Read Online Death at the Crossroads by Dale Furutani - Free Book Online Page B

from the Tokugawas, he had eluded the men with the banners with the family crest that looked like a spider: eight bent, white bamboo leaves surrounding a white diamond, all on a black background.
    Walking in the dark storm, he had carried her deep into the mountains and, although he was weary, he wanted to continue fleeing the pursuing guards. But he realized she needed rest and had taken the risk of stopping to build a shelter to protect her from the hard rain. Kaze dared not build a fire and was considering asking permission to lie next to the Lady so his body heat could warm her when she had started speaking.
    “I don’t know how, but if she’s still alive I want you to find her. It’s my last wish and my last command to you,” she said. She looked at him with feverish eyes, black from strain and pain. The translucent whiteness of her skin was caused by cold and her weakened condition, not by carefully applied rice powder, as it would have been in happier days. It gave her a ghostly appearance.
    Kaze couldn’t speak. He bowed formally in response to the Lady’s order. Hot, wet tears flowed down his cheeks and mingled with the icy raindrops striking his face. The Lady extended a weak hand. It trembled with the effort to keep it in the air. “Give me your wakizashi.” Surprised, Kaze removed his short sword from his sash, putting it in her hand. The weight of the sword caused her hand to drop to the ground, but she clutched the scabbard fiercely. At first Kaze thought the Lady had lost heart and was going to use the short sword to commit suicide, but then she said, “This represents your honor and the ability to take your own life. It is now mine until the girl is found.”
    Now the sword reposed in the Lady’s funeral temple, waiting for him to reclaim it. That was how many villages and towns ago? Andhow many faces of little girls had he looked at, hoping to see a glimmer of the Lord or the Lady in that face? She was seven when he started, and now he was asking about nine-year-olds. Would he be asking about ten-, eleven-, and twelve-year-olds before he could find her? But ahead was another village, and maybe in this village he would find what he was seeking. Then his life would be his own again, along with his honor.
    He looked around for the bandit’s sword and went to pick it up. Using this weapon instead of his own sword, he started scraping out two shallow graves. When he finished burying the men, he looked at the trees lining the road until he found one that suited his purpose. Using the bandit’s sword, he cleanly sliced a limb off, then took a second cut at the limb’s stump to cut a piece of straight tree branch as long as his hand. He took out the small knife embedded in his scabbard and set to work, his hands moving with practiced economy as he carved the wood. From the rough wood emerged Kannon, the Goddess of Mercy. With a few final slices of his knife, he finished the folds of her robe and then gazed into her serene face. It was the face of the Lady, not as he had seen her last, but the way he wanted to remember her.
    Placing her by the side of the road where she could look upon the graves of the two bandits, Kaze continued his journey.

          CHAPTER 6
     
    Dark night, ghostly moon.
A leaf flutters to the ground.
Demons on the road
.
     
    I t was early afternoon by the time Kaze walked into the next village. The thatched roofs, the dusty streets that turned to mud when it rained, and the weathered wooden walls all looked familiar to him. Every village in Japan was starting to look the same to him. But like Suzaka, Jiro’s village, Kaze could see that this one, Higashi, was more run-down and tattered than he was used to.
    Unlike Jiro’s village, Higashi boasted a tea shop where travelers could get a meal and spend the night. It was located where three roads met, and on the indigo-blue half-curtain that hung from the top of the doorway, the name HIGASHI TEAHOUSE was painted. It