Risuko: A Kunoichi Tale (Seasons of the Sword #1)(39)

Again we followed; again Toumi made sure to finish before us.

Her smirk ceased to bother me soon enough, however. First, it became clear that moving quickly was not the point—the more Toumi rushed, the more Mieko seemed to slow down, flowing from one movement to the next so that you could not tell where one movement ended and the next began.

Second, my mind was fully occupied. Between the movements themselves, which became slowly more challenging, though always as slow and flowing as if in a dream, and the fact that there seemed no point to what we were doing, I had no room in my head to think of Toumi at all.

Dance. It was a dance. We had learned other dances at the Full Moon—dances that I recognized as going along with some of the ceremonies and songs that we were learning. Yet this dance was so slow and so unlike any that I had ever seen that I was bewildered.

I was bewildered too because as much as it didn’t seem like any dance that I had ever seen, nonetheless, after a time of following the ice-slow flow of arms and legs, I began to feel as if I knew the movements—as if I could anticipate them before Mieko began to lead us into the next step, the next sweep of the arms, the next gentle lunge.

As the lesson went on, I found that, no matter how quickly Toumi raced, I had always anticipated the movement that Mieko was about to show us, and reached the next shape before Toumi could.

Was I simply growing accustomed to this peculiar dance? In the moment I could only have told you that I felt as if I were remembering it from another lifetime, which made me think of Otō-san, and that it gave me a deep feeling of peace.

As we moved, I found myself remembering the couple whose voices I’d heard outside in the woods. Masugu-san, perhaps? And who else?

After a time, Mieko returned us to the first position—The Two Fields, feet wide, hands before our bellies. “Again,” she said, and lead us back into the flowing pattern of movements that felt as comfortable to me as walking or as climbing a tree.

—

She led the whole company through the dance eight more times, so that after a while even Emi and Toumi were beginning to move with the rest of us, rather than looking to see what the next movement might be. In the end, Mieko stood for a moment in the beginning posture, but instead of saying “Again” and continuing, she brought her feet together, placed her hands on the fronts of her thighs, and bowed. We all bowed with her, as if we were her mirror. It was a startling feeling—that some twenty people were moving, not as individuals, but as a single being. We straightened and stood.

There was no sound but the hiss of the wood burning in the little stove.

Without a word, Mieko left, followed by the Little Brothers, with Aimaru trailing behind them, blinking.

The rest of us stayed to return the stable to its normal, cluttered state. We had just finished when Masugu-san rode in, his horse sweaty and covered in mud, his eyes bright as I had not seen them in weeks.

—

As soon as we left the stable, Toumi snarled, “What kind of idiotic nonsense was that?”

Mai and Shino pulled her aside, whispering urgently—clearly trying to help Toumi avoid one of the older women overhearing—but they needn’t have bothered. One of the older kunoichi made a sour face and clicked her tongue before turning toward the great hall. Looking like a dog that’s just been hit, Toumi ran toward her least favorite spot in the Full Moon, the kitchen.

“Well,” whispered Emi as we followed in Toumi’s wake, “I guess she could have found a more polite way to ask, but I have to say I’m just as confused. You knew the moves. Do you know what that was about?”

I shook my head. “I don’t even know that I really knew the dance, or whatever it was. It just felt... as if I just knew what she meant us to do.”

Emi stopped and looked at me, frowning. Of course, Emi was always frowning, so it wasn’t easy to know what she was thinking. “You’ve really never seen that.”

“No. At least, I don’t think so.”

Emi nodded, but as we both walked up toward Kee Sun’s domain, her frown hadn’t lessened at all.





22—Feather Soup


The following day, after the midday meal, Emi and I were taking the remains of a dozen chickens out through the gate in the back of the compound wall to the rubbish pit when we heard a sharp hiss from behind our dormitory. She and I blinked at each other, dull and incapable of thought after the long ordeal of plucking and butchering the birds.

“Emi! Murasaki!” It was Aimaru’s voice, whispering as loudly as he could manage.

Blinking at each other again, Emi and I scanned the compound. It was not snowing—it hadn’t in over a week—but it was bitterly cold as only those mountains can be, and everyone seemed to be indoors, shutters closed. I led the way back to where Aimaru was hiding.

Our friend was wearing what looked to be every piece of clothing he could pull on—he could barely bend his arms to gesture.

“You look silly,” Emi said, her scowl lightening slightly. He looked like a rag doll.

“Very funny,” he said, and Emi and I choked on our laughter, unable to cover our mouths since our hands held baskets full of bones, feathers, intestines and beaks.

“Look, I’ve been waiting out here forever since the end of the meal. It’s cold!”

We laughed again. It wasn’t very kind of us, but after all of the dismal and odd things that we had been doing, it felt good to laugh.