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In many ways, the tempo of life did not particularly change after Father was buried between the roots of the golden Gingko tree. Each day still required breaking a fast with rice porridge and tea, work around the homestead, bathing, practicing, a simple meal of rice and mushrooms, and a tired sleep. There were still masters to learn from, although their songs were different now. Hanbai taught her to flow with a katana like steps in a dance, Ran taught her how to fletch an arrow, as neat as any flower arrangement. And of course, there were still lessons on the Shamisen, discipline of the Sumi-e, lessons spent kneeling with Aunt Atsu.
Aunt Atsu was not so different from Father. They both tilted their head to the right to hear her play. They both laughed when Mochizuki would pass wind when Kiku cleared her stable. They both enjoyed their tea a little too hot and scalded.
The greatest change in life was really Lady Oyuki. She was not so different from some of the older ladies at Matsumae Castle, the ones with soft movements but hard hands, who often saved treats for Kiku and scolded Father about not raising her in the South. Not that Oyuki ever suggested she go South, but she was always free with the treats.
It was more that, whenever Aunt Atsu was hard, Oyuki would be soft. If Aunt Atsu frowned and scolded, Oyuki would offer warm arms and gentle words. When Aunt Atsu laughed and slapped her sides, Oyuki would raise her eyebrows and make some cutting comment, which would only make Atsu laugh all the harder. It seemed to Kiku as though Oyuki felt the need to be Aunt Atsu’s shadow, providing counterpoint to her melody, and it was a strange adjustment to the song of daily life.
In the middle of their first winter, when Father was not yet gone a year, Aunt Atsu returned from foraging with a boy in tow.
“This is Taro,” she had said simply, taking their horses to the stable. “He'll be staying with us a while.”
Oyuki was cautious. She was perfectly polite, welcoming, and entertaining to Taro, of course. She fed him hot rice and tea, fetched him a new woven mat to sit on. After they had eaten, Oyuki gave Kiku a pointed look and after a brief silent battle that was ultimately pointless, Kiku fetched her shamisen and began to play. She chose a soft and gentle song, and tried not to rush through the notes as Oyuki often scolded her for. She kept playing, even as Oyuki and Atsu drifted away. She let her fingers drift over the shamisen, aware of Taro’s smile as he listened, trying not to play for him, or for herself, but just to let the music be in the room with them.
And she strained to listen.
“Atsu, are you sure?”
Atsu turned away from the stove to face Kiku and Taro. “He's just here till the snow passes,” she dismissed Oyuki’s concerns.
Kiku could see the set of Oyuki’s mouth, a slight exasperation in the tilt of her head. “And what of Kiku?”
Atsu turned her head to look at Oyuki, and she smiled. “What of her?” she asked, the steel of her katana beneath the words.
“Oh, Atsu,” Oyuki breathed, a tiny laugh shaking her shoulders, and she leaned forward, brushing her forehead against Atsu’s.
“Kiku!” Atsu called, “it's a cold night. Warm us up with something livelier.” And Kiku could not overhear while bringing the bachi down faster on the strings.
Taro was older than her by a few years, but scrawnier and smaller. Still, he was a hard worker, and sharp witted. He was all too eager to help with the homestead, thatching the roof with her and Atsu, and offering to help her carry water every day with no complaint. He had many stories of following Atsu around battlefields and enemy camps, and of stealing from the dead.
One day, when the snow was drifting up against the walls, and they were all kept inside, practising their own crafts, Oyuki bowed her head low over her shamisen and said to Kiku, “You mustn't think harshly of him, Kiku.”
Kiku didn't think that she was. She glanced over to where Taro was sitting with Atsu, studying letters with her. He was getting increasingly frustrated by Aunt Atsu’s sometimes less than patient instruction. Oyuki's fingers executed a complicated move across the strings, bachi thudding like a heartbeat. “Taro has had a hard life. He has not had your protections.”
Kiku wanted to say that was obvious, and that she was treating him very fairly, thank you. She liked Taro, after all. But she hesitated, and her song slowed just a moment as she thought. What counterpoint was Oyuki offering? What did she think Aunt Atsu was missing?
In the spring, as the snows cleared, Atsu and Taro would ride out together as the weather allowed. Mochizuki and Isamo were shaggy haired and short tempered about this new work, but both seemed pleased by the thaw.
One day, when they returned, the snows were almost gone, clinging in drifts, and Kiku was plucking a duck on the cliffside. From this vantage she could see as Oyuki unfolded gracefully, her arms extended in a soft bend to embrace Atsu, how she pulled her close, and the way their faces turned in to one another’s neck. In a strange, stabbing moment, Kiku could not well remember her mother and father together, only glimpses of them separately.
“You seem very far away,” Taro’s voice interrupted her. He had looped around the old tree and was standing a little way off, smiling at her lopsided and hopeful. Over the winter he had somehow got taller on a diet of rice and sake. He was not yet taller than her, but he was broader now, and stronger. He had his hands held behind his back and he extended one, revealing a small wrapped box. Kiku glanced down at her lap, where downy feathers clung to her apron despite her best attempts to keep them contained in the sack. The duck, half finished, seemed to be watching her with it's bald neck. She brushed her hands off and accepted the gift, opening it to find a selection of sweet dough balls. “Spring is here,” Taro said with a happy smile. He bowed, a little stiff, and headed back to Isamo, laden down with supplies.
Kiku understood why Oyuki sent him away with the sun.
So Taro became another part of that rhythm. He would appear briefly, often with gifts, and be sent away again seemingly with no hard feelings. Kiku herself was sent away in the heat of summer, to Master Heijiro. Aunt Atsu made some unconvincing claims about how good it would be for her to learn more of her grandmother Yone, in a place Yone helped to build, and Oyuki waited impatiently at the gate. Undoubtedly neither paid great attention to the rumours of a man calling himself Saito’s heir in the north, and this decision was unrelated.
Kiku enjoyed her time with Master Heijiro, even when word came of the Onryo striking in the north once more. When she was reunited with Atsu and Oyuki the three of the them spent a long time in an embrace, Kiku surprised to find tears soaking the shoulder of her aunt's kimono where she buried her cheek.
“I know you want to keep me safe,” she said that night, as they sat around the fire. “But if you leave me alone, like Taro, I will not be safe. We need to hunt as a pack, or not at all.”
Oyuki and Atsu, sitting shoulder by shoulder, looked at one another, and then Atsu nodded.
That winter, Taro returned like a cat. He was of heights with her now, and sometimes his laugh boomed in his chest like a man's. Even Aunt Atsu seemed to hesitate a little now when she saw them together. But she set them to sparring when the weather allowed, and Kiku found it hard to nurture an affection alongside a bruised arse cheek. Taro, at least, didn't seem to take this personally.
That year, they rode out as a threesome. Kiku killed a rapist raider for the thanks of a young woman on the coast. Neither Atsu nor Oyuki said anything, but they both watched her that night.
All the bones of their family under the Gingko tree made it grow tall and strong. Kiku and Oyuki returned to Oshima Coast the next year, and Kiku watched Oyuki watch the horizon, and she announced her business concluded before it truly was. It was worth missing some old friends to see Oyuki run to embrace Atsu by the forge. Kiku leaned on the neck of Sora, watching as the pair entangled and kissed, and she thought that there would always be time to visit old friends. She didn't regret it.
Taro, when she met him, whether it was a winter on the farm, or sometimes in the inn, or at Master Heijiro’s, was finally taller than her. He greeted her with affection, but no longer with expectation, and Kiku was grateful. Sometimes, when she played at the Shadow Inn, and she could see him watching, she felt regret reverberating up her striking hand. Taro would have been an easy and a simple choice.
Father would not have approved.
But she was no longer a Matsumae lady in waiting.
The winter was coming once more. She packed her saddlebags in a bitter wind, and looked up at Yotei, the snow drifting off her face in lacy wisps.
“It's just a pair of women,” she heard a too-loud, too-confident voice say. “They keep each others faces warm between their legs. There's good metal at the-”
Her blade whispered against the neck of the speaker. “You must not know the stories of the Gingko tree,” she said, smelling piss steaming in the cold air.
She could see Taro looming behind the man's friend. He grabbed the bums shoulders with his hands. “Perhaps you need to hear some stories,” Taro said, his voice loud, deep, strong.
Kiku released her victim, let him stumble back into the warmth of the inn. She sheathed her blade. She trusted Taro would educate the fools. He trusted that she would be ok. The people of Ezo trusted in the Ghost.
That winter she spent in Oshima Coast, with friends who were now wives and ladies, and more than one had a tiny creature crawling at their feet. Kiku enjoyed playing peekaboo and horsey rides, and she laughed with old friends when they speculated which of the men in Matsumae Castle might tempt her, but that was a game as well. A game that entertained her old friends, but a game that taught valuable skills too. Like, I'm still here when you don't see me. Lessons that everyone should learn, but few remember.
She did ride out with Clan Matsumae once or twice, and found the fields of Oshima Coast as idyllic as her memories. Yet, people stayed the same. An old, wizened, trickster warrior was selling villagers the same patch of land on the mountain. Kiku watched him run his milky gaze up and down her body, not leering, only seeing her. All of her. And she watched how he decided it was not worth fighting.
Master Hanbai said that battle was like a song. That warriors learned a rhythm of steps that would carry them through a hundred dances. But that one day, that dance would be all they knew.
Kiku wasn't sure if that was true, because her life still sang. And Aunt Atsu and Lady Oyuki sang too. Their steps also contained embraces, and kisses, flowers left on pillows, sweet cakes brought from afar, gentle touches, and favourite songs played on lazy summer breezes. Life was not so different, even when everything was. She still slept, she still ate, she still met her friends and laughed, she still played her shamisen, and she still knew she would never get married or have a family. But that was still a life that hummed with joy and danced along strings. A different tempo, but a beat all the same.