Beyond the Werefox Whistle
Written by Uehashi Nahoko
Illustrated by Yumiko Shirai
Part 4: Breaking the Curse
Chapter 2: Nobi's Determination
Sayo returned to Harumochi’s chambers under a cloud. Harumochi waved to her. “How did things go? Did you remove the curse?”
Sayo showed him the cursed insect she’d pulled from Koharumaru’s ear.
Harumochi stared at the insect in horrified fascination.
Nobi sat in a corner in his human form. When he caught sight of the cursed insect, he jumped up, then blew on it.
The cursed insect vanished, becoming nothing but a tiny pile of ash in Sayo’s hand.
“Sayo?” Harumochi asked.
“The cursed insect is gone,” she said, “but I think that Koharumaru is still cursed.”
Harumochi opened his mouth, then closed it. When he spoke again, he chose his words carefully and with deliberate calmness. “Sayo, I don’t understand. Start at the beginning. Tell me what happened.”
As Sayo relayed what had happened, Nobi frowned. Getting rid of the insect should have lifted the curse, but Koharumaru was under some kind of powerful compulsion. The curse still wasn’t broken, even with the insect gone.
Harumochi thought deeply about what Sayo said. He understood her gloomy mood. “Can you remove the curse in some other way?” he asked. “I think… it’s possible that I contributed to Koharumaru disbelieving you. I locked him away for a long time, which I know was cruel… but it was also the only way to save his life.” He shook his head. “Please. Do whatever you can.”
“I have,” she said. “I… I don’t know what else to do.”
Harumochi nodded slowly. “In that case… the curse is still there because of me. I should have known that simply leaving Morikage Estate wouldn’t ease Koharumaru’s worries about the future. I’ll take responsibility for protecting him and breaking the curse. So don’t worry,” he said. “You’ve done all you could, as Hanano’s daughter.”
Sayo shook her head. Even if Harumochi assumed responsibility for this situation, Koharumaru wasn’t the only person under threat. Even if Harumochi managed to break Koharumaru’s curse, enemy sorcerers were still targeting both Harumochi and Koharumaru.
“Lord Harumochi,” she blurted out. “What if the curse is still in place because of you?”
“I don’t understand what you mean,” Harumochi said. “Didn’t I just say that?”
“No,” Sayo said. “I mean… what about Wakasa Fields? What if the curse took hold because of the hatred and resentment that taking Wakasa Fields caused in your family? If you return control of Wakasa Fields to the High King, that might break the curse.”
Harumochi’s eyes flashed. He saw Hanano whenever he looked at Sayo. It felt like Hanano was blaming him for everything, even though she was dead. Even her death was his fault.
No, Harumochi thought. Moritada is to blame. He started all of this. He killed and cursed my family first, and caused all of this suffering.
“You don’t know anything,” Harumochi said to Sayo. “You don’t know what happened in the past.”
Harumochi’s wife was dead because of Koharumaru’s curse.
One day, when Koharumaru was just three years old, the young boy had a temper tantrum and threw the protective charm around his neck into a deep pond. Alarmed, his mother had removed her own protective charm and placed it on Koharumaru.
A few moments later, a gust of wind had knocked her down. When Harumochi had found her only a few minutes later, she was dead and covered in blood.
Slowly, in stilted words, Harumochi told Sayo what had happened to his wife. Then he said, “The sorcerers of Yuki have killed dear friends of mine in the same way. They killed your mother, too,” he said gruffly. “She died to protect Koharumaru. Keeping him at Morikage Estate was the only way to keep him alive. Your grandfather died suddenly, and that weakened the protections that all of us had. And Koharumaru was too young to understand what protective charms meant or why they were important. There was no other way to keep him safe.”
Harumochi tried to tamp down the anger and hate that speaking of these terrible things made him feel, but he was unsuccessful. He turned away. “Returning Wakasa Fields to the High King would mean that Moritada and the evil sorcerers of Yuki win. They don’t deserve to be rewarded for so much killing. I won’t give them what they want, humiliating myself, just because I don’t have a sorcerer powerful enough to stand against them anymore.”
Harumochi covered his face with his hands and said no more.
Sayo sensed Harumochi’s strong emotions coming off him in waves with her listening ability. The emotions were so loud that they hurt her ears.
If only I had a powerful sorcerer, so that I could repay Moritada in kind, Harumochi thought. I will return Wakasa Fields to the High King only after Moritada has suffered as I have suffered. Hanano was powerful enough, but she never punished the sorcerers of Yuki or Moritada as I wished. Would Sayo, my daughter, be powerful enough, and would she do it? I haven’t even claimed her has my daughter. Perhaps if I had, she would have done as I asked. I could use the power of the spirit fox who attacked me, perhaps…
Sayo couldn’t bear to listen to Harumochi’s thoughts any longer. She stood up straight and faced him. She felt like she was about to burst into tears.
Harumochi dropped his hands away from his face and looked at her, but he couldn’t quite look her in the eye.
Sayo ran from the room, hugging herself. She just barely remembered to bow before leaving. As she stepped into the hallway, she realized that she had no idea where she was. But that didn’t matter. All she wanted right now was to get away from Lord Harumochi. She ran as fast as she could down the hall. The soldiers watching over Harumochi’s rooms watched her go, perplexed.
Sayo ran all the way to the inn’s garden. She hopped off the veranda to the ground and then kept running through grass and trees until she reached a wall. She crouched with her back to the wall and started to cry.
Nobi found her not long after. He sat beside her and didn’t say a word.
Sayo tried to stop crying, but she couldn’t. This entire situation was so stupid. Hatred and resentment fed itself. It made the curse on Koharumaru and Harumochi’s family that much stronger. She felt so sorry for Koharumaru, who had been a bright and cheerful boy. He had dreamed about freedom and a better life. He’d wanted so much to see his father, back then. He’d done nothing wrong, but had spent a decade locked away.
Hanano wouldn’t have allowed that, she was sure. Sayo didn’t understand why her parents—both of them—had kept so many secrets; she hadn’t lived their lives. Suzu had said that her father was cursed because of how her mother felt. Hanano had refused to fight Yuki’s sorcerers. Sayo had to think that she’d done that because fighting Yuki’s sorcerers wouldn’t break the curse.
Sayo and Koharumaru were almost the same age. Her mother and Koharumaru’s mother had spent time in the castle together. Surely her mother must have foreseen the danger to Harumochi’s family. Had she done anything to protect herself, Harumochi or Sayo, or had she only been able to protect Koharumaru?
What was my mother thinking? Was she an idiot? Sayo thought, wincing. She didn’t like thinking ill of her mother. Her father had wanted Hanano to use her powers as a sorceress on his behalf. He wanted to use Sayo that way, too.
“I want to run away,” Sayo said. This couldn’t continue. “If I stay, I’ll only be used as a tool by hateful people.”
Nobi looked at her. She was probably right. Even if she found some way not to be used, she would certainly wind up cursed.
Nobi was cursed, too. All familiars were cursed to be what they were. Sayo didn’t deserve to be sucked into this vortex of power and hate, but that was where Nobi and Sayo had found themselves.
“I don’t think you should be a sorceress,” Nobi said. “If Harumochi tries to make you, you should run.”
Sayo blinked away tears.
“Being a sorcerer is difficult,” Nobi said. “Being cursed is worse. The night you saved me, I had just killed someone on my master’s orders and was fleeing. I could have died.”
Sayo went very still. She remembered blood dripping from the little fox’s fur on the night she’d found him. She’d thought that the blood had been his—but had some of it been human?
“I was used as a tool by hateful people,” Nobi said neutrally. “That’s what being a sorcerer’s familiar is. I didn’t want to kill anybody. I had to because familiars can only do what they’re told.” He paused. “Spirit foxes are carnivorous. I eat mice when I’m hungry, and I don’t feel bad about that because if don’t eat, I’ll die. But killing that man… I felt terrible about it. I still feel terrible about it. That was the first time I’d ever killed a person. I wondered if I was going to be murdered one day, too. As I ran through the fields, I felt so alone and cut off from the world. Cut off from who I was before.”
Sayo remembered the stark fear on Nobi’s tiny fox face as she’d picked him up. There’d been blood on his nose.
“I wasn’t expecting you to find me,” Nobi said. “I was glad when you did. I was happy that Koharumaru knew of a way to treat the poison.”
The moon rose in the dark sky, shining down on the garden. The white light made Nobi’s dark hair shimmer.
“After that, you went and got some walnut mochi for Koharumaru,” Nobi said.
“Eh? Were you watching us?” Sayo asked.
“Yeah. Sorry.” He scratched the back of his neck. Nobi had watched Sayo and Koharumaru talking and eating. He’d wanted to join them, but that would have been too dangerous. “It looked like you were having fun.” The sight had stirred early memories of playing in a bamboo grove with other fox cubs, more than half-forgotten now. “I watched over you both until the night of that terrible storm. I was really lonely after you two stopped visiting.”
Sayo stared at him, silent, for a little while. “I wish you would have come out to play,” she said quietly. Koharumaru would have been delighted to see the little fox again.
“It’s probably for the best,” Nobi said with a slight smile. “Back then, I’d never spent any time at all with humans, really. That little fox cub might have brought you a dead mouse as a present.”
Sayo suppressed a laugh. “I… yes, I wouldn’t have liked that at all.” Sitting here with Nobi made her feel better. She caught a glimpse of his thoughts—sunshine, pure and clean.
Nobi nodded tightly, then became suddenly serious. “It wouldn’t have been safe for me to get too close. I’m cursed, Sayo. I was cursed then, too.”
Nobi’s seriousness spread to Sayo. She looked at him, really looked, and it occurred to her that species was irrelevant to this. It was just as wrong to curse a spirit fox as it was to curse a person. She thought of Nobi as a person. He looked like one as he gazed back at her, pale clear eyes wide open.
Even during the long months where she’d believed herself to be all alone after her grandmother’s death, Nobi had been watching over her.
Sayo suddenly felt cold: cold and empty and uneasy. She’d forgotten, for a moment, about the fragility of Nobi’s situation. The sorcerer who commanded him could end his life at any time. It wasn’t impossible for him to vanish from her life at this very moment.
Life itself struck Sayo as ephemeral. She’d never really thought about dying herself. Up until now, life had seemed like one long continuous line. Now she saw so many ways for life to end in the immediate future, and that frightened her. Possibilities surfaced in her mind like bubbles suspended on the surface of a pond.
Perhaps Nobi would save them. That was one bubble. It was, perhaps, the best possibility. Nobi had always protected her and he’d always been honest with her. She reached out and wrapped her arms around him.
Nobi froze, but then he moved his arms tentatively around her back and held on. Sayo’s touch was gentle and careful. Nobi closed his eyes and sank into the warmth.
If only we could run away now, Nobi thought.
Nobi regretted his curse more than ever. If he were just an ordinary spirit fox, he and Sayo could have been friends—and perhaps more than friends. If only I weren’t a familiar, we could run away to a distant land, have our own lives and our own children, Nobi thought. But that was impossible and had always been impossible.
Sorcerers never forgave disobedient familiars. Tomorrow, Kuna would come to the High King’s castle disguised as Dairou. He would question Tamao and learn of Nobi’s betrayal. Nobi only had a short time left to live.
Sayo’s embrace was so warm. He brushed his cheek against hers as foxes sometimes did among one another. He had tried so hard to save her, but he hadn’t even been able to manage that, in the end. There was no way for him to break his own curse. He’d been plucked up by his master in his babyhood, and there was no way to escape now.
A chill went up Nobi’s spine as he remembered that Koharumaru was still cursed, even with the cursed insect gone. Kuna would certainly lay more traps and make more plans to kill Koharumaru. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end.
Koharumaru is in danger. He might be killed, too, Nobi thought. His heart ached as he remembered Koharumaru as a boy. Koharumaru had treated his poisoned wounds and praised Nobi’s bravery, saying: “He sees me! That’s a fierce look for a little fox.” Nobi recalled Koharumaru’s smile as he’d sat with Sayo around a fire fed by bamboo sticks.
The warmth of the fire, the warmth of Sayo’s arms… these were precious to Nobi.
I need to stop this, Nobi thought. He wished he knew more of his master’s plan. Perhaps he could deduce something based on what he knew? Why had Kageya come here disguised as Dairou?
Nobi thought for awhile, and then he got an idea. He wasn’t certain of his master’s plans, of course, but he knew that there was at least one thing he could do. It was a gamble: the very definition of the shot in the dark. But he’d never forgive himself if he didn’t make an attempt to save Koharumaru.
Koharumaru should live. If he lived, Sayo would be happy.
Nobi rested his head against the back of Sayo’s neck for a brief moment. Goodbye, Sayo, he thought but didn’t say. He was careful to dissemble his thoughts, too, so that Sayo wouldn’t hear them with her listening ability. He blew into her ear, creating a spell of sleep.
Nobi carried Sayo to a servant’s bed inside the castle. He sat next to her for a few minutes, considering what to do next and memorizing her face. Then he got up and went to Harumochi’s chambers.
Harumochi was still awake. He sat up in his bed, holding his head as if it pained him.
“Lord Harumochi,” Nobi said.
Harumochi flinched and pulled his sword up out of his blankets, pointing it right at Nobi. “What… what do you want?” He recognized Nobi and lowered his sword slowly.
Nobi approached Harumochi carefully, as if he were a cornered animal. “Tomorrow,” he said, “I will disguise myself as Dairou and accompany you to your audience with the High King.”
Harumochi put his sword down. “Why?” he asked.
“My master was planning to disguise himself as Dairou, though I’m not entirely sure why. This is the only thing I can do to help protect Sayo.”
Harumochi nodded in understanding. “Very well. You can accompany me, then.” He looked at Nobi’s face, then frowned. “Is Sayo all right?”
“She was crying for a little while. She’s sleeping now.”
Harumochi’s expression twisted with pain. “I see.”
***
Nobi went out into the garden again and looked up at the moon. The high-pitched sound of a whistle cut the air, splitting Nobi’s shadow on the ground for a second.
That was a werefox whistle. Nobi’s master was calling him. If he didn’t respond to the summons, his master would know that Nobi had betrayed him. But if he did respond to the summons, he wouldn’t be able to lie to his master. He wasn’t crafty like Tamao and Kageya.
Nobi wouldn’t answer the summons. He had to live until tomorrow. Tomorrow, everything would be over, for better or worse.
“So you’re not going to go?” Tamao asked. She stood in the garden, poking her face out from behind a tree. She was in her human form. Her eyes shone with a pale blue light under the moon. “You really defied the master. I can’t believe it. You’ve ruined your life—or what little is left of it.”
Nobi faced down Tamao in silence. Tamao looked him up and down, not glaring and not smiling.
“Where’s Kageya?” Tamao asked.
“Captured,” Nobi said. “His powers are sealed away.”
Tamao snorted. “So you didn’t kill him, and they didn’t either. Are you not going to kill us?”
“I never wanted to kill you. Or anyone.”
Tamao looked at Nobi again.
The werefox whistle rang out, shrill and high in the stillness.
“I have to go,” Tamao said. She looked away.
Nobi nodded in farewell.
Tamao spun, transforming into her spirit fox form. She leaped up a tree trunk, then jumped into the deep blue sky and disappeared into the night.
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