“Sen!” her mother said, cradling Seijiro against her shoulder. “Get that sword away from the baby!”
“Let me show you what Chichiue taught me,” Sen said. Surely that would make her mother happy. She always told Sen the importance of hard work and practice.
“That’s between you and Chichiue,” her mother said. “I want nothing to do with it.”
“Let me show you!” Sen said, raising the sword insistently.
“Sen, no,” her mother said.
“I want to show you!” Sen said, raising the blade higher, just like her father always did when he was angry.
In that moment, Sen saw a strange expression on her mother’s face, one she’d never seen directed at her.
Fear.
That look was usually reserved for her father when he raised his voice. But why should Sen’s mother fearher? She would not beat her like her father, or scold her. But still her mother’s eyes darted between the blade and Sen’s face, frozen as if waiting to see what Sen would do.
But now, at least her mother was looking at her. Her protests had fallen silent, and Sen was the only star in her universe.
Quickly, Sen demonstrated how she unsheathed her blade and struck down in one fluid motion. Her mother watched in silence, her eyes locked on Sen.
“Well done,” her mother said stiffly, then hurried into the kitchen, clutching Seijiro to her chest.
Sen knew the praise was a lie, but she treasured it anyway. All she’d had to do was act like her father, and her mother had listened.
The next week, Seijiro came down with smallpox.
His skin bubbled, his breath grew shallow, his bones burned with fever. Soon, he was too weak to open his eyes.
On the fifth night of Seijiro’s illness, Sen’s mother carried her out to the sea. It had been so long since her mother had held her that Sen didn’t even question it. She wrapped her arms around her mother’s neck and hugged her as close as she could while they walked across the shore.
Sen remembered the sound of crashing waves, her mother’s crisp footsteps in the wet sand, tears that fell in a cold rain onto her face. Her mother knelt on the shore, clutching Sen to her chest, and whispered prayers to the local dragon god.
“Please accept my humble offering,” her mother whispered. “Please save my son.”
Then the ocean roared in Sen’s ears and her mouth filled with salt water. She remembered the feeling of weightlessness, the searing cold, the ocean stealing her from her mother’s arms. She opened her eyes to the brine and her fist tangled with what she thought was seaweed, then realized was long, black hair.
A woman emerged from the darkness of the sea and held Sen close. Her fingers traced Sen’s brine-scrubbed lips, her stinging eyes, the scarred soles of her feet.
This lonely child is mine, she whispered, the words crystal bright in the water.
When Sen opened her eyes again, she was on the shore, alone. She walked back home, and her mother never spoke of that night.
The next day, Seijiro’s smallpox scars disappeared, his fever abated, and he happily ate a bowl of porridge in his mother’s lap.
Sen’s mother said it was only a dream. But Sen knew, even then, when her mother lied. She knew her father would be angry if he heard her mother praying to the old gods, for he only believed in Lord Shimazu. Since then, Sen had been living on time stolen from the sea.
Now, at last, the ocean was calling in its debt.
Sen had long ago resigned herself to dying on a battlefield beside her father—it had been an irrefutable fact since her training began, as natural as the changing seasons. She would die with purpose and honor.
But she had never imagined that she would die for nothing at all.
She felt lost as she walked through Lee’s world—the world that somehow existed without her, without any samurai. Of course Sen had always known that life would go on after she died, but it was hard to fathom how unfairly bright the sun was,how green the fig trees were, how clear the sky was, as if she had never mattered at all.
She wondered if her fate was truly fixed, if any of her choices still mattered. She’d placed the sword guard under the floorboards and then found them in Lee’s time, so clearly her actions could still impact the future. But had that choice already been decided for her, and she was now only acting out the role she’d always been destined to play?
She had to believe she could still change her fate. If she didn’t, she was sure that without the weight of her sword on her hip, the wind would carry her into the sky like a silk scarf. She hardly existed at all without that thin string of hope.
