by Barb Lien-Cooper
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Kiyoko wasn’t doing well in the battle, and we could all see it. These weren’t just tough peasants with big talk, these were experienced soldiers, and she was a young woman (with her hair cut short, who happened to be passing herself off as a young man). She was not half bad with a sword, not at all, but these were killers, and she lacked the killer instinct.
“We would gladly share our food with you, sirs. None of this is necessary,” I heard Eisai-sama say, over on my left.
“We want the magical pouch of rice you carry! Then we would never be hungry!” shouted the leader of the pack of soldiers as he lunged at Eisai-sama, who easily blocked the man with his sword, the legendary Lightning-on-the-Water.
“…We’re hungry for blood, Takeshi,” the voice of the old man in my head said.
“Starve yourselves,” I told the old man’s voice in my head, “just like these soldiers starve. Just because you want me to use my sword to kill doesn’t mean I want that…”
“You’d be putting them out of their misery!” said the voice of the old woman in my head. “And you’d keep them from hurting others…!”
A soldier came near me. He looked afraid. “Just give us the pouch,” he said. “We’ll leave if…”
I gave him a shove. “You should leave without it,” I said. “It’s a cursed thing.”
“No, you are a cursed thing, Takeshi,” said the oily, slimy voice in my head.
I ignored him as best as I could… but then I saw three soldiers teaming up to attack Kiyoko, figuring—rightly—that she wouldn’t be able to fight them all…
They didn’t live long enough to be proven right.
Before I quite registered what had happened, I was standing over there, surrounded by the men… well, except that now each of them was just lying scattered around in separate parts, and my sword was covered in blood.
The voices in my head made no comment. They were satisfied for the moment.
Little Enma looks so pretty, I thought, looking at my sword, with blood on her blade…
“You fools!” Eisai-sama yelled at the men, “you’ve heard we bear the magic bag of endless rice but you haven’t heard of my friend over there? Haven’t you heard that men call him the Little God of Death?!”
The soldiers looked at me as if I was a monster. It snapped me out of the frame of mind I was in, and I smiled a smile cold enough to freeze the sun itself. “Hello,” I said casually, playing the part that Eisai-sama wanted me to play, “are the rest of you also curious to find out what happens after you die…?”
“He’ll send your souls to Jigoku!” Kiyoko yelled at them.
“…He’s only a boy,” the commander of the men scoffed. I think he’d been too busy fighting with Eisai-sama to see me kill the three men who were lying in pieces around me…
“He is the boy possessed by the three oni!” Eisai-sama yelled. “He doesn’t care who he kills!”
“My reputation precedes me,” I said, continuing to playact. “It’s gratifying to know that my exploits have reached this far region…”
“The more he kills, the stronger he gets!” Kiyoko screeched at them. “Don’t let your blood feed his sword further!”
“And the more he kills, the more bodies I have to bury,” Eisai-sama said bitterly. “I’m tired, gentlemen. I’m tired of war, I’m tired of blood… And most of all, I’m tired of planting corpses in the ground. Corpses are not plants. They do not grow fruit. They only breed maggots.”
“But we’re starving!” protested the young man I’d shoved earlier. “There’s nothing to eat around here!”
“If you stop attacking us and you bury the bodies,” said Eisai-sama, “I will say a prayer over the dead… And I will share the food. But if you don’t listen to reason, you’re all dead men.”
They listened to reason. They buried the corpses, and Eisai-sama said a prayer over them. Then he gave the soldiers as much rice as they could carry. The magical pouch of rice was bottomless, after all…
The men thanked me for not killing them, and then they went on their way.
Only after they were completely, unquestioningly out of earshot did Eisai-sama turn to me and start yelling at me. “How could you be so stupid? The more you kill, the more of an oni you become! I had hoped that you could control yourself better than that…!”
“Don’t call me stupid—I did what had to be done. Besides, you two laid on the Little God of Death crap pretty thick, don’t you think?”
“Only to keep you from murdering more soldiers,” said Eisai-sama.
“It’s not murder, it’s battle,” I said.
“When you’re up against soldiers who are just poor country folks, it’s murder,” Eisai-sama said.
“…Eisai-sama, they did attack us first,” said Kiyoko.
“See, it was a legitimate battle,” I said.
“You are risking your soul every time you do battle,” said Eisai-sama.
“Better to risk my soul than to risk Kiyoko’s life!” I said. “She’s little better than those soldiers when it comes to a real battle!”
“Oh… I see… thank you,” Kiyoko said in a very small voice. “I’m sorry to be so much trouble. If you just leave me at the nearest temple, I won’t trouble you anymore. I saw one about a mile back…”
“—That isn’t what I meant—You’re no trouble…” I said.
“Without meaning to, your words cut deeper than your sword,” Eisai-sama told me.
“No, he’s right. I’m useless,” said Kiyoko. “I make such mistakes when I’m fighting… those three men would have beaten me…”
“Everyone makes mistakes,” Eisai-sama told her.
“You don’t, Eisai-sama,” Kiyoko said.
“I do,” said Eisai-sama. He turned, and looked around. We’d been attacked at a crossroads. We’d been headed northwest—just because Eisai-sama said it might be good to breathe some sea air. The men who’d attacked us had gone to the northeast. But now, Eisai-sama was looking down the road leading to the southwest, a direction in which we hadn’t been planning to go. “I do make mistakes,” he repeated, “and if you want to see one of them, let’s go about a mile that way…” He started walking. Kiyoko and I followed.
As we walked, I talked to Kiyoko. “I didn’t mean to say it like I did—you… you’re not half-bad at fighting. It’s just, fighting is all I know. First, I was a bodyguard to a young shogun, then I was thrown into the army. It’s the only skill I have. I can only see the world through the eyes of a killer…”
“No, that’s not true,” Kiyoko said.
“You, on the other hand,” I continued, “have many, many paths open to you. So what if I’m a better fighter? I’m no good at anything else…”
“Again, that’s not true,” Kiyoko said.
“Why do you keep saying that?”
“Because you’re still young, just like I am. We both have the whole world in front of us. There’s still a lot of skills we can learn… I might learn to be a better fighter someday…”
“And what can I learn?” I asked.
“You may learn not to be a better fighter. You may learn how to live without seeing nothing but battles in front of you,” she said.
We walked for a while without talking.
Then: “Kiyoko-chan?” I asked.
“Yes?”
“Would it offend you if I held your hand?”
Kiyoko didn’t say anything. Instead, she held out her hand and smiled.
I took her hand.
“Come on, you two, the building we’re going to spend the night in is just ahead,” said Eisai-sama.
Some minutes later, we saw a large, obviously-deserted house. Other than the fact that the way it looked run-down suggested it’d been abandoned for some time, there wasn’t much very noticeable about it… with one exception… “The trees are all dead around it,” I said.
“Everything’s dead here,” Eisai-sama sighed.
“It’s kind of odd, because there’s a well right there… maybe it dried up, though…?”
“It didn’t dry up,” Eisai-sama said grimly.
“Well then… this place is so beautiful, otherwise…” said Kiyoko, “or must’ve used to be…Why did anyone desert it in the first place?”
“Come inside the place and see,” Eisai-sama said.
We went inside. “Oh! It’s much better than I thought it’d be on the inside!” said Kiyoko.
“That’s because no one comes in here,” said Eisai-sama. “Or if they do, they don’t stay for long…”
“I still see nothing but beauty…” Kiyoko said…
“That is because you are young,” said Eisai-sama. “The young—with the exception of our little god of death over there—tend to see the beauty in things. Well, let’s camp here for the night anyway…”
“We’ll need water,” said Kiyoko, turning around and heading toward the doorway by which we’d just come in, “I’ll go outside and get some…”
“—Wait, that wouldn’t be a good idea,” Eisai-sama said, but it was too late. Kiyoko had already gone outside.
“Why isn’t it a good idea?” I asked.
“You’ll see,” Eisai-sama said.
Kiyoko came running back into the house. “There’s someone in the water,” she said.
“You mean there’s a body in the well?” I asked.
“No, I mean, there’s a man’s face in the water I drew from the well. He looked dead.”
“…A man’s reflection?” I asked.
“No, a man’s face,” she said.
“I don’t understand you.”
“This place is haunted, Takeshi-kun,” said Eisai-sama. “But don’t worry, no harm will come to you. Just don’t expect to sleep well tonight…”
We unrolled our bedrolls. “Takeshi-kun, may I put my bedroll close to yours?” Kiyoko asked me. “I don’t like it here now that I know it’s haunted…”
“Makes no difference to me,” I lied, because it did make a difference to me. I liked the idea of lying close enough to Kiyoko to hear her breathing…
We went to sleep without supper. Eisai-sama didn’t eat after noon for monk-ritual reasons, but Kiyoko and I still liked to eat supper… but a dead man’s face in the water meant no water to make rice, so we all did without our evening meal.
At first, we all slept fine.
Then I heard the door to the house slide open. I was instantly awake—sometimes, I’m a light sleeper, and this was one of those times.
I heard something dragging itself across the floor… I clutched Little Enma close to me…
Then I smelled the smell of fetid, stagnant water, and I realized that my sword would be no help at all.
But the sounds went away… and eventually the smell faded somewhat. It was just a ghost, after all, the kind that, as Eisai-sama had promised, would do us no harm.
In the morning, Eisai-sama and I found water all over the floor. Kiyoko went to find somewhere else to get water so she could cook and make breakfast. When she came back with a bucket, she said “I’ve outfoxed the ghost! I found a little stream not too far away!”
Eisai-sama smiled a sad little smile. “Look in the bucket,” he said.
Kiyoko and I both looked in the bucket.
We saw a handsome young dead man glaring back at us.
“Oh,” Kiyoko said softly. “So it happens with any water brought into this place, huh.”
“So, there goes any idea of breakfast,” I said.
“Eisai-sama, can’t you exorcise that ghost?” Kiyoko asked.
“Yeah, chant something,” I said.
Eisai-sama took out his prayer beads and chanted, “How… about… you… both… shut… up… mmm…?”
I thought Kiyoko was going to be hurt by Eisai-sama’s rudeness, but instead she laughed, so I did too.
“My point, children,” Eisai-sama said as he put back his prayer beads, “is that there is no chant on earth that can help this situation.”
“Why not?” Kiyoko asked.
“Let’s go to the stream, and make breakfast there,” Eisai-sama said.
We began to pack up our things. “Back when I first became a monk,” said Eisai-sama, “I was sent off on a pilgrimage to discover myself. I was sent to obscure areas such as this one, in order to offer my services, but the trip was mostly so I could see the world through the eyes of a monk instead of those of a former samurai.”
“So, it was a kind of a shed-your-pride sort of a trip?” Kiyoko asked.
“No, it was more of a ‘let’s see how far you get before you get yourself into trouble’ sort of thing,” Eisai-sama laughed.
“I think that they just sent you off because you can be a real pain in the ass sometimes,” I said.
“Takeshi, that’s just mean,” said Kiyoko.
“No, he’s right,” said Eisai-sama, “and more than just a little. You see, when you are a samurai, you train to be the best samurai you can be. You train, and you attach yourself, your sword, and your services, to your lord and master. Your lord is your god, in a way. When I became a monk, I saw the wise and compassionate Buddha as my new shogun. I trained myself to read the texts and do the rituals in the same way I had trained myself to be a samurai. I was in a competition with myself to be the greatest monk ever. If the monks fasted for two days, I fasted for three. If they chanted for an hour, I chanted for a whole day. No one wants to be around a holier-than-thou, I’m-better-than-you-are monk.”
“And you’ve changed how exactly?” I said.
Eisai-sama laughed. “I’ve learned to laugh at your insights instead of becoming angry, so either the years have changed me, or I have changed myself,” he said.
“Uh… so, you were kind of acting like a jerk and you got sent away, huh?” I said.
“Sad but true. Of course, no one said what they thought, which was that I was guilty of the crime of spiritual arrogance… but at that time, I was. That is a real problem with trying to become enlightened. One wants it all immediately. One doesn’t want to develop patience. So one tries to do everything at once, you see?”
“I was sort of like that when I first started training to be a samurai,” I said. “My teacher finally said, ‘Takeshi-kun, if you want a skill that will last, make haste slowly.’”
Having gathered up our stuff, we headed outside. “It sounds like your teacher would have made a good monk,” Kiyoko said to me.
“I agree,” Eisai-sama said.
“So was there some incident that made them send you away or was it just little things adding up?” I asked Eisai-sama.
“Mostly little things, but there was one incident…”
“I knew it. You messed up somehow,” I said.
“No, I didn’t exactly. I thought that the head of the temple had messed up, as you put it, and I told him so. That led to my journey.”
“You mouthed off to your superior?” I asked.
“That’s a harsh way of putting it,” Kiyoko chided me.
“No, actually, he’s right again. My temple had a sort of festival we were involved with for the local people… we worked hard to set up a harvest feast. Well, one of the farmer’s wives brought some plum wine, which was her family’s pride and joy… The families brought barrels of it. She offered some to me, and I told her that monks do not drink. I was insulted that she didn’t know that. I could see the hurt in her eyes, but I was adamant. Then the head of the temple said that he would be glad to have some of her wine. Her face lit up like a candle. I stomped away, angry and let down that a monk would break his vows.”
“You felt that you were in the right,” Kiyoko said.
“Definitely,” he agreed. “Later, the head of the temple came to a part of the temple where I was chanting. When he came in, I said, ‘You have dishonored the Buddha’s teachings by your actions.’”
“That was pretty mouthy of you,” I said.
“The head monk must have been so angry…” said Kiyoko.
“No, he wasn’t. He smiled at me, then said, ‘These farmers are not educated. They do not know our rules. But they respect us as representatives of Buddha’s teachings.’ I told him that it was up to us to show them the way by not drinking.”
“What did he say to that?” Kiyoko said.
“He said, ‘The Buddha is the soul of kindness. We do not teach others that Buddha’s way is best by hurting the feelings of others. That woman spent her time and effort making that wine for the celebration. It was her gift to all of us. To turn down such a gift is worse than bending a rule about drinking.’ I told him that I did not see it that way. I said that monks should be beyond reproach. He told me that we did not represent some unobtainable ideal, but a way out of the suffering of this world. We must know the world in order to rise above it. We must understand others so we can be compassionate toward them. Then he told me that I had to see the outside world, and he sent me away. He told me to come back when I understood.”
“When you understood what?” I asked.
“That’s what I asked him. He said, ‘You’ll know it when you find it, not a second before.’ Then he helped me pack up my things, and I left.”
“And you found it when you came here, I take it,” Kiyoko said.
“Indeed I did.”
“What was the ‘it’ that you found?” I asked.
“I found that one should never take a situation at its face value. And I found that trying to do the right thing can be the wrong thing.”
“…You’re talking in Zen riddles, Eisai-sama,” said Kiyoko.
“How else can one achieve true enlightenment?” said Eisai-sama.
“—Would you just tell us what happened?” I said.
“Oh, yes… I was wandering around this part of the country, helping out wherever I could… At one point, plague broke out, and I helped a doctor tend to the ill and the dying…”
“You chanted while he worked, I assume,” I said.
“No, I acted as his assistant. I helped out by lifting dead bodies out of the sick room, making food, administering medicine, comforting the grieving. The chanting came afterward, when the ill were beyond anyone’s help but the mercy of Heaven. Anyway, the plague eventually passed… I was sitting with the doctor, watching the sun set, when he said, ‘About five miles down the road is a sick house.’ I asked, slightly surprised, if the plague had reached that far into the country. He shook his head and said, ‘No, the house is sick. Maybe you can help the people inside of it.’ I had no idea what he was talking about.”
“Yeah, sounds clear as mud to me,” I said.
“He meant, the house was haunted,” Kiyoko said.
“No, I think he’d meant what he said,” said Eisai-sama. “Houses are like people. Just as people change people, people change their homes, don’t you think?”
“Do you ever speak sense?” I asked.
“I’m saying that when an incident disturbs a house… I think that sometimes, it holds onto the incident,” Eisai-sama said.
“So, you went to this house… I mean, it was this house, right?” Kiyoko said.
“Yes,” Eisai-sama said. “This house.”
“And I bet you saw the face in the water, just like I did,” Kiyoko said.
“Indeed I did,” said Eisai-sama. “Like you, I did not drink the water… I threw it on the weeds near the well. The weeds died instantly.”
“Eep,” said Kiyoko.
“I wondered to myself if the plague itself had been somehow caused by the evil face I’d seen, but that was just me trying to find an explanation for the sudden sickness in the land. While we are all one spiritually, not every incident in the world is connected. Coincidences do happen sometimes, even in a karma-driven world. But I was younger then, and I thought that because I was doing the work of helping people understand the teachings of Buddha, I could never be wrong.”
“You’re not the Buddha, though…” said Kiyoko.
“You are already smarter at your young age than I was back when I discovered this accursed place,” Eisai-sama said.
“Thank you,” said Kiyoko.
I looked at the water in the stream. “Are you sure that this water is all right?” I said.
“Yes,” Eisai-sama said. “The people from the house used to have to make meals here and bring them back to the house.”
Kiyoko got up and got some water from the river. “Sounds like a lot of trouble…” she said…
“It wasn’t easy,” Eisai-sama agreed. “The face did not appear in other liquids such as sake, so they simply did not drink water.”
“They must have been drunk all the time,” I said.
Kiyoko giggled.
“Go get some firewood, smart-ass,” Eisai-sama said.
I did so. It wasn’t that hard, considering all the dead trees around.
As I gathered dead sticks, the old man’s voice in my head spoke up: “Life is all about vengeance, my friend. This story is all about revenge.”
“Humanity is nothing but a bunch of angry, frightened children bent on self-destruction,” the old woman’s voice said.
“What would be so wrong with helping humanity destroy itself?” the man with the oily voice wondered. “It’s what they really want, after all…”
“That’s one way of seeing things, I suppose,” I said. Then I went back to Eisai-sama and Kiyoko.
“Your voices are very active this morning,” Eisai-sama noted.
I gave Kiyoko the firewood. “It’s that obvious?” I asked.
“It’s written all over your face,” Kiyoko said.
“…Maybe you should return to your story,” I said to Eisai-sama.
“Where was I again…?”
I sat down. “Young monk, out to see the world, evil ghostly face in water, dead weeds…” I said…
“Ah, yes. I was invited into the house by a servant. She was an old woman who was a devout Buddhist. She offered me food, which was waiting in the kitchen. In order to get to the kitchen, I had to walk by the room of the mistress of the house. She was a distinguished middle-aged woman, fragile and delicate, rather unhealthy-looking. I saw that she had a cane with her. She was praying. In front of her was an altar with a young man’s portrait on it. ‘Her young man died?’ I whispered to the servant. I was told that her mistress’s name was Osono. Osono’s young man had disappeared after she was pledged to marry another man.”
“How sad,” Kiyoko said.
“So they manipulated her, eh?” I said, unable to hide a little disgust.
“It was a matter of honor, Takeshi-kun,” said Eisai-sama, “as I learned from talking to the cook in the kitchen. She was a middle-aged lady who had been with the household since she was a young girl. She was an excellent cook, albeit a bit of a gossip.”
“Do monks listen to gossip?” I asked.
“They do to be polite,” said Eisai-sama. “And they do when they are strangers in a strange part of the country. And they do because… even monks get curious.”
“Ah, but curiosity is a desire to know the truth,” I observed. “Desire makes humankind miserable. You should be beyond curiosity…”
“It’s too early in the morning to debate philosophy,” said Eisai-sama. Then he couldn’t resist: “…Still, how can one help people if one does not know their problems?”
“Breakfast!” Kiyoko said as she brought us bowls of rice. “Careful, the rice is hot.”
“Thank you,” I said with a smile.
Kiyoko smiled back. She was a girl with a very honest, open smile… She wasn’t shy, and she never put on any airs. I thought to myself, I’d rather have a Kiyoko for a girlfriend than any other type of girl. Other girls are so artificial compared to her…
“Would you stop flirting with each other and sit down?” Eisai-sama said.
“We weren’t flirting,” I said.
“You were with your eyes,” Eisai-sama said.
“You were telling us about the cook,” Kiyoko said quickly.
“Yes. She told me that Osono had fallen in love with Minokichi, a young man who was below her station in life. Osono was a lady of high repute. Minokichi was just…well, he was just a young man, not that different than, say, Takeshi-kun here. Osono’s family had fallen upon hard times. Her grandfather drank the family fortune away. All they had left was their rank. Well, there was a businessman who was rich, but of a lower class. He decided to marry Osono in order to become a noble,” Eisai-sama said.
“So, she was essentially sold into marriage,” I said.
Eisai-sama nodded.
“And Osono told Minokichi that she must follow her father’s wishes and to go away,” I said.
Eisai-sama nodded.
“Did he go away?” Kiyoko asked Eisai-sama.
“Well, he disappeared, so…”
“You’re being a little evasive, there…” I said.
“The cook told me that Osono had been married to her husband, Tokubei, for ten years. They’d had a child,” Eisai-sama said.
“The child died?” Kiyoko asked.
“He wandered off and drowned in the stream. Or at least, that’s what they said to the authorities.”
“But… it wasn’t true?”
“…Well, it was a strange story…”
Eisai-sama fell silent a minute. Finally I said, “What was a strange story? What happened?”
“…The child drowned while lying on his futon,” Eisai-sama said.
“…How could… that… happen…?” said Kiyoko.
“It couldn’t,” Eisai shook his head, “a child who was nowhere near any water should not drown in the way that this child did. But the child gasped for breath, and spat up water, and then choked, just like a drowning child.”
“…Scary,” I said.
“Sad,” Kiyoko said.
“The child is free from the troubles of this world,” Eisai-sama said.
“—Don’t you have a heart?!” Kiyoko yelled. “A child died!”
“I do have a heart. I have prayed over the child’s grave whenever I come through this part of the country. But… I am a Buddhist monk. Our philosophy is that emotional detachment frees us from worldly suffering. Life, in our view, is transitory. The soul is what matters, not the… I… yes, it is sad, my friends. But in this world, with all of its battles and wars, its famines, its pain, I cannot carry every tragedy I see with me. I have to believe in the teachings of Buddha, or else I would crumble…”
We sat in silence for a minute.
“Would you give me a few moments alone? I’d like to visit the grave and say a prayer,” Eisai-sama said.
“Of course,” Kiyoko said.
We let him go.
“…Sometimes,” Kiyoko said with a sad little laugh, “try as I might, I do not understand the way of the wise, compassionate Buddha.”
“If we did, then we would be the Buddha, and would have no need to pray for wisdom. We’d just know what we need to know,” I said.
“You sound like Eisai-sama,” she said.
“Yuck, I don’t want to sound like that… I want to sound just like myself, and not…”
“—It’s better than sounding like the voices in your head. They must hate how much you’re changing.”
“Me? I haven’t changed at all.”
“You have. I see it every day. You’re resisting them more and more. That’s why they yell at you so much. They’re losing ground with you.”
“…I killed, yesterday… They liked that…”
“You used your sword to protect me. A sword used to defend another is not the same thing as a sword used to attack. The very nature of your sword is changing, so you’re changing too.”
“…You know, I am very careful with how I treat my sword. Little Enma matters to me. That sword is a part of me. But even though I clean it and take care of it, I see little bits of wear and tear. I get scared because it’s losing some of its luster, some of its beauty…”
“…Some of its appeal?”
I nodded.
“Like I say, you’re changing in a lot of ways,” she said. “That’s making the voices angry. They know that, well, it looks like they’re going to lose the fight.”
I didn’t say anything. I just thought about what she’d said. But I was glad she’d said it.
Eventually, Eisai-sama came back to us. He looked upset. “What’s wrong?” Kiyoko asked.
“I really shouldn’t have been surprised…” said Eisai-sama.
“Surprised?” I asked.
“The soil was soggy around the poor child’s grave,” said Eisai-sama. “It always is. It’s like it was constructed over a well. But I know it wasn’t. And it hasn’t been raining around these parts in a while.”
“Oh,” said Kiyoko.
“Maybe there’s some logical explanation for it?” I tried.
“This from a young man who speaks to the oni in his head,” Eisai-sama scoffed.
“…Getting back to your story, Eisai-sama…” said Kiyoko.
“Mm. Yes. The cook told me that Osono’s husband, Tokubei, was very much in love with Osono, but that Osono, beyond doing her, ah, wifely duties, could not respond in kind…”
“She still loved Minokichi,” Kiyoko said.
“There are some who would advise you not to be such a romantic,” Eisai-sama told her. “It is often said that time heals all wounds.”
“You found her praying at a shrine to Minokichi, though…” said Kiyoko… “She was still in love with him…”
“Don’t bicker,” I said, “just tell us what happened next.”
~~~~~~~~~~
TO BE CONCLUDED