Chapter Fifty Rui
CHAPTER FIFTY
Rui
The sound of a waxwing drifted lightly through the window.
The girl rolled onto her side, feeling the rough-spun wool over her body, the cooling caresses of the breeze against her shoulder.
She lay awake until the sun had finished coming up, and saw two birds beyond the frame.
It wouldn’t be long before the day turned whole and shining, and crisp with winter, bright and cold, with light too sharp for tired eyes.
Then, she started to remember.
She turned, shielding herself from the light, the dawn that had come.
She wanted to go away. From this place, from the pain, from the world itself.
From the weight of being here, still, somehow still alive, when so many others were not.
The light cut in; it made her bleary. Somehow the shards of sun made her want nothing more than to dive back down to bed and return to the nothingness of sleep.
But she wasn’t nothing. She was here. She was hurt. She was alive.
How is this possible?
On her chest, above her heart, she found a long scar, the length of her palm. Exactly where she’d stabbed the demon, and killed them both.
Where the god Hososhi had stood in the way.
What if I die first? she’d asked.
I won’t let you, the Hososhi had said. You still have a role to play.
She pulled on the wool coat and traveling pants that the old farmer and her husband had given her, folding the pleats as best she could, tying the sash. Dressed, she stood before the window, took a breath, and looked to the sun, closing her eyes, seeing if she could feel its warmth.
The god in her heart was silent now.
She could barely remember what happened after she struck the demon.
She wasn’t sure what was real, and what was the remnant of a dream: she remembered the pain, she remembered the voice, the immense and other-worldly sound of the Hososhi that came from the earth itself, but she couldn’t remember what they said.
She remembered the spear, lancing through her enemy’s heart.
Remembered how it cut through hers.
Remembered the choice now, laughing, and how she felt something bigger than herself, bigger than the world, pull the spear from her hands and away.
Then nothing. The world went black. The Hososhi smiled.
She’d come to in a hollow at the edge of the riverbank, half-hidden by the camphor trees along the steep, silty shores. Snow fluttered down. It kissed her cheek, mingling with the saltwater of her tears.
Why am I still here?
Cold lay in a dense layer over the riverside. She shivered.
Keep walking, her teacher said.
So she did. She found the village just south of the temple gates, little docks where they tied up boats for trade. She walked back to the temple, as if in a daze, found her way to the little garden, the open yard where she fell.
It was empty now. In the place where her teacher had lain, the ground seemed dark, ashen.
She found the old prayer rings that had once adorned his staff.
Two iron feathers remained, half-buried now.
She pulled them from the mangled rings; they were painfully cold.
The two feathers, representative of the twin souls of the crow monk, fit in her hand.
She tucked them into her tunic and moved on. She cried.
The clearing was scorched black where the demon had died. There was no trace of the bodies. Only the spear remained. The blade, long as her arm, still bright and shining, its wooden shaft now broken near the tang.
Once, she had lived in a little village not much different to this. Once, she’d had a home. A barn, a stable, an inn. It wasn’t much, but it was something. Now what did she have?
The snow coming down, and the heat of the fires in the temple by the river, orange, red, and white. It was too much. She stumbled to her knees again.
That was how they found her. Keishi soldiers.
Someone shouted. They’d seen her, they were coming.
She didn’t want to fight anymore.
She never wanted to fight again.
She had no time. She rose, clutching the spear.
She threw herself off the high stone wall and into the river, and was washed away.
Late: the sun hung low over the west. She hid in a hollowed scoop of rock beside the river, under earth and gnarled roots and a twisted apricot tree that rose like a curling hand into the sky.
“Hello?” A voice came through the dream, pulled her back to earth. An old farmer and her husband.
“Heavens, it’s another one.”
“Kouzeon be merciful,” the man prayed.
The woman said, “She’s still alive.”
They dropped their bundled wood, started climbing down the rocky bank toward her. They called out, but she was barely aware. “Hey! Hey, girl! Hang on!”
She felt the man’s arms lift her. up. No’in, she thought. She struggled, tried to speak:
“What happened to the monks?”
“Dead,” the old woman said. “They’re all dead.”
Rui sank into the blackness once again.
Once, in her old life, she went to no’in houses where children lived, and they danced at her approach. She was an orphan, raised by nuns. She knew what it was to be alone.
Once, in her old life, she told the children stories. They laughed. They sang, with her. Scuffed toes, dirty cheeks.
Once, she’d loved those stories.
Now, walking the long road to Tose, she wondered why.
They were stories of comedy and adventure, the rising of beasts and heroes, of the fight for peace. What peace? she wondered. There was a god in her heart who heard everything she said. A god who saw in all directions.
A god who didn’t answer.
Stories tell us something bigger is possible, she thought. Something powerful, and tremendous as love. Those stories, they showed that such things could happen, in this soul-eating world, even for no’in. Even for those who felt like nothing in their lives was right. Even for those who were lost.
And those who were lost still.
This is the story of your life, Rui Misosazai, her teacher once had said. It’s up to you to live it. There was a god in her heart who saw every variation, a god of the barrier that divided worlds, or brought them together. A god that saw she had a story yet to tell.
She’d never told her story, of being found in Azemichi town. The story of how she was saved. Of the only survivors. Of her and Sen.
As she walked the narrow road, fields expanding before her, she thought, maybe there will be a new ending. Maybe there is a way.
There was a god in her heart who told her, I have a use for you.
There was a god who said, You must always choose.
Well, I choose life, she’d told them, in anger and frustration, and in fear. I have a curse in my heart just as powerful as any god. It will never go away.
You have a role to play, the god had said. This isn’t over yet.
She walked the path until it met the larger road into Kiseda. She saw the smoke from cooking fires rising dimly overhead. She saw assorted flags, Gensei, Zusho, Tokeishi, Yamana, and Andachi, flying high.
The trees above Kiseda had begun to bloom already, unfolding from their winter sleep. What was it she felt? A shifting in the world. A moment where everything felt at rest.
She once sat at the edge of a pond in the mountains, water so still it seemed to be outside of time, unmoving: a door into another kind of world. A place where her family could speak. Could tell her they were there.
She once sat at the edge of the pond, and dreamed. Dreamed that she would find happiness, in her heart. A way, a place, that told her she was loved. But the world had other plans. It set her on this path. She could not see which direction it would go.
But she was still here.
The god was right. To save one life was to save the lives of all the world. There were lives she still could save. She didn’t know how. She didn’t know what would happen. But she could choose, she could try. She would. She had to.
Children once laughed, and danced about her, wanting stories. I’m only young, she’d say. I’ve told all the ones I know.
We’ll have to make our own.
Late winter, melting snow and muck. Two lonely birds carved an arc through raw granite-colored sky, and she walked among a group of civilians, in the fields outside Kiseda. Ahead, the army was moving out.
“Rui!”
She turned to find Atsu skipping through the crowd toward her. “Praise the Awakened,” Atsu gasped. “You’re still alive. I can’t believe it.”
Rui fought the tightness in her throat. “Atsu… Me neither…”
She’d spent three days with the farmer and her husband, three days of healing and trying to forget. The god came back to her, in dreams. A tangle of wood and gnarled roots: Bird-child, they said. You did well.
She’d saved the spear. Removed the mounting, extracted the long blade from its hilt. The tang, almost the length of the blade, was undamaged. She wrapped it in smooth silk, stored it in a long cloth pouch across her back.
She’d followed the road south, then east, along the foothills, toward Kiseda, and the Tose road.
Now she met Atsu, her light embrace. “I’m glad you made it too.”
Atsu took her hand, led her back toward the camp. “Myorin will be overjoyed. She never wanted to believe that you were…”
“Where is she?”
“With the Hoshiakari. He’s in the command now,” said Atsu. “The red guard…”
Rui slowed. On the other side of the highway, Gensei generals were riding forth.
And there he was.
“Look.”
Tall and terrible on their warhorses, they rode.
Armor of every color, the most beautiful bows.
A woman rode at Sen’s side, regal and pure, head high near the Gensei crest, a crescent fan of bamboo leaves under a gentian flower.
Rui had met that woman, the night before the battle.
Kai Gekko’in, Sen’s sister. Rui had thought she seemed so sad.
But she looked a different person now. Brave, impenetrable.
She looked like royalty.
Sen, in red armor, had white flowers in his hands.