the shadowless samurai 2: bunraku oni

 a second tale about Taro 

Chapter 2 Bunraku Oni

 

Taro wandered from province to province, dispensing justice, fighting evil, and killing monsters, followed always by the faithful Ichiro.

Now, it came to pass that Ichiro had gone into a village to purchase trail rations for his master and himself, and he was astonished at how poor was the village, how destitute the people, how solemn and sad they looked.

“Tell me, honourable farmer, how is it that this village looks so bad?” he asked, as he purchased a meagre amount of rice and rice flour. It was rather expensive. “The fields look fertile, and yet the rice you have on sale, so sorry, please forgive me, is not of good quality.”

The farmer sighed.

“We are afflicted by a gigantic oni, a goblin demon of great size and orange skin, with four horns, and once we have paid our taxes in rice to our most honourable samurai overlord, the oni comes and demands his own tribute. Whatever we make, he wants. We are starving. Those peasants who make such things as sandals and hats, and the basket-maker for catching fish, they are not as badly off, for we need such things, but the fishermen who buy the baskets must make do with old ones for longer, for the fish is taken, and after they have been cleaned!  We are reduced to cooking the fish heads to make broth in which to boil our millet. He takes tribute in such cloth as we weave, and barrels from the coffin-maker, in which to put his booty. Oh, he is cruel and evil!”

“Have you not complained to your samurai?”

“Oh, yes, most honourable traveller, and he put on his armour, and came, and the oni flew through the air and kicked him in the mouth, and our noble samurai was so shamed that he slunk away.”

“I saw a plump man that people shunned; he is not suffering?”

“No, he is the indigo-dyer for our yukatas; and his trade is smelly, so he lives out of town, and even the oni shuns him,” said the peasant. “And don’t come back for more; I am only selling the last of my food because my wife is ill and I have to pay the doctor.”

“Will not the indigo-dyer aid you all?”

The peasant sniffed.

“Him! He says that we have shunned him, and so he will shun us. And nobody wants to grovel at his feet to beg aid. He offered to pay for a doctor if I gave him my daughter in marriage, and if he thinks my lovely daughter is going to suffer being such an eta – he also does the job of grave digger, as he is already shunned – he can think again.”

 

Taro listened to what Ichiro had to tell him.

“Plainly, it is my duty to slay this oni, but I cannot help wondering  if the indigo-dyer is somehow in league with the oni, to be left alone like this. I cannot think that such a demon would be so fastidious as to avoid him for his smell.”

“The smell of indigo dying is most singular, master; like cat-urine and boiled greens.”

“And I have smelled oni who smelled worse,” said Taro. “I will go into the village as a drunken ronin; and you will go and look at the indigo-dyer’s house. And I will do something to make up for having to crawl about a stinking hut like that.”

“Yes, my lord,” said Ichiro, who would have done something ten times as unpleasant for his samurai, who treated him well, and had even nursed him through a fever, before he became inured to their hard life.

 

Taro rolled into the inn.

“Sake!” he called.

The innkeeper knelt.

“Please excuse, honoured samurai… we have none left… the oni… he drinks it. I can bring you good well water.”

“Ah? That will have to do. I must find and kill this oni.”

“Others have tried, noble samurai, and we have nothing with which to pay you.”

“Yes, you do; or you will. I’ll bring back the sake,” said Taro.

Other men came in, and offered a little sake, or honey, to add to the evening’s drinking; it seemed that they shared for the sake of convivial company. Taro provided some plum brandy, and the company bowed much, and thanked him.

He sat, sipping the odd concoction made by pooling resources, listening to tales of the oni.

It took two hours before a huge shadow was cast on the shoji screen. It had red glowing eyes.

“Who dares say he will fight me?” roared an echoing voice.

Taro slammed back the screen, and caught a flicker of movement further up the mean street. It seemed to him that someone or something dodged out of the way.

It was now dark outside.

Something came swooping towards Taro from the sky. He dropped to a squat, and as it passed over his head, he swung his blade purposefully.

Several heavy weights dressed up in an orange kimono with a painted mask fell to the ground behind him, as did the line down which they ran, on a bamboo through which the line passed.

“A child’s trick,” said Taro. “And I wager the monstrous shadow was but a shadow-puppet.”

The other men came out of the inn, and looked at the thing and its zip-line with anger.

“Is the oni playing tricks on you?” asked the innkeeper. “Why, I thought it was flying down to attack you as it attacked our lord in the manor.”

“I think you will find that your overlord was in much the same place as me when he was too slow to avoid being hit by a weight dressed in a kimono and mask,” said Taro. “Where does this cord run to?” he followed the end of the cord, which led to the midden behind the inn. “An insalubrious landing, but not one likely to be investigated.  I think, however that we should interrogate this kimono.”

“It smells of more than midden,” said one of the men, picking it up, with some distaste. “It has smears on it as well.”

“Ichiro,” said Taro, seeing his man had returned. “What did you find?”

“The house looks mean from the front,” said Ichiro, “But it is fine at the back, well-made, and with good screens.  There’s a large store-room too, and a bath-house.”

“In the season when there are no fresh leaves, he may manage to be rid of the taint to take plunder to the city,” said Taro.

“Are you saying that the indigo-dyer is an oni in disguise?” gasped Ichiro.

“No; I am saying that the oni is an indigo-dyer in disguise,” said Taro. “And he needed to knock out a real warrior with his weights on a line, because he cannot afford anyone cutting  into the body of the Oni, for it will quickly show that it is some species of puppet, which he wears like a noh costume.”

This was enough for all the men in the inn, perhaps fortified by the inclusion of plum brandy in their nightly tipple, to murmur.

They were content to follow Taro to the indigo-dyer’s residence, however; and then fell on it like a plague of locusts.

The costume was found, with a cured pumpkin rind for the head, carved grotesquely, eye holes in a face moulded onto the breastplate, for the indigo-dyer to look out, and the height made up above his head, and rods to work arms inside a wide costume. A barrel was found to be converted to make a booming voice.

 

They caught the indigo-dyer trying to leave town, weighed down by the gold he carried.

Taro counted it.

“Forty koku; enough to feed forty men for a year, plus whatever is in his stores. I suggest you use the money to buy in rice and pay for the mending of your houses; and share fairly what foodstuffs he has,” he said.

“M… my lord, are you not going to take the cash?” asked the innkeeper, tremulously.

“I have no need for cash,” said Taro. “But I will take some rice, and some pickled fish. Hand him over to your samurai, do not take the law into your own hands. I imagine your lord will be pleased to have someone to punish for embarrassing him.”

“Mercy, my lord! I sought only some vengeance for being treated as a pariah!” moaned the indigo-dyer.

“Do you deserve mercy after all you have done? I think not,” said Taro. “Scaring people a little, well, I could understand that. But robbing to penury? I do not think so. If there is anyone who will plead your case, I will listen and advocate accordingly, but I hear no such plea.”

The man was dragged to the village.

Taro took advantage of his bath house and slept in his fine bed. He had slept in places with smells about them before. In a year or two, this would make a fine inn.

Perhaps in a year or two, they might return and find out if it had been turned into one.

“We know oni exist, Ichiro,” he said, as they soaked together. “But most people will never see one. It is a cunning ploy to use the superstitious fear of them to prey on others. But he should not have preyed on his own village. People will forgive cunning, but they will never forgive those who steal from their neighbours.”