Chapter Fourteen
I startled awake, the building silent and dark. I sat up in bed, my head foggy, and fought to clear my vision. Somehow, I was not surprised to see Aki calmly asleep by my side, the inky jet black pool of her hair spilling over her forehead. I watched her chest move in and out with each breath, the press of her breasts beneath her gown, my eyes tracing down the curve of her side as it dipped into the demure hollow of her waist. I could not help but feel a stir of base emotion, my heartbeat rapid.
Then I heard the footsteps.
I knew whoever approached was trying to be quiet. Long silence of a span of heartbeats followed each soft pad, yet the creak of timber gave soft warning no matter how carefully the intruder moved.
I could not shake the paralysis that gripped me. It felt like even moving my eyes in their sockets would advertise my position. The steps grew closer, step by slow step, and I realized he was drawn to the sound of Aki’s gentle sleeping breath. I tensed my weight on my feet and hands, the floor beneath me protesting alarmingly. The footsteps quickened, I sensed a special determination to them now.
I cast a desperate look towards Aki. Her face was so calm, so innocent, her lips slightly parted. Then, as I looked, she slowly opened her eyes with such deliberate control I knew she had not been asleep at all, but simply waiting for this moment. I saw beneath the long curve of her eyelashes her eyes were damp and glistening.
“I miss you,” she said.
Her words struck away the supports of whatever it was that held my being, for every emotion and urge inside my heart collapsed with a painful compression. The footsteps suddenly closed in a rapid tattoo and Aki flinched, I drew in breath to shout, everything tore away in a rapid swirling as a typhoon descended up the building, yet it was all done with an eerie silence. I felt the buffeting, saw shards of flooring and bedding scatter to the mercy of the destructive wind, yet my ears registered nothing but my ragged breath.
Through the maelstrom, I saw an approaching figure, his cloak whipping furiously at his heels. I was on my feet, fighting to stay upright. Aki was gone. I sheltered my eyes against stinging sand, squinting, trying desperately to find her and at the same time see who approached.
Then I knew. It was Master Masakage. The whole building had been swept away. All that remained was stumps and crushed debris. I fled, stumbling through water up to my knees, the mud sucking at my bare feet, pulling me backwards. Still the entire world was soundless, yet I was not deaf, the rasping of my breath and thump of my pulse loud in my ears. Masakage was close now, without turning I could feel him at my heels. I gave one last terrific struggle to free my feet from the mud -
- and awoke, feeling a very real weight of something atop my chest, crushing breath from my lungs. I bucked and from the way the weight shifted I knew it was something alive, some animal or child, wet and dripping and reeking to its very bones of stagnant river water.
Takatora.
My heart skittered in the chasm of my chest as I gave a heave and Takatora lost his balance and fell away. He gave a tittering laugh, and in the darkness bare feet padded away in a quick run across the tatami floor.
I heaved in a breath, disorientated and frightened, sitting bolt upright upon my futon drenched in rapidly cooling sweat. Wild loneliness of despair mixed with fear, for I keenly felt Aki’s absence. Just as real as Takatora had been, she had been right here, in this room. I found myself shivering, searching every corner of the darkness, fearing the return of Takatora, and aching with wistful agony as I sought for Aki’s ghost.
As my heart slowed I realized the room was quiet, faint moonlight leaking through the window. I pushed aside the heavy covers that lay over my feet and raised myself, my uneasiness making my shoulders hunch in a tight concavity about my chest, and took careful steps to the door.
My feet met with something chill upon the floor. A wet footstep.
I crossed the distance to the door quickly and slid it open to night, almost falling over myself in my haste to flee the darkness of that room. In the winter night, moonlight ebbed and swelled as deep black snow-laded clouds swept across the sky. The night was absolutely still, without even the faintest breath of wind. I had forgotten my shoes, but I hardly felt the cold sharp stones in the soles of my feet.
Was I still in a dream? Everything had that otherworldly quality, where things moved silently and deliberately, as if orchestrated by some invisible hand. The forest surrounding the temple seemed to be breathing, towering shadows of evergreens upon the night sky, the undergrowth heavy with old snow. From one of the other buildings drifted the sound of the plucking of the strings of a koto, sadly haunting and wistful, the notes bending and sighing their regret into the night. It seemed they sung for me, knowing I was an imposter of my own life.
I felt I was moving on a raft in a swiftly flowing stream, that endless sense of motion echoing the dreams of running that plagued my nights. It was then I recalled the first time I had had that dream: the fateful evening when I was hidden in the compartment to spy upon the Hatakeyama family. It made no sense; at the time I had spent most of my life inside the walls of that castle, and before that, only faint memories of my peasant family working the rice paddies in the flatlands - at no point in my life had I been exposed to the forest. Where had that vision come from? I could still remember it even now, and I realized that Yobutomo had given me names to label what I had seen; the majesty of the towering sugi trees entwined with climbing creepers, the bladed fronds of the sasa grass understory like a diminutive audience of bobbing heads, broad leaves of the satoimo creating a vast canopy as wide as a man's outstretched arms. The detail had been incredible, beyond what my earthly eyes had ever seen. Was it not simple lassitude that had made me sleep: had I instead been lured away from my watch by some ethereal power? Whatever the cause, I had been the lynchpin holding everything in balance, and when I failed my duty, I had let fall a cascade of death.
I shook my head. Perhaps I should see it in a different light. Things had been stacked top heavy, ready to tumble into disorder; if it had not of been my failure, then inevitably some other point must have given way. But it took only a little more thought to know I was being disingenuous. If I had warned Master Masakage of the plot, no doubt it would have been thwarted, and everything that followed would surely have been avoided.
I knew what I had to do.