A Broken Dream at the Green Window

The night in Kyoto was pure and cold, the moonlight white as frost. At the foot of the capital, the long bluestone street shone like a stream of jewels. Noisy taverns, clamorous lantern stalls, and surging crowds filled the road, yet none of them matched the fever gathered around the mansion at its far end. House of Fortune. He stood in a robe of dark blue satin, golden acacia patterns burning softly beneath the lamps. In his arms he held a small white creature and stroked it absently while narrowing his eyes at the signboard. Just as he meant to go in, someone came flying through the entrance and tumbled down the steps with a cry, his head split and bleeding. But the people who had thrown him out were not finished. A woman in red strode after him, planted a foot on his chest, and pressed down. "You think you can walk away after owing the house money? Since when was the world that cheap?" Her hair was twisted high like a chrysanthemum, a few black strands falling loose beside her ears. Three tiny beads swung from her pale lobes and rang when she moved. By then the crowd had already thickened around the scene, her men spreading outward with blades in hand. Through the bodies before him, he saw her lift a narrow knife. The steel flashed once in the lamplight. Then blood sprayed. The onlookers recoiled. The gambler on the ground gave a scream so horrible that even the night seemed to shiver. The woman raised her foot, her face calm, as though she had only cut away a few hairs and not three of his fingers. "Three hundred taels in three days," she said. "If you still can't pay, losing a few fingers will be the lightest thing that happens to you." Then she flicked her sleeve and turned away. Even the hardened men at his side felt chilled. He remained standing there long after the crowd had scattered and the gambling house resumed its bright roar. Something in him tightened around the image of her back. At last the white creature in his arms made a small impatient sound, and he turned toward the sedan waiting at the corner. His fingers drifted over the fur at its neck, but his mind stayed fixed on the scene he had just witnessed. What kind of woman could wear cruelty so calmly? Yet somewhere beneath the shock, he could not help feeling he had not mistaken her. The little beast suddenly woke and stared up at him with two keen bright eyes. He touched its nose and murmured, "Koyuki, to her your life is ten times more precious than a man's." The fox licked at his face until he laughed, though a strange unease had already entered his gaze. By the time the sedan stopped and he crossed the moon gate into the deep layered halls of his household, the thought of that woman still had not left him. He slept at last in a room with green window lattice and plain paper screens. When dawn came, he did not notice the narrow crack left in the door, nor that the little white fox was gone.

Before that, Kiyohara Ryoshin had spent ten years searching for her. Ten years: enough time for seas to become fields. Standing under the green window, he touched the crescent-shaped scar at his left wrist. Time had nearly faded it to a ghost, and yet it had not vanished in all those years. In the last few days his men had quietly learned what had become of her. She was now the managing hand behind Kyoto's largest gambling house. Any debtor who fell into her grasp could never escape. House of Fortune looked like a mere den of pleasure on the surface, but in truth it thrived on usury: lending ruinous sums, then taking either lives or loyalties when the gamblers could no longer pay. "Zangxin," he murmured, tasting that unfamiliar, ruthless name like something bitter. His eyes rested on the cinnamon tree outside the window. "Ten years. Only ten years, and you've even buried your heart." Then a servant arrived at the door to announce that Fujiwara Kimito had come. Ryoshin closed the window and gathered himself.

"Kimito, you're here." He came into the hall holding a sprig of osmanthus beneath his nose, smiling with a brightness that almost concealed the sorrow in his face. Fujiwara Kimito moved to bow, but Ryoshin caught him by the arm and drew him up. Kimito had always known him as a youth dressed in white, gentle as jade, forever carrying a snowy little fox and feeding it greens and birds' eggs as if the thing were a spoiled child. Left Minister Kiyohara adored his son beyond reason. What troubles could such a pampered young master possibly know? Then Kimito remembered and asked, almost cautiously, "I heard on my way into the capital that your little white fox has gone missing." Before he could finish, a hard rap landed on his head. "Good, Kimito. So you really don't care about me at all." The grievance in Ryoshin's voice sounded like that of a sulking child, nothing at all like the quick hand that had just struck him. Kimito swallowed his protest. He had been in Satsuma all this time, investigating a nest of bandits. Ryoshin's fox had been missing seven days. The palace guards were useless. So Ryoshin had summoned him back in the middle of the night. "Will you help me or not?" Kimito had barely knelt and agreed before Ryoshin clapped him on the shoulder and declared, "Excellent. We leave for Satsuma at dawn." "Satsuma?" Kimito stared. "Weren't we looking for the fox?" But Ryoshin was already gone, shouting for the servants to pack.

On the road he behaved as if they were out on an excursion. He insisted on bringing more than a dozen baskets, each filled with different sweets, as if they were hawkers headed south rather than men riding toward danger. "How many times have I told you," he said, chewing osmanthus cake with serene delight, "don't call me my lord when we're not in the capital. Call me Ryoshin." Then, before Kimito could answer, he stuffed another piece of cake into his mouth. Clouds thickened, the sky dimmed, and by nightfall the wilderness around them offered no inn, no shelter, nothing but dark grass and cold wind. They lit sixteen horn lanterns, making the little convoy shine like a star dropped in a desert. Then the grass moved. Kimito's sword was out in an instant. "Who's there?" A broad-shouldered man stepped from the dark. It was General Liang, who had been left in temporary command at Satsuma. Relief barely had time to rise in Kimito before Liang's hands clamped around his throat with impossible force. Kimito tore at them, unable to breathe. Then two small things flew through the curtains of the carriage and struck the general in both eyes. His grip failed at once. He collapsed dead. Kimito dropped to his knees, stunned, fingers pressed to the red welts at his neck. "What happened?" From inside the carriage Ryoshin's sleepy voice answered, "Miao sorcery." He pushed the curtain aside, rubbing at his eyes as if annoyed at being woken. "How tiresome. I was in the middle of a lovely dream." Kimito demanded an explanation. Instead, Ryoshin turned away and lit the brazier in the carriage. On the golden grate he set several glutinous rice cakes and pork rolls to warm. The smell rose at once. "Aren't you hungry?" he asked. Kimito could only stare. The army at Satsuma had been left in Liang's hands. If Liang was here and dead, what had happened to the men behind him? Kimito moved to leap from the carriage, but Ryoshin caught his wrist. "Do you want to throw your life away?" "Even if I die, I have to go." He shook him off and jumped down, only to hear Ryoshin say coldly behind him, "It's already too late." Kimito turned. Ryoshin, biting into a pork roll, spoke as if discussing the weather. The Hayato tribes were masters of poisons and gu. Once a strong-willed body was taken by their insects, it could go on moving after death. Liang had already been such a shell. There was no need to imagine what had become of the others. Kimito cursed bitterly. Ryoshin replied without pity, "If they entered Miao land without understanding it, their deaths belong to no one but themselves." There was a strange light in his eyes as he said it, something that made Kimito shiver.

Only later, while the men buried Liang by lantern light, did Ryoshin reveal with an almost playful smile what he had used as weapons: the rice cakes from the carriage. "Hayato gu fears glutinous rice most," he said. Kimito stared. Then memory struck him and he turned at once to send a rider back to the capital for reinforcements, ordering him to bring more rice. The soldier looked confused. "But, Lord Fujiwara... didn't the young master already order that before we left?" Kimito looked back at the white-clad figure in the carriage. Ryoshin was leaning at the window, face once more mild and distant, as though this were all nothing more than careful weather-reading.

By the time they reached the Satsuma border camp, there was almost nothing left but blackened earth. Kimito dismounted and ran forward, finding only scorched traces where men and tents had once stood. No bodies. No survivors. No sound. He clenched his sword so hard his knuckles whitened and ordered a new camp raised at once while they waited for imperial reinforcements. At that moment Ryoshin suddenly cried out, "Koyuki!" and leapt from the carriage, white robes flashing, straight into a patch of tall grass. Though it was full daylight, from the moment that field began it seemed as if light itself had been cut away. Beyond the grass lay an endless haze of blue miasma. Kimito shouted for the men not to move and followed alone. The grass grew higher the deeper they went. At last something coiled around Ryoshin's wrist. He glanced down and saw a green blade wound tight as a snake. A cold smile touched his mouth. "Otowa," he said softly, "you stole my fox, left me a trail, and lured me here. If you wanted me, why not come out openly? Are you still playing hide-and-seek like you did ten years ago?" The grass before him parted. A white blur sprang upward. Koyuki threw itself onto Ryoshin's shoulder, frantic with joy, licking his cheek until he laughed. Then a woman's voice said coldly, "Koyuki. Back here." The fox jumped down at once and trotted obediently to the red-clad woman waiting beyond the grass. She stood in silence, the little fox at her feet, and the whole world around them felt suddenly still.

"So you've forgotten your loyalties entirely," Ryoshin said, watching the fox. "I raised you for ten years, and still I was never your only master." Then his expression sharpened. "And you, Otowa. Have you forgotten that I am Hayato too? Tricks like this won't hold me." He flicked his fingers, and the grass wound around his wrist shrank away like a scolded pet. She smiled without warmth. "How foolish of me to forget that though you are the Left Minister's son, Hayato blood still runs in you." Her eyes were clear and dead, like still water under moonlight. "But don't mistake me. I remember very well who I am." The tremor in her mouth gave her away before the anger did. "Ten years. I've waited ten years for this day." For one moment a thin mist of tears rose in her gaze. "Ryoshin... your mother was Hayato. Would you really see southern blood spilled for the court?" The sweet pain in her voice struck the most vulnerable place in him. The scent of flowers thickened in the air. The past surged upward.

Ten years earlier, Koyuki had been nothing but an abandoned white fox cub found in the busiest street in Kyoto. The crowd had wanted it killed at once before it grew into some omen or danger. One finely dressed man had even picked it up by the scruff and announced he might as well pluck it and make soup of it. Otowa, then only a little girl, was the first to throw herself forward and snatch the cub away. She ran straight into a boy wandering the street, and the two children fell together. The frightened fox sprang from her arms and fled into the crowd, only to end up trapped in a bamboo basket held by that well-dressed man. He caught it by the throat and sneered that clever little animals became clever monsters when they grew up. Otowa ran at him and bit his hand so hard he dropped the cub. In return he struck her across the face. The boy beside her, Ryoshin, stepped forward then, bit his own finger until it bled, and muttered something under his breath. At once the man began stripping off his clothes in the middle of the street, one piece after another, until he stood naked to the laughter of the crowd and fled in humiliation. That night, with the moon dim and uncertain over the grass, Otowa and Ryoshin searched for the fox together. At one point he vanished into the trees and came back carrying what looked like an eight-sided jewel lantern. Only it was not a lantern at all. It was made of fireflies, bound together by his blood and his childish gu. Otowa stared in delight. Then the grass moved. Koyuki had returned, but when they picked it up, they found blood matting its fur. The cub had stepped into a hunter's trap, and its leg was nearly torn through. Otowa's tears fell so hard they seemed enough to make a lake. Ryoshin later said that he never forgot the sight of her crying like that. The only way to save the fox was to feed it his blood. Children raised among poisons know that poison can kill but also heal. Yet if he did it for the fox, he did it even more for Otowa. He shut his eyes, held his hand to the little creature's mouth, and let it bite. The crescent scar left by that wound ached for ten years. So did the memory of Otowa's tears.

And now, after all that searching, he had found her transformed into the woman who called herself Zangxin, a mistress of debt and blood, a ruler who treated human lives as if they were straw. "Otowa," he said, the name shaking in him like a bell. "What happened to you? Why did you become this?" For an instant he saw again the girl in violet dancing under the moon, laughing with a brightness that seemed too pure for the world. Then the tenderness vanished from her face and she shouted, "Otowa died ten years ago. She died that night." Wind swept up through the grass, and Koyuki trembled on her shoulder. Behind her words another memory opened: the night she returned to the general's residence and found the gate open, the guards dead, the whole household butchered. Her mother with a blade in her chest. Her father collapsing in a room thick with blood. The scream that tore out of her before dawn had carried across all Kyoto like the cry of an animal being disemboweled. Over the ten years that followed, she had almost ceased to live as a human being. At last she had discovered the truth: someone had passed a secret memorial to the emperor accusing her father's house of treason and collusion with the south, and the imperial guard had slaughtered more than a hundred lives in secret. She alone escaped. Since the night she left the fox with Ryoshin and ran home, she had not known where he was. Only recently, when Koyuki appeared in her room again, had she learned that the child she had once known had grown into the cherished son of the Left Minister. "I was wrong," she said now with a cold smile. "I thought you might still remember old affections." Ryoshin could not answer. His hands had gone tight with pain. At last he said only, "Otowa, you're not my enemy. It doesn't have to be like this." She gave a sharp, humorless laugh. "Doesn't it?" Then a knife flashed in her hand.

Before he could move, she drove the blade into the white fox's throat. Koyuki's eyes flew wide. Blood poured over its fur. "Koyuki!" Ryoshin cried, the sound breaking in half inside him. Otowa caught the fox's blood in her hands and drank it, staining her mouth and cheeks red. Koyuki, even dying, turned those clear innocent eyes toward her once more. "Only the blood of a spirit fox can break the firefly gu," she said, wiping her face. "Ryoshin... this is the end." Her hand opened and the fox fell. He stared at her in horror. Why had she become this? Why choose such a road? She lunged before he had time to recover, and in his grief he nearly failed to defend himself. But at that exact moment a sword flew from the grass and drove clean through her chest. It was Fujiwara Kimito's blade. Time slowed so terribly in that instant that the whole world seemed to congeal around the bloom of blood opening through her robe. Ryoshin lost all feeling in his limbs. When Kimito burst through the grass and called out, Ryoshin hardly heard him. He only saw the empty scabbard, understood everything, and walked toward her one shaking step at a time, each one as long as ten years. The grass around them seemed to smell the blood and grew wild with it. His hands shook violently as he lifted her from the ground. "Otowa. Otowa." Her eyes opened with effort. "Ryoshin... Ryoshin... brother." A faint smile touched her mouth. "Do you believe me? I brought you here... only to see you one last time. Will you remember me?" "Yes," he whispered, tears dropping over and over onto her face. "I've never forgotten." Then the light in her eyes flickered. From between her slackening fingers, one firefly rose. Then another. Then dozens. Then hundreds. In a rush of dim green sparks, they poured from her body. Only then did Ryoshin understand. Otowa had died long ago. What stood before him these ten years had only been a shell, her ruined body held together by the supreme firefly gu of the Hayato. The insects had fed on her memories little by little while granting her strength enough to keep walking. By drinking the fox's blood, the one thing capable of breaking that gu, she had chosen to end the cruel fate that had carried her this far. Kimito could not speak. In Ryoshin's arms her body turned to ash. He buried his face in the torn red cloth left behind and gave a cry so full of grief it seemed to tear the sky. Then he collapsed.

What spread later through Kyoto was simple: the Left Minister's beloved son had died in distant Satsuma, and Fujiwara Kimito, sent to pacify the southern bandits, returned only to spend three days without food, sleep, or speech, like a puppet with its strings cut. The emperor stripped him of rank and made him a commoner. On the day of the decree, the emperor sat in the Chomon Hall in dragon robes, sipping tea with satisfaction while the chamberlain beside him grinned and bowed. "Excellent. Truly excellent." The emperor could not hide his delight. The chamberlain murmured, "I told Your Majesty it would be so. Ten years later they would die uglier than they did ten years ago. And now all the blame may be cast on the Hayato. The Left Minister will never threaten the throne in his grief." The emperor smiled darkly. "You have indeed done me a great service. Without that neat plan of yours ten years ago, making those two children grow up only to destroy one another, how could I ever have washed away that humiliation?" For even now he had not forgotten the day, long ago, when traveling incognito, he had been made to strip naked in the street by a little boy's blood-charm before a howling crowd. He laughed and promised the chamberlain any reward he wanted. The old man, simpering, confessed that he had never in his life tasted the western tribute wine. "Bring the wine," the emperor ordered. A night-glow cup was set into the chamberlain's hands, cold and shining. Beyond the green windows the sunset burned red across the sky and all the palace roofs glowed. Then something gave a sharp breaking cry. Birds burst from the garden trees. The chamberlain clutched at his throat, fell twisting to the floor, and bled until he gave up his final breath. Crows cried in the distance. The clouds sank low. Night came down at last.