etsu

She stopped walking at noon, by a waterfall.
She crouched, breathing hard, sweating. Laid down her walking stick.
She slipped the cloth straps from her shoulders, set down the basket.
In the dust. There. Where else? In nothing.
In the roar of the waterfall. In the drifting, shocking cold, rainbow tinted mist.
As soon as she set down the basket, the boy began to whimper.
He'd been asleep. His chin was wet with drool.
She tottered a little as she stood up. She went down to the pool under the falling water, soaked a cloth in it. Wrung it out. Went back to the boy and wiped his face thoroughly and lovingly with the wet cloth.
He moaned. His eyes rolled a little and he looked at her.
Then he smiled. She smiled with him. He laughed and clapped his hands. She took a rice cake out of the pouch she wore slung around her neck, broke it, and fed him half.
She'd been carrying this boy ever since she found him sitting against a wall in a village to the far north. He didn't have a family or a name, so she named him Mujo.
She didn't know what had happened to his family. Maybe they were all killed. Maybe they'd abandoned the boy.
He was only about four or five. Stunted. It was hard to tell his exact age. He could hear perfectly well, but he didn't speak. His legs had withered. That was why she carried him in the basket on her back. He wasn't heavy but if she walked for too long the cloth straps chaffed her shoulders painfully and the muscles began to wince and jump. It didn't matter. She loved Mujo. She sang to him, folk songs, as she trudged the dusty roads and walked the paths through mist-soaked forests.
When his face wasn't dirty, he was beautiful. His eyes were big, wide-awake and shining black.
He ate his rice cake carefully. Then he picked grains of rice from his lips and chewed those. She watched him, smiling. It was hard to tire of watching this infinite boy. His expressions were always direct and pure. He enjoyed life. He was happy.
After she'd been carrying him for a month or so on her walk south, getting stronger with every step, she found that he could go into a trance and write -- in the dust, on air, on a sheet of paper.
He wrote beautiful Chinese and flowing Japanese characters. And the writing was the writing of dead people, sometimes of ancient scholars or of warrior monks. His writing told stories, or just "spoke" in a kind of fragmented poetry.
After watching him writing with a stick in the dust she got him some ink brushes and ink and collected scraps of paper, sometimes with sutras written on one side, or even banana leaves for him to write on, and she kept everything he wrote in a large sutra scroll container that hung below the basket. At night, while he slept, she'd read it by firelight, her spirit alive with wonder.
What unbelievable luck!
She herself had learned to read in a city to the far north, growing up as the daughter of a ninja commander who was killed in the wars. After her father's death, her mother had cut her own throat. She had no one else. She shut the door behind her and walked away without looking back.
She knew how to read, and had read many sutras and poetry collections and novels, but she couldn't go into trances and write the stories of spirits.
She'd been walking the country alone for two years before she found Mujo. She'd walked through many burnt villages and had spent nights not only in abandoned temples but in the charred ruins of castles. Everything was on fire, or already burnt. Sometimes for many miles the air stank of fires.
When she heard horses approaching, she always left the road or the path and hid wherever she could crouch down to hide. In reeds. In thick grass.
Are there wildflowers in hell? This question possessed and unerved her. She had seen wildflowers growing in the charred rubble of castle keeps. She'd picked them for Mujo sometimes. He tried to eat the blossoms.
She called herself Etsu. If you asked her name that's what she'd say. "Etsu."
She had straight glossy black hair and black eyes and although burnt by the sun and often scowling in the shadow of her round brimmed straw hat you could see that she might well be beautiful.
The walking stick that she carried everywhere in her wanderings, cut from silky golden paulownia wood, was a shikomi-zue -- that is, it sheltered a well-forged and razor sharp straight katana blade. Etsu was an expert in the use of this "cane sword." She had been instructed personally and with great intensity and care by her father. He had taught her a style he called "Flowing Water."
Then he'd given her the sword cane. Its blade had been forged by a famous smith. She couldn't remember who.
As a swordswoman, in truth, she could not be touched. She had never been beaten in a real fight. She didn't take heads. She just cut men down if they threatened her or when she was paid to do it. Mostly she killed bandits and criminals. She'd never fought a woman. Yet.
She was wary of arrows. Against a sword or a spear she couldn't be beaten.