The Eastern Mount
She dwells among the shadows of the East
The cool primeval pines of the highest mounts
Whisper her name softly like the wind.
We, we come like the thunder of guns
The lightning of artillery and cannon
Silences voices and silences the ancients.
I bridge the worlds and make them whole
Demand their fealty, honor, and tribute
She vanishes from us once again.
The Eastern Mount
Chapter One: The Old
She came among them like a spirit and a shadow, always pale and lovely and mysterious. Her cool silver voice that fell like water on the ear and murmured soft on the heart, was faint and fascinating. Her husband was the last of the shoguns of old Imperial Japan, and whenever she raised her unsettling violet eyes, it seemed that the old days and old ways were reaffirmed again. Whenever some of the rebellious young ones declared the ways of honor and bushido obsolete, they had only to look into her eyes and their protestations were silenced.
It would have been impossible to describe her fittingly, the perfection with which the grand minimalistic palaces of exquisitely grained wood and pale unadorned stone fit her. She floated among the walkways that boasted almost no ornamentation, but possessed a grace in form that was adornment it itself. Their plainness was their beauty, indescribably soothing and graceful. But she belonged to them, and they to her, in an unknown primal fashion which cannot be explained by modern logic.
It was the summer of her seventeenth year, the fourth year of her marriage to Hidekei, when she was to set sail for Kyoto, the ancient capital of the emperors. There, the pale-haired barbarians to the West had come, come to demand fealty, honor, and tribute. There would she meet the red-coated men who did not wear robes and wore hair on their face. They too, had come from an island and they too, believed themselves to be the kings of the world.