Lest Our Passage Be Forgotten & Other Stories Page 5

  Plus there was the simple fact of Fuyoko’s elevated status, Yasuo thought as he glanced at the handmaid.

  She hadn’t moved an inch.

  It would typically mean death for a common man to witness the Daimyo’s mother in such a manner, but the courtesies given to the practitioners of birth and death were essentially the same.

  The Daimyo’s mother looked back at him and pursed her red lips as if she were his lover. “Will it hurt?” she asked.

  It was such an absurd comment and his nerves were so tight that a laugh burst from Yasuo before he could prevent it.

  Fuyoko smiled. “See, that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  Yasuo covered her up with a white cloth until only her back was exposed. “This is serious work, O-dono.”

  “Then why are you still laughing?”

  A few more chuckles escaped as he took the procedure’s most expensive component, a small bottle of dragon oil, and carefully traced a line of it along her spine.

  “That’s cold!” she shouted, swatting at him with her hand.

  He composed himself and began massaging her back. “The key,” he said, calming his voice to a more soothing tone, “is to get to the muscles, to loosen them. Once that’s done, the memories will follow. Focus on the memory you have in mind. Replay it over and over, focusing on any detail you can, no matter how small it may seem.”

  He continued to stroke the long muscles that bracketed the spine, by far the most important. He heard light snores coming from the head of the table. He leaned over and looked at her. Her rouged eyes were shut, but then she opened one of them and smiled. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Did I fall asleep? Your story so intrigued me, I can’t imagine how that could have happened.”

  He ignored the gibe, willing to take some abuse as long as the memory proved useful.

  Fuyoko seemed relaxed enough, so he retrieved one of the glasses and lit a thick stick of mountain sage incense. He ran the quickly burning incense over her back, trailing smoke like the burning paper serpents of the New Year. Then he tipped the first glass upside down over the glowering tip, capturing the heat and the smoke. When he’d had enough—it didn’t take long—he pulled the incense away and lowered the glass onto her back just next to the spine.

  “Ow!” Fuyoko squirmed, but he kept the glass firmly in place.

  “Please,” he said as her skin was pulled upward inside the glass from the cooling air within, “keep the memory firmly in your mind until I tell you to stop. The oil and the incense will do the rest.”

  Then he hummed—a low, droning sound—while continuing to heat glasses and position them along her spine. He stopped when there were a dozen, six on each side. She looked like a pale, wrinkled dragon with a dozen glass eyes upon its back.

  The smoke eventually cooled and collected on the oil coating her skin. It would have already absorbed most of the memory from her, but he allowed it to stay while he hummed, keeping her as relaxed as possible.

  When he felt it was time, he placed the palms of his hands on the two highest glasses. The memory tugged at his mind.

  It showed a much younger version of Fuyoko. He might even say she was pretty. She wore ornate robes similar to what she’d worn today, and she was standing in what Yasuo imagined the grand throne room would look like: golden lanterns hanging from a tall ceiling; emerald green runners trailing down the walls; three rows of trestle tables with over a hundred chatting guests wearing a mixture of traditional and modern garb. Fuyoko stood near the throne, where a man sat in beautiful robes with tiny brass bells stitched along the arms and chest. Yasuo had not seen the former Daimyo in over ten years, but his round face and wiry beard were unmistakable. He was speaking with several black-skinned men in stuffy black suits.

  Next to him, on a smaller but no-less-opulent chair, was his son, dressed similarly to his father. His head was leaning back and his mouth was open wide, his quiet snores overshadowed by the din of the crowd.

  The room was sweltering, and it smelled of roast pork and vinegar and lemongrass. Most of the food had been taken away, but a few were still toying with the remains of their plates. Fuyoko chatted quietly with two other ladies, but then she realized her son was sleeping upon the throne. She snapped for a servant to attend her. She whispered to the boy, who then shot off toward the rear exit. He returned moments later with a handful of large grapes. Fuyoko took them and waved the boy away.

  Then, one by one, she began lobbing the grapes toward her son’s mouth. The first struck his headdress and rolled down his arm before plopping to the floor. The second hit his eye. The third hit his bottom lip just as he was waking.

  The nearby crowd fell silent, and looks were exchanged, but Fuyoko was laughing. Then a boom brought the room to complete silence. The Daimyo was staring at Fuyoko, his face furious.

  Yasuo yanked the glass off of Fuyoko’s back, a sucking sound coming with it. He wiped away the round smudge of collected smoke from her back.

  He yanked the second, and Fuyoko stirred.

  “You’re taking my skin off.”

  “If you wish to make a travesty of my profession”—he jerked another one free—“you can do it with another smokeman.”

  When he had pulled all the glasses off and stored them in his bag, Fuyoko sat up, gathering the silk sheet to her breast. “What was wrong with that?”

  Yasuo closed his bag and left the room. The last thing he heard from the room as he closed the door behind him were the gravelly chuckles of an old, dying woman.

  Yasuo woke the next morning to find that the spirit that visited his home from time to time had made another move on the Ojin board. Yasuo sipped his lime tea, admiring the move, trying to decide what his counter should be, but he couldn’t concentrate. His mind kept drifting back to the previous day at the castle. He should not have left like he had. He had been dealing with emotional people his whole adult life. How had the Daimyo’s mother gotten so far beneath his skin?

  He knew the answer to that. Most people shunned him because of the obvious ties his profession had to death. They didn’t want to deal with someone that reminded them so often of their mortality, or those of their parents or other loved ones. He had known and accepted that twenty years ago when he decided to become a smokeman. What he could not accept was someone scoffing at his profession as if it were a joke, as if it meant nothing.

  Yet he had to wonder why she would do such a thing. She was cynical, yes, but there seemed to be more to it than that. The wine, and her drunken state, for one. Her wish to tarnish her late husband’s image, for another. Was it all simply to spite her son? To spite the village? Perhaps she was angry at death; that wasn’t at all uncommon. And although it was rare, some simply refused to leave messages, refused to herald their passage into the Lands of the Dead. Yasuo decided he didn’t care after all. If she wanted to pass over like a thief in the night, then so be it.

  Moments later, the soft sound of paddles striking the water interrupted Yasuo’s thoughts. He quickly made a move on the oval board and rushed outside. He traveled the well worn path from his home to the small dock just as Fujumoto Harune and her daughter, Rika, arrived by rowboat. While their attention was taken maneuvering the boat for their landing, Yasuo smoothed his linen shirt and made sure that the buttons lined up properly with his trousers.

  When the boat was close enough, Rika tossed him a rope, and Yasuo pulled them in and helped them disembark.

  “I would row her in, Fujumoto-san,” Yasuo said. “It would save you so much trouble.”

  Rika dropped to the edge of the dock and inspected the water for koi.

  “It is no trouble.” Harune pulled the straw hat from her head, allowing it to hang down her back from her neck by its black cord. She wore sandals, simple leggings and a white shirt stained with years of hard labor in her rice fields. Despite her traditional and somewhat primitive garb, there was a certain pride in the set of her fine jaw and her matter-of-fact gaze. She bowed and held out her hand to Yasuo, which cont
ained three coins.

  “It can wait until I’m done,” Yasuo said. “The memories don’t always come.”

  She took Yasuo’s hand, and placed the coins there. A warm tingle ran up his arm.

  “They will come,” she said.

  When Harune turned toward her boat, Yasuo motioned to his home. “Please,” he said a little too loudly, a little too abruptly. “I have tea. You could rest awhile before you head back to the village.”

  As always, Harune gave him a fleeting smile and shook her head. “I have so much to do. Another time, perhaps.”

  Yasuo’s heart sank just a little, as always. “Of course,” he said, and motioned young Rika into his home.

  As the sounds of paddling faded, Yasuo led Rika to his sitting room, which was clear except for a sunken hearth in the center of the room and a reed mat with a soft quilt on top of it. While Rika sat on the mat and removed her sandals, Yasuo looked through the propped-open window. The rowboat was already beyond the line of trees on the west shore of his island.

  “Don’t you have work to do?” Rika asked.

  Yasuo turned to find her grinning up at him from her mat.

  “Why, I believe I do”—he made a show of scratching his head—“but for the life of me I can’t remember what.” He looked around the room as if he couldn’t remember how he’d gotten here.

  Rika giggled. “I remembered something about father a few days ago, and mother had to have it.”

  Yasuo frowned. “And what does that have to do with me?”

  “You’re supposed to harvest it for me, silly.”

  “Ah, of course, I remember now.” He kneeled next to her and gave her a most serious look. “Tell me more.”

  Rika shrugged. “I don’t remember much. He was bouncing me on his knee, and I fell off. Hit my head and started bleeding.”

  “That’s hardly a pleasant memory.”

  “That’s what I told her. But she said he was so worried about me that he carried me all the way home and bandaged me himself.”

  “You remember that part?”

  “No. Not very much of it.”

  Yasuo tried to hide his disappointment. It might be a good memory for Rika’s father, but Yasuo did not approve of it for Rika herself. No matter what Harune might wish, memories that shed a good light on Rika were far more important than even the most positive for her father. But there was nothing for it at this point. He had learned the hard way that Harune was no one to argue with.

  Yasuo retrieved a stick of sage and lit it from the dying embers in the hearth. “It may still come,” he told her. When she continued to stare at his preparations, he waved at her to disrobe. She shrugged out of her white shirt—a shirt not nearly as stained as her mother’s—and lay down for him. He applied the precious dragon oil over her back, hoping her memory would come complete. Harune had been desperate ever since her husband had died four years earlier to harvest memories from her daughter. Her husband had decided against preparing any fireworks for himself. They were too poor, he’d always said. Once Rika was grown and married away, once they managed to terrace additional paddies higher up the hillside, then they could afford it. But he’d died in a foolish fight at a bar in the village. Harune had been heartbroken ever since and had been trying to make up for her husband’s shameful entry to Shiri-kin. Plus, she had told Yasuo the first time she’d brought Rika to him, she would not have her child enter the Lands of the Dead the way her husband had.

  When he was nearly finished, the sound of paddles came again, but this time it was clear that there were many paddles and they were in unison, indicating a single, large craft was on its way here. He stood, still humming, and stepped over to the window. An extravagant longboat with a dragon figurehead and eight rowers was just pulling even with his small dock. Green streamers around the dragon’s neck and tail fluttered in the meager breeze. A platform occupied the center of the impressive craft. Upon this was an ornate wooden chair, which was occupied by Asuhiko.

  Yasuo returned to Rika and tested the memory quickly. It was as Rika had described, but only that—no recollection of her father’s chase down the hillside, no yelling for Harune to help him, no mad dash for clean water and bandages. He woke Rika from her reverie and told her to dress.

  Outside, two of the rowers stepped onto the dock and laid a plank from the dock to the platform in the center of the boat. They bowed as Asuhiko strode across the plank and up the dock.

  “Wait here,” Yasuo told Rika. Then he strode to the dock.

  Asuhiko wore a top hat and a suit the color of hay. A diamond rooster pin rested in the center of his emerald green cravat.

  “How may I serve, Asuhiko-sama?”

  He nodded toward Yasuo’s home. “I hope I haven’t disturbed your business, but my duties are taking me away for several days, and I’d hoped to discuss the Daimyo’s mother before I left.”

  Yasuo bowed to hide the flush that had suddenly come to his face. “Of course, Asuhiko-sama. Of course.”

  “I understand she presented a bit of a challenge.”

  The shame at leaving his post came back to Yasuo in full force. The right thing to do, as he’d suggested to Asuhiko two days ago, would be to summon a smokeman from the capitol. But then a thought struck him, one so logical in the light of Fuyoko’s behavior that it couldn’t be ignored. “Forgive my presumption, Asuhiko-sama, but I wasn’t the first smokeman you summoned, was I?”

  Asuhiko bowed his head ever so slightly. The first time they had met, he seemed younger than his days, but now he seemed much older, much wearier. “The other returned to Ushito two weeks ago, incensed, and we’ve been unable to arrange his return.”

  “Me or another, it will do no good if Yoshida-dono will not cooperate.”

  “I’ve talked with her. We’ve come to something of an arrangement.”

  “She wants the fireworks made?”

  “Wants them? No. But she will have them done, yes.”

  “If I might ask,” Yasuo said carefully, “why doesn’t she wish it?”

  Asuhiko smiled, and for the first time the man seemed unsure of himself. “I can only grasp at guesses, all of which would be pure conjecture, useless and perhaps damaging to share. She has refused to give any sort of clues, but this is the other thing I wish to ask of you. Any information she might give you. Will you share it with me?”

  Such a thing would be out of the ordinary, but this charge was out of the ordinary as well. “Of course,” Yasuo replied.

  Asuhiko seemed pleased. “Good,” he said, and walked back to the longboat. “I will tell them to expect you tomorrow. I return in five days. We will discuss your progress then.”

  Yasuo watched the boat depart, wondering if it wouldn’t have been wiser to refuse Asuhiko. But he rejected the notion as quickly as it had surfaced. He was sure that despite Fuyoko’s coarse exterior, there was something inside worth showing. He simply had to find it.

  He went back into his home, kneeled next to Rika, and placed the coins Harune had given him in her hand. “Don’t tell your mother about the memories. I’ll tell her they were fine.”

  Rika nodded, staring at the coins.

  “Slip those into your mother’s coffer when you can, all right?”

  Rika nodded again, clearly a bit scared by the prospect.

  A short while later, Harune came and left quickly, stopping only to verify that Yasuo had retrieved a good memory from her daughter. Yasuo felt horrible lying to her, but he couldn’t explain. Not now. He would confront her once he’d had time to interview Rika more fully to find something more suitable.

  The next morning, after tea and completing another move on his game board, Yasuo went to the castle. He was shown to Fuyoko’s room on the seventh level. The handmaid, standing in one corner, motioned to the open doors that led to the private balcony. Yasuo set his bag down, walked outside into the fresh breeze, and found Fuyoko leaning against the railing. She wore a traditional blue silk dress, her grey hair in an impeccable bun atop
her head. She ignored his approach and instead continued to stare over the vast green landscape. Far below, the lake’s islands huddled together, most of them connected by bright red bridges. Thin tendrils of fog slipped from the nearby pine forest and crawled through the cattails and lily pads toward the main body of the lake.

  Yasuo remained silent, hoping she would speak first.

  Fuyoko motioned to the lake below. “You were very angry when you rowed home the other day.”

  Yasuo stared down into the slate blue water. “How would you know that?”

  “Because you rowed very quickly, and you went straight home to your island. Normally you take your time and skim the western shoreline.”

  She was right. He did do that, but why would the Daimyo’s mother care where he rowed and how quickly? “Forgive me, Yoshida-dono, but—”

  She made a motion with her fingers like she was cutting with scissors. “What did I tell you about that?”

  “Forgive me, Fuyoko, but why do you watch me when I travel home?”

  “You think I shouldn’t?”

  “Well, no, but I rather thought the village’s smokeman was beneath the castle’s notice.”

  “I’ve often wondered what it would be like to have grown up in the village instead of here in the castle”—Fuyoko tilted her head, only a little, but it was a vague sort of apology for this small invasion of his privacy—“and you row by often enough. I began to wonder what it would be like to gather memories. It seems like it would hold so much mystery and intrigue.”

  Yasuo chuckled. “Mystery? No, not very often. But wonder, yes. There is always something new in people’s minds, things I hadn’t thought of before.”