“That’s what I used to say, too.” Nihira smiled. “I hope you’ll be better than me.” He looked out across the hillside, the grove of whistling pines, and the half-constructed temple on the mountain.
“Whatever happens,” Sen said, “I will come back.”
“Oh,” Nihira said, “I know.”
“I’ll see you soon, Ogami’in.”
“That is my greatest hope,” Nihira said. As Sen turned to go, he called, “Be careful.”
Sen stopped in the open doorway. He’d finished tying his straw coat now, and was about to turn into the rain, where Lord Tokuon and the retainers were waiting. He heard them gathering the horses and baggage in the downpour.
“Always am,” he said, and left his brother to his grief.
CHAPTERTWENTY-FIVE
Rui
Rui saw something dark, something that felt like thunder, in her dreams. She saw a shaded figure, eyes shining with pale fire, holding a baby in his arms; she cried out, for the shadow was coming for her, trying to give the child to her. She stood at the edge of a waterfall, a torrent of water raining down, and a hawk landed lightly on her shoulder.
All she was left with, when she woke, was a vague sense that something – that thunder, that darkness – was coming close. The leaves were falling.
Jobo, as always, sat at the foot of her bed. Tea, in a steaming kettle from the hearth, the air heavy with its warmth. A tinge of smoke. “How’re you feeling?”
“I’m all right,” she lied. His eyes seemed to pierce her with a fire of their own; she looked away. Even now she could hear the Hososhi whispering in the back of her mind.
“Sen came to you,” Jobo said, “in the night. You were sleeping with ill dreams… he didn’t want to wake you.”
Rui blinked. “Where are they?”
“Gone,” Jobo said. “Tokuon rode out at dawn. Sen was with him.”
“I need to talk to him.”
“You are unwell.”
But she tore away, reeling, from the bed, pulling herself up.
“You must be reasonable,” he said, “you still have the fever.”
“That’s not going to change.” She lifted her straw coat over her shoulders, grabbed the sword the crow monks gave her, and ran headlong through the door.
“Rui,” he called. But she ignored him, staggering when she reached the outvillage road. The world was gray, dim and cold in the budding light of predawn, and the village lay quiet, the rice paddies abandoned, the road empty. They’d already gone. She slid to her knees in the dirt, tears in her eyes.I don’t want this… I don’t want this god, I don’t want to go to the three wells… I don’t want any of this…
But it was too late.
Sen’s family had come. Had taken him back. Had brought him to their world.He is a Gensei again, Rui thought.And I am cursed. He is a Gensei, he has his family…
And they are leaving me behind.
She arrived at the shrine and hid there, furious. At herself, at the gods, at the kijin and the world. Hiding, praying for something to change at the ancient shrine below the cryptomeria trees.
“O-ine,” she said. “It’s me, it’s Rui no’in. I pray to you, O-ine, for the harvest across the land, so small beings like me may eat and be happy… I pray to you, I pray to the gods of the mountain and the valley, I pray to the rain; I pray to the god of lightning, wife of O-ine. And will dedicate my life to your peace. I marry my life to you, O-ine, if you may bring me peace. And… and help the god of four directions to spare me, and to lift this killing curse from inside my heart.”
Around her, the great cryptomeria murmured slowly in the breeze.
“Please,” she whispered. “Please just tell me it’s going to be all right. That’s all I want to know. Just tell me it will be all right.”
She prayed in silence. The woods were still. She turned and saw a small fox watching her from the side of the shrine in the trees. It raised a forepaw, and when she gasped in awe, vanished into the woods.
