Jisei (Farewell Poem)

by Gloriana

Title: Jisei (Farewell Poem)
Author Name: Gloriana
Genre: Drama, AR – Indigo Warrior-verse
Rating: R
Archive: To MA only.
Disclaimer: George Lucas and his bunch own Star Wars, Tem-ve H'syan owns Kaemon and Benjiro. I make no money, take no prisoners.

Summary: In the closure of this samurai-AU universe, Kaemon and Benjiro meet the challenge that faces all warriors.

Warnings (highlight to read): Major character death.

Written for: Bonus-track fic for Tem-ve's Indigo Warrior zine.

Author Notes:

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, Tem-ve H'syan realised that no-one had written a TPM samurai AU. So she did it, and it was called 'The Indigo Warrior', and after awhile she made it into a beautiful zine, for which this story is a bonus track. It's a sequel, following on from Gail Riordan's 'The Seven Virtues' (not yet on the web).

Useful links:

The original Indigo Warrior
A quick and dirty summary of 'The Indigo Warrior', with spoilers. Included in the lj entry is artwork for this story.
Gail Riordan's posted prequel to 'The Indigo Warrior', 'Iron and Indigo'.

* Aki-no-Tsuki
* Autumn Moon

Wind in the pinetrees
branches toss, dry cones rattle
withered warning bells

Wind at his back, Benjiro ran through drifts of pine needles lying on the moonlit path. They crackled, his quick feet triggering small explosions on the forest floor.

Thus his return was known to his master; but Kaemon did not move to greet him. "You bring clouds to cover the face of the moon," Kaemon said, the lines by his mouth drawn with a stick of charcoal.

"I bring the news," Benjiro replied hotly, "whether or not you care to hear it. They raided again last night."

Kaemon said nothing; in the silence Benjiro saw that the fire had almost burnt out, and that his master's hands were pinched with cold. "Sit," he said in a quieter voice. "I will tend the fire, since you have not."

The iron poker lay neglected on the floor. He picked it up and shifted the ashy coals to make room for a new log in the hibachi. A handful of scattered needles: the log flared, veins of resin bursting into rubies. It spat gobbets at them.

"Green wood," Kaemon muttered.

"All we have," Benjiro said, feeding the fire though his own skin was beaded with sweat. "Our neighbours have less. Those thieves took everything, down to the firewood in the cradle."

Kaemon glanced at him. "Not everything, I think," he said drily. "A shark attacks the fisherman's nets, but he ignores the fry swimming around his mouth. They will have left just enough for the village to survive the winter, and plant anew in the spring. Such is their way."

"Thieves!" Benjiro spat. "How can you let them - "

"How shall I stop them?"

Benjiro's eyes went to the corner of the room.

Kaemon shook his head. "There is no answer there," he said quietly. But Benjiro mistook the sorrow in his voice for weakness.

* Donguri
* Acorn

So the sword buried beneath the cornerstone remained asleep, wrapped in silk and earth.

Benjiro awoke the next morning and the next. He stirred the porridge in the kettle. He cut more wood for the fire, the axe biting deeper into the heart of the trees with each blow. He took what little the villagers brought in payment when they came to bathe; he ground their acorns to make bitter meal. He watched Kaemon ease an old man into the hot spring waters, hands soothing old hurts.

"He was a samurai once," a young mother said to Benjiro, her spring-born baby sucking at her nipple. "Can't you ask him to help us?"

"Ask him yourself," Benjiro said, turning away. The child had vomited through the first days of summer. Kaemon had stroked its stomach and fed it sticky rice with his fingers; and it had calmed and taken its mother's milk once more. Benjiro knew she would not ask him.

So his axe flew, iron biting deep. The poker lay in the fire, metal slowly heating.

Until the last night of the old moon, when Kaemon turned to him in the darkness, and parted his cheeks with wide thumbs.

The taste of acorns taken from the poor filled his mouth. "You are eager enough to use that sword," he said. "But you will not use the other."

And all at once the sword that had lain sleeping cleaved between them, cold steel in cotton sheets.

* Tsuchi Kane
* Earth and Metal

He dug it up the next morning, ignoring Kaemon's watchful presence.

There was a chip of flint in the stone that marked where it lay; and below that Benjiro tunnelled a narrow shaft with his bare hands, wary of disturbing the walls Kaemon and he had built over the hiding place. Soon he felt sacking beneath his fingers, and it was surprisingly easy to draw the bundle out.

It was heavier than he remembered. He'd carried the sword itself from the watchman Gosu to Takada, but he'd had little time to concentrate on its distinguishing features then. And when, three years later, a messenger clothed only in night blacks - no sigil on his person or his livery - had ridden up to the bath-house and placed a mis-shapen sack in Kaemon's arms, he'd not touched it at all. Kaemon - or rather, Kiyonaga, as Obi had been careful to call him then, even in the privacy of their home - had slipped down the sacking, glanced at what lay inside, and then nodded at the rider, who had wheeled his horse and vanished into the dusk.

"A gift from the Shogun," Kiyonaga had finally declared after burying the sword, unopened, at daybreak the next morning. He had shifted the first stone they'd just laid down for the new house so it covered the hole. "His knot is on the next layer."

"How did he know it was yours?" Obi had asked

"Lord Hideyasu was always wiser than his brother," Kiyonaga had told him, "and more merciful. He sent it as a sign that we are safe here, my Benjiro. The sacking, the ropes... he renews the binding that held me to his father. We no longer need to hide." Still, they had kept their new names in public, and their new lives; and the sword had been left to sleep these thirteen years.

Benjiro laid it down to unwrap it. The earth clung to the coarse burlap; but below it waxed linen had kept out mud and rain. Carefully he slipped off the blue and green twisted cord, keeping the triple mallow knot intact. The Shogun's own crest: Benjiro nodded to it courteously as he put it to one side. Under the linen, a scarlet bandage of cotton, the colour of weddings and celebrations, was bound round the shaft, layer upon coiled layer. This was tied in red and gold cord. Benjiro blushed to see the chrysanthemum knot.

"Lord Hideyasu guessed more than I thought," Kaemon said. There was a wry twist to his lips.

Below the cotton, oiled grey silk was bound with a simple twist of paper. "It has no message on it," Benjiro said, smoothing out the paper cord into a scroll half the length of his arm. The oil had only penetrated its margins.

"The message is in the knot, " Kaemon said. After a moment, Benjiro nodded. Such a simple knot: Kaemon's big hands had bound half the things they owned together with the same bow. Benjiro put the paper with the cords. Then he unfolded the last wrapping, the silk slippery in his hands.

The blade lay on the cloth, and where silk gave way to steel the eye could barely trace the line.

"It was made in friendship," Kaemon said abruptly. He had picked up the cotton bandage, and was wrapping it around his fists as a fighter might to guard his knuckles. "Many hours and much skill, to forge a weapon for a man who could not claim it - a man who no longer existed."

Benjiro lifted it up by the odd hilt. "It's hardly a finger's width longer than my old katana," he said, "but the blade is so broad." He held it out to Kaemon.

"You know what they used to call those?" Kaemon said, his hands still bound in the cotton. He did not reach out to take the sword. "Dotanuki: torso-cutters. Heavy enough to slice a man in half, through armour and flesh and spine in one strike - it can even stop the bullet from a musket. It was made for me. You do not have the muscle to wield it."

"I may not have the muscle," Benjiro said, "but I have the will." He wrapped the sword back in the silk, and set to packing the narrow hole he'd drawn it from with earth once more. But the stone had slipped down into the hole, leaving a small gap in the wall above it.

"The cornerstone has shifted," Kaemon said. "How can the house stand?"

* Murashigure
* Sudden Winter Rainstorms

Up beyond the baths there was an outcropping of rock so sharp that no trees could cling to it. Benjiro climbed it with fingers and toes, the sword bound to his back in its waxed linen sheath. The smooth crown of the rock was bare of all but lichens, and the blue sky bounced off the unwrapped blade. He began to practise.

He remembered the weight of a bamboo sword in the arms of a weary boy, Akimoto Katsuo's gentle admonishments in his ears. Here, only ravens cawed, and at first the sword slipped through the air like a fish slicing the waters of a stream. Eagerly he followed the path it clove, letting his body swing as the blade swooped.

But an hour later, the air itself had grown heavy. The sword flopped and wallowed, striking the rock with a harsh clatter whenever it slipped in his hands. His wrists ached. Still, he carried on.

"Benjiro." Kaemon had climbed the rock so quietly Benjiro had not heard him. "I have been working all morning to clear the water pipes of fallen leaves." Indeed, the hem of his kimono was embroidered with the remnants of dying maple. "Will you come to make me my food?"

"Will you teach me how to fight?" Benjiro asked, laying down the sword on the hard stone. It shone in the winter sunlight.

"I will not," Kaemon said in a low tone.

"Then I will not come," Benjiro replied.

He spent the afternoon trying to remember the stances and strokes his old master had taught him. His hands firm around the hilt, he drew the sword up over his head and brought it down, again and again, until his arms were so tired that each swing jerked like a pigeon pecking at rice grains.

"Benjiro." It was Kaemon again. "I have been pulling up stumps of old trees all afternoon, and the sun will soon set." Bits of twig clung in his hair. "Will you come to cut them into logs for our fire?"

"Will you teach me how to fight?" Benjiro asked. This time he did not even put down the sword, but continued to swing it, the blade glinting red then gold in the dying sun.

"I will not teach you," Kaemon said.

"Then I will not come."

The stars shone bright upon the bare rock. The new moon curved like a saddlebow in the sky. Benjiro carved circles and cut lines in the air with the tip of the sword, struggling to write characters there with the precision of a brush tickling paper. Although the night was chill, his body gleamed with sweat.

"Benjiro. Our house is cold and there is no food in the pot. Will you come home?"

"Will you teach me how to fight?" The sword scraped over the rock, moonsparks flashing from the tip. Benjiro cursed and tried to hold it aloft again.

"You know I will not," Kaemon said.

"Then I will not come," Benjiro said. The swordtip rose to mirror the moon once more.

"But it is about to rain," Kaemon said, his voice urgent at last. "Please come home to our shelter."

"I will shelter here, beneath the rock," Benjiro replied stiffly.

Kaemon sighed and went. It was only moments later that the wind leapt up, chilling Benjiro's tired fingers. Clouds swept over the moon; stinging raindrops began to prick his shoulders. Quickly he scrambled down the rock face, the sword loose against his back, and took shelter under the rock. There, in a warm bed of pine needles, he wound the sword in silk and linen once more. "It is just an early winter rainstorm: they come and go."

But this one did not; and eventually Benjiro went to sleep curled up in a nest of old leaves like a dormouse. When he woke, water was dripping quietly down the rock face. A lattice of ice beads had made a curtain over his lair. It dissolved as he brushed it aside, already melting in the morning sun.

"Kaemon?" he called, walking into their house. There were no ashes in the bare hearth; the air was dank and cold. He heard a dry cough from the other room.

When Benjiro looked in, Kaemon was still rolled in their bed mats, hair straggling across the pillow. The stained kimono was a sodden mass by the end of the bed. Kaemon turned his face away into the quilts.

"I am going to cook," Benjiro said. "And then I will begin making a scabbard for my sword."

* Urugare
* Frozen Fieldgrasses

When he finally arose, Kaemon washed their linens in the stream of hot water pouring from the baths. Dirt and twigs swirled away from his kimono; pink dye flowed from the chrysanthemums that decorated their autumn quilt. He hung everything to dry in the sunshine. "I will put new bedding on our mats," he said. "These will not dry by tonight."

Benjiro, pounding a piece of leather with a stone, did not offer to help. That night they slept on indigo, and all the room was dark save for the sword, which glinted star-lit from the corner where Benjiro had propped it up.

By the next noon the old sheets were dry, stiff and fractious in Kaemon's hands as he folded them away. Where their shadows had blocked the sun, the field grasses were rimed with frost. "Winter is coming," Kaemon said.

Benjiro watched the mallards swoop down to the distant village pond, their cries ailing in the chilly air. "Winter is here," he said.

* Sen Ryu
* River Willow

The first snow melted; but the second did not. The rock grew skins of ice, each one more slippery, until Benjiro gave up his platform there and took to practising in a clearing deep beneath the trees, where the shadows left the snow firm underfoot.

Each morning he worked with the sword. But in the short afternoons he put it away, and came back to cut wood or grind meal. The evenings they spent beside the fire, sewing in its poor light.

Benjiro pushed a metal needle into the softened leather for his new scabbard, pulling through twine he had twisted from dried hemp. Kaemon cut the sword's old cotton binding into scarlet squares, and sat hemming them neatly into kerchiefs with a thread teased from the cloth itself. His bone needle flew white against the red. The rafters groaned with their burden of snow. Watching Benjiro work, Kaemon gave dry little coughs, like the rattle of disapproving bulrushes clacking at the wind.

For a while, Kaemon cleared the paths for the few who cared to climb the slopes to the bath-house at that season. But a sunny day turned to a snow-storm by evening; and the next morning the drifts were too deep even for his long limbs to conquer. They had no visitors after that.

Still Benjiro tramped to the forest clearing each morning, his footprints fresh in the newly fallen snow, the sword swinging loose against his spine. One day, on his way back, he found Kaemon by the lowest pool of the baths. Here a cold spring joined the hot waters from above; and by the edges a skin of ice had already formed. The old willow, leaning into the water, was heavy with it.

"This winter is harsh," Kaemon said. "The willow freezes for good."

"It will come back to life in the spring," Benjiro said awkwardly. He did not want to contradict Kaemon when so little had passed between them of late.

Kaemon shook his head. "I do not think so," he said. "But we will not miss its leaves when the cherry blossoms in its place."

* Fuyugomori
* Winter Confinement

Finally the scabbard was finished. Benjiro set it aside with the sword, for more heavy snows held him in the house. The log pile dwindled. There was little to do.

In a clear cold dawn, Benjiro climbed out through the smoke-hole in the roof. The house was encased in ice, the snow up to its knees. He slid down the eaves into the drift by the door, and laboriously cleared the opening. A southern breeze tossed powdered snow playfully back at him.

"Will you come with me to the stream?" he asked Kaemon.

"Gladly," Kaemon said, but he frowned when Benjiro gathered up the sword. "The axe would be of more use."

Benjiro bit his lip and walked out, the sword stiff across his shoulders. The wind changed in his face, a slap of northern cold against his cheek. Kaemon did not follow him.

When he returned, hours later, splintered logs littered the snow and the axe rested by the chopping block. Kaemon, naked to the waist, leant against the doorpost, coughing into his hand at each breath he took of the icy air. His skin was covered in sweat.

Benjiro picked up the axe. "Go inside. I will finish." Wordlessly Kaemon went.

The days continued clear - but colder, colder, until all was bound in ice. The forests were still. The pools froze in place. Fallen maple leaves lay wrought into iron. Autumn dew drops crystallised on the webs of spiders long since gone. Everything was hardened, unnatural. The only sound to the days was the ice shifting in the weak sun; to the nights, Kaemon's heavy breathing in the darkened room, withered plume grass hissing ceaselessly in the wind. Benjiro walked the path to the forest clearing alone; cut wood alone; ate without words.

He flung their last spare quilt onto the bed: a hemp sack stuffed with acorn shells. In silence he and Kaemon lay down to sleep. There was only the rustle of the shells in the sack, Kaemon's body moving restlessly on the mats as the full moon shone down onto their faces.

"You make so much noise," Benjiro said abruptly, "I can hear you breathing from over here."

"Then I will sleep elsewhere," Kaemon said, getting up.

Benjiro roused himself on one elbow. "Where are you going?"

"To the bath-house," Kaemon said. There was the skitter of his mat rolling up. "It will be warm enough with the steam from the water. And I will still have the moon to share my pillow there."

Long after he was gone, Benjiro lay awake, body rigid beneath the quilts. Over his head the ice grew like stone on the roof. "This winter will never end," he whispered.

* Kori toke
* Winter Ice

For the next month, that was true.

The full moon turned, hid his face, showed it once more; and all below him only snow held up his mirror. The hot springs still flowed into the baths. But beyond its stone channels, the warm water spilled out into a world of ice, and stood still.

In cold so sharp his breath was robbed by every mouth of air he took, Benjiro worked with the sword. His muscles were stronger. It was no longer an effort to lift the blade, to control its flight through the air even when his hands and the sword both felt like iron. But that was not enough to fight a man. He shifted to hacking at the trees around him, finding a kneecap in a whorl of bark here; in a branch, an arm hewed off at the shoulder, there. Slow sap stuck to the blade. He cleaned it at nights sitting by the hibachi, while Kaemon returned to the bath-house, dry coughs trailing behind him.

Yet for all his work, Benjiro's progress was as still as the stream.

A swing up with the sword: a raven, startled, cawed by his ear and the sword cleaved into bark, uncontrolled. A chip of wood bit his cheek; he swore as he wiped the blood away. "I wound nothing but myself. How can I learn to be a warrior, without a master to teach me?"

He tramped home, one lone speck moving in a field of white. The sword lay heavy on his shoulders. Kaemon was setting the pot on the fire when he entered. "You are early," Kaemon said. "The rice is not yet cooked."

He moved into the light.

"Benjiro! Are you - " Fingers reach out to his cheek.

"It is nothing," he said, turning away, "just a chip of wood. You have a hundred scars on your body far worse."

Kaemon clicked his teeth. "Let me clean it."

He knelt by the fire as his master slowly wiped the blood away, scarlet cotton dipped in warm water from the pot. He would not look Kaemon in the face.

"Better," Kaemon said, sitting back on his heels, "but it still weeps." He took another cotton kerchief from the sleeve of his kimono and, ducking outside, snapped off an icicle from the eaves; wrapped it in the cloth. "Hold that to your cheek."

They sat in silence as the winter ice against Benjiro's skin melted into clean water.

"Don't ask me to stop," Benjiro finally whispered. "I will do what I must - can't you understand?"

Kaemon brushed the water away where it trailed down the curve of Benjiro's neck, pink now with dye from the cotton, not Benjiro's blood.

"Clear are my eyes," he said. "Clear is my heart. Come to me tomorrow and I will teach you."

* Suigetsu
* Moon on the Water

But when Benjiro entered the gloom of the bath-house the next morning, the first thing Kaemon said was, "Leave the sword by the door."

Benjiro's fingers tightened around the hilt. "You made a promise."

Kaemon smiled. "Do you think it is the sword that wins the fight? Very well - attack me." He turned his back and walked out into the snow.

"But - I can't - " Benjiro took a step toward him then stopped, scabbard and sword still clutched in his hands.

"Do it now," Kaemon called without turning round. "Or my promise was made to a worthier student."

Kaemon had gone twenty paces more before Benjiro flung the scabbard aside and charged, sword held high. A moment later he was lying on his stomach, powdered snow filling his mouth, his hands empty.

"That is muto," Kaemon said, "the art of no-sword." With a hand he lifted up the blade held flat, the tips of his fingers beneath its balance point. "If I could teach it to you, you would be able to defeat six or seven armed men if ten attacked you, although you had no weapon with you other than your fan, or even your bare hands. But we do not have the time."

Benjiro snorted snow out of his nostrils. "You can do that - I had no idea! Why didn't you tell me?"

"Did you ask?" Kaemon said mildly. "What have you been doing to this sword, Benjiro? Using it to chop wood?"

In a much smaller voice Benjiro replied, "I was practising hitting branches."

"That shouldn't matter - what is a branch to a dotanuki? But I'm sure it used to balance slightly further from the hilt than this. Perhaps it is reshaping itself to suit its new owner." He held a hand out and pulled Benjiro up. "Come. It's time to work."

The air of the bath-house was heavy and moist after a lungful of snow. Kaemon lay the sword in its scabbard on the first tier of stone benches, and picked up two stout bamboo poles of the same length as it. He walked to the centre of the large flat changing platform by the hot pool. "No-sword is not a trick to take your opponent's sword, or to show off what you can do," he said, passing one pole to Benjiro. "It is the readiness to use whatever is at hand; it is the readiness to allow your opponent a sword and fight him nonetheless. What matters is the mind, not the tool."

"I see, Master," Benjiro said.

"No, you don't," Kaemon said, "but you will. Let us begin with what you do know. The three sangaku."

"Posture, arms and legs, sword," Benjiro replied promptly.

"Show me the wheel." Benjiro held the pole sideways, where he could easily rotate it to block an attack to his left shoulder. "Dragon crouching in water." He let the tip of the pole drop downward to his right, then swung it up to hit at Kaemon's fists in a semi-circle wheel when Kaemon went for his left shoulder. He didn't connect, but neither did Kaemon. "Good. Now for an attack position. Wild sword."

Benjiro shifted the pole to one hand and hit out to the right, moving his left leg to follow the stroke. In the expected response, Kaemon pulled the stroke up and went for Benjiro's left shoulder again. Benjiro managed the counter-manoeuvre, sinking low to miss the blow and striking Kaemon's pole up; but Kaemon had already moved back to safety before he could get both hands on his own pole to hit at Kaemon's wrists.

Kaemon clicked his teeth. "You are too slow. Your thoughts dwell on the strike you have just made, and your mind is stuck there, wondering if you hit true. While you are thinking, your opponent takes strength from the rage of battle, and attacks." He stroked one finger over Benjiro's brow. "You must snatch back your mind: without the space of time to allow a strand of hair, you must strike a second blow, and a third. Let your mind be released, an empty gourd on the water slipping away from the hand that reaches to touch it. Then it will move as swiftly as the moon's light travels to its reflection on the pond, and your body will follow."

He paused, lifting Benjiro's chin with his fingers. "Heed me. Without this detachment of your mind, you will fail. Be a gourd upon the water, a warrior with an unfettered mind. Promise me."

Benjiro nodded.

They fought their way through the First Five waiting stances, Benjiro taking the defensive and Kaemon attacking; then through three more of the Goblin's eight attack postures. "Watch my eyes. Watch my body. Seek the boshin - the place - where my mind reveals my intentions," Kaemon lectured breathlessly. Soon he was coughing in harsh rattles, but Benjiro still couldn't land a single blow.

"Enough," Kaemon finally wheezed. They both staggered to the stone benches, Benjiro flopping down to lie as flat as the sword beside him, Kaemon sitting up to cough repeatedly into one of the cotton kerchiefs he had taken from his sleeve. When his breathing was finally even again, he prodded Benjiro with his elbow. "Up. Pick up the sword."

Groaning, Benjiro obeyed. "Swing it. Test its reach."

"I've swung it a thousand times," Benjiro grumbled, but nevertheless he did as he was told. Meanwhile, Kaemon took one of the bamboo poles and snapped off a section as wide as his handspan.

"Look," he said. "This is the length of a standard katana. Show me the moon on the water."

Benjiro frowned. "It hasn't risen yet," he said uncertainly, glancing up to the narrow smokehole in the roof, which the steam-laden air had long since coated over in ice. Even if it had been open, the sun would have stolen the moon's reflection away.

"This," Kaemon said, hauling himself to his feet and sweeping a long curve through the air with his pole, "where I can strike, where my sword can reach you, this is the shadow of the moon on the water. With every man you face, and every sword you face, it will be different. But you must be able to see it as clearly as you can light and dark, for beyond it you are safe. And within it, my blade deals death. Show me."

Benjiro reached out a fingertip to a point just beyond the furthest reach the bamboo pole had marked out.

Kaemon shook his head. "I lunge," he thrust forward on one knee, knocking Benjiro's hand aside with the pole, "and the moon's shadow grows. Nor is it a single point. It encircles me," he slashed back behind him at some invisible opponent, "a sphere as round as the moon itself. Show me."

They spent the day describing the moon's shadow, for katana and dotanuki and the shorter wakizashi, held by a tall man and a short, and a giant like Kaemon; then they lay like beached flounders on the boulders of the hot pool, letting the water soak away the ache of muscles pushed too hard. Bruises had bloomed on Benjiro's shins to match the fading tattoo on Kaemon's shoulder.

"You are getting too thin," Benjiro said, looking at Kaemon's long, pale body; and he put three extra spoons of porridge in the bowl Kaemon told him to bring for supper.

"Will you sleep in our house tonight?" Benjiro asked, when Kaemon had eaten it all.

Kaemon looked away. "I have grown used to it here," he said.

Walking back to the house that night, the newly risen moon behind him, Benjiro watched his shadow mark the snow, as straight and sharp as the sword by his side.

* Hatsu-hi
* First Rays of the Sun

For the next month, Benjiro trained every day in the bath-house.

At first he and Kaemon sparred with the bamboo poles, Benjiro's weighted down to mimic the heaviness of the dotanuki. Kaemon rarely spared Benjiro a blow from his own pole; but his coughing grew worse, and one morning he put his pole aside.

"I'm too old for all this jumping about," he said. "Besides, it's time for you to get your hands on that sword. Show me the wheel."

"Can't I do something harder?" Benjiro said, drawing the sword from its scabbard.

Kaemon threw their discarded poles across the hot pool to make a rickety bridge. "I meant, stand on those and show me the wheel."

When he wasn't balancing on blades of grass, trying not to cut off his own toes or get dowsed in the water, Kaemon had him run backwards up the benches with the sword held perfectly steady, or blindfolded him and then demanded he slice the acorn shells Kaemon sent whizzing past.

"You're enjoying this, aren't you?" Benjiro said, as a shell clipped his ear.

"Close your mouth and open your ears," Kaemon replied. In the quiet there was the rustle of Kaemon's hand in the sacking, a squirrel shifting through its winter hoard looking for the last uneaten acorn. Sudden silence, and Benjiro lunged. The halves of the shell rattled to the ground.

"Now get on the poles and do it," Kaemon said. "No, with the blindfold."

The shell-filled quilt was soon empty, but the lessons went on. Sitting like a gaunt old raven perched on the stone benches, indigo kimono wrapped tightly around him even in the moist heat of the baths, Kaemon rasped orders and observations between bouts of coughing into his kerchiefs.

"You should take some medicine," Benjiro said worriedly, after Kaemon was left more breathless describing the position to take up against two attackers, than Benjiro was when he put the words into practice.

"What use is medicine?" Kaemon replied. "The only thing for a winter cough is the first breath of spring." Nevertheless he let Benjiro brew him a pot of foul tea from dried nettles, and drank it all except the last cup, which he spat away.

"You should sleep in the house, under our own quilts," Benjiro said, as Kaemon rolled up his mat in the morning and set it to air on the line outside. Increasingly it was the only time he left the bath-house, since he no longer joined Benjiro for meals.

"It is warmer here," Kaemon replied; and wrapped himself in another kimono.

He grew thinner, too, as if the new muscles developing on Benjiro's body were carved straight out of Kaemon's flesh. He would not eat the extra portions of porridge Benjiro gave him, so Benjiro spooned a little pickled fish into his bowl instead.

Kaemon grunted when he saw it. "It's you who need this, not me," he said, putting it aside.

"I ate twice that earlier," Benjiro said, but Kaemon merely shook his head. "I am not hungry tonight."

The next evening Benjiro brought him rice from their tiny store, and cabbage pickled in white vinegar. "If I eat it, will you stop trying to stuff me with food?" Kaemon asked; but still Benjiro watched him until he was finished.

Benjiro took the bowl back to the house and lay down to sleep. It was utterly quiet: no sound of water bubbling across the rocks, no Kaemon wheezing into a kerchief. The hibachi grew cold.

"I won't force the question on him a third time," Benjiro said into the dark. He rolled up his mat under his arm. On his way back to the bath-house, only the stars lit the sky; the new moon was still hiding his face behind the trees. In the darkness, Kaemon was no more than a shadow against the opposite wall. "You don't have the moon to keep you company tonight," Benjiro told him, "so I have come instead."

"I'll disturb you with my coughing," Kaemon said. His voice was raw from the exertions of the day.

"I'll bed down over here, then." Benjiro put his mat by the door. Susurrations of water and breath lulled him into easy sleep.

When Kaemon woke at dawn, the first rays of the sun had pierced the matting across the doorway; and the light shone squarely on the face of his apprentice, who was sleeping by his feet.

Kaemon smiled. "Wake up, Benjiro," he said. "You have brought the New Year's sun to our bed. We must get up, put on our new spring robes, and make our bows in welcome."

* Hototogisu
* Early Cuckoo

Benjiro packed the sword back into its scabbard.

Kaemon frowned at him. "No more practice today? We don't have time to waste."

"I'm going into the village," Benjiro said. "We need more rice - and you need some proper medicine." He ignored the stubborn set Kaemon's mouth took on. "Go back to bed. You hardly slept last night for coughing."

"It was the nightingale singing that kept me up. How you intend to pay for rice, much less medicine..." Kaemon grumbled, pulling the quilt up round his ears.

"I'll sell the silk the sword was wrapped in. Stop fretting and sleep."

The breeze in Benjiro's face as he walked down the mountain was fresh with the scent of plum blossom. He had been indoors for so long that he had missed all these signs of winter ending: the last cries of the plovers flying out to sea, buds on the bare branches. The snow was rotten beneath the strips of willow he had tied to his shoes to make the walking easier.

Down in the valley, plum blossoms littered the rooftops. "It will thaw soon," the butcher said, fondling the oiled silk. "Spring winds have started to blow, and those robbers will be back. I need to save my money."

"Tell the wind that I am waiting for them." Benjiro patted his scabbard.

The butcher's face grew light with hope, although he said nothing about the sword. "In silk such as this, my knives will not rust," he said instead, and he gave Benjiro coins worth twice the value of the cloth.

The young mother behind the meagre bags of rice held her baby up for Benjiro to see. "He grows fatter every day," she said, eyeing his scabbard. "But the river is already flowing, the snow melts from the roads. How long before they return?"

Benjiro chucked the boy under the chin. "Tell the water that I am waiting for them," he said.

She did not smile, but she gave him a bag of rice, and waved his coins away.

The apothecary was crouched over a flask, stirring the copper-green liquid that seethed within. Benjiro's throat caught at the acrid smell. "I need some medicine for a cough," he said. "Kiyo-san has been suffering all winter, and it's getting no better as the weather changes."

"Your master steals my patients, and then he asks for my pills," the apothecary said, but his fingers were already sorting through the small bottles he kept beneath the counter. "Is this cough wet, or dry?"

"Dry at first, but now it's wet," Benjiro said. "He has his face in a kerchief half the day."

"As long as there's no blood," the apothecary said. "When a man's mouth is as red as a cuckoo's, no remedy of mine will help. Have him drink this."

Benjiro took the bottle the man held out. "It's too early in the year for cuckoos," he said, smiling. He put two coins down on the counter.

The apothecary pushed one back. "Yet I heard a cuckoo singing by the road only yesterday, and now you come with a sword hanging at your side. Beware it isn't your death she's singing about, Obi-san. You are brave - I do not doubt it - but those thieves are fearsome men."

Benjiro picked the coin up. "Let her sing to them, then," he said. "Tell her I am waiting."

"Perhaps it is their death she sees," the apothecary agreed. But his worried gaze followed Benjiro's path back up the hill.

"They are talking about cuckoos in the village," Benjiro told Kaemon as he shrugged off the heavy winter kimono. The bath-house air was oppressively humid, and under the drug of its warmth Kaemon was still half-asleep.

"Cuckoos? It's not spring yet."

"But it's coming, as everybody was eager to tell me. You'd think they'd have other things to discuss than the weather." He boiled water on the hibachi that now resided permanently in the bath-house, and put three drops of liquid from the little bottle into a pot of tea.

"It's worse than the nettles," Kaemon grumbled. But it must have eased his throat, for Benjiro did not hear him coughing in the night. Or perhaps it was the change in the weather at last: a warm wind sprang up at dawn, and by the time Benjiro had washed and put their breakfast soup on the fire, the ice that had coated the smokehole all winter was finally gone.

"Practice in the morning," Benjiro told Kaemon, "but this afternoon I'm going to scrub the place down, and put our winter clothes to wash. Let's not waste the sunshine."

While Benjiro took brush and pail to the bath-house, Kaemon wrapped himself in their autumn quilt and sat outside, his face to the sun. Passing him to empty the pail into the lower pools, Benjiro laughed. "You look like a garden of flowers that got lost in the snow," he said, gesturing at the chrysanthemums blossoming on the quilts.

Kaemon laughed too; but the next moment he was coughing, and when a cloud passed over the sun Benjiro saw him huddle down into the quilts. "Don't you have better things to do than watch me?" he said, gruff words in a gentle voice.

"All the laundry," Benjiro agreed. By the time he brought out the bundle of washing Kaemon had gone back into the warmth; so he worked alone, stripped down to his fundoshi in the warm water, pounding quilts and kimonos on the rocks and hanging them up to dry until his arms ached more than they did under the weight of his sword. At last there was only Kaemon's indigo kimono left, and a mound of his scarlet kerchiefs. The water ran deep blue, then red.

Dark, dark red.

Benjiro knelt, frozen in the flowing water, while a handful of kerchiefs tumbled away down the stream.

Blindly, he turned to the heap of them still stacked on the rocks. Each one bore stains of rusty iron. Benjiro scraped at them with his nails, scratched off flakes of darker matter that drifted down to powder the snow. "No!" He tore at the cloth, but even in the shredded threads the stains remained.

"No." He opened his hands and let the kerchiefs fall.

* Yugao
* Bottle Gourd

He did not return to the bath-house until evening. It had already started to snow again, the soft wet flakes painting pale chrysanthemums on his kimono, and on the sopping bundle in his arms. He laid it down in the darkness by the doorway, indigo cloth melting into indigo shadow.

"Benjiro?"

He followed Kaemon's voice over to their mats. "Why, you're frozen!" Kaemon's hands pulled him gently down, stripped the damp kimono from his body, gathered Benjiro close. In the warmth of their quilts, in Kaemon's arms where he had not lain for many months, Benjiro stopped shivering at last.

It was only in this warmth and darkness that he could speak the words. "Why didn't you tell me?" he whispered.

Kaemon stiffened against him; then sighed and relaxed once more. His hand went to Benjiro's hair. "I didn't know at first," he said, stroking Benjiro with sure, steady touches. "Then, when I realised... there was such a gap between us. How could I talk to you across it? I was alone, and fearful."

Benjiro made a small sound and Kaemon held him closer. "Hush, hush. It's over now." He rocked Benjiro against his body.

When they both lay calm again, Kaemon continued. "Once I had accepted it, I thought it would make it easier for you, if I left when we had drifted apart. But I was still being ruled by my fears. I could not do what I wanted you to do."

Benjiro drew a breath heavy with tears. "Tell me."

"I couldn't let go," Kaemon replied. His voice was softly apologetic. "I wanted you to be able to surrender me easily to death. But I couldn't bear the thought of you dying, a sword in your guts or worse. I've seen so many men die in battle, Benjiro - killed so many myself. I didn't want that for you. I wanted you to live, and grow old, and be happy. I could not train you to die."

"It was mine to choose," Benjiro said slowly, "although death was not my intention."

Kaemon's mouth curved in a smile against his hair. "I did finally realise," he said. "You are an honourable man, and in my attachment I would have taken that from you, and left you with nothing." He gave a deep sigh. "I had forgotten. The warrior's way is one of detachment."

"A gourd upon the water," Benjiro murmured, "never anchored to one point. You've tried to teach me that."

"It's the hardest lesson of all."

They lay quietly for some time. Beneath his ear, Benjiro could hear the tiny crackles of his lungs as Kaemon breathed in; breathed out. "How long?" he finally asked.

"Before they come for you, I think," Kaemon said gently. Benjiro squeezed his eyes shut against the dark. "You should have told me," he whispered. "After - when there were words between us again. The time we have wasted."

Kaemon hesitated a moment. "It was not for me to tell you," he said at last. "You had to learn it in your own way, just as I had to learn to let go of life in my own way. To let go of you."

Benjiro turned his face into Kaemon's hair. "Don't let go of me just yet - ah, please, Kaemon."

"I will hold you close all tonight. That I swear." Like small children under the covers they clung to each other, until sleep came to claim them.

* Shinimizu
* Pure Water

Kaemon refused to let Benjiro spend the next days moping at his feet. Instead they practised with the sword for long, long hours, Kaemon if anything harsher in command and comment, Benjiro quicker to obey.

"I at least will die quietly from old age. You will be stuck like a pig on a spit if you don't learn to keep that foot back!" Kaemon poked at Benjiro with the pole he had taken to using as a method of correction.

"Yes, Master," Benjiro said.

The normal household tasks were set aside: the woodpile slowly dwindled, unreplenished; they ate their stocks of rice and fish while the unground acorns rotted. The main house was abandoned. Winter refuse clogged the water pipes down the slopes; the stream was left to carve its own way to the valley.

At first the drops from the tiny bottle helped keep Kaemon's coughing under control. But he soon refused the dose, brushing aside the cups of tea Benjiro offered. "It makes me drowsy, and we have work to do." Only at night would he take a single drop. Then he lay sleeping heavily in Benjiro's arms, while Benjiro stroked the flesh over bones now protruding, kissed the hair that lay loose over their pillow.

While Benjiro watched over Kaemon, the winter melted into spring. Where once the world had stood still, it now stirred constantly. Small mice and spiders invaded the empty house; the willow branches shook loose of the ice to float on the water; snow melted into plum blossom and plum blossom gave way to blades of grass.

Benjiro cursed when he saw that the lowest pool was finally free from ice, the cold spring gushing into it swift and strong. But when he told Kaemon, Kaemon smiled. "Fresh spring water," he said. "My throat is so dry." Each day after that, Benjiro walked down to the spring and carried back up a flask of water chilly with snow-melt. In Kaemon's pleasure, Benjiro's curses dissolved away.

It was not only the season that was changing. As Kaemon grew weaker, there was a new intimacy between them. Benjiro did for him the things he had always done on his own, bathed him and dressed him and helped him to the small shit-house a few steps down the hillside. The easy obedience Benjiro gave him in their lessons, he gave back as he handed his body over to Benjiro's care. Benjiro wept in the nights when he cradled Kaemon to his breast, but whether they were tears of sorrow or joy became harder to say.

There came the day when Kaemon could no longer walk on his own; and the day when he did not stir from their bed.

Their lessons were done now. Benjiro put aside the bamboo poles, left the sword in its scabbard. The words Kaemon murmured to him as they lay in bed, the noon sun peeping through the smokehole, were no longer ones of instruction.

Towards evening, Kaemon stirred. "Make me a litter tomorrow morning. I want to go down to the spring. I want to see the willow in the water."

"Not yet," Benjiro pleaded.

Kaemon put a finger across his lips. "Would you have me die when I am too weak to sit up? I am a samurai still."

After a long moment, Benjiro pressed his mouth to Kaemon's hand. "I will do as you say."

Kaemon did not take the drug that night. When Benjiro slept at last, it was Kaemon who stayed awake to watch; and when Benjiro roused in the early dawn, those blue eyes were upon him still.

Benjiro ate breakfast alone. Kaemon waved away the soup. "I want only water now." He lay watching as Benjiro lashed the bamboo poles together, and stretched a mat across them. "Dress me in my spring kimono," he said. "No more indigo, only flowers."

The journey down to the pool was slow. Benjiro went carefully. Kaemon stopped him often to show him small but beautiful things: the dew on the grass, a spider-web hidden between two intertwined blades. By the time they reached the willow tree, Kaemon's bier was littered with flower petals, bits of grass, small twigs he had collected on the way.

He had Benjiro pull the litter to the spot on the east bank opposite the old willow, where a young pine-tree grew. There, sitting up against the trunk, new sap staining his clothes, he looked across the pool. A warm wind had sprung up and the willow's branches trailed in the water, following the soughing breeze.

"It's budding," he said.

Benjiro turned to the willow. "I told you," he said.

Kaemon smiled. "So you did." His fingers curled around Benjiro's. "Now bring me some water from the spring." But when Benjiro came back, the flask filled to overflowing, Kaemon had him put it to one side.

"You will be a great warrior," he said, taking Benjiro's hands again, "a greater man than I. They will tell stories of how you defeated a band of robbers single-handed. Promise me."

"Yes, Kaemon," Benjiro whispered.

"And for your promise," Kaemon said, his voice weakening, "I will give you my jisei, my death poem. What warrior can die without one?" He paused. "Do you remember when we first travelled the road to Edo? I bought that kimono of red and gold with flying cranes to dress you in. I thought then that I had taken an apprentice samurai, and turned him into a courtesan." He cradled Benjiro's head in his hands. "Now I see that I was wrong." Slowly he recited the words:

"Chrysanthemum bulb that I tended and watered -an iris bursts forth."

Sighing, he leant back against the tree, his hands slipping away. "That is my haiku of farewell," he said. "It's all I have for you, my Benjiro."

"Not all," Benjiro said, his eyes wet with tears.

Kaemon brushed one from his cheek. "Some water," he asked. Benjiro held the flask to his lips. He took a swallow, turned his head into Benjiro's shoulder, and slept.

* Tsuki onaji
* One Moon

Even though Kaemon's body had wasted in his last illness, it took Benjiro two days to pull the litter down to the village. The bamboo poles scored the earth in deep runnels; the scabbard across his shoulders knocked clumsily against them. His kimono was soon spattered with mud. Small stones turned under his feet.

"If you could see me," he told the silent bier across the fire the first night. "A donkey would serve you more gracefully."

He plucked the early crocus flowers that lay in his path and put them on the litter; late cherry blossom drifted down to rest with them on Kaemon's robe.

He came to the village late the next evening. The street was almost empty as he made his slow way on, but before he had gone past the last house, the young mother ran up to him. He stopped to catch his breath while she bowed. "A last gift," she said, pressing a cloth bundle into his hands. "My husband's summer kimono. It isn't large enough for you to dress him in it," she ducked her head at the bier, "but perhaps you can use it yourself."

"Thank you," he said. He shifted the scabbard to one shoulder, settled the new burden on the other.

The apothecary came out of his doorway with something clutched in his hand. "Straw sandals," he said, laying them with reverence amid the flowers. "To ease his feet on the journey over Death Mountain."

"Thank you," Benjiro said. The apothecary stepped back into the gloom.

Benjiro was nearly half a mile out of the village when the butcher finally caught up with him, panting and wheezing. "Some salt," he said, thrusting a twist of blue paper at him. "To cleanse you when you return. And my sympathies."

"Thank you." Benjiro waited until the man had gone into the night once more before he tucked the salt into his belt. It would have been ungracious to have left it on the path.

It was early dawn before he reached the old tomb that marked the half-way point on the road down to the coast. Four stone steps led up to a large flat plinth. The statue that had once stood atop it had been stolen away many centuries ago: now only ivy, not yet in leaf, clung with bare fingers to the crumbling stone. There, Benjiro put the litter down.

Over the course of the morning he collected a quantity of dry winter wood to put across the plinth. Ravens watched him jealously while he worked. The bamboo poles, freed from their lashings, came next; and finally he picked up the matting, Kaemon's body and the flowers all together, and laid them gently on the wood. He placed the straw sandals over Kaemon's slippers. He took two cords from the pocket of his old, stained kimono, before tucking it like a blanket on Kaemon's bed. For himself, he put on the new kimono the woman had given him. It was patterned: iris thrusting up on a bright blue ground. The red and gold cord was almost gaudy against it; nevertheless, he tucked it into his belt. Carefully he twisted the other one, the blue and green kumihimo with its triple mallow knot, over the first. Lord and master: by serving one, he showed his devotion to the other.

In the afternoon, Benjiro rested at Kaemon's feet.

They came when the sun began to set, and the moon began to rise. Only three of them, but all on horseback, one with a pike and two with swords. The swordsmen carried torches to light their way - or to threaten the roofs of people's houses. They wore leather armour.

"So you are the peasant with a sword," the man with the pike said. "We've heard you plan to teach us a lesson."

The man with the longer sword stretched insolently in the saddle. "I think it's you who will learn one instead, about your proper place. And look, there's a pyre already prepared."

The man with the shorter sword (but he had another in his belt) laughed at this wit. "At least he's saved us the bother of making one for him."

"This will be no bother at all," said the man with the pike. The other two held their horses back while he charged at Benjiro, who stood unmoving, dotanuki raised.

One deep breath. A memory of Kaemon, whirling in the snow to catch the dotanuki in his palms. The pike came crashing in - but Benjiro was not there. He had slipped sideways, a gourd on the water. The pike hit the stone plinth with jarring force; it snapped, and in the sudden impact and release the mounted man fell from his saddle. In one swift move, Benjiro cut his throat. Another, and he was back on the safety of the plinth steps.

He was panting. His eyes were fixed on the body lying in a thickening pool of blood. The men on horseback did not take advantage of this, though: if anything, they backed their horses further off, ignoring the dead man's mount as it rode past them down the path.

Let go. It was Kaemon's voice, though the only sounds in the small glade were the horse's hoofbeats fading away, and the cawing of the ravens. Release your mind from that blow. Let go. Shuddering, Benjiro turned his gaze back to the swordsmen.

Far enough away to be out of reach of an attack, they were whispering in argument. One feared to drop the torches in case they set light to the dry pine needles underfoot. He thought they should dismount to draw their swords. The other wanted to remain on horseback, but could not think of how to handle torch, sword and reins. Neither would agree to hand his torch to the other and attack Benjiro on his own.

Benjiro waited. "You never told me my best weapon was my opponents' stupidity," he murmured for Kaemon's amusement. An inquisitive raven which had landed by the pikeman's body knowingly cocked one eye at him. It was joined by another raven, somewhat less daring, before the swordsmen finally decided. They dismounted, awkwardly balancing both torches and drawn steel. The ravens shuffled to one side as the men approached. Ten steps away, the men charged.

In the first mad whirl of blades Benjiro had no sense of what he was doing - merely that he cut up, cut down, thrust the attacking blades aside. The men fell quickly back, one bleeding from the shoulder.

The blow struck a moment ago no longer mattered. What mattered was this moment - now! Benjiro dropped to one knee as the man with the longer sword attacked again. A step to his right - he turned and parried, swirled and cut. A torch dropped to the steps, sputtered out. The man with two swords drew his second blade.

From then on the fight was long moments of stillness bursting into sudden flame. Benjiro was more nimble on the stone steps than either of his opponents, whose eyes constantly shifted down to check their footing, and who had to make sure not to hit one another. The stone plinth guarded his back. He tired, but no more than they; and as the dusk slowly deepened they seemed less used to fighting in dim light.

Quick! He's in your shadow! The man with two swords had taken an imprudent step forwards: Benjiro shifted as if to retreat, then suddenly lunged. The dotanuki bit bone. The man shrieked. Benjiro twisted, just in time to block a strike from the longer sword behind him.

"Only us now," the other swordsman panted. He stepped back down to the next stair. "But I am better than they were." He threw the torch at Benjiro, and thrust when Benjiro ducked. His sword went true.

No!

Benjiro ignored the anguished cry; bent double over his bleeding stomach, he slashed the dotanuki one-handed through the air.

It was, indeed, a sword that could cut a man in two.

Long minutes later, Benjiro let the dotanuki slide from his fingers, slid to the next step down himself. The two bodies sprawled at his feet. From here he could see a tiny flame catch on the pyre above, where the torch had come to rest. His fingers, clutching the great rent of cloth and flesh at his middle, were beginning to go numb. Fumbling, he pulled a piece of paper from the sleeve of his kimono with his free hand. It fell to the bottom step. The twist of salt from his belt tumbled after it, anchoring the paper down. Salt spilt on dry ink and fresh blood; obscured the old oil stain.

His vision was blurred when he looked up at the pyre again. The flame had grown, but it had not yet taken hold. If he got to his feet now, he thought he could climb up onto the plinth in time. Of course he could. Kaemon was waiting for him.

Behind him, the raven came over to peck at the salt. Its wings brushed Benjiro's last words.

Though I tarry on the road
my master took, above us glows
one moon.

~ ~ The end ~ ~

Acknowledgments and thanks:

I have stolen more liberally for this story than for any other, with the only excuse that it might be permissible to do so when writing about a foreign culture so rich in its own symbolism. Kaemon's lessons in swordfighting come from 'The Sword and The Mind', a collection of writings from the seventeenth century Zen monk Takuan and the swordsmaster Munenori whom he heavily influenced, translated by Hiroaki Sato.

Much of the imagery throughout the story I derived from 'Japanese Death Poems', hundreds of jisei by monks and samurai, warriors and poets spanning over 600 years. (Jisei were meant to be composed virtually at the moment of death, and are thus the last words of the deceased.) These have been collected, translated, annotated and introduced by Yoel Hoffmann. The last haiku is his translation of the jisei of the eighteenth century poet, Isaibo, and hence is not constrained to seventeen syllables.

My thanks go to three wonderful beta readers, in ascending order of pickiness: Dr Squidlove, Tem herself, and my husband. JenniferGail and I found ourselves feeding off each other voraciously: I think if our editrix had not called a halt with those nasty deadline thingies, we might have continued bouncing off each other's ideas forever. And, of course, without Tem-ve's font of inspiration, The Indigo Warrior, her kind permission to play in her sandbox and her enthusiasm in having us do so, this story would not exist at all.