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Dance the Memories Into the Night
the songbird in its gilded cage
watching the swift in flight
soon chooses to forget
by Mia-chan
Those who cringed in fear of the visitor in the night known as the Black Wing during the Bakumatsu would hardly have recognized the young woman walking through Kyoto's streets one golden afternoon. Enveloped in several layers of expensive silk, a man at her side shading her from the sun with a delicate parasol, she was the very picture of nobility and grace: a daughter of a lord, perhaps, or a member of a wealthy clan out for a walk in the gentle sunshine.Few passers-by would ever know how close to being a lady of noble blood she was, or how far from the truth was the facade she presented in her flowing walk and embroidered kimono. She tilted her face up to her companion and spoke softly to him. The young man responded with a nod and a touch to the saya at his side. It was a masterful gesture, speaking of the easy familiarity with which he weilded the katana sheathed in the dark wood.
A daimyo's daughter, and a skilled samurai of noble blood.
Admiring glances followed them as they made their way to the well-off districts, and looks of pity and regret as well. Relics of a lost era, the old men, former Ishin, muttered to themselves. A princess and her swordsman from a forgotten past, the old women sighed. They are lost now -- spirits, wraiths, sakura petals blown away by the wind, leaving only their perfume in memories. One of the more modern carriages rattled past them. The woman looked up, but she had not made way for it. Indifferently, the man shifted his hold on the parasol.
The old men and women shook their heads. They will be left behind, those who watched were thinking. Left behind, with all the pride and ancient courtesies of the great families, with the old ways and the abandoned customs. There is no place for them in this world of the restoration. Not anymore.
A pity, said the other young women who had been eyeing the lady's clothes, beautiful kimono upon kimono; and the young men longing to be great samurai who could ignore the sword-carrying ban agreed as they looked at the tall bushi with envy. A necessity, those who were older and wiser corrected. The nobility would have been the death of Japan. And still the woman and the man who were not what they seemed walked on, noticing all the remarks but saying nothing, letting the thoughts pass over them like clear water over the stones in a river. They arrived at the well-kept gate, shaded in sakura, of one of the houses of the rich and disappeared into it with the quickness of shadows.
The maid was exceedingly respectful when she slid the shoji open and almost apologetic when she approached Shinobu to inform her of her visitors' arrival. The lady almost frowned before remembering to keep her face as still and smooth as the unruffled surface of a lake, and gently she asked Izumi who the man and woman seemed to be. She had always had to be careful with Izumi; the girl was easily intimidated. At least, however, she was not the kind of person who would ever turn traitor. Then again one had to be careful about judging people, about setting one's mind in stone regarding the loyalty of one's maid. That had been a painful lesson for her, ending in Hamagi's betrayal, and had cost her dear. But she had learned. Takeda Shinobu never made the same mistake twice.
It was with those thoughts troubling her mind that she took in the maid's description of her visitors' appearance -- the richly ornamented kimono, the well-crafted katana at the man's side -- and the manner with which they bore themselves. Shinobu nodded and asked Izumi to show the woman in. Undoubtedly one of her guests was Hikaru, white lock and all. So the unpredictable girl had chosen to accept Shinobu's invitation. How... strange that to all intents and purposes the girl chose to present herself as a well-born lady visiting a friend. No, Shinobu thought suddenly, Hikaru was far from being a friend. In a few hours the girl might consider the lady an enemy, if the words she had carefully planned did not have the desired effect. Perhaps it would be better that way. The lady had no intentions of seeing anyone who had been born into such a high position and drawn such disgrace to her clan as more than an ally due to objective, ironic Necessity.
Then Hikaru quietly entered, and Shinobu's perceptions and preconceived notions were thrown awry again, thoughts coming and going at an unimaginable speed. Instead of the summer yukata the young woman usually wore, she had chosen garments more similar to -- perhaps even more expensive than -- Shinobu's customary clothing. The young woman was clad in several layers of kimono in pastel shades of green and gold, the outermost kimono one that Shinobu remembered seeing in court when she was a child, a lifetime ago. The gaze of her rich brown eyes remained languid, but deep inside herself Sakura emerged to analyze the sudden change that, she knew, was just another move in this peculiar game that she, a Takeda who grew up in Matsudaira's court well-acquainted with the power of the clan, and the younger woman, a Matsudaira by blood who had turned her back on all that power in utter defiance, had played ever since the identity of Hikaru's mother had become known to her.
That was it: the kimono had been worn on several occasions by Matsudaira Kei. The pattern of lavender petals and fire had been Lady Kei's trademark among the nobles of the court, and young as she was then Shinobu remembered the ripple of mild shock at the "princess"' choosing such an unconventional pattern. The kimono was as much of a statement as it was a work of art. And in this particular instance the statement was as effective as ever. The audacity of Hikaru in wearing a Matsudaira's kimono was like a splash of icy water across Shinobu's suddenly marble-cold face. The young woman was, Sakura reflected, much more subtle than she gave her credit for.
Hikaru bowed. "Konbanwa, Takeda-san."
"Kurohane-san." The gaze of Shinobu's eyes noted the slight flinch that was Hikaru's only reaction. The girl might have been intelligent, but she did not have Shinobu's complete control over her emotions. "Do take a seat. Thank you for accepting my invitation."
"Iie, Takeda-san, it was nothing," was the uncharacteristic, soft-voiced reply, "With your request you have conferred a great honor upon one who deserves it the least." There was a definite expression, unreadable and shadowed, in Hikaru's unusual eyes. "I must confess, however, that the honor is unexpected."
The lady suppressed the retort that rose to her lips. She motioned instead to the tea cup, already filled so that Shinobu herself would not be forced to pour tea for a traitor to her family, on the tray in front of Hikaru. "Please."
Hikaru's smile was tainted with bitter irony, and when she spoke her voice was laced with pain. "You wound me, Takeda-san," she murmured, cradling the porcelain shell in her transparent fingers. "Let us be truthful with each other, if you do not take offense. There is no reason for you to desire any contact with me, more than is necessary for the business of the Kagetai, so why go through this charade of invitation and having afternoon tea together?"
"Kurohane-san," and Shinobu did nothing to hide the inflections she put into her pronunciation of the surname assumed to cover the shame of the Matsudaira, "you assume too much."
Anger sparked in the beautiful green eyes -- the eyes that were too much like Lady Kei's for Hikaru to be anything other than a daughter of her blood -- but the answer was far from emotional. "Takeda-san, I never assume."
"Then you speak of what you know, Kurohane-san?" Shinobu took a sip of tea and suppressed a frown; Izumi had added too much lemon to the brew. She saw that Hikaru had not yet touched her tea.
"I only know, Takeda-san, that I would have been Lady Sumire of the Matsudaira if my mother had not attempted to escape entrapment in a political marriage; that the daimyo who was my uncle attempted to kill me because of political necessities, but following that sought to bring me back into my clan as its prize. And since then I have turned my back on all those who are of my blood and who would use me only as a political pawn." Emotion deepened the green in Hikaru's eyes. "Furthermore I know that a lady in the daimyo's courts would never have understood that."
"As you say, I do not understand. Sympathy would be unthinkable, would it not?" Shinobu let the frigid haughtiness of a highborn noble seep into her tone, but she could not seem to summon it as well as she had when maneuvering against the other nobles of the court. "A Takeda can see only shame and dishonor in one who becomes a traitor to her clan and turns her back on its name and the duty that goes with it, all because of her own selfish desire... Kurohane-san."
Hikaru bowed slightly. "Ah." Surprisingly, she smiled. But Shinobu, the well-trained observer, saw that the warmth did not reach her eyes. "Thank you for your honesty, at least. Given this unusual circumstance of our speaking face to face, it is good that we do not have to hide what the other already knows."
"It is for that reason that I have removed myself from your company except when necessity compels me to do otherwise." Shinobu took up her tea cup and glanced at her perfectly still fingers with a sense akin to wonder. A year ago this conversation would have seemed impossible. The freedom to speak her thoughts without concealing them behind poetry and subtle nuance was completely new and, frighteningly, intoxicating.
"As it compels us all." The remorse in Hikaru's voice was a dark thread running through clear melody. She tilted her head, fingers running over the smooth surface of the teacup. "I cannot help but ask what form necessity has taken in this instance, though."Shinobu took a piece of paper from her inner garments' sleeve and slid it across to Hikaru, her ink-stained fingertips touching the edge gingerly, reluctant and unwilling to come closer to a rebel than... than was needful, she reminded herself. "The Matsudaira have put themselves in contact with me recently." She felt rather than saw the girl tremble.
"They've found me?" Hikaru whispered, laid bare, naked, vulnerable.
"Not yet. There is much involved in the request, after all." She dipped her head, a flower bending over its stalk in a breeze, and took a sip of her tea. "Much to gain." Shinobu slowly put the cup down and, for the first time since she had found out about the girl and her clan, met the disturbing gaze of the green eyes. "Much to lose."
Hikaru turned away sharply, and just as the sting of being disrespected so, by a traitress to her family, began to rankle Shinobu saw the tears trembling on the other's eyelashes. A lady of the court would never have let herself be seen so affected, the analyst in Shinobu noted; the younger woman would never have survived the spiderwebs of intrigue there. "Too much." The note of despair was evident even in the flatness of the reply. "You will give them the information needed, of course?"
"Not only I but my family will be helped by the Matsudaira, as the letter reads." Shinobu let the tiniest of frowns crease her plucked eyebrows. "I do not understand why you run from them, Kurohane-san, considering the forgiveness they have lavished upon you in being willing to redeem a fallen daughter."
"No, Takeda-san?" Another, even more bitter smile. "Do you understand what freedom is, how being one's own is like, then? Or why I cling to it so desperately?"
Her back stiffened, her posture growing haughtier, the set of her shoulders nobler. "Kurohane-san, the nobility are not themselves but their clans'. They do not, as you say, have the 'freedom' to follow whatever foolish whim and destroy their lives, valuable to their families, as they wish."
Hikaru's face, tanned by sun as a noblewoman would never have allowed hers to be, lowered before turning to her. It was so twisted with emotion Shinobu wondered, in the innermost core she never delved into -- having learned that some questions were better left buried and some truths better unawakened -- how the girl dared to show her face to anyone other than herself. "Too high a price to pay," she said.
"Nobility demands much sacrifice, Kurohane-san. Some shrink from submitting to it, though the duty be born in their blood." The retort was pointed, but it echoed oddly within her as a twinge of what might have been regret.
"Ah," Hikaru said in reply, her shoulders slumping under the weight of burden and her voice so quiet she seemed to be speaking only to herself. "Duty. Is that all there is?" For one moment Shinobu thought she should reply -- though it was strange she would feel obligated to, when the remark was but a rambling of one who did not know what duty was -- but then Hikaru spoke again, her eyes now unclouded. "I only ask that I be given today to settle my business before you relay my whereabouts to them..."
There was something in her tone that had never been there before, ever-observant Shinobu thought.
Resignation to fate.
"...My freedom is in your hands."
The artist inside her studied the expression on Hikaru's face -- the desolate plains of cheek and forehead, the shadowed hollows of the cheekbones, the wounds gaping dark in fear-struck eyes -- and decided it would not make a good subject. There was too much emotion in it; the rice paper might go up in flames, drown in blood, dissolve into tears.
Tap-tap.
She heard, dimly, the sound of Grandfather Shingen's ghost rattling the sakura branches outside her window the precise moment the decision crystallized in her mind with the sudden beauty of lightning.
Tap-tap.
So like the soft knock of the messengers outside her door when summoning her to her uncle's apartments.
Tap-tap.
"Tell me please," and a part of her jumped at the strangeness of addressing a betrayer of what womanhood should have been with such genuine courtesy, "why I should do that?" The sudden intake of breath that was Hikaru's only answer was very loud in the room. "Would not Kurohane-san know best where the object of the Matsudaira's search is to be found?" Shinobu continued, trying to ignore the branches tapping outside and the conflict within.
Tap-tap.
Emerald eyes, Lady Kei's eyes, were very wide and luminous as the young woman looked deep into Shinobu's own of rich almond. Finally Hikaru whispered, "Tell them Kiyotake Sumire has been dead for more than a decade," and unsteadily rose, still disbelieving.
Shinobu inclined her head.
"And Shinobu-san... I wish it could have been otherwise."
Like the Black Wing that was her namesake, Hikaru was gone in a sudden rush of air, an relieved exhalation of reviving breath, a swift passage of moments falling as leaves from the tree of time, while Shinobu took up her tea cup with tapering fingers covered in ink stains in a gesture of infinite grace to the music of the sakura branches tapping outside.
Tap-tap tap-tap tap-tap.
Faintly, a nightingale sang outside, its song soon lost in the branches' rhythm.
---------------owari-----------------
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