The Iris Fan

6

Month 4, Hoei Year 2

(April 1705)

A trill of birdsong pierced the black silence in which he floated. Falling water splashed in the distance, a cool breeze swept his skin, and wind chimes tinkled.

Hirata opened his eyes to soft, pale light. He was lying on a futon, alone in a small room. Through the open doors he saw a veranda with red railings and wooded hills veiled with fog. Twisted pines clung to rocky cliffs above a waterfall that cascaded like a spill of liquid silver. The breeze tinkled brass wind chimes hanging from the eaves. A red bird perched on the railing and trilled. The view had a serene, unearthly beauty.

Hirata had never seen it before, nor this room.

Confused, he kicked off the white quilt tangled around his legs. He was naked. Although his mind was fully alert, he couldn’t recall what he’d been doing before he fell asleep. He jumped out of bed. A white cotton kimono lay folded on the tatami.

Who had left it there? Whose house was this?

Hirata put on the kimono, then ran outside. The red bird flew away. The veranda jutted over empty space. On hills that sloped down to a valley were dark pines and trees with pink and white blossoms. Hirata searched for familiar landmarks and found none. He leaned over the railing and peered upward. The house was part of a temple built on a cliff. The tiers and spire of a pagoda rose above the curved roofs of other buildings.

What temple? How had he come to be here?

Into his mind seeped a dim memory of flashing blades, a sword battle with … Tahara and Kitano.

The rusty floodgate between past and present creaked open. He’d tried to kill Tahara and Kitano, to shut down the secret society and end its treasonous scheme. Details of the battle were hazy, but he knew he’d lost.

“Then why am I still alive?” Hirata said aloud.

Birdsong echoed across the valley. Hirata remembered lying strapped to a table in a cave while Tahara and Kitano chanted a spell, pressed a leather mask over his face, and fed fluid through a metal tube into a vein in his arm-some bizarre, unheard-of medical procedure. The smell of sweet chemicals was the last thing Hirata remembered.

What had they done?

Hirata flung open his robe and examined his body. It looked normal, with the long, puckered, familiar old scar on his left thigh. He pushed up his sleeves. On his left forearm was a small, round discoloration where the tube had pierced. He felt fine, but his eyes couldn’t tell him if he still had his martial arts skills, his supernatural powers.

Merciful gods, had they taken those away?

Hirata drew deep, slow breaths. Meditation aligned and amplified the mental, spiritual, and physical energies in him. Power flowed through nerves and muscles. He pointed his finger at the wind chimes. Each slender brass cylinder began to spin, one after another, on its string. Hirata exhaled with relief. Then he felt the pulse of an aura, the energy that all living things emitted. His trained senses identified its source as human. Each human had a unique aura that signaled his personality, health, and emotions. This one was a strong, booming, familiar cadence that struck fear into his heart. Reaching instinctively for his sword, forgetting that he was unarmed, Hirata whirled.

Two samurai, dressed in white martial arts practice jackets and trousers, strolled out onto the veranda. Their conjoined aura dissipated. They, unlike other creatures, could turn it on and off. They weren’t armed, either. They didn’t need weapons to kill.

“Somebody’s up and around,” said Tahara, in his voice that was both smooth and rough, like water flowing over jagged rocks. His deep black eyes twinkled. His left eyebrow arched higher than his right, lending his strong, regular features a rakish charm.

“It’s about time.” Kitano’s mouth moved, but the rest of his face was an immobile mesh of scars. Cuts sustained during a long-ago battle had severed his facial nerves. He was in his fifties, with gray hair and a robust physique that seemed impervious to aging.

“Where am I?” Hirata demanded.

“At the Sky Mountain Temple in Chikuzen Province,” Tahara said.

He and Kitano studied Hirata with an intense, eager interest. Hirata realized that someone was missing. “Where’s Deguchi?”

Deguchi was a Buddhist priest, the fourth member of the society. “Don’t you remember?” Kitano sounded concerned.

Now Hirata did. Deguchi had fought on his side in the battle against Kitano and Tahara. Memory served up an image of Deguchi’s dead, broken body. Hirata’s heart sank.

Tahara smiled as if relieved that Hirata’s wits were intact. Kitano’s eyes crinkled in his paralyzed face. Hirata also remembered that they’d all been injured during the battle, but the other men seemed as fit as himself. “How long was I unconscious?”

“Oh, about a year,” Tahara said.

“A year?” Hirata was horrified. “What’s happened to my wife and children? And Sano?”

“Damned if we know,” Kitano said. “We haven’t been back to Edo in all that time.”

“We’ve been on the run,” Tahara said with a spark of anger. “After you told Sano about our society, he reported us to the shogun. There’ve been troops hunting us. We’ve had to keep a low profile, which means no contact with anyone in Edo. And it’s no easy task, lugging an unconscious man all over Japan. You should thank us for keeping you safe.”

“‘Safe’? You ruined my life!” Because of them he’d lost his family, his relationship with his master, and his honor. “What did you do to me while I was unconscious?”

“We healed you,” Kitano said. “We gave you plenty of good food and exercise. We kept you in good shape.”

They’d used their mystical powers to manipulate his body. Hirata pictured himself eating, practicing martial arts, and going through the motions of daily living like a sleepwalker. He shuddered. “What else?”

They watched him; they seemed to be waiting for something. Then Tahara spoke in a tentative voice. “General Otani? Are you there?”

General Otani was a samurai who’d fought in the Battle of Sekigahara more than a century ago. His side had lost to Tokugawa Ieyasu, who’d unified the warring factions of Japan, founded the Tokugawa regime, and become its first shogun. General Otani had died on the battlefield. Tahara, Kitano, and Deguchi had stolen an ancient book of magic and learned a spell to summon his ghost. The ghost had granted them, and Hirata, supernatural powers in exchange for services. General Otani had one goal-destroying the Tokugawa regime and avenging his defeat at Sekigahara. He couldn’t do it alone; he was disembodied energy. He needed human help, and he could only be seen by and interact with the secret society members while they were in a mystical trance.

Sudden terror gripped Hirata. “Are we in a trance? Is that what this is?” He looked around for General Otani, whose powers were limitless, his wrath deadly.

“No,” Kitano said. “This is the real world.”

“Then how-?”

“General Otani?” Tahara repeated, louder.

Hirata experienced a strange, zinging sensation, like a current of extra life force speeding along his nerves. The blood in his veins and organs swelled. Heat flushed him. He felt a jolt in his brain. A part of him that he hadn’t known was still unconscious snapped alert. His lungs drew a deep, involuntary breath. His arms and legs stretched and flexed of their own accord. He couldn’t control his movements! He opened his mouth to yell, “What are you doing to me? Stop!” Instead he said, “I am here.”

His voice was deeper than normal, with a strange yet familiar accent. Tahara said to Kitano, “It worked!” They hooted with laughter and slapped each other’s backs.

“What worked?” Hirata was relieved that this time he’d said what he meant to say, yet terrified by what had just happened.

“The spell for possession,” Kitano said. “We’ve been working it on you for six months.”

“General Otani isn’t just a disembodied spirit anymore,” Tahara said. “He’s inside you!”

An alien presence bloomed in Hirata’s mind, like a carnivorous flower that preyed on his mental faculties. General Otani spoke in his thoughts: You and I share your body.

This was the terrible purpose for which General Otani had ultimately wanted Hirata-to give the ghost a human form. Hirata cried, “No! I don’t want you! Get out of me!”

“The spell is permanent,” Kitano said.

Tahara shrugged and smiled. “Sorry.”

Their attitude compounded the rage Hirata felt toward them for luring him into treason. “Why does Otani have to possess me? Why not one of you?”

“He thought you would be the easiest to take over,” Tahara said.

Hirata clawed at his chest, yelling, “Get out!” His nails raked bloody tracks on his skin.

You can’t get rid of me, General Otani said inside his head. His arm muscles stiffened, jerking his hands away from his body.

Hirata lunged toward the veranda railing. “Leave, or I’ll jump!”

A fear that wasn’t entirely his own stabbed his gut. Hirata realized that General Otani shared his mortality as well as his body. He tried to climb over the railing, but his legs wouldn’t cooperate. He staggered toward the wall of the building and beat his head against it. Otani’s voice in his head howled at the pain. Hirata’s back arched, and he fell to the veranda. His arms and legs curled to his chest. He struggled with all his might, but he was as immobilized as if wrapped in chains.

“No use fighting,” Kitano said.

“He’s got you good,” Tahara said.

“You should listen to your friends,” General Otani said aloud. His voice was breathless as it emerged from Hirata; the struggle had tired him. “Stand up, or must I force you?”

The chains loosened. Hirata stood, conceding defeat, but he’d learned that the ghost had physical limitations now that it was in him. He would play along until he figured out how to expel it and be his normal self again.

It won’t work.

Hirata’s breath caught. General Otani said, I can hear your thoughts. You can’t hide anything from me. Hirata’s lips moved as General Otani spoke aloud: “We are going back to Edo.”

“Good, I’m ready for some action,” Tahara said.

“It’s too quiet here,” Kitano said.

“You two are not coming with us,” General Otani said through Hirata.

The other men looked surprised. “Why not?” Kitano asked.

“I have no further use for you.”

They apparently hadn’t realized that after they gave Otani a human body, he would be independent. “We’ve served you for years.” Tahara’s voice rose with indignation. “You can’t just ditch us.”

“Watch me.”

Propelled by the ghost, Hirata moved toward the door to the bedchamber. Tahara and Kitano stepped in front of it. “We gave up everything to help you destroy the Tokugawa regime,” Kitano said. “We’re fugitives because of you. We’re not letting you walk away.”

“I’ve rewarded you handsomely for your service. You have mystical powers that you could not otherwise have attained.” Hirata tried to bite his tongue to stop Otani from speaking, but he couldn’t. “Our collaboration is over.”

“If it’s over, then we’ll send you back where you came from,” Tahara retorted.

He and Kitano began chanting words in archaic Chinese that Hirata couldn’t understand. Inside him, General Otani’s spirit recoiled with fear from the spell that would permanently banish him to the netherworld of the dead. Hirata’s mouth opened. From his depths came a shout so loud that he thought his head would explode. Tahara and Kitano choked and staggered, mouths agape, while the force that Otani had summoned from Hirata blasted down their throats. They jerked and twisted like hanged men suspended from gallows, then fell to the floor. Flames burst from their mouths and eyes. They writhed, screamed in agony, then lay still. In the sudden quiet, the waterfall murmured.

Hirata fell to his knees, crying, “Tahara-san! Kitano-san!”

Their eyes were burned black as coals; their mouths leaked wisps of smoke. Hirata remembered how much he’d hated them, how he’d wanted desperately to kill them. He’d thought that if they were gone, he could reunite with his family, reconcile with Sano, and regain his honor. Now he desperately wished for the power to bring them back to life. They were the only people in the world who could have saved him, and the Tokugawa regime, from General Otani.

It is time to go.

Hirata’s muscles jerked him upright. He and the ghost inside him walked out of the temple, down a mountain path, toward the road to Edo.