Lian Hearn - Heaven's Net Is Wide

Naomi invited Shigeru to stay until the others returned, for he could then take food with him, but he was anxious to cross the first pass before nightfall.

“Should I leave you alone?” he questioned.

She became almost angry with him. “If you want to leave, go now! I am in no danger, and even if I were, I am perfectly capable of defending myself.” She indicated the sword next to her. “There are also spears outside,” she said. “I assure you I can fight with both.”

They parted formally, with a certain sense of disappointment on both sides.

A wasted journey, he thought. We are both hopelessly weakened. He could not see how they could help each other, yet he could not imagine achieving anything without her. She was his only ally.

The farther he went, the worse he felt about leaving her. He wanted to tell her more; he felt he had not expressed his gratitude to her for supporting him against Iida, for understanding his grief, for making the journey to see him. It might be months before they met again. The thought was suddenly unbearable. He had walked for scarcely two hours when the rain began again, heavier than ever. Faced with the prospect of spending the night without shelter, he told himself it would be wiser to turn back; as soon as he turned, his spirits lifted. He walked swiftly, often breaking into a run, hardly noticing the rain lashing at him, soaking him, his heart pounding from exertion, from anticipation.

He saw immediately that the woman, Sachie, and the groom had not returned. Only the one horse, the pretty mare, stood in the shelter. She turned her head at his approach and whickered gently. He splashed through the puddles, undid his sandals, and leaped up onto the boards of the veranda.

He heard the sound of a sword sliding from the scabbard and put his hand to Jato, calling out, yet not wanting to name either himself or her. As he stepped into the temple area, the door to his left slid open and she stepped out, the drawn sword in her hand. For a moment they stared at each other without speaking. A flush lay beneath her normally white skin, and her eyes were brilliant with emotion.

“I… came back,” he said.

“I did not expect it to be you.” She looked at the sword and lowered it. “You are soaked.”

“Yes. The rain.” He gestured toward the outdoors, where the rain fell in a solid curtain.

“Sachie and Bunta will have stayed in the village,” she murmured. “Let me take your wet clothes.”

Pools of water were already collecting around him where his garments dripped on the floor. He took the sword from his sash and placed it inside the doorway of the matted room. She laid her sword next to it, then stepped toward him, her face still, her movements deliberate. He smelled her perfume, her hair, and then her breath. She stood close to him and her hands went to the knot in his sash. She undid it carefully and then looked up into his face as she pushed the outer garment back from his shoulders. Her hands brushed against the cold skin at his neck, and he remembered the birds’ plumage; she led him into the room, loosened her girdle, and drew him down onto the crimson cushions. He thought, I must not do this, but he was beyond choice, and then he thought, Everything else is denied to me; this one desired thing I will have. He remembered all he had feared for women, their frailty, their weakness, but she did not receive him with passiveness or weakness but gave herself to him and took him, all his strength and his need, with her own strength and power. Beneath the silk undergarments, her body was both slender and muscular, desiring his as much as his desired hers, astonishing and delighting him.

They clung to each other like fugitives in the deserted temple. While the rain fell, they were safe: no one would come as long as the rain kept falling. They were emperors in a palace above the clouds, in a world beyond time where anything was possible.

This is what it is to fall in love, he thought with a kind of wonder, never having expected to experience it, having always guarded himself against it on his father’s advice; now realizing the impossibility of resisting it, he laughed aloud.

She was seized by the same merriment and became playful, like a child. She brought tea and poured it not like a great lady but like a serving girl.

“I should serve you,” he said. “You are the head of your clan, and I am dispossessed. I am nothing.”

She shook her head. “You will always be Lord of the Otori clan. But we will serve each other. Here”-she spoke in familiar language-“take. Drink.” The abrupt words coming from her mouth made him laugh again.

“I love you,” he said.

“I know. And I you. There is a bond between us from a former life-from many lives, maybe. We have been everything to each other-parent and child, brother and sister, closest friends.”

“We will be husband and wife,” he said.

“Nothing can prevent it,” she replied, adding frankly, caressing him, “it is what we already are. I knew I loved you as soon as I saw you at Terayama. I recognized you in some way, as though I had known you deeply but had forgotten about you. My husband was still alive, and I knew I could never admit my love for you. But I did not stop thinking about you or praying for your safety. When my husband and my son died, it was only the thought of you that sustained me. I decided that so much had been taken from me, I would grasp the one thing I truly wanted.”

“I felt the same,” he said. “But what future is there for us? Before, you were a faint dream, a distant possibility. Now you have become my reality. What meaning will our lives have if we are only to be separated?”

“Why should we not marry? Come to Maruyama. We will marry there.” Her voice was warm and untroubled, and her optimism led him into a reverie where it was all possible: he would marry and live with this woman; they would establish a peaceful land in the West… they would have children.

“Would it ever be permitted?” he asked. “My uncles are now the heads of the Otori clan. My marriage would be of some importance to them. They would never approve of a union that so increased my standing and power. And there is Iida Sadamu.”

“The Tohan decided my first marriage. Why should they have any further say in my life? I am a ruler in my own right. I will not be dictated to!”

Her imperiousness made him smile, despite his forebodings. He saw her confidence-the assurance of a woman who knows she is loved by the man she loves. Despite the losses of the previous year, she still had a look of youth. Grief had marked her but had not corroded her spirit.

“Let us work toward it,” he said. “But can we keep such a thing secret? We might be able to meet once or twice without being discovered, but…”

“Let us not talk of danger now,” she interrupted him gently. “Both of us know the danger; we have to live with it daily. If we cannot meet, we may at least write to each other, as you said last night. I will send letters, as before, through Sachie’s sister.”

It reminded him of her previous message, brought by his former retainer.

“You met one of my warriors, Harada? I was astonished by his conversion to the Hidden.” He spoke more quietly, though there was no chance of being overheard through the downpour, and tentatively, unsure of how much she would reveal.

“Yes, Harada had some sort of vision. It is not uncommon among these people. Their god speaks to them directly when they pray to him. It seems, once heard, it is a voice that is hard to ignore.”

He felt that she was speaking of some direct experience. “Have you heard it?”

She smiled slightly. “There is much that appeals to me in these teachings,” she replied. “My children taught me how precious life is, how terrible it is to take it. As the leader of my clan, though, to give up the sword would condemn my people to immediate defeat by all those armed warriors who surround us. We must have some power to stand up to the cruel and the ambitious in their pursuit of conquest. But if everyone believed they faced a divine judge after death, maybe their fear of punishment would rein them in.”