Lian Hearn - Heaven's Net Is Wide

Afterward she wept with long, gasping sobs while he held her, wiped her face, and held the wine bowl to her lips so she could drink. The depths of her grief, the ferocity of the passion, and his tenderness all undermined her. She felt on the verge of wanting to cling to him forever.

“Akane,” he said. “I love you. I will speak to Haruna about you. I will buy your freedom from her. I want you to be my own. I will do anything for you. We will have children together.”

She allowed herself to reflect, once, How pleasant that would be, while at the same time she thought coldly, That will never happen, but she did not reply.

When she finally spoke, it was to say, “I want to be alone now. I must go to my mother before the end of the day.”

“I will arrange the escort.”

“No,” she said. “You are very kind, but I prefer to go alone.”

Everyone would recognize whose men were with her. It would be as good as announcing she was his mistress already. Haruna had not been consulted, and anyway she would not let any man own her. She would not fall in love with Hayato, though she knew she had been on the edge of love earlier, when her body had known such gratitude for the intensity of both his passion and his tenderness. She drew back from the crater where love’s fires burned and steamed; she would never allow herself to plunge into it.

AKANE STOOD WITHOUT moving; she would not weep. Her mother was doing all the weeping at home, had been prostrate with grief for days.

“Don’t make it harder than it has to be,” her father had said, just once, and Akane had resolved then that she would save her tears for when he was dead, when he would be beyond all suffering and fear and would not be weakened or shamed by her sorrow.

The priest was shaking a white-tasseled stick over the parapet that had become a tomb. The stone bridge, completed after six years, was festooned with new straw ropes and white streamers tied to fresh young willow wands. Chanting rose from the crowd, and drums were beating sonorously and rhythmically. From the far side of the bridge, the young boys who served at the shrine to the river god came, dancing the heron dance.

They were dressed in yellow and white, with tassels like feathers bound around wrists and ankles. Each held a talisman in his right hand, with a design made of bronze metal that reminded her of a heron’s skull-the small brain pan and the huge beak, the empty eye-sockets.

Did he hear the drums and the chanting? Did any sound penetrate into his grave? Did he regret the obsession that had driven him to build this beautiful thing that now spanned the river with its four perfect arches and had brought him to this end, sacrificed to placate the river god and to prevent him from ever building anything to rival it?

People said it was built by sorcery. Many still poled across the river in ferry boats rather than use it. It changed the song of the river. More than fifteen workers had died during its construction, as though the river had already extracted payment for the arrogance and effrontery of man. Yet the head of the clan, Lord Otori himself, had ordered its building; and the same Lord Otori had ordered her father’s death to quieten the fears and suspicions of the people, and maybe also to placate the river god who had so nearly taken his younger son, Takeshi, and had taken Mori Yuta, the oldest son of the horsebreaker.

The dancers came from the southern end of the bridge, their feet almost soundless on the smooth stone. On the northern side, a small wooden platform had been erected, matted like an outdoor room, the sides swathed in silk cloth, the roof a canopy. On either side, banners rippled in the soft breeze, so the Otori heron seemed to fly.

Lord Otori sat in the center of the platform, flanked by his brothers on his right, and his two sons, Shigeru and Takeshi, on his left.

Akane remembered how she had helped one brother pull the other from the water, and she wondered if they knew who she was. Yuta’s little brother had been given to the shrine: he would become a priest, but now he was still a child, and danced the heron dance with the other boys crossing the bridge, passing by her father’s tomb.

Was he dead yet?

The silence of the crowd, the insistent pulse of the drums, the graceful movements of the dancers, full of controlled energy and power, ancient beyond words, moved her unbearably. Despite herself, a cry of emotion forced itself from her throat, a cry like a seabird’s that pierced the souls of those who heard it.

Her father did not hear it and would never hear anything again.

THE OTORI LORDS were escorted away and the crowd mainly dispersed, though a handful of people remained, Wataru and Naizo among them. There was nothing they could do for their master, but they could not bring themselves to leave him either. It was unthinkable that they would return to their homes, to their ordinary lives, while he, no longer alive but not yet dead, crouched in the dark among the stones.

Akane had not thought her legs would obey her, but they did, taking her with hesitant steps toward the center of the bridge. Here she knelt and prayed for her father’s swift death, for his soul’s safe passage.

Wataru came and knelt beside her. He was like an uncle to her; she had known him all her life.

“He made it perfectly,” he said quietly. “There will be no air. It will be quick.”

She did not dare to ask how long.

They stayed there all day, until the sky faded to gray, the haze rose from the sea, and one by one stars appeared. It was a warm night, and a rain frog was croaking from the reed beds, echoed by the tinkling bell frog. At one point Wataru spoke to Naizo, and the boy disappeared for a while and came back with a flask of wine and two bowls. Wataru poured a little into one of the bowls and set it before the stone. Then the three of them drank in turn from the other. As Akane lifted the bowl to her lips, she heard a new sound in the voice of the river.

“I can hear him,” she whispered, and swallowed the wine in a gulp.

“No, he is long dead,” Wataru replied. “Don’t torment yourself.”

“Listen,” Naizo said, and then all three of them heard it, a sort of low keening beneath the flow of the river. It was her father’s voice, transmuted into water. He had become one with the river.

Shigeru heard the girl’s cry and glanced toward her. He could not see her face-her head was covered with a wide cloth-and he did not recognize her, but the way she stood straight and calm impressed him. The stonemason’s death troubled him, though he had said nothing against his father’s decision, feeling his loyalty was more important than his conscience.

He had returned from Terayama as soon as the snows melted and the roads were open. Winter might call an end to skirmishes and campaigns, but intrigue was not smothered by the snow. He had intended to stop in Tsuwano and insist again that Kitano’s sons be recalled from Inuyama, but messengers had come saying that spring had brought an outburst of smallpox and Lord Shigeru was on no account to risk endangering his life: he should return directly to Hagi. It was impossible to know if this was a lie or not. Shigeru himself was determined to go to Tsuwano and prove it was, but Irie, who had come to the temple to escort him home, advised against it.

The new year had seen him turn sixteen. He was now fully a man: his coming-of-age ceremony was held in the third month with great solemnity and rejoicing. He was glad to be back in Hagi-though he missed Matsuda’s advice and support-and was relieved that his brother had survived the fall from his horse, a slight inflammation of the lungs during the coldest days of winter, and numerous blows from wooden swords in practice. For Takeshi now lived in the castle with his father and trained with the other boys of the Otori clan.