Thousand Shrine Warrior Read online

  The woman did not move as the nun walked away.

  The night had not been quite as cold as the dawn. The path began to sparkle with frozen dew. The cold did not appear to perturb the traveler, though certainly it did not make the morning pleasant.

  Deciduous trees had lost their leaves, for autumn came early to the mountain region of Kanno, and winter already approached, though in lower domains, maples were bright red and gingko yellow. The leaves that softened her path were already devoid of color, mildewed, rotting.

  To the south were high hills, the tops blanketed with snow. There was a stillness in the air broken only rarely by the wind’s hissed deathhhh, deathhhh, chilling the bikuni to the marrow. Her hands ached from the cold, so she kept them inside her kimono, next to her flesh.

  In a while she stopped, pushed her hands out from the warmth of her kimono’s interior, and looked at the ground to one side of the road, seemingly at nothing. Then she knelt near a tiny patch of brittle grass. The grass was white with morning’s frost. Beside the stiff, dry stems there reposed a small serpent, coiled upon the ground. It was a white snake with pink eyes. It was scarcely able to move. Doubtless it had misjudged the weather due to the night’s relative mildness, and, foraging at dawn, became ensnared by the frost.

  The bikuni cupped her hands around the white serpent and lifted it to her hat-shaded face, breathing moist air between her thumbs. The pitiful, small thing coiled more tightly about itself, perhaps understanding that its life was being saved. The bikuni talked to it briefly. “The wrong day to bask in sunshine, Snake. The sky is clear but Amaterasu’s light is colder than that of her moon-brother. As you are a white creature, I will take you to a Shinto shrine, where you will be honored.”

  Shintoists considered unpigmented creatures of any sort to be holy and supernatural. Though tradition among warrior-widows dictated that such a woman become a nun of a Buddhist sect, in the wanderer’s heart she sympathized more strongly with Naipon’s older faith, and was eager to save the snake for this reason.

  The wandering nun owned little. Besides her two swords, deep bamboo hat, and damaged shakuhachi, she also had a pouch, which hung loose from her neck. It was an alms-bag, in which she was supposed to receive payment for playing shakuhachi at doorways and gates. Though the alms-bag was intended to take a cup of rice or small coin or other donation, the bikuni could not expect to make her living properly until her shakuhachi was repaired or replaced. So she used the alms-bag to hold the snake. She placed the creature in the pouch with utmost care, then pushed it halfway into the fold of her kimono, to assure the small occupant warmth.

  Along the way was a Shinto shrine with a torii gate facing the ridge highway. The bikuni stood at the road’s high point, where the view was remarkable. The pretty, rustic shrine-houses formed a fairly large compound, far enough away that they could all be framed within the tall torii, which was nearer the road. The gate itself was ceremonial rather than functional, inviting rather than a barrier, consisting of two vertical poles thick as logs, and two horizontal beams near the top. There was an old, worn, moss-grown staircase leading sharply downward, the torii being halfway down the slope. There was no fence from this approach, though the shrine grounds were somewhat protected by the natural wall of the mountain’s slope. She could see, far across the compound, where two sides of the grounds were protected from desecration by high walls; but there were numerous entries, as though none would really desecrate such a place, and everyone was welcome.

  Beyond the torii and at the foot of the ancient staircase, there stood two stone guardians so worn by time that it was impossible to say if they had once been lions, or dogs, or foxes. The fangs of one were broken out; the other was clamp-mouthed. If the guardians had ever been fierce, their current weathered softness had erased all ferocity.

  Beyond stair, torii, and featureless knee-tall guardians, the path was winding and indirect. It passed amidst blossomless lily ponds, grottos, carved bridges, and small cascades artfully improved, with numerous tiny streams rushing from high ground to lower. In spring, this place was surely gorgeously ablossom. Even now, mouldering leaves on paths or floating on ponds, naked branches twisting upward, it remained a pleasant sight to soften one’s heart. As winter hurried nearer, the grounds would become more and more stark; but there were evergreens both large and dwarfed, well-situated rocks, and stone lanterns on gravel jetties, so that the sanctuary would be beautiful even at the height of winter, when everything would be dulcetly muted by blankets of snow.

  Some of the auxiliary buildings were in extreme disrepair. Large areas of the gardens looked wilder than they should. It was not a rich shrine, to be sure, but a haven nonetheless, and the nun liked the looks of it. She said, “A good place for you to live!” and had anyone been close enough to hear her words, it might have seemed she meant herself, though a Buddhist nun living at a Shinto shrine would be unusual. But it was the serpent she addressed. The occupant of her alms-bag moved almost imperceptibly.

  A group of children were running through the gardens of the sanctuary. A white elk fled the racket of rowdy, ill-clad youngsters, bounding out of sight. An old man came running out from somewhere, beseeching the children not to bother the holy creatures who lived in the sanctuary, bowing to the scamps several times as though they were his elders. Their response was to run and dance around the old fellow, making a lot of noise, calling him names that were more whimsical than disparaging. Soon he seemed dizzy from trying to catch this one or that one, and staggered like a scrawny, drunken ape, to the heightened amusement of the peasant brats.

  The watcher on the upper road lifted the front of her big hat, to better observe the comical business among the shrine-houses and gardens. She descended halfway down the steep stairs, then stood in the frame of the torii gate, her usual solemn expression betraying amusement.

  The children had bundles of twigs and bags of leaves tied to their backs, light enough loads that the weight did not slow them down too much to avoid the priest. They were slender children, too hungry-looking and small to be sent out in the mornings to gather fallen limbs and leaves that would be used to kindle charcoal in the firepits of peasants’ houses. But such were their duties, young though they were for it, and they obviously wished to turn their hard work into moments of wild freedom—at the old priest’s willing expense.

  They relieved the harsh tedium of their morning chore by meeting at the shrine, attempting to infuriate the tiny, elderly man. From the bikuni’s vantage point, it was clear the priest was not easily annoyed, but was more like one of the children himself, participating in a silly game he could never hope to win. In this way, he brightened the dark lives of poor mountain children, encouraged their laughter, and at the same time eased his own lonesome life.

  Eventually the children tired of their sport and ran off in the direction of a village, screaming laughter as they went. The Shintoist stood watching them leave by way of back exits. Then, shaking his shaven head, he went into one of the main shrine-houses and closed the door against the cold.

  The bikuni went down the rest of the steps, passing between the gently observing guardians, scabrous with lichen. She sauntered along the winding approach to the buildings. For a moment she stood near a bridge and watched a little cataract tumble over stones and spill into a pool. White fish rose to the surface, then dropped into murky depths. She was surprised to see a pink-eyed turtle with a carapace white as a mound of snow. At first she had thought it a stone, until it looked at her then slid into the chilly pool.

  She came in due course to the door of the sanctuary’s caretaker. Before she could slap the door, the entry slid open and there stood the wizened Shinto priest in stiff green cloth. He said,

  “I saw you on the high road enjoying the nonsense. You are Buddha’s woman, I can see; but all pilgrims are welcome here. Please enter. I have already prepared a morning meal. Perhaps you will be kind enough to play your shakuhachi for me before you’re on your way.”

  The
mendicant entered, the odor of the promised meal inviting. She doffed sandals and hat, listening to the sound of baby birds, hatched out of season, peeping in the warm rafters. Before making herself comfortable at the fireplace, she bowed deeply and said in an apologetic tone, “I fear there was trouble in the night and my instrument was damaged in a scuffle. Yet fortune saves me from becoming a true beggar, for I have come upon a thing which should prove valuable to your shrine and gardens.”

  She removed the small serpent from her alms-bag. It was livelier for its warmth and wrapped itself tightly about two of the bikuni’s fingers. The Shintoist could barely contain himself. The deep creases of his aged face traced his delight. He took the serpent from the bikuni’s fingers and let the small thing rest in his two cupped hands. Then he looked up into the rafters and made chirping sounds. Directly, six small white birds fluttered down to the Shinto priest’s shoulders and arms. There were three species represented, but the bikuni could not identify them with any certainty, for they lacked familiar colors. They blinked red eyes and turned their heads from side to side to inspect the creature in the priest’s hands. He said to them,

  “We have a new friend!”

  Then he bowed to the bikuni, showing his gratitude, while the birds on his shoulders were unsettled only a little bit. He said, “You have saved this serpent’s life and enriched this shrine by far.”

  The six white birds returned to their nests and their peeping chicks above. The priest set the white serpent on the floor and let it crawl off wherever it desired, to search the cracks and cubbies of the shrine-house for crickets and spiders. Perhaps it would decide to hibernate beneath the floorboards of the house and not come out until spring, when the gardens would be their liveliest and most beautiful; or it might choose to live near the warmth of the fireplace and not hibernate at all, losing track of seasons as the mating birds in the rafters had done.

  Though the bikuni had saved the snake within the context of Shinto belief, it was at the same time an act of Buddhist compassion. The bikuni and the Shinto holy man sat together before the firepit in the center of the room, understanding one another well enough. He was old, shriveled, bowlegged due to rickets in childhood, a trait which lent him a sort of monkey-grace when he was running through the gardens trying to catch the children. He said,

  “I am originally Yano of Seki, but the village children call me Bundori-sama, ‘Honored Mister Paddy-Bird,’ because I live with sparrows in my house. It has become my favored name.”

  The Buddhist bowed and addressed the priest by his favored name, then introduced herself somewhat cryptically. “I am a retired warrior upon an endless pilgrimage to pray for those who’ve died in battles. I have given up my station and family ties, thus I have no name to offer you in return.”

  “Ah. I see,” said the old man, handing the nun a bowl of soup, then sipping from his own. “I had thought you might be a famous person I have heard about: Tomoe Gozen of Heida, who fought in the great battle of Heian-kyo, where her husband died. Of course, there are more widow-warriors than just that one in this sad world, but an old man such as myself sometimes dreams of meeting a few famous people before he dies.”

  The bikuni seemed uneasy, so the priest laughed at himself and added, “It is rude of me to pry into your past! Please forgive me.” He set his bowl aside and bowed. The bikuni said,

  “If it pleases you in your old age, feel free to think I am a famous warrior. And my sword by the door is famous, too.”

  “Ah, soka,” said the priest, and laughed at himself again. “Will you take some more soup?” His spidery hands moved to the ladle, then to the pot hanging above the firepit. The bikuni held forth her emptied bowl between two hands. They spoke of various matters of varying importance as they ate, and afterward, she sat as near the firepit as possible, holding her hands over the glowing coals. The Shintoist had been watching how she used her hands, how presently she kneaded each finger one by one. At last it caused him to remark,

  “Your hands appear to ache. I’ve knowledge of herbs if you need something.”

  “It’s a minor thing,” she said, drawing away from the firepit and placing her hands on her knees, sitting more formally than before.

  “Don’t mind me at all,” said the Shinto priest as he scooted on his knees and came close enough to reach for her left hand. She let him take it, though it made her uncomfortable that he was solicitous. He poked at her knuckles, finding them slightly puffy, then bent her fingers backward until she winced. He shook his head a little and said,

  “I sympathize with you. It must hurt a lot.”

  “It doesn’t.”

  “You must use your hands for hard work,” he said. “Usually hands don’t wear out like that until someone is older.”

  She could not hide a startled emotion. “Worn out?” she asked.

  “Joints creak and get stiff every morning, especially in cold weather. The fingers sometimes swell up, not so most people could notice, but it’s a nuisance.” He wiggled his own gnarled fingers as if to say he shared the problem. “It happens to all of us when we get old. Sometimes it happens to younger people, too, especially if they use their hands more than average for hard labor. Perhaps you practice with your swords too much!”

  His last remark seemed partially in jest, but the bikuni was silent for a while. The priest looked at her with a kindly expression, and his concern unsettled her more than the pain she had experienced off and on during the last two years or so. At length, she felt compelled to ask, “Will it get worse?”

  The elderly fellow nodded. The bikuni cupped her hands one inside the other, looking upset. The Shinto priest said, “I’ll give you an ointment that will help; and I can counsel you to rest your hands as much as possible, and keep them warm. It could be that the problem will not progress too rapidly. But I’m afraid I cannot tell you the pain will ever go away.”

  After a while, the wandering nun took her leave in order to visit the village. She had arranged to return to the shrine at a later time, with Bundori’s promise to aid her in the task of carving a stone lantern for the sake of the three men she had killed the night before. Her immediate concern was with her shakuhachi, which by some means would need to be repaired.

  When Bundori was certain the nun was far enough along the path to the village that she could not possibly hear anything untoward within his house, he became an industrious fellow indeed. He went bowlegged about the interior of his dwelling double-checking locks, doors, and windows. He hung a large kettle over the firepit for tea. He gathered up a few utensils and set out a tray of small cups. He unrolled a long, narrow straw mat. He put everything into a precise if puzzling order.

  He dragged a storage chest out into the middle of the floor and climbed on top of it so that he could reach inside the nests of the birds who had hatchlings. Two of his three pairs of birds had one youngster apiece. The parents did not mind that he was handling their babies. He took the tiny birds—one with pinfeathers, the other still a homely thing with bulbous red eyes on its featherless head—and placed them with utmost care on the woven straw mat. They seemed tinier than tiny at the mat’s center.

  The mother birds and father birds, as well as the pair who had no hatchling, flew down to the mat to be with the chicks. They preened their feathers, devoid of surprise regarding current affairs.

  Bundori pushed the storage chest back into its proper place. Then he took out a special box and set it beside himself on the floor. He gazed upon the six adult birds and two babies on the mat, and his expression was one of extreme delight.

  Removing the lid from the small wooden box, Bundori took from it a brass bowl and a little mallet carved of wood, a bit longer than a chopstick. The mallet was intended to strike the bowl for the sake of a pure, sweet knell. The old priest looked comfortable on his knees before the bowl-bell, striking it over and over again, as rapidly as he could manage. The birds enjoyed the knell, matching the note with their chirping.

  At the same time, B
undori chanted a pretty Shinto incantation, quite different from most incantations, which had a more dour sound to them. The combined effect of the knell, the chirping, and the chanting caused the interior of the shrine-house to feel warmer and more pleasant. The very floors and rafters resonated. The walls of the place began to shine in a subtle manner. A glittery substance rained down from nowhere, disappearing before it struck the floor.

  Priest Bundori recited his spell so swiftly, and beat the brass bowl so fast, it did not seem possible that he could increase the pitch or pace. Yet he did so. It was a mad, merry sound. The birds, with their two small chicks, bobbed their heads up and down and from side to side in time with the rhythm of the priest’s activity.

  The raining glitter began to swirl about the happily peeping chicks and the twittering adult birds.

  The birds began to grow.

  Caught in the vortex of a powerful magic, the white birds were nevertheless devoid of fear. They acted as though this strange business was something to which they were accustomed, something they found to their liking. Perhaps they were helping to cause the event, rather than being the passive recipients of Bundori’s talent.

  Bigger and bigger they became, growing up and up. As they grew, they changed in shape and substance. Their contours altered by degrees until they looked no longer like birds, but like human beings. Their feathers became regal finery. Kimonos were of the most extraordinary, shimmering quality.

  The mother bird named Shiumi, whose chick was youngest, became a beautiful woman holding a sweet infant. The infant was clad in a child’s kimono, embroidered white on white with crane designs. Shiumi’s strong husband Omo looked on with pride at the nicely clad infant.