The Sword of Kaigen, page 40
“Gods willing,” Misaki murmured, and he withdrew, leaving her alone with the body that was no longer Mamoru.
In her mind, Misaki had compared the bomb shelter to Hell. But this—this clarity of stillness—was worse. The bizarre thing about Misaki was that she could be at home in Hell. Chaos had its own calming effect on her. In the bunker, the screams, the pulsing blood, and the gunfire had drowned each other out, smothering her in a daze. Here, there was no fluid crawl of blood or dribble of tears to consume Misaki’s attention; this blood had frozen into something solid and irrefutable. There was no movement to spur her to action, nothing to mend or destroy. There was only the frozen truth of her son’s death.
Slowly, Misaki sank to her knees beside the corpse.
Her eyes traced the details, preserved in the cold. The bullet wounds may not have bled, but there was plenty of frozen blood to survey, a map of Mamoru’s struggles leading up to his death. Minor cuts littered his face and forearms, bruising and raw skin around his neck suggested that someone had tried to strangle him, and his lip was split from a blunt blow to the mouth, but none of that had killed him. It was clear that his death had resulted from the deep blade wound in his side.
Misaki wished she hadn’t seen wounds like that before, on the victims of machete attacks in Livingston. She wished she hadn’t witnessed firsthand how excruciatingly long it took those people to die.
The fonyaka opposite Mamoru had been cut cleanly in half by a sword stroke that ran from his right hip to just beneath his left arm—the sort of cut that ended a man’s life instantly. Even the greatest fighter in the world couldn’t get up for a counterattack after that. Mamoru’s blow had been the final one... which could only mean that her boy had fought through the injury that ended his life. Even with that hideous wound in his side, draining his blood and disabling vital organs, he had fought.
His right hand was mangled, missing two fingers, so she reached out and touched his left, smoothing a gentle touch over his battered knuckles. The first time Misaki had held Mamoru, as a tiny baby, she had hated the feel of his jiya simply because it reminded her of his father’s. It had made her want to retch and recoil. Now she reached for it, her fingers grasping and senses straining for the smallest trace—but of course, there was nothing. The life force that had made him Mamoru had departed, on its way to a different realm of existence.
A breathless sob escaped Misaki. Her ice-laced fingers dug into the back of her son’s kimono and she wished, she wished, from the depth of her aching chest, that her claws could pull a life back to the Duna as easily as they could tear one out of it.
The next breath that came out of her was more of a scream than a sob, and the pain it sent through her lungs was so pitifully small next to the sheer absence beneath her hands. She would let a fonyaka pull her life from her mouth, she would give her soul a thousand times over, if she could just bring Mamoru’s back.
It wasn’t until she felt liquid blood on her fingers that she jerked back and realized what she was doing. As she longed to feel Mamoru’s pulse and nyama, her own subconscious had risen to pull at the lifeless body. It hadn’t restored a true pulse, of course. All it had done was unfreeze arteries and disrupt rigor mortis, causing Mamoru’s bullet wounds and other injuries to bleed anew.
Horrified, Misaki scrambled a pace back from the body.
“Sorry!” She gasped, wiping the blood from her hands in the snow. “I’m so sorry!” She bowed down, crushing her forehead into the frozen ground until it hurt, until ice and then rock ground into her brow. “I’m so sorry.”
She stayed there for a long time, pressed to the ground in apology as if there were enough apologies in the Duna to make up for how she had failed him. Closing her eyes, she prayed to Nagi for strength and Nami for calm. Neither obliged. Her bloodstained hands shook, even as she braced them against the ground for some semblance of stability. The sobs wouldn’t stop, but she had not come here to confuse Mamoru’s spirit and pull it in two. She had come here to help him, to be a good mother, if the Gods would give her this last chance.
One didn’t need to be a fina to understand that regret was like poison to the spirits of the dead. A spirit who regretted what he hadn’t accomplished in life would be unable to pass into the peace of the Laaxara. Those spirits became trapped in the burning realm on the fringe of the Duna, unable to truly die, their suffering intensifying as their regrets festered. It was a horrible existence. And it was the souls of those who died young, in the midst of hope, unfinished business, and unfulfilled potential who were in the most danger.
Through the shaking, Misaki found the voice to speak to her son.
“Kotetsu Katashi and Atsushi both lived, you know,” she said softly. “The Kotetsu line survives, with all its knowledge, because of you.” That was the first thing he needed know: that he hadn’t died for nothing. To Misaki, at this moment, the lives of the Kotetsus seemed irrelevant, but Mamoru was a better person than she was. It would matter to him.
“I know you doubted. I know you worried that you wouldn’t know what to do. But look at you... you fought so well.” And with the grief, Misaki realized that there was also pride welling up in her throat. It intertwined with the pain, amplifying it. “You’re only a boy, but you fought to the last like a man. You did well here. But I’m sure you know that...” A painful, nearly hysterical smile jerked at the corners of Misaki’s mouth. “No warrior could have fought through injuries like yours without being sure of himself.”
Misaki bit down on her trembling lip as her throat closed up. There were no holy men here to offer the perfect, enlightened words to send Mamoru’s spirit on its way. As his mother, as the only living person here, Misaki had to find the words. This was the last thing she could do for him. So, even though it shook her body and hurt beyond imagining, she forced herself to keep speaking.
“You did right by your family and your country, even though, I think... none of us did right by you. There is nothing in this world for you to regret. Nothing at all.”
But it wasn’t Mamoru’s regret Misaki truly feared. Her son had been honest with himself and others. He had lived well and died with purpose. Right now, Misaki herself was the greatest threat to her son’s spirit. The regrets of a spirit’s loved ones could also tie it down. The bitterness that consumed her could doom him to an eternity of fire—unless she found some way to be better.
With a last bracing breath, she lifted her head to look into Mamoru’s face and was surprised to find a kind of peace there. Somehow, the horrific damage to his body had done nothing to contort his features, as pale and clean as his father’s, but gentler—like the bright edges of a moon barely softened by mist. His jaw wasn’t clenched, nor was his brow crunched in pain. Instead, he had the innocently wondering look of someone halfway woken from a dream. His eyes, glazed and frosted from the cold, no longer functioned, but somewhere in the space between space, his spirit still saw her. He still listened. She looked into those eyes, using them to ground her, as she started to speak.
“Mamoru-kun...”
The sound of her own voice wavering in uncertainty brought her back to the first time she had truly talked to her son: that dawn on the front deck mere months ago when they watched the sunrise. She hadn’t quite known what to say then either, to help him on his way.
Start small, she told herself, as she had then, conversational. The right words would follow if she just loosened her time-stiffened lips.
“Do you remember that morning, Mamoru? After you had that fight with Kwang Chul-hee and asked for my help? You asked me if... if one day I would tell you about my school days, about my life before Takayubi.
“It made me so happy to hear you ask that, and I was looking forward to telling you those stories. They were going to be fun stories, adventure stories. I’m sure you would have liked them, but now I think... maybe those stories about Tsusano Misaki—Sirawu, the Shadow—didn’t have as much value as I put on them. Maybe they weren’t worth retelling or holding onto the way I did.
“See, Mamoru, there were certainly people in those stories who knew what they were fighting for, heroes who were noble and strong-willed, and worth remembering... like you. But I wasn’t one of them. Sirawu was just that. A shadow. It was someone else’s story and I was just passing through it. This... you are my story... and I was so selfish, so tied to that shadow that I missed it. And my son, I— I’m so sorry it took me this long to understand. I’m sorry—” the words caught in her throat, choking her, until pain shot through her chest, forcing her to let them out. “I never loved you the way I should have.”
Tears rolled down Misaki’s cheeks. For the first time since coming to Takayubi—perhaps the first time in her life—she knew she was human. Acutely, unbearably human. Now that it was too late.
“Your mother is a selfish woman, Mamoru.” She clutched a sleeve in her hand and wiped the tears from her eyes, only to have new ones well up in their place. “I won’t deny that. I’ve lived my life unable to let go of all the ‘what if’s, the ‘if only’s. For my husband, I couldn’t let go of them. For the love of my life, I couldn’t let go of them, and we’ve all suffered for it. It was the poison of my regret that killed my unborn children, those who would have come after you and before Hiroshi. My regret has poisoned this family for years, but I swear, Mamoru, I won’t let it touch you.
“The thing is... you’re more important than all of them. So, what I couldn’t do for my parents, or Robin, or Takeru, or my unborn babies, I’ll do it for you. My son, I’ll do it for you. You’ve done more in this world than anyone could have asked. This once, let me be the mother I should have been from the beginning. Let me take care of the rest, alright?”
She crept forward to touch his hand again, but this time, she did not sob or pull. Her jiya was under control. She cried quietly, her tears falling without disturbance. She let him be still.
“I know have no right to ask anything of you, but please... if your poor, stupid mother can ask one last thing of you... let me hold you one more time. Just one more time, you’re going to let Kaa-chan hold you and treasure you the way I should have the day you were born. Then I’m going to let you go on with all my blessings. Is that alright?”
Finawu said it was not good for a woman to touch the dead, but Takayubi’s finawu had all been lost in the tornado with their temple. There was no one to judge Misaki as she gathered her boy into her arms and settled down to hold him for the last time.
Please Nami, please Nagi, she prayed through the tears. He’s such a good boy. Don’t let his stupid mother ruin this for him. Please... give me the strength to let him go.
A mother was supposed to go to the temple after the death of a child. She was supposed to speak to the spirits of the Dead until she had said all she needed to say to the child, until all her unresolved feelings were spent, all conflicts resolved, all grudges laid to rest, until the finawu were satisfied that the deceased could move on in peace. But the temple was gone, along with all the masks and wise monks in it.
The best Misaki could do was hold her baby, and love him, and love him, and hope it was enough that she could let him go.
“You have no debt to pay the Duna.” She murmured, resting her cheek against his cold head. “It is enough that, even for a moment, I had a son like you. It is enough that Hiroshi, Nagasa, and Izumo will have a brother like you to look up to as they become young men themselves. It is enough,” she told herself, even though she would never hear him laugh with his little brothers again, never watch him bring beauty to another kata, never see that boyish smile, with those dimples, deepen into the smile of a man. For a moment, her hands had been full of pearls. She rocked and repeated, “It is enough.
“It is enough.
“It is enough.
“It is enough,” until Chiba Mizuiro returned with a group of volunteers to help her carry the body up the mountain.
Before they left, Misaki paused before the corpse of the Ranganese soldier who had killed her son. Kneeling down, she passed a hand over his eyes, closing them, letting herself forgive him. It was easy to forgive a young man following orders.
Too easy.
And it didn’t lift any of the weight from Misaki’s chest—because this Ranganese stranger wasn’t the one who really needed forgiving.
Chapter 21: The Stormlord
Setsuko woke later that day, complaining of a splitting headache with her usual good humor. When Misaki softly told her what had happened to her husband, she got very quiet. It was plain that she had been expecting the news. If Takashi had survived the battle, he would have been the one at his wife’s side when she woke.
“How did he go?” She asked finally. “Was it possible to tell?”
“Fighting,” Misaki said. That much had been easy to deduce. In fact, it was a bit of an understatement. Decimating or slaughtering might have been a more apt description of the scene Takashi had left on the southern pass. “After sending Takeru up to the village to protect us, he was one of the last of our men standing.” He and Mamoru.
“His body?” Setsuko asked, strangely calm.
“Well... there isn’t really a body,” Misaki explained. The volunteers had formed slabs of ice inside the Matsuda compound walls, where they placed the collected bodies. But there hadn’t been much of Matsuda Takashi to collect. His bones had been placed in a woven basket.
“The volunteers retrieved his swords, but it seems like his death jiya was so strong, it turned all the blood in his body to spikes of ice. It was spectacular,” Misaki added on a whim. Maybe it wasn’t a very ladylike way to describe something so violent, but she thought Setsuko would want to know.
“Spectacular, huh?” the satisfied look on Setsuko’s face told Misaki she had thought right.
“And terrifying.”
“Well,” Setsuko managed a laugh. “Coming from you, I take that as high praise!”
The corner of Misaki’s mouth twitched, but she couldn’t quite return Setsuko’s smile. Part of her had hoped that the blow to Setsuko’s head had knocked out the memory of what she had witnessed during the attack on the Matsuda compound, the carnage Misaki had created, but if Setsuko was uncomfortable sharing her makeshift rubble bench with a monster, she didn’t show it as she leaned forward.
“Tell me more,” she said.
More? She wanted to know more about her husband’s gruesome death?
“I’ve never seen death jiya like it,” Misaki said and did her best to describe the bloody formation of spikes. “I’ve never known a fighter who was absolutely indomitable right to the last. From the look of the battlefield, he managed to take several fonyakalu with him at the moment of death, and that’s to say nothing of the hundred or so he killed before that.”
Setsuko smiled a strange smile that teetered on a blade edge between savagery and adoration. “That’s my husband,” she said, her eyes full of tears.
And that’s my Setsuko, Misaki thought as she clutched her sister-in-law’s hands, vibrant, unbroken, even in the face of the unthinkable.
“You hear that, Ayumi-chan?” Setsuko beamed through her tears as her baby woke and started fussing in her arms. “Your father’s a hero and a god!”
Misaki wished she had Setsuko’s strength. She had thought for so many years that what she had was strength—faking a smile through pain and anger—but this honest ability to smile from the heart was something beyond anything she had ever had. It was why she had followed Robin like a moth to a flame. It was why Setsuko was and always would be the most beautiful woman in the world.
“Come, little one.” Setsuko stood, nuzzling Ayumi to giggles. “Let’s go pay our respects.”
“I told you, there’s no body,” Misaki said.
“Yes.” The smile faded from Setsuko’s face as she looked at Misaki. “But I have to say goodbye to my brave nephew, don’t I?”
Misaki looked up at her sister-in-law in surprise. She had only just woken up. “H-how did you...?”
Setsuko put a hand to Misaki’s face, ran a gentle thumb beneath one of her eyes. “You’re not much of a crybaby, little sister,” she said softly. “I’ve never seen your eyes so red.”
Something in Misaki’s expression must have broken through Setsuko’s calm because for a moment, she looked sadder than Misaki had ever seen her. The hand on Misaki’s cheek tugged her in. She took the invitation and leaned her head into Setsuko’s chest.
No words. Just silent support.
Misaki closed her eyes, reminded of the way her mother used to hold her during a storm, assuring her children that the wind and thunder could never hurt them. It was a comfort Misaki knew she would never feel again, one she could never offer her own children.
“I think I should apologize to you,” Setsuko said finally, “since my husband isn’t here to do it himself.”
“What do you mean?”
“Takeru came back to protect us on his orders... He could have sent Mamoru, and...” and Mamoru would still be alive. It was something Misaki had been trying not to think about. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” Misaki said. It wasn’t even Takashi’s, really. He must have realized that staying to hold the line meant certain death, that whoever he sent back up the mountain would have to head up the Matsuda house in his absence. Takashi himself could have exchanged places with Takeru, but Mamoru was too young. A fourteen-year-old could not lead the family, let alone the whole village, in a time of crisis.
She ignored the little voice in her head that demanded to know why Mamoru couldn’t have gone up the mountain with his father. Why hadn’t Takeru insisted on it? How could he have left his own son to die without argument? How?
“It was necessary,” Misaki insisted as if it would do anything to lessen the ache. “You don’t need to apologize to me.”
“Mmm.” Setsuko rubbed Misaki’s back. “But someone should.”
A steady stream of corpses on stretchers came up the mountain all day. It was horrible to hear the cries of grief and denial from family members that greeted each new body, but Misaki found that it was more horrible still to watch a body appear over the ridge to silence. Some of these people had died along with everyone who might remember them. They lay alone on their ice slabs, with no one to mourn them.
