The Chrysanthemum and the Rose

by DJ Clawson

This is story 9 in the series that started with "A Bit of Advice." You might want to click on my author profile and start with the first one at this point. Otherwise, enjoy!

Check the Flicker account for frequent updates based on things described in the chapters.

www . flickr . com / photos / 25734638 (at) N03 / sets / 72157605063518073 /

Note: This chapter was mislabeled in the previous chapter. Apologies.

Chapter 25 – The Agreement

Mugen was gone before anyone rose in the magistrate's complex. He had slept poorly, he would say. He did not like the things he saw when he closed his eyes, so he opened them.

"Get away." He swung his cane at the raven on the gravestone. "Go away." It flew off, leaving him to climb the stairs to the little temple. If this was anywhere else and in any other time, it would not have been a significant place, just a little house of prayer and a place for the Buddhist priest to live. Mugen considered his life a long series of coincidences; that was what he told himself when he was awake and angry. He did not want to be a pawn in anyone's game, and that included the gods, or the Buddha's.

It was early winter, and the land was preparing itself for the first snow, which would surely be soon. The harsh winds blew at the white prayer flags tied to the tree that stuck out over the entrance to the little building. The floor was unforgiving stone. The Buddha was made of bronze, not gold; the Japanese were so practical. It was a piece of metal.

Mugen drew the blade inside his staff just enough to prove it was there as an imminent threat.

"You would draw your sword in a shrine?"

He put it back in its case with a click. "So would you."

The samurai did not remove his ronin hat. Even with his eyes partially hidden through the screen of woven palm leaves, his gaze was unforgiving. Mugen heard the rustling of the hat. He had not turned to face the samurai, but he knew he was gazing up at the thousands of wooden prayer beads. The samurai had a set himself. He was as close as one came to an ordained monk without being one. "It really is quite impressive how thousands of lives have come together in this one tiny room."

"Hmph. I don't want to live on as a pair of beads."

"But you do want to live."

Mugen didn't answer the question. He assumed it was obvious.

"What was it we said?"

Mugen tightened his grip on his staff. An inferior blade to be sure; straight blades were always inferior to curved ones because of the folding process. Still, last time, he hadn't wounded Kogi with his blade. "How's your heart?"

"Still beating. How is your lung?"

"The same." He reached out and held his hand over one of the candles, almost playing with the flames with his thumb and forefinger. "I remember last time I said I would kill you if I could."

"You haven't tried yet."

Again, Mugen couldn't bring himself to respond to that.

"So, have you chosen your successor?"

"You already know the answer to that question. Why else would you be here?"

"Why else would you come out of hiding?" the samurai said. "You and I are kindred spirits."

"I don't take that as a compliment."

"No one else has ever come so close to killing me," he said. As usual, his voice had no emotion. He was so serene, like a priest. "Remember our deal. When you finish her training, I'll finish my mission."

Mugen grumbled. "I don't remember making that deal."

"Or we could fight now." The samurai stepped out, so he was no longer standing inside the temple, just on the little stone courtyard. He waited for Mugen to follow.

Mugen snapped his blade open again, quietly sighed, and closed it.

"You finally have something to lose, other than your life." He pulled his hat down further over his eyes. "We'll meet again."

Mugen did draw his blade, and swung, cutting the candles in half. Their still-lit tops fell onto the stone floor and began burning out. When he turned, there was no one there. "Kogi!"

But the samurai was gone.

"Alison, come back here! You'll catch cold!" Despite the custom, Georgie was not going to allow her daughter to continue being barefoot. The wood did nothing to hold back the cold, which the Japanese tolerated much better than heat, and designed their houses accordingly. "You will put on your socks now!"

"Mama, they itch."

"We'll get you some cotton ones when we go to town," she said. "Now come here!"

She was still forcing the split-toe socks onto Alison's tiny feet when the door slid open and Geoffrey entered.

"Papa."

"Hey. You have your mother in a tangle, don't you?"

Georgie continued her work until Alison had socks on her feet and a scarf around her neck. "Have you seen Mugen-san yet?"

"He's probably not home from last night."

"I don't remember him going out."

Geoffrey shrugged. It was the second week since Mugen's arrival, and usually he either rose late or returned late in the morning from falling asleep on some tavern table. By the middle of the day he was usually ready to go, and could work Georgie until dinner or when she was ready to pass out, whichever came first. Sometimes Danny and Sanjuro would watch, usually in awe. Mugen was as unbelievable a fighter as Geoffrey remembered him being.

"Jorgi-san," Kiso said, appearing at the entrance to their quarters with a low bow. "Mugen-san has requested your presence in the woods today."

Geoffrey gave Georgie a skeptical eye as she slung her real sword over her shoulders and picked up two wooden ones. "You look like your father when you look at me like that."

That was enough to shut him up. She kissed Alison and stepped outside, into the blast of cold air.

The woods were especially unforgiving. The area wasn't farmed because it was so uneven and filled with stones from the mountain, too much so to be flattened into a field. "Sensei." She bowed at Mugen, who was sitting on a stump.

"I never told you to call me that." He didn't look at her, though he had been aware of her approach. She expected no less of him. He stood. "I don't have any parting words. I was never any good at that shit."

"Nani?" ("What?")

"See, this is why I said that." He looked at the sky, as if he was searching for something. "Goodbye." He turned, quite obviously, to leave.

"Wait! What are you talking about? What about my training?"

"I'll give you this: you're smart enough to realize that I'm not going to train you now."

He was walking away, but she was faster, running in front of him and bowing to his feet. "What did I do? Where did I fail?"

"Oi, what did I say? I said I didn't want to talk about it. Now you're making me repeat myself." He walked around her, but she grabbed his arm.

"You can't do this to me! I came all the way to Japan – "

"I can do whatever the fuck I want," he said. "I've never listened to anyone, certainly not a gaijin. Now get out of my way!" He threw her off with a flick of his wrist, and continued walking.

She picked herself up, dumbfounded. "What did I do wrong?"

"Is this where you want to be?" he said. "Kind of a depressing place, isn't it?" He looked up again, bothered by some bird flying from branch to branch.

"I have nowhere else to go." But what was the point? What was the final lesson? "I can't wait. I need it now!" she said. Her voice was eerie. She looked up at the world, upside down. "I can't go without it. Mugen, you bastard, you can't leave me! You left me once, to gaijin who drink tea and get married and don't understand anything!" It came from nowhere, but she didn't stop it. "I hate you for what you made me! I hate you!"

She dropped the wooden swords. There was no pretense of that. Though he made no move to do so, his blade was drawn by the time she reached him, and he spun around to lock it. Their blades locked, and it became a battle of pure strength.

"I don't want to fight you," he said, and pushed her off.

Georgie was not going to give him the chance to argue over it. She swung again, and he blocked, tossing her to the side, where she fell into a tree. "I hate you!" She picked herself up, digging her geta into the dirt, and hurled herself at him again.

This time, she was ready for his deflection. She ducked under it, and around, swinging at him again, on the other side. He parried again, and she looped around him, backing off to catch her breath and avoid his ki. She took only a moment for rest, or he would escape, and she didn't want him to escape. At that moment, she wanted to cut him open, let him feel the pain she felt when there was death inside her.

The tip of the blade came right up to his stomach before he slammed down on it, the force of it breaking his own far inferior blade, leaving the hilt and a stub. He stepped on her blade, and hit her in the chest with the back of his hilt. She stumbled back, and he stepped into a more defensive stance, ready to block with the remains of his sword.

The blood began to seep through his torn kimono. She had broken the flesh just enough for a trickle, to prove that he might act like an inhuman monster, but he could still bleed. Despite his shock, he was still ready for her. Deflect, deflect, deflect. That was all he did, even though she could still feel the sting from where he struck her. He held her at bay with just his broken sword.

"I won't let you leave me," she growled.

"You don't understand what you're saying, little girl."

"Yes. I. Do!" She swung, and he ducked. Something did go flying – his topknot. His hair fell down, free of the string that held it in place, and he tripped her. She caught herself before she fell, and somersaulted back into stance.

Georgie tightened her grip around the hilt of his sword, the sword he had given her, that had once belonged –

There were so many things she understood and did not, but remained forever on the tip of her tongue, and now she found one of them. Her sword, an extension of herself, as it had always been, was raised when she charged. His motions to block would be futile. He tried and succeeded in blocking with the small remains of his blade, but the connection of their swords meeting was enough for her to transfer the pain inside her to him. Let him know.

The moment broke, and she stepped back, then collapsed to her unsteady knees, dropping the sword. Her hands stung, and she looked down to find them bleeding where the palm had gripped the sword. "What's this?" Her master would tell her.

Mugen did not. "Sensei!" Her cries went unheard as Mugen sunk to the ground, and she crawled forward, to cradle his still form as the first snowflakes fell on her head.

"Georgie," Geoffrey commanded, "drink."

The tea was hot, and burned all the way down her throat, but she didn't mind. She held the cup in her bandaged hands. She couldn't seem to get warm. Geoffrey put another kimono over her shoulders, one of the heavier ones.

"Here," Danny said, handing her the prayer beads, now washed of the blood. She put her head forward, and he hung them over her like a necklace. "He's still on the porch."

"Is he all right?"

"I think so. It's just a little cut. And the wounds on his hands, but he already has a lot of scars there, so I don't know – "

She rose for the first time since her arrival from the long walk back to the house, when she had been carrying her fallen sensei. "I didn't mean to," she said over and over again. "I'm so sorry." Geoffrey let her cry into his sleeve. It took a long time for her to explain that her own wounds were somehow self-inflicted.

Using the sword as a staff, she went out to the porch against all advice. Mugen was sitting at the end, buried in blankets, with a now-cold pot of tea in front of him. She bowed to the wooden floor beneath her.

"Oi," he said. "Don't do that to yourself."

Geoffrey, who had followed her, helped her sit up. "Mugen – "

"I was telling the truth," he said. "I don't know how to say goodbyes. I didn't know how to say I was afraid to train you, Jorgi-chan, so I didn't." He was looking out at nothing. "Can I see the beads?"

This time she did not put up a fight. She willingly removed them from her person for the first time since taking them from the temple and put them in his hands. He stared for a long time.

"I hate fate. It's been so cruel to so many people. Especially you." He tightened his fist around them, then looked out again. "These were Master Hyuu's O-juzu beads."

Neither of them had a response.

"Someone must have brought them here. Probably that stupid monk, the one I had to kill. He knew what he was doing, but he didn't know." He handed them back to her. "For the first half of my life, people wanted me dead because I was a stupid kid who didn't respect his elders. That's all right. I understand that. But since I left China, people have wanted me dead because of the secrets he taught me. That I always thought was unreasonable, but I could handle it. That's what I thought, until ten years ago, when I met someone who not only had to kill me over it, but could, if I wasn't so lucky. I don't want to pass that on. At least, not to you." He chuckled. "You stupid girl, you have to be the only one who I'm supposed to teach. You have to make it so obvious. It would be easier if I didn't like you. Then I wouldn't feel so bad."

"So your answer was to run away?" Geoffrey said, when Georgiana couldn't.

"Smart people have never liked me," Mugen said. "Like your father, Jeffrey. He was right to listen, when people said I was dangerous and untrustworthy. Also a coward, but he didn't know that. What kind of person runs from everything, never facing his challenges? Even the important ones." He finally turned, and looked at Georgie. His face was so pale, with barely any more color than he had when she carried him back. "You know if you'd hit me harder, you would have killed me."

"Yes."

"I'm lucky then, because you couldn't do it." He looked at his bandaged hands again. "Do you really want to continue? No, I don't suppose you have a choice. You made that decision a long time ago."

"I'm sorry."

"I know. So am I."

"She deserves an explanation," Geoffrey said. "Beyond the one you've already provided."

"I know. Sa, it's cold! Someone help me inside, and we'll continue. But this time, I'll try not to run." His old grin returned. "No promises."

...Next Chapter - Mugen's Tale Part 1

Chapter Notes:

- The samurai who appears in the opening scene is the same samurai who killed Tanaka in the bar.

- The raven is a symbol of death in Okinawan culture, as it is in many cultures.