III. The Castle of Forlorn Dancers
You tentatively pull one arm out of its glove and reach out past the hatch of your armor; rain immediately soaks your hand and your sleeve.
You are
not sleeping under this.
Turning your bunraku around, you walk off towards the castle. It seems nature has found in human ruins an enclave of fertility in the warlands; weeds grow thick around vine-choked houses in the tiny village surrounding the castle. Once, these would have been peasants and common workers catering to the needs of the warriors inside, running for the safety of its walls when a siege came; their houses were always cheap and frail, wood and clay rather than stone, because they would be burned down time and again. You eye them as you pass, but none of them make for suitable shelter, too rotted and crumbling already. Eventually you reach the long-open gates of the small fortress and step into its yard.
Grey stone streaked by rain, paint long ago faded, roofs pockmarked with missing tiles, the castle stares you in the eye as if it tried to tower over you but could not match your giant's stature. This is an old building - a castle of the age before Heaven's fall. It was never meant to accommodate the bunraku, which did not then exist. You will not be able to take your armor inside the main building - but the walls of the courtyard support inward roofs, likely once used to protect supplies stored outside from the weather. Your giant of steel and wood swaggers over to one of the walls, and you kneel in the hatch pushing it to do the same. Harvest settles, one knee to the earth, naginata at hand, a roof over its head. Only then do you kick off the apparatus and slide out of the hatch onto the courtyard.
The doors of the castle are closed, but they open with a simple push, their locks hanging off a rotted frame. You enter a dark and silent building, lit only by the soft stream of grey-weather light poking in from windows and holes in the ceiling. You go through a hallway full of lacquered furniture which would have once been precious, your eyes sliding off paintings that have been eaten in their frames. You look at tapestries of flowers and warring armies and pass into a main room which boasts a fireplace in which is now pooling water. You walk upstairs, where you find more chaotic scenes; whatever impact breached the castle made some of the walls and ceilings cave in, and it is now a mess of wooden splinters, chalk dust and broken stone. You go back downstairs, pondering.
Nowhere in the castle is there any indication of which family owned it.
Back in the living room, you look at the rain and decide to sacrifice momentary comfort for the peace of a good night. You take a bag and your naginata, and you walk out of the walls, then away from the village, enjoying moving without the weight of your puppet-armor. On the Pearl River shore, you stand spear in hand, watching the flow for signs of motion. The rain shrouds the stream in ripples, making this a much harder task than it ought to be; but you are patient. Again and again, you strike at the water ahead of a barely-glimpsed motion. Again and again, you miss. But as the sun nears the horizon, you finally strike: your curved blade hooks into the flesh of a carp and you pull it out of the water, tossing it to the ground. "Hah!" You shout defiantly, before snapping the fish's neck with the butt of your weapon. This will make a good meal for tonight once the second part is done: pacing the outskirts of the abandoned village, collecting kindling in your bags.
When you return to the castle, you wipe the puddle out of the fireplace with a piece of cloth, then take your firesteel and flint and get to work until the wet wood finally starts giving off smoke. At last, you gut your carp, stab it with a branch, and roast it on the fire. The work is good for your spirits, keeping your mind focused away from dreary thoughts and memories of the battlefield. The simple carp is the best meal you've ever eaten in your life, and you down it with ample small beer. When you are done, you throw your traveling mat on the ground, place your naginata next to you, and lie down, baking in the heat of the fireplace, confident in the proximity of your bunraku. Exhaustion makes your sleep deep and dreamless.
***
Songs are what pulls you out of sleep. Songs and crystalline laughter, the laughter of ladies-in-waiting whispering behind their fans.
You blink your eyes open and are surprised to find far more light in the room that there should be in the middle of the night, even with your fire. A bit hazy, you sit up, rubbing your eyes and forehead, and feel motion all around you.
"She's awake!"
"The stranger is awake!"
"The warrior is awake!"
Men and women in beautiful robes - although decades out of fashion - move slowly around you. All are looking at you; some with scorn or disdain, most with varying mixes of curiosity and cheer. Their make-up is very classical, skin almost painted white with crimson lips like two rose petals, and a handful of them are dancing in the middle of the room. A woman leans towards you, offering her arm; you take it with a half-awake grunt and she helps you get up, a minor breach of etiquette on both sides.
"My dear," the woman says, and you notice she seems to be around your age, "how delightful it is to have a new visit in the castle. Our nights are so dreary, being so far from society… Tell me, how was the road here?"
You are quickly crashing awake, the incongruity of the situation harshly ripping the shreds of sleep off your mind. You mutter something non-committal as you take your bearings, and notice that the room has changed. Lanterns shed soft light everywhere, the fireplace is roaring, and the paintings are whole in their frames - the mon of a noble family sits above the fireplace, but for the life of you you could not read it. Something in its composition is wrong.
A young man with a bright smile and the same striking make-up as the woman approaches you by your other side, taking your arm, and also attempts to start a conversation; you resist the impulse of taking your arm away. These people look like nobles; do they not know how rude their behavior is?
You feel… Something throbbing above you. Like a pulse in your head, a heat radiating down. You shake your head, and the young man slides off your arm. The people around you shift, and there are more of them now. You hear conversations around you, in corridors and rooms you cannot see. All you glimpse are the shifting hues and shadows cast by people carrying colorful lanterns as they pass around this room. There is a musician in a corner - she is playing the shamisen and you are certain she was not there a moment ago. Someone foists a cup of steaming tea in your hands, and your heart jumps; you almost down it unconsciously before forcing yourself out your trance.
You look. You force yourself to really, truly look.
A woman makes a joke to her companion, and with every pearl of her laughter ripples of translucence go through her body. A man puts his cup of sake on the table, and when his hands let go of it the cup ceases to exist. A dancer crosses a stream of moonlight and casts no shadow.
Ghosts. You are in a castle of ghosts.
"Come now," the woman who first approached you says, stepping closer again. "You have barely said a word since your arrival. O brave samurai - for I see that you are a samurai by your rugged looks, your armor and your spear-"
Your spear. Where is it? You almost panic, realizing that the simple motions of the crowd took you halfway across the room from your mat, but there it is on the floor. You crack a forced smile, remembering years of painful tutoring in etiquette.
"I must beg your pardon, my lady," you say and begin to move back towards your weapon. "The hardships of travel have taken their toll on me, and I am half a dead woman as I stand before you. Why yes, indeed, I reached your castle soaked to the bones, very like a soul that fell into the River of Regrets on its way to the Underworld."
The woman laughs, a mirthful sound; if she is putting on a polite affectation she excels at it. You crouch and put your tea cup to the ground - untasted, for you remember the old tales - and pick up your naginata, making no threatening move. None of the celebrants seem to notice it; many indeed seem to have forgotten you altogether.
"A dead soul in our walls! Would you believe this! Ah, but you are delightful. Yet, you do us a terrible offense!"
"I would never wish to offend the mistress of such a radiant castle," you say as smoothly as you can manage.
"Oh, me, mistress? Perish the thought. And that is your offense, brave samurai! You have yet to introduce yourself to our Lady, who I am sure will be as delighted to see you as everyone in this room."
The throbbing comes back, stronger than before, and you realize that it is not internal; it really comes from above you. You look up, and through the old, cracked planks of the ceiling, you see a golden light shining through, and moving, slowly, at the speed of a casual walk. Wherever that light goes, the pulse goes, and the closer you are to her, the more you feel it. Streaks of golden light peek through the ceiling, cast by some hidden sun. You find yourself short of breath.
"Here," the lady says, playfully taking your arm and pulling you into the corridor. "You have nothing to fear, for I will be sure to tell the lady myself of the bravery of your reaching us through this dreadful weather."
You tilt your head as you enter the corridor. In the courtyard, more ghosts - if that's what they are - are chatting under the cover of the inward roofs. You can see your bunraku, still kneeling, lanterns suspended to its armor by some blitheful soul.
You turn, towards the direction the lady is taking you, and you can see the golden light, moving, throbbing, radiating heat. You know, without the shadow of a doubt, that this is the "Lady" of this castle, towards whom your companion is taking you, seeing nothing wrong with bringing an unknown, armored stranger wielding a spear to her mistress and treating her as a guest. Ghosts cannot fully grasp the world, you know this; their worldview tends to ignore facts that do not fit into whatever picture their mind is obsessed with.
You have not reached the stairs yet. Your armor is in the courtyard, so close.
[ ]Make polite excuses and meaningless chatter as you excuse yourself and move to the courtyard, get in Harvest and run from whatever madness is going on in these walls.
[ ]Follow your companion to her Lady in hopes of discovering the source of and reason for this disturbing spectacle.
