A short story engendered by a friend's picture on Night Cafe; Thetis, this is for you
The Fan
“So, what is your name?”
She was a beautiful woman with eyes that held a hint of amber in their dark depths.
“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.
Will I write more? Maybe. Maybe not. Equally, I might, or might not expand this.
