“They’re not all dead,” Sen said, hoping her father hadn’t heard that, or else Seijiro wouldn’t be allowed to eat dinner. She ignored the insult, because warriors couldn’t be provoked by children. “We’re still here.”
Here, whatever that meant.Herewas not living, not really. Here, in this tiny house shrouded in sword ferns, so far from the land their lord had given them. Sen felt less like a warrior than a rabbit hiding underground, cowering at footsteps overhead.
Their father was the only survivor of the samurai revolt—the last stand against the emperor who had abolished their class.
Or, at least, had tried to.
As if it were that simple. As if you could just sign a piece of paper and erase the warriors who had carved Japan from the parched dirt, whose blood had soaked the soil that fed the grass. Their bones were tangled with the roots of the oldest trees, their bloody handprints on the stairs of every palace, and they did not answer to the whims of a child emperor. If the samurai could be toppled so easily, they would never have existed at all.
Sen’s family was living proof of that. All the other samurai had either died in the revolt, or quietly let the government strip them of their titles and hand them office jobs. Only Sen’s family remained, clinging to their titles with bloody fingers.
Seijiro scoffed, scooping up Kotaro. “Yeah, what a victory,” he said. “We’re out here eating bugs and kicking rocks around like warriors.” Then he shoved open the porch door with his shoulder. “Come on, Kotaro,” he said. “Onesan wants to swing her sword at bamboo shoots again.”
He slammed the door. Sen stood alone in the yard, a sword clutched in her hand, fighting no one at all.
Sen knew Seijiro was mad at their father and not her, that he was only taking it out on Sen because she didn’t scare him as much.
The wind picked up, carrying the scent of scorched summer grass and wisteria. Sen could feel her father’s gaze in the searing edge of sunlight over the trees, sharp as a blade scoring her eye.
Her father wasn’t supposed to return from the revolt.
When word of his failure reached home, Sen and her mother had gone to the safe house and held a funeral. It was impossible to separate her father from the dream of the samurai’s return, so when one had died, they’d thought the other had as well. The father Sen knew would sooner turn his blade on himself than return home carrying that kind of shame.
But then, as the snow melted, her father had returned.
At least, part of him.
When he wasn’t training Sen, he vanished into the forest. The leaves parted for him, the shadows pulled him in, the river roared over the sound of his footsteps. It was as if he became the forest, his eyes the glare of sunlight over the horizon, his voice the scream of wind at night, his hands the wispy branches that scratched against the side of the house.
Sen looked across the yard, into the forest and the heavy curtains of shadows between the trees, and wondered how far the man who called himself her father had wandered into the woods, if he would return this time.
“Sen!” her mother called from inside the house. “Come in and help me with the mosquito nets!”
With one last glance across the yard, Sen sheathed her sword and turned around.
She jumped back at the sight of Youna, the maid. Sen could normally hear a seed dropped by a sparrow in the forest, but Youna always seemed to roll in like a hot summer breeze. Youna was younger than Sen’s mother and had hair that fell in waveslike the sea, gentle hands that she used to brush and tie back Sen’s hair.
“My lady,” Youna said with a bow, “I can assist your mother. You should continue your training.”
“Thank you, Youna,” Sen said, “but I’m done training for today anyway.” And her mom would scold her if she didn’t come in to help, but she didn’t want to say that to Youna.
Sen tried to slip on her house shoes in the dark, but her left shoe was missing. She kicked her brother’s shoes aside, revealing a stain on the mat. It was dark, like something had splattered in the seam between the floor and paper door, which was speckled with dark spots. Sen squatted down to get a better look. Something about the constellation of marks unnerved her. She felt dizzy looking at it, and she pressed her finger to one of the spots to make sure it was really a stain and not an infestation of bugs. The mark flaked away under her thumb, disappearing into the shadows of the floor. Her mother called for her again and she looked away.
“Seijiro!” Sen said. “Where are my shoes?”
“I didn’t do anything with your shoes!” he shouted from another room. Words carried easily through this house—it was a skeleton, and when you slid open enough doors, the whole world passed through it. There was no such thing as a secret in this house.
“I know you did!” Sen shouted back.
“Sen, just take mine,” her mother said, appearing in the doorway with a handful of mosquito netting. “Stop shouting.”
Sen grumbled but put on her mother’s extra house shoes, thinking about how her father would never tell her to stop shouting. He would have told her to shout louder, that no one thought women could be strong, so she had to be louder and stronger and faster and better until there was no one left alive who doubted her.
She stood on her toes and helped her mother hang the mosquito netting over her brothers’ beds. Her mother let the servants hang the netting in the other rooms, but she insisted on doing it herself for the boys, with Sen’s help to reach the ceiling.A mother must care for her babies, she’d said. Apparently, Sen wasn’t her mother’s baby anymore.
The air smelled of steam, but Sen couldn’t discern what the servants were cooking from the scent alone—she could only sense the wet heat that filled the house, like they were inside the mouth of a beast, hot air sighed up from its throat.
She finished hanging up the netting and stepped back while her mother inspected it. Even though autumn was approaching, it was still too hot to sleep with the doors closed. Sen hated leaving the door open, so close to her feet. She was certain she would wake from sleep with a blade at her throat. She slept with her katana close beside her, just in case.
