Chapter 16
Winter, 1236 – The Unknown Lands
While Yu’genta waited for Ou’bouji’s arrival, he watched the human he had found in the jungle grow healthier each day. She used the small blade from the knife to cut a strip from her second blanket, tying the first around herself in a crude mimicry of the outer layer he had originally destroyed. Once that was accomplished, she moved freely about the hut as she willed, though she returned to her bed frequently for rest and for him to teach her how to care for her own wounds.
Finally, around the time the time when they days became their shortest, she was able to leave his tree hut and climb down. He led her into the jungle, and tears glimmered in her eyes as she breathed the freedom of her escape. She did not flee. He led her to the clear-running cool jungle stream from which he drew his water. When she threw off her cloth wrapping and jumped into the waters, he could not help but remember the youngest of the Vānara, born so many years ago. How long had it been since there had been a child among his people? Even if he should be cautious about this being, he had to smile to see her, not too much more than a child, enjoying the freedom and the waters as she washed herself.
He had to spend extra time caring for her wound that night, but she made the ‘Arigato’ sound. He found himself beginning to regret that he would not be ever able to heal the wound fully. Some wounds are even beyond the skill of the Vānara.
After that day, she did spend time helping him in his hut, but each day, she would make the climb down to the ground and begin to dance. Yu’genta watched her carefully from a perch on an upper branch. At first her dancing was done with empty hands, moving back and forth across the jungle floor beside his home. The motion was fluid and beautiful.
It was disturbing, then, when she took up her knife. He kept well away from her, always aware of the edge of madness, but she simply did the same dances over again, this time with the naked steel in her hands. There was violence and death in those moves, and it took all his courage to remain watching. But he could not deny that the same beauty that had been in the dance without the steel was in this dance with it. Could beauty and violence subsist together? A strange step indeed on the path of dharma. Perhaps the unification of such principles is a necessary step along the path towards liberation from the wheel.
Time passed. Yu’genta finally met with Ou’bouji far from his hut while he was out foraging.
“This is the first test. Give to her these, and see what she does with them. The Brahmin passed wisdom across generations with these.” The guru gave Yu’genta a number of pieces of paper. The old man had seen them at times before: when he had travelled on pilgrimage to the holy places as a young man, long ago. There, they recorded the sacred scriptures, with drawings and paintings that showed the images of the gods.
When Yu’genta had returned to the hut, he found that the human had boiled water in an empty gourd using a heated stone, and had made a tea by boiling leaves. She poured out for him a cup. In return, he gave her the paper with a grunt.
She smiled and made the ‘Arigato’ sound again. As he drank the tea, he watched her. After some time, she decided take the first piece of paper and carefully fold it, bending and folding it over and over into a small five-sided shape. She looked at him, and pulled on two parts of the folded shape, which pulled open like a flower. With two more folds, she held it on her hand and offered it to him. It was an egret, a bird made out of paper with a long neck and long wings, looking as though it had settled into her hand to nest.
The other sheets she set aside. After he had finished his tea, she found a stick and laid it upon the hot stones until it was well charred. In her empty cup, she combined the ashes with a little water, and then found a green twig. She stripped away part of the pith of the twig at one end, leaving only a curl of the green bark. Using the twig and the ashen water, she began to make marks upon the paper. The marks were alien to him. But the human’s expression was focused and serious; unlike the creation of the egret, this was no casual craft or play. When she was done, she laid the paper aside. She laid her hand on the paper she had marked when he tried to move it, and since it was bad dharma to take anything that had not been offered, he let it be.
Yu’genta left to report the results to his guru, bringing with him the paper bird he had been given.
Ou’bouji examined the bird carefully and listened to the old man’s description of the marks on the paper. “She has writing then, even if we do not know the tongue. And she can clearly create beauty for beauty’s own sake.” He held up the bird. “We are ready for the second test.”
Yu’genta had left as normal for his daily foraging, but on this day he found a perch high in a tree overlooking his own hut and the jungle floor around. As usual, the human arose and came down to do her dancing with the sword. However, things today would be different.
A chilling, panicked cry emerged from undergrowth near where the human danced. She stopped, sheathed her blade, and looked around for the source of the sound. Then, breathing rapidly and painfully, she turned and went towards the sound, pushing aside the heavy bushes. There, Ou’bouji was ready, his staff in hand, cowering away from what appeared to be an enormous spider, at least the height of a man. The spider bore in on the guru aggressively. Yu’genta, even knowing the plan, could hardly bear to look. Would the human turn aside, seeing nothing to be gained here? Would she wait until the spider had attacked Ou’bouji for the full glory of bloodshed without risk? Or…
The human came running, sweeping up a rock and hurling it at the giant spider’s carapace and shouting as she came.
The giant spider whirled and charged towards the human, huge, hairy, and venomous. But the human held her ground, hand on the handle of the knife but not drawing it, as she waited for the spider to close and attack her. Yu’genta was surprised that the human was able to face such a creature unarmed, without even flinching.
At the last moment the spider turned aside and charged into the forest, disappearing.
Perhaps the sound faded a little too swiftly, for Yu’genta knew that the whole thing had been an illusion prepared by Ou’bouji, though the illusion was so realistic it had seemed real even to fellow Vānara. Illusion gone, he climbed down from his perch and moved towards the human. She was pale and her breath labored. She made some sounds, and pointed up towards the hut.
Ou’bouji then spoke. It was in a tongue that Yu’genti did not understand...but it was clear the human did. The guru translated his words for the old Vānara.
“Yes. We go to hut. Hide from Spider. Arigato...Thank you.”
Oh, so that’s what it meant.
Ou’bouji led the way to Yu’genti’s hut in the tree, and the human insisted on coming last. The spider, naturally, did not follow. It had never existed at all.
On reaching the treehouse herself, she bowed to Ou’bouji and a flood of words came out of her mouth at once despite her breathlessness. The guru held up his hand. “Slow.” He put the banana-leaf wrapped bundle he carried down to one side and settled into a squat at the circle of stones, and the young female nodded and knelt across from him. Yu’genta sat nearby, watching them as the guru kindly translated both her words and his.
The guru pointed at himself. “Me Ou’bouji.” He pointed over at the old man. “He Yu’genta.” He pointed at the human. “Who you?”
The human pointed at herself. “I am Kakita Arahime.”
The guru nodded. “You samurai?”
The human...Kakita Arahime...answered, “Yes.”
Yu’genta bared his teeth, but Ou’bouji stopped him with a glance, saying quickly in their own tongue, “There is more that we don’t understand. We should not draw conclusions yet.”
Ou’bouji turned back and spoke again in the girl’s tongue. “Why you here?”
Arahime look down, as though trying to find the right words. “Another samurai threw me from the ship we were travelling on. He wanted me to die. I swam to shore. I got hurt. I woke up here.”
The words were difficult to translate, and it took Ou’bouji several attempts to get them right. Once it became clear violence that had been done to her, Yu’genta hooted his anger, but Ou’bouji showed more control.
Before he could ask another question, however, the girl turned to Yu’genta and said, slowly and clearly, for Ou’bouji to translate, “Thank you for saving me.”
Yu’genta was pleased and settled back with satisfaction.
Ou’bouji leaned forward to look intently at the samurai. “What you want most now.”
Ferver brightened her eyes and she lean forward intently. “Please take me back to Second City. Please help me go home.”
“No!” Ou’bouji’s voice changed tone dramatically, becoming loud and authoritative, ending with a boom. He held his staff in front of him, awaiting the attack that might come.
Yu’genta almost pitied the samurai when he saw the expression of hurt in her eyes as she drew back. Her eagerness and happiness at being able to communicate disappeared and she seemed to draw in on herself. She was silent for a long time. Finally, tentatively, she asked, “Do you know where it is?”
Ou’bouji’s tone was even sterner in response. “Yes.”
Arahime was still quiet, still controlled. “Will you tell me how to get there by myself?”
The brown-eyed Vānara searched intently in the human’s eyes for traces of violence as he answered, “No.”
She will definitely attack now. She will try to force him to tell. Yu’genta’s thoughts were dark. Together, the two Vānara waited for some kind of response. Any response.
The human knelt there, watching them both for a very long time. The only sound in the hut was the sound of her pained breathing. Finally, she said, in a soft tone. “Could you at least tell my family I am not dead, please?”
The guru said nothing, just looking at her silently. She tried to ask several more times, but neither of the Vānara said anything in response. In the end, she turned and withdrew to her sleeping mat. She lay down, pulled the blanket over her and went to sleep.
Yu’genta turned to Ou’bouji long after she had gone to sleep. “Well? How do you judge?”
Ou’bouji watched the sleeping form. “Remarkable.” He turned to face the old man. “I have no doubts, now. Despite her words, she must be Brahmin.” He ticked off on his fingers the results of the tests.
“She had already shown in her interactions with you the virtues of bodily purity, humility, and courtesy. “In the first test, when given paper, she used it to create both beauty and write words, showing herself above the laborer caste and indicating that she likely has a soul. There is no requirement that we understand the words for them to be knowledge shared in this fashion. These show values of scholarship, knowledge, and beauty.
“For the second test, in the face of danger to a stranger, to Vānara, she went to the aid the other even at risk of her own life. And yet, she did not threaten violence by drawing her weapon even after she had called the wrath of the enemy upon herself. She saw to the safety of the other before her own. Courage, sacrifice, and restraint.
“And for the third test, you see. She did not respond to denial of the desired with violence, threats, or complaint. She asks to send word to her family…it honors her elders. I do not think that a normal Samurai could have responded thus. She must be Samurai-Brahmin.”
Yu’genta, for the first time, did not feel so foolish for taking in this fallen bird he had found in the forests. Perhaps there were things they could learn from each other. “What will we do now? Will we help her?”
Ou’bouji opened his mouth in a broad-toothed smile. “Yes, indeed, Yu’genta my friend. There is much we must speak of. If she desires to know us, we will guide her. And we will grant her what her heart hopes for.”
Winter, 1236 – The Unknown Lands
While Yu’genta waited for Ou’bouji’s arrival, he watched the human he had found in the jungle grow healthier each day. She used the small blade from the knife to cut a strip from her second blanket, tying the first around herself in a crude mimicry of the outer layer he had originally destroyed. Once that was accomplished, she moved freely about the hut as she willed, though she returned to her bed frequently for rest and for him to teach her how to care for her own wounds.
Finally, around the time the time when they days became their shortest, she was able to leave his tree hut and climb down. He led her into the jungle, and tears glimmered in her eyes as she breathed the freedom of her escape. She did not flee. He led her to the clear-running cool jungle stream from which he drew his water. When she threw off her cloth wrapping and jumped into the waters, he could not help but remember the youngest of the Vānara, born so many years ago. How long had it been since there had been a child among his people? Even if he should be cautious about this being, he had to smile to see her, not too much more than a child, enjoying the freedom and the waters as she washed herself.
He had to spend extra time caring for her wound that night, but she made the ‘Arigato’ sound. He found himself beginning to regret that he would not be ever able to heal the wound fully. Some wounds are even beyond the skill of the Vānara.
After that day, she did spend time helping him in his hut, but each day, she would make the climb down to the ground and begin to dance. Yu’genta watched her carefully from a perch on an upper branch. At first her dancing was done with empty hands, moving back and forth across the jungle floor beside his home. The motion was fluid and beautiful.
It was disturbing, then, when she took up her knife. He kept well away from her, always aware of the edge of madness, but she simply did the same dances over again, this time with the naked steel in her hands. There was violence and death in those moves, and it took all his courage to remain watching. But he could not deny that the same beauty that had been in the dance without the steel was in this dance with it. Could beauty and violence subsist together? A strange step indeed on the path of dharma. Perhaps the unification of such principles is a necessary step along the path towards liberation from the wheel.
Time passed. Yu’genta finally met with Ou’bouji far from his hut while he was out foraging.
“This is the first test. Give to her these, and see what she does with them. The Brahmin passed wisdom across generations with these.” The guru gave Yu’genta a number of pieces of paper. The old man had seen them at times before: when he had travelled on pilgrimage to the holy places as a young man, long ago. There, they recorded the sacred scriptures, with drawings and paintings that showed the images of the gods.
When Yu’genta had returned to the hut, he found that the human had boiled water in an empty gourd using a heated stone, and had made a tea by boiling leaves. She poured out for him a cup. In return, he gave her the paper with a grunt.
She smiled and made the ‘Arigato’ sound again. As he drank the tea, he watched her. After some time, she decided take the first piece of paper and carefully fold it, bending and folding it over and over into a small five-sided shape. She looked at him, and pulled on two parts of the folded shape, which pulled open like a flower. With two more folds, she held it on her hand and offered it to him. It was an egret, a bird made out of paper with a long neck and long wings, looking as though it had settled into her hand to nest.
The other sheets she set aside. After he had finished his tea, she found a stick and laid it upon the hot stones until it was well charred. In her empty cup, she combined the ashes with a little water, and then found a green twig. She stripped away part of the pith of the twig at one end, leaving only a curl of the green bark. Using the twig and the ashen water, she began to make marks upon the paper. The marks were alien to him. But the human’s expression was focused and serious; unlike the creation of the egret, this was no casual craft or play. When she was done, she laid the paper aside. She laid her hand on the paper she had marked when he tried to move it, and since it was bad dharma to take anything that had not been offered, he let it be.
Yu’genta left to report the results to his guru, bringing with him the paper bird he had been given.
Ou’bouji examined the bird carefully and listened to the old man’s description of the marks on the paper. “She has writing then, even if we do not know the tongue. And she can clearly create beauty for beauty’s own sake.” He held up the bird. “We are ready for the second test.”
Yu’genta had left as normal for his daily foraging, but on this day he found a perch high in a tree overlooking his own hut and the jungle floor around. As usual, the human arose and came down to do her dancing with the sword. However, things today would be different.
A chilling, panicked cry emerged from undergrowth near where the human danced. She stopped, sheathed her blade, and looked around for the source of the sound. Then, breathing rapidly and painfully, she turned and went towards the sound, pushing aside the heavy bushes. There, Ou’bouji was ready, his staff in hand, cowering away from what appeared to be an enormous spider, at least the height of a man. The spider bore in on the guru aggressively. Yu’genta, even knowing the plan, could hardly bear to look. Would the human turn aside, seeing nothing to be gained here? Would she wait until the spider had attacked Ou’bouji for the full glory of bloodshed without risk? Or…
The human came running, sweeping up a rock and hurling it at the giant spider’s carapace and shouting as she came.
The giant spider whirled and charged towards the human, huge, hairy, and venomous. But the human held her ground, hand on the handle of the knife but not drawing it, as she waited for the spider to close and attack her. Yu’genta was surprised that the human was able to face such a creature unarmed, without even flinching.
At the last moment the spider turned aside and charged into the forest, disappearing.
Perhaps the sound faded a little too swiftly, for Yu’genta knew that the whole thing had been an illusion prepared by Ou’bouji, though the illusion was so realistic it had seemed real even to fellow Vānara. Illusion gone, he climbed down from his perch and moved towards the human. She was pale and her breath labored. She made some sounds, and pointed up towards the hut.
Ou’bouji then spoke. It was in a tongue that Yu’genti did not understand...but it was clear the human did. The guru translated his words for the old Vānara.
“Yes. We go to hut. Hide from Spider. Arigato...Thank you.”
Oh, so that’s what it meant.
Ou’bouji led the way to Yu’genti’s hut in the tree, and the human insisted on coming last. The spider, naturally, did not follow. It had never existed at all.
On reaching the treehouse herself, she bowed to Ou’bouji and a flood of words came out of her mouth at once despite her breathlessness. The guru held up his hand. “Slow.” He put the banana-leaf wrapped bundle he carried down to one side and settled into a squat at the circle of stones, and the young female nodded and knelt across from him. Yu’genta sat nearby, watching them as the guru kindly translated both her words and his.
The guru pointed at himself. “Me Ou’bouji.” He pointed over at the old man. “He Yu’genta.” He pointed at the human. “Who you?”
The human pointed at herself. “I am Kakita Arahime.”
The guru nodded. “You samurai?”
The human...Kakita Arahime...answered, “Yes.”
Yu’genta bared his teeth, but Ou’bouji stopped him with a glance, saying quickly in their own tongue, “There is more that we don’t understand. We should not draw conclusions yet.”
Ou’bouji turned back and spoke again in the girl’s tongue. “Why you here?”
Arahime look down, as though trying to find the right words. “Another samurai threw me from the ship we were travelling on. He wanted me to die. I swam to shore. I got hurt. I woke up here.”
The words were difficult to translate, and it took Ou’bouji several attempts to get them right. Once it became clear violence that had been done to her, Yu’genta hooted his anger, but Ou’bouji showed more control.
Before he could ask another question, however, the girl turned to Yu’genta and said, slowly and clearly, for Ou’bouji to translate, “Thank you for saving me.”
Yu’genta was pleased and settled back with satisfaction.
Ou’bouji leaned forward to look intently at the samurai. “What you want most now.”
Ferver brightened her eyes and she lean forward intently. “Please take me back to Second City. Please help me go home.”
“No!” Ou’bouji’s voice changed tone dramatically, becoming loud and authoritative, ending with a boom. He held his staff in front of him, awaiting the attack that might come.
Yu’genta almost pitied the samurai when he saw the expression of hurt in her eyes as she drew back. Her eagerness and happiness at being able to communicate disappeared and she seemed to draw in on herself. She was silent for a long time. Finally, tentatively, she asked, “Do you know where it is?”
Ou’bouji’s tone was even sterner in response. “Yes.”
Arahime was still quiet, still controlled. “Will you tell me how to get there by myself?”
The brown-eyed Vānara searched intently in the human’s eyes for traces of violence as he answered, “No.”
She will definitely attack now. She will try to force him to tell. Yu’genta’s thoughts were dark. Together, the two Vānara waited for some kind of response. Any response.
The human knelt there, watching them both for a very long time. The only sound in the hut was the sound of her pained breathing. Finally, she said, in a soft tone. “Could you at least tell my family I am not dead, please?”
The guru said nothing, just looking at her silently. She tried to ask several more times, but neither of the Vānara said anything in response. In the end, she turned and withdrew to her sleeping mat. She lay down, pulled the blanket over her and went to sleep.
Yu’genta turned to Ou’bouji long after she had gone to sleep. “Well? How do you judge?”
Ou’bouji watched the sleeping form. “Remarkable.” He turned to face the old man. “I have no doubts, now. Despite her words, she must be Brahmin.” He ticked off on his fingers the results of the tests.
“She had already shown in her interactions with you the virtues of bodily purity, humility, and courtesy. “In the first test, when given paper, she used it to create both beauty and write words, showing herself above the laborer caste and indicating that she likely has a soul. There is no requirement that we understand the words for them to be knowledge shared in this fashion. These show values of scholarship, knowledge, and beauty.
“For the second test, in the face of danger to a stranger, to Vānara, she went to the aid the other even at risk of her own life. And yet, she did not threaten violence by drawing her weapon even after she had called the wrath of the enemy upon herself. She saw to the safety of the other before her own. Courage, sacrifice, and restraint.
“And for the third test, you see. She did not respond to denial of the desired with violence, threats, or complaint. She asks to send word to her family…it honors her elders. I do not think that a normal Samurai could have responded thus. She must be Samurai-Brahmin.”
Yu’genta, for the first time, did not feel so foolish for taking in this fallen bird he had found in the forests. Perhaps there were things they could learn from each other. “What will we do now? Will we help her?”
Ou’bouji opened his mouth in a broad-toothed smile. “Yes, indeed, Yu’genta my friend. There is much we must speak of. If she desires to know us, we will guide her. And we will grant her what her heart hopes for.”
