Grass for His Pillow by Lian Hearn Read Free Book Online Page B

me again. The next time, though, I did not get close to rapping him; I moved head and hands away before he could touch me. Watching him, I began to sense the slightest intimation of movement. I finally managed to graze the surface of his knuckles. He said nothing, nodded as if satisfied, but barely, and we moved on to working with juggling balls.
    So the hours went: passing the ball from one palm to the other,from palm to mat to palm. By the end of the second day I could juggle three balls in the ancient style; by the end of the third day, four. Akio still sometimes managed to catch me off guard and slap me, but mostly I learned to avoid it, in an elaborate dance of balls and hands.
    By the end of the fourth day I was seeing balls behind my eyelids, and I was bored and restless beyond words. Some people, and I guessed Akio was one, work persistently at these skills because they are obsessed by them and by their desire to master them. I quickly realized I was not among them. I couldn’t see the point to juggling. It didn’t interest me. I was learning in the hardest of ways and for the worst of reasons: because I would be beaten if I did not. I submitted to Akio’s harsh teaching because I had to, but I hated it, and I hated him. Twice more his goading led to the same outburst of fury, but just as I was learning to anticipate him, so he and Yuki came to know the signs, and were ready to restrain me before anyone got hurt.
    That fourth night, once the house was silent and everyone slept, I decided to go exploring. I was bored, I could not sleep, I was longing to breathe some fresh air, but above all I wanted to see if I could. For obedience to the Tribe to make sense, I had to find out if I could be disobedient. Forced obedience seemed to have as little point as juggling. They might as well tie me up day and night like a dog, and I would growl and bite on command.
    I knew the layout of the house. I had mapped it when I had nothing else to do but listen. I knew where everyone slept at night. Yuki and her mother were in a room at the back of the building, with two other women whom I had not seen, though I had heard them. One served in the shop, joking loudly with the customers inthe local accent. Yuki addressed her as “Auntie.” The other was more of a servant. She did the cleaning and most of the food preparation, always first up in the morning and the last to lie down at night. She spoke very little, in a low voice with a northern accent. Her name was Sadako. Everyone in the household bullied her cheerfully and took advantage of her; her replies were always quiet and deferential. I felt I knew these women, though I’d never set eyes on either of them.
    Akio and the other men, three of them, slept in a loft in the roof space above the shop. Every night they took turns joining the guards at the back of the house. Akio had done it the night before, and I’d suffered for it, as sleeplessness added an extra edge to his teasing. Before the maid went to bed, while the lamps were still lit, I would hear one or other of the men help her close the doors and the outer shutters, the wooden panels sliding into place with a series of dull thumps that invariably set the dogs barking.
    There were three dogs, each with its own distinctive voice. The same man fed them every night, whistling to them through his teeth in a particular way that I practiced when I was alone, thankful that no one else had the Kikuta gift of hearing.
    The front doors of the house were barred at night, and the rear gates guarded, but one smaller door was left unbarred. It led into a narrow space between the house and the outer wall, at the end of which was the privy. I was escorted there three or four times a day. I’d been out in the yard after dark a couple of times, to bathe in the small bathhouse that stood in the backyard, between the end of the house and the gates. Though I was kept hidden, it was, as Yuki said, for my own safety.