IGMS Issue 9 by IGMS Read Free Book Online Page B

wonder, "Yet the
ushi-oni
came here, to these rooms, not to Minister Morioka's quarters. Why should she --
it
-- have done so?"
    Junko shook his head. "That I cannot say. I know only that I am done with everything." He walked slowly to retrieve the
daimyo
's sword, brought it to him, and knelt again, baring his neck without another word..
    Lord Kuroda did not move or speak for a long time. The Lady Hara put her hand on his arm, but he did not look at her. At last he set the
wakizashi
back in its lacquered sheath, the soft click the only sound in the ravaged room, which seemed to have turned very cold since the fall of the
ushi-oni.
He touched Junko's shoulder, beckoning him to rise.
    "Go in peace," he said without expression, "if there is any for you. No harm will come to you, since it will be known that you are still under the protection of the Lord Kuroda. Farewell . . . Junko-
san
."
    A moment longer they stared into one another's eyes; then Junko bowed to his master and his master's lady, turned like a soldier, and walked away, past smashed and shivered
tengu
furniture, past Minister Morioka -- who would not look at him -- through the crowd of gaping, muttering retainers, and so out of the Lord Kuroda's castle. He did not return to his quarters for any belongings, but went away barefoot, clad only in his kimono, and he looked back only once, when he smelled the smoke and knew that the servants were already burning the body of the
ushi-oni
that was also his wife Sayuri. Then he went on.
    And no one ever would have known what became of him, if the old priest Yukiyasa had not been the patient, inquisitive man that he was. Some years after the disappearance of Minister Junko, the commoner who had ridden at the right hand of a
daimyo
for a little while, Yukiyasa left his Shinto shrine in the care of a disciple, picked up his staff and his begging bowl, and set off on a trail long since grown cold. But it was not the first such trail that he had followed in his life, and he possessed the curious patience of the very old, that is perhaps the closest mortal approach to immortality. The journey was a trying one, but many peasant families were happy to please the gods by offering him lodging, and peasants have long memories. It took the priest less time than one might have expected to track Junko to a village that barely merited the title, on a brook that was called a river by the people living there. For that matter, Junko himself was not known in the village by his rightful name, but as Toru, which is
wayfarer.
Yukiyasa found him at the brook in the late afternoon, lying flat on his belly, fishing for salmon by the oldest method there is, which is tickling them slowly and gently, until they fall asleep, and then scooping them into a net. There were already six fish on the grass beside him.
    Junko was coaxing a seventh salmon to the bank, and did not look up or speak when the old priest's shadow fell over him. Not until he had landed the last fish did he say, "I knew it was you, Turtle. I could always smell you as far as the summer island."
    Yukiyasa took no offense at this, but only chuckled as he sat down. "The incense does cling. Others have mentioned it."
    Neither spoke for some time, but each sat considering the other. To the priest's eye, Junko looked brown and healthy enough, but notably older than he should have. His face was thinner, his hair had turned completely white, and there was an air about him, not so much of loneliness as of solitude, as though what lived inside him had left no room for another living being, or even a living thought.
He chose a good name,
Yukiyasa thought. "You do well here, my son?"
    "As well as I may." Junko shrugged. "I hunt and fish for the folk here, and mend their poor flimsy dams and weirs, as I was raised to do. And they in turn shelter me, and call me
Wayfarer,
and ask no questions. I am where I belong."
    To this Yukiyasa knew not what to say, and the two were silent again, until Junko