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

had been at Terayama had formed a strong bond between them. Shigeru noticed how Kiyoshige encouraged the younger boy, tacitly approving his rashness because it matched his own. Shigeru deliberately kept them apart while they rode out on patrols, sending Kiyoshige with Irie and keeping Takeshi with him, but when they met in Chigawa, it amused Kiyoshige to take Takeshi around with him.

“There was a man outside with a message for you,” Takeshi said. “Just about the ugliest man I’ve ever set eyes on.”

“He’s been roasted like a chestnut,” Kahei added.

“We sent him packing.” Takeshi laughed. “What impudence, expecting you to speak to him.”

“Roasted?” Shigeru questioned.

“His face was puckered and red, as if he’d been burned.”

“Hideous,”Takeshi muttered. “We should have put him out of his misery. What does a man like that have to live for?”

Shigeru had thought more than once about the man he had rescued the previous year, but the Hidden seemed to have vanished underground again, true to their name. There had been no more reports of attacks over the border, and though occasionally what he had learned about their strange beliefs floated into his mind, he dismissed it as yet another superstition. He had enough of these from his father. Now he remembered Nesutoro and the sister who had considered herself his equal because of the teachings of her god, and he wondered what the man wanted and if it was too late to speak to him.

“Kiyoshige, go and see if this man is still there. You must remember him. Nesutoro, the one we rescued last year.”

Kiyoshige returned to say the man had disappeared. The innkeeper did not know how to find him, and there was no sign of him in the streets around.

“You should have treated him more gently,” Shigeru told his brother. “He is a brave man who has suffered a great deal.”

“He’s just some peasant who got drunk and fell in the fire!”

“No, he was tortured by the Tohan,” Shigeru replied. “He is one of the reasons we fought them last year.”

“One of the strange sect? Why does everyone hate them so much?”

“Perhaps because they seem to be different.”

“They believe everyone is born equal-in the eyes of Heaven,” Kiyoshige said. “And they claim their god will judge everyone after death. They don’t know their place, and they make everyone else feel guilty.”

“They could be very destabilizing within society,” Irie added.

“And my elder brother protects them,” Takeshi said. “Why?”

“The Tohan had come into Otori territory,” Shigeru replied. It was the reason he had always given; yet he knew, if he were truthful to himself, that it was not the only one. The scene at the shrine would never be erased from his mind-the cruelty, the courage, the suffering, all part of the terrible fabric of human life. The beliefs of the Hidden seemed outlandish and unlikely, but then so did his father’s superstitions. Could anyone fathom the truth of life? Could anyone read the secret hearts of men? Just as cutting back a shrub made it grow more vigorously, so suppressing strange beliefs gave them more life. Better to allow people to believe what they wanted.

“I had never seen children tortured in that way,” he added. “I find such cruelty offensive.”

There was a kind of pride there too: the Tohan might act in such an inhuman way, but the Otori would not. And a defiance: if the Tohan persecuted the Hidden, the Otori would protect them.

“Would you have spoken to him?” Takeshi looked a little discomfited. “I’m sorry I turned him away.”

“If it is important, he will probably return,” Shigeru said.

“I don’t think so. Not after the way we dealt with him. I should have been more gentle with him.”

“We can reach him through his brother-in-law,” Irie said. “The headman from the village.”

Shigeru nodded. “Next time we ride that way, we will make a point of speaking to him.”

Shigeru put the matter out of his mind, but the next morning Kiyoshige was called to the front of the inn and returned to say that the man’s sister was waiting in the street.

“I’ll send her away,” he suggested. “You cannot be expected to receive every peasant who thinks they have some claim on you.”

“Did she say what she wants?”

“Just that she comes on behalf of her brother, Nesutoro.”

Shigeru sat silent for a few moments. Kiyoshige was right: he should not make himself freely available to anyone and everyone. If he showed favoritism or particularity to one group, it would only cause envy and discontent among others. But the woman had intrigued him, and there had been some connection between him and the man-some recognition on both sides of their shared humanity-and shared qualities, too, of courage and patience.

“Let her come in. I will talk to her.”

SHE CAME IN on her knees, face to the ground. When Shigeru told her to sit, she did so reluctantly, her head kept low, eyes cast down. He studied her, noticing how she had made every effort to present herself: the faded robe was clean, her skin and hair clean too. He remembered the sharp planes of her face: they seemed more acute than ever, carved and hardened by grief. She had brought a companion with her, a girl of about fourteen or fifteen years, with the same high cheekbones and wide mouth. The girl did not venture into the room, but remained kneeling in the doorway.

“Lord Otori,” the older woman began, haltingly, “I do not merit your kindness. Your goodness is beyond words.”

“I trust your brother is recovered.”

“Thanks to your mercy. He is well, in himself, but…”

“Go on,” he prompted her. He listened impassively, neither flattered nor offended. Her words were formal, appropriate to her role as supplicant. He also felt his role descend on him, timeless and impersonal, nothing to do with his own seventeen-year-old self or his personality-the role of leadership he had been born into and trained for.

“He is losing his sight. His eyes became infected after the… after the fire, and he is nearly blind.