Chapter Sixteen Sen #2
“Because when we ask the gods to do things for us, they require something in return. And sometimes… sometimes, they say yes.”
Jobo’s exuberance had melted away.
“The cost is just too great,” he said. “It is no secret, even children know.”
As he walked off, he clasped his hands around his staff, and softly quoted another of his teacher’s sayings:
“Two monks were arguing over leaves in the wind. One said, ‘The leaves move.’ The other said, ‘The wind moves.’ They argued back and forth but could not agree. The teacher said: ‘Gentlemen! It is not the leaves that move. It is not the wind that moves.’
“‘What is it?’ they asked. ‘What moves?’
“The teacher said, ‘Exactly.’
“The monks were struck with awe.”
With that, he grinned as though he had just imparted the greatest wisdom in the universe, and walked off, whistling a happy tune.
Sen rolled his eyes. “You’ve lost your mind.”
“Good! It bogs me down.”
“You’re infuriating!”
“Am I?”
“Yes!”
“Good!”
The metal rings on Jobo’s staff clinked softly, like bells, and Sen had no choice but to follow him along the trail. After a few moments, Jobo stopped and sat heavily on a log.
“Sit,” he said. “And I will teach you. Every god is all the gods. We’re all just spirits, they say, in different forms. But the imperials in the royal court have become too obsessed with their own imagined history, they’ve started thinking that because of what happened a thousand years ago, they are special, that they can control the gods, as Sora’in did. But she never controlled the gods.
“The old ways have always been different,” he said. “Our predecessors who were born in this land saw things differently than we. The gods they pray to in the capital were not always their gods. People forget this.”
“Then who did they pray to?”
“The mountains. The sky and the rain and the vast oceans around us.
The earth itself. Every being in this world has within it one spirit and two souls, Sen.
Opposing, interrelated elements of life.
The angry soul, vigorous, selfish, full of passion; and the tranquil soul, calm, selfless, full of compassion.
We need both; a unity, of both, is how we make our steps.
“Magic is more simple, and far more difficult, than it seems. Humans cannot do magic, so we must make requests for the spirits to grant things on our behalf… if we give them what they want. That, of course, has some major consequences. Magic means one thing: we ask the gods to do something for us. And yes, the problem is, sometimes they say yes.”
Sen sat with this for a while, thinking. Above them, the branches of the great trees creaked and shifted, teasing each other like so many soft hands reaching for a blue-lit sky. “Teacher,” he asked. “What really happened to my family?”
“You know the story of the war.”
“I know we were allied to the Keishi. I know they helped Goshira take the throne. Then they turned on us. My father tried to stop them, that’s why he was killed. That’s why we’re exiled.”
“It was more complicated than that.” Jobo’s eyes had gone cold.
“Goshira fought against his brother, Sutoh, for the throne.
Your two families supported him. They banished Sutoh, and he became obsessed with dark magic.
His daughter died. He vowed revenge. Some say he went mad, bitter with rage…
Some say he became a demon. If we ever want to prevent something like that from happening again, it will be up to each of us, individually, to fight for it.
The sins of the past lie on our shoulders.
And it will be our individual healing that adds together. Nothing more.
“What this means is that the warrior’s lot is not a good path to enlightenment,” Jobo continued.
“Sins in this life carry over to the next. And what is our job, we warriors, what is our whole existence, but to be the ones who sin? We kill. There is nothing good about that. And yet, that is who we are. So we are condemned to be reborn as sinners again. And again after that, with every incarnation. This is why so many look for solace in the new religions. They’re searching for another path to enlightenment.
Because they know living a good life is beyond them.
It’s something they hope to see in others, but which they will never have.
So they sit, and they say their mantras, and they pray. ”
“They think saying the same dumb words over and over again will bring enlightenment?”
“How do you know it won’t?”
“Sounds like it’d make you lose your mind,” Sen said.
And that’s when Jobo smiled. “Enough for today. Let us go home again, before it gets dark.”
That evening, he found Rui sweeping the gate. The edge of the Godspath lay before them, dappled like emeralds in sunset, and when they walked back toward the dormitory, the Godspath trees shivered in the fading light. Soon they saw, above them, a stream of stars.
“Look,” Sen said. “The heavenly river.” They walked the path a few moments more. “You know, the autumn festival is coming up. I was wondering, maybe after practice, I thought if you would want to go?”
Rui smiled. “What would we do there?”
“I don’t know. The whole city’s gonna be there.”
“But not the crow monks.”
“Come,” Sen said. “They’ll let us. It’ll be fun.”
She gave a shrug. Sen fell to a silence, and they walked together, closer than before.
Things had changed, since that day on the trailside in Kitano, since they fought at the echo pond.
He didn’t know how to explain it. He felt the conflict, the sadness in her, which matched so well the things he felt inside himself.
He knew that, out of all the people of the world, if things went wrong, the only person he would go to, and seek help, was her.
Slowly, softly at first, he began to hum a few notes from one of the common songs, a tale of love between two children-of-the-sky. He paused, laughing at himself, as she watched and smiled back.
“How do you know that song?” Rui asked. “It’s a lowborn song.”
“Everyone knows ‘The Magpie’s Wing’,” Sen said. He lifted his voice for the last, most famous verse:
The autumn princess was so sad
Her lover fell beyond the sky…
Oh, the magpies, the magpies…
She cried so much, the magpies saw her
And their hearts did ache, they made an offer
To carry the autumn princess across the river
The bridge of heaven
To meet the sky lord’s daughter again
Let no rain come
Let no rain come
Let no storms wash them all away
Let no rain come
For the tears of Akihime
In the end, with the words drifting off, sure as fireflies, sure as the setting sun, he fell to silence. “I…” He stopped. Bashful, suddenly off balance again – as if he’d just exposed too much, as if he’d shown his heart. He said: “Anyway… it’s just a thought.”
“We should probably be getting back,” she said.
Another moment passed, then another, and Sen realized she was lingering, unable to say what she really felt, what she thought, or what she feared. It was the hardest thing of all.
“It was just a dumb idea,” he said.
“Sen,” she told him. “I’d love to.”
But even then he saw that something else was weighing on her, hanging over her, a shadow on her thoughts.
“Why don’t you go on ahead of me,” she said. “I’ll catch up later.”
“You sure?”
“I… have some things to do first,” she said.
He’d wanted to believe that Rui had left the whole incident behind her, but that was wishful thinking.
You couldn’t leave something like that behind.
It would always have an effect, and Rui was affected.
She was quieter now, more subdued. The events of the past year had changed her.
She could still be hot-headed, but at the same time, something, yes, felt changed.
A pallor lay across her heart. It didn’t fit the story of herself that she’d been telling to herself, he knew, didn’t fit her conception of who she was – and yet it happened. How do you come back from that?
“I’m not who I thought I was,” she’d told him, months before. “I don’t know what I thought, but not this… never this.”
“It’s all right,” Sen said now, and fell quiet, feeling an emptiness within his words. This, he thought; these hollow words, inadequate. Rui shook her head, tried a smile, and walked along the path.
“It is what it is,” she said.