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“As of today, he is your master.”
It was spoken with a lilting humor. The Lord of the land laughed like a sword unsheathed, his shoulders raised to his red human ears in time with it, and the blood rushed to his face with great ease. Tomoe looked from him to the boy who wore an expression so grave she knew she’d never made a choice so easy in her life. He was a shy little boy, though he’d be loathe to admit it because he carried his grandfather’s wishes, his face and his reputation like a pack slung over his shoulder wherever he’d go. Tomoe strode towards him, leaving Isshin’s amusement behind like dust to her heels.
He is so small, she thought, towering over him as she was, though Genichiro exaggerated the fact by curling into himself and crouching in the dirt, making ragged patterns in the soil with his finger.
“Would your grandfather approve?”
Genichiro stiffened, stalling his motion.
Tomoe continued, “Dirtying his noble fingers in the sediment?” She smiled, though Genichiro kept his head low.
Her eyes widened, growing impossibly large. She spoke slowly, putting power into each word, “Does it trouble you to meet my face?”
Indeed, men gawked and scowled at her height, but it was the horrors of her flesh which caused wanton rage. Their faces will wrinkle like ripples in the water, Tomoe. Not delicately. Not like a pebble, but like a boulder falling from a height unimaginable into a pool. And it will sink, Tomoe, the boulder is strong and deadly, but it will sink. It doesn’t belong in the pool. It should have stayed on the mountain. Shizu loved to entertain, but the heresy of Tomoe’s desires would not be.
Genichiro turned his body to look up at her, bending his knee. His face betrayed no delicacy, he was Isshin’s no doubt; no etiquette. It did wrinkle as his eyes ran over her face, catching places like her ridged nose and wide nostrils. (It amused her still that humanity’s idols of the Divine Dragon had never prepared them for its face to face them.) Then he focused on her eyes, deep and black, the only light that escaped was the light she’d let in, then let out; a revolution of control. He swallowed, standing to face her. He balled his fists and Tomoe thought of how he’d handle the grip of a bow.
“I’ve offended you, My Lady.” He had no trace of shame, he’d hidden it behind layers of pride, of impatience, and a curiosity for what a being such as her could impart. He would have made a fine blacksmith, constructing armor plate by plate if fate found him in a forge instead of a castle, Tomoe thought, he’s built a heavy guard in no time at all.
“We’ll see what offends me.” She turned her back to him. He wasn’t sure if it was an instruction to follow, but trusted his gut and did. He’d heard her speak from several feet away as he tried to catch up, “You don’t belong down in the earth, young Master. I’ll have you leaping so high you’ll forget it altogether.”
⁂
She’d insisted all court formalities be stripped from the space where they trained. He’d kept his delight at that request to himself he thought, but Tomoe had a good eye.
“What should I call you?” Genichiro asked.
“Whatever you see fit,” Tomoe answered.
“Master then.”
Tomoe had turned her head at that, her long neck twisting like a tree. Genichiro’s face was red and he held the pommel of his blade tightly. She mercifully walked away, towards the dojo’s rack of spears.
Genichiro caught sight of that, his mouth hung open, eagerly running towards the rack to swap his katana for a spear. Tomoe grabbed his wrist before he could close his fist around the bloody red weapon.
“Ready yourself. Ready yourself with your sword.”
“But you’re—”
Her eyes grew, Genichiro was certain he’d never grow familiar with the feeling it inspired. He relaxed his hand and Tomoe did as well. He walked back and closed his fist around his sword’s hilt, the tsuka’s wrappings damp. It sat at his hip, holstered, but he reminded himself not to let it slip from his palms.
He watched her back, how wrongly Ashina’s armor moved with her body. Her hair was wild and long, and Genchiro wondered if it ever got in her way. He supposed he was about to find out.
He furrowed his brow.
What’s taking her so long? Does she think I’ve let my defenses down?
He inched forward, taking on the stance of an Elite before they’d unleash the Ashina Cross maneuver.
Does she want me to let my defenses down? Is she testing me?
“These weapons,” Tomoe started, “they've got a lot of weight to them.”
Genichiro grimaced, “Of course they do.”
She turned towards him, but kept her eyes on the bouncing of the pole’s weight in her palms. “We’ll have to do something about that.” She smiled at him and it was every affirmation she was not human, “I promised to get you off the ground.”
She spun, the only pretense was the loud thud of the heavy spear’s pointed head falling to the floor. It spun with her, it didn’t stop, it picked up speed in the direction of Genichiro. He stepped back and pulled his sword from its scabbard. If he was sweating before, this was something new—he tried to find a moment in Tomoe’s momentum to halt her, to jab his sword into the whirlwind of metal tearing circles into the dojo’s wooden floors.
Hesitation is defeat!
He stabbed downwards into the floor and felt the meeting between himself and the castle as the wood beneath him splintered and flew. He knew he’d missed because the spark of Tomoe’s spinning blade came after his attack. Genichiro had suddenly lost his grip on his sword, he’d hadn’t realized it until after he’d felt the blood running down his face.
He panted hard, hands still gripping a phantom sword. He’d at least had control over his vision, and glancing downwards saw half a blade embedded in the dojo’s floor. He turned his head to his right, towards where the ringing in his ears was the loudest, and saw the other half of his sword, a clean red sheen along its edge. He was putting the pieces together, as it were. He at last dabbed at his forehead and when he pulled back his hand he understood that this was where his sword hit him when it was bisected.
Tomoe ran her finger underneath the wound, sidelong, leveeing the flow of blood.
“It’ll leave a scar.” She said, “I’m sorry. I thought you’d jump.”
Genichiro met her eyes as she continued, “Isshin’s done a number on your instincts.”
⁂
Tomoe loved tea. The heat against the ceramic, the ceramic against her skin. She tilted the cup back, enjoying it as a proper Lady would. She drew her hand back from the side of the cup, observing the mark of heat it left against her skin, darkening it to a deep blue; it stung badly. She frowned and thought back to evenings with her sisters, when the sake flowed endless and they spun, lawless, bound to nothing. Tomoe would stare at the edge of the water, where it made a false horizon for them. It couldn’t flow forever, she thought, it had to pool somewhere, make its landing on solid ground. The mystery of it moved her and she fought the liquor’s drag, her heart racing at the contemplation.
“Master, your hand!”
Tomoe looked up at Genichiro, then closed her hand into a fist.
“My skin is a little different than yours, Genichiro, but it won’t stop me from drinking tea.”
She’d never seen him so worried. It amused her, “What?”
“Don’t laugh, Master! You’re hurt!”
She raised a brow, “I’m not.” She kept her fist closed. “I respond better to the cold. This world takes some getting used to. We’re both in training, I suppose.”
He stared at her kind face for a moment, then asked, “Will you teach me?”
She tilted her head. Genichiro continued, “My grandfather says hesitation is defeat, and you are unrivaled, Master. I’ve never seen you hesitate.”
She looked to her burnt palm.
“Do you think he’s right, Master?”
Tomoe flexed her fingers, “Yes.”
Genichiro relaxed his shoulders.
She imagined a life where she thought twice: she lay supine on a tatami mat, growing sores, the roots sprouting from her feet weaving with the tatami’s straw, and the sakura petals falling incessantly.
“Yes.” She said again, “On that we agree.”
⁂
Genichiro put his armor back on. Tomoe’s latest teachings spoke of the mastery of “god”. He didn’t understand what that meant, but he was jumping higher, inhumanly so. It required him to shed the makings of an Ashina clansman, the emblazoned flower would fall blasphemously to the floor. Tomoe noted the hesitation, and noted the anger following the hesitation as if it were her own. She told him, when he fought it would be an extension of Ashina’s grace. He was growing older, and with it his impatience grew for her poetry. In recent years, he would scowl at most things.
He adjusted his chest plate until it sat right, then felt a hand on his waist which spun him around. He wasn’t face to face with her, she still had some height on him, but Tomoe was close.
Genichiro’s lip curled, “What are you doing?”
She spun, and Genichiro was forced to spin with her. He pushed weakly at her arms, unsure of himself, of what Tomoe wanted him to learn.
“Master!”
“It’s an imported dance!” She said, moving to take Genichiro’s hand, “From a foreign land!”
They spun, and Genichiro twisted his head so he could find a measure of sense in Tomoe’s expression. She looked...senseless, purposeless, happy.
“Now what is it Takeru calls it?” She continued to spin them, “It was all in some strange writing from a stranger continent and he’d figured out the steps himself. Of course,” She pivoted them and the biting air from atop Ashina castle whipped Tomoe’s hair loose, it flowed like a typhoon around the two of them, “I was his test subject, but he deciphered it alone. He was inspired by its intimacy, heretical it was!”
Tomoe let out a wailing note, and Genichiro spun alone. He steadied himself and with his vision unblurred saw Tomoe on the ground, her face hidden in her hair.
What did I do? He thought. Did I do this to her? Have I been doing this to her? Genichiro’s eyes burned, all that spinning, and the air up here— Or have I been a distraction?
Genichiro walked towards Tomoe and put his hand on her back, without hesitation. He crouched further, letting the muscles in his legs give way to his armor’s weight and he collapsed beside his Master. He rested his head against her hair, closing his eyes and breathing in the smoke the Nightjars would use to light their way back home. She told him she used to smell of sakura, now she smelled of Ashina.
⁂
With two fingers Tomoe tapped Genichiro’s elbow, and he’d understood his angle needed improvement. But only by a touch. He was picking up archery with an intuitiveness Tomoe had only seen in another life. She gave him some space, walking back towards the stairwell that lead deeper into Ashina. It was spring again, and while everyone else forgoed bundles for bright, airy robes, Tomoe wore socks lined with a powder the physician Dogen concocted to keep her cool. She watched the trees shake and didn’t think of the Everblossom. She thought only of Ashina, of the earth under her feet.
She heard the sounds of Genichiro’s arrows beat against his bow. Its density was impeccably light; she’d berated the smithy, demanding perfection, yelling about time, and that if her young Master would soar, it would need to be now. The man withered under her and she’d rubbed small circles against his shoulders, an apology in the language she spoke most fluently these days. She’d found many things tired her, but—her ear twitched, she’d not heard contact for a while. Tomoe turned her head, and parted her lips, struck by Genichiro’s posture. He was on bent knee so every arrow flew heaven-wards. She followed their trajectory, watching it pierce a low-lying cloud. Genichiro reached for his quiver, grasping at nothing, having exhausted his stock.
He let his arms hang, but kept his eyes on the graying sky, the imminent spring shower.
Tomoe’s breathing stuttered, and she cried. The morning she’d leapt from the Divine Realm, she’d followed a current of air Shizu insisted was fabled. The descent was slow. She slipped the ties of her mask from her face and watched it shimmer against where the sun met the earth, an honest horizon. She’d landed in the heart of the mountains and danced where the water pooled.
She’d navigated herself, by instinct alone, into Takeru’s arms, and deemed it cruel fate would navigate him up the Floating Passage.
But Genichiro wasn’t divine. Good. In the only way it mattered, they were the same. Victims of fate who were arrogant enough to deny its nature by denying their own.
Leap, young Master, until you forget the earth altogether.