Chapter 11

She packed all the things she could carry in her bag that night so she didn't have to lay in bed and dwell on the event of the previous day. She had been sitting on her futon when she got a strange feeling that she wouldn't return anytime soon. She shook her head at herself, they wouldn't return because they were going to die. The troops stood absolutely no chance against the samurai. It was going to be another massacre. Ariel knew that they stood no chance of defeating an opponent they knew nothing about. If it was just her life on the line, she realized that it may not have matter as much as it did, but it wasn't just her, it was Nathan and Zeb and all those naïve but kind men. That's why she had to give them the best possible chance. Ariel rummaged around in her bag and pulled out the books Graham had given her, studying them intently one more time. She had to make sure she had gleaned all she could from them.

About an hour before dawn, Ariel put down the last book and signed. There still wasn't enough information for her liking, but there was nothing they could do know. General Hasagawa hadn't been very forthcoming with the things that he knew about samurai strategy, but she didn't fault him for it. If she had to help people she didn't know to defeat her friend then she would be generous with the details either. Ariel stood up and walked to the shoji door pushing back the paper screen, the entrance to the inner garden. This place was so different than anything she was used to. No marble stair cases or portraits on the walls. No big four poster beds or floor to ceiling picture windows overlooking the large English gardens of her father's estates in Bath and Derbyshire. No grand dining room or balcony overlooking the bustling New York street. It was simple and rather small in design with sparse furnishings, but it was an understated beauty. The garden was simple with one small tree and many rocks raked every morning into different patterns. A rock garden, she'd been told. The one thing that was always the same no matter where she went was the noise. Whether it was the rattle of carriage wheel on the cobble stones or people going about their business along the street outside and even the sound of gun and cannon fire, she had never been in a place of complete silence. Maybe that was the reason she had made that poor man shoot at her. Had the never ending din of the world around her become too much? Even when she slept she could not escape it. The nightmares of battles past never ceased, they were always there in her mind the hot smell of smoke and the death knells of the wounded repeating over and over. Ariel just wanted it all to go away. She wanted to lie in the soft blown earth and hear the blissful silence, but that was the coward's way out and she was no coward. She still had people who needed her here. Nathan and Zeb, her Mother and Father, it would hurt them.

Ariel sat down on the wooden porch outside her door and leaned against the support beam watching the leaves of the lone tree swaying in the breeze. Fall never ceased to amaze her. It was so wonderful with its beautiful colors and that's what always seemed so strange to her. It is so beautiful but it's dying. Beauty in death was a strange concept to her as a child; she had never understood and she still couldn't. Ariel thought about her childhood thought, she supposed, she could still be considered a child at 16. Before she ran away to the war, she had been a happy child. She couldn't remember a time when she wasn't laughing and smiling and everything had come easy to her. As she got older however, she remembered feeling more and more out of place, like God had made a mistake sending her to New York. Every day she prayed for God to tell her what to do, and one day she found a draft flyer on her usual seat on the pew. She believed once that it was God helping her find her place in the world sending her off to the war and one day she would realize that the place she had come to was the place she was meant to be. After 3 long years of searching she still felt like a ship lost at sea, but maybe there was no place for her at all Ariel thought, maybe I'll wonder from place to place for the rest of my life not belonging anywhere. Then she remembered that in the next few days she might not have to worry about anything anymore. None of them would have to.

The next day the troops marched out of the field on the way to place Katsumoto had been seen last. Mr. Graham rode beside her the whole way babbling on about this and that. The camped that night and started again early in the morning. Not too long after they began, they came to a burning town. Ariel didn't know what to make of it. Did the rebels set the blaze? Mr. Graham told her that Omura's men had set it because the town was in the way of the tracks they were laying, and as she watched all the sad faces of the town's people she hated Omura even more. Mr. Graham told her that once Omura got rid of the samurai, he would own all of the railroad and the land and then asked how we would fine Katsumoto.

"Don't worry. I assure you , he'll fine us."

Next chapter is the battle scene so tune in next week, same bat time same bat channel. (Jk look again tomorrow for another update.)