Isla was readying for bed when an unusual dull clunk and what might have been the rustle of cloth caught her attention. She slid open the door to her room to peer into the tatami room.
Keiichirō was there, wearing a simple dark robe, his hair loose. He was kneeling before an alcove, and he looked at her.
‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you,’ she said, feeling bad for interrupting a private moment.
But to her surprise Keiichirō asked her to join him.
She went to his side, aware of his sleepy warmth, the scent of the cotton of his kimono. His presence was like a mountain, silent and regal. For many beats of silence they looked at the samurai armour sitting on a stand, well used judging by its chips and signs of use and the edges of the red lamellar armour rusted to brown. Beside it was an urn that was simple, dark and polished to a shine, with the now familiar crest of the Shimazu clan painted on it in white, the cross inside a circle Isla had seen many times since she arrived.
‘Who is in the urn?’ As soon as the words left her mouth, Isla wanted to wince. She should be respecting the quiet of the moment, and not blurting things out.
Keiichirō didn’t seem to have heard. Then, in a far-away voice, he said, ‘My father. He died two years ago.’
Keiichirō prepared some incense to offer before his father’s urn, and Isla helped him as best she could.
‘How did he die?’
‘He killed someone who hurt Kana. There was a young samurai from the village who forced himself on my sister. My father killed him for it, but it was the wrong sort of punishment. He slit the man’s throat in his sleep, the type of murder only a coward would do. So my father committed seppuku to win back his family’s honour.’
Seppuku, ritual sacrifice. Sinking a blade into one’s own belly to disembowel oneself, a painful death.
Isla wondered who had done this to Kana, and her gaze turned in the direction of the door behind which Keiichirō’s sister and her daughter Yura slept.
‘She was pregnant with Yura when she told him,’ Keiichirō added. ‘It’s not Yura’s fault, of course, but when she was a newborn, I couldn’t touch her, couldn’t look at her. She looks too much like Kana’s attacker. My mother died when I was six and Kana was four. Father was all we had, and, because of him, we no longer have a father.’
Isla felt Keiichirō had to force his voice to remain calm; a tremor, like an earthquake deep beneath the ocean, gave away the extent of his emotion. And no wonder.
‘I’m so sorry, Keiichirō.’
Isla had no words strong enough, not in English nor in Japanese, to tell Keiichirō how horrible it all was. To know your sister was raped, then to lose your father so soon after.
Keiichirō closed his eyes as he bowed his head. Then he straightened his back.
‘Tell me about him,’ asked Isla, as the smoke of the incense wreathed them. ‘I’d like to know more.’
Keiichirō answered that his father had been called Ujio, and he had had a great talent for playing the biwa lute as well as unwavering nostalgia for the glory days of the fighting samurai. ‘He loved shōchū. You remember his cup? He had a few small cups, but the blue one you saw was his favourite, the one he would drink shōchū from.’
‘My grandfather Tom was partial to whisky,’ Isla said, and told Keiichirō some of the history of Scottish whisky. She tried to describe the woody, peaty taste of Scotland’s favourite spirit. ‘I think Tom and Ujio would have liked each other.’
Keiichirō made Isla and himself some tea. ‘My father loved to play pranks. I remember when I was young, perhaps around five, I complained I had a stone in my sandal. He took a huge rock and hid it behind his back, then when he shook out the stone, he dropped the rock onto the ground. He always said I just gaped at him, looking between him and the ground. I thought it had come from my sandal.’ They laughed at this. ‘I got him back, eventually. I’m scared of cockroaches, but my father was always afraid of worms. I once put one on his face while he was asleep. He screamed so loudly my mother thought there were bandits in the house.’
Isla laughed again, just as the door slid open. Kana came through, her hair mussed and with a sleepy Yura in her arms. She glanced at them both and then moved into the next room.
Isla realised dawn had broken and it was a new day. Somehow daylight had come while they were talking.
Their talk seemed to have put Keiichirō in a better mood. ‘Shall we catch some fish for breakfast?’
‘I’ve never fished before,’ Isla admitted.
‘Then I’ll show you how.’
Isla dressed in yesterday’s clothes. The robe and hakama trousers were becoming easier to don by the day. Five minutes later, she and Keiichirō were heading towards the river, a simple rod and tackle in Keiichirō’s hand.
‘How about your father?’ he asked as they sat watching the river, waiting for a fish to nibble the line. ‘And your mother?’
Isla had tried not to think about her family since the realisation that she had stepped through time. Hearing someone else ask about them, even in another language, brought a deep loneliness.
‘You never did tell me. Did you come to Japan with them?’ Keiichirō kept his eyes on the river as he spoke.
Was Keiichirō still trying to find out about her after all? And if so, who could blame him?
Isla wanted to confess everything. To explain she came from the twenty-first century and to tell him about all its mayhem, and that a broken heart had been a large part of the reason she had come to Japan, and increasingly she was thinking about her third-great-grandfather Hisakichi Kuroki and whether he had been a renowned samurai as her family lore claimed.
Isla imagined those soft brown eyes that were now looking at her blinking in confusion, his features wrinkling into puzzlement. There was no way Keiichirō could understand any bit of the truth. But what other answer could she possibly give? The samurai hated liars, and Isla didn’t want to make something up. She liked Keiichirō too much, and he would think less of her if he caught her in a lie. Well, for now he had simply asked about her parents, she reminded herself.
‘I came to Satsuma alone,’ she said eventually, noting the slight rise of Keiichirō’s eyebrows. ‘I was looking for information on Kuroki Hisakichi. Have you heard of him?’
‘Kuroki?’ Keiichirō fiddled with the line, then glanced at her. ‘Here in Kagoshima?’
‘Maybe,’ she said. A thrill of excitement ran through her. ‘Do you think you could find him? He might go to your shi-gakkō.’
There was a jerk on the fishing line and Keiichirō reeled it in. He held up a squirming silver fish. ‘Barely enough for a mouthful.’ He glanced skyward. ‘Let’s go inside.’
Keiichirō folded his unused futon, a sharpness deep in his chest. It was a feeling he didn’t like.
Jealousy.
Kuroki Hisakichi, Isla had said, was someone she was looking for. Someone she thought might be a samurai at one of Saigō-sama’s shi-gakkō schools. But how could that be? If she had stepped foot in the Satsuma province before that night in early January, he would have known about it. No gaijin with hair that red could have remained hidden for so long. The gossip about Isla currently flying around his school was a testament to that.
‘I’ll check and see if anyone knows him,’ he had promised her. He had managed to keep putting one foot in front of another and his expression stoic until he had slid the door closed and was alone with his thoughts and gathering daylight.
Kuroki . . .
He had no right to be jealous. Isla was not his wife.
The reminder didn’t help.
At the shi-gakkō later, Keiichirō asked anyone he could about Kuroki Hisakichi. But there were thousands of students in dozens of academies all over Satsuma territory, so it was unsurprising that the name was unfamiliar. Toramasa hadn’t heard of him, and neither had Keiichirō’s cousin, Tatsuzō.
Keiichirō tried not to think about why MacKenzie Isla might be looking for a Satsuma samurai. There was no reason he could think of that was not upsetting.
Still, Keiichirō greeted his friend Murakami near a soba noodle shop on a street overlooking the bay. ‘I’m looking for someone, and I hear he might be a student at the shi-gakkō. Kuroki Hisakichi. Do you know him?’
‘Can’t say I do,’ said Murakami, scratching the stubble on his cheeks.
Something smashed behind Keiichirō, making them both glance around.
Nakamura Nene and Hirayama Aiko were fussing around a broken pot that had smashed to bits on the road.
‘Is everything all right, Nene-chan?’ called Keiichirō.
‘Hm? Oh, yes, Maeda-san. Everything’s fine.’ Nene’s round cheeks pinked as she and Aiko hurried off, the broken bits of pottery in their hands.
* * *
Isla ate alone in her room. Working with Nene and the others tending to the fields, or washing and cleaning, made eating a meal in the evening merely a quick prelude to falling into bed. It was a simple life, one she did not belong to. Isla missed chocolate and coffee, texting and showers. She longed to wear different clothes every day, to be able to brush the tangles out of her hair and properly clean her teeth. She missed electric lights, video games and refrigerators more than she would ever have thought possible. But it was her family and friends she missed most.
The people she had met in Satsuma so far were reserved and private. This made it easier not to betray her emotions too much, and she got on with her tasks with quiet toil, every day and night, always keeping on the lookout for gathering storms that might lead her home.
Increasingly, though, Isla thought of how Satsuma’s history was presented in tours and museums. How would the people she now knew personally, the people intent on eking out a living and following Takamori Saigō in the fight to preserve their way of life, feel if they knew that a century into the future it had all been for nothing, and that people would enjoy reading and watching their history and learning about their beliefs and passions merely as entertainment? The tawdry souvenir stickers and the badges bearing the Shimazu clan crest reduced these life-and-death times to a fun day out.
Isla supposed the same could be said for any time period. Even in this old Satsuma she was experiencing, people enjoyed theatre plays of stories and samurai warriors from long ago.
* * *
‘MacKenzie-san?’ called Nene Nakamura one chilly morning in late January.
Mount Sakurajima had erupted the day before, covering the town in ash. Kana and Isla had spent most of the morning sweeping the porch, but it was a losing battle.
‘Nakamura-san, ohayou gozaimasu,’ Kana greeted Nene as Isla stepped outside. ‘You missed Keiichirō. He just left.’
‘Nana!’ cried Yura from the porch, waving happily at Nene.
She giggled and waved back. ‘Hello, Yura-chan! Ah, MacKenzie-san, ohayou. Kirino-san is waiting for us.’
‘Call me Isla,’ she said.
The ash had left a grey coat over everything, and down it still fluttered from trees, like dirty snowflakes.
‘Then please call me Nene.’ Nene rubbed her scalp, looking up at the nearest tree. ‘This ash is so unpleasant.’
Weeks here in the nineteenth century, and not a drop of rain had fallen.
Nene explained that the volcano’s eruption meant the working women would need to collect falling ash that day, packing it into sacks that would be already sitting on the back of a wagon. Otherwise the ash would further damage the crops, which were already scarce and a cause for concern.
‘People are always worried about the volcano,’ Nene sighed as they shovelled ash. ‘Sometimes I think one day it will erupt and destroy the whole town, taking everyone here with it.’
‘It won’t,’ said Isla before she could stop herself. She quickly tried to backtrack. ‘It’s a dangerous volcano. But it won’t bury the town, I’m sure.’
Nene gave her a strange look that made Isla’s insides drop. She had meant her words to sound reassuring, but all she had done was to make Nene wonder anew about her.
Isla decided the best thing for her to do would be to work hard at helping clear the ash. She struggled to keep up with the others. It seemed everyone else could carry twice as much as she could in half the time. But Isla made sure not to show she was tired. She had to take one day, one task, at a time, and try not to panic. She had been here for weeks already; surely it couldn’t be for much longer.
‘Everyone,’ called Kirino-san, gathering the women together as they kept an eye on the skies for more ash. ‘Come. We’ve done as much as we can do with the ash today. It’s time for some sparring.’
Wearing the now familiar wide trousers and holding a bokken stick of her own, Isla was paired with a slender woman who looked unsure how hard to try to beat her. Isla responded by wildly swinging her stick, forcing the girl to raise her own bokken just in time. A wild giggle burst from Isla’s lips as they sparred, parts of her body bruised. Kirino-san even offered her tips, showing her how to stand and how to swing properly. She had been sparring for a while with the women now, and although she was hardly an expert, she felt more comfortable than before with a weapon in her hand. In fact, it was fast coming to feel as if her bokken was something of a friend.
The slender woman smacked her in the ribs, and Isla gasped and lowered her stick. Embarrassment flushed through her, followed by a familiar wave of anger. Her bokken fell on the grass while her opponent straightened, satisfied.
Isla snatched up the weapon with more force than necessary and squared up to her opponent once more. But her flush of temper died immediately when the sound of horses’ hooves reached them, accompanied by voices with a timbre very different to the usual Japanese. Isla glanced over the field, just as everyone else did.
Men – Caucasian men – sat in a horse-drawn carriage. It was clear they were looking over at the sparring women.
Kirino-san made sure, Isla noted, to place herself between these men and the young women, like a lioness protecting her cubs.
The voices grew more distinct as the carriage drew near, and Isla caught snippets of syllables on the wind. They weren’t speaking in English.
‘Ow!’ Isla dropped her stick as pain exploded across her fingers. She shook her hand as the girl stood before her looking shocked. ‘Ugh. Good game. I wasn’t concentrating.’ She gave a hasty bow and retreated to Kirino-san and, as the carriage proceeded past the group of women, Isla asked, ‘Who are they?’
Kirino-san’s glare at the now retreating men could have melted steel, and for a moment Isla appreciated how tolerant Hisa Kirino had been of Isla’s own presence. Then Kirino-san said, ‘They are traders from Nagasaki. Dutch, from the community of Holland nationals on Dejima Island.’ Then in a loud voice she added, ‘That’s enough gawping, everyone. Back to sparring.’
Isla paired herself with Nene.
‘Don’t hold back,’ she said, even though her side and fingers were throbbing.
‘You, either.’ Nene gave a hard swing, wood cracking close to Isla’s head as she blocked.
They all swapped partners again and again, and with each round Isla picked up more of the way the best opponents moved and were able to second-guess her own moves, how they swung the bokken sticks in ways that aimed at weak points like the neck, and how they rose their weapons to block a coming attack.
Isla put her frustration into her attacks, sometimes hitting harder than necessary. But she loved the rush of satisfaction she felt whenever she landed a hit, even if it wasn’t the most graceful way of achieving it.
‘MacKenzie-san, you got me.’ Aiko Hirayama rubbed her shoulder and gave a low bow.
‘You got me twice,’ Isla said back with a grin. She was breathing hard, relishing the feeling of hard exercise. It kept some of her ever-present anxiety at bay. She even enjoyed the bruises already forming on her skin, evidence that she wasn’t afraid to come in close to the other person’s bokken. Isla would have hated it if anybody accused her of being weak or timid.
She ended the session being paired with Nene once more, Kirino-san circling them all and observing carefully. Nervous at being under such pressure, Isla didn’t anticipate a hard hit in the side of her head that made her shout out in pain, clutching her ear.
‘Block like this.’ Hisa Kirino raised her own stick and urged Nene to hit again like before. Her ear throbbing, Isla watched the older woman dodge and block, and for a moment she felt embarrassed that she hadn’t been able to react in this adept way. But Kirino-san wasn’t trying to humiliate her but to teach her, and what she had to be was patient as well as open to learning.
‘Do that move again,’ said Isla, standing in front of Nene. The girl’s plump cheeks were flushed, and, when she swung for Isla’s head again in exactly the same way as before, this time Isla was able to block with a loud clack. She grinned with satisfaction.
When Kirino-san called a halt, they were covered in sweat and ash, and flopped onto a nearby stretch of grass, where they passed around water.
‘You’re getting better,’ acknowledged Nene, although she didn’t look especially happy about this.
‘Thank you for helping me,’ said Isla. ‘You’d prefer to be paired with someone else.’
‘Not at all, Isla-san. We have to look out for each other,’ answered Nene, and Isla tried to concentrate on the words, rather than the slight pause before Nene had said them.