[Yoshino]
[GEN] A FAMILIAR PATTERN
myaru
Like the dew on the petals of a morning glory Sai passed from the world of the court, of black and white shale, into a realm of poetics he had never sought to understand. The grid of a go board was concrete - a manifestation of the physical universe and the material of the human mind. Even the gods, his father said, played go; even they sought the pattern underlying their existence and the possibilities for the future hidden in the stones. Such was the Hand of God: concrete, though its seekers were many and transient in nature. Attainable, if only one searched long enough.
He had wandered the grid of the capitol with his formless body for two cycles when a fire sprang up in the northern district and swept through the capitol, consuming all in its wake, in the space of a day and a half. The home he remembered was consumed, his earthly connections turned to ash. The garden and its ancient plum tree, transported from the far reaches of Hino; his son, his mother, his nurse and retainers; the go board, a gift from his father upon his capping ceremony, which Sai had lovingly polished with his own hands and played countless games upon in the years since his entrance to the imperial court.
Ash. Only the earth was left behind, and a crippled wooden frame. His fingers passed through the remains when he reached to touch them, and at the edge of his hearing, behind the fence, was a voice: Terrible, to lose a boy of such potential, and his father--
He never learned the meaning of the grid, Sai thought, watching the ashes stir in the parched summer wind while his hair curled over the ground, still. Their white powder did not touch him. Tendomaru will never reach for the Hand of God.
If not the father or the son, then who-- his rival? The descendants of the Sugawara, instead of the Fujiwara?
He would rather not see it found.
~*~
Sai sought refuge from the press of the capitol at Toyama, when he had stopped counting the years and began measuring time in increments of disaster: only ten houses remained from his living memory, the others destroyed in a quake - or fire, or flood, sometimes decay. Then five remained, and then one. The last of the children he'd tutored became an assistant director at the Bureau of Divination, then a secretary, then an onmyouji. They spoke once, played a game, when the boy had grown thin with age and his eyes learned to see the veil between life and death. This move, he'd said at the beginning of their encounter, eyes lingering upon a board with a familiar pattern, you never revealed its true significance. And the words he longed to hear came next: Would you care for a game?
It was as if they parted merely a few days ago. His host replayed the game with his own hands while Sai imagined he could feel the painted stones between his fingers. That night, when the cherry blossoms rained and the moon was full, he thought he remembered the sharp lavender scent of the diviner's incense and the taste of sake, which wasn't a taste at all so much as a texture upon the tongue that lingered after one swallowed. Sai could not remember the boy's name - only the blossoms and the stones mattered, black and white, light and dark, living and dead.
The mountainside was quiet. From a cleft on the slope facing Heian, crowded with maple and persimmon trees, the capitol lay upon the land in a precise grid under its veil of woodsmoke and wispy fog. The lake shined like a mirror at that distance, and it seemed he should be able to walk upon its surface this time, should he pay it another visit. The river shimmered, and Sai thought of its music when it danced over rocks and lapped on the shore.
In his time fortunes were spent on gardens that emulated environments such as the one he stood in now, in an effort to capture the caprice of nature within the frame of order mankind wished to impose upon it. More fragrant, Shikibu said, these flowers, precious, transient-- but flowers were born again every spring, and the earth remade itself after each disastrous quake.
He no longer knew or cared for the era when the capitol was befallen with misfortune. A fire - but there were always fires, there was always a careless maid or inebriated entertainer to cast the first sparks - and then a whirlwind from Hell itself, then famine, then the breaking of the earth. He remembered the cries of the commoners picking among the ruins for lost children, the remains of their belongings, and their curses upon the Taira for bringing the disaster about. This is hell, opening up to draw Kiyomori back into its maw where he belongs.
It was men who were transient. The human life, the human hand, prone to decay. The Taira fell and did not rise again. The wisteria bloomed in profusion that summer and blanketed the mountainside in lavender and safflower pink. There were times Sai lifted his hand and thought he could feel their silky petals and smell their spice. Time passed for him in seasons. On the grid of the capitol he replayed his last game over and over in his memory.
New music joined the sound of the stream that cut through the gorge, and Sai did not recognize its intrusion for a long while because it was quiet, intermittent, a plucking of biwa strings calculated to emulate the splash and whirl of water. It disappeared for days at a time, but always returned when dusk fell on days when the sunset was particularly beautiful in red and gold, fading to indigo.
The moon was high and full. Sai didn't know what the day was, but the year had moved into early autumn and the trees around him were flaring to life, creating their own sunsets and dusks until they would turn yellow and brown and crumble into winter. He followed the sound across the stream and moss-slicked rocks, over the mountainside, until he reached a small hut surrounded by a fence overgrown with vines and clover. The door was uncovered. He paused at the frame and watched the plectrum strike the strings. Thin fingers curled with age manipulated the frets. The cut of the robes told him this man was a monk, though his hair had grown out somewhat.
How long, since he heard music such as this?
How long since his own fingers manipulated the strings and his own voice recited the ancient stories of Yamatai? He remembered the polished wood of the plectrum, the vibration of the biwa and his own vocal chords in unison.
The piece came to an end like water stilling, a drawn-out sweep across the strings. The katsura trees rustled in a breeze, and a breath of air snuck through the doorway to raise gooseflesh on the elderly man's arms.
Silence.
"Why are you here?" the monk asked, resting his biwa on the dirt floor. He did not turn around. "What ties you to this world?"
What indeed.
Sai drew a deep breath, though it made no difference to his spectral body nor his nerves. What did he know of the laws governing karma and fate? Why should he be allowed to wander this earth when many other worthy souls died and passed on, no more than a breath or a whisper upon the wind?
"Go," he said, when silence had stretched again between sounds. He hadn't spoken in years, but the sound of his voice had not changed. "Would you like to play a game?"
The monk snorted, and Sai looked away. What else was there? What was left of his legacy, in this world that had fallen and risen again as the province of warriors who lacked the delicacy to appreciate the mysteries hidden beneath the stones?
"Even go is not eternal," the monk said. "Who are you, and what do you really want?"
Sai gazed at the Lotus Sutra on its makeshift stand, and said nothing.
myaru
Like the dew on the petals of a morning glory Sai passed from the world of the court, of black and white shale, into a realm of poetics he had never sought to understand. The grid of a go board was concrete - a manifestation of the physical universe and the material of the human mind. Even the gods, his father said, played go; even they sought the pattern underlying their existence and the possibilities for the future hidden in the stones. Such was the Hand of God: concrete, though its seekers were many and transient in nature. Attainable, if only one searched long enough.
He had wandered the grid of the capitol with his formless body for two cycles when a fire sprang up in the northern district and swept through the capitol, consuming all in its wake, in the space of a day and a half. The home he remembered was consumed, his earthly connections turned to ash. The garden and its ancient plum tree, transported from the far reaches of Hino; his son, his mother, his nurse and retainers; the go board, a gift from his father upon his capping ceremony, which Sai had lovingly polished with his own hands and played countless games upon in the years since his entrance to the imperial court.
Ash. Only the earth was left behind, and a crippled wooden frame. His fingers passed through the remains when he reached to touch them, and at the edge of his hearing, behind the fence, was a voice: Terrible, to lose a boy of such potential, and his father--
He never learned the meaning of the grid, Sai thought, watching the ashes stir in the parched summer wind while his hair curled over the ground, still. Their white powder did not touch him. Tendomaru will never reach for the Hand of God.
If not the father or the son, then who-- his rival? The descendants of the Sugawara, instead of the Fujiwara?
He would rather not see it found.
~*~
Sai sought refuge from the press of the capitol at Toyama, when he had stopped counting the years and began measuring time in increments of disaster: only ten houses remained from his living memory, the others destroyed in a quake - or fire, or flood, sometimes decay. Then five remained, and then one. The last of the children he'd tutored became an assistant director at the Bureau of Divination, then a secretary, then an onmyouji. They spoke once, played a game, when the boy had grown thin with age and his eyes learned to see the veil between life and death. This move, he'd said at the beginning of their encounter, eyes lingering upon a board with a familiar pattern, you never revealed its true significance. And the words he longed to hear came next: Would you care for a game?
It was as if they parted merely a few days ago. His host replayed the game with his own hands while Sai imagined he could feel the painted stones between his fingers. That night, when the cherry blossoms rained and the moon was full, he thought he remembered the sharp lavender scent of the diviner's incense and the taste of sake, which wasn't a taste at all so much as a texture upon the tongue that lingered after one swallowed. Sai could not remember the boy's name - only the blossoms and the stones mattered, black and white, light and dark, living and dead.
The mountainside was quiet. From a cleft on the slope facing Heian, crowded with maple and persimmon trees, the capitol lay upon the land in a precise grid under its veil of woodsmoke and wispy fog. The lake shined like a mirror at that distance, and it seemed he should be able to walk upon its surface this time, should he pay it another visit. The river shimmered, and Sai thought of its music when it danced over rocks and lapped on the shore.
In his time fortunes were spent on gardens that emulated environments such as the one he stood in now, in an effort to capture the caprice of nature within the frame of order mankind wished to impose upon it. More fragrant, Shikibu said, these flowers, precious, transient-- but flowers were born again every spring, and the earth remade itself after each disastrous quake.
He no longer knew or cared for the era when the capitol was befallen with misfortune. A fire - but there were always fires, there was always a careless maid or inebriated entertainer to cast the first sparks - and then a whirlwind from Hell itself, then famine, then the breaking of the earth. He remembered the cries of the commoners picking among the ruins for lost children, the remains of their belongings, and their curses upon the Taira for bringing the disaster about. This is hell, opening up to draw Kiyomori back into its maw where he belongs.
It was men who were transient. The human life, the human hand, prone to decay. The Taira fell and did not rise again. The wisteria bloomed in profusion that summer and blanketed the mountainside in lavender and safflower pink. There were times Sai lifted his hand and thought he could feel their silky petals and smell their spice. Time passed for him in seasons. On the grid of the capitol he replayed his last game over and over in his memory.
New music joined the sound of the stream that cut through the gorge, and Sai did not recognize its intrusion for a long while because it was quiet, intermittent, a plucking of biwa strings calculated to emulate the splash and whirl of water. It disappeared for days at a time, but always returned when dusk fell on days when the sunset was particularly beautiful in red and gold, fading to indigo.
The moon was high and full. Sai didn't know what the day was, but the year had moved into early autumn and the trees around him were flaring to life, creating their own sunsets and dusks until they would turn yellow and brown and crumble into winter. He followed the sound across the stream and moss-slicked rocks, over the mountainside, until he reached a small hut surrounded by a fence overgrown with vines and clover. The door was uncovered. He paused at the frame and watched the plectrum strike the strings. Thin fingers curled with age manipulated the frets. The cut of the robes told him this man was a monk, though his hair had grown out somewhat.
How long, since he heard music such as this?
How long since his own fingers manipulated the strings and his own voice recited the ancient stories of Yamatai? He remembered the polished wood of the plectrum, the vibration of the biwa and his own vocal chords in unison.
The piece came to an end like water stilling, a drawn-out sweep across the strings. The katsura trees rustled in a breeze, and a breath of air snuck through the doorway to raise gooseflesh on the elderly man's arms.
Silence.
"Why are you here?" the monk asked, resting his biwa on the dirt floor. He did not turn around. "What ties you to this world?"
What indeed.
Sai drew a deep breath, though it made no difference to his spectral body nor his nerves. What did he know of the laws governing karma and fate? Why should he be allowed to wander this earth when many other worthy souls died and passed on, no more than a breath or a whisper upon the wind?
"Go," he said, when silence had stretched again between sounds. He hadn't spoken in years, but the sound of his voice had not changed. "Would you like to play a game?"
The monk snorted, and Sai looked away. What else was there? What was left of his legacy, in this world that had fallen and risen again as the province of warriors who lacked the delicacy to appreciate the mysteries hidden beneath the stones?
"Even go is not eternal," the monk said. "Who are you, and what do you really want?"
Sai gazed at the Lotus Sutra on its makeshift stand, and said nothing.