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answer_keyby tuulentupa / 
tuuli_chan
Water Children Part I: Kagemaru
One spring evening, around the time when the last cherry petals were floating down in the wind and the wisteria were just beginning to bloom, the capital was abuzz with whispering. Rumors spread across the city like fire in dry hay.
"Have you heard of the Minor Counselor's wife?"
"The baby... have you heard of the baby...?"
"It's horrifying! How could she face such misfortune?"
"I hear it's malformed, like a frog..."
"No, no, its skin, its skin is like that of a fish, slippery and scaly..."
"Frightening!"
"How did it happen? Is it a curse, or..."
"I heard..."
"Yes?"
"I heard she went for a swim."
"What?"
"When she went on a pilgrimage last summer. The day was hot, they passed a lake, and she went to swim."
"That... that is...!"
"I know. Such behavior! What else could follow but misfortune?"
-
As the women gossiped, the Minor Counselor's wife was smiling down at the tiny bundle in her arms. The servants were frightened, silly things, so she had to take care of her child on her own. She didn't mind though, for it was such a beautiful child: clear, pale skin, amethyst eyes, soft dark hair already thick as a finger. The only problem was the thin web-like skin growing between the infant's fingers and toes, like in the foot of a frog... but with such a beautiful child, it was a minor grievance. Surely it would come off as the child grew.
The baby's father wasn't quite as happy when he came to see his new son. The Minor Counselor stared at the sleeping baby and its tiny, tightly closed fists. Even so the web between the fingers was obvious. He turned his glare to the new mother, who lowered her eyes.
"It is unfortunate, of course," she murmured to his unspoken accusation. "But don't you see how beautiful and healthy the boy otherwise is? I think people are making too much out of a little thing..."
"Little thing!" the counselor exclaimed. "The city is full of rumors! Do you have any idea what this does to your reputation - not to mention mine?"
"People make too much out of this," she repeated quietly, still watching her hands. "With time, they will forget. And it is a little thing - as the boy grows, surely those things will come off. With time."
The Minor Counselor leaned back, watching her with an unreadable expression. He posed an extravagant sight that day in his fine robes, as if he had wanted to make sure that at least his appearance wouldn't give any cause for criticism. "How can you know that?" he finally asked. "And even if that is true, this is a bad time for you to cause a scandal attached to my name. How could you be so foolish!"
She stiffened a little. "I have done nothing wrong," she said, annoyed at the defensive tone in her voice. "I was merely walking by the lake when I slipped and fell into the water. You know that! Don't you remember? It perfectly ruined my clothes!"
She shuddered with the memory. The shock of the cold water hitting her and that frightful moment when she had been completely submerged, her clothes heavy in the water, uncertain which was up and which down, until a hand grasped her hair (of all things!) and pulled her to the surface. "I can't even swim," she concluded a little weakly. She looked up at her husband, and for the first time felt anger toward him. "How can you be so cold! This is your child, after all; can't you show at least a little bit of happiness for a new son?"
He looked again at the baby and frowned. "Is it so strange if a man isn't overly pleased when he has eagerly waited for the first song of a thrush, only to hear a frog croaking in the night?"
"Man has to be deaf indeed to mistake a thrush for a frog," she replied coldly. "I am sorry you are so disappointed, my lord. But what has happened can't be made undone. This child is now here, and he is yours, and mine. The days to come will yet prove to you that I am right: he is a fine son for you to have."
"Perhaps." With that the Minor Counselor stood up and without a word of goodbye stepped outside of her curtain, leaving her and the baby alone. She watched a moment after him, sighed, but turned then to her child. Yes, the days to come would prove her right.
The first two years of the child's life passed quite uneventfully. On the day when the Minor Counselor had left, not hiding his displeasure, the servants had been fretting, sure that he would not return and their mistress would face an unhappy fate, abandoned by her husband. To their great surprise he had not cut their ties completely and had even come to see the baby a few times.
The baby had grown up fine, just like any other child. The servants were still wondering about him (carefully when their mistress didn't hear them), about his hands and feet, his strangely colored eyes, his hair that had been abundant already when he was a baby. When the spring came two years after his birth, the hair fell down over the boy's shoulder blades, and they would have cut it, but the mother was against it - she said she wanted to see how long it would grow. So the servants kept on wondering, but with time they calmed down, gradually getting quite fond of the little, always smiling Kagemaru, as the boy was now called. His mother didn't like the name and its implication of something ghostly, but it was what his father had called him, and she decided it might be best not to make an issue out of it.
When the boy was living his third summer something happened that gave her quite a fright. Having found his feet, Kagemaru had turned into quite a lively and quick little boy. One day the girl taking care of him had turned her back only for a moment, or so she said, and suddenly he was gone. They searched everywhere, and finally it was his mother who spotted him in the garden, already wading into the water of the artificial lake, splashing happily as he went. She rushed quickly to him and snatched him away just when he was about to fall into the water, getting a loud wail of protest for her reward.
The girl got quite a scolding, and, teary-eyed, promised to be more careful in the future. After this it took everyone's full attention to keep the boy out of the lake - the moment they looked away, he was heading outside, toddling his way toward the water.
After they had fished him out of the lake for the third time, she wrote a desperate letter to the boy's father.
"I don't know what to do," she wailed. "It is as if there were something in the lake to lure him away - I barely dare to sleep in the night, fearing he slips away in the dark and in the morning we find him drowned. What should I do?"
Instead of a reply, the Minor Counselor sent an onmyouji to examine the boy. The mother waited nervously for the verdict. Finally the onmyouji came to see her, sitting down on the other side of her curtain.
"To tell the truth," the onmyouji started, getting straight to the matter, "I must admit I have never seen a case quite like this before. It is as if your son consisted wholly of pure yin - yang in him is nearly nonexistent. Water is his element, strong in him. You should keep him away from water - I don't know what might happen if he ever would follow its call, and I don't dare to guess."
"So what should we do?" she asked, desperately. The onmyouji shook his head at a loss.
"Fire is the opposite of water," he said, "but we can hardly burn him. I will give him a fire pendant - maybe it will help to quell the water in him."
That was all he could say. Little Kagemaru didn't like his new pendant, but it was hung round his neck on a strong string, and he couldn't get rid of it, try as he might. His mother wandered outside and watched sadly the little lake that had always been her favorite part of the garden. Then she called for her servants and told them they would be getting rid of the lake. This aroused some startled protests, but she was adamant. The work took a long time, but in the end where there had once been a shimmering lake and a softly murmuring little brook was now a rather tasteful and extremely dry rock garden.
After this little episode years passed again quietly. Kagemaru left seldom his mother's house. A few times his mother took him to watch processions or competitions, always keeping him in her own carriage away from the gazes of others, carefully avoiding the canals that ran through the city on the way. She couldn't help feeling bad, though, for although he never complained she saw the boy was growing bored always staying within her walls. She would have wanted to send him to his father's at times, just for variation, but she worried how he would fare there, among people who didn't know him. She went on pilgrimages to various nearby temples - never wanting to stay away long - to pray for her son, and once she even took the boy with her. That trip, Kagemaru later declared, was the best thing ever to happen to him, and he asked his mother if he couldn't go with her more often. She was quiet, troubled - not that she wouldn't have wanted to take him with her, but there were few places where they could go that didn't have any waters to cross on the way.
She had been so sure that time would make her son normal, but as days rolled by his strange hands and feet did not change. At least she had been right at one point: he was a fine son to have. He studied diligently, learning to read and write in a beautiful hand, and the poems he composed, though still childish, showed quite much promise. He was a sensitive boy too, at times showing deep awareness of the evanescence of the material world that belied his few years. Especially in winter, when the nights were clear and starry, the boy was often found sitting outside, watching the dark sky in complete silence. "The universe, mother," he would say when she'd go to him. "Can you feel it?" And as she sat next to him under that great starry firmament, she thought she could.
What a great man her son could some day be, if only his hands weren't so strange! The worry grew in her, gnawing her insides, until one day she again wrote to her husband. First she explained in detail the achievements of their little son, now eight years of age, and attached a poem he had recited during one of those starry nights. Then she humbly admitted she had been wrong - the webbing between his fingers wasn't disappearing. They should do something.
An onmyouji arrived again, the same as before, this time accompanied by the boy's father, who by now had risen in his career despite his strange son and had turned from a Minor Counselor to a Middle Counselor. The onmyouji examined Kagemaru's hands and toes. The skin growing between the boy's fingers truly showed no signs of ever going to disappear, white and thin though it was - so thin that light shone through it when he raised his hand toward the sun.
The simplest way, the onmyouji declared, would be just to cut the skin away. The boy flinched, but in the presence of his father refused to show any signs of weakness, and so he followed the onmyouji in silence. His mother waited behind her curtain and couldn't help shedding tears as she heard her son crying in the next room. When the boy came to her, face pale and tear-stroked, all fingers separately bandaged, she opened her arms to him and let him cry against her shoulder.
Two days passed. On the third night the servants came to wake her up. The boy had developed a high fever. He was delirious, talking of strange things no one understood. Frightened, his mother called again for the onmyouji and sent a message also to his father. Now, the onmyouji was the only one to arrive, though the Middle Counselor sent a reply asking them to keep him informed.
Nothing the onmyouji could do seemed to help. A medium was called so that they could exorcise the evil spirit causing the fever, but nothing happened. If anything the fever grew higher. The boy writhed in his bed, moaning softly, great pearls of sweat glistening on his forehead.
"Can't you do anything!" his mother exclaimed behind the screen where she was following the procedure - she wanted nothing more than to tear down that stupid screen and take her son into her arms, but there were strange men present so she had to restrain herself.
The onmyouji gave the boy a troubled look, clearly at his wits end. "I must consult my colleagues," he finally stated. "I will return tomorrow..."
"Tomorrow!" She was wringing her hands. "But what of now? He is in pain now! What can we do to ease it?"
"I'm afraid I can't..." the onmyouji started.
"Get off those bandages!" she cut him off, not listening. "That must be what caused this! Let me see his hands!"
"Surely," the onmyouji had time to say before she plunged forward and, coming out of her screen, started to tear away the bandages. Embarrassed, the onmyouji started to turn away, but the sight of the boy's hands caught his eyes and he froze. The fingers were red and swollen, clearly infected. But what was more peculiar was the skin that had started to grow at their edges.
Kagemaru's mother sat a moment in silence staring at the hands. Then she tore off the rest of the bandages. "Can you... can you do something about this?" she said weakly, giving a self-conscious glance at the onmyouji, as if only now realizing what she had done. Her servants had already raised the screen again and she returned behind it, hiding her face behind her fan.
The onmyouji applied ointments on the boy's hands. After two days the swelling was down and the boy was as healthy as before. And the skin between his fingers was unbroken, as if it had never been cut off.
So, the mother concluded sadly, she would simply have to be content with their fate. No matter how perfect her son would be, would people ever see beyond his hands? Would he have to spend all his years hiding from people's eyes?
"It breaks my heart," she complained to the boy's father who had come to see them a few days after the boy had got better. "Would that at least you were to realize what a fine son you have!"
"Perhaps," the Middle Counselor stated, "I should learn to know him better. You say he is completely recovered? Then I shall take him to my mansion as I go. He can spend a few days there - I am not too busy at the moment, so I should be able to spend some time with him."
She worried, what else could she do, but even so she nodded her head. What else could she do.
And so Kagemaru left his mother's house together with his father. She gave them her final warnings and directions - ones she had voiced many a time before and which were beginning to make both father and son equally weary. "Stay away from water. Don't leave him alone in the garden. If he disappears, check first all the places where there is water. Don't..."
"I'm not two years old anymore, mother," the boy finally cut her off, growing impatient. "I'm not going to drown into a small garden lake."
She fell silent. "Well. I hope you enjoy your stay with your father," she finally said, and the two were off.
The Middle Counselor's mansion was much grander and bigger than his wife's, but even so, Kagemaru found himself a little disappointed. Everything was in a bigger scale, yes, but otherwise the place was very similar to his mother's. There was one crucial difference, though: in the garden there was a real lake. Kagemaru found himself surprised at how strong a pull that place had to him. Here he found the pendant with the fire emblem, still hanging on his neck, useful - clutching it helped him to resist the call of the water. Even so, very often he found his steps leading to that place, and he would sit long by the lake's shore, very much wanting to take a dip but not daring to put even a finger in the water, remembering his mother's worries and fears. The servants at the mansion gave him and his hands long, wondering looks, and he could at times hear them whispering behind his back, but everyone treated him politely, if not overly friendly. He was their master's son, after all.
His father had taken him there to get to know him, to spend time with him, but in truth he saw his father but a little. He decided not to let this chance to learn new things to be wasted, though, and with his father's permission he spent a long time in the library, reading this and that, what happened to catch his interest. And so one morning he happened to grasp a book that dealt on a subject he didn't know. Starting to read it he realized it was about a game - a game that at the same time appeared to be extremely simple but still so complicated he wondered if he ever could learn it.
He spent the rest of the morning reading that book. When his father came to look for him, he found the boy sitting on the floor, completely absorbed in the book.
"What are you reading?" the Middle Counselor asked, and it took a moment for his voice to register in Kagemaru's brain.
The boy looked up, and seeing his father stood up quickly, and bowed. "This book," he said, showing it to his father. "Honored father, what... what is this game called? I can't read this sign..."
The Middle Counselor looked surprised. "It's go. How can you not know go?" Then he answered his own question, "Of course, your mother has never been fond of that game. I still wouldn't have thought she would neglect teaching it to you. Would you like to learn?"
"Yes father, please!" the boy exclaimed, face alight.
This was the most important thing Kagemaru took with himself as he returned to his mother's house: love for go. His mother wasn't quite thrilled, for she had never had any skill for the game whatsoever, but still she couldn't help feeling happy as she saw how eager her son was about it. It even seemed that go might get a stronger hold of his heart than water, and she hoped this would be the case. She might not like go, but at least it wasn't something that would place her son in danger.
She said this aloud one day, and Kagemaru smiled at her. "Go is like water, mother. It... it flows. It is full of endless possibilities. It's flexible, without a given form, like water, and, like water, it's constantly the same and still constantly changing." He would have gone on, but seeing in his mother's eyes that she was growing troubled again he fell silent. "I do like it better than water, I think," he said then, smiling at her, hoping this would calm her down. It did, a little.
Despite her dislike for the game his mother took out her old go board and started playing with him. It didn't take long before she needed handicap stones against her son. The Middle Counselor, when he visited them and played a game against Kagemaru, was astonished at his growth. "Had you truly not played at all before I started teaching you?" He had new kind of wonder in his eyes as he watched his son, and for the first time in years Kagemaru's mother felt tiniest sense of hope.
As time passed she soon realized what a wonderful gift her boy had found in go, and regretted not having introduced it to him earlier. Where the boy had spent hours watching the clouds in the sky, clearly wishing he too could come and go as freely as they, he now was absorbed in the game, always reading, playing and replaying when he had a chance. Kagemaru too was grateful of finding go, though for different reasons - he had never spoken of it to his mother, but on so many nights he had lain awake in his bed, listening to the water he could feel flowing in the very ground below him, a hand clutched around the pendant that always hang on his neck. Now, at such times, he would think of a go problem, or of a game he had played the previous day, and soon he would be carried away by a different current, the call of water fading into the background.
With his new addiction to spend time with years flew by so fast Kagemaru hardly noticed it. At the beginning of his thirteenth year his father declared it was time to start preparing for his coming-of-age ceremony. This put the entire household into excited turmoil. Kagemaru's mother was at times smiling, at times weeping, petting his cheek as he walked by. "My little boy," she would whisper. "So soon a grown man."
On the day of the ceremony Kagemaru found himself more nervous he had ever been. It would be a simple enough ceremony, with not much for him to do, and there really wasn't any reason for him to be so nervous, but as the servants were making him ready he felt a bunch of butterflies flying around in his stomach, and he could just hope he'd manage to pull it through.
There was one part in the preparations he did not like at all, though: the cutting of his hair. It had grown long indeed, so long he had to be careful with it when he sat down. Now, it would be cut to shoulder-length, and it would be tied upon his head in a topknot. The sound of scissors clicking made him want to flinch, but he stood still, just breathing out an inaudible little sigh.
As it was, the ceremony proceeded without any trouble. His father was there, naturally, and looked at him with something akin to pride in his eyes, and it made his heart swell. His mother, equally naturally, was sitting behind her curtain and so he couldn't see her face, but he was sure she too was watching him proudly, and that thought almost brought tears to his eyes. He fought to keep them back, and managed, somehow. Some people might have noticed the dampness of his eyes, but that was hardly a bad thing; on the contrary, it was a sign of a properly sensitive young man. His uncle was the one to place the court hat on his head, and it was all done. As he stood there in his new attire, he was given his adult name.
Sai, he repeated quietly in his mind. It would take time to grow used to it.
---
kage = shadow, silhouette, phantom
maru = suffix that was used for esp. children's names
tuulentupa / tuuli_chanWater Children Part I: Kagemaru
One spring evening, around the time when the last cherry petals were floating down in the wind and the wisteria were just beginning to bloom, the capital was abuzz with whispering. Rumors spread across the city like fire in dry hay.
"Have you heard of the Minor Counselor's wife?"
"The baby... have you heard of the baby...?"
"It's horrifying! How could she face such misfortune?"
"I hear it's malformed, like a frog..."
"No, no, its skin, its skin is like that of a fish, slippery and scaly..."
"Frightening!"
"How did it happen? Is it a curse, or..."
"I heard..."
"Yes?"
"I heard she went for a swim."
"What?"
"When she went on a pilgrimage last summer. The day was hot, they passed a lake, and she went to swim."
"That... that is...!"
"I know. Such behavior! What else could follow but misfortune?"
As the women gossiped, the Minor Counselor's wife was smiling down at the tiny bundle in her arms. The servants were frightened, silly things, so she had to take care of her child on her own. She didn't mind though, for it was such a beautiful child: clear, pale skin, amethyst eyes, soft dark hair already thick as a finger. The only problem was the thin web-like skin growing between the infant's fingers and toes, like in the foot of a frog... but with such a beautiful child, it was a minor grievance. Surely it would come off as the child grew.
The baby's father wasn't quite as happy when he came to see his new son. The Minor Counselor stared at the sleeping baby and its tiny, tightly closed fists. Even so the web between the fingers was obvious. He turned his glare to the new mother, who lowered her eyes.
"It is unfortunate, of course," she murmured to his unspoken accusation. "But don't you see how beautiful and healthy the boy otherwise is? I think people are making too much out of a little thing..."
"Little thing!" the counselor exclaimed. "The city is full of rumors! Do you have any idea what this does to your reputation - not to mention mine?"
"People make too much out of this," she repeated quietly, still watching her hands. "With time, they will forget. And it is a little thing - as the boy grows, surely those things will come off. With time."
The Minor Counselor leaned back, watching her with an unreadable expression. He posed an extravagant sight that day in his fine robes, as if he had wanted to make sure that at least his appearance wouldn't give any cause for criticism. "How can you know that?" he finally asked. "And even if that is true, this is a bad time for you to cause a scandal attached to my name. How could you be so foolish!"
She stiffened a little. "I have done nothing wrong," she said, annoyed at the defensive tone in her voice. "I was merely walking by the lake when I slipped and fell into the water. You know that! Don't you remember? It perfectly ruined my clothes!"
She shuddered with the memory. The shock of the cold water hitting her and that frightful moment when she had been completely submerged, her clothes heavy in the water, uncertain which was up and which down, until a hand grasped her hair (of all things!) and pulled her to the surface. "I can't even swim," she concluded a little weakly. She looked up at her husband, and for the first time felt anger toward him. "How can you be so cold! This is your child, after all; can't you show at least a little bit of happiness for a new son?"
He looked again at the baby and frowned. "Is it so strange if a man isn't overly pleased when he has eagerly waited for the first song of a thrush, only to hear a frog croaking in the night?"
"Man has to be deaf indeed to mistake a thrush for a frog," she replied coldly. "I am sorry you are so disappointed, my lord. But what has happened can't be made undone. This child is now here, and he is yours, and mine. The days to come will yet prove to you that I am right: he is a fine son for you to have."
"Perhaps." With that the Minor Counselor stood up and without a word of goodbye stepped outside of her curtain, leaving her and the baby alone. She watched a moment after him, sighed, but turned then to her child. Yes, the days to come would prove her right.
The first two years of the child's life passed quite uneventfully. On the day when the Minor Counselor had left, not hiding his displeasure, the servants had been fretting, sure that he would not return and their mistress would face an unhappy fate, abandoned by her husband. To their great surprise he had not cut their ties completely and had even come to see the baby a few times.
The baby had grown up fine, just like any other child. The servants were still wondering about him (carefully when their mistress didn't hear them), about his hands and feet, his strangely colored eyes, his hair that had been abundant already when he was a baby. When the spring came two years after his birth, the hair fell down over the boy's shoulder blades, and they would have cut it, but the mother was against it - she said she wanted to see how long it would grow. So the servants kept on wondering, but with time they calmed down, gradually getting quite fond of the little, always smiling Kagemaru, as the boy was now called. His mother didn't like the name and its implication of something ghostly, but it was what his father had called him, and she decided it might be best not to make an issue out of it.
When the boy was living his third summer something happened that gave her quite a fright. Having found his feet, Kagemaru had turned into quite a lively and quick little boy. One day the girl taking care of him had turned her back only for a moment, or so she said, and suddenly he was gone. They searched everywhere, and finally it was his mother who spotted him in the garden, already wading into the water of the artificial lake, splashing happily as he went. She rushed quickly to him and snatched him away just when he was about to fall into the water, getting a loud wail of protest for her reward.
The girl got quite a scolding, and, teary-eyed, promised to be more careful in the future. After this it took everyone's full attention to keep the boy out of the lake - the moment they looked away, he was heading outside, toddling his way toward the water.
After they had fished him out of the lake for the third time, she wrote a desperate letter to the boy's father.
"I don't know what to do," she wailed. "It is as if there were something in the lake to lure him away - I barely dare to sleep in the night, fearing he slips away in the dark and in the morning we find him drowned. What should I do?"
Instead of a reply, the Minor Counselor sent an onmyouji to examine the boy. The mother waited nervously for the verdict. Finally the onmyouji came to see her, sitting down on the other side of her curtain.
"To tell the truth," the onmyouji started, getting straight to the matter, "I must admit I have never seen a case quite like this before. It is as if your son consisted wholly of pure yin - yang in him is nearly nonexistent. Water is his element, strong in him. You should keep him away from water - I don't know what might happen if he ever would follow its call, and I don't dare to guess."
"So what should we do?" she asked, desperately. The onmyouji shook his head at a loss.
"Fire is the opposite of water," he said, "but we can hardly burn him. I will give him a fire pendant - maybe it will help to quell the water in him."
That was all he could say. Little Kagemaru didn't like his new pendant, but it was hung round his neck on a strong string, and he couldn't get rid of it, try as he might. His mother wandered outside and watched sadly the little lake that had always been her favorite part of the garden. Then she called for her servants and told them they would be getting rid of the lake. This aroused some startled protests, but she was adamant. The work took a long time, but in the end where there had once been a shimmering lake and a softly murmuring little brook was now a rather tasteful and extremely dry rock garden.
After this little episode years passed again quietly. Kagemaru left seldom his mother's house. A few times his mother took him to watch processions or competitions, always keeping him in her own carriage away from the gazes of others, carefully avoiding the canals that ran through the city on the way. She couldn't help feeling bad, though, for although he never complained she saw the boy was growing bored always staying within her walls. She would have wanted to send him to his father's at times, just for variation, but she worried how he would fare there, among people who didn't know him. She went on pilgrimages to various nearby temples - never wanting to stay away long - to pray for her son, and once she even took the boy with her. That trip, Kagemaru later declared, was the best thing ever to happen to him, and he asked his mother if he couldn't go with her more often. She was quiet, troubled - not that she wouldn't have wanted to take him with her, but there were few places where they could go that didn't have any waters to cross on the way.
She had been so sure that time would make her son normal, but as days rolled by his strange hands and feet did not change. At least she had been right at one point: he was a fine son to have. He studied diligently, learning to read and write in a beautiful hand, and the poems he composed, though still childish, showed quite much promise. He was a sensitive boy too, at times showing deep awareness of the evanescence of the material world that belied his few years. Especially in winter, when the nights were clear and starry, the boy was often found sitting outside, watching the dark sky in complete silence. "The universe, mother," he would say when she'd go to him. "Can you feel it?" And as she sat next to him under that great starry firmament, she thought she could.
What a great man her son could some day be, if only his hands weren't so strange! The worry grew in her, gnawing her insides, until one day she again wrote to her husband. First she explained in detail the achievements of their little son, now eight years of age, and attached a poem he had recited during one of those starry nights. Then she humbly admitted she had been wrong - the webbing between his fingers wasn't disappearing. They should do something.
An onmyouji arrived again, the same as before, this time accompanied by the boy's father, who by now had risen in his career despite his strange son and had turned from a Minor Counselor to a Middle Counselor. The onmyouji examined Kagemaru's hands and toes. The skin growing between the boy's fingers truly showed no signs of ever going to disappear, white and thin though it was - so thin that light shone through it when he raised his hand toward the sun.
The simplest way, the onmyouji declared, would be just to cut the skin away. The boy flinched, but in the presence of his father refused to show any signs of weakness, and so he followed the onmyouji in silence. His mother waited behind her curtain and couldn't help shedding tears as she heard her son crying in the next room. When the boy came to her, face pale and tear-stroked, all fingers separately bandaged, she opened her arms to him and let him cry against her shoulder.
Two days passed. On the third night the servants came to wake her up. The boy had developed a high fever. He was delirious, talking of strange things no one understood. Frightened, his mother called again for the onmyouji and sent a message also to his father. Now, the onmyouji was the only one to arrive, though the Middle Counselor sent a reply asking them to keep him informed.
Nothing the onmyouji could do seemed to help. A medium was called so that they could exorcise the evil spirit causing the fever, but nothing happened. If anything the fever grew higher. The boy writhed in his bed, moaning softly, great pearls of sweat glistening on his forehead.
"Can't you do anything!" his mother exclaimed behind the screen where she was following the procedure - she wanted nothing more than to tear down that stupid screen and take her son into her arms, but there were strange men present so she had to restrain herself.
The onmyouji gave the boy a troubled look, clearly at his wits end. "I must consult my colleagues," he finally stated. "I will return tomorrow..."
"Tomorrow!" She was wringing her hands. "But what of now? He is in pain now! What can we do to ease it?"
"I'm afraid I can't..." the onmyouji started.
"Get off those bandages!" she cut him off, not listening. "That must be what caused this! Let me see his hands!"
"Surely," the onmyouji had time to say before she plunged forward and, coming out of her screen, started to tear away the bandages. Embarrassed, the onmyouji started to turn away, but the sight of the boy's hands caught his eyes and he froze. The fingers were red and swollen, clearly infected. But what was more peculiar was the skin that had started to grow at their edges.
Kagemaru's mother sat a moment in silence staring at the hands. Then she tore off the rest of the bandages. "Can you... can you do something about this?" she said weakly, giving a self-conscious glance at the onmyouji, as if only now realizing what she had done. Her servants had already raised the screen again and she returned behind it, hiding her face behind her fan.
The onmyouji applied ointments on the boy's hands. After two days the swelling was down and the boy was as healthy as before. And the skin between his fingers was unbroken, as if it had never been cut off.
So, the mother concluded sadly, she would simply have to be content with their fate. No matter how perfect her son would be, would people ever see beyond his hands? Would he have to spend all his years hiding from people's eyes?
"It breaks my heart," she complained to the boy's father who had come to see them a few days after the boy had got better. "Would that at least you were to realize what a fine son you have!"
"Perhaps," the Middle Counselor stated, "I should learn to know him better. You say he is completely recovered? Then I shall take him to my mansion as I go. He can spend a few days there - I am not too busy at the moment, so I should be able to spend some time with him."
She worried, what else could she do, but even so she nodded her head. What else could she do.
And so Kagemaru left his mother's house together with his father. She gave them her final warnings and directions - ones she had voiced many a time before and which were beginning to make both father and son equally weary. "Stay away from water. Don't leave him alone in the garden. If he disappears, check first all the places where there is water. Don't..."
"I'm not two years old anymore, mother," the boy finally cut her off, growing impatient. "I'm not going to drown into a small garden lake."
She fell silent. "Well. I hope you enjoy your stay with your father," she finally said, and the two were off.
The Middle Counselor's mansion was much grander and bigger than his wife's, but even so, Kagemaru found himself a little disappointed. Everything was in a bigger scale, yes, but otherwise the place was very similar to his mother's. There was one crucial difference, though: in the garden there was a real lake. Kagemaru found himself surprised at how strong a pull that place had to him. Here he found the pendant with the fire emblem, still hanging on his neck, useful - clutching it helped him to resist the call of the water. Even so, very often he found his steps leading to that place, and he would sit long by the lake's shore, very much wanting to take a dip but not daring to put even a finger in the water, remembering his mother's worries and fears. The servants at the mansion gave him and his hands long, wondering looks, and he could at times hear them whispering behind his back, but everyone treated him politely, if not overly friendly. He was their master's son, after all.
His father had taken him there to get to know him, to spend time with him, but in truth he saw his father but a little. He decided not to let this chance to learn new things to be wasted, though, and with his father's permission he spent a long time in the library, reading this and that, what happened to catch his interest. And so one morning he happened to grasp a book that dealt on a subject he didn't know. Starting to read it he realized it was about a game - a game that at the same time appeared to be extremely simple but still so complicated he wondered if he ever could learn it.
He spent the rest of the morning reading that book. When his father came to look for him, he found the boy sitting on the floor, completely absorbed in the book.
"What are you reading?" the Middle Counselor asked, and it took a moment for his voice to register in Kagemaru's brain.
The boy looked up, and seeing his father stood up quickly, and bowed. "This book," he said, showing it to his father. "Honored father, what... what is this game called? I can't read this sign..."
The Middle Counselor looked surprised. "It's go. How can you not know go?" Then he answered his own question, "Of course, your mother has never been fond of that game. I still wouldn't have thought she would neglect teaching it to you. Would you like to learn?"
"Yes father, please!" the boy exclaimed, face alight.
This was the most important thing Kagemaru took with himself as he returned to his mother's house: love for go. His mother wasn't quite thrilled, for she had never had any skill for the game whatsoever, but still she couldn't help feeling happy as she saw how eager her son was about it. It even seemed that go might get a stronger hold of his heart than water, and she hoped this would be the case. She might not like go, but at least it wasn't something that would place her son in danger.
She said this aloud one day, and Kagemaru smiled at her. "Go is like water, mother. It... it flows. It is full of endless possibilities. It's flexible, without a given form, like water, and, like water, it's constantly the same and still constantly changing." He would have gone on, but seeing in his mother's eyes that she was growing troubled again he fell silent. "I do like it better than water, I think," he said then, smiling at her, hoping this would calm her down. It did, a little.
Despite her dislike for the game his mother took out her old go board and started playing with him. It didn't take long before she needed handicap stones against her son. The Middle Counselor, when he visited them and played a game against Kagemaru, was astonished at his growth. "Had you truly not played at all before I started teaching you?" He had new kind of wonder in his eyes as he watched his son, and for the first time in years Kagemaru's mother felt tiniest sense of hope.
As time passed she soon realized what a wonderful gift her boy had found in go, and regretted not having introduced it to him earlier. Where the boy had spent hours watching the clouds in the sky, clearly wishing he too could come and go as freely as they, he now was absorbed in the game, always reading, playing and replaying when he had a chance. Kagemaru too was grateful of finding go, though for different reasons - he had never spoken of it to his mother, but on so many nights he had lain awake in his bed, listening to the water he could feel flowing in the very ground below him, a hand clutched around the pendant that always hang on his neck. Now, at such times, he would think of a go problem, or of a game he had played the previous day, and soon he would be carried away by a different current, the call of water fading into the background.
With his new addiction to spend time with years flew by so fast Kagemaru hardly noticed it. At the beginning of his thirteenth year his father declared it was time to start preparing for his coming-of-age ceremony. This put the entire household into excited turmoil. Kagemaru's mother was at times smiling, at times weeping, petting his cheek as he walked by. "My little boy," she would whisper. "So soon a grown man."
On the day of the ceremony Kagemaru found himself more nervous he had ever been. It would be a simple enough ceremony, with not much for him to do, and there really wasn't any reason for him to be so nervous, but as the servants were making him ready he felt a bunch of butterflies flying around in his stomach, and he could just hope he'd manage to pull it through.
There was one part in the preparations he did not like at all, though: the cutting of his hair. It had grown long indeed, so long he had to be careful with it when he sat down. Now, it would be cut to shoulder-length, and it would be tied upon his head in a topknot. The sound of scissors clicking made him want to flinch, but he stood still, just breathing out an inaudible little sigh.
As it was, the ceremony proceeded without any trouble. His father was there, naturally, and looked at him with something akin to pride in his eyes, and it made his heart swell. His mother, equally naturally, was sitting behind her curtain and so he couldn't see her face, but he was sure she too was watching him proudly, and that thought almost brought tears to his eyes. He fought to keep them back, and managed, somehow. Some people might have noticed the dampness of his eyes, but that was hardly a bad thing; on the contrary, it was a sign of a properly sensitive young man. His uncle was the one to place the court hat on his head, and it was all done. As he stood there in his new attire, he was given his adult name.
Sai, he repeated quietly in his mind. It would take time to grow used to it.
kage = shadow, silhouette, phantom
maru = suffix that was used for esp. children's names
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Date: 2013-09-20 08:19 pm (UTC)On to the next part!
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Date: 2013-09-26 11:37 am (UTC)I did think it might be Sai, especially when describing the boys eyes and hair.