GHOSTS AND GIRLS
As she walked along the dark road, the expression on Kasane’s plain round face was stoic, but she had no illusions about her future. She knew that her new master might be intending to take her to a deserted place and rape and kill her, but she doubted it. Kasane was a shy child and a virtuous one, but in the past few days she had come to think of herself as merchandise.
She had been kidnapped at sea by a pirate masquerading as an honest boat captain. He had sold her to the procurer, who had peddled her to innkeepers twice and then restolen her. He would have done it again if the mysterious, ferocious young stranger hadn’t interfered. Now this latest master would undoubtedly go into business, too, with Kasane as his stock. One didn’t waste anything that could be exchanged for money.
Before leaving for the pilgrimage to Ise several days earlier, Kasane had never been beyond the call of her village drum. Since then she had seen only the worst of men, but this one was nothing like the pirate and the procurer. For one thing, he was very young. And he was certainly extravagant. Even though the moon was only beginning to wane and was almost directly overhead, he had lit the lantern.
Kasane carried the baggage and the lantern too along the deserted farm road. She walked in front and held the lantern’s pole to the side and behind her so it lit her new master’s way. She glanced back over her shoulder only once. The light and shadow had transformed Cat’s glower into a hideous mask. She looked to Kasane like Lord Emma, the king of hell.
The temple grounds were beyond the fields, among the steep folds of the high hills west of Totsuka. A heavy mist swirled low to the ground there. In the darkness of a grove of trees, Cat almost missed the
slender granite marker indicating the turnoff onto a badly maintained path.
As she and Kasane moved forward cautiously, the trees and bushes closed in around them. A fox barked. Something rustled in the black depths of the undergrowth. Kasane stopped so abruptly, Cat almost bumped into her.
“A goblin,” Kasane whispered.
“Keep walking, simpleton.”
In the stillness of the night Cat’s own voice sounded harsh to her. She thought of Musui’s kindness and felt small and mean. She remembered his gentle admonition. A true warrior knows compassion. Cat decided to leave the child some money when she abandoned her.
In the moon’s bright light, tears glistened on Kasane’s cheeks. Her lips trembled as she felt her way along the dark, rocky path. A gust of wind blew, and both she and Cat heard a rattling, like bones.
Kasane gave a small cry and shrank back when something tall and thin loomed from the ground fog. She felt rather than saw more shapes in the darkness beyond under the trees.
“Tombstones.” Cat lowered her voice and took a firmer grip on her walking staff.
Hundreds of tiered stone monuments rose up from the fog and crowded the slope of the hill. A forest of tall wooden funerary laths, some new, some old and neglected, clattered against each other in another gust.
Cat and Kasane walked past granite columns and slabs, carved with snarling lions and the ferocious faces of Buddhism’s guardian kings. In the mist the grave markers looked like a silent army turned to stone.
The lantern had been burning low. Suddenly it guttered and went out.
“He said it held enough oil for two hours’ light.” Cat was furious that the oil vendor had cheated her. She knew he had long since closed up for the night and decamped; but she wanted to march back to Totsuka, rap him on the head with her staff, and demand her money back.
Kasane shrank back against her and clutched her sleeve.
“Don’t be a fool.” But Cat herself spoke in a whisper. “When our eyes grow accustomed to the darkness, the moon will guide us.”
Kasane didn’t dare point out that the massive cedars were now shutting out most of the moon’s light. Still clinging to Cat’s sleeve, she strained to see around her. “Did you see that?” she whispered.
“Yes,” Cat murmured. Suddenly Kasane’s presence was a comfort to her.
A flame flared in the distance, then softened and broadened into the glow from a lantern. It lit portions of the gravestones around it and in places left angular sheets of night.
Three huge shadows stooped and reared against the granite monuments. Each shadow sported a pair of pointed fox’s ears.
“Where?” The word drifted, like a fragment of a lost conversation, through the gravestones.
“Over here.” The voice was nervous and subdued.
“Bring the light, you bucket of night soil.”
“Two of them in one night.” The first speaker sounded as though he had fortified himself with strong drink, home-brewed sweet-potato wine, probably. His dialect was too coarse to belong to someone who could afford sake. “What luck.”
Cat heard the rhythmic kachunk of wood striking stones and saw the curved shadows of two mattock blades rise and fall on the monument. She thought again about returning to Totsuka but dismissed the idea. The inns would be tightly shuttered. Even if she could have found shelter in a shed or chapel in town, she would have had the problem of avoiding Kira’s men in the morning. The idea of sharing her night’s lodging place with this sort of riffraff made her skin crawl, though. The only solution was to evict them.
With both hands gripping the staff lightly, she held it up as though it were a long-sword, parallel to her body and with the tip slanted outward. Her pulse thrummed in her ears as she started forward, crossing each foot in front of the other in the buoyant scissor gait of a sword player.
She was concentrating on centering her thoughts and breathing properly when she felt a hard tug at her sleeve. She whirled, dragging a heavy weight with her. She struck down and behind her with great force but stayed her hand at the last moment. When the staff landed on Kasane’s side, it was painful but not damaging.
Kasane shut her eyes tight and held on to Cat’s sleeve with both hands. She had decided she would rather die of a blow from her strange new master’s staff than release her grip.
“Let go of me, you idiot!” Cat whispered as she tried to disengage her. “Wait here.”
“Don’t leave me, master.” Kasane spoke in a tiny, strangled voice. “Kill me, but don’t leave me in this haunted place.”
Cat could see the hysteria rising in the peasant’s contorted face. She shook her hard by the shoulders. “I’ll be back. I’m only going to see who they are.”
“They’re demons or ghosts.”
“I doubt it. I think they’re human, and they’re up to no good.”
Cat pried Kasane’s rigid fingers loose. She brandished her staff and started forward again, using the gravestones for cover. She lifted each foot deliberately and set it down as softly as a leaf landing. She thought they were mortal, but she wasn’t certain.
Kasane stood in the gloom and watched the only being who might possibly be human desert her. From the corner of her eye she thought she saw something stir in the well of night behind a tombstone. The roots of her hair tingled at the nape of her neck. She tucked her robe’s skirts up into her sash. Crouching, she crept after Cat.
Kasane wanted to scream to drown out the noise of the mattocks and the rustlings and squeakings and the liquid hooting of the owl in the darkness. She could only whimper far back in her throat. She remembered the old proverb, “Ghosts and girls are best unseen,” but it was no comfort.
“When were they buried?” The man’s voice sounded so close, it startled Kasane. It distracted her from the sharpening odor of rotting flesh.
“The other one’s only a few days old. This one’s been here almost a week.”
The light of the lantern was close enough now to make the darkness around Kasane complete in contrast. But at least she could see the beings that were casting the shadows. She could see that the fox ears were formed by the stiff knotted ends of the towels tied around their heads. She also could see that these demons were wearing filthy loincloths and collections of paper rags.
Kasane crouched behind a marker and watched Cat approach the men. She put a hand down to steady herself, but instead of earth, she felt the cold, rubbery skin of a woman’s breast. It gave strangely under her fingers. The stench of death hit her in the face.
Kasane shrieked. She shrieked again. She kept on shrieking.