Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [463]
If the fox had really gone, so much the better, but Iori didn’t know what to believe. Since he had injured the animal, he felt it was certain to take revenge, one way or another. Resigning himself, he sat still and waited.
Just as he was beginning to feel calmer, an eerie sound floated to his ears. Wide-eyed, he looked around. “It’s the fox, for sure,” he said, steeling himself against being bewitched. Rising quickly, he moistened his eyebrows with saliva—a trick thought to ward off the influence of foxes.
A short distance away, a woman came floating through the evening mist, her face half hidden by a veil of silk gauze. She was riding a horse sidesaddle, the reins lying loosely across the low pommel. The saddle was made of lacquered wood with mother-of-pearl inlay.
“It’s changed into a woman,” thought Iori. This vision in a veil, playing a flute and silhouetted against the thin rays of the evening sun, could by no stretch of the imagination be a creature of this world.
As he squatted in the grass like a frog, Iori heard an otherworldly voice call, “Otsū!” and was sure it had come from one of the fox’s companions.
The rider had nearly reached a turnoff, where a road diverged to the south, and the upper part of her body glowed reddish. The sun, sinking behind the hills of Shibuya, was fringed by clouds.
If he killed her, he could expose her true fox form. Iori tightened his grip on the sword and braced himself, thinking: “Lucky it doesn’t know I’m hiding here.” Like all those acquainted with the truth about foxes, he knew the animal’s spirit would be situated a few feet behind its human form. He swallowed hard in anticipation, while waiting for the vision to proceed and make the turn to the south.
But when the horse reached the turnoff, the woman stopped playing, put her flute in a cloth wrapper and tucked it into her obi. Lifting her veil, she peered about with searching eyes.
“Otsū!” the voice called again.
A pleasant smile came to her face as she called back, “Here I am, Hyōgo. Up here.”
Iori watched as a samurai came up the road from the valley. “Oh, oh!” he gasped when he noticed that the man walked with a slight limp. This was the fox he had wounded; no doubt about it! Disguised not as a beautiful temptress but as a handsome samurai. The apparition terrified Iori. He shivered violently and wet himself.
After the woman and the samurai had exchanged a few words, the samurai took hold of the horse’s bit and led it right past the place where Iori was hiding.
“Now’s the time,” he decided, but his body would not respond.
The samurai noticed a slight motion and looked around, his gaze falling squarely on Iori’s petrified face. The light from the samurai’s eyes seemed more brilliant than the edge of the setting sun. Iori prostrated himself and buried his face in the grass. Never in his entire fourteen years had he experienced such terror.
Hyōgo, seeing nothing alarming about the boy, walked on. The slope was steep, and he had to lean back to keep the horse in check. Looking over his shoulder at Otsū, he asked gently, “Why are you so late? You’ve been gone a long time just to have ridden to the shrine and back. My uncle got worried and sent me to look for you.”
Without answering, Otsū jumped down from the horse.
Hyōgo stopped. “Why are you getting off? Something wrong?”
“No, but it’s not fitting for a woman to ride when a man’s walking. Let’s walk together. We can both hold the bit.” She took her place on the other side of the horse.
They descended into the darkening valley and passed a sign reading: “Sendan’en Academy for Priests of the Sōdō Zen Sect.” The sky was filling with stars, and the Shibuya River could be heard in the distance. The river divided the valley into North