The Twelve Kingdoms - Novel 5 - The Wings of Dreams Read online

  Now Keika’s face paled. “Miss, what’s gotten into you!”

  No sooner had Keika’s anger flared but Shushou grabbed the soup bowl, rose to her feet, and threw it at her. “Shut up! I told you I didn’t want it!”

  Keika stood there in stunned silence. The soup had cooled enough that it was no longer scalding. The greater shock was that the bowl had been hurled at her at all.

  “W-what—did you do that for—?”

  Tears welled up in misery and mortification. She bent over and wiped the broth from her cuffs and sleeves of her padded kimono. But it was already soaking into the fabric. The live-in servants did not receive a wage. They could count on room and board, but not clothing. Twice a year, the master gave them fresh fabric, but a growing girl like Keika soon outgrew her wardrobe.

  On top of that, the manual labor done by the live-in servants day-in and day-out soon left their clothing threadbare. They patched the worn spots, sewed split seams back together, and made do. Once an article of clothing was beyond repair, it was either wait for somebody to take pity and part with a hand-me-down, or dip into the master’s New Year’s celebration allowance and have new clothing made.

  “How awful—”

  She just had the outfit made from fabric she’d received at New Year’s. Choking back sobs, she brushed off the minced vegetables and pieces of meat. Shushou grabbed her hand.

  “I’m sorry!” Shushou fetched a hand towel and wiped down her dress. “I’m sorry, Keika. Is it hot?”

  “Um, no, it’s not hot, but—”

  “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

  Keika rubbed her face. As a servant, she’d been out of place taking Shushou to task. She dried her tears and blinked her vision into focus. Kneeling at her feet, Shushou looked up at Keika apologetically.

  “I’m really sorry. I’m just not in a very good mood.”

  “No—it’s—I’m okay.”

  “You’d better take this off. Maybe you got burned.”

  “I’m fine. It was only warm.”

  “You can’t very well return to you living quarters like this. It’s freezing cold outside. You’ll catch your death. Wait here. I’ll get you a change of clothes.”

  Shushou ran to her room, banged around her closets, and returned with a pretty silk kimono. She held it out to Keika. “It’s an old thing but it should fit you, Keika. Here, take it. It’s yours.”

  “But, Miss—” said the startled Keika.

  “It’s okay. It was my fault. I’ll explain everything to your mother and father. Don’t you like it? I’ll let you pick something else.”

  “No, no, this is fine!”

  “I really apologize. I lost my temper for a moment. I never intended to do something like this. Can you forgive me?”

  Keika nodded. It wasn’t clear to her who was supposed to be forgiving whom for what in the first place. And besides, she’d ended up with such a splendid gift.

  “Um, are you sure this is okay? An outfit this nice?” She was pretty sure Shushou had been wearing it only since the New Year.

  “If you’ll forgive me, then I don’t care at all. You’d better put it on before you catch a cold.”

  “Yes, um, sure.”

  Keika undressed there on the spot. Shushou helped her into the warm silk.

  “I feel like I’m dreaming.”

  “Really? It’s a perfect fit.” Shushou picked up the discarded clothing. “I’ll wash this.”

  “You needn’t go to such lengths.” Keika hastily taking them back. She couldn’t allow Shushou to become the cleaning maid as well.

  Shushou refused to relinquish them. “If that soup was hot, you could have gotten burned. I cannot with a good conscience do anything less. Don’t worry about it. I should be good for more around here than studying all day long. Well, I hope so.”

  Shushou smiled and set aside Keika’s kimono and returned to her chair. “I apologize. The food looks delicious.”

  She accompanied Keika to her living quarters and explained the situation to her mother and father. After receiving an earful of the expected protestations, she returned to her room.

  Shushou sat in the chair and thought. Time passed. She sighed and got to her feet, held up Keika’s padded kimono, and gave it a good looking over.

  With a small grimace, she said, “I should have thrown my teacup at her.” She stared out the bars of the window. “Now it smells like soup.”

  Chapter 4

  [1-4] Behind the main wing of the house was a group of buildings called the “cold room.” Facing the kitchen was a well and a washing basin. And then the root cellar and granary. Extending ridgepole to ridgepole, the buildings enclosed the vegetable gardens, stock pen, and a fish pond, along with a mill and abattoir to process the harvest.

  Thickly clad in a padded satin kimono, Shushou ventured out to the cold room about the time morning chores were done.

  “Good morning!” an old man named Bashi called out to her.

  “Morning, Bashi.”

  “I heard that the academy got closed or something.”

  “Whatever my father’s been going on about, I don’t want to know. Mind if I feed Hakuto?

  “Go right ahead,” Bashi said with a big smile.

  Bashi was one of the live-in servants. In the chaos following the death of the empress, he’d lost all his worldly goods, and with only the clothes on his back and his children under his arms, had sought employment here. His three children had been split up among other estates and retail establishments. But all were live-in servants.

  “So the headmaster died, eh?” Bashi mused as he led Shushou to the stables. He’d been the stable master as far back a Shushou could remember. “It’s really too bad. Nothing but tales of such savagery abound in Renshou these days.”

  “Very true.”

  “But thanks to your father, I can rest at ease.”

  “I have to wonder how much longer that is going to last.”

  “Perish the thought,” Bashi said sadly as they entered the stables.

  Shushou liked the smell of the barn. Especially in the winter, the straw bedding, the warmth from the horses and donkeys, created a warm and comfy atmosphere. Her mother complained of the smell when Shushou came back into the house covered in straw dust, but she was sure that was because her mother didn’t like horses to start with.

  “Is everybody in a good mood this morning?” she said to each animal in turn as she made her way to the back of the stables. Past the hay bin was her favorite, Hakuto.

  “Morning, Hakuto.”

  The white beast slumbering on the other side of the fence raised his head. Hakuto was a moukyoku, a species of kijuu that resembled a white leopard. Intelligent, highly capable at reading human intentions, and yet gentle and attuned to its master, whom it already understood Shushou to be. It stretched out its neck and purred like a cat.

  As Shushou softly called out to the beast, Bashi narrowed his eyes. He invested all his pride and joy in these stables, lived to care for the animals it housed, and treated them no worse than his own children. Watching Shushou exhibit a similar affection couldn’t help but arouse a tang of possessiveness.

  Shushou had her hand on the fence and was opening the gate as she glanced over her shoulder at Bashi. “Okay if I play with him for a while?”

  The moukyoku had agreeable temperament. Shushou and the kijuu were well accustomed to each other. She often came to the stables and wasn’t above pitching in with the chores. So Bashi refrained from listing the do’s and don’ts, nodded, and noted that he had things to tend to outside the stables.

  Shushou watched Bashi leave, unlatched the gate—as high as her chest—and entered the stall. She sat down and cuddled up to Hakuto, sprawled out on the fluffy dry straw. She hugged its big head, burying her face in his neck, and stroked the soft fur behind his ears. Thanks to Bashi’s fastidiousness, Hakuto’s fur was as fresh as the straw and bore none of the stink of the wild.

  For a few minutes more, Shushou
listened to Bashi greeting the other horses. His voice soon died away as he exited the stables. Pricking up her ears, his footsteps grew distant as well.

  “All right,” said Shushou.

  She grinned at Hakuto, stood and left the stall. Making sure no one was looking, she went to the hay bin. She pushed her way through the loose hay, climbed up the stacked bales, and pulled a package from between the bin and the wall. Her travel bags, that she’d secreted there the night before.

  Grasping them triumphantly, she waded back through the hay and hurried to the stall. Answering Hakuto’s puzzled look with a smile, she got the saddle off the hook on the wall. She’d saddled Hakuto many times before. Realizing they were going out, Hakuto got to his feet.

  “Hold on there a minute,” Shushou said to him. She took a sheet of paper from her breast pocket. Wrapping her arm around his neck, she explained, “It says not to take Bashi to task over this.” Shushou placed the note in the feed box. “And if anybody does, I’ll never come back again.”

  Hakuto gave Shushou a quizzical look.

  “Yes, we are going a long ways away, but we’ll keep each other company. With your strong legs, we should make good time.”

  Hakuto, of course, had nothing to say in return, and only curiously blinked his golden brown eyes. Shushou patted his head. “Twenty-seven years. The empress died a whole twenty-seven years ago! Now youma are even appearing in Renshou. More and more people are dying—”

  She looked up through the barred skylight of the stables. When a kingdom lost its emperor, the kingdom descended into chaos and youma roamed at will.

  “And yet well-meaning adults bar the windows and the doors and say they sleep soundly at night. What foolishness. As long as we have no emperor, the world will deteriorate around us. What must they be thinking?”

  Hakuto looked at her like a child not quite getting the gist. Shushou smiled and took up the reins.

  Where the sunlight slanted beneath the eaves, Bashi and his workers sat together and finished up various handiwork and chores. They were amazed at the sight of a moukyoku galloping across the grounds of the “cold room.”

  “Miss!”

  They jumped to their feet and ran out, waving their arms to stop the bolting pair. With an almost lazy leap, the moukyoku soared over them, as if dancing right into the sun.

  “Miss!” Bashi called out. “Shushou-sama!”

  The moukyoku vaulted over the eaves and bounded across the bright green roof. All Bashi could do was watch as Shushou’s bright voice rained down from the sky.

  “I’m just off for a little jaunt!”

  “What in the world—! Miss!”

  “Don’t worry! I’ll be fine!”

  Leaving the confounded Bashi and the other behind in the dust, the moukyoku sprinted up the roof of the main wing. Shushou turned in the saddle and waved goodbye.

  The white tail of the moukyoku flashed against the gleaming enamel. The guards posted at the four corners of the estate looked up and pointed at the fleeting kijuu. Shushou laughed and waved and urged the moukyoku on. As they cleared the great roof of the main wing, the endless spring sky reached out before her.

  White clouds trailed silky threads across a light blue tableau tinged with pale violet. The tile roofs of Renshou spilled down the slopes beneath her, cresting and falling like ocean waves. As if corralling the city against Ryou’un Mountain behind it, the twisting, entwining barrier walls were bathed in white, tinged by the golden rays of the sun.

  Beyond the walls was black earth and green valleys and hills. Everywhere lingered the early signs of spring, suffused with the soft light.

  The white kijuu kicked off the waves of tile, landed on the nearby wall, and with a sidelong look at the startled sentinels ran along the top of the battlements. The galloping moukyoku glanced back at Shushou with a look that said, You sure this is okay?

  “It’s fine. It’s fine. The only moukyoku in Renshou is you, Hakuto. Nobody’s going to take a shot at Banko’s kijuu.”

  Shushou smiled at Hakuto as she took in the sun-drenched countryside. “I simply couldn’t abide sitting around twiddling my thumbs. If no adults are going to step up, then I will!”

  Where to? Hakuto seemed to ask with a second glance back.

  Shushou said, urging the kijuu towards the outskirts of Renshou, “To Mt. Hou! We’re going on the Shouzan!”

  Chapter 5

  [1-5] In the center of the world was the Yellow Sea.

  The Yellow Sea was a dry sea, equal in size to any of the surrounding kingdoms. It was a land that lay outside civilized law and order, where youma roamed at will. The Yellow Sea was the domain of neither humans nor gods. The one exception were the Five Mountains in the middle of the Yellow Sea, known collectively as the Gozan.

  The Gozan was home to the gardens of the mountain wizards and Seioubo, the “Queen Mother of the West.”

  Gods and humans did not mingle together. People could only pray at the ancestral shrines, and the priests and wizards participated in the shaping of the world only by absorbing into themselves the prayers uttered there.

  Supposing that the Five Mountains were indeed the gardens of the wizards, and the Yellow Sea the province of the youma, this still remained a world unconnected to human habitation. Mt. Hou alone was not entirely divorced from mortal concerns.

  Mt. Hou, also known as Taishan, was the holy ground where those divine creatures, the kirin, were born. The kirin were magical beings of great power. Exercising affection and compassion, wise both to the Way and the reason of the world, they heard the Divine Will of Heaven as dictated by Providence.

  The human world was divided into twelve kingdoms, each ruled by a emperor or empress. They were not chosen according to their bloodline or their meritorious accomplishments. Only the Divine Will of Heaven could place a person on the throne. That meant it was up to the kirin to choose.

  The kirin were born on Mt. Hou, reared and protected there by the wizardesses. Traveling to Mt. Hou and ascertaining the Divine Will of Heaven from the kirin was known as the Shouzan.

  Of course, going on the Shouzan required making it to Mt. Hou in the middle of the Yellow Sea. The steep, towering ridges rising above the Sea of Clouds were sealed off to airborne travelers. And then there were the Kongou Mountains.

  The mountain range was steep and inaccessible, impossible to scale. There were only four routes through the Kongou Mountains, each blocked by a mighty gate. These were the four Command Gates. Each gate opened only once a year. To the northwest, the Reiken Gate abutted Ken County in the Kingdom of Kyou. It opened on the spring equinox. For one day.

  Shushou had left Renshou with the goal of arriving by the spring equinox. The moukyoku was not an adept flyer, but by air and on land he put the miles behind them at a pace three times that of a horse. It was a long way to the Reiken gate, not a distance Shushou could have covered on foot. The moukyoku reduced the hardships of the journey by a good third.

  What’s more, Shushou had left home with considerable traveling money in hand. She knew that her father had been building a rainy-day fund to cover urgent living expenses in case something happened in Renshou and they had to hurry off to a safe house.

  He would probably try to track her down, but with their numbers diminished by youma and disasters, finding a single lost child was unlikely to command the urgent attention of the constabulary. Few had a faster kijuu than the master of the Sou family, so catching up with her would be well-nigh impossible.

  The Sou family operated establishments through Kyou, though not in every city and town. They could dispatch “blue bird” carrier pigeons, but with no idea where Shushou was headed, they wouldn’t know where to have somebody waiting for her.

  Shushou had figured all along she’d simply drop in on whatever city was closest along the route and work something out along the way. She had no sense of being pursued. The evening of the sixth day after leaving Renshou, she’d made it two-thirds of the way to the Reiken Gate.

 
“Well, then—”

  Shushou set Hakuto down in the deserted fields surrounding a town. It wasn’t too big and not too small. She didn’t enter the town right away but set off again in search of the graveyard.

  These towns all connected to the highway in the south and placed the graveyards in the north. Wanting to stay out of public view and settle her nerves first, Shushou circled around to the north. The town was small enough that in a corner of the field, the golden roof of the cemetery shrine soon came into view.

  Many of these cemeteries had no fences or walls. This one was no different. Neither was the patch of ground defined by a cluster of new graves, a scene she’d observed in each of the six towns she’d stopped at so far. The fresh mounds of earth were painted white by the catalpa branches stuck into the ground. People were dying here too.

  Shushou set Hakuto down next to the cemetery shrine. Cemetery shrines were, by and large, stark and uninviting buildings. Unlike the ancestral shrines that occupied the city centers, the cemetery shrine stood alone. The walls barely kept out the wind and rain. In an alcove lacking even a door was an altar where respects could be paid to the dead.

  The only dead buried in the potter’s field of this town had died far from home, so the altar saw little in the way of memorial services. Behind the altar was a small annex where the dead could be temporarily housed until they were buried. There wasn’t much more to the cemetery shrine than that.

  Shushou went to the well next to the shrine, removed the well cover, and drew out a bucket of water for Hakuto. She squatted down next to him. Stroking his neck, she took in the rest of the graveyard, one that had become all too familiar during the journey. In fact, it seemed that with every new town, the number of graves only multiplied.

  “That’s what becomes of us when we die.”

  Placed in a coffin, buried in a hole in the ground, the earth piled up—and that was the end.

  Some said the dead were reborn in Yamato at the eastern reaches of the Kyokai and became wizards. Or their spirits flew off to Mt. Kouri in the midst of Mt. Hou. There an accounting was made of their sins, and according to their good and bad deeds they were given positions in the world of the gods.