The pale-skinned, dark-haired farm boy stood in a harvested sorghum field. He threw the sickle in his right hand at the scarecrow 20 feet away. He missed. Then the peasant lad threw the sickle in his left hand at the straw man. He sighed with frustration as he missed his target by an inch.
"How many years have we been going at this?!!" The ebony-skinned, pale-haired peasant woman standing behind him shouted. "When are you going to get this right?"
"Actually, I've gotten this right many times," the young man thought. "When you are not watching. But somehow, under your stern, unforgiving gaze, I always fail."
Akio ran forward to pick up his fallen sickles, his long slender braids flying behind him. His mother's tirade continued. "Focus! Concentrate! Aim! How are you going to be able to defend yourself or our village against a single samurai or Nobuseri like this? Why can't you be like my brothers?"
"Maybe… because, I'm really not your son," he said softly without turning to face her.
There was a long silence. Then the woman came forward and put her hand on the lad's shoulder. "Akio, you should not care so much about what other people say…" she spoke slowly.
"How can I not care?" the lad with blue hair and red eyes said to himself. "Year after year, word after word. Even drops of falling water can penetrate a stone, given long enough."
"Mother," he finally turned to face her. "Maybe it is time for me to take my leave and seek my own fortune. Find my own place in the sun, if it exists."
"Don't leave us," The woman with pale pink hair and blue eyes replied anxiously. "This is your home."
"No, this is your home," he said wordlessly. "It has never been mine."
--
17 years ago, two eunuchs - representatives from the Imperial Court - had come to Momoyama Village. With them was a court physician. They said they wanted to find the healthiest young women in the village "for the emperor's use". Thus, all the peasant women between the ages of 18 and 26 were subjected to a physical exam. The locals thought it strange and invasive, but they had no authority to resist the emperor's order.
The village elders had heard of court representatives going around the various states once every few years, seeking out exquisite beauties for the emperor's harem. But they almost never came to the Northlands. Women of the matrilineal Northland states were of too fiery temper and strong mettle for the men of the patrilineal South to tolerate. Thus, they were not considered ideal candidates for the Amanushi's seraglio. But oddly enough, these Imperial Eunuchs who visited this day were not asking for the most beautiful women. They were asking for the healthiest women.
The Imperial Agents took only one young woman from the village – Misaki. She was sent back to the village a few months later, visibly pregnant. The peasant woman refused to tell anyone about what she experienced in the Capital, saying she had sworn an oath of secrecy. Thus everyone assumed that she was chosen as an Imperial Wife, but lost the Emperor's favor and was dismissed.
The Kokuryu-ans were a matrilineal people. The daimyo and village chieftains were women. Name, position and property passed from mother to daughter. There was no great shame in a woman without a husband having a child. Thus, no one made a big deal when Misaki came back to the village pregnant. The trouble only started when the baby was born.
The child was white-skinned and had bluish near-black hair. The ebony-skinned pale-haired villagers eyed him curiously. Misaki's mother said, "He'll darken up later. I've heard this is what happens."
Misaki named her son Akio, after the Morning Star. But Akio's skin did not darken after he aged into a toddler. By now, everyone was looking at him as if he was a freak. The Northlanders had children with people of other Sectors for millennia. There was no taboo against children born of diverse lineage. But such children came in various shades of brown, from pale tan to deep chocolate. Not only was Akio white-skinned, he did not resemble Misaki in the least.
Now people were whispering, saying that Akio was not really Misaki's son, that he was a demon who borrowed her womb to find a human shell and enter the mortal world. The other village children would not even talk to him. A few times, Akio would ask his mother why he did not look like her, but she never answered him.
At school, the teacher always rebuked Akio more harshly for the same offences committed by his classmates. Still the boy tried his best to fit in. He was obedient and eager to please. His mother tried her best to make him belong in their close knit community. At first Misaki tried rubbing soot on her son's skin when he went out to work in the fields, but as soon as he started sweating, the soot ran off. After years of laboring under the harsh Northland sun, Akio had grown into a tan peasant lad, and his naturally blue-black hair was bleached lighter by the sunlight. But still, he did not pass a day acutely aware that he was an outsider in this peasant village where few people from other realms came to visit.
Mother tried to turn the Ultimate Outsider into the Ultimate Northlander. She taught Akio the lore and the songs of their people. She made him read many books. Akio could recite his 'ancestral lineage' up to 40 generations, though he was painfully aware that it was in all likelihood, not his lineage. He could retell ages of Northland history, from the time of the ancient southern conquests in which the fierce Northlander nomads descended on the Amanushi's people in the Southlands, to the peasant rebellion which ignited across the Northland States two hundred years ago. In fact, Akio knew the old lore better than the village bard. But he suspected he could never be the bard even if he wanted to be.
In the famed Northland rebellion two centuries ago, peasants more than held their own against samurai, battling swordfighters with peasant weapons adapted from sickles, rice grinders and the ubiquitous staff. Misaki was determined that her child should continue their proud tradition. She and her brothers taught Akio to fight like a Northland peasant. Akio did well under the supervision of his uncles, but under his mother's instruction, he always under-performed. It was as if she wanted him to succeed so much he felt he had no choice but to fail.
Under her expectant gaze, Akio could almost the mental message Misaki was sending. "Don't fail! Do NOT fail! Don't let me down! Do not be my shame!" But he was already his mother's shame. At that thought, his hands would tremble.
Maybe, maybe it was only by leaving her that he could become a man that could make her proud.
Author's Comments:
The Northland peasants in this tale are partly inspired by the description of the Ryukyu peasants in Secrets of the Samurai:
"It was in these (the Ryukyu) islands …– that he (the samurai) learned how inadequate his armor and his array of traditional weapons could prove to be, when pitted against the bare hands and feet of a peasant sufficiently desperate and properly trained in the ancient Chinese techniques of striking."
The Ryukyu Kingdom is modern Okinawa. The Okinawans are famous for self-defense arts originating from people outside the warrior class. Fishermen developed Ekudi, the art of fighting with oars. And the peasants used sickles (kama), rice grinders, horse shoes and horse harnesses (developed into a form of nunchaku) in combat.
The line about water penetrating a rock is a Chinese saying.