The shadowless samurai 1; the fan

 this is the whimsy converted into a first chapter. The book will be episodic, like 'the Expeditor' so I'll post as I have them, between longer things.  Simon wrote a lot of notes on his last chapter yesterday but he promises it will be ready by the end of the week. He really has worked hard and put in time every day

 

 

Chapter 1 the fan

 

The man sat in the shadows in the corner, sipping his sake, and listening to the talk of the garrulous peasants.

“They call him the Shadowless Samurai,” said one old worthy. “I don’t know why, but he is supposed to have no shadow at all.”

“Nonsense!” said another. “All men have shadows; and mighty samurai he might be, but if he was some sort of demon without a shadow, he would not be known for righting wrongs.”

“It’s true enough, Kenji,” said another. “I saw him fighting the goblin horde which has been menacing all the villages around here, and slew every last oni in the band, a dozen of them, if you will believe it!  His eyes burned like fire, and so did his blade, but the sun was well up, and no clouds, and never a shadow did he cast! Uncanny, it was, and it took a while for me to realise what it was that was so uncanny!”

His fellows scoffed.

“You were drunk and dreaming,” suggested one.

“How would you be so close to a mighty warrior and a goblin horde, Ichiro?” said another.

“Well, I was; because there are fine peach trees growing along the road that leads to their lair, and I thought if I was quick, I might take a few peaches, before any oni noticed. And I did, and what is more, I was hiding in the branches of a peach tree.  I saw the samurai first, and he consulted a piece of paper, perhaps it was directions. Then, he plucked a peach, and he ate it, as any man might, skin and all, not effete and cut up like the merchants do. And then a couple of oni jumped out of some tunnel, and shouted that his life was forfeit for stealing their peaches. And he laughed, and threw the peach kernel at them, and asked where their army was, to be able to defeat him.  Well, one of them blew on a conch-shell horn, and the rest of the horde came running down the road. And his eyes started glowing, and fire ran down his blades, when he drew them.”

“He fights with two blades?” the others in the small, rude inn were awed. “Ni-to kenjutsu is known only to the best, they say.”

“Hai, and I know enough to know he plied them in as pretty a fashion as you might like to see,” said Ichiro. “I’ve been a soldier, I have, so I know a bit about how samurai fight.  And it was almost like a dance, save that every partner he got close to fell down dead.”

“And then what?” asked the old worthy, interested despite his cynicism.

“Then, he flicks the blood and flames off his blade, which sets the bodies alight, plucks another peach, and looks up at me, and says, ‘What, are you going to lurk there all day when you might go and see what treasures they had in their cave?’ and I say, ‘Noble samurai, the spoils are yours.’ And he laughed again, a singular laugh, very merry, like a boy who has no care in the world. ‘I have no need of spoils,’ he said. ‘But you should divide them out to those made most needy by the oni.’  And then, he turned, and left. And didn’t I come and tell you that the Shadowless Samurai had killed the oni, and didn’t we go and empty their cave, and find enough to care for the widows, and to mend all our houses in the three villages?”

“But how can a man have no shadow?” asked Kenji, with a whine.

“Does it matter?” asked Ichiro. “I’d serve a man like that if he asked me, instead of laughing at me for eating so many peaches while I watched that I had belly ache.”

The man in the corner cleared his throat.

“Perhaps I may enlighten you on how the Shadowless Samurai lost his shadow,” he said. “If you would like to hear.”

“If you would be so good as to tell us, honoured stranger,” said Ichiro.

“I call my story, ‘The Fan,’” said the stranger. “And it involves a youth, whom I shall name ‘Taro,’ because it’s as good a name as any. He called himself ‘Taro Kaze-ni-ha’ because he saw himself as a leaf in the wind, as the name says.  He was quite a naïve young man, though with the arrogance of youth, he felt he had achieved a pinnacle of his abilities. He was a young fool, in other words, like all young men, and he was unperturbed when one day he found himself in an inn with a young woman, an obvious lady, expensive, cultured, and without an escort in sight. Naturally, he fancied his chances of a shag, leaping to the conclusion that she was a geisha. That a geisha would have escorts somehow passed him by; he was at this point thinking with his little head, not his big head, and so sorry, all brains disappeared with blood rush.”

His audience laughed.

The stranger took another sip of his sake.

“Well, Taro started talking to the beautiful woman, who was fanning herself lazily with a singular fan, painted with a sunset scene of mountains and trees. She had big brown eyes with amber lights in their dark depths, and she did not seem to mind him talking to her.”

“Did she have several fox tails?” asked the old worthy.

“No, old man, nothing so benign as a kitsune,” said the stranger. “Hear my tale, of how she fascinated young Taro.”

 

 

“So, what is your name?” she asked.

“Taro,” he told her. “Where is your entourage, lady? Or are you looking to hire a bodyguard?”

“Bodyguard! I never considered that. Are you a ‘Big Boy’ like your name? and do you have another?”

“You can call me Taro Kaze-ni-ha,” he said.

“Leaf in the wind? So, nowhere to go, associated with nobody?”

“At the moment,” said Taro.

She fluttered her fan. Taro found himself staring at it, and quickly, politely, looked away. It bore a scene of countryside, distant mountains, nothing more, nothing which should draw the eye so much.

“Sake?” she asked, summoning the waiter.

He drank rice wine with her, and nibbled the sweet rice balls served with it. And she waved her fan, slowly.

Taro found himself drifting off to sleep. He tried to fight the sensation, but the gently waving fan lulled him, and soothed his fears of sleeping in a public place.

 

 

Taro awoke. He was in a narrow room, with open shoji on each side. One side was… it seemed to be the original of the scene on the fan…. But it was as painted as the fan, and he could not reach it, it was as if it were a painted shoji, but when he went to the edge of his narrow room, he could go no further, as if it were both next to him and a gulf away.

On the other side, her face, smiling at him, filling the open shoji screen. He ran, and bounced from an invisible barrier.

“What, my little big boy, are you angry with Hana?” she asked. “Don’t be. If you behave, not only will I call you out when I need a bodyguard, I might let you out to pleasure me. You are in my fan, a silhouette upon it, against the eternal sunset.”

He called her the sort of names which would have had him beaten by his parents. She laughed.

“Naughty boy, Taro!” she said. “Discipline time!”

She tapped her sharp nails on the silhouette samurai on her fan. Taro fell, each tap like a stinging blow. He tried to get up, but in the end sank into a swoon from the pain.

“Don’t cross me again,” said Hana.

He knew now she was a shugenja, a magic person; and she had ensorcelled him.

“Why?” he begged. “I would have worked for you, for very little pay.”

“Because I prefer to own you than to hire you. I know your name, you know. Taro Kurita, I know who you are. Rebelling against a marriage not of your choosing. Such is the way in your family. Once, I was married to your uncle, Hoshi. I went to take a job as household shugenja; but he forced me into marriage when I was young, and less able. ‘I prefer to own you than to hire you,’ he said, and own me he did, and forced himself upon me, for I was young, innocent, and easy to cow. But I learned more, and after a while, he let his guard down.  It was an improper trapping in the fan that I did to him. Do you remember him vanishing?”

“Yes, my father said that his widow, if widow she was, was inconsolable.”

“Oh, I wept. I wept that I had got the spells wrong, so I could not touch or torture him as he had touched and tortured me,” said Hana. “So, I burned that fan, and burned him with it. I pleasured myself to his screams.  And then, I was free. But by chance, into the inn you came, looking like Hoshi, arrogant, like Hoshi. So you, you will fight for me when I tell you to, and I will make you beg to come to my arms and have a few hours of being human.”

“Never! I will never beg!”

“You will,” said Hana.

 

His first bout of freedom was to act as her bodyguard against a pair of thieves who thought a lady travelling alone was a nice bonus.

He had no will save his understanding of how to fight; and he cut both brigands in half. And then found himself back in the fan.

“Impressive,” said Hana. “You are lithe. If you ask nicely, you may share my futon tonight.”

“Go to hell,” snarled Taro.

He soon discovered that for a fan to be opened and closed at speed so that he was folded back and forth was extremely uncomfortable, as was being waved angrily. But it was her fingernails that beat him to the ground.

He drew his sword and tried to plunge it into his belly, to commit seppuku; but it was as if it was made of paper, and folded without cutting him.

She shut the fan with him folded in darkness for what seemed like an age before unfurling it again.

This time, he asked, a trifle churlishly, to be allowed out, to do her bidding.

He satisfied her, and, as she slept, tried to leave her sleeping chamber.

And he was back in the fan.

“Naughty boy, Taro,” she mocked him. “You are a silhouette. You cannot die. You do not need to eat, so you cannot starve. You cannot leave the room where you are as but a projection. You are mine. Forever.”

Taro bowed his head.

There was one way he could die. It would be an agonising death, but he would endure it to escape her. He bided his time, fought brigands, the goblins called oni, even a Dai-oni, a goblin lord, whose treasure the shugenja took concealed as embroideries on her kimono.  He put up with her caresses, when she would keep hold of the fan, using it to beat him, or run down his body, so that he could feel his connection to it, making him feel violated. It was silk, with ivory sticks, a delicate, yet strong thing. And she could hurt without damaging it, run needles in and out of him, until he was reduced to screaming in agony.

And one day, he satisfied her well enough to fall asleep. He would not make the mistake of trying to flee again; but she had called for tea in this little inn, and the teapot was kept hot on charcoals. The fan had fallen from her hand as she slept, and he picked it up, his belly squirming in disgust at the way it made him feel. And then, he was laying it on top of the charcoals and blowing the embers into life, ignoring the burning across his skin as the painted silk smouldered and burned.

The shugenja woke with a start, feeling her spell come unravelled, and Taro, burning, drew his sword from its scabbard to strike in one movement, the perfect iajutsu draw; and Hana’s head fell from her body.

The burning stopped. Taro, naked but for his sword, found himself alone with a dead woman, whose clothes were suddenly plain, with chests of treasure lying about beside them. Taro put back on the simple hakama and yukata he had been wearing when she had trapped him, belted on his swords, and called for the innkeeper.

“This witch slew my uncle; I am avenged,” said Taro. “See her body is burned so she cannot return as a vampire.  And I want some pack ponies for my goods.”

His clothes were simple, but rich; and he wore the two swords as one born to them and used to them.

Taro walked away from his slavery a rich man, most of which he gave to nuns raising orphans, and went on his way having adventures.

 

“And then he became the Shadowless Samurai?” asked Ichiro.

“It doesn’t tell how,” said Kenji.

“I suppose it was a consequence, in a way; he decided that rather than drifting aimlessly, he should do something meaningful with a life he did not expect to have,” said the stranger. “He was in shock, as a man must be if he has made up his mind to commit seppuku, and is somehow interrupted, honourably. He did not realise right away, but burning his shadow on the fan had burned his shadow entirely, and the flame remained with him on his blades and in his eyes when he fought.  It was some time before he realised that he had no shadow; others fled from him, which confused him, but a small child asked him where his shadow had gone. And he replied, ‘I gave it to karma to let me live and do good.’ Because that seemed as good an answer as any.”

He rose from his kneeling position and stood.

“I bid you good night,” he said. “Ichiro, if you want a position, it is yours.”

Then he walked out of the inn, and the lamp shone on him briefly, but cast no shadow.

And Ichiro scrambled up and followed him; and was no more heard of in that district.