The second night, like the first, passed without incident.
That shouldn’t have bothered Sekken. If anything, he ought to have been glad for the undisturbed sleep, and relieved that whatever sent the inugami to plague him had – perhaps – given up.
But he remembered his childhood nurse commenting that she had always been most concerned when his sisters fell silent. That was inevitably a sign that they were up to some scheme which would cause a mess, get someone hurt, or both. The cessation of the haunting didn’t feel like a reprieve; it felt like the next stage beginning.
At least I’ll face that stage well rested.
This time he didn’t surprise the headman’s wife when he came out into the living area, but she still didn’t have breakfast ready. Sekken went for another walk, hoping the bright morning air would clear his head and leave behind a plan for how to find the witch. Even if it was true that Aoi was possessed, and even if that possession was the fault of someone in the village, it didn’t tell him how to find the culprit. Possibly Aoi herself could do that, once she’d been restored to herself – but possibly not.
In the meanwhile, he had more people to interview. With no sign of Ryōtora even after his breakfast, Sekken gathered his writing kit and paper and sallied forth to find the peasants he’d not gotten to the day before, because of the funerals.
He soon formed the opinion that a rural village was every bit as much of a brewing-vat for interpersonal drama as any samurai court. The only difference was how willing people were to admit it. Samurai carried out their affairs discreetly, with poetry written on scrolls whose paper and sticks were selected to elegantly inflect the message they carried; here, one peasant told Sekken to his face that Kuwa would untie her kimono for any man who brought her a gift. Which might be true, because supposedly one of her frequent lovers was Ashio, the man he’d interviewed yesterday, who’d been driven half-mad by the laughter of a kerakera onna – the yōkai more often associated with red lantern districts. When Sekken found Kuwa near the well, he saw her hair was chopped short, and he asked if it had been cut off by a kamikiri; she responded by hurling her bucket at a passing woman and shrieking that “that hag” had done it out of jealousy. Said hag proved to be the alleged lover’s wife, and Sekken was doing his best to keep the two of them apart when Ryōtora’s approach quelled the fight.
“Thank you,” Sekken said, once peace had been restored. “I’m afraid I haven’t quite finished gathering stories. I keep running into… interruptions.”
Ryōtora shook his head. “That isn’t why I came. Does your scholarship extend to things other than yōkai?”
“Many,” Sekken said, grinning. “You’ll have to be more specific.”
Needling the Dragon shugenja wasn’t wise. Something about that stiff bearing, though, just begged to be prodded a little. Sekken’s parents and teachers had dutifully instilled a sense of propriety in him, but he also knew that strict adherence to the tenets of Bushidō often made people inflexible – and that which couldn’t bend was at risk of breaking. Not that he wanted to tempt Ryōtora into misbehavior; just that it might be good for the man if he smiled every now and again.
The faint compression of Ryōtora’s fine mouth was more likely to be him tamping down a scowl than a smile. “The enshrinement rituals for a kami.”
Sekken hadn’t expected that line of inquiry, and it sobered him. “Are you hoping to enshrine a Fortune here for defense? That will be difficult if you aren’t carrying it from an existing site. And all of those are far enough away that you won’t get back here before the next full moon.”
“An existing site, yes – but not like that.” Ryōtora turned and lifted his chin, pointing at the ruined shrine Sekken had noticed the previous day. “That’s the shrine to Saiun-nushi, the kami of the mountain. The villagers have gone on making offerings since it collapsed, but I think the kami should be moved to another location until that one can be rebuilt.”
That place was supposedly still in use? Given its wrecked state, Sekken had assumed it was long abandoned. From a distance, it looked like an old ruin. “Is that the cause of everything here? The kami’s anger?”
A thin line pleated the skin between Ryōtora’s brows. “I don’t think so – the timing is wrong. The collapse happened well before any of this began. But before I try to ward this place, I think the kami should be taken care of.”
“Why ask me for help, and not the shrinekeeper?”
“Because the shrinekeeper is dead.”
Like so many others. The amusement left over from the tale of the kerakera onna and the jealous wife burned away like mist. In his scholarly fascination with the range of yōkai showing up in Seibo Mura, Sekken had lost sight of the terrible suffering inflicted on this place.
All the terrible suffering I’m familiar with took place centuries ago. And none of it prepared him for dealing with a problem that was current and very likely to return.
But the question at hand wasn’t quite Ryōtora’s specialty, either. A shugenja he might be, but his kind were trained to invoke the elemental kami, the little spirits of earth, water, air, and fire, which were relatively easy to propitiate. More powerful spirits like that of the mountain were less predictable, and harder to work with. Sekken asked, “Will Saiun-nushi answer you?”
“I will do my best.”
In hindsight, he could have predicted that answer without bothering to ask.
The patient hope in Ryōtora’s eyes both buoyed Sekken and weighed him down. For the second time since arriving in this village, his knowledge might be useful… but that meant someone expected him to be useful.
He scraped together his knowledge, hoping it would be enough. “Then you have two ways to do this. One is to create a daughter shrine – in essence, to leave the kami where it is, but also to enshrine it somewhere else, and have everyone make their offerings there.” Sekken paused as an idea came to him. “Even if the collapse happened a while ago, there’s a chance it’s specifically the kami’s ara-mitama that’s causing this. I have to imagine the roof caving in didn’t do anything good for the geomantic balance there. Perhaps the problem has built up over time.”
The line between Ryōtora’s brows was still there. “Part of the ledge fell… it’s possible. Are you suggesting we enshrine the ara-mitama separately?”
It wouldn’t be unheard of. The rougher, more violent part of a kami’s spirit had been known to cause problems, and providing it with its own shrine often eased that tension. But Sekken frowned, finding the flaw in his own reasoning. “That would leave the nigi-mitama neglected back in the original shrine, though. Right when they need its protection the most.” Even if Saiun-nushi wasn’t causing the disturbances, the villagers were going to want to petition its harmonious side for aid. “You could still try to propagate its spirit into a new shrine. But if the point is to get it out of the collapsed building, you’re better off moving it entirely. Have you ever done that before?”
Ryōtora’s jaw tightened. Then he said, “I know the principles. But… no.”
The uncertainty in Ryōtora’s low voice was for Sekken alone, and it startled him. It seemed wholly at odds with the man’s unyielding demeanor. But Ryōtora forging ahead as if he knew exactly what he was doing could add to the village’s troubles, if he made a mistake and angered the kami of the mountain. And who else could he share his doubts with? He could hardly show any such weakness to the people he was trying to protect.
That gesture of trust touched Sekken, even if the only reason for it was that he was the only other samurai for miles in any direction. He just wished it didn’t remind him of the limitations of his own knowledge. He’d never re-enshrined a kami, any more than Ryōtora had.
Then an idea came to him. “You don’t mean it to be a permanent move, do you? Only until the shrine can be rebuilt.”
“Presuming it gets rebuilt at all,” Ryōtora said. “If I can’t put an end to the disturbances this next full moon…”
A moment before, he’d said we. Now it was back to I. But Sekken could hardly fault the man for taking the responsibilities onto his own shoulders, when they were in Dragon Clan lands. While Sekken’s idea wouldn’t remove that burden, he hoped it might take a little weight off. “Then just treat it like a festival.”
He’d confused Ryōtora. The shugenja frowned, opening his mouth to ask how that could work – and then understanding dawned. “You mean, not removing it from its current shintai and putting it into a new one.”
“Moving the shintai itself,” Sekken confirmed. “Just like you would do for a festival. If the village has a portable shrine, you could even leave it inside there.”
“Or build a hokora.” Ryōtora was still looking at Sekken, but his attention had gone straight through. Probably envisioning the small shrines that decorated the edges of roads throughout Rokugan and clung to the outskirts of larger shrines, especially in rural areas. “I’d want to protect it, though. Set up a sacred enclosure around it.”
“Then you’ll need rope, and… hmmm. You’re unlikely to find a sakaki here; wrong climate.” Those trees were hard enough to find in the milder weather of Phoenix lands, and usually grew in groves tended by shugenja who could keep the atmosphere warm enough for them.
“Cypress,” Ryōtora said. “It’s common around here.”
Some courtiers prized the subtle dueling of poetry or wit. Sekken had always preferred the back-and-forth of ideas, unraveling some puzzle or developing a new theory. This was the first time he’d experienced that dance where its end result would be practical, and he couldn’t hold in a smile. Ryōtora’s demeanor didn’t crack nearly so far, but the tension that seemed to always wind him tight eased a bit. Sekken wondered if it ever went away entirely, or if Ryōtora’s concern for propriety always kept him on edge.
Perhaps after these troubles ended, Sekken would have the chance to find out. Always assuming he didn’t get thrown out of Dragon lands, when someone noticed he wasn’t where he was supposed to be.
“Thank you,” Ryōtora said. “Can I ask you to look into whether they have a portable shrine? And rope. I could try to salvage from the current shrine, but I’d rather disturb the site as little as possible.”
“Where can I find you, once I know the answer to that?”
“If you’ll tell me which one is Aoi’s house, I thought I might go examine her.”
“It’s–” Sekken stopped himself before he could give directions. “Not very pleasant in there. If you’d prefer, I can go find her, and bring her to the headman’s house.”
Ryōtora brushed the offer away. “There’s no need. An examination at Ogano’s will attract attention, and if she’s lost her memories I imagine she’s had enough of people whispering around her. If she’s possessed, as you suspect, then I would prefer not to endanger my host.”
And I’d prefer you to examine her somewhere I can see. If Ryōtora succeeded in driving the possessing spirit out of Aoi, Sekken wanted to observe every detail: whether it was an inugami, whether it fled in a particular direction, whether it could give him any clues to his own situation.
But he didn’t want to say any of that. The fight between Kuwa and her lover’s jealous wife was only one of the points of tension he’d observed while questioning the villagers; unsurprisingly, Seibo Mura was boiling over with suspicion, each peasant wondering if their neighbor was responsible for everyone’s misfortunes. Small sins that would have passed unremarked in normal times now became cause for blame. One man accused his rival of stealing more than his share of barley from the granary; another told Sekken that his cousin habitually left the doors on his family altar open at night. The last thing Sekken wanted to do was give anyone a foothold for suspecting his own connection to witchcraft.
So he merely said, “Let me show you the way.”
En route to Aoi’s house, he thought of a path toward his real suspicion, without going directly at it. “Has it occurred to you that there might be an untutored shugenja in the village? This place is so remote that few samurai would have passed through, but it’s always possible.”
The path was rough, with great depressions where something unspeakably heavy seemed to have hopped along. Ryōtora stumbled and almost lurched into Sekken before righting himself. “My apologies. My sandal caught against a stone.”
“It’s quite all right. I know it’s an indelicate thing for me to imply.” Did Ryōtora have a by-blow of his own somewhere? The touch of relaxation that had come when they discussed moving the kami of the mountain was gone as if it had never been.
Ryōtora said, “I will keep that possibility in mind, but I doubt it.”
“The gift is rare, it’s true,” Sekken mused. “But that doesn’t rule out other ways to disturb the spiritual atmosphere.”
“If you are suggesting again that the Perfect Land Sect is responsible for this, then I will remind you again–”
“Not that,” Sekken said. He still didn’t agree with Ryōtora’s certainty, but that wasn’t the target he aimed for. “Merely that there could be other… unorthodox practices here. The rural areas of Rokugan hold many superstitions a proper priest would frown at. Even things picked up from Yobanjin. We aren’t that far from their lands.” In theory contact with the northern barbarians was strictly limited, and the mountains certainly presented a substantial barrier – but not an impermeable one.
“I will consider it,” Ryōtora said stiffly. “We are near the edge of the village. Which house is it?”
“Oh! This one.” Sekken indicated the house to their left, and Ryōtora bowed in thanks.
Also in dismissal. There was no graceful way around it; Sekken either had to walk away or speak up. “Would you mind if I stayed? I know you asked me to inquire about materials for moving the shintai, but…” He hesitated, feigning a degree of embarrassment. Or rather, feigning a different reason for the embarrassment he actually felt. “The mother wanted so much for me to help her daughter. I know I can’t do anything, not like you – but I’d like to offer what help I can.”
At first he thought Ryōtora was going to refuse. But Sekken could practically read the scroll of the other man’s thoughts: the tag on the scroll said Bushidō, and it was unfurling past the headers for Courtesy and Compassion.
“Very well,” Ryōtora said, and knocked on the weathered wood of the door.