Where the Wind Takes Us

(Book 13 of the Guardian of the Spirit Series)

Author: Uehashi Nahoko

Translator: Ainikki the Archivist

Epilogue - Where the Wind Takes Us

    A strong wind blew through the rasal reeds lining the lake, making the walls of Sari’s hut shake. Even huddled up inside with the screens woven of more rasal reeds covering the windows, the air was frigid and made the fire in the hearth waver.

    Gamal was roasting fish over the fire. The smell roused Sari to wakefulness. She sat up and stretched. “Do you hear that?” she asked.

    Gamal’s thick eyebrows drew together. “Do you think they’re coming back?” He smiled a little, scratching at his beard.

    The wind carried the sound of bells and drums to Sari’s hut.

    “I want to get up,” Sari said. “Help me.”

    Gamal came to Sari’s bedside and took her arm to support her as she stood up. She wrapped a woven blanket around her shoulders and shivered. A few moments later, the thick door woven of several layers of rasal reeds opened, and Eona passed through it.

    “Mom!”

    Eona tore off her coat and shoved it at Kii, who was coming in the door behind her. Eona hugged her tightly for a moment, and Sari laughed. She could feel the water harp tucked safe and sound against Eona’s chest.

    Eona’s hair and face were cold from the wind outside. “Maybe we should have stayed in Oki for the night and tried arriving tomorrow. It’s so cold! But I couldn’t wait to be home,” she said.

    Sari and Eona hugged for a long time, then broke apart, smiling at one another. Sari rubbed her cheek against her daughter's in greeting. “Welcome home,” she said quietly.

    “I’m glad to be here.”

    Eona shivered. She moved a little closer to the fire, then said, “Mom, we have so much to talk about. It was a remarkable journey. I don’t even know where to start.”

    The corner of Sari’s mouth quirked upward. “I heard a few things from Gamal. He said that Balsa showed up and protected you at the Herb Market. But let’s have supper and get you all warmed up first. After that, we can talk as long as we like.”

    Kii and Sansa were also in the hut, unpacking. Then nodded gratefully at Sari. The hut, formerly quiet except for the sound of the wind, was now noisy and a little crowded. After dinner, Eona told Sari about everything that had happened to them.

    Sari waxed nostalgic about her own journey to Rakul Province so many years before. So Jiguro is dead, then, she thought. That was hard to believe. He’d always seemed so strong. Eona was the daughter who had been born less than a year after that summer night. She wondered if Balsa knew. If Balsa had known all along.

    “I’d like to talk to Balsa,” Sari said. “Did she come?”

    “No,” Sansa said. “She parted with us a while back, headed home to New Yogo.”

    “I hope she doesn’t get caught in a blizzard,” Sari said. “It’s a terrible time of year to travel.”

    “That’s one reason we hurried home ourselves,” Sansa said, rubbing her chilblained hands together.

    Kii laughed. “I’m sure Balsa’s eager to get home to her husband’s warm arms.”

    The fire crackled, spreading warmth, as the winter wind tried and failed to blow the walls of the hut down. Eona stared off into the distance lost in memory, and resumed the story of her journey.

 

***

 

    The door to Tanda’s hut was half-buried by drifting snow. Someone was trying to force it open. Tanda peeled himself away from the warmth of the fire, motivated to help, and made it to the door just as Balsa slipped inside and shut it behind her, panting.

    “You climbed all the way up here in a blizzard?” Tanda asked, alarmed.

    “It’s not a blizzard. Just a little blowing snow, is all.” Balsa stomped snow off her boots. Everything she owned was wet through, including her spear and coat. She stripped her coat off, shivering, and hung it up to dry.

    The scent of wild mushroom stew reached Balsa’s nostrils. She inhaled deeply, savoring the warmth in the air along with the smell of food. There were other familiar scents in the hut that soothed her: drying herbs, the sweet smoke from the firewood, the sharp cold of a gust of wind. This was what home smelled like.

    “I was sure you’d spend the winter in Rota,” Tanda said.

    “I might have if the weather hadn’t cooperated. But the first snow hadn’t fallen yet when I crossed the border. I made good time.”

    Balsa extended her cold-red hands over the fire set in the floor. Torogai was away from the hut; it was her custom to visit a hot spring at the end of autumn until the worst of the winter cold abated, since the hot water helped her aging joints. Tanda usually spent most winters alone, treating the injuries of the hunters in the mountains who chased after boar and other game. Most often, the hunters paid him in meat.

    “The last hunter I treated was lucky. I got a whole boar out of him. We have plenty to eat tonight, so help yourself.”

    Tanda ladled some of the stew bubbling over the fire into a bowl and passed it to Balsa. There was seasoned boar meat in it, so soft and juicy that it melted in her mouth. The fattiness of the meat brought out more flavor in the wild mushrooms. The stew was hot enough to warm her all the way through in moments.

    Tanda ladled out his own bowl of stew, then picked it up and took a seat next to Balsa. “I was cleaning the inside of the roof a few days ago and missing you. When I climbed down and was looking for a broom, I found this.” He reached out and rolled a stick across the floor.

    Balsa recognized it: the stick was one of the first practice spears that Jiguro had made for her. There was no spearhead and it was quite thin, but it was almost as tall as her normal spear. She remembered a time when she’d thought it was the heaviest thing in the whole world.

    The surface of the practice spear was nicked and gouged in many places. Jiguro had never allowed her or Tanda to smooth them out. Jiguro called them the spear’s wounds, and seemed to think that it was important for the spear to keep them.

    Balsa reached out to touch the practice spear with her greasy hands, forgetting to wipe them until she noticed the shiny impressions that her fingertips left on the wood. “This was a good weapon,” Balsa said. “It still is.”

    Balsa thought about her early life with Jiguro--fleeing Kanbal, getting her first practice spear, getting this practice spear. When she was ten, Jiguro had given her the spear she carried now, with a real point, and that was when she’d really started learning to defend herself. To defend others.

    “I haven’t thought about this practice spear in so long,” Balsa muttered. “How many years has it been? I guess it doesn’t matter.”

    Tanda raised an eyebrow.

    Balsa smiled at him. “Don’t mind me; I’m just in a mood. Thinking about how long it’s been since Jiguro died.”

    Tanda nodded sadly. “I’m not sure measuring an event like that in terms of time is right. We should measure in moments, one flowing into the other. That way, Jiguro is still alive, in a way. He shared so many moments with you, and as long as you remember, you’ll have them.”

    Moments. Suddenly, Balsa remembered the Sadan Taram walking through a golden field in their bright clothes, instruments in hand.

    “I was thinking,” Balsa said, setting her practice spear aside, “that we should go to Rota next year, when the snow melts.”

    “Go to Rota again so soon? Why?”

    “There’s going to be a festival to the goddess Hanma in Rakul Province.”

    “What’s the festival about?”

    “You’d like it. Men and women from different clans meet and mingle together during the day. If they like one another, they can decide to get married at night. Romantic, isn’t it?”

    Tanda didn’t seem too enthused about the idea. Balsa allowed herself a moment to enjoy his confusion. She hadn’t seen that face in so long. Then, finally, she told Tanda about her latest journey with the Sadan Taram.

    Balsa was grateful to be inside, comfortable and warm with Tanda: the story she had to tell was a long one. As she spoke, the love song Jiguro had sung echoed in the back of her mind, as if carried by the winter wind.

 

The cold wind blows

over the Yusa Mountains

under the moon.

I go to the peak,

spear in hand,

step by step.

The world is hidden in white,

swept away by an avalanche.

I go to the peak,

spear in hand,

step by step,

with the season's last flower

held over my heart.

 

THE END