Silkpunk and Steam Page 5

  Taishi shrugged and waved her off. He spoke in Jomon. “How are children supposed to learn about things they will need to know later if they don’t spy on adults? You and your sister used to do the same thing not so many years ago.”

  Her gaijin worlds were painted with indignation. She stomped off along the path through the high, purple grass, taking the baby with her. That was dangerous, being all alone without the protection of the tribe. If gaijin came, they would snatch her up. Taishi let her temper cool off for half an hour before he sent me to fetch her to help serve dinner, but she wouldn’t leave the shade of the umbrella tree where she sat with Michi. I went back to him and told him.

  Taishi frowned upon seeing me return alone. “Grandmother Ami said you and Shipo-chan ran off today and didn’t help with chores. How shall I punish you?” He said it in front of everyone as the old men and women cooked dinner at the fire. There were about seven other children in the camp at that moment. They stopped doing their chores to stare at me. Except for Shipo. She sat beside Grandmother Ami weaving a basket. Her eyes were locked on the plant fibers like her dumb basket was the most interesting thing in the world, even though she hated weaving and she wasn’t any good at it.

  One grandfather shook his head at me, showing his disappointment before he turned away.

  I hung my head again. “Faith-san thinks you should ‘box my ears.’” Whatever that meant.

  “No, she thinks I should beat you for spying and being a chikkan.” That was the term for pervert. Taishi stroked his smooth chin. “I’m more concerned about you shirking your duties. The leader of a tribe cannot have a family member who behaves irresponsibly. Do you understand running off makes me look bad?” He crouched beside me and lowered his voice. “It makes Faith-san look bad. Don’t you think people already look down on her enough for being different?”

  I nodded. The adults turned their backs away from me like I was someone to be ashamed of. I didn’t like that feeling. I didn’t like causing my brother embarrassment or making Faith’s life more difficult.

  He brought his face so close to mine I could see the brown of his eyes under the shadow of horns and teeth on his poorly sewn eboshi. “Do you want the Chiramantepjin to shun my wife and daughter? Do you want our village to fracture and break into pieces so that there won’t be enough able-bodied adults and warriors to protect and feed the children? That is what will happen if people decide I’m an unfit leader.”

  I toed the dirt and shook my head. I didn’t like my brother when he wore the eboshi. Unfortunately, that was all the time. He never played with me or listened anymore. All he had time for was duty like my mother when she’d been a leader.

  He stood up. “Double duties for Shipo-chan for the next seven days,” he said loudly.

  Shipo’s face crumpled and she turned away.

  Taishi nodded to me. “Triple duties for Sumiko-chan for seven days. You can get started by fetching Faith-san and Michi-chan. If you fail to bring them back, I’ll make it triple duty for a fortnight.”

  Iya! I hated my brother. I’d already tried and failed to bring his wife to him once. Surely he wanted me to fail and have triple duty for a fortnight.

  As a peace offering, I took a bowl of stew for her as I made my way back along the path where she had walked. I wanted to eat my dinner right then, but I didn’t think my brother would approve. I would get mine later if there was any left.

  The path was dark with dusk. Every tree standing alone above the purple grasses looked like a man. Each outstretched limb looked like a gaijin hand reaching out to grab me. I didn’t like walking alone. I felt better when I spotted Faith sitting against a tree.

  She sat with her back turned to me. When she glanced over her shoulder I saw that her eyes were puffy and red. Her tears made me feel more shame than the tribe hearing my brother chastise me. I felt bad for her. She must have felt alone to have no family left except Michi and my brother. She had me too, but I didn’t think she was pleased about that.

  I didn’t want to like her, but I pitied her because she had been born a gaijin and always would be a gaijin. She could never be an “insider” like I was because of how she looked. Yet I sometimes felt just as out of place as she did, even if my skin looked like everyone else’s.

  “Are you hungry?” I asked.

  “Thank you. Michi is,” she said curtly. She picked up the bowl and fed my fair-haired niece. Michi turned her head away, not liking the taste of the soup. The vegetables were bitter, but that was what the grandmothers had to work with.

  Michi made a face. She was a cute baby, no matter what people said. I’d never seen a baby with blue eyes and pale hair. She was exotic like Faith.

  I tickled my niece’s cheeks. “Are you going to eat for us, little mei?” I used the word for niece when I addressed her.

  “No!” Michi said, pouting.

  “Little mei can’t afford to be a picky eater,” Faith said in Jomon. She was good at speaking our language, but sometimes she got the words wrong. She shoved another spoonful into Michi’s mouth.

  “You should call her ‘daughter’ not ‘niece,’” I corrected.

  She didn’t answer.

  I knelt beside them. I wasn’t sure what it would take to get Faith to come back, short of Taishi dragging her. He could, but he wouldn’t because he didn’t like to shame Faith. It made him look bad when they quarreled, which is why he had given me the task. Better I look bad than him.

  “Will it make you feel better if I let you beat me?” I asked. “I won’t tell my brother this time.” They’d argued the last time she’d hit me, and he’d forbidden her from punishing me again. “Will you come back and be happy again? Please, Faith-san?”

  The truth of it was, Faith didn’t know how to hit hard with a switch—or anything else. I’d gotten welts from practice fighting with the other children that were far worse. But I hadn’t known that ahead of time. So when she had made me fetch a switch I’d rubbed it with memory moss because I knew it would numb my skin and then ran back to hand it to her. She hit me on my bare bottom. It made a strange tickly sensation rush through me when she’d smacked me. I liked the feeling, though I didn’t tell her that.

  Afterward, I’d been sorry for whatever naughty thing I’d done, but I kept wondering if I could trick her into hitting me with the branch again so I could feel that pleasant tickle. She was so pretty. I had rubbed my behind, liking the sensation of the moss on my skin. I wondered if anyone else liked the feeling of memory moss used for pleasure like I did.

  I then hatched the idea to tell her it hadn’t hurt in the hope she might do it again, and ran away and bragged about it loudly, much to my brother’s annoyance. I was lucky he hadn’t found a bigger switch to hit me with. Instead they’d argued. I didn’t understand why he’d been mad at her. I felt bad. And not just because my ploy had failed.

  I would gladly let her hit me with a stick as punishment. At the same time, a chance to feel the memory moss again wasn’t worth it if I made Faith cry. “Will it make you happy if you punish me?” I asked again.

  She sighed. “No. It would make me happy if you were a good girl and set a good example for the other children. Think about how your behavior influences little mei.” She fed Michi another spoonful. “You embarrass your brother with your childish behavior.”

  “Yes, my brother said the same. He gave me extra chores.” I didn’t state the real reason why. I didn’t want her to agree with him about neglecting my duties too.

  She nodded approvingly. “Well, I see he has some sense left in him.” She took up her bowl and ate a spoonful. That was a good sign.

  “I will try to be good for you and Nipa in the future.” I used my brother’s formal title as leader. I burned to ask her a question, but I hesitated, uncertain if I was going to get myself in more trouble. “Why do you always get mad when you see nakedness?”

  She lifted her nose in the air. “I am a refined lady. My sister may have been a
chikkan, but I’m not. It isn’t respectable for young ladies to see or hear about such things.”

  “But you have to see it when you spend time with my brother like that, ne?” They did have a baby. I wondered if my brother’s bottom was as hairy as Ursai’s. Iya! That thought made me want to vomit. Maybe that’s why Faith didn’t want to see naked men. I didn’t blame her. I bet she wasn’t hairy and disgusting under her clothes. She was probably smooth and silky like Midori. But I didn’t know, since she wouldn’t bathe with the children or elders like Midori did.

  Faith’s body was a mystery. I tried not to smile at the idea of her nakedness. I didn’t want her to think I was a chikkan.

  She fed Michi another bite. “I’m not that kind of wife. I’m only Taishi’s geari wife. I am saving my virtue for when I marry one of my own people. Someday I will be rescued and go home.”

  I wasn’t sure what she meant about saving her virtue, or why she would save herself after having a baby, but I understood the rest. I frowned. “I will be very sad if you go. Will you miss me?”

  She set her stew down and gifted me with one of her rare smiles. There was such tenderness in her eyes it made me feel special. She ruffled my dark hair and hugged me to her side. “I will miss you and little mei and your brother. But this isn’t my home.” She kissed the top of my head. I didn’t squirm away like I used to. Kissing was a strange gaijin gesture, but I’d learned it meant she liked me.

  “You will leave Michi-chan? Your daughter?” I asked incredulously.

  Michi lifted her arms and made a motion for more food. “Yummy!” she cried. “Hungry.”

  Faith laughed. “Now you’ve decided the stew is yummy? When there is little left?” Faith picked up the spoon again and fed her more of her soup.

  “You will leave Michi-chan?” I asked again.

  Faith sighed. “She isn’t my daughter. Someday she shall be grown up and she won’t need me anymore. Maybe I will be able to find a way home then.”

  “Iya! How can she not be your daughter? She looks like you.”

  “My sister, Felicity, was Taishi’s wife. Michi is my niece.”

  I looked from the baby to Faith. They looked so much alike. I’d always assumed. Everyone assumed. That must have meant no one had met Felicity. Taishi’s new tribe wasn’t very old.

  Faith went on. “That’s what duty is, Sumiko. You do things, even if they aren’t for you.”

  I felt guiltier than ever. Here was this gaijin, someone who wasn’t even one of my people, who had a better understanding of duty than I did. She was a better person than I was. I wanted to be selfless like her. I would be like her, I decided.

  “Maybe you can take me with you,” I said. “When you leave.”

  “Maybe,” she said. She patted my shoulder and looked a little sad. “But this is your home.”

  I waited until they were finished eating. “Will you go back to camp with me now?”

  “I suppose.”

  If I was lucky, I might finish my chores before dark. I wondered if I might be able to find time to rub memory moss on a switch and hit Shipo with it so she could tell me if she liked it as much as I did. Then I decided that, no, I was going to be good from now on. I would share my helping of stew with Faith, instead of playing games with Shipo.

  Or maybe I would do both.

  Chapter Five

  “Giri” or “geari” is the concept of social obligation in Japan. For example, a “geari” gift is a present given as a result of social obligation.

  —J.C. Rowley, British anthropologist, 1878

  By the time I was thirteen, Taishi had been leader of our misplaced band of tribes for several years. We traveled from province to province to avoid the gaijin’s ships. Game was scarce and we had to go farther north. The trees had been flattened and burned, leaving few areas for animals or people to hide. In many places the land was so scarred I was sure I could feel the sorrow of the kamuy, even if I couldn’t see them.

  Faith said “terrascaping” was the gaijin word for what the ships did to our land. The machines leveled mountains and burned forests, sending great plumes of smoke into the sky that blocked out the sun. Faith called the cold flakes that fell from the sky “snow.”

  Our numbers swelled to forty, mostly children and the elderly with the new additions to our tribe that Taishi had welcomed in recent years. Small bands of able-bodied warriors who hadn’t wanted to join us, men and women alike, had disappeared. Taishi said they’d been made slaves, or killed when they tried to attack the gaijin. The only chance we had for surviving was hiding.

  “We should fight too,” I said, pounding my fist into my palm. I was training to be a warrior like my brother.

  “Sometimes doing nothing is doing something if it helps you survive,” Grandmother Ami said.

  I would have felt better if I could have kicked something.

  Our numbers diminished again when sickness came, leaving us with no more than two dozen. Grandfather Rethar and Grandmother Konkani died from the kamuy that entered their bodies when the snow came.

  Shipo’s death had been the hardest of all.

  Every time the memory of her death entered my head, I made myself push the thought away. It was hard not to think of her when everything reminded me of my friend. When I saw blood moths fluttering in thatched huts where we lived and no one was ill, I wondered if it was my best friend reminding me of her from the spirit world of Kamuy-mosir. When Midori sang Shipo’s favorite song, I thought of her. Every breath I took that she couldn’t, made me mourn my friend.

  I made myself focus on the present. I pretended I never had a best friend and hadn’t lost anyone. Pretending was difficult. I had a tribe and a family, but I felt more alone than ever. If it hadn’t been for Faith’s friendship, I would have died of loneliness.

  There wasn’t a day that went by that I wasn’t hungrier and colder than the last. I couldn’t hunt when there was no game. All I could do was forage, my fingers growing numb when I dug under the snow, even with the gloves Faith sewed for me. Every hunting trip my brother went on with Ursai was more disappointing than the one before.

  Finally my brother came to us with a solution. “I have met with a go-between from the Tanukijin tribe. He has convinced their nipa to meet us two days east of here. We will set out tomorrow. If we please the great leader, he will welcome us into his tribe.”

  I didn’t want to leave the sanctuary of our warm little huts and venture into the cold, wet weather, but I didn’t have much say in these matters. The elders were excited by the prospect of taking refuge in the Tanukijin stronghold. We’d encountered parties of their warriors out hunting on chiramantep several times, all healthy men and women with round faces. To live with the Tanukijin meant greater protection from the off-worlders. I wanted to be happy and hopeful too. I wanted a better life. It was just hard to imagine one.

  Taishi led us to a cave he told us wasn’t far from the Tanukijin secret palace. If my brother pleased the great leader, Shiromainu would welcome us to his home and we would have a new nipa. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Maybe my brother would be a different person without the weight of his eboshi. He might have time for me and play with me again.

  The cave was hardly large enough for my tribe as it was, and we camped there for weeks before the Tanukijin arrived unannounced. They came early in the morning. I was still groggy with sleep and stood out of the way as the elderly bustled about to clean up the cave. We had to put out the fire and light our precious torches. I helped roll back the sleeping mats, and our tribe squished to the side to make room for them to enter.

  Shiromainu Nipa wrinkled his nose at our smell as he filed in at the head of his group. His eyes were nearly hidden in the mask, and it made it difficult to guess what he thought of us. My brother gave him the honor of kneeling in the warmest place in the room at the far wall where the fire had been.

  Ten of his warriors assembled behind him. He didn’t greet my bro
ther with a bow, but then, the Tanukijin customs differed from my own tribe.

  As soon as I came close enough to see his face, or the part of his face that was revealed under his eboshi, I knew I’d met him before. It has been long ago, before my village had been consumed by fire. I vaguely remembered his stern expression and being in trouble for playing in memory moss, but that was about all I could recall.

  Warriors dressed in pelts of green and purple-striped tanuki dogs sat behind him, their expressions as unfriendly as Shiromainu’s. Heads of skinned animals wrapped over their heads like hats, some covering their upper face so their eyes peeked out from the place the animal’s eyes should have been. Their eboshis were so much more realistic than my brother’s chiramantep eboshi. The horns and teeth decorating the fur heads distracted me and I imagined what it would be like to be swallowed by a tanuki dog.

  Shiromainu wore the heaviest fur headdress of all. The blue and white belt that signified his rank, similar to the one my brother wore, was visible for all to see. A dozen of my own tribe knelt before the old leader, and more stood in the back. We were dressed in mismatched attire, some in the blue furs of the chiramantep like my brother and myself, even those who weren’t from the original Chiramantepjin tribe. Some wore the scaly pelts of isepo, supplemented with the feathered coats of lizard-birds from southern tribes. All of our hides and pelts were dull and dirty compared to the brightness of the Tanukijin’s furs.

  Taishi kneeled across from the older man. I followed suit and Faith in turn did the same, though she wore a veil that shielded her face from view. She held Michi, who was asleep in her arms. Michi was too old to be carried like a baby now that she was four, but the sky outside was still dark and she had fallen back asleep.

  Taishi bowed low to the other nipa. He had to hold onto his own headdress, the eboshi made of a chiramantep head that was too big for him. Both nipas exchanged smiles at this and the Tanukijin warriors snickered. The mood lightened.