The Sword of Kaigen

by M.L. Wang

“He said, ‘there are a million ways to tell the same story. Our job as jaseliwu is to find the one the listener needs to hear. Not necessarily the one that makes them the happiest or the one that gives them the most information, but the one they need to hear to do what they need to do.’

But here, high in the obscuring mists of Takayubi, where nothing seemed to have changed for a thousand years, it was easy to believe the fantasy of a stable world.

It wasn’t a question of whether or not he was going to die.

It was a question of whether he would die quickly, with all his spirit intact, or slowly, after the evils of the world had ripped and beaten every shred of optimism out of him.

Power was born into a person and lived in the wordless depths of their soul. The strength of a bloodline wasn’t something you sang about; it was something the holder knew and others witnessed.

Something in Misaki was dead after that day. She no longer saw her husband or Mamoru as they passed through the house around her. Every night, Takeru clinically opened her kimono, pushed her down, and lay with her. He put another baby in her, and she lost that one too. After the second miscarriage, she began to think that she really was a doll—stiff, unfeeling, incapable of producing life because she was not really alive. There were horror stories of Tsusano puppet masters, manipulating the blood in the bodies of others—dead and living—making them dance like dolls. Sometimes Misaki wondered if she had subconsciously become one of them, puppeting her own gutted body through each day. It wasn’t until Setsuko married into the family that a pulse flickered to life in the doll’s chest. Setsuko was the first person who had ever talked to Misaki about the miscarriages.

“You can play weak and dumb with me, but it’s not going to work. There’s a bright, strong woman in there.” Setsuko put a hand on Misaki’s chest. “I’d like to meet her.”

You learn over time that the world isn’t broken. It’s just… got more pieces to it than you thought. They all fit together, just maybe not the way you pictured when you were young.”

“But… aren’t we all children of the Empire?” Mamoru asked, and of course, he would think that. That was what he had been told in every story and song since he learned to speak. “Don’t we have to trust our government?” “I suppose so,” Misaki said, and before she could stop herself—“if you really want to be a child forever. Do you, son?” She looked sharply at Mamoru in the growing light. “Or do you want to be a man?”

“See, that’s the hard part,” Misaki said, “coming to terms with what you don’t know, finding the answers, and acting on them without regret. Some people never learn. Some people learn too late.

“I know you might feel broken, but we’re jijakalu. We’re water, and water can shift to fit any mold. No matter how we’re broken and reshaped, we can always freeze ourselves strong again. It’s not going to happen all at once,” she added. “You have to wait for the turn of the season to see what shape the ice will take, but it will form up, clear and strong. It always does.”

For fifteen years Misaki had lamented being fated to raise her husband’s sons. All that time, she hadn’t considered that these boys might have something of her in them too.

“You might be.” Misaki offered her son a smile, even as fear twisted in her stomach. “Now, do as your father says. Go defend your idiocy.” “Is he going to kill me?” “If he is, you’d better die like a man, on your feet.”

Mamoru stood alone in the middle of the dojo with his hands covering his mouth until he heard the shuffle of Takeru and Setsuko’s footsteps leaving the compound and the thud of the sliding door closing behind them. Then he moved his hands, waking his jiya. Misaki watched in surprise as he drew the blood from his face and clothes then formed a scab over his split lip. She knew that as a child, he had shown promise in blood manipulation, but she hadn’t realized that he still remembered the little she had taught him all those years ago. Not only that, he had clearly taken the time to get better at it. She had to wonder, that all these years, this boy had been growing up right in front of her—and she had missed it.

“Why would it bother me?” Mamoru said. “This is good news. I’m the son of two great fighters, instead of one. This is good. It means that I must be strong. I should be proud.” Misaki stared. It defied logic. How had a soulless block of ice like Takeru and a selfish thing like her created something so bright? Somehow, despite everything, despite this tiny village, his frigid father, his bitter mother, his brainwashing school, despite all of it, Mamoru was growing up into a good person.

After all, Mamoru wasn’t much like her. Now that Misaki thought about it, he was more like the people she would have killed and died for.

“And what if they are? If the Ranganese are coming, they are coming to their deaths.” He spoke with the same stupid confidence that seemed to possess everyone in Takayubi. “This is the Sword of Kaigen. To make a run on it is to die.” “Those are pretty words,” Misaki said, “but you haven’t seen what’s out there.”

“You—” Misaki’s words caught in her throat, and she had to swallow. “You think I’m a good person.” She touched Setsuko’s hands. “That saved my life.” “What?” “I never admitted it because I’m proud and stupid—” and they were running out of time. Misaki blinked rapidly. No time for tears. “You saved me. I’m going to return the favor, but I need you to trust me and hide.”

With a slow breath, Mamoru raised his sword. Atsushi and Kotetsu Kama were behind him, counting on him to protect them. Beyond them, his mother and father were counting on him. Beyond this mountain, the fishermen of the Shirojima islands and the farmers of Yuwei and Hakudao were counting on him. His Empire was counting on him.

Maybe the pain and shame were too much for a small boy to hold, but the mountain… the mountain could bear it all.”

“The anger is not going to go away,”

The enemy that loomed before her now was not Matsuda Takeru himself, but the bitterness of silence that had built up between them over fifteen years. She would fight it, kill it. And when she was done, she would have a husband.

Something bigger than myself, she realized. “I’m Matsuda Misaki,” she said with pride and honesty she never attached to those words before. “I’m your wife.”

What sort of a man closed his eyes to the world and called it clarity?

“I was lucky. My parents let me turn my education into a weird overseas adventure, knowing all I had to do was marry well out of school and, by chance, it ended up paying off in useful knowledge. When you’ve been around the world and seen all different kinds of lies, it gets easier to see through them. I don’t fault you for being misinformed.”

A dragon knew when he was looking at worms and snakes.

“I won’t raise another generation as blind as my own.” Because it was nighttime and no one was around to see, Misaki reached out and found her husband’s sword-calloused fingers. They had been married fifteen years. It was the first time they had ever held hands.

No pop and hiss of steam here, no flame to set the darkness jumping in aimless excitement. But where there was light, there was always room for shadow. Entwined with the snow-white light of Takeru’s cold, Misaki found herself seeping in and rooting deep. She belonged.

it’s that a person’s tragedy doesn’t define them or cancel all the good in their life.