Servant Mastered
1.
The girl crawled from her bed. The hour was dark, and the servants were gone to bed, leaving her free roam of the household – provided she kept silent. She learned early not to be caught, for if she were caught, she would be appropriately punished. Instead of making her afraid, this served to make her bolder and more cunning.
This night was different, and there was a chill in every breath she took. Making her way through the secret places of the mansion, she came to the place of her father, where he would stare out over the world and rule as he saw fit.
Below, lamplight danced along a ghostly procession. She hadn't seen them coming, and didn't know where they were going, but many people had gathered under the light of the moon. High Priest Ojisan led the way, and he paused for a moment, staring up at her.
The girl clapped her hands to her ears to block out the vicious howl that sounded, through floorboard and bone, and scrambled away as fast as her legs could carry her.
The sound haunted her dreams, and the girl awoke in her bed, to morning on the air.
2.
Hotaru was young yet, but trained well in her mother's art. Since the death of Lady Himuro, it had fallen on her shoulders to maintain order within the household until her father remarried. She did as was expected of her, and in turn expected nothing less.
Her father was, without a doubt, a man of fine stature. He ensured order and diligence, observing every last laborer, down to the lowliest of the farmers. When it wasn't him, personally, it was one of his countless spies. When it was him, work was silent, lest a loose tongue bring down his wrath upon them all.
When she was young, he would ask her: My daughter, what have you seen today? The question persisted, but now she answered in full honesty, knowing well the truth behind the question. Some days, she wished it were as innocent as she remembered it, when her father would laugh and smile at her descriptions of the nonsense things. Instead, he scowled and considered every tidbit of news, and she saw the consequences of her words play out in disappearances.
She was always truthful, and she was always afraid.
3.
By the age of fourteen, Hotaru knew the most every in and out of the mansion by heart, and yet she never knew what became of those who stepped unknowing away from the invisible line. In search of her father's secrets, she found a frightful truth. In the most secret room, that she never would have found if it had not been so hidden, was a living doll... a made mockery of a girl, barely older than Hotaru herself, caged and warded for fear of... what?
For many nights, she crept through the attic. Her bravery was lost, and she would turn back. The doll-girl watched her, every time, with no life to her movements.
One such night, as she approached the heavily charmed bars, and sought to turn around, a voice captured her, blocking her escape at the door.
"Ask."
Hotaru turned and did as she was bidden. "My father keeps you here?"
"No. The rope keeps me here," the girl confided. "My duty keeps me here."
The girl bid her Ask again, before she dared. "What is your duty?"
"My duty is to die, so that my spirit may guard the gates of hell."
She would have run, then and there. The girl's voice captured her, holding her at the door; she realized the weight of the confession she was hearing.
"Your father... He enjoys taunting me with my life." There was a smile to the girl's lips, as she related, "He does not appear to realize that I am already dead."
She had to escape, had to get away...
"He seeks the power of the ropes, which no man may posses," the rope maiden's voice warned after her, "His hubris will destroy us all."
When her father asked what she had seen, Hotaru told him that the cherry trees were in bloom.
4.
"I expected your return."
Hotaru had taken her time. She was tired and frightened, and all alone. Or so she thought, and now she was surprised. "How?"
"I see all that happens in this house. It is a blessing of the ropes."
"You know...?" Hotaru choked quietly. There was a creaking of the floorboards, and she froze. If they had come through the door, to her side, she would have been unable to run. The rope maiden waited until whoever it was returned to where they had come, and spoke in a low voice, that soothed Hotaru's pain.
"I know what you fear."
She nodded weakly, trying to be as quiet, as calm and noble. "He knows... he knows I lied to him."
"Yes. You do not lie well." Silence. "Tell me of the cherry blossoms."
Hotaru spoke, then, of what she had seen. Of who she had seen, and the sights and sense of spring. By the time she had finished, light crept through the boarded up window, and she nearly panicked. Before she could excuse herself, the girl spoke to her again.
"Your duty is his sin. Or his redemption," she said. "He is a servant of the ropes, as am I, as are all who dwell here, that bear our name. As you must be prepared to be."
"If I cleanse his corruption from our blood, can you do what must be done?"
5.
Her father's reign was one of fear. Hotaru shared in that fear, as any of the servants or the priests might have done. It was that fear that whispered to her, he knows, in the voice of the dead. She stood at the end of the corridor, where he trapped her with his gaze, and waited.
"I knew," he hissed, "That the world was my enemy. But I never expected of my daughter to join against me."
In his darkest nightmare, her name was a curse to him. The shadows deepened, encroaching on them both, with no trace of the morning sunlight.
"You oughtn't fear the living, Lord Himuro."
The shrine maiden appeared as a phantom of death in the darkened hallway. His fear did not lose him his wits, and the family master drew his sword in the same grace it took him to reach the end of the hallway, where his daughter cowered helpless. Ropes slithered down from the rafters and caught Himuro in a twisted spider's embrace.
Hotaru didn't see what happened, as the ropes dragged her father to his death. She shivered in a corner, until a hand landed on her shoulder. She whimpered.
"Be at peace, Lady Himuro," said the girl who was death, "Be still. Look up and see that there is nothing you need fear in your house."
6.
Lady Himuro remembered this procession, as though in a dream. She walked the path, bade by priests and shrine maidens who knew things and were wiser than she. It felt as though she was doing wrong, when every step of the way, she was told it was the most righteous of rights.
She liked to think of the rope shrine maiden – Kimiko, her name was, although she never did respond to it – as a friend, and perhaps one of the only true friends she ever did know. Kimiko, who was loyal to her purpose and dedicated to Himuro, only smiled softly and rarely asked of anything.
And this night, Lady Himuro was to sacrifice this girl, as her father was wont to do. And she fretted and worried, even as she had already torn the eyes from another – the young woman who had taken the blow with all the serenity and stoicism that Kimiko was showing now.
The altar was set. All that was left was her duty.
"Do not fear for me," the young woman reminded her lady, at this end of all, "I am already dead, and cannot be truly harmed."
7.
The woman appeared on the road, and insisted to be taken in at once. She explained herself, a fallen noblewoman of the Miyoshi clan, and with her son, Miyoshi Katsuo, claimed the right of ascension to Himuro.
She knew – guessed, Lady Himuro's priests told her – a great many things, and hinted at knowing even more. Out of place, she insisted that her son being the only male heir of the vanished Lord Himuro, now that the unfortunate Lord was vanquished, and spread the seeds of deceit.
Lady Himuro had power, in herself and in her priests. She allowed the woman to stay out of grace, and could not rightfully say whether hers was a truth or not.
Above all, she wished Kimiko were here with her now.
8.
"Lady Himuro, a word."
Katsuo was unlike his mother, in every way polite. He stared at her with a reverence that she felt undeserving, and so she did not look at him.
"They call it the Abyss," she answered softly, staring out over the water.
"Lady Himuro, please..." He sought her out, and pleaded, in hushed tones as not to be heard, "You must know as well as I that my mother deals in lies. My father was a humble merchant, and my mother never stepped foot on your mountain before she set out to meet you here. You must send us away, she means you great harm."
Only then did she stare at him. "Why do you tell me this? What dishonor do you wish to bring upon yourself?"
"No dishonor, Lady Himuro, I..." They were alike, with secrets and with principle. Katsuo could not be silenced, "I would not have come, except for this. I only wish to serve you."
"You don't know what you ask," she said, "If you will excuse me, I have a ceremony to oversee."
9.
It was no coincidence that they appeared so inconveniently, so near to the night of the ceremony. Lady Himuro stepped down the stairs, carefully as she had when she was a child.
She tumbled down the last two steps, tripped in the night.
The woman reflected within the mirror meant her harm, as the her son had said. Beneath the stairs she waited, ready to finish what she had forced into play. As she approached the family master, knife drawn, a third reflection appeared in the mirror, unworldly and terrible as the dusk.
Her screams woke the household. Ojisan came running, and the rest of her priests behind him. And Katsuo, with the servants. The Lady needn't explain herself, they insisted, as Katsuo explained rightly. His mother was gone, escaped into the night as her plot unraveled.
The truth was far more dreadful.
She is ours now. The rope shrine maiden's voice echoed in Lady Himuro's ears, There is nothing you need fear in your house.
10.
You must die now, but do not weep. Your pain will not last.
The child had been frightened, rightfully so. They always were.
You will see things that we cannot, and keep us safe. This is your duty, and you shall bear it with pride.
Lady Himuro had her duty, too. Her son was too young to oversee the ceremony, and her husband was ever an outsider to the priests. Nevertheless, she told him the secret, in wisps of truth and half-forgotten lies, and let him believe in the things he knew from his own experience.
Katsuo was a never did once betray her trust. It was his insistence that his mother left because her lies had been found out; he was a good adviser, and from him she drew strength.
Her father had been wrong. The pain he inflicted was torment from his own soul, his vengeance only real in his own mind. He ought to have gathered near those who kept him, rather than pushed them so far away. Lady Himuro blamed him not, and felt little remorse. Yet his shadow lingered, guarding over the house. He had become nothing more than a puppet of the ropes.
the end
Working Title: Servant Mastered
Inspiration: Vengeance and VengeanceInWall. And curiosity.
Noteworthy: Apparently, women in olden times Japan could become placeholders for their lineage, while awaiting a son to carry on the dynasty. Thus: Hotaru, puppet-ruler for the priests. (If I'm wrong, well... uh... oops?)
Disambiguation: Presume Ojisan a childism that Hotaru privately never grew out of.
Derivative work of material © Tecmo.