A foreigner with bright haunted eyes and dark curly hair, his face painted gray with shadows.
Sen had rushed back to her room as soon as she saw him, katana unsheathed and primed to strike, but he was gone. It didn’t matter what room she tore through—there was no one there but her family and the servants.
It must have been a bad omen. The foreigners who first came to Japan had brought the guns that ended the rebellion, and now the image of a foreigner had appeared inside her house. Surely it was a sign that they were coming to take her house, her land, her life. Her father didn’t believe in omens, but would he believe if he’d seen the sharp, clear lines of the foreigner’s face?
A blade pressed to her throat.
Sen tightened her grip on her sword, but it was too late.The blade dug deeper, carving a thin line of blood just above her collarbone.
Behind her, Sen’s father sighed.
“If it were anyone but me, you would be dead,” he said. “If I weren’t feeling as kind today, you would also be dead. You deserve death for your inattention.”
“I deserve death,” Sen echoed, her pulse hammering in her throat. Maybe today would be the day her father actually killed her. Her mouth dried up, but she couldn’t swallow, or the motion would press his blade into her skin.
At last, he withdrew his sword. Sen heard the sound of him sheathing it behind her, and wasted no time folding into a bow before him.
“Forgive me,” she said. “I was distracted.”
Her father grabbed her by the ponytail, yanking her to her feet. She stayed limp as he tugged at a loose lock of hair in his left hand. He released her ponytail, then drew his short katana and sliced off the stray lock of hair, casting it to the forest floor.
“If you are slain with an unseemly appearance...” Her father paused, waiting for her to finish the thought.
“You will show your lack of resolve,” she said.
Her father shoved her to the ground. Branches crackled beneath her palms, cold mud sinking into her robes.
“Never appear unclean before your enemy,” her father said, sheathing his short katana. “Inside, the skin of a dog. Outside, the hide of a tiger.”
He was quoting theHagakure, the book that he turned to when the emperor and his fellow samurai had failed him, the words that might as well have been his god. It was the only book he wouldn’t burn, and he had fed Sen its passages when they had no food to eat.
TheHagakurewas a compilation of thoughts recorded by asamurai over a century ago. He had endeavored to describe the proper beliefs and trainings for any samurai, and Sen’s father had used it as his guide when the military academies closed down. Even a century ago, the author had known that the age of the warrior was waning in the absence of war. But he had believed, just as Sen’s father believed, that the loyalty that defined the samurai could not be eroded by time. The world would change, but the soul of the samurai would remain the same.
Others thought her family foolish. For decades now, samurai had inherited titles but used them to hold bureaucratic positions rather than military ones. They toiled not on battlefields but in offices. They weren’t even allowed to show their katanas in public, or they could be jailed.Don’t unsheathe your katana unless you’re prepared to die—that was what the other samurai always said. They all thought her father was caught in another time. And maybe they were right. But Sen was her father’s shadow, and she could do nothing but follow his every step.
The heart of theHagakurewas in its first chapter, the words that Sen’s father had made her write over and over until they were seared into her mind:
The way of the samurai is found in death.
Samurai were supposed to abandon the concept of a soul, and fear along with it. Only when they lived as if they were already dead could they truly be free to fight—not like humans, but as cold, faithful weapons.
And for years, Sen had tried.
But her soul clung to her hands like tree sap, her fear screaming bright across the horizon every morning, shocking the birds away from the trees. It was her shadow, and it would not leave her, no matter how fast she ran.
Her father walked toward the house, his back turned to her because he only showed his back to those he thought weak. Sen curled deeper into the dirt as the sound of his footsteps faded.Even now, though she knew the war had ruined her father, Sen could not help but press her fingers to the imprints his shoes left in the dirt, to bow before him even though he would never see it. Sen could never be the daughter her mother had wanted. If she was not her father’s child, then she was alone.
When the front door slammed shut, Sen rose to her feet, her knees stiff. Sweat pooled in her collarbone from the humidity, plastered her hair to her forehead. Only yesterday, gnats had buzzed around the warmth of her skin when she entered the forest, but today it seemed they couldn’t bear the taste of her. Sen remembered the blood on her chin and licked her parched lips.
Sen did not get dinner that night. Her mother saw the line her father’s sword had left on her neck and did not set out a bowl for her. Her father sent her back to the forest to hunt, even though he knew as well as she did that there were no animals, no insects, no plants they could eat without being poisoned.
But Sen was a sword, not a soul, and so she obeyed.
She tucked her sword into the ties of her hakama and walked into the forest, now blue-black with night. Around this hour, the cicadas should have come out, brightening the forest with their high-pitched chirps. But that evening, the silence screamed at her, like the night was full of secrets it wouldn’t share.
Sen had only ever hunted in land so barren once before.
Once, when Sen was a child, winter turned all the sugarcane black, and it didn’t grow back when the snow thawed. The pigs died and rotted before they could be eaten. The fish rose dead to the surface of the river, and Sen’s parents feared to even drink its water.
