Shadow of the Moon, a Sea of Shadows ttk-1 Read online

  At the question Youko raised her head. She looked at Takki and shook her head. "Other than looking for Keiki, there's not much else I can do."

  Even if Keiki were a youma, she knew he couldn't make things any worse for her than they already were.

  "That's going to take some time. Not a thing easily done."

  "Yes," Youko reluctantly agreed.

  "And in the meantime, you've got to make a living for yourself, no? Wouldn't mind you staying here, but my nosy neighbors find you out and they'd no doubt pack you off to the county seat. I could say you were the child of a relative, but they'd probably see through it before long."

  "I don't want to cause you any more trouble."

  "East of here there's a town called Kasai. My mother lives there."

  When Youko looked at her, Takki laughed. "She runs an hotel. Don't worry, she won't turn you in. She's my mum, see. I'm sure she'll give you a job. You willing to work?"

  "Yes," Youko agreed on the spot. It'd be tough looking for Keiki. And it'd be well-nigh impossible if she'd didn't have a place to live in the meantime. Fighting the youma every night, having nothing to eat, sleeping outdoors--if she could avoid all that she would.

  Takki laughed and nodded. "That's great. You'll see, it won't be such a bad job. Everybody who works there is good people. You'll fit in just fine. How about we set off tomorrow?"

  "That'd be okay."

  "Okay it is, then. We'd better get to bed. And tomorrow morning, if you're not in the mood for traveling, we can stay here for another day if you want."

  Youko bowed her head deeply in gratitude.

  3-3

  Her bed felt like a thin mattress laid out on a tatami mat. Youko fell asleep once, then woke up later in the middle of the night.

  Her benefactor was sleeping soundly on the other side of the room. Youko sat up and clasped her knees, her clean nightshirt rustling against her clean skin. The shutters were closed. The room was dark. The night was quiet. Sheltered by the heavy roof and thick walls, not even sounds of small animals disturbed their rest. The air lay calm and still around them. The room felt like a place of sleep.

  Youko got out of bed. She retrieved the sword from where it was stashed on the shelf, went into the kitchen. She had quickly formed the habit of waking herself from a sound sleep, and until she felt the hilt of the sword in her grasp again she could not rest easy. She sat down in a chair, wrapped her arms around the sword--now covered in a new cloth Takki had given her--took a deep breath.

  Takki said it was a three-day trip to Kasai, where her mother ran the hotel. When they got there Youko would have a home of her own in this world. She had no experience working for a living, but her sense of expectation was greater than her anxieties. She wondered what kind of people she would be working with.

  She'd sleep in a real building, wake up in the morning, work all day, go to bed at night. Once she started working she probably wouldn't have time to think about anything else. Maybe she wouldn't be able to go home, to her home in that other world, or be able to look for Keiki. But right now she couldn't care less.

  Having finally found herself a place in this world, she let herself drift off into sleep. As her forehead rested against the shrouded sword, a high, clear note sounded from within the steel.

  Youko awoke with a start. A faint light was shining out from under the layer of cloth. She timidly undid the cloth. As on the night before, the sword was glimmering with a ghostly light. She could see small, dim images flickering across the blade.

  Her eyes focused in the dark. The images drew into shape. Before her eyes, like a movie projection, was an image of her room. It looked so real she imagined that if she stretched out her hand she could touch it. But it wasn't real.

  The cavernous echo of falling water continued incessantly. The figure she saw in the sword was, as before, her mother. Her mother moved aimlessly around Youko's room.

  She opened a drawer, moved things around on the shelf as if she were looking for something. About the umpteenth time she opened the bureau drawers, the door opened and there was her father.

  He said, and Youko heard his voice clearly. "The bath ready?"

  Her mother shot him a quick glance and then resumed searching through the drawer. "Should be. If it's warm enough, go ahead."

  "I need a change of clothes."

  "If that's all you need, then get it yourself."

  There was a caustic edge to her mother's voice. Her father's reply was no less barbed. "Hanging around her room won't do a damned bit of good."

  "I'm not just hanging around her room. I have things to do. If you need a change of clothes, you're perfectly capable of getting it yourself."

  Her father said, his voice low, "Youko left. Spending your every waking moment camped out in her room isn't going to bring her back!"

  I left?

  "She didn't leave."

  "She ran away. She met up with that strange boy at school, didn't she? Then they had some of their friends go outside and break the window. She got mixed up with a gang and hid it from us, isn't that the best explanation for what happened?"

  "She isn't that kind of girl."

  "What you mean is, you never noticed. Like her hair. She's been dying it all along, hasn't she?"

  "She didn't."

  "It happens all the time. A kid starts hanging out with the wrong crowd and finally she runs away from home. She'll come home eventually, when the fun wears off."

  "She wouldn't do something like that. That's not the way I raised her."

  They both glared at each other. Her father said, "Every mother says that. That kid that broke into the school, they say his hair wasn't a natural color, either. Those gang kids are all like that, and she was one of them, too."

  Dad, it's not true!

  "Stop slandering your own daughter!" Her mother's words boiled over with resentment. "What do you know? All you know is your work. But my work, everything to do with our child, I had to do!"

  "That's the way it is. That's the father's role."

  "Father? Who's being a father?"

  "Ritsuko … . "

  "So you go to work, you bring a bunch of money home, and that makes you a father? Our daughter disappears and you didn't even bother to take the day off! What kind of a father is that? Don't lecture me about what Youko is or isn't when you don't know a thing about her!"

  Her father seemed more surprised than angry, "Calm down, you're being hysterical."

  "Oh, I am calm. I'm as calm as I possibly can be. Just imagining what Youko is going through, what do you expect me to do?"

  "You have your responsibilities, too. You calm down, you do what you have to do, and then you can worry."

  "And doing your laundry is my responsibility, I suppose? Rather than worrying about my child, that's what I should be concerning myself with? All you can think about is yourself!"

  Her mother stared at her father. His face flushed with anger but he said nothing.

  "You say she was one of them? How can you say that? She's a good, proper girl. She never talks back or acts up. She never gave me cause to worry, never. She could talk to me about anything. She's not the kind of child who would run away from home. Because there wasn't anything she'd want to run away from!"

  Her father turned away, still holding his tongue.

  "Youko left her backpack at school. And her coat, too. How can that be called running away? Something must have happened. That's the only thing that makes sense."

  "If it did, so what?"

  Her mother's eyes went wide. "So what?"

  Her father answered bitterly. "Let's say she did get caught up in something. Even so, what could you do about it? We informed the police about everything that happened. Running around like chickens with their heads cut off isn't going to bring her home any faster."

  "Why do you have to say things like that!"

  "Because it's the truth! Handing out flyers and slapping posters on telephone poles, do you really think that's going to m
ake a difference? Be honest!"

  "Stop it."

  "If she didn't run away, if she got wrapped up in some kind of conspiracy or something, she'd be dead already."

  "Please stop!"

  "You see it all the time on the news. Do those kids ever turn up alive? That's why I say she ran away from home!"

  Her mother burst into tears. Her father stared at her, then stomped out of the room.

  Dad … Mom … .

  Seeing them like this cut her to the core. The scene blurred. She closed her eyes and felt the tears tumble down her cheeks. When she opened her eyes, her vision was clear. The images had already vanished.

  All she could see was the sword, the light gone out of it.

  3-4

  She wept uncontrollably. "I didn't die."

  Maybe she would be better off dead, but for the time being she was still alive.

  "I'm not a runaway."

  There must be some way to get back. She missed her home and her parents more than anything.

  "That was the first time I ever saw Mom and Dad fight."

  Youko rested her forehead against the table. The tears came like rain.

  "Stupid, stupid, stupid … . "

  She didn't know what it was she had seen, but it wasn't necessarily the truth.

  She sat up, wiped away the tears, bound the sword in the cloth. Somehow it was like the sword itself was showing her these visions. She couldn't tell whether they were real or not. Her intuition, though, told her the visions were true.

  Stiffly she got to her feet. She opened the back door and wandered out into the night. The heavens were suffused with stars. She didn't recognize any constellations. The fact was, she had never had any interest in astronomy, so it was probably because she didn't know any of the constellations up there.

  She sat at the edge of the well. The cool stones and the cool breeze was a small comfort. She held her knees to her chest. Behind her a saw-edged voice stabbed at her ears.

  "No, no, no. You can't go home, missy."

  She turned slowly. Sitting on sturdy stones that formed the rim of the well was the blue head of the monkey. The monkey rested there on the hewn surface, bodiless, as if severed at the neck, and laughed at her.

  "My, my, my, but haven't you given up yet? You can't go home, little girl. You so want to, don't you? Go see your dear mum. But you can plead and plead and it will never happen."

  Youko fumbled about for the sword, then realized she'd left it in the house.

  "It's what I keep telling you. You're perfectly capable of whacking off your own little head. And if you did, ah, you could rest so easy. All that love and all that longing, it will all go away."

  "I'm not giving up. Someday I'll go home, even if it's the last thing I do."

  The monkey cackled gaily. "So who am I to persuade you otherwise? But I might as well take the opportunity to fill you in on what's coming next."

  Youko stood up. "I don't want to hear it."

  "Really? You don't want to know? About that woman … . "

  "Takki-san?" Youko turned.

  The monkey bared its teeth at her. "You had better not trust her."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "She's not the good person you think she is, little girl. Good thing she didn't poison you during dinner and be done with it."

  "Oh, give me a break."

  "Maybe she's scheming to kill you and rob you of everything you've got. Or maybe she'll let you live and sell you into slavery. Either way that's the kind of thing she's up to. And you want to thank her for it! Oh my, but you're so naive!"

  "Quit jerking me around."

  "Don't I tell you these things out of love? Don't you understand? You've got no allies here, little girl. No one would shed a tear if you dropped dead. You're such a bother to everybody, don't you know?"

  Youko stared hard at the monkey. The monkey answered her with a screech of laughter. "If I told you once, I told you a thousand times. If it's so painful, it can be all over in a moment." The monkey howled again, then turned on her with a fierce expression. "Since you won't say a bad word about her, let's just kill her, then."

  "What … ?"

  "Kill her and take the money and run. Since you don't seem to know when to give up, you'd better do it for you own sake!"

  "Shut up about it already!"

  Chattering madly with laughter, the monkey disappeared, like chalk being erased off a blackboard. As before, only its grating laughter remained behind, fading away into the distance.

  Youko continued to stare at the place the monkey no longer was. What did this thing have against her, to do nothing but give her such grief?

  I don't believe it.

  Not a single word the little monster had said.

  The next morning Youko was shaken awake. She opened her eyes. The large-framed woman was looking at her with a bothered expression. "You awake? Dead to the world, you were. Well, get yourself up and have some breakfast."

  "Sorry."

  Youko hurriedly got up. From the look on Takki's face, it was obvious she'd been sacked out for a long time.

  "No need to apologize. How you doing? Ready to set off? We can always do it tomorrow."

  "I'm okay," Youko said, bouncing to her feet. Takki laughed and pointed at her bed.

  "There's a dress there. You know how to put one on?"

  "Probably … I think."

  "You run into trouble, give me a holler."

  With that, Takki disappeared into the adjacent room. Youko sat down on the bed and picked up the kimono Takki had laid out for her.

  It had an ankle-length skirt that was tied with a cord around the waist, a short, vest-like blouse along with a tunic the same length. It wasn't a comfortable fit when she first put it on. The collar pinched her neck as she walked into the next room, where Takki had set the table.

  "Ah, looks just right on you." Takki put down a big bowl of soup and laughed. "It's a bit plain, true. Something from when I was younger would have been better."

  "Not at all," Youko said. "Thank you very much."

  "Even so, it's a bit too showy for me. I was thinking of giving it away to the neighbors one of these days. Well, let's eat. Don't hold back, now. We've got a long walk ahead of us."

  "Okay."

  Youko bowed. She sat down at the table. When she picked up the chopsticks, for a moment she remembered what the monkey had said the night before. But it didn't feel true in the slightest.

  She is a good person.

  If the villagers knew that Takki had taken her in, they'd no doubt have harsh words for her. Takki had done good by her, and suspecting her now would only invite bad karma.

  3-5

  It was past noon when they left Takki's house.

  The trip to Kasai turned out to be an unexpectedly pleasant one. At first, Youko cowered whenever they encountered someone, but perhaps because Takki had dyed her hair with a dye made from herb roots, nobody cast a suspicious eye on her. She grew accustomed to it after a while and enjoyed meeting people along the way.

  Although this country had the look and feel of old China, the people living here came in all different types. Their faces were generally Asian in appearance, but the color of their hair and eyes and skin was all over the place. Skin color varied from that of a white Caucasian to a black African. Eye color was everything from black to sea-blue. As for hair, there seemed to be an infinite variety, such as purple or blue-white. In some of the odder cases, hair was two-toned, as if part of it had been dyed.

  Initially, it struck her all as very strange, but she got used to it fairly quickly. And once she did she decided that, yes, different was good. And yet she didn't see anyone with pure, golden hair like Keiki.

  Their clothing was in an old Chinese style. Men wore a tunic over short trousers. Women's fashions were based on the long skirt. Now and then she spotted a group dressed in what was certainly an "Oriental" style, though from what country and what era she couldn't tell. According to Takki, they
were traveling minstrels.

  For Youko, it was a relief just to walk. She followed Takki's lead, from getting food to arranging lodgings. Youko had no money, so Takki paid for everything.

  "I'm really sorry I can't help out," she said as they walked along the road.

  Takki laughed heartily. "I'm just an old busybody. You've got nothing to worry about."

  "I've got nothing to give you in exchange."

  "Not at all. It's been a long time since I've seen my mum. Thanks to you now I've got a good excuse to go see her."

  Her kind words were a joy to hear. "Takki-san, did you go to Goso to get married?"

  "No, that's where I got my partition."

  "Partition?"

  Takki nodded. "When you become an adult, you're given a plot of land and made to stand on your own two feet. The plot I received was in Goso. That's what a partition is."

  "Everybody receives land when they become an adult?"

  "Yes, everybody. My husband is the old guy who lives next door. We split up after our child died."

  Youko stared at Takki's jovial face. Now that she mentioned it, she had mentioned something about a child dying. Youko said, "I'm … sorry."

  "Don't worry about it. I wasn't cut out to be a mother. The child we were blessed with after so long, she died on my account."

  "Surely you don't mean … . "

  "Children come to us from heaven. So heaven taking her back again wasn't up to me. But people being what they are, I guess it was inevitable. It's too bad about the child, though."

  Youko had no idea how to answer but managed a hesitant smile. In a small way Takki seemed a sad and lonely person.

  "I imagine your mum must be worried sick about you. The faster you get home the better, no?"

  "Yes." Youko nodded. "But is it really possible? When I was in Hairou, one of the town elders said it wasn't."

  "Well, if you got here somehow, surely you can go back."

  Youko nodded again. The carefree smile that came to her lips reflected a profound happiness.

  "Of course. Ah, here we are."

  At the fork of three roads, one pointed to the left. At every intersection along the road there was always a small stone marker into which was carved distance and destination. Distance was measured in units called "ri." This particular marker listed the destination as "Sei" and the distance as "5 ri."