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He wakes not to light, not to darkness. He opens eyes he is not sure are eyes at all, flexes fingers he cannot see or feel. There’s no up or down, no left or right, no lack of sensation nor sensation at all. There is nothing here.
Nothing, that is, except the faint, distant notes of a song.
It’s some time, he thinks, before he realizes it’s there, so quietly does it begin. The sound ebbs and flows, flitting far away from him when he thinks to chase it—then approaches again, once he’s not searching. It’s a warm sort of sound. It’s a chorus of voices, then the gentle wash of a quiet sea’s waves over sand.
The rustling of a summer breeze through a field ripe with grain, the sound of sandaled footsteps on an unpaved road lined with grass.
Bright, ringing laughter.
He listens, and he sees. No—perhaps he remembers, from a life lived before this one.
There is a young boy—still slight, not yet grown into the frame of adulthood. He stands like a saint, a child holding a banner of war and the weight that hangs from it like a shroud. He smiles. His teeth are crooked when he does.
There is a mother and an infant, two faces among thousands. She gazes upon him, their boy-messiah, like he can bring her deliverance, as though he glows with some kind of divine light in the diffuse darkening of the evening sky. She cradles her infant to her chest, rocks him to sleep in her arms. He awakens, anyway, to the cheers that rock the fields soon afterward.
There is a cold winter, so quiet it could deafen. There is a castle, long left in ruins, nestled atop a bluff that overlooks the ocean. The greenery has long died, leaving behind only spindles that stretch toward the gray sky.
There are people—men, women, children—running toward the sea, up the slope of icy grass that leads to the cliff’s edge. Some die before they reach it, struck down with blades that shine bright in the watery winter light. The blood, though, doesn’t shine. The blood sprays and scatters, beni-colored inkblots against the white of the ground. Steam rises where it falls.
There is a body, floating silently in the ocean. The waves crest over it gently, almost as though to carry it away for a funeral. When the snow falls, white specks over the never-ending expanse of blue, it melts into the water, leaving not a trace behind but the snowflakes that chase after it.
There is the boy-messiah—his head, bloodied, eyes-closed, sits strangely without the weight of the body attached to it. He is older now than he was before, but he will never outgrow this age. The head remains there, the hair stirring in the chill Nagasaki wind, until it rots. Bruising color creeps over it like vines.
There is fire. The weather has warmed since the dead of winter, but now it becomes hot—searing, blistering. The castle burns, the stone cracks. There are still people inside it, but they do not move. This time, they do not run for the sea—instead, they pray. Even as their skin boils, as their tongues still—they pray, and it would only be kind to think that their prayers are heard.
There is the flash of a blade in the waxing yellow sun. At its wielder’s waist—a scabbard, dappled like the pattern of light over rough waters.
And still, he hears the song.
The song, the hymn, the prayer.
And he reaches for it.
And there is something both heat and chill at once, something that burns like a furnace and cracks like ice in the dead of winter, something that floods a body he didn’t know he had—something that is pain, something that is pleasure, something that is cacophony and calm and noise and silence and nerve and assurance, something that is joyous like bells and as sorrowful as the summer rains.
And then, finally, there is quiet.
When he opens his eyes, he is greeted by the soft pink of petals, falling around him like an early snow. He lifts a hand, catches one in his palm. The touch is soft, but it rings like a forge hammer.
And he lowers his hand, and smiles through the weight around his neck. He knows, without ever having laid eyes on it, what form it will take. His memories have told him clearly enough.
“Matsui Gou, a famous blade forged by Gou no Yoshihiro. Compared to singing and dancing, I’d say I’m better at spilling and splashing. Spilling what? Why, blood, of course.”