’m already being judged.
He took off his mask, and she recognized Azamaro, Lady Iyo’s paramour, strongest warrior in the north, with his hands like steel, his eyes like stone.
They said he was a prince of the Iteki, said he worshipped the bear-god above all things.
It wasn’t hard to imagine him a bear-god himself, angry, harsh, and cold.
Yes, she thought, I am being judged.
She said, “I’m sorry.”
His face offered nothing. A commotion brought her gaze back to the gate, where bright white-and-purple flags fluttered about on poles, the banners of Iyo’s son. Hakaru stormed into the temple.
“Go!” he shouted. “Bring her to me now!”
They ran at her with ropes, grabbed her, threw her to the ground, their feet on her back, her face in the dirt.
“Lords, gently!” Old Jiko the crow monk called. But Hakaru would have none of it.
He shouted, “Bring me her head!”
The Kitano soldiers pulled her arms behind her with ropes, forced her head down and made it painful just to breathe. A sword flashed in the chill dead air. She gave a trembling cry.
At last Azamaro spoke. He came forward and said, “Wait,” with such force that they stopped in their tracks. The Taga warrior now removed his helm. She felt his gaze pass over her.
“Bring her to Kitano,” Azamaro said. “The Ogami’in will want to see her.”
Hakaru scowled, but was in no position to go against his elder.
He merely nodded with a jerk, and Rui had time enough to see, before they tied her up, that the great Azamaro hadn’t moved.
He was still staring down at her, impossible to read – a blank, stone wall.
But there was something else now. Something in his eyes had changed.
The second thing she saw, before they threw her to the ground and the icy dirt bit her cheek and split her lip again, was Sen, standing in a corner of the pavilion, with his fists clenched.
Then they hauled her to her feet, re-bound her arms, and threw her into the cart, tying her to a joint before they started down the mountain, along the path to Kitano, the fortress where Hakaru wanted her dead.
It took an hour to tie her to the great tree in the Kitaiji temple yard. Her arms were still bound, but now they coiled her with thick hemp rope from shoulder to hip, and strung her at a height from the branches, leaving her feet kicking and dangling in empty air.
When they looped the thick rope around her, Rui panicked.
Forgetting everything she had decided, everything she thought, she lashed at them, writhing, trying to break free.
She sounded like a wild animal when they brought her up.
Spitting, shouting, screaming at the guards, cursing them, lashing out.
She caught one of them in the knee: a sharp cracking sound and the man fell to the grass with a cry of pain.
Then they hoisted her up, secured her with a counterweight, so that she swung with every movement of her flailing feet.