They’re with me now, she thought.My family. My village, old Goro and Koroku, Otsu and Jobo and the monks, and Sen. They will always be with me. We’re on the road now. We’re gonna make it.And she thought,Well, that’s all right.She felt herself receding, pulling back. The gods were with her still; perhaps they always would be. She felt something in herself float off, into the wide, white arc of snow on the hillside, and the trees and the storm-colored horizon beyond. She could hear voices now. There were people all around her, an army moving out. Among them, she was alone.
Atsu came running, and when she saw her smile, Rui felt she could find a new family without giving up the old. Maybe that was all right, too. She stood in the pale brown of the sunlight as it rose somewhere behind those clouds, behind the dead sky and the world. And in the distance, she triedto see Sen as he was that day, when he walked with a spring in his step, and lay in the grass, and said,There’s nothing wrong with who you are.
Now Sen was riding away. He had his cousins and his retainers all around him, bannermen at his side. But to Rui’s eyes, among the cohort of the clan, Sen looked lonely. Around his neck, he wore his jewel; Rui touched the one around her own. There were flowers in his hands. A breeze sliced past. His horse jittered, and the petals flew off in a scatter beneath the wind.
I’ll always know you’re out there, Sen had told her once. It felt so long ago.I know you’ll be there. Now, Rui heard his voice again.Find me, Rui. Whatever happens, come back and find me.
The horses were receding now. The first ranks started on the road. Rui lingered on the little hill by the plum tree, with its small buds already starting to open, spots of color among the frost. She watched the soldiers curse and joke as they packed their belongings into canvas sacks, porters hurrying around. Tents had been struck, cooking fires doused, and over the entire encampment she could hear the sound of the army slowly lumbering to life. The earth seemed quieter; the snow was melting. There were birds in the air, and when she turned to the road, where Atsu was waving from the tents, she saw a flower budding from the frozen earth.
“I’m coming back,” she said at last, whispering the words to herself, or her friend, or the gods. “I’ll come back to you. I promise.”
CHAPTERFIFTY-ONE
Demons
Yoji Year 1
Spring
The girl wandered alone.
It was dusk. The field had emptied. Too late for stragglers, all lay still and silent; the hunters, such as they were, had long gone home. Hard-bitten earth lay trampled in haste. Carrion circled in the smeary sky, ash on frost-kissed puddles and the morning’s rain. Cold.
She walked the footpaths among the dead and dying, passed the broken spears and arrows on the ground. She moved through mist, a low sun failing over clouds, and a sky still open to the west. Behind her, a full, dark rain threatened to overrun the fields.
She wandered for quite some time. The dead were all around her; she paid no mind. It had rained here once already, an icy rain, a rain that marked the end of winter and the coming of another year: spitting, gray, unremarkable. Now, the day had shifted and recoiled on itself; another rain would come. The field had turned to mud. Wet and treacherous, it was filled with bodies, corpses half-buried and contorted where they fell. A battle had occurred here, not too long ago.
She walked slowly, stepping from one thick-muddied spot to the next. The dead would never bother her. She knew she shouldn’t be here, knew that something deep inside her heart was wrong. But she wasn’t in her ownworld anymore. She walked as though she had no idea where she was, as if she had no clue as to the violence that had taken place. She might have been someone’s daughter on her way to market for some eggs. An icy gust whipped past; she shivered. Her thin tunic flapped about her shoulders. She tiptoed lightly over mud, and as she took one careful step after the next, she began to sing to herself, mumbling the words off-key.
One little step, two little steps
Not quite day, not night yet
Twilight hour as the sun goes down
Twilight falling on the little river town
One more step, and one more step
Make your way home
an’ get in safe before
The hour, the hour
of the ghosts
Finally she stopped, toes squelching. She looked up: clouds lay heavy above her. She looked to the side: nothing that could move. Everything was dead.
Well, almost everything.
“Soon it will be spring,” she announced, to no one, and no one answered. “Maybe it will rain.” Then walked on, singing in her tiny voice. “One more step, one more step… The hour of the ghosts…”
A wind blew, harsh, biting. She didn’t mind. She hop-skipped a path across the corpses as the light fell. It was like she was running toward the dark.
“What’s that?” the first man said, sniffing.
Two survivors, foot-soldiers with the Keishi butterfly still clinging to their ragged sleeves. Cold breeze billowed through the field, disturbing corpses all around them. They’d spent the better part of the evening trying to stay out of sight. There were roving bands out there, horsemen who sought stragglers to kill. They’d managed to help each other to the edge of the reed-fenced field, looking for shelter, and now sat bickering and murmuring as they stripped the bodies of what valuables they could find.
