“Do you want to die?” he said evenly. “Is that why you fail me again and again? You want me to end you?”
Sen panted for breath, rising to her feet to look her father in the eye. She knew the answer he wanted.
“I am already dead,” she said. That was the heart of the samurai’s work. To be so resolved to die in battle that she felt as though she had already died.
“So you say,” her father said, sheathing his katana.
He sent her out to the forest to practice alone, and she obeyed even though she wanted nothing more than to fall asleep across the rocks in the shade and coolness of the riverbank. But if her father caught her sleeping out in the open, he would kill her, and she would deserve it.
She trained until she could barely lift her arms anymore, and then she dragged her sword as she returned to the house, carving a line in the dirt while the sun bled behind her. She slipped on her house shoes and headed down the hall, passing by her parents’ bedroom. Their shadows stretched tall across the closed door, where her mother was whispering to her father.
“Maeda is gone,” her father said.
Sen held her breath, clutching her katana to her chest. Her father’s friend Maeda had helped them find safe passage to the house behind the sword ferns. He had been a samurai once, but had quietly allowed the government to strip him of his title. He was a coward, but his guilt prompted him to care for Sen’s family, so they had accepted his help. He was the only person who knew where her father had hidden. If he kept his word, their family would be safe.
But Maeda was not a samurai anymore. He did not knowthe face of pain, had not promised honor above all else like Sen and her father had. If he had disappeared, he had either run away or been taken.
“Do you trust him?” Sen’s mother said.
Her father let out a long breath. “I trusted him in life, but Maeda feared death,” he said. “If they threatened him, I don’t know how much he might have said.”
“Should we leave?” her mother whispered. Her shadow wrung its hands.
“No,” her father said. “There is no safer place than this. We would have to identify ourselves to find any other housing, and any innkeeper would report us.”
“So we sit and wait for death?” Sen’s mother said.
Her father’s shadow shook its head. “We are already dead,” her father said.
Sen sighed and turned down the hall, entering her room and closing the door behind her. She had heard similar conversations hundreds of times since they came to the house behind the sword ferns. It was always the same—her mother wanted to run, but her father wanted to stay and fight, and his word was law. Sen didn’t understand why her mother agonized over a decision that wasn’t hers to make.
Sen fell into bed and stared at the ceiling as she gathered her strength. Though her bones felt impossibly heavy, she could not fall asleep. She recalled the pale face of the foreigner in her window, his crooked shadow cast across her wall.
Her mother wanted to run because she was certain that if they stayed and fought, they would lose. That was what the foreigner’s omen foretold. That was what Maeda’s disappearance would indicate. It felt as if the whole universe had conspired against her family, that they were fated to end here, the age of the samurai along with them.
But Sen of Shimazu did not believe in fate.
She had worked too hard and too long to die here, among the sword ferns. No spirit or soldier would be her end.
She lay still and watched her candle burn down. Darkness fell deeper over the house, and Sen began to wonder if the ghost would ever return.
The night grew darker, and once more, the shadow with curly hair appeared.
With her sword ready in one hand, she opened the door.
Chapter Eight
The Legend of Urashima Taro, Part I
Long ago, in a village by the sea, there lived a fisherman, and a child, and a turtle.
The fisherman, who was named Urashima Taro, had lived a quiet life caring for his elderly mother, up until the day when adventure came for him.
One morning, he was heading home with the day’s catch of salmon when he saw a giant turtle lying on the shore. Its shell was black like the sea, its eyes glittering like great diamonds. A group of children had gathered around it and were trying to bash its skull with rocks and poke its eyes with sticks.
Urashima Taro yelled at the children and chased them away. He looked into the watery eyes of the turtle and saw gratitude. The turtle crawled slowly back out to shore, and Urashima Taro watched it descend beneath the waves.
The next morning, as the sun broke across the darkness, Urashima Taro went out to fish once more. But this time, a turtle was already waiting for him.
