Summer Wind
Chapter 36: Boy Crazy
In which Tomoe drinks and thinks.
The marketplace swirled around her. People came and sat along the long benched table where she was, ate their lunch, and left. More came and sat and ate and left. She was like a rock in a rushing river. She moved only to place another coin on the table in front of her, and then to pour and empty, cup by cup, the little flasks of saké that appeared before her.
She had not thought about the future in many months, but she was beginning to realize that it was going to arrive, whether she were prepared or not. She tried to think about it now.
Her father had been gentle and quiet, but his dry humor could sting. She could always tempt him from his work for play, or for food, or for just a story, but he could also be a stern disciplinarian, and from him she'd gotten a spine of steel.
Her brother was knit into her like her own muscles. While he was still an infant, she and her mother had played with him, and together had made beautiful little treats for his baby mouth. But that was before the sickness struck, before her father grew quiet and stopped laughing. After that, she and Enishi had clung to each other and, as often as they could, had escaped into the wilderness, where they could sleep in peace, without the sounds of her mother's pain creeping along the hall. The adrenaline of the hunt, the sweat of the hikes, the quiet moments in the dark when she could stop pretending to be strong.
Her mother's death had strained their bonds to the breaking point. And then Kiyosato Akira's family had come to her father, and a light had wavered into her life again.
She and Akira had grown up together, and he shared many of her memories, including of her mother. Until he was old enough to be sent to the dojo and spend all his days there, he'd harvested beans and cabbage alongside her, and eaten with her family many evenings at the big welcoming table in the back, along with others of the neighborhood's children. Akira had been good and happy. He had not suffered under the burden of duty, but seemed rather to embrace it—it agreed with him. Akira did what was right and expected. He was eager to please, his father, his master, his family. And her, which both flattered and sometimes irritated her. But it pleased Shigekura Jūbei, whose mansion was in her town, and when Shigekura-dono accepted a position with the Bakufu, he took Kiyosato-san along with him. They were all very proud. Everyone knew they were a good match. In her heart, one of the things she'd liked about him, something that had seemed like a sign to her, was his height. She was a little too tall for a proper Japanese lady, but Akira was very tall, and next to him, she'd felt petite. And correct. Yes, they would have had a good life together.
These men she loved. She could not seem to lay hold of happiness with them. She seemed always to be looking to the past, to previous times that she'd somehow missed when she was there. And now those times were gone, or as good as. What was it her mother had always said? "Time moves on. Things change."
Well, no previous change could compare with this one: Himura. Their beginnings still colored her view of him, and she had trouble thinking of him by his first name; their new intimacy was hardly more than a wavelet in the turbulent seas of their history. Getting to know him wasn't changing that—he was still like a wild thing to her, unpredictable and mysterious and silent. She tried to reconcile the parts she knew of him—sneak murderer, coldly smooth soldier, competent worker of the earth, and now tender lover—but it made her head hurt and her face flush with confusion and uncertainty.
But what had she been trying to think about? Oh, yes. Her future. She'd gotten mired in her past and had allowed her present to take over again. The saké hadn't helped. Well, she'd think about that later.
The sun rose to its zenith and began to descend, and still she stayed and drank. Then she reached into her purse and fished out three coins, not quite enough for another flask, and at last she noticed the sky, the fading light, the shadows lengthening around her. It was late. The crowd was beginning to thin, and some vendors were closing up shop. Time to go home. Long past.
She squirmed her way along the bench to its end and stood up, but had to catch herself against the table's edge. She considered that she may have erred with that last flask. Well, there was nothing for it now. The mountain path waited, and there was no assassin to help her climb it. She was on her own.