Mystic Eyes (5/6)

We had a small dinner, apples and crackers. Neither of us was really hungry. But I was tired. The events of the day had exhausted me and I wanted to crawl into bed and sleep, even if there was, as the expression went, "still daylight outside."

"What about your homework?" Oji-san asked. Tomorrow was Monday and I still had't finished my math.

"I'll wake up early and do it then," I promised. "It's only two pages. I can finish it in an hour or so. I'm just tired. Is it okay if I just sleep, Oji-san?"

He let me of course. I took a bath, brushed my teeth, and got changed, and when I was done, he tucked me in. He patted my head and got up to leave when I said, "wait."

He sat back down on the bed beside me. "What is it?"

To this day, I don't know why I made that request. Maybe I wanted to give the impression to Oji-san that I actually did care. "Tell me about that girl who died today."

The request pleased and touched him in a sad way. He shifted into a more comfortable position and started to talk. "She worked for a major drug company and discovered something that would have brought the company down, I believe. I'm not sure."

It would be years later when I found out that Oji-san had to sneak around Otou-san's room to get bits of information that he could pass

to Obaa-chan and her disciple to figure out who Otou-san would kill

next. Sometimes, they would have disciples follow him, or Oji-san

would. Otou-san was careful with where he kept his information, although sometimes for fun, he would just leave the name, place, and time for one of his "appointments" on his desk just to enjoy the confrontations between him and Oji-san when they met.

"Seishirou-san killed her for that," Oji-san continued, and his voice grew hard. "Her grandfather will be crushed. She was all he had. She took care of him and now she's dead. And Seishirou-san just killed her in cold blood. He destroyed her life and the life of her grandfather. All because I didn't get there in time.. That girl and her family and others like them."

"That poor girl," I said sadly, as if I didn't spend the afternoon stroking her dead body in dire fascination.

But Oji-san wasn't fooled. "You don't care about her," he said absently.

"I'm sorry." Sorry for disappointing him, not sorry that I couldn't feel anything for dead people and their mourning families.

"It's all right." But he sighed.

I shifted to my side on the bed. "Was it always like this?" I asked.

"You really did know about it for a long time, didn't you?" he said.

I didn't say anything, but he knew the answer.

"Yeah, it was always like this," Oji-san said.

"You don't like it." It was question of course, worded in a statement.

"No." He said what we both had known for a very long time. "I hated it since he first came home with blood on his hand."

"Why didn't you leave then?" I asked.

"I couldn't leave you," he said softly. He must have turned away because his voice sounded more distant. "Hokuto-chan's baby. Her daughter." He turned to me. "It's such a shame she never got a chance to see you. She would have loved to see you. She wanted children very much." He gave an almost cynical laugh. "When Seishirou-san first told me about you, I thought he was crazy. But then I saw you. And I saw /her/ in you. You couldn't have been more than a few days old."

He paused, and I waited for him to continue. It was the first time anyone told me something about my babyhood that didn't pertain to how

cute I was. And it was Oji-san who was telling this rare piece of

family history.

He spoke as if I wasn't there. "Seishirou wasn't willing to give you up to me entirely, of course. I had to move in with him. I could leave whenever I wanted to, but I couldn't leave Hokuto-chan's daughter alone with that man."

The bitterness he said "that man" with surprised me. I knew Oji-san was none too fond of Otou-san, but there were times I thought he almost tolerated my father.

"Is that what Otou-san means when he says you're his pet?" I asked.

"No," Oji-san replied. "I was pet a long time before that."

Even at my young age, I understood that he wanted break from that role, to move out of out Otou-san's shadow that had held him back for so long. But for ten years, something had kept him there, and while I was a part of it, there was something else too. Something I didn't realise until years after he moved out.

"When did you become his pet?" I asked.

"I'll tell you another time," he said. "When you're older." And perhaps noting the scowl on my face, added, "I promise."

"You better," I warned.

"Promise," he said.

I shifted under the blanket again. "Can you at least tell me what the prophetess said today?"

He waited a while and then told me, "She said there will be two Kamuis, and I will be fighting for one of them."

I raised my head up an inch. "What?" I gasped.

"I'm a Dragon of Heaven," he said. "I'll be fighting to save people from the final destruction of the earth. I will be involved in the Promised Day." His voice trailed off.

Just one surprise after another. Your typical day in the Sakurazuka/Sumeragi household. "When?" I asked.

"When Kamui decides, I'll know," he said simply.

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

"That's all she told me," Oji-san said simply.

"She didn't tell you anything else?"

"No, that's it."

"/Nothing/ else at all?"

He seemed amused, but in a nice way, not Otou-san's way of being

amused. "I'm afraid not, Hitomi."

I growled in disgust. It was not the first time I had gotten half complete, ambiguous prophecies from paid professionals. "Why are all

prophets and prophetess so frustrating?" I demanded.

"They're underpaid and under appreciated so they feel they have the right to be so," he replied somewhat ruefully. In his case, that would be considered a joke.

I scowled again but he didn't seem to mind.

"Go to sleep now," he said.

There were so many questions I wanted to ask about the prophecy, but

something in his voice told me he knew as little as I did. So I let

it go and pulled the blanket tighter around me. "Sing me a lullaby,

Oji-san," I said.

It had been years since anyone had sung me to sleep. When I was very

small child, both Otou-san and Oji-san would take turn tucking me into sleep and either telling me stories or singing a lullaby.

While Oji-san didn't like Otou-san's stories, which usually made even the most horrific murders seem romantic, it was the lullabies he objected to. Otou-san sang me the lullabies his mother sang to him and no doubt her parents sang to her. They were often disturbing, sometimes brutal, always dark, but there was one in particular that I loved, and it was that one I asked Oji-san to sing to me.

"Hitomi," he protested, and the horror in his voice was plain. It was the lullaby he hated the most, the one I remember hearing him once telling Otou- san he didn't want to hear him sing to me again.

It was the lullaby sung by the first female Sakurazukamori over a

thousand years ago to her baby, and it carried down through the generation, a lullaby so sweet and pure in melody, and darkly melancholy in lyrics.

"Sing it," I ordered, knowing he had to know the words from hearing Otou- san sing it so many times. "Please. For me?"

After a while, he seemed to understand that I wasn't trying to hurt him by making him sing it. I wanted him to sing it because it was a part of me that I wanted him to acknowledge. And so he began to sing, in a voice so soft and pure that I had to hold myself to keep from shattering:

"As I rock my darling child to sleep

I think of Sakura red with blood

Blowing in the Wind

Blowing over lakes and trees

Blowing over hills and valleys

Oh take me with you, Sakura

For I want to be free in the wind as well

With my hands stained

With the blood of the innocent

With the weeping of the bereaved

But not until my child, falling asleep

Understand that she too must stain her hands

With blood and tears

So I can give you my breath,

My Life, Sakura and I

Blowing as one in the wind."

When it was over, there was a short stretch of silence. Then he simply got up and left the room. He closed the door behind him, and then I heard him lean against it. He didn't move for a long time.

I wonder if it was then that the seed was planted, because not much later, no more than two weeks, he would ask me to move out with him. We would tell Otou-san that we were leaving, and he would act like it was no big deal. Then we´d pack our belongings and move into Obaa-chan's house until we found a more permanent residence with the Dragons in the Inomoyama mansion.

I wonder if it was singing that lullaby that started it, that maybe the lines about being free spoke to him differently from how it spoke to the Sakurazukamoris. Or if singing it, he realised that if he didn't get me away from my father, I would fall into the same fate. Of course, it is possible that it wasn't the lullaby at all. It could have been the prophecy, or the finding out that I knew all along what he was trying to hide. Or maybe he finally got sick and tired of playing Otou-san's games.

Who knows?

But I do wonder about making him sing that particular lullaby. Head of the Sumeragi clan singing the death wish of a Sakurazukamori. Perhaps it was a premonition or a sign, or worse, the beginning of a curse.

If I had known what was going to happen, I would have thought twice about making Oji-san sing that song.

- - - - - -

End of Chapter 5

Notes: The poem was inspired by a similar one found in Richard Adam's brilliant novel, "Watership Down", where Silverweed gave a sad poem about the deathwish of the rabbits in Cowslip's warren. It was a haunting and beautiful piece of work. I come nowhere close to its sadness and poignancy, but then I wasn't too. I am no Richard Adam, and for that, I am grateful.