Heaven's Net Is Wide Lian Hearn (leveled readers .TXT) 📖

An iron hook suspended from the ceiling held a small pot, which was starting to steam. With the extra wood, it was soon boiling. Matsuda took dried mushrooms and bean paste from a container in the bamboo basket and added them to the water. After a few minutes he took the pot from the hook and poured the soup into two wooden bowls. He performed all these movements with dexterity and great skill, as though he had done them many times before, and Shigeru guessed the master had been to this hut on many occasions, alone or with other pupils, during the years he had served the Enlightened One at Terayama.

They drank the soup and followed it with the last two rice cakes from the container. Shigeru wondered what they would eat the next day; maybe they were to fast. Matsuda told him to take the pot to the spring, rinse it, and refill it; he would make tea.

It was completely dark by now, the stars visible through the swaying branches, the moon a faint glow in the east behind the peaks. A vixen screamed in the distance, an inhuman sound that made him think of goblins-and suddenly of Takeshi, who had wanted to be taught the art of the sword by the goblins of the mountain, like Matsuda himself. Maybe it had been in this very place; maybe Shigeru would see the same goblins, be taught by them, become the best swordsman in the Three Countries, far better than Iida Sadamu… He resolved not to waste a moment of this time with Matsuda. Whether it involved fasting, fetching wood, sweeping the floor, he would carry out all the tasks of the disciple in order to learn from his master.

BEHIND THE HUT was a small clearing, level and smooth-grassed. Rabbits, hares, deer, and other forest creatures came to graze here before sunrise. It made a perfect natural training ground, and Shigeru was eager to begin. Yet Matsuda seemed in no hurry. He roused Shigeru while it was still dark, the silent darkness that precedes dawn when the sounds of night, even the frogs, are muffled. The moon had already set, and the stars were dimmed by mist rising from the damp earth. The embers of the fire still glowed, a tiny light against the darkness of mountain and forest that lay around them.

After they had relieved themselves, washed their faces and hands in the spring, and drunk from the water, Matsuda said, “We will sit for a while. If you are to learn, it must be with an empty mind. Watch your breath; that is all you need to do.”

The old man sat down, legs crossed on the small wooden step. Shigeru could not see his face, though he was barely a pace away. He also sat, on the ground, legs crossed, hands on his knees, the first finger lightly touching the thumb.

He breathed in and out, feeling the breath as it filled his chest and flowed out through his nostrils. The inbreath was strong, the outbreath weak-the inbreath full of life, the other somehow suggestive of death. Always the strong breath followed it, the body possessed of its own desire to live, but one day that outbreath would be the last. The air would no longer go in and out of him. This body, which was so familiar to him, indeed so loved by him, would decay and rot: eventually even the bones would crumble. But his spirit? What happened to that? Would it be reborn into the endless cycle of life and death? Or into the hell reserved for the wicked, as some sects taught? Or would it reside in some remote shrine like this one, as the country people believed, or at Terayama, where his descendants would revere him and honor him?

His descendants: He would be married; he would have children. He brought his thoughts back from that direction. He would not start dwelling on women. He opened his eyes and glanced guiltily at Matsuda. The old man’s eyes were closed, but he said quietly, “Watch the breath.”

The breath went in and out. Thoughts circled around it like goblins or demons, clamoring for his attention.

As the fletcher whittles arrows, as the horseman tames horses, so you must direct and control your straying thoughts.

But the horses made him think of Kiyoshige and of the black colt he had left behind. He thought he could see through the horse’s eyes, taste the summer grass in the water meadows; he longed to feel the animal beneath him, the springy, controlled tension, the excitement in the curve of neck and back, the pleasure in controlling a creature so much larger and more powerful than himself. And the arrows: He felt his hands change out of their meditative pose into a longing to shape themselves around the bow, the rein, the sword.

He breathed in and out.

If you cannot quieten yourself, what will you ever learn?

The words fell into his hearing. He knew it was Matsuda who had spoken them, yet they seemed to come from some other source, some place of truth within himself. He repeated them under his breath. If you cannot quieten yourself. They became the breath. For a few brief moments his mind emptied. However, almost immediately the clamorous thoughts returned. So that’s what my teacher meant! I did it. Now maybe I can start using the sword.

Impatience set its ant bite on him. As if in response, his body began to complain about its discomfort. His legs were cramped, his belly empty, his throat dry. Yet Matsuda, over three times his age, did not move at all, merely breathed calmly, in and out.

I will be like him, Shigeru thought. I will. He tried to discern the master’s breathing and follow it. He watched himself breathe. In. Out.

Birds were starting to call from the trees. A thrush burst into song. He opened his eyes briefly and realized it