NaNoWriMo 02
NaNoWriMo Chapter 2. 2,146 words. 43,567 to go.
To Chapter 1
The next day found me dressed again in hakama. The master gunner of Hiroshima castle was staring at me in an unhappy way. Asano Yasushi was known to show his cannon more kindness than his students.
Behind him several young men stood. Some looked amused at my presence. Others frowned. It was clear that my presence was a disruption. I began to regret my request of my father.
“Look at her. She will get her pretty white face and kimono all covered in black soot.”
“She should be blackening her teeth, not her face. She should be preparing for marriage.” This from one of the frowning men. “Perhaps you should ask to be her husband if you think her so pretty, Daichi-kun.”
“I might, Kichirou-dono. She’d be more fun to load than a cannon.” My regret flamed up within me.
“Silence!” Yasushi shouted. The men all quieted. Yasushi looked over at them. “The Daimyo has declared she is to become a gunner. So she will become a gunner. Take your places.”
Swiftly the men and boys hurried over to the two guns resting atop the castle wall, quickly organizing themselves with two in front of the great wheels of each gun, two behind, a fifth at the long tail of the carriage the cannon rested on. Two more stood behind another small wagon with a large chest on it while one more stood next to the chest. The rest all stood off to the side as though to watch.
Yasushi turned back to me. “Hiroko-hime, you will stand here. You will touch nothing. You will say nothing. You will watch everything. When we are finished drilling, you will explain everything to me.”
“Yes, Yasushi-sensei.”
Yasushi struck the side of my head, leaving my ear ringing. “I said you will say nothing.”
My pride smarting as much as my ear, I bowed. Yasushi grunted, then turned back toward the men at the two cannons.
“The target is the river! Load solid shot!” he shouted.
I turned to watch one of the teams of men as they leaped into action. At the front of the gun a man shoved what looked like a spear tipped with a pig’s tail made of iron down the long barrel of the gun. At the rear of the gun the man at the tail of the gun’s carriage leaned down to site along the barrel, then picked up the tail and pulled it sideways slightly. Back at the chest the two men there threw the lid upward and immediately pulled out a bag with a rounded shell sticking out of the top.
It was too much to watch all at once. I quickly became lost in what was happening. As the young man standing beside the chest took the bag and ran backwards to the front of the gun I chose to watch the cannon ball. I would watch other parts of the gun later. The cannon ball was cradled to the belly of the young man carrying it. When he reached the wheel he turned and passed it off to Daichi.
I could see Daichi turn and hold the cannon ball and the bag up to the mouth of the cannon. The ball was in the front and the bag behind it so that the bag would enter first. The samurai beside him had flipped the strangely tipped spear around and used the broad butt of it to push on the cannon ball, shoving it bag first down to the bottom of the cannon.
I turned toward the read of the cannon and watched as Kichirou bent over the back end of it. He took a large brass needle and pushed it down into the small hole on top of the barrel, tapping several times. Pulling the needle out he pushed a brass tube into the hole then hooked a thin rope onto the wire coming out the top of the tube. I watched as everyone stepped away from the cannon.
“Ready!” Kichirou with the rope shouted.
Yasushi nodded, then looked at the river. Satisfied, he lifted his hand into the air. He jerked it downward. “Fire!”
Kichirou leaned away from the cannon, and then it belched flame, jumping backwards. The sound assaulted my ears. It was much louder than I had expected, slapping into my body with the force of a powerful gust of wind.
After a second and a half two large splashes erupted down in the river.
Yasushi gave the men no time to celebrate their good aim. “Same target! Shell, two second fuse!”
I immediately turned to watch at as the two men at the chest pulled out another bag, not paying attention to the cannon as it was wrestled back into place. One of the men held the bag as the other pulled out a disk and twisted it into the cannon ball. He then took a needle and pushed it into the disk.
The young runner took the bag and, again cradling it to his belly, backed swiftly to the cannon. He handed it to Daichi, and from this point I could see that the process was the same as before.
This time when the cannon balls dropped into the river the splashes were almost immediately followed by great gouts of water blasting upwards. I could not help but be impressed.
As the cannon was loaded and fired several more times I began watching one person at a time. I watched as a wet sponge and then a dry sponge mounted at the end of spears were used to clean the barrel between shots, and as the man at the trail carefully adjusted where the cannon was pointed and lifted or lowered the back of the barrel. I watched as cannon balls were prepared for loading and as they were primed to be fired. Mostly I watched an elaborate dance no less graceful or deadly than the movements of two samurai engaged in a duel.
I found it beautiful.
I could not understand all of the words Toliver used when I walked into the room with the Babbage engine. What I did understand was enough. I had changed my clothing and redone my makeup after leaving the cannons behind, but I could not change my hair. When Toliver had mentioned smell and wrinkled his ugly monsterous nose I knew he was referring to the smell of the cannon smoke.
I wanted to ask him how he could smell my hair over the reek of stale sweat that rose from him, but I wouldn’t dishonor my father so. He was a guest in the castle and I would treat him like one. “Would you like tea?” I winced at my clumsy English, remembering my Father’s words.
“No, thank you.” Tolver looked up from the low table he sat behind. He set down a paper filled with holes on top of a small stack of similar papers and patted a pot next to him. “I have some.”
I stepped closer so I could look at the odd piece of paper. At either end of it I could see a hole centered along the edge. The rest of the paper had several rows of holes and spaces where holes might have gone, but remained solid paper. Reaching out I picked it up to look at it closer.
Toliver snatched the paper out of my hand and set it back on the stack. He said something in English that I couldn’t find meaning in. I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”
He repeated what he’d said, more slowly. I could recognize some of the words he used, but most of them did not provide any more meaning than they did the first time. Again I shook my head.
An exasperated look crossed Toliver’s face. He lowered his head, resting his chin in his hand for a moment, then turned away from me. He slid a stack of papers without holes over toward me. Picking one up he looked at it, then me. He spoke one word. “Card.”
“Card,” I repeated in English struggling with the strange way the sounds pushed together, and the parts that were missing from proper language. “This is a card.”
“Close enough,” Toliver said. He held the card over the table, then slowly spun it so the top was now the bottom. “Turn over.”
“Turn over,” I repeated. I then reached over to the stack of cards he’d slid over and took the top one. “The card. Turn over.” I flipped the card I was holding.
Toliver shook his head. “It’s ‘Turn the card over.’” As he said it, he demonstrated.
I tried again. “Turn the card over”. The words felt strange.
“Yes.” Holding his card, he then spun it so that the edge that had been towards me was no towards himself. “Turn around.”
Again I repeated his action and odd sounding words. “Turn around.” Then I flipped the card over. “Turn over. Turn around.” I spun the card.
“Very good.”
“Turn the card around,” I said, and began to demonstrate.
His hand rushed toward mine, gripping it and the cart, keeping me from finishing the movement. “Don’t turn the card around,” he said.
I pulled my hand away and stepped back. No Japanese man would have touched me like that, but this disgusting barbarian thought nothing of how to behave himself. “Don’t”, I said in English. Then in Japanese, “Don’t do that again.”
Toliver looked at me for a moment like he didn’t understand. Then he looked down at his hand. He gave a shrug and quietly said something I could not interpret. He pointed at the stack of cards with holes punched in them. “Don’t turn them over or around.”
The meaning of what he had been trying to tell me became clear. The cards had to be just right, and he did not want me to mix them up. I walked back over to the table and sat down across from him, kneeling on a cushion. Instead of reaching for the cards with the holes, I reached over to the stack without holes. I took the top one and slipped it into the middle of the stack, looking at him.
“Don’t do that either,” he replied. For the first time I saw him smile.
I did not return his smile, still angry over his having touched me without my permission. Instead I took the top card from the stack without holes and began to teach him to say in Japanese what he had just taught me to say in English.
When I returned to the quarters I shared with several other young women of the clan they were gossiping about the day as usual. As soon as I entered the room they swarmed around me, asking me questions about the strange things I had done today. I politely answered a few before pleading for some quiet to let my mind settle from all it had learned today.
I pulled the combs out of my hair and untied the ribbons in it, then walked towards the baths. “Ayame-hime,” I called. “Will you help me wash my hair?”
Ayame was a precocious child. Like me she had moved into the castle after the death of a parent. Unlike me, her father was the one to die, and she had several brothers and sisters who also lived at the castle as wards of Nagamachi. Her mother attended to Nagamachi’s wife while Ayame was learning to wait on Nagamichi’s own daughters. Though she was two years younger than me she had become my closest friend in the castle.
Ayame practically bounced over to me. “Of course, Hiroko-hime.” She took a pair of towels and a comb and set them in a conveniently placed basin, then scooped them up.
“So what were they like?” she asked.
“Who?” Ayame was an inveterate gossip. She always wanted to know everything about everyone. I had seen so many people that day I couldn’t be sure who she meant.
“The men who manned the cannon!”
“Disgusting,” I told her. Sighing, I related to her what had been said before the men started their gun drill.
Ayame took it all in, then giggled as we entered the bath area and began undressing. “I thought you wanted to have a man like that. I’ve seen the books you read.
Appalled, I made a vow to do a better job hiding my copies of The Courtesan’s Silken Sieve and The Palace. “It’s different when they say those things about you.”
Ayame filled the basin, then dumped it over herself so she could scrub away the dirt of the day. “Were any of them beautiful?”
“I don’t want to talk about it, Ayame.”
“Mou, Hiroko. You’re always such a bore. At least tell me about the Englishman.”
“He stank. Just wash my hair.”
“Bore.”
To Chapter 3
To Chapter 1
The next day found me dressed again in hakama. The master gunner of Hiroshima castle was staring at me in an unhappy way. Asano Yasushi was known to show his cannon more kindness than his students.
Behind him several young men stood. Some looked amused at my presence. Others frowned. It was clear that my presence was a disruption. I began to regret my request of my father.
“Look at her. She will get her pretty white face and kimono all covered in black soot.”
“She should be blackening her teeth, not her face. She should be preparing for marriage.” This from one of the frowning men. “Perhaps you should ask to be her husband if you think her so pretty, Daichi-kun.”
“I might, Kichirou-dono. She’d be more fun to load than a cannon.” My regret flamed up within me.
“Silence!” Yasushi shouted. The men all quieted. Yasushi looked over at them. “The Daimyo has declared she is to become a gunner. So she will become a gunner. Take your places.”
Swiftly the men and boys hurried over to the two guns resting atop the castle wall, quickly organizing themselves with two in front of the great wheels of each gun, two behind, a fifth at the long tail of the carriage the cannon rested on. Two more stood behind another small wagon with a large chest on it while one more stood next to the chest. The rest all stood off to the side as though to watch.
Yasushi turned back to me. “Hiroko-hime, you will stand here. You will touch nothing. You will say nothing. You will watch everything. When we are finished drilling, you will explain everything to me.”
“Yes, Yasushi-sensei.”
Yasushi struck the side of my head, leaving my ear ringing. “I said you will say nothing.”
My pride smarting as much as my ear, I bowed. Yasushi grunted, then turned back toward the men at the two cannons.
“The target is the river! Load solid shot!” he shouted.
I turned to watch one of the teams of men as they leaped into action. At the front of the gun a man shoved what looked like a spear tipped with a pig’s tail made of iron down the long barrel of the gun. At the rear of the gun the man at the tail of the gun’s carriage leaned down to site along the barrel, then picked up the tail and pulled it sideways slightly. Back at the chest the two men there threw the lid upward and immediately pulled out a bag with a rounded shell sticking out of the top.
It was too much to watch all at once. I quickly became lost in what was happening. As the young man standing beside the chest took the bag and ran backwards to the front of the gun I chose to watch the cannon ball. I would watch other parts of the gun later. The cannon ball was cradled to the belly of the young man carrying it. When he reached the wheel he turned and passed it off to Daichi.
I could see Daichi turn and hold the cannon ball and the bag up to the mouth of the cannon. The ball was in the front and the bag behind it so that the bag would enter first. The samurai beside him had flipped the strangely tipped spear around and used the broad butt of it to push on the cannon ball, shoving it bag first down to the bottom of the cannon.
I turned toward the read of the cannon and watched as Kichirou bent over the back end of it. He took a large brass needle and pushed it down into the small hole on top of the barrel, tapping several times. Pulling the needle out he pushed a brass tube into the hole then hooked a thin rope onto the wire coming out the top of the tube. I watched as everyone stepped away from the cannon.
“Ready!” Kichirou with the rope shouted.
Yasushi nodded, then looked at the river. Satisfied, he lifted his hand into the air. He jerked it downward. “Fire!”
Kichirou leaned away from the cannon, and then it belched flame, jumping backwards. The sound assaulted my ears. It was much louder than I had expected, slapping into my body with the force of a powerful gust of wind.
After a second and a half two large splashes erupted down in the river.
Yasushi gave the men no time to celebrate their good aim. “Same target! Shell, two second fuse!”
I immediately turned to watch at as the two men at the chest pulled out another bag, not paying attention to the cannon as it was wrestled back into place. One of the men held the bag as the other pulled out a disk and twisted it into the cannon ball. He then took a needle and pushed it into the disk.
The young runner took the bag and, again cradling it to his belly, backed swiftly to the cannon. He handed it to Daichi, and from this point I could see that the process was the same as before.
This time when the cannon balls dropped into the river the splashes were almost immediately followed by great gouts of water blasting upwards. I could not help but be impressed.
As the cannon was loaded and fired several more times I began watching one person at a time. I watched as a wet sponge and then a dry sponge mounted at the end of spears were used to clean the barrel between shots, and as the man at the trail carefully adjusted where the cannon was pointed and lifted or lowered the back of the barrel. I watched as cannon balls were prepared for loading and as they were primed to be fired. Mostly I watched an elaborate dance no less graceful or deadly than the movements of two samurai engaged in a duel.
I found it beautiful.
I could not understand all of the words Toliver used when I walked into the room with the Babbage engine. What I did understand was enough. I had changed my clothing and redone my makeup after leaving the cannons behind, but I could not change my hair. When Toliver had mentioned smell and wrinkled his ugly monsterous nose I knew he was referring to the smell of the cannon smoke.
I wanted to ask him how he could smell my hair over the reek of stale sweat that rose from him, but I wouldn’t dishonor my father so. He was a guest in the castle and I would treat him like one. “Would you like tea?” I winced at my clumsy English, remembering my Father’s words.
“No, thank you.” Tolver looked up from the low table he sat behind. He set down a paper filled with holes on top of a small stack of similar papers and patted a pot next to him. “I have some.”
I stepped closer so I could look at the odd piece of paper. At either end of it I could see a hole centered along the edge. The rest of the paper had several rows of holes and spaces where holes might have gone, but remained solid paper. Reaching out I picked it up to look at it closer.
Toliver snatched the paper out of my hand and set it back on the stack. He said something in English that I couldn’t find meaning in. I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”
He repeated what he’d said, more slowly. I could recognize some of the words he used, but most of them did not provide any more meaning than they did the first time. Again I shook my head.
An exasperated look crossed Toliver’s face. He lowered his head, resting his chin in his hand for a moment, then turned away from me. He slid a stack of papers without holes over toward me. Picking one up he looked at it, then me. He spoke one word. “Card.”
“Card,” I repeated in English struggling with the strange way the sounds pushed together, and the parts that were missing from proper language. “This is a card.”
“Close enough,” Toliver said. He held the card over the table, then slowly spun it so the top was now the bottom. “Turn over.”
“Turn over,” I repeated. I then reached over to the stack of cards he’d slid over and took the top one. “The card. Turn over.” I flipped the card I was holding.
Toliver shook his head. “It’s ‘Turn the card over.’” As he said it, he demonstrated.
I tried again. “Turn the card over”. The words felt strange.
“Yes.” Holding his card, he then spun it so that the edge that had been towards me was no towards himself. “Turn around.”
Again I repeated his action and odd sounding words. “Turn around.” Then I flipped the card over. “Turn over. Turn around.” I spun the card.
“Very good.”
“Turn the card around,” I said, and began to demonstrate.
His hand rushed toward mine, gripping it and the cart, keeping me from finishing the movement. “Don’t turn the card around,” he said.
I pulled my hand away and stepped back. No Japanese man would have touched me like that, but this disgusting barbarian thought nothing of how to behave himself. “Don’t”, I said in English. Then in Japanese, “Don’t do that again.”
Toliver looked at me for a moment like he didn’t understand. Then he looked down at his hand. He gave a shrug and quietly said something I could not interpret. He pointed at the stack of cards with holes punched in them. “Don’t turn them over or around.”
The meaning of what he had been trying to tell me became clear. The cards had to be just right, and he did not want me to mix them up. I walked back over to the table and sat down across from him, kneeling on a cushion. Instead of reaching for the cards with the holes, I reached over to the stack without holes. I took the top one and slipped it into the middle of the stack, looking at him.
“Don’t do that either,” he replied. For the first time I saw him smile.
I did not return his smile, still angry over his having touched me without my permission. Instead I took the top card from the stack without holes and began to teach him to say in Japanese what he had just taught me to say in English.
When I returned to the quarters I shared with several other young women of the clan they were gossiping about the day as usual. As soon as I entered the room they swarmed around me, asking me questions about the strange things I had done today. I politely answered a few before pleading for some quiet to let my mind settle from all it had learned today.
I pulled the combs out of my hair and untied the ribbons in it, then walked towards the baths. “Ayame-hime,” I called. “Will you help me wash my hair?”
Ayame was a precocious child. Like me she had moved into the castle after the death of a parent. Unlike me, her father was the one to die, and she had several brothers and sisters who also lived at the castle as wards of Nagamachi. Her mother attended to Nagamachi’s wife while Ayame was learning to wait on Nagamichi’s own daughters. Though she was two years younger than me she had become my closest friend in the castle.
Ayame practically bounced over to me. “Of course, Hiroko-hime.” She took a pair of towels and a comb and set them in a conveniently placed basin, then scooped them up.
“So what were they like?” she asked.
“Who?” Ayame was an inveterate gossip. She always wanted to know everything about everyone. I had seen so many people that day I couldn’t be sure who she meant.
“The men who manned the cannon!”
“Disgusting,” I told her. Sighing, I related to her what had been said before the men started their gun drill.
Ayame took it all in, then giggled as we entered the bath area and began undressing. “I thought you wanted to have a man like that. I’ve seen the books you read.
Appalled, I made a vow to do a better job hiding my copies of The Courtesan’s Silken Sieve and The Palace. “It’s different when they say those things about you.”
Ayame filled the basin, then dumped it over herself so she could scrub away the dirt of the day. “Were any of them beautiful?”
“I don’t want to talk about it, Ayame.”
“Mou, Hiroko. You’re always such a bore. At least tell me about the Englishman.”
“He stank. Just wash my hair.”
“Bore.”
To Chapter 3