Chapter Twenty-Three Rui
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Rui
Trust the gods, they’d said. And she’d tried, she really had.
But it was hard to see what good might come, what the purpose of it was, when such a nightmare seemed to have been burned into her spirit.
A god like a splinter between the souls of life and death.
It cut a shard in her, leaving her feeling neither whole nor injured, but half awake, half here and half not-here, as though the god or their effects had already begun to pull her from this realm and into their own.
What am I going to do?
“There’s a cloud over my life,” she said to Jobo when he returned.
“It’s been there since I was born, since they found me and Sen in the house, and took us away so we wouldn’t be killed.
Nothing ever goes well…” Her eyes brimmed with tears.
“I should’ve never tried, I should’ve just been happy in that attic over the stables, and none of this would have ever happened… ”
“You cannot say what may or may not have happened,” Jobo told her. “Regardless, it did happen. You cannot change it.” He’d been strangely quiet, and she remembered his haunted face when he’d tried to listen for the gods. Something’s coming.
“The only thing to do is live your life,” he said. “One step before the next. It’s the only way.”
“The way to what?” she asked. “I pray and pray, and I never get any answers.”
“When you pray,” Jobo said, “true faith is not about expecting something in return. It’s about belief. And your respect for the numinous forces of the worlds, the gods and the things we cannot see.”
“My heart hurts.”
“And I am sorry.” She realized he was angry, barely holding it all in. “The god Hososhi came to you for a reason,” he said. “But we cannot expect for them to tell us what it is. We must make peace with that.”
“Easy for you to say. I have to live with it.”
“That,” Jobo said, “is the meaning of faith.”
Cursed, she thought. I was cursed before I did any of this. I was cursed before that day with the guard, the sword I stole, the metal in my hand. I was cursed before I was born.
A wave of pain flashed through her. She grimaced; her heart pounded.
She tried to rise. She stumbled. With lightning reflexes, Jobo caught her fall, pressing a hand against her forehead and feeling her pulse.
“This illness is your body reacting to the god,” he said, “the splinter in your heart. And it is growing.”
She went to the window to smell the rain. Finally, she found her cloak; the rough hemp felt good against her skin, solid and real, unlike these feelings of anger and loneliness mixed together. “I need to go outside,” she said. “I need to breathe.”
She walked for an hour, wandering the woods of the Godspath, staying away from the trail that led up to Kannagara but not wanting to return to the village just yet.
She pushed through the undergrowth, got lost in the shadow of the sugi trees.
She didn’t know where she was going. She found herself staring at the familiar curve in the trail, and went to her shrine at the edge of the Godspath, where O-ine always waited, to listen to the subtle sounds of the woods and its spirits as they came out to watch her, this strange girl with the red-brown hair who didn’t fit in anywhere.
Who felt so alone.
She passed the ring of woven grass and branches, into the sacred space.
She heard thunder, a storm on its way. The small shrine lay at the base of a great cryptomeria tree, but when she approached, the echoing laughter of the Hososhi came back, deafening her, and she fell, a fierce pain shooting through her limbs.
As though a thousand paper-cuts sliced themselves across her body, as though she’d been slashed by invisible knives.
She cried out, feeling them criss-crossing her arms, her hands, her face, blood-thin lines cutting into her; when finally she looked up, her skin was untouched, but the pain remained.
“What’s happening…” she muttered. Her skin felt on fire. Something burned in her chest. She thought she saw someone floating in the air above her, a specter, a shadow of the god.
Hososhi. The god of the barrier between this life, and the next.
Her vision wavered; the air seemed to distort with heat. Shadows talked to one another in the branches.
The god appeared.
“This is your future,” they said. “This.”
She saw it instantly. She saw herself, her own body lying on the bed, in old Goro’s hut; the body of another, of Lady Iyo, struck by two arrows like small thorns.
Saw Sen arguing with the others in the keep.
Saw Jobo, working over her, watched him try to heal her, from a strange place, floating in the ghostly air.
She saw herself, delirious, racked with pain.
The world and all within it faded from her sight.
In the darkness, the Hososhi came again.
They loomed above her, their cavernous voice reverberated through her bones.
“A demon has broken the bounds of this earth,” they said.
“Daiaku. If this demon is to succeed in its murderous path, thousands will lie dead in its wake, and all of humanity will suffer. Ten, one hundred, one thousand years from now, the blood of its curse will remain. The earth will begin to die and the war between the gods will resume… And those of you unlucky enough to survive will only have lived to witness the slow death of all the spirits of the world.”
“Help.” She struggled with the words. “Help me…”
But the god vanished, and the world heaved, and when she opened her eyes, Jobo was there, running to her.
“Get back! Away from the shrine!”
“Why…?” she slurred, suddenly feverish.
And Jobo stared at her, eyes wide – like he knew, like he had just realized what had happened. “Tatarigami,” he muttered. “The cursed gods.” Then, firmly: “Come with me.”
He brought her to Tokuon’s diviner, Hassho Tayu, who threw bones into a fire and watched the cracks they made. She whispered to herself. She closed her eyes, cast a sparrow’s skull onto the altar and watched it land. “Not good,” she mumbled. “Not good…”
“Hassho,” he asked. “What do you hear?”
“The gods reveal,” she said, swaying slightly, eyes closed in thought.
“There has been a new vessel. I thought it was gone… haven’t felt it for twenty years, since the time of the uprising.
” She looked at Rui. “Since the time you were born. It disappeared after the fighting. The emperors restored their order, fragile as it is, and the Keishi took power. I kept waiting for it to come back, but it never did…”
“What was it?”
“An onryo,” the old woman said. “A vengeful spirit, summoned by the demon-emperor when they threw him from the throne; who he promised would kill those who took part in his removal from power… She’s back.”
The diviner crouched low. “Sutoh. The demon-emperor. When he was deposed, he became a monk, and cursed the imperial family and those who expelled him. He conjured a giant spirit to bring revenge against the sinners who wronged him…”
She looked at Rui. “Someone has made a deal with the demon-emperor’s spirit, I fear.
Someone who is willing to do anything, to sell their souls, to keep power and stop those who would get in their way.
That is why Hososhi has come… You, Rui, must stop this evil.
Only then will you be free from this curse. ”
“What is the Hososhi?” Rui asked. “What is this god?”
“They watch the endless barrier between our world and the next. And if they have come with a warning, we must not ignore it.”
Rui held her palms against her eyes. Her vision had been blurring, and an ache hammered itself through her skull.
“The Hososhi cursed you for a reason,” the Hassho said. “They want you for something, but we cannot be sure what it is. The gods work in strange ways.”
“They cursed me because I hurt them,” Rui said. “Cursed me to suffer.”
“That may not be the only path,” Jobo said. “You must stay awake now. Have I ever told you the story of my teacher’s teacher, Abai-no-Haruaki?”
She shook her head.
“Once,” Jobo said, “a young monk of Mount Takano, known as Utsui, fell ill with a strange disease. No one had seen its like before; his skin seemed to burn, his spirit in jeopardy. The monks believed it was due to some shadows from his past lives, a mark against his spirit that would not be cured by medicine. Despairing what to do, they called a hermit, Abai-no-Haruaki, to the temple, to divine Utsui’s fortune and find a way to heal him.
Now, Haruaki prayed at the temple and its river-shrines, but he saw nothing but death in Utsui’s future.
He told the monks that if someone was willing to take the man’s place, he could trade their lives, perform a ceremony, and the young monk might survive.
“The monks were stunned. They loved young Utsui, but no one was willing to offer their own life to save his. Finally, an apprentice, hardly older than you, came forward. He was called Seizan, like the mountain. He was not even a monk, just an acolyte, but he stepped forward and offered his life in exchange for Utsui’s own.
“Abai-no-Haruaki accepted the offer. He performed the secret ceremony, and soon the boy Seizan shook and cried in pain. At the same time, the sick monk Utsui opened his eyes. His fever broke. He stood, weak from his long illness, but was healthy once again. His heart welled in gratitude to the diviner, and in awe. But the boy Seizan had paid the price. He lay unmoving, moments from death. Haruaki lowered his arms, ceased his spells, and looked away, struck by the youth’s selflessness.
Utsui cried for the boy who had given life for his, but just then, as the boy drifted into the other world, a great wind blew, and the god of the river rose and appeared before them, voice like a crashing waterfall in the rain:
“‘You offer to give yourself freely to save another,’ the god said. ‘To save one life is to save all lives: let me take your place instead.’