He seemed to have gained one advantage only to lose what he most desired, taken one step forward only to be thrown back two. “What can I write?” he said. “All I can say is farewell forever.”

“Don’t despair,” she said. “Continue to be patient. I know it is your greatest strength. Iida will be overthrown; we will continue our struggle against him.”

“It’s getting late. Where will you sleep tonight?”

“I will go to the Muto house, where the brewery is.”

“Come here tomorrow. I will have a letter ready for you.”

“Lord Otori.”

They walked out together into the silent garden. Starlight glimmered faintly on the rocks around the pools, where ice was already forming. He was going to call for the guards to open the gates, but she forestalled him. She motioned him to be silent and leaped into the air, vanishing on the tiled roof of the wall.

He spent most of the night writing to Naomi, telling her what had transpired with Muto Shizuka, expressing his sorrow at her daughter’s fate and his deep love for her, warning her that it might be years before he was able to write again, telling her on no account to write to him. He ended echoing Shizuka’s words: Do not despair. We must be patient.

A week later snow began to fall heavily, to Shigeru’s relief, for he had feared that after the assassination attempt Iida would renew his demands for Takeshi to be sent to Inuyama. Now this would be put off until spring at least. It did not matter that the snow also closed the roads to messengers, for he knew he would not hear from Naomi again.

IN THE FOURTH MONTH of the following year, news came of Mori Yusuke’s death on the mainland. It was brought by a ship’s captain, who also delivered Yusuke’s last gift to Shigeru: a stallion from the steppes of the East. The horse arrived thin and dispirited, exhausted from the journey; however, Shigeru and Takeshi both saw something in it, and Takeshi made arrangements for it to be well fed. When it had recovered some of its energy, he put it out in the water meadows with the mares. Despite its thinness, it was well put together, taller and longer of leg than the Otori horses, with flowing tail and long mane, once the tangles had been unknotted. The old stallion had died the previous winter, and the new one quickly took the mares as his herd, nipping at them, bossing them, getting all of them with foal. Shigeru entrusted the handling of the horses to Takeshi. The only surviving son of the horsebreaker’s family, Hiroki, was occupied with his shrine duties, but he often discussed horses with Takeshi, for he had still retained the family interest in them and he and Takeshi were the same age. It was ten years since the stone fight in which Hiroki’s older brother, Yuta, had died, ten years since Hiroki had been dedicated to the shrine of the river god.

When the foals were born the following spring, one of them promised to be the pale gray black-maned sort so prized by the Otori. Takeshi named it Raku. Another was a black very like Shigeru’s stallions Karasu and Kyu. The third was a less handsome dull-colored bay, who turned out to be the most intelligent and tractable horse Takeshi had ever known.

43

Isamu’s widow was six months pregnant when her husband’s body was found. She had hoped all winter that he would reappear in the spring as suddenly as he had done before; her disappointment and grief were only made bearable by the fact that he had obviously been murdered, unarmed. His repentence for his past life had been sincere; his conversion had not been a sham. He had not sinned; they would meet again in Heaven, as the old teachings said, in the presence of the Secret One.

She married her brother’s oldest friend, Shimon, a boy she had grown up with, whose hopes had been destroyed by the stranger’s arrival, and he became a father to the boy born in the seventh month, to whom they gave a name common among the Hidden: Tomasu.

The child had been unusually active in the womb and continued to be so after his birth. He rarely slept, walked at nine months, and from then on seemed intent on escaping into the forest. At first he seemed destined to die from some accident, drown in the flooded spring river, fall from the crest of a pine tree, or simply get lost on the mountain. His stepfather predicted all these ends for him, in between trying to control him with scoldings, punishments, and rare beatings. His mother, Sara, swung between terror that they would lose him and pride at his quickness, agility, and affectionate nature.

Tomasu was in his fifth year when word came to the remote village of Mino of the persecution of the Hidden throughout the East, and his childhood was darkened by the shadow of Iida Sadamu, who, it was said, hunted down children like himself and killed them with his own hands. But two years later the Battle of Yaegahara seemed to divert Lord Iida’s attention away from undesirable elements within his own domain. It was known that the losses on both sides had been huge; the villagers gave thanks, not for the deaths but because they thought Iida’s warriors would have more urgent concerns in the years to come than combing this distant forest for members of the Hidden.

Iida became something of an ogre, used by mothers to scare children into obedience. They both believed in his dark power and giggled at it.

THE YEARS PASSED. The Hidden continued their peaceful life, revering all living things, sharing their weekly ritual meal, rarely speaking of their beliefs, merely living them. Tomasu survived his childhood despite his stepfather’s gloomy predictions; though he did not often show it, Shimon loved the boy almost as much as Sara did and certainly equally with his own children, the two girls, Maruta and Madaren.

Shimon and Sara did not speak of Tomasu’s real father, the stranger who was murdered, and Tomasu did not grow up to look the way they remembered him. He did not really resemble anyone they knew but had a look all his own, thin and fine-featured. The only similarity his mother noticed was in the curious lines across his palms: she knew his father had had the same hands.

Tomasu was not exactly unpopular with the other boys of the village; they sought him out for his skill in games and for his knowledge of the forest, but he seemed always to be fighting with them.

“What happened to you this time,” his mother wailed when he came home late one afternoon in his eleventh year, dripping blood from a head wound. “Come here. Let me do that.”

Tomasu was trying to wash the blood from his eyes and staunch the flow. “Just a stone I got in the way of,” he replied.

“But why were you fighting?”

“I don’t know,” he said cheerfully. “It was a stone fight. No particular reason.”

Sara had moistened an old rag and pressed it firmly against his temple. He rested against her for a moment, wincing slightly. Usually he wrestled with her embraces and struggled away from her.

“My wild boy,” she murmured. “My little hawk. What will become of you?”

“Were the other boys teasing you?” Shimon asked. It was well known that Tomasu lost his temper easily and that the other boys reveled in provoking him.

“Maybe. A bit. They say I have sorcerer’s hands.”Tomasu looked at his long-fingered hands, marked by the straight line. “I was just showing them how a sorcerer throws stones!”

“You must not fight back,” Shimon said quietly.

“They always start it,” Tomasu retorted.

“What they start is not up to you to finish. Leave it to the Secret One to defend you.”

The suggestion of sorcery disturbed Shimon. He watched the boy carefully, alert to any sign of real difference in him or of demonic possession. He kept Tomasu near him as often as he could, forbade him to wander alone in the forest where strange beings might enchant him, prayed day and night that the Secret One might protect him, not only from all the perils of the world but also from his own strange inner nature.