A Mother's Eyes

Hana knew her son's silences. Taro had one for guilt, one for hunger, and one for the anger he thought children were supposed to swallow. The boy in the ditch wore none of them.

He held the stolen spear badly, too tight in the front hand and too high at the shoulder. Yet his eyes moved with a purpose she had never seen in him before. Road. Trees. Smoke. Hachi. Back to the road.

Always looking for what came next.

"What happened beneath the cart?" she asked.

Taro glanced at Hachi.

"Later."

Hana nearly struck him. Not because of the word itself. Because her son had never spoken to her that way. Then men shouted from the village and the moment passed.

She took Hachi by the wrist.

"Kiku, hands."

Kiku held them out. No blood. No cuts. Charcoal beneath the nails. Hana touched her daughter's cheek anyway.

"We move."

She looked toward the upper escape path.

Taro shook his head.

"Not there."

Hana turned.

"Your father told us to use the upper path."

"That's why they'll check it."

He said it calmly. No performance. No attempt to sound clever. That made Hana listen. Taro pointed toward the drainage channel.

"Follow this until it splits. The lower branch passes beneath the cedar roots."

"And comes back toward the shrine."

"Below it."

"How do you know there aren't men there?"

"I don't."

Hana studied him. A child trying to impress an adult usually reached for certainty. Taro had answered too quickly to be pretending. She looked uphill again. Every family in Kurotake knew the upper path. They used it during floods, fires, landslides. Anyone who had asked even one villager about the settlement would know it too.

"Lower branch," she said.

Taro nodded once.

The relief in him was small but visible. He had expected a fight. Hana did not know what that meant yet. They moved through the ditch. Hana went first with her charcoal knife. Kiku followed. Hachi stayed close to her shoulder. Taro brought up the rear with the spear.

He stumbled before they had gone fifty paces. The second time, the spear almost took him down with it. Hana turned.

"You are hurt."

"I can walk."

"I did not ask whether you can walk."

Taro touched his ribs.

"Bruised."

"Arm?"

"Cut."

"Face?"

"Still attached."

For one instant, Hana heard her son again. Then he looked past her toward the road, and the feeling was gone. The ditch narrowed into a ravine under the cedars. The rain softened to a steady whisper through the branches.

Hachi began crying without making much sound. Kiku took his hand.

Taro kept looking back.

Hana remembered the morning. Koji had lifted the old spearhead from beneath the floorboards before breakfast. His left hand never closed properly after the fighting years ago. He could still split wood, but some mornings the fingers stayed stiff until midday. He almost never spoke about the campaign that had damaged them.

Once, when Taro was small, he had asked whether his father had killed a samurai. Koji had laughed without humour.

"Poor men usually kill poor men. Samurai collect the names."

This morning, when the horn sounded, Koji had tied that old spearhead onto a bamboo shaft.

"Take the upper path," he told Hana.

"And you?"

"I'll get the others moving."

He kissed Hachi's head. Put a hand on Kiku's shoulder. Then he looked at Taro. Longer than the others. The eldest. The child who would help carry the family when Koji's hand finally failed him.

"Keep them together."

Taro had nodded.

Now Hana watched the boy walking behind them and wondered who had kept that promise. The ravine split. Taro pointed to the lower branch. There were no footprints.

That could mean safety. It could also mean no one used the route for a reason. The slope steepened. Water ran over smooth stones.

Hachi slipped.

Taro caught him around the chest. The spear struck the ground. Taro's knees buckled. Hana grabbed both boys before they fell. For a few breaths the four of them stood pressed together in the rain.

Taro was shaking.

At first Hana thought it was exhaustion. Then she saw where he was looking. His hands. Blood had dried into the charcoal on his skin. Hana understood. He had killed a man.

Whatever had changed beneath the cart, this body still belonged to a fourteen-year-old boy who had just felt another person die through his hands. She took the spear from him.

Taro tightened his grip.

"We need it."

"We have it."

"I can carry it."

"You can carry Hachi."

She pushed the younger boy's arm around Taro's shoulders. Taro opened his mouth, then stopped.

He obeyed.

Hana filed that away with everything else. Near the cedar split, voices drifted down from the slope above. Hana raised one hand. Everyone froze. Two men moved through the trees.

"...can't be far."

"Captain wants the eldest alive if we can manage it."

"Why him?"

"Didn't say."

Hana felt cold spread through her chest.

Taro heard it too.

His face changed before she could look at him properly. He wasn't shocked. He was thinking. That frightened her more. The men passed without looking down. They waited until the voices were gone.

Then Taro said, very quietly, "We shouldn't use the old kiln." Hana turned.

"How do you know about the kiln?"

He blinked.

"Taro knows."

The words landed wrong. Kiku noticed too. Hana saw it in her face.

"Who are you?" Hana asked.

Hachi moved closer to Taro.

Taro opened his mouth.

Nothing came out. A horn sounded from the village. Three short calls. The searchers above shouted to one another and moved downhill.

Taro watched them go.

"They're being recalled."

"You understand the signal?"

"No. I understand that they changed direction."

Now he was careful with every word. That meant he knew he had made a mistake. Hana tightened her grip on the spear.

"We use the kiln. Koji knows it. If he escaped, he may go there."

Taro nodded.

No argument. They reached the abandoned charcoal kiln before sunset. It had not been used in two years. Damp leaves clogged the entrance and one roof beam sagged badly, but the stone chamber was dry enough at the back.

No Koji. No villagers. No food. Hachi sat against the wall and pulled his knees to his chest. Kiku found dry charcoal beneath an old covering and began making a small fire.

Taro stayed near the entrance.

Hana cleaned his arm with rainwater. He hissed when the cloth touched the cut.

"Do the soldiers in your dreams not feel pain?" she asked.

His whole body went still. Hana tied the cloth tighter.

"You speak the way your father did when he came back from war."

"I'm tired."

"You watch every exit."

He said nothing.

"You counted the men in the village."

Still nothing.

"You knew the upper path would be watched."

Taro looked toward Hachi and Kiku.

"Mother..."

Hana stopped tying the bandage. Mother.

The word sounded like Taro.

Not because of the voice. Because of the fear underneath it. For a moment she remembered him at six years old, hiding behind her legs when the tax collector came to the door.

Then the older look returned to his eyes. Hana lowered her voice.

"I don't know what happened under that cart. Maybe you struck your head. Maybe some spirit followed the smoke. Maybe terror pulled something out of you that was already there."

Kiku had stopped feeding the fire. Hachi was pretending not to listen. Hana touched the small scar below Taro's eye, the one he got falling from a woodpile when he was five.

"I know this face. I know that scar. I know you hold your breath before you lie."

Taro exhaled.

Hana had not realised how badly she needed him to do that.

"Are you my son?"

The question hurt him. She saw it immediately and almost took it back.

Taro looked down.

"I remember being him."

That was all. It was also enough to make grief rise in her throat. A branch snapped outside.

Taro reached for the spear.

Hana drew her knife. A shadow crossed the kiln entrance.

Hachi pressed into Kiku.

A man stumbled inside. He carried a hunting bow and had blood down one side of his coat. Hana recognised him.

"Jubei."

The old hunter looked at them once, quickly, taking count. His gaze stopped on Taro with the spear.

"Koji is alive."

Hana put one hand against the wall.

"Where?"

"Still in Kurotake. He got people into the shrine storehouse before the road closed. I saw him standing when I left."

Standing. Hana took the word and held it carefully.

"How many men?"

"More than a dozen. Maybe fifteen in the village. More on the roads."

"Wounded?"

"Koji had blood on him. I couldn't see how bad."

Jubei crouched near the entrance and listened outside before continuing.

"We can't stay here. They'll search the kilns before morning."

Taro looked at him.

"Why are they looking for me?"

Jubei's eyes sharpened.

"You heard that?"

"Two of them spoke above the ravine."

Jubei considered this.

"Careless men."

Taro shook his head slightly.

"Maybe. Or maybe they wanted us to hear."

Jubei studied him.

"Why would they do that?"

Taro took a moment before answering.

"If a family thinks one person is the reason everyone is in danger, they start arguing about that person. They move faster. They make worse decisions."

Hana looked at him. Jubei did too.

"Koji teach you that?" the hunter asked.

"No," Hana said.

Too fast.

Taro's jaw tightened.

Jubei did not push.

"Answers later. Men with spears now."

He reached inside his coat and pulled out a strip of red cloth.

"Their captain wears this around his wrist. Clean armour. Calm voice. Men call him Genta."

"Bandits?" Hana asked.

Jubei shook his head.

"They've burned the houses beside the road. Left the upper charcoal sheds. Took some food, yes, but they're spending more time on the road than the grain."

Taro looked toward the kiln entrance.

"They're clearing it."

Jubei frowned.

"For what?"

"For whoever comes next."

A bell rang in the valley. One slow note. Then another. Kiku looked up.

"That isn't the fire warning."

"No," Jubei said.

"What does it mean?"

"Nothing we use. That's the problem."

A third bell rolled through the trees.

Taro moved toward the entrance.

Hana caught his sleeve.

"No."

He turned. She expected the strange new stubbornness. Instead he looked at her hand around his sleeve.

"Then we look together."

They climbed only far enough to see between the trees. Kurotake burned below them. The shrine bell swung in the rain. A man in clean armour stood at the rope.

Red cord around his wrist. Genta. Beside him, prisoners were being pushed toward the shrine storehouse. Koji was among them. He stumbled once. Hana bit down on his name before it escaped her.

Genta released the bell rope and raised one hand. Every armed man in the village stopped. That was when Hana understood. Bandits did not move like that. Orders passed down the road. Torches went to the houses nearest the lower path.

One roof caught despite the rain. Then another. The fire formed a line through Kurotake. Beside Hana, Taro gripped the captured spear until his knuckles whitened. In the firelight, wet charcoal and soot had turned the shaft almost black.

Hana looked at her son's face. He was afraid. She hated herself a little for the relief that gave her. Whatever had come back from beneath the cart, fear still reached him.

Below, Genta rang the bell once more. Smoke rolled across the village until Hana could no longer see her own house.