Risuko: A Kunoichi Tale (Seasons of the Sword #1)(43)

“Really?” asked Emi, scowling; I was probably scowling too, since it hadn’t occurred to me that Lady Chiyome slept at all, or that she would want to. Somehow, taking a sleeping draft seemed... human.

“Ayup.” Kee Sun grunted. Then he smiled again. “But I don’t want yeh coming in here usin’ knives when yeh haven’t slept well, so I’ll show yeh girlies how to make a good tea with this”—he let a handful of the corydalis fall through his fingers—“that’ll give even a crabby old man like me a good night’s sleep.”

—

Later that day, we went out to the stable for another lesson with Mieko-san.

As we arrived, the women were still moving the equipment out of our way. one of the women barked, “Hey! Where are all of the blankets?”

“Blankets?” asked Toumi.

“Yeah. We usually move all of the saddle blankets, but they’re not here.”

Pointing to the far wall, Fuyudori answered brightly, “See! They’re over here, already out of the way. Perhaps Masugu-san moved them.”

Emi muttered, voice low so that even standing beside her I could hardly hear, “Or maybe it’s our fox spirit again.”

Before I could begin to wonder what she meant, Mieko stood silently and led us through her dreamlike dance once again. Once again, I had the odd, disturbing sense that I knew the movements. Perhaps I had danced it as a child. Perhaps I had danced it in a previous life. Perhaps I was simply imagining it.

Now that they were sure that they knew where they were going, my limbs wanted to go faster, but Mieko-san’s steady, flowing movements lulled me into following at her pace.

My hands. My hands felt... empty.

And the air was full of the metallic scent of snow.

—

True winter closed in that night. A blizzard turned the whole world into a huge sheet of blank paper, and didn’t let up.

After several days of being snowbound, we all began to feel jumpy. We were only outside long enough to scurry from one building to another.

At meals, the women became quieter for a time, but soon some of them began to grumble—though not so loudly that Lady Chiyome could hear. “It can stay like this for weeks at a time, up here in the mountains,” muttered one of the women into her soup one night. “We won’t be going out on any trips any time soon.”

A broad-shouldered kunoichi who had come in just before the blizzard answered, “Trust me, you’re not missing anything out there.”

As the rest of us became gloomier and gloomier, only two people seemed to be merry. The first was Lady Chiyome, who said that the valley needed a good snow, and who always seemed most cheerful when others were miserable.

The other was snow-haired Fuyudori, who seemed to be in her element. At lessons, she chirped and laughed. At meals, she sat near Masugu-san and flirted shamelessly.

Mieko-san didn’t seem to find anything about the proceedings at all amusing. She glowered in the opposite direction—at Kuniko’s nightly memorial bowl of rice. At me. At the wall.

Masugu-san sat like a stone statue of himself. Then again, he hadn’t been able to take his horse out. He was never happy when he couldn’t ride.





24—Visitors


The snow did not relent for days. Every morning, Emi, Toumi and I had to break the ice that had formed atop the well in order to fill the tubs. As the snow kept piling up, Emi pointed out that we could use the drifts that had fallen in the courtyard overnight. Not only was this easier than trudging all of the way to the back of the estate where the well was, but it had the benefit of clearing the snow from the area immediately around the bathhouse, which made walking to and from the kitchen easier.

Though we never discussed it, we began to stay in the bathhouse longer and longer, letting the heat of the fires and the warming baths thaw us.

Having to trudge out into the cold again each day just as the baths began to heat up was unbearably hard. That we were able to flee to the warmth of Kee Sun’s kitchen was at least a small blessing.

Kee Sun continued to teach us about herbs. And each night, after we had finished cleaning out the tubs for the day, Emi went to the kitchens to pick up a pot of corydalis tea that the cook had prepared; he had already brewed one for Lady Chiyome, he said, so one more was no trouble, if it meant that Emi came to work in the mornings with a smile on her face. I think that he was joking.

The tea certainly helped Emi sleep. Sometimes it seemed as if she went through the rest of the next day barely awake.

—

After five steady days, the blizzard let up. Emi, Toumi and I were in the teahouse that morning with the older girls, writing out one of the Buddha’s sermons. Even when we warmed the ink stones at the small fire, it took a great deal of rubbing to get the ink sticks to mix smoothly with the water, and even then the ink was thick as honey from the cold, full of clumps that left splotches on the page. Mai just laughed when Emi’s attempt to write the Chinese character for bliss came out looking more like—as Mai said—“a kid’s drawing of a cow turd.”

Suddenly, the screened walls of the teahouse glowed brightly, as for the first time in days something like bright sun broke through the overcast. We all stumbled to the door—though the clouds were still heavy and it was still cold. “Go!” said our teacher, sighing. “I want to read some more of what the Buddha had to say about cow plops.”