By Joseph Wise
Okeno Dashi moved his family to the Daoko Suru one day before his twenty-sixth birthday. He had lived in Shangti his whole life but never until now outside of the Juutakuchi District. Walking home from the Cutty Steamworks one night very late, he became lost in the tangled slum. If the crumbled streets did not lead to crooked dead ends they led to narrow rows where the derelicts waited slumped for unfortunates to pass. Dashi wandered, stopped, back-tracked in the moonlight because the gas-lamps did not work in Daoko Suru. He was lost for an hour before he sat in a deep shadow, sobbing without sound into his arm. It was not that he was hopelessly lost that made him do this. He knew he would find his way. He sobbed for the time he had lost, knowing that he would have to wake again in five hours so that he could return to the Keiko Bathhouse, where he also worked, and then to the Steamworks again to make the nightshift.
When he finally found the streets leading to the Tekkai Sao Ravine he wiped his face well and wished he could be angry with himself for his weakness. He expected to find Okeno Kuro, his wife, staring at the wall again and his children sleeping at the foot of the bed under the blanket they shared. Instead his children were awake and Kuro rubbed her shoulders in what was a very warm summer night. The lights were out.
“There is a man in the ravine,” Kuro said.
“Men go into the ravine,” said Dashi, unslinging the bag in which he carried both his kimono for the bathhouse and his satchel for the steamworks.
“Not men like this,” said Kuro. “He is in armor. He is samurai I think. The children saw him and were frightened, and he is just below the house.”
Their flat stood directly on the edge of Tekkai Sao Ravine, so that in going out the door one had to be careful not to lean too heavily on the broken bamboo rail. The walls of the ravine were completely sheer, completely smooth. For the vines that grew on these walls, and the trees that sprouted from the floor of the ravine, it was impossible to see into it from the stoop. But there was an odd kind of path into the ravine, a few streets away, and Dashi had been into it one morning and knew the sharp rocks that littered its floor. It was Dashi’s constant worry that the children, in going out to play on the small square of grass next to the building, in skirting the rail and climbing the steps up from the basement in which they lived, that they would slip and fall.
“You went into the ravine?” he said, stooping and looking his young son in the eye.
“The man has a hurt leg,” replied Kenji.
“Go and see?” said Kuro. “I don’t like him being out there.”
Dashi stared at the rail and the fronds below it. A breeze played with the thin door. He came inside and shut it. “If a man is in the ravine, it is his business.”
He calmed his children that night, calmed his wife, and they all slept soon on the thin mattress they shared. In four hours Dashi woke to the ringing of an old clock and he readied himself for another day. The sun had not yet risen.
The flat was small. There were only two rooms. The main room held the mattress, a small low table big enough for two plates, a stove, and a basin. These things took up most of the floor space, leaving just enough room to walk between the mattress and the oven, and leaving a small square behind the table where the children often played with a lutuki game that Dashi had found. The basins were filled with mold, dust clung to their sides, and bits of hair were stuck in old grime that could not easily be scrubbed away. There was a pump nearby for clean water and the dirty water went into the ravine.
The landlady, Onaka Chihiro, lived above them and charged very little for the room. She did not ask for references and she did not ask for advance rent.
The stove was not fit with a gas line. It was a wood stove and sometimes Dashi brought oil-rags home from the Steamworks so as to heat the pots more quickly. Kuro did not mind.
But for Dashi the room was always troubling. He hated the cracked basins and he hated the slow wood oven. He hated the grime and the soap-stains on the mirror, and the window that was too small to let much light into the main room. During a normal week Dashi spent perhaps twelve waking hours in his home, but he hated it and his hatred for it grew as the summer grew.
Kuro spent far less than twelve of her waking hours anywhere other than the flat. Dashi did not like her to take the children far from the door. He did not trust the slums of Daoko Suru and he did not trust the ravine. Kuro occasionally went to the market or to the water pump but otherwise stayed in the flat. And in the apartment she stayed mostly on the mattress. She put little effort into scrubbing the basins or beating the matted rug. She rested her head on a pillow and above it the children played in the corner.
This morning Dashi dressed quickly in his kimono. He kissed his children. Kenji had just turned six and Ling was three years old. He kissed Kuro on the forehead and watched her sleep. Her left cheek was covered with red veins from a lusoko infection, and her open lips revealed the three shattered teeth on her lower jaw.
Dashi left the house thinking of tying towels and scrubbing the bathhouse floors. Already he had forgotten about the man in the ravine.
Two days passed before any reminder came.
He had left the bathhouse for the day and arrived at the Steamworks. Sir Reginald Cutty, a Gaijin merchant from overseas, owned the Cutty Steamworks. He sold machines and he fixed machines, and he paid his mechanists flat for the repairs they made. If a repair took longer than expected, the wasted time was not Cutty’s fault; it was the mechanist’s fault, and he paid only for how long it should have taken to finish. If there was not enough work on any given day, Cutty did not keep more mechanists on hand than he needed, and today Dashi was not needed.
Dashi was an apprentice, at best. When they lived on Sukodo Street, near the marketplace, Kuro saw a post for mechanists with Cutty and told Dashi to try his hand at it. He had fixed a boiler once, nothing more.
“I’m not qualified,” he had told her. At that point the bathhouse had been the only job he had ever had, and he knew nothing more than the scrubbing of floors.
“Lie,” she had said. Dashi lied, and Cutty hired him. That was five months ago. But he was not quick, and he was not experienced, and he did not bring much extra money from this. Kuro’s certainty that he would get better as time passed was the only thing that kept him from quitting. And Dashi’s odd relationship with the far more experienced Kujo Toshi was the only thing that kept Cutty from realizing Dashi should be fired.
Today even Toshi could not convince the boss to let Dashi stay and assist with the few rickshaws and clockwork hounds. He went home, with the daylight still on his back.
When he found his house empty Dashi panicked. Kuro and the children were not playing on the grass. He had passed the water pump too and they were not there. He stood in the doorway staring at the mattress, staring at the pegs and strings of the lutuki game with its missing pegs and stained board. He immediately thought of the ravine.
He was halfway down the path when he remembered what Kuro had said about the man who stood below the house. His panic grew.
The ground here was soft and mossy, with sharp stones littered about. There was not much water in the ravine, just puddles and pools. Numuro flies buzzed over these bits of stagnant water, and Dashi avoided them. He saw the man through the leaves and crouched.
He was samurai. The warrior in his armor stood staring at the wall of the ravine directly below Dashi’s stoop. He paced and Dashi could see the stiff leg but there was something else strange. Underneath the warrior’s grace was somehow hidden the awkwardness of a machine. Dashi did not want to approach this warrior. His family was not in the ravine and he went home quietly.
In an hour Kuro found Dashi curled up on the mattress and was surprised. He rubbed his eyes as the old bamboo door dropped sunlight on his face. He brushed the point of his beard with his finger tips.
“We’ve been to the market,” she said, and Dashi was furious. She was not to go to the market without him.
“You know how we live! You know how our credit expired in the Juutakuchi when the Esunori men tapped their fingers waiting for us to give what we would otherwise have eaten!”
She pushed the children inside and they sat at her feet. “We didn’t buy. We looked at the toys and the confection case and we came home again.”
Dashi sat on the mattress and grew dark. Kuro thought Dashi didn’t believe her, and she thought he was worried about the children walking through Daoko Suru. He was angry because he thought of his children looking and smiling and not being able to buy.
The children went to the spare corner of the room. Kenji picked up the game and Ling giggled. “Are you going to play that?” And she clapped and watched Kenji wind the strings because there were not enough pieces to both play lutuki as it should be played, and some of the pegs had been snapped.
Dashi stood and kicked the mattress. He was furious that his children could be so happy about something that was broken, and he walked out of the house by himself. He drank that night in the tea house and was drunk from the lotuke before stumbling home again and finding his family asleep.
The next day Cutty had enough work for him to stay the shift. Toshi laughed at his story. “You’re a fool! That was no man. That was a thing. You’ve never heard of the Clockwork Ronin?”
Dashi helped Toshi lift a piston into the rickshaw they were fixing. Toshi was a round man who ate too well. Here was a mechanist who always had work.
“I’m not a fool.”
“Mechanical warriors,” said Toshi. “Look at the fool who doesn’t know what he is. They can be found in Shangti now and then. But why was he in the Harinukawa Quarry?”
Dashi stared and did not answer. Toshi realized why and corrected himself. “Right, they call it the Tekkai Sao Ravine now. Did you know it was the quarry? Of course you didn’t, not even if someone had told you. It was the Harinukawa Quarry once. Harinukawa Shinmo liked the stone so much there he had it blocked for his house. A fine black stone, but a fine big hole it left. Why do you think the Daoko Suru is such a slum? A hole like that fills fast with water that goes nowhere and then you have the Numuro Fever. Too many flies and soon everyone is sick. They cut the ravine to drain the quarry but by then no one wanted to live in Daoko Suru who could afford to live somewhere else. I was there to help them do that, it was years ago. But they haven’t learned how to drain the poverty from the slums!”
Toshi laughed in his loud way.
Dashi searched for the correct wrench and fastened the valve bolt. He did it too slowly, like he did everything.
“Who is Harinukawa Shinmo to make so many people sick for his fine house?”
Toshi laughed louder and it was a long while before he could stop. His face glistened in the red light from the paper lantern. Gas hissed from the pipe.
“You…you don’t know? He was an actor. Kabuki, from the Masuku Troupe. He was famous! Hasn’t been seen in ages but the finest actor in the Motenashi, some say. Masuku, they can’t show their faces or the troupe takes their lives. Only their masks are to be seen, but what masks! A fortune worn on the face!”
Toshi laughed and they closed the rickshaw so that it would run again. There were more to fix but most of the work would be booked to Toshi. Dashi would be paid flat for the small problems, the maintenance, not the big repairs. He did not complain because he would not be maintaining these machines if Toshi was not repairing them.
When the shift ended the two of them walked out together. “I hope you’ve learned something today, but I’m always the dreamer,” said Toshi and he laughed again. Dashi walked away from him alone and Toshi called after him. “Dashi!”
He stopped and turned. Toshi wasn’t laughing anymore.
“Dashi. Keep those kids away from the ravine. Keep them away from the ronin.”
Dashi thought about this as he walked home. He knew they would be asleep now but every step told him to hurry.
Dashi woke his children and told them immediately that they were never to enter the ravine again. "The man you saw is dangerous," he said, and he woke Kuro and told her that when he was out she was to keep the door locked and not leave the house. "Not even to visit the pump. I'll fill a pale every morning. Make it last."
He thought to tell the constable, but he also thought the ronin would not stay much longer. But when would he leave? He had been standing there for days, maybe longer. Was he still there? Dashi did not want to go into the ravine and he could not see the ronin from his stoop. Maybe he had gone already. Maybe the constable would laugh at Dashi and call him a fool like Toshi had done. "There's no one in the ravine," he would laugh, "certainly not a...a what-did-you-call-it? A Clockwork Ronin. Fool." He would not tell the constable. He would let the ronin be and it would leave soon.
In a few days he had decided that the ronin was no longer in the ravine. If something reminded him of the warrior his stomach would fill with acid for a moment, but he would tell himself that there was no reason to worry. The ravine was empty now. No one would stay in such a place as long as this. But the day soon came in which he could not help but see for himself that the ronin still stood below his home.
It was a warm night with clear stars and he heard rustling from the trees of the ravine as he walked home. He did not worry about his children. They could not be out as late as this. But he wondered at the sound and he wanted to see who made it.
Near the mouth of the ravine he heard two men talking.
“Armor like that could feed us for months,” said one of them. They were walking down the narrow path, much as Dashi had done the week before. He knew this was not the first time they had gone this way. “And that katana! Jade, I’m certain.”
They walked quietly but Dashi could hear the rattle of bamboo coverlets. Dashi hid his satchel in the weeds and followed these men.
He did not stay close enough to hear what else they said but he knew they meant to rob the ronin and murder him. Dashi did not know if it was possible to murder a Clockwork Ronin. Soon he could see a light ahead.
It was a paper lantern. Dashi could see from its light the Clockwork Ronin, still facing the rock wall of the ravine. He could see the shape of the man who held the lantern but nothing could be seen of the man’s companion.
“Who’s here in my ravine,” said the lantern-holder. “You’re trespassing! Remove your blade and kneel. We will take you to the constable.”
The ronin did not move.
“I am armed,” said the man.
Again it seemed the ronin would not move. He just stared with his masked face, and the rest of him was armored like any samurai. But a moment passed and his head began to turn with the whirring of gears. He looked at the man and his lantern.
The lantern must have had a lens. The man dropped a fierce beam on the ronin’s face, as if to blind him, but the ronin did not seem bothered. Dashi caught a glint of metal behind the war-mask.
A shadow moved in the trees beyond the ronin and the second man, who had been hiding, flew from the leaves with a blade in his hand. It was the movement of attack and it was quick and terrifying.
But the blade broke on the ronin’s armor, and the ronin twisted his hand around to break the man’s spine. The ronin’s sword was out now and he cut the man to spill his guts. All of this happened in the light of the lantern before the man who held it could drop it and run.
But soon the man did run, and the ronin followed him. The mechanical warrior moved slowly with his lame leg. The man was much faster. The ronin threw a dart and the man was soon lying on the rocks, blood gurgling from the wound in his throat. Then he went silent.
Dashi watched this and did not move. He did not dare. He sat in the darkness and hoped he could not be seen, as the stars were blocked by leaves and the lantern had extinguished in its fall.
Around him he could hear the echoing step of the Clockwork Ronin, and the faint click of gears. He hoped he could not be seen but the ronin knew where to find him. It drew close and was standing over him. Dashi braced and wondered what the blade of a sword would feel like as it severed the spine of a man.
“You live above,” said the ronin. No blade fell on Dashi. He kept his eyes shut anyway. “You live above, with the children,” said the ronin. It began to walk away from him, to the wall where it had stood staring all of the time.
Dashi raised his head.
“There are murderers in the ravine,” said the ronin. “Go to your children.”
Dashi backed away slowly, without fully standing.
“Do you know what this place is?” said the ronin. “The rocks here. They remind me of something. Do you know?”
Dashi did not speak. He backed away. He did not fully stand.
“Go to your children,” said the ronin, “there are murderers in this place. But I cannot leave until I remember.”
Dashi stood now. He ran, sometimes tripping but never stopping. He ran up the path and through the slums to the stoop of his home. He was not careful with the bamboo rail and it bowed under his weight, but he kept his balance and was inside soon. He latched the door and breathed hard on the dirty rug. His family did not wake. He did not sleep.
For the next few days he did not tell Toshi what he had seen. But he couldn’t contain himself completely and all the while he gave hints. Soon Toshi knew there was a story to be had.
“He killed two men who meant to rob him,” said Dashi.
“He should have killed you too,” said Toshi, smirking. “It would serve you right for being nosy. Clockwork Ronin are not for making friends and for chatting. They are for war.”
“He was wondering about the rocks of the ravine,” said Dashi. “He said they reminded him of something.”
Toshi threw up his hands. “Of course they do, fool. Clockwork Ronin weren’t always machines. They were samurai once, flesh and blood all of them. But they can’t remember who they were before their spirits were stolen for the machines. Sometimes there’s something familiar, but it’s useless. In the end they’ll not remember. They’ll become useless and won’t fight because they’re thinking about rocks in old quarries.”
Dashi did not like being lectured. He did not speak of the ronin again with Toshi. But ideas came to him now and then as he turned bolts or pulled at the billows, and he would ask Toshi questions that to the old mechanist seemed to come from nowhere.
“Where do the kabuki play?’
“Depends on the troop.”
“The Harinukawa Palace, no one goes there now?”
“Shinmo does not invite them.”
There were many others, but none of them mentioned the Clockwork Ronin or the assassins he had killed in the ravine. Dashi kept those questions to himself.
Dashi could not stop thinking about the ronin’s leg. Could a machine be wounded? Of course it could. And he was paid to fix them, but it was Toshi who knew how to fix them. He did not want to ask Toshi but he thought of a way to learn without Toshi’s help. Cutty had an office in the Steamworks, but he was rarely in it. The rice-paper slider was often open enough that Dashi could look inside as he passed. There were scrolls stacked on shelves, too many to count. They were schematics for every machine Cutty sold, every machine that could be fixed. Dashi thought maybe one of them would show how to repair the Clockwork Ronin.
He searched the office one night when Cutty had gone out and the other mechanists were too busy to notice him. The scrolls were not filed well and it was a long while before he found a stack of schematics that seemed to have never been used. At the bottom of this stack was an old and incomplete detailing of the Clockwork Ronin. Dashi hid this in his satchel and took it home with him when he left for the day.
He unfurled the scroll at home that night as his family slept. The lamplight made him squint and he could not understand all of the notations. He found a section of the scroll that demonstrated the assembly of the ronin’s leg. “Many Clockwork Ronin have elected to undergo modifications so there could be any number of variations,” the scroll read. Dashi did not know if he could repair something so complicated even if it did match. He slept that night after hiding the scroll above his cupboard.
For the most part he stopped thinking about the ronin. Now and then he would go back to the scroll and study further, and he would realize he needed a tool he did not own, or that some parts cannot be easily found in Shangti. Everything he read discouraged him.
He might have given up entirely, but for a chance glimpse in the upper drawer of Mr. Cutty’s old tool chest. Cutty kept the chest locked most of the time, but one day he had been asked for a koi pick and he left the drawer open while he brought it to Toshi.
“Delicate, now, that’s not easy to come by,” said the big gaijin with his red beard and thin hair. He towered over Toshi as the mechanist worked.
Dashi at this time was coming back from the store-room and passed the tool chest. He stepped around the drawer to avoid it and did not mean to look inside. Yet something caught his eye. A small brass device with a fine head and articulated grips. They were toa’jin pliers. He had seen drawings. He recognized it from the Clockwork Ronin scroll and he put it in his pocket quickly and walked away.
Cutty did not notice Dashi. Perhaps he thought something was out of place when he shut the drawer and locked the case again, but he said nothing.
The tao’jin pliers went into Dashi’s cupboard, next to the scroll, and there they stayed for many days. Dashi from time to time peered over his balcony to see if the ronin still stood below. He could never tell, except for the occasional glint of metal between the shifting fronds.
He thought of selling the pliers. He thought of taking them to the marketplace and asking a price, because he could not use them. He was not Toshi and he did not have the skill to repair the leg of a Clockwork Ronin. But he did not sell the pliers.
Cutty did not like Dashi and now it became more apparent. Dashi wondered if Cutty suspected him of taking the scroll, and of taking the pliers from his tool chest.
He became more critical of Dashi’s work. “You’ve clamped this too tight. What am I saying? You’ll never learn why.”
Cutty became more hostile toward his habits. “You haven’t trimmed your beard. You haven’t tied your hair. This is Shangti, not the Blospelds!”
He became less tolerant of Dashi’s punctuality. “You’ve taken leave without telling a man in the place where you would be taking it, and you’ve returned later than a man in the place is allowed.”
Dashi worked slower. Dashi’s eyes drooped. Dashi annoyed Toshi constantly and he shouted occasionally at the old mechanist. “I can do this part, stay out of my way!”
“You can’t do it,” Toshi would say. “You haven’t done it. You haven’t got the eyes to see through the metal or the hands to know the tensions. You can’t do it, fool.”
He went home and did not sleep. He hovered over his children as they dreamt, whispering and kissing Kenji on the forehead. “You were there when the air was hardest for me to inhale, do you remember that day? No, you were small, too small to stand. But you were there. Trust me. I trust you most little one.”
Reginald Cutty discharged Dashi from his employment one evening when the air was beginning to turn for autumn. Dashi had arrived at the Steamworks later than he should have, due to the crowds in Shounin Square. He arrived late and still wearing the silk of the Keiko bathhouse, and he had to change in front of everyone to be fit for Cutty’s work.
“You’ve got to work fast to catch us up,” Toshi told him. But Dashi did not work fast and Cutty told him to go home.
“You’re worthless,” said Toshi. “You’re thick and lazy and you can’t pull your own weight even when the laziness is thin.”
Dashi drank in Tasoko until late in the night, and he walked home thinking too much of his children to be giddy, thinking too much of Kuro to be calm. He shouted at a man in the Daoko Suru and walked quickly, too frightened to be confident.
“You’ll find other work,” said Kuro. “What are we going to do? No, you’ll find other work, there are gaijin coming every day, shops opening every day. A butcher’s counter? No. You’ll look every night and it won’t be long.”
Dashi was tired. He did not want to look for work every night but he left and walked. He drank in Tasoko, or he watched the fowl races in Dao’kasuru. Some nights he did look for work, but he was not clean and he did not speak well and they turned him away.
He was drunk one night late when he reached home and he nearly toppled over the rail. He shouted down to the ravine in the middle of the night. “Do you remember yet? I’ll come and see you and you’ll remember when I’ve told you what I know!”
He burst into his home and took the schematics and the pliers from his cupboard, and he took a paper lantern that still had some wick left, and he went to the path that led into the ravine.
Dashi worried about the assassins who had been killed. He knew they would not have been given a proper burial. Dashi knew as well as anyone the dangers of leaving the dead to haunt instead of rest. But he did not see the bodies that he thought he would see, and he knew someone had taken them away.
After all this time the Clockwork Ronin remained in the same spot. He noticed Dashi approach but such a small man did not concern the ronin. He stared at the rocks.
“What is wrong with your leg?” said Dashi. “Tell me, and I’ll tell you what this place is.”
The ronin turned toward him. “What is your name?”
“Dashi.”
“I am Tsungeru. My joints have failed there from a fall in battle.”
Tsungeru turned back to the wall of the ravine. “What is this place?”
“I can fix you,” said Dashi. The light from his lantern shook in his drunken hand.
“Do you have tools?”
Dashi fumbled for the pliers. “I have these.”
The ronin looked at what he held. “Do you have a mallet. You’ll need a mallet.”
“I’ll use a stone. I’ll wrap it in cloth.”
The ronin nodded. “I cannot fix the joint. It is fine work. Difficult. Are you mechanist?”
“I am.”
Dashi crouched and moved close to the Tsungeru. The ronin sat on a flat boulder and stretched his damaged leg in the lantern light. Dashi could see the joint now. Cables had come out of the diverter track and the gears were getting no friction as they turned. Too much slack.
Dashi’s hands shook and he did not know what to do with the cables. He could not get them loose enough to move, even with the pliers. He wasn’t holding them right, or they were the wrong size, or he was just too drunk. He knocked the diverter back with the mallet and leveraged his arms and the lantern tipped over but blindly he managed to get the cables into their track. He righted the lantern and tightened the diverter and secured the gear catch. He had made the repair.
“Very good,” said Tsungeru.
“Yes, very good.”
The Clockwork Ronin stood. He paced and moved his knee and it worked as it should. He stared at the rocks again.
“What is this place?”
Dashi wiped his brow and sat because he was too dizzy now. “They used these rocks to build a house. I can show you the house and you may remember it. A rich man owns it. He may know you from long ago. I don’t know, but I can show you the house and you can help me too.”
“Do you know the name?” said Tsungeru.
Dashi thought a moment. He did know it but he could not say it yet. He blinked and clicked his tongue. “Yes,” he said at last. “Harinukawa Shinmo, he is Kabuki.”
Tsungeru stared at the rocks again and muttered. “Shinmo. I don’t know.”
Dashi fell back on soft moss suddenly. “Why do you care about something you can’t remember? Go somewhere else, go fight wars. There is nothing in Shangti, nothing for anyone.”
Tsungeru stepped over a few stones and lifted Dashi by the collar. “We’ll go tonight?”
Dashi caught his balance. He was drunk, and confident, and he said that they could go tonight. “Why do you care? Yes, I don’t want to go home yet.”
In less than an hour they stood waiting for the night train to Motenashi Station. The train came, it was vacant, they boarded. The train stopped three times along the way but the platforms were all empty at this hour. Only once did they see another person, and he was only passing from car to car asking for money.
“Excuse me gentle folk,” he said, looking at neither of them. “I don’t mean to burden any of you, but I’ve had hard times. I just need a little to get me through the month and out of Shangti. I know it’s asking a lot and I’m not proud to ask but I think I might find work with the straw bosses and I need money to get out of Shangti and through the month. Excuse me gentle folk, I don’t mean to burden any of you…”
He did not stop walking as he said any of this, and the speech began again the moment he entered the next car. He was gaijin, from overseas, but he was thin and his hair had been cut close to his skull. Grease marks riddled his clothes and he smelled of soot.
Motenashi Station was not empty. Some stared as the Clockwork Ronin stepped out of the train car but they were not surprised by him. The district was still loud at this hour, and the streets were as drunk as Dashi. But they were walking away from the noise, to the gated streets of Lao’goa.
Dashi told Tsungeru what he had been contemplating over the last few weeks. His voice was slow and he was tired from sitting. “He hasn’t been seen in ages,” he slurred. “A man as rich as that, not seen for that long, I think he may be rich enough to stay away from Shangti without even leaving it. Or he’s dead.” His voice sharpened suddenly as he stretched his back. “We can go inside his house and you can see if you recognize anything, and I can look for things that might be as valuable to me as your memory is to you.”
Dashi knew now more than Toshi had told him. He had learned where to find the house, and he had learned about the last appearance of Shinmo in the Motenashi Theaters.
“His troupe isn’t allowed to be seen unmasked and he stood in front of the audience and said, ‘I’ll not wear the mask again, and you will not see me again because of it.’”
“He retired,” said Tsungeru, and his tone had changed. Dashi knew that all of this sounded familiar to the Clockwork Ronin.
“You’re as smart as a man,” said Dashi.
“I was a man once.”
Dashi told Tsungeru what he had learned last week from a man he’d met at the Steamworks. He told him that Shinmo had retired and discharged the samurai who protected him and his home. Tsungeru stiffened for a moment. This was an important fact.
“All of that, it sounds like an easy pick for thieves like us,” said Dashi,
“Thieves,” said Tsungeru and this did not sound like a question.
Harinukawa Shinmo’s home stood on a low hill and the path to his gate wound around the hill. Fronds clung to the rock and one could not see the road from the path.
“I don’t hear any sounds and I don’t see lights,” said Dashi but he said it too loudly and Tsungeru held his brass palm over Dashi’s mouth.
“There is someone near us,” said the ronin. He held his sword.
They rounded the path and came to the gate which was tall and thick. Through the iron bars they could see the house, past a wide lawn. Someone stood on the other side of the gate. It was a young woman.
“We’re here to see your master,” said Dashi.
She only stared. Slowly her face grew dark. “You have tickets?” She held a hand threw the bars but something was strange. Dashi stepped back. The hand followed him. It was longer than it should have been.
“Stop, where is your master?”
“I have none,” said the girl. She unlatched the gate. “Do you have tickets? No. Then you can watch with us in the guard house.”
The gate swung open and the young girl sunk into the shadows and was gone.
“I do not know her,” said the ronin. He pulled Dashi into the yard.
Dashi did not want to go any further. His confidence had turned to dread. He had been wrong about this place, it would not be easy, and it was not vacant like he thought it would be. He could hear a crowd somewhere nearby. The guard house, he thought.
“Why do they say he hasn’t been seen if he has as many friends as that?” hissed Dashi. He wanted to go home. Tsungeru would not let him.
When they reached the garden Tsungeru stopped and looked at the stones and he shuddered. “There was a bench here once, I’m sure of it. It is gone now.”
“You see. You know.”
The ronin looked from the main house, which was massive and thick and dark, to the guard house which was thin and low and filled with light. A crowd stood around it. Many of them were staring now at the ronin and at Dashi.
“Come here, the show will begin!” said an old man whose hands shook. None of these people were very clean, not like the friends of a famous kabuki should be. The old man had one good eye and the other was shriveled and did not move.
More of the people approached Dashi and Tsungeru, reaching out with ragged sleeves over frail limbs. “The show, you don’t need a ticket for this one.”
Tsungeru looked to the house. He had seen the walls and he had recognized the stone from the quarry. “There is a room, next to the entrance, where a man can see the gardens and the gate. It is empty now. I do not know how I know this.”
Why is no one worried to see us here? Dashi could not stop asking himself these questions. We are trespassers, why do none of these people ask who we are and our business?
The people, whose faces where half shadow from the light of the guard house, drew close. A young girl took Dashi by the hand. She felt cold, and she felt strong as she tugged at him, pulling him away from the main house. “You can’t go in there, the Ticket-Taker will find you. But you don’t need a ticket for the guard-house. Forget about Shinmo. Even with a ticket one can only see his show once and never again, and one will want to see it again but cannot. See our show instead. We’ve found someone better. Something far better than kabuki, and you can watch this show forever without ever needing a ticket.”
She had pulled Dashi very near to the guard house now. He could see shadows inside but he could not see through the open door. The crowd tumbled out from it. He could hear a sound from within, under all the voices, a wet sound, a hard cracking sound, a growling sound. It terrified him. In his mind he wanted to leave, he wanted to go back to his home. But in his gut he wanted to see what was inside this building and his legs were obeying his gut tonight.
“It is better, this show, than the one Shinmo will give you. You won’t want to look away, not ever.”
He could see a corner of the floor of the guard house, now, through the open door. There was blood. He could hear another sound now, the sound of a man crying. Dashi thought it should be the cry of pain, but it was the cry of regret, the cry of a man could not reverse whatever horrors he had seen. Dashi did not like this sound and he wanted to see what could cause it.
“I know this place,” said Tsungeru, who followed him. “We can’t go inside. There was a time. We can’t go into the guardhouse.”
“I want to see,” said Dashi. “What is going on inside?”
The girl shook her head. “The show is perfect. Shinmo will only admit you once, but this is better, this you can watch forever. You will watch forever. Much more, much better. None of the silence and all of the noise.”
Dashi wrenched his arm free and fell on the ground. “Who is in there? Let me see; stop dragging me I’ll come with you.”
“No,” said Tsungeru. “These people are all dead. All of them. You don’t belong here and you do not want to look through that door. You do not want to watch a show that is meant for the dead”
“How do you know? You can’t remember. Who is in the guard house?”
Tsungeru pulled Dashi by the strap of his tool satchel. “You do not want to know who is in the guard house.”
He lifted Dashi and pushed through the groping crowd. Dashi’s stomach lurched and he nearly vomited. The faces were angry. Tsungeru carried him away from the crowd, to the door of the massive main house and he opened the door. The crowd did not come any closer.
“The Ticket-Taker will find you,” said a man whose jaw was bruised and dirty. “He’ll ask for a ticket and if you have one you will regret bringing it. If you don’t you will regret not having one. Come to the guard house. There are no tickets for that show.”
Dashi stood on his toes, looking over the heads of the crowd, trying to see into the guard house again. Behind him Tsungeru did not knock on Harinukawa Shinmo’s door. He merely opened that door and entered, dragging Dashi by the strap of his satchel into the dark hall. The crowd did not follow and the door shut so that Dashi could not hear them cheering at the guard house anymore.
“You do not want to see,” said Tsungeru in the dark. “I remember something. I remember being here and having to leave. I remember when the guard house was clean and I remember the angry dead coming to it and doing terrible things there. This used to be a peaceful place. Something has happened.”
Dashi struggled to his feet. “Let me go. We’re inside now, let me go.”
A flash of sulfur shown on his face as he struck a match. He could see Tsungeru, walking ahead of him as if the darkness had not mattered.
“Why were they here?” he whispered. “Why do they haunt the garden of Shinmo?”
Tsungeru did not answer. Instead he asked a question of his own, and Dashi did not think this question was meant for him. “If the dead fill the yard, where are the corpses?” said the ronin in a soft voice that could barely be heard above the whirring of his gears. Dashi followed him.
“Those people saw us, you didn’t knock. They’ll send a constable. We should leave.”
Tsungeru shook his head. “Constables are for the living.”
“This place isn’t empty,” said Dashi. He felt nauseous.
“That is the door I must open,” said Tsungeru. They had entered a wide hall with stairs in the middle and doors all around. Tsungeru pointed to one on the second floor. It was too dark to see well. Dashi thought someone stood atop the stairs but he squinted and there was no one.
“What is through it?” said Dashi.
“I don’t know,” said the ronin. He began to climb the stairs with Dashi close behind.
Half way, the match fizzled. Dashi did not light another. Starlight dropped from high windows. They climbed the stairs, which were solid and made no sound under the Clockwork Ronin’s heavy feet.
“I remember someone small,” he said.
When they reached the door to which Tsungeru had pointed, he did not knock there either. It opened easily on clean hinges. This was a room with windows along one wall, and the light was not bad. Everything was gray, but it could all be seen. Tsungeru entered and stood in the center. Dashi shut the door.
It was a room for children. There were two small beds near one wall, and a table surrounded by wooden toys. A cabinet stood next to the door and after glancing over the room, Tsungeru stared at this without moving.
“Their clothes were in here,” he said.
Dashi had gone to look at the table and the toys. None of these were broken. None of these were dirty and cracked. A child would have space to play with them, and they were kept neatly in boxes. A child would not have to wait for his turn to play with any of these, as there were so many here. Dashi thought of a shovel and pail he had as a child, for digging pebbles in the garden. There was a pail here too, but it had never left this room.
“I’m going,” said Dashi.
Tsungeru had not moved except to hold a finger toward the cabinet. He stood still, pointing. “The older one there. The younger one below.”
Dashi went to the door. Something moved by the beds. He turned.
“Did you see it?”
Tsungeru had not.
Dashi stared, there were shadows and the starlight did not move. The room was empty.
Dashi opened the door and went into the hallway again. He went to the stairs. Why had he come here? He wasn’t a thief. He was drunk, and angry, and he shouldn’t have come into a man’s house without asking. He shouldn’t have come to a place so full with ghosts. Kuro would wonder where he had gone tonight and she would be up and worrying. The children might hear her whisper to herself and they would be up and worrying with her. He shouldn’t have come. He was leaving now.
He told himself these things as he took the stairs. He was unsteady and held the rail. Now and then he glanced at the door to the children’s room, where Tsungeru must have still been standing and pointing without moving. Why did he care about things that he couldn’t remember?
And at the bottom of the steps someone touched Dashi’s hand.
He stopped. Someone dark and crooked stood next to him. Dashi did not want to speak. He walked quickly, jerking his hand away from the rail, but someone stood in front of him now. It was the same figure, dark and crooked.
“Your ticket?”
Dashi stopped, said nothing.
“Your ticket…” said the voice of an old man. In the low light Dashi could only make out a pale face with a long and pointed beard. A hand reached forward holding something. “Here is your ticket,” said the old man.
Dashi squinted. “I did not mean to come inside, I am going.”
The man gripped Dashi cold and fierce by the wrist and forced his palm up. The man was holding a small slip of paper, with calligraphy on the face in gold that shimmered in the starlight. He put this in Dashi’s hand.
“Your ticket.”
Now Dashi could see him. The man wore silk robes. He had long fingers, too long. A chain hung around his neck, latched to a small wooden box with a slit in the top. It was a ticket box.
Dashi wanted to run. He closed his fist over the ticket he had been given and he tried to walk away, but the man had him by the wrist still, and by the elbow now.
“Now you’ll give it to me,” said the old man, whose voice was a taut thread. “No admittance without a ticket. Put it in the box!”
The man wrenched Dashi’s arm so hard he fell to his knees with a cry.
“Put it in the box!”
Dashi unclenched his fist and straightened the paper. He reached to the man’s neck where the box hung, and he put the ticket through the slot. Immediately the man’s grip was bearable. He brought Dashi to his feet without letting go, but no longer were the fingers like a clamp on his arm.
“Come with me.”
Dashi followed as the man led him away from the stairs, away from the entrance, to a darker part of the house. Soon Dashi could not see and his chest was rubble from fear and he could not speak or cry.
The Ticket-Taker led him in the darkness quickly and Dashi worried he would trip. He could hear the old man breathing with difficulty as if some disease had crippled his lungs. This sound, and the hands on his arm, were now his only sensations, until the smell found his nose.
It was a horrible smell, like the dead alleys of Daoko Suru where garbage had been piled and never cleaned away. In a moment they stopped and the Ticket-Taker opened a door. The smell grew stronger. Dashi wanted to vomit. He was nauseous already from drinking and now the smell filled his stomach too.
The Ticket-Taker pushed him through the door and shut it again. A hiss came, which was the opening of a gas valve and suddenly a spark sounded to light the lamps.
Dashi’s eyes adjusted to the light and he could see the old man in front of him, smiling with blue lips before stepping away and standing against the wall.
Dashi vomited on the bare floor. He could see why the smell was so strong here. In the corner of the room was a pile of bodies that rotted in the close air. Some were old and the flesh had fallen away, some were new and still bled on the floor. Dashi vomited again and stumbled against the wall.
He could see their faces, they were so close. He noticed first that they were smiling. They had died smiling and the faces had not changed since. And what horrible, painful smiles they were. Dashi could not look away. He glanced from face to face, hoping he would find one with closed eyes and peaceful lips. He did not find one such as that.
“I’ve seen them before,” he said holding his stomach. He had seen them. He had seen them in the garden of this very house, gathered around the guard house. None of them had died well. “I’ve seen them,” he said.
In a moment the Ticket-Taker forced Dashi to his feet again. When Dashi was steady enough, the old man left him and went to the far side of the room where red curtains hung from the ceiling and a golden rope hung with them so that they could be parted. The Ticket-Taker held this rope as if he would pull it.
“The Great Harinukawa Shinmo stands ready to bring you the tale of the Lesser Tusuoko Che, in which the emperors of old are confounded by the demands of a young man. He waits, behind the curtain, to bring their faces to you through his own, now unbound by the mask that held him in check for ages. Shinmo!”
The Ticket-Taker inhaled a long breath. The air in his chest was held longer than it should have been. He pulled the rope. The curtain parted.
Dashi did not know where the old man went then. He simply vanished and Dashi was alone with the corpses and an empty stage. Lamps were lit and shadows were cast. There was a blue screen in front of one of the gas-flames and a colored film flickered over the wooden floor. Then the footsteps were heard from somewhere back stage.
No one entered the stage. A drum began and the footsteps kept its rhythm. No one had entered. The drum quickened and the gas-lights flared. Now a man’s shadow was seen approaching but his movement did not match the steps, and when his body was seen on the stage, his feet moved quietly and the footsteps were not his own. Dashi wanted to move to the door but he could not.
The man was dressed in a simple kimono of blue and white. His hair was tied in a top knot. He was middle-aged and handsome. Nothing unusual stood out about this man unless it was his confidence, and for that he was yet more terrifying in this place of odd things. He bowed once, stiff and reverent. Then he spoke.
“Welcome.”
Dashi wondered if he should respond. He didn’t.
“A man wonders if life is the gift we’re given, or if ours is the gift of death.” The lights dimmed. The man on stage, Shinmo it must have been, lifted his eyes once and they were alive with echoes of daylight. “This tale has never been told before.” He turned his back to Dashi. “Not like this.”
He held his hand out to the side now and Dashi could see that he held something. In the low light he saw a mask, white and shimmering, gold-edged with onyx above the eyes, sapphire tears, lips of beveled crimson and ribbons of silk for the ties.
“I hold death in my hand for you to see. It is beautiful. It speaks to you without words, it touches those parts of you that have walked through the brambles. But it does not change. I am no longer the face of death. Neither is our hero tonight.”
Shinmo placed the mask on the floor and stepped away from it. The kabuki turned and Dashi was shocked by a new expression on this ordinary man’s face. It was hatred, and anger, and passion, and love. It was many things at once and Dashi could not move, not even to blink.
“I have seen the rivers swelling in the new rain,” said the kabuki, in a young voice. “I have seen the trees snap in the wind. These are small things and these are great things. Your city is unfinished. Do you see the shade of red I mean to bring?”
Shinmo spun, quickly as if he had moved without moving. He entered the stage again, decrepit and old with a face that had been lost. “You must leave. These are our gates and you have no place within them, where all places are ours.”
He spun again and was a regal man whose face had spent an eternity’s conviction on some thought which his eyes could not help but prove false. “There are ways to say the things you’ve said, but the ways in which you’ve said them haunt meanings that would have been better kept elsewhere. Return when you are older.”
He spun again and was the young man.
Dashi watched, paralyzed with awe. He no longer thought of the corpses piled beside him. He no longer thought of the Clockwork Ronin. He no longer thought of the priceless mask discarded to the floor. He no longer thought of his children. He thought only of Harinukawa Shinmo, and Dashi could feel his own face tighten at the corners, and a smile had formed. He lost everything else and was there beside the young man on the steps of the empire, watching the dust sift from the stones.
Shinmo told of the feast that was broken by a girl’s refusal to eat. He told of the empty halls. With a wave of his hand he was the wind and told of the cold that fell on the city. With a blink of his eye he was at once every lamp going dark. He told of the walls of the city and the sheets of silk hung from them in honor of the water that had been driven from that place so long ago. He told of the death of a young man. And for a moment, he was the shadow of an improper grave.
Dashi’s fingernails dug into the floor as he watched. His limbs had grown rigid. His heart had a fast and irregular beat and he was sweating. Had he been conscious of it he would have felt the most unbearable pain through the muscles of his back as they strained against his spine. But he was not aware of this. And he was not aware that behind him the door had opened and someone had joined him in this room with Shinmo.
Even when the ronin appeared Dashi did not at first notice him.
Tsungeru moved quickly. His sword cut the air and before Shinmo could move away he was impaled. His face lost all emotion and he was himself again, usual, unremarkable. Just a man.
Dashi could feel the pain now.
“Do you know what he’s done to himself?” shouted Tsungeru, pushing his blade into the floor and leaning on Shinmo who bled over the planks. “Do you know where they are? Do you know what has become of them since you removed that mask and brought men to die with glad faces? You had children once, they loved you. Sungsi looked after his younger brother and told him you would be home soon, and you never were. They waited at your door, they looked through their clothes to find costumes that would make them look like real kabuki. They came to your bath once, before you sent me away, and they wanted to have tea with you but you told me to not let them enter and I did and they were sad but deserved to be angry. And you were free to see them but cherished too much your thoughts, and too little the mask. They would have died to entertain you and now Sungsi entertains those who have died to be entertained by you, and you don’t remember who they were when they were Sungsi and Kuto, and loved you. I watched them wonder when you would come again from the theater, and I watched the ghosts beg them for another taste of the poison you serve. I watched them…”
Tsungeru went quiet then. Shinmo shuddered and he too stilled. Dashi stood over them both with his satchel of tools and from it the small cable-saw he kept there. He had cut the gear shaft in Tsungeru’s neck. He had remembered that that would kill a Clockwork Ronin if done correctly and somehow he had stood and walked through his own agony and done this thing correctly. Tsungeru fell aside, to the floor, and Dashi went into his satchel and brought out the tools he would need to dismantle the thing that had already been killed.
“What more was there to the story if you hadn’t killed him?” shouted Dashi. “The tale was not finished. Not yet!”
His hands flew at the ronin and within moments the ronin was in ten pieces about the floor. Dashi’s back seared with pain as he stood. Before him Tsungeru was scattered, a gear here a cable there, a hinge and a spring. The discs of copper that had made his eyes twitched in the pool of Shinmo’s blood. Dashi looked at these things and felt regret for having destroyed his friend with such unconscious speed, and the regret made him shiver and his chest convulsed with sobs. But he was angry, too, that the great Shinmo had been interrupted in the midst of so full a human tale.
Dashi could not stand here any longer. His back seared as he took the mask of Harinukawa Shinmo, and left this room.
He found his way out of the house in the dark. Around him there were footsteps but he did not turn to look, and no one bothered him as he went. Things had quieted some. He heard a man sobbing that regretful sob, and now he thought he understood it and he wanted to see who made the sound. But he did not want to stay here any longer and he did not turn to look at the guard house.
He wandered home without realizing, without thinking, without remembering which alleys to take. In their small room his family was asleep. Dashi put the mask above the cupboard and he climbed onto the mattress, careful to pull his knees in so that his legs would not disturb the children. He did not sleep yet.
He thought of the theater district of Motenashi and wondered if anyone there knew the tale Shinmo had tried to tell. He wanted to hear more of it. He wanted the ending. He spent an hour convincing himself that there were many theaters, and he would surely find one that would show such a play. But this thought made him angry and he knew that no performance would be great enough to continue where Shinmo had been forced to stop. He knew that his life had been spared but knew also that death would have been better for him than to have let this thing go unfinished. He wore a mad smile in the dark tonight.
He finally fell asleep, and he slept through the morning. He did not wake to go to the Keiko Bathhouse for his shift there, and Kuro could not wake him. He drenched the sheets with his sweat and shuddered in his nightmares.
For three days Dashi thought of nothing but Shinmo. For three more he thought of nothing but Tsungeru. And when his mind at last calmed he could think of nothing but the mask.
He did not know how to sell it. It frightened him that owning such a mask was forbidden for all those who did not belong to the troupe, and that the troupe punished those who stole them with death. Dashi knew that it was very valuable, but he did not know who would buy it, or how to ask.
He spent much time in the Motenashi District. At first he thought he might overhear something that would lead him to a buyer, but he heard no such thing. He kept going because there were actors there, and troupes that would perform for free on terraces trying to make a name for themselves. Sometimes he would watch them perform for hours, sometimes he would move from troupe to troupe trying unsuccessfully to find a version of Shinmo’s tale. He did this when he was supposed to be looking for work, and he left the district very late some evenings with cramps in his stomach and nausea behind his ears.
He still had hard nights with jittering hands and his jaw rattled in the alleys of the Motenashi District as he hunted for the completion of a tale that haunted his ears more than any other sound. It was on one such night that he found himself standing in the guttering light of a paper lantern, screaming delirious the tale he had heard, to the point he had heard it. And when he quit, unable to continue for lack of knowing what to say next for the tale to go on, he heard applause. He had drawn an audience. Faces covered with soot and faces demure alike had gathered around and stopped to listen, enthralled by this version, and for a moment, a moment only, Dashi thought he knew what might happen next in this tale, as if the telling of it had been filled with hints. Then it was gone and he wandered home in the dark.
He went back again other days and did the same, almost unconscious of the act, and he never fully realized what he was doing until the performance was through and the audience had gone away. And always afterward he felt as if, somewhere in his skull, he knew more than he thought he knew.
Performance quickly became exhilarating for Dashi, and in a small way it replaced in his mind the obsession with Harinukawa Shinmo’s tale, by giving him a way to examine that obsession. He thought about his words and his smile and his eyes as he slept in bed at night next to his shivering wife, next to his children who were growing as thin as he was. And one night, the thoughts were too much for Dashi to hold and he stood up in bed and woke everyone, and he lit the lamp and was loud in the middle of the night.
“I’m going to tell you tale,” he shouted at his family with a mad smile, and behind the smile was the madness that had dismantled his friend Tsungeru in the twitching of a nerve. “I’m going to tell you of the Tusuoko Che River, which was beautiful once.”
“We are hungry, we are tired, we cannot listen,” said Kuro, but Dashi silenced her with that mad smile and she held her elbows on the bed.
He told his drowsy family of the young man and his long walk from the deltas. He told them of the days spent in the rain and the days spent in the steam. Dashi twirled and was the man who pushed the ferry. Dashi knelt and was the stones of Dao Tso. Within moments the sleep had fallen away from his children’s eyes.
He told them of the place where the river was buried under stone and issued from a weir. He told them of the city that had been built over the Lesser Tusuoko Che and how the young man could no longer follow its banks for its banks were dead. So he went into the city, and walked to the gates of the palace where the Three Emperors were standing in council.
With a twitch of his hand Dashi was the echo of a knocking door. With a bent back he was the oldest of the emperors, standing on the veranda and saying nothing. With a dip of his head the young man was before the banquet, asking for the chance to speak.
“The river is all I know and I cannot know all of the river.”
The emperors did not stand as they spoke back to him.
“This city will not move for you.”
“This city is the river. It flows with human life instead of water.”
“The Tusuoko Che is here still and you know it by walking the streets that cover it.”
Dashi knelt and begged and the young man threatened the emperors that the river would swallow them if the did not let it breathe again. With a tilt of his head Dashi was the youngest emperor’s oldest daughter who felt sad for the young man.
Dashi told his family of the great fire and of the young man’s execution as the emperors stood in the ash filled air. He told them of the blood seeping through stone.
And now the tale as Dashi knew it had ended. It was here that the story had been cut from the air by Tsungeru’s sword. He could not pause, he could not let the scene die, and so as he told his family of the proper funeral of the emperor’s daughter Dashi began to speak to them of ghosts.
“When the blood touched the buried water the young man walked as a shadow, much as the hordes of Shinmo walk in shadow before his door.”
And with a straight back he was Harinukawa Shinmo himself, standing resolute before the troupe, refusing to perform again, refusing to wear the mask ever again. “Then you must never be seen again,” he was told and he walked away with a straight back and arms folded.
Dashi told his family of the house and it’s theater where Shinmo continued to perform for those who were hapless enough to find him there, and with a ridged smile Dashi was a corpse driven to a mad death through the joy of watching, through one man, all that had happened in all the world.
“My children, you must not touch this door,” Shinmo said to his two boys, and with wide eyes Dashi was young again wanting to see his father. He nearly stumbled out of character because it jarred him to think of small faces staring up at a door that hasn’t opened for far too long. But he was back again, and stern, as the samurai guard who would not let them touch the knob. He was soft again as the samurai watching through the nursery door as Shino’s children rummaged through the clothes of the dresser to make costumes with which to stage their own play and draw their father out again.
With a lift of his heel Dashi was the swift samurai leaving Shinmo’s home and finding work far from here, in a place and time that would turn him into a machine and still his memories. With the swinging of his arm Dashi was a Clockwork Ronin who had forgotten the two children, both of them alone and so terribly sad.
“Two boys followed a river that they loved, listening always to its voice, and they found it now buried behind a theater door in a house made from dark stones.”
Dashi stood still and was suddenly the shadow of a dead man, a ghost without rest, wandering the halls of that stone house. “We have no tickets, please can you tell us a story to settle our hearts?” And the young boys were no longer alone, but yet more terribly sad than they could have imagined.
With a twitch of his back Dashi was the tortured and twisted form of a boy who had been in the company of ghosts for too long. With the flash of a sneer he was Sungsi and he tore his younger brother Kuto’s throat to the bone so as to thrill a crowd of the ghosts.
“And the young man’s blood soaked through those stones, to the river again, where steam rose in the form of someone who had heard at last a voice he had wanted to hear since those first steps from the delta in the rain.”
And Dashi bowed low to his family, and collapsed on the floor where they left him until morning. They did not sleep and they did not speak.
In the morning, for the first time, Dashi realized that he was hungry.
This performance was not his last. “I am going to Motenashi again,” he told Kuro, two nights later, and she was worried as he left. But she said nothing. Today he took the mask with him.
He did not use it. He kept it hidden in his satchel, and he gathered money from the audiences who came to see him in the alleys. But in time, his hand reached into the satchel as he spun and laughed, and he held the mask above his head and told his audience that every changing face was but this face and no other.
The crowd went wholly silent.
“Who will buy this?” he shouted. “It is the soul of every man who has ever lived. Who will buy it?”
And in the crowd, there was movement as a shadow pushed toward him.
Dashi did not know the man who purchased the mask from him. Afterward he could not even remember the face, but one thought always bothered him, and it was that he did not think the mouth ever moved.
For a time this made him nervous. He thought Shinmo’s troupe might know all that had happened, and that one day a silent figure would drag him into the dead alley’s of the Daoko Suru.
But this never happened. In time Dashi learned to forget about the danger he had brought upon himself. He learned to pretend none of it had ever happened. He learned to think of it all as a play he must have seen while wandering the Motenashi District.
He could not explain away the money, though. He had enough now that he moved his family away from the Tekkai Sao Ravine, and back to the Juutakuchi District where the streets were lit and there were parks for his children. They had furniture now, and clean basins. Dashi liked this new flat.
“You are acting yourself again,” Kuro said to him at one point.
“I do not want to think of it as acting,” Dashi told her, and they smiled together. They were sad smiles, as if they were mourning lost time. They were sad as if they must be sad, because now they had every reason to be happy.
Dashi could not quit his job at the bathhouse, but he had no need for a second job and he spent much time with his children. Sometimes he would even watch Kenji play with the lutuki game. It was the same broken and incomplete set they had in Daoko Suru, but Dashi had insisted it be brought to their new home. He and Ling watched Kenji play alone, and for the first time in his life, Dashi was overjoyed that his children could be so happy with something that was broken.
