Chapter Thirty-Eight Rui #2
It was a mistake, and she knew it, and didn’t care. And in a moment, his hands had gone to her shirt, folding it open, and Rui pulled his robe apart, her hands brushed skin and he flinched, said, “Rui, careful.”
She said, “I won’t hurt you.”
Sen fell back against the cushions with a gasp. Rui moved tenderly, feeling the warmth across her cheeks, her skin, pressing herself against him, keenly, flutteringly aware of the heat of him and the erection between his legs. “Rui,” he muttered. “What are we doing?”
But he was already reaching for her. Slipping a finger through her sash while his other hand pulled her recklessly harder, and she just said, “Oh hell.”
She didn’t care who saw them. She didn’t care about anything.
Not anymore. Not the war, not the god inside her; no, only the pulse inside her.
Can you feel it? she wondered. Can you? She slipped her hand in, closing the gap between them, molding them together like soft-drenched flowers in the rain.
Her heart ached sweetly, and she let it this time, she let it all fall away, in the smell of him, the feeling of his hands, her hands, his skin, his hair, and hers.
She wanted to scream. She wanted to shriek and shake and drown in herself, be cast off into some other world.
Then he faltered. Hesitating, he withdrew.
Don’t stop, she wanted to say. Don’t stop now.
It would be so easy, to just let go and let it happen, and let them become whatever they would, whatever this was, whatever – and be in it, the little fluttering thing inside her chest – he felt it too – and let the rising take them both.
Instead, it was over. The sky darkened, the sun set; he pulled away. He sat with his head in his hands.
“Sen…”
“Myorin’s moving out,” he said, after an eternity.
Something changed in her then. Closed off. It was like a door, between them, sliding shut.
“To the temple,” she said, sitting. “I know.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I can’t… just…”
“It’s all right,” she said; but it wasn’t.
He sniffed. “How’s your heart?”
“Hurts.”
He looked away. “I wish… things could be different. I wish we could just…”
“Tell me something,” she said. “What are you so afraid of?”
It took him a long time to answer. And when he did, she could barely hear his words. “Too much. Too much. They just won’t let me…”
He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to.
Finally he stirred himself. “Myorin’s moving out,” he said again, mumbling like he felt useless.
“I know. Your sister’s there. At the temple. The god, they showed me. The bridge, the wells… I saw them there. They’re in trouble. The Keishi are getting closer – I-I can feel it. The Hososhi makes me…” Rui broke off.
“What is it?”
“Come with us.”
“I can’t.” Sen turned. And it hurt, but it was not unexpected. “Tokuon has given me my own fighting group. I’m to lead his left wing on the march… a hundred warriors on horseback…”
“You have responsibilities.” Rui knew this would happen. She knew…
“You start to move differently, with them.” He bent his head. “It’s different. They expect me to be…”
“What?”
He didn’t answer.
Rui, too, now looked away, gazed at her hands, the bruises there, the broken skin.
Gazed at nothing; what was there to say?
She tried to read the silence that lay so heavily between his words, the thoughts, the voice that would not come.
She tried to understand what he so struggled to find within himself, to speak, to share.
I’m scared; that was what he hadn’t said.
But his clothes, his sword; he was kijin now.
He wasn’t allowed to be scared. Wasn’t allowed to say it.
“Do you…” He hesitated, seeking something, seeking hope. “Do you ever think about a moment that changed your life? That… could have made things different? I do… sometimes.”
He laughed, then, at the enormity of it all. “All the things I could’ve done… or could’ve done differently… What I could’ve changed… And I wonder if things would’ve been different. If it would’ve made them change.”
He stopped. “I’m sorry. That I left. That I abandoned you.”
Rui said, “You didn’t.”
“It was a shitty thing to do.”
“Whole thing’s shitty,” Rui said after a time. “It’s all right.”
She kept saying it, but it wasn’t true.
“I can’t undo it,” he said. “But I can tell you I’m not gonna let them get me like that again. I’ll be better. They won’t break us, all right?”
There was so much fear, Rui thought, fear of others, of the war, the unknown. The general, pervading fear of being lost, of feeling, in some deep way, that there was nothing you could do about it. That you had to let it happen.
It was a fear of change, and at the same time, fear that nothing would.
It came and went in waves. It showed itself in times she’d least expect. This, too, Rui thought, this is how we survive.
“They put me on the field,” he murmured, repeating himself. “Tokuon. We’ll be a day behind you. But you – the Jibashiri – you can get there first. This is our chance.”
He smiled now, vague and distant, and, yes, afraid. He’s worried, Rui thought. He’s trying to believe it all, himself.
“Then let’s take it.”
It was an act of bravery, she knew, finding a way to believe when nothing told you that you should. When you had to find it in yourself, because it was nowhere else. “Let’s do it,” she said again. “Let’s do this thing.”
We have each other, she wanted to say. And it meant: things will start looking up. We can do what we want to do. We can do anything.
“Oh, this place.” Sen sighed. “This fucking wild land…”
“What’s that?”
“It’s just like us.”
There’s an ocean inside you, she thought, just as wide, and real, and vast as any other.
Just as huge as the river I could see from home.
She knew because she had those memories in her, those little hardships and those joys.
They carry everything, they remind me who I am.
Who I can be. It brought the past with it, and sometimes she wanted it to come, wanted it to drown her out.
She felt she might be washed away, but tonight, she wanted to be washed away. Tonight, it felt good.
They went outside, and even the night seemed warmer now, warm enough to be free. The dry, chill cold and the patchy clouds and the whispers of a breeze, and somewhere up there, the gods were watching. She felt the twinge of pain again and remembered the Hososhi. Sen, too, was cursed, they’d said.
But tonight, her god was silent. Tonight, there was just the two of them, who’d been found together by chance, and who, by chance, had found each other once again. Who’d saved each other, in different ways.
Sen was the closest thing to family she’d ever had. Closer than Koroku, closer than the crow monks themselves.
“You and me,” he’d told her, once, at Kannagara, his young face bright and shining, as they stole off with a jar of rice-wine and got drunk under a harvest moon.
You and me. It’s you and me against the world.
We’ve got to look out for each other.
I’ll always know you’re there.
Now, she felt those words again. She saw them in his eyes, his glance.
She felt, for this instant, somehow closer than family, closer than love.
In it, she felt wild. This was someone who would always be there, who would say, We can do anything.
Who said, We don’t have to be what they make us.
Who said, We can run. Who said, We can sing, we are drunk with it, the power of knowing that you, Rui, you out of everyone in this fragile life, you have my back.
“It’s us,” he said again, now, quietly. “It’s all of us.”
Here, under the heavy clouds and the wind and smell of frost, Rui felt a shard of hope. Hope that, as long as they could find a way back to one another, they would make it through. “It’s us,” she echoed. Us.
No one can tell us what to be.
The wind blew clear and cold around them. The clouds began to brighten with a glow.
“Rui,” he whispered. “Look. The moon.”
She smiles at us, Rui thought.
She fell asleep with the world still spinning beneath her, feeling the earth on her back and the air on her skin. She fell asleep with Sen in his embroidered cloak clutching her left hand, and whispering into her right.
She thought, I’m free.
And later, the clouds pressed down, glowing faintly, and she thought back to that one night under the stars, the tips of trees, the rising of the moon.
Remembered falling stars that came from dark recesses of the cloud, a blanket hanging heavily above their heads, rain and fate entwined; remembered the reflections on the water, small, shimmering things, that rose up in unison to meet the real falling lights in the air above, and the starry water that always seemed, in those few moments, to be made of glass.
It felt as though the world and every living creature on it was taking pause, a small scrape of time to halt their hard-fought lives and stand or sit or lie down facing that black sky, their eyes turned up to heaven, to see what the lights might have to say.
In the darkness, she felt a soft hand on her own. Sen was watching her, and he had tears in his eyes too.
“You’re gonna come back,” he whispered. “Right? You’re gonna come back.”
“’Course I am. You know I’ll come back.”
“You better.” He tried for a grin, gave her a knuckle to the shoulder, and took her hand again. “You better.”
All lay quiet, and motionless but for the breeze, and it was as if they were the only two things that existed, her and Sen, in all the world.
She said, “I will.”
But as she saddled her horse the next morning, the hills lay chill with mist and fog, and the Hassho’s voice came to her again.
This curse was not meant for you. It will consume you. It will spread into your heart and make you a monster, and then, child, it will take you too.
The only way to stop it is to die.
She saw the shadowy giants, the pilgrims of death, walking the skies above the world. Each night, they shifted, spoke in murmured voices at the bounds of her perception, like far-off thunder, floating at the edge of sight.
She could see the ghost, the demon, every time she closed her eyes. She was afraid to sleep again. She was going to the wells, that was the destination. She would soon be there, but who knew what she’d find?
She saw other ghosts, too, flicking past, just like the giant gods, but these were smaller, shades of a little boy and girl she could just make out, but never reach. The image of a bridge lay heavy on her mind.
The sisters were ready. The horses were prepared.
Sen had come to watch them go.
With fast mounts and fewer numbers, the Jibashiri could make it to the temple by sundown, but Tokuon and the rest of the army would need another day at least. If the fighting began before that, there was no telling how long they’d last.
They better hurry, Rui thought. And, with a flash of sadness: Once again I’m going away. When can I stop leaving places, and start returning?
She glanced back to find Sen watching in his colors of purple and indigo over white. He’d never looked so proud, she thought, nor so beautiful.
She left with a horrible feeling that she’d never see him again.