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The earth is fragrant
With plum petals falling
On my way home
—Fuwa
The air flicks and twitches like the coat of the old gelding in the heat of the summer evening.
The boy with one arm leads horse and cart along the road through the paddy fields.
*
As the mother goddess dies, he escapes his own death once more, but not the death of all his plans.
Half-blinded, broken and made to look a fool. His rage is like a hand about his throat, the stone of a plum stuck in his gullet.
Uchiha Madara swallows it down, becomes once more the man he was always meant to be.
He must begin again.
*
The farmers stop to watch the pair of travellers pass by.
The old man lies dozing in the back of the cart. His long hair is mats and clumps. His eyes are dull and lightless.
He will not see another winter, they think.
*
Madara becomes again a gardener. He puts aside all thought of the world, the bile of betrayal and the sting of cruel death. The tree is all that matters now. Like his vengeance, it must be nursed in darkness, fed with earth and water and the scraps and scrapes of blood and chakra he can salvage from the beasts’ taint on him.
It will rise again.
And then they shall see.
*
He seems to show the proper duty, this one-armed boy, in his care for his grandfather.
But he is a stranger, and the shinobi can pass for ordinary folk and even their children and cripples are killers, so the farmers avert their gazes.
*
The tree is so fragile now. Like him. His body is frail and splintered as rotten bamboo. The tree sustains him, and he nurtures it in turn, loves it like he could not love the dark-eyed child Mito placed in his arms all those years ago.
This last thing that needs him, he must not lose.
*
The cart stops, and the boy signals the workers in the field, palm flat to show he means no harm.
Water, he says, Please, and bread if you can spare it. I can pay.
*
It’s just nerves, old man.
He thinks about that night more often than he should, as he tends the tree. He remembers the taste of the warm sake and the sting of disdain when he saw just how peace had made his oldest friend run to fat. There’s nothing unnatural about it. You’re scared. But wait until he comes. Until you see how he grows. Until you watch him breathing as he sleeps. It steals over you. And there is no love like it.
*
The boy does not drink from the spout himself, but fills his canteen and climbs aboard the cart. He is gentle with his grandfather and patient, coaxing him, until finally the old man drinks.
The water drips down his chin and dewlap.
*
He had cared for the fool boy, Obito, like this once. Tended his wounds and repaired his shattered body, strip by strip. He had borne his inanity and his prattle in silence. Granddad, when I’m well, will you come back to the village with me? Granddad, will you tell me stories of the olden days? Granddad, the day I become Hokage, then will you come visit?
Bit by bit, he had stripped the boy’s dead flesh and all his illusions from him.
All weapons need whetting.
*
The boy climbs down from the cart.
Kaede lost her arm nearly fifty years ago, when she was 16 and her fingers had caught in the grain auger. She still remembers the taste of the leather strap she bit down on as her brothers cut her free.
So only she sees the slight dip of the boy’s shoulder as he reaches for the side of the cart with a hand that is no longer there.
*
There are nights – or are they days? – when the life in the tree gutters like a candle flame and he must stay up, no sleep, and tend to it. He feeds it his dreams of peace, of a world made perfect and new.
When he has no dreams left to feed it, he feeds it his rage. At being made a child again. At being rendered a demon’s catspaw. At the cruelty of his oldest friend’s betrayal and the awful nature of his pity.
When he has no rage left he would feed it his tears, only a dead eye cannot cry.
*
Is there fighting in the east, stranger?
The boy shakes his head. No, the fighting’s done. But the snow melt from the mountains put the Ishikari in flood. The dam above Haskikami burst and the valley is flooded.
Sacred Mother. My sister and her husband live in Hashikami. Did you see… Were there any survivors?
The harvest is ruined but I am told the people of the village reached higher ground in time.
Hah. Some fool took it upon himself to pull them from the river. They had thought the old man asleep until he speaks in a low voice. Grateful, I’m sure they are not.
The boy looks away.
*
Then one day, the stone rolls away from the door of the cave and the boy with one arm enters his sanctuary.
*
The coins in the boy’s purse are wood and brass and few in number. Men have lost their lives for less, but not for much less. They bear the crests of Earth and of Rivers.
Hours later, when boy and cart are long out of sight, Yousuke finds that the wooden bits have been replaced by five golden Fire ryo and cannot understand what has happened.
*
He is weak and sickly, but he is still the unconquerable, the strongest fighter the world has ever known. Purple fire blossoms. The smell of sulphur is strange and bitter after so long in the stale air of the cave. The demon soldier rears its head and screams…
Stop. The boy lays his sword by his feet and kneels. We can fight if we must but it’s not why I came.
*
On the warm stones beside the water, the toad and the black water snake sit quietly together, as if their eternal deathdance can be set aside in the fading sun.
*
From somewhere, the boy finds tea things and sets the tea to brew. The one good arm makes him slow, but not clumsy. He unfolds a package from his belt and sets a portion of dry ration cake between them.
The boy tells him his name and the name of his family.
I am aware, he replies haughtily, as if he wouldn't recognise his own kin. Everything the boy has he stole from Madara.
I wasn’t sure you knew.
The boy pours the tea. As his hair falls forward it does an imperfect job of hiding the eye of the sage.
He thinks of reaching out for it, of snatching the eye for himself. How easy it would be. How strong that would make him. How much quicker he might rise with two good eyes.
The boy doesn't look up, but he says: If you kill me, there won’t be anyone else who comes for you. I’m the last.
The boy sets the tea in front of him.
*
Mitsuki scrambles beneath the cart and up over the wheel. Her mother calls the cart driver a boy but he is tall as a man in Mitsuki’s eyes. His left arm is missing, as if someone chopped it off with a meat cleaver, but otherwise he is dull. Not a shinobi, because his hair and eyes are black and common, and the shinobi in Old Ani’s tales always have hair of gold or of crimson or eyes like the blood moon. Mitsuki has dreamed her whole life of meeting a real shinobi.
The cart driver does not turn away from Mitsuki’s father, but he catches the scruff of Mitsuki’s tunic before she can climb into the cart, and places her firmly but gently back on the ground.
*
You were stupid to come here, boy. I will tear your eye from the socket of your skull. I will use it to rise up again. I will burn the five countries to the ground. I will snuff their leaders out and take their prized possessions. And that boy you hold so dear, the one whom you think will not betray you, I will use your power to rip the fox from his flesh, split his heart like a ripe pomegranate and leave him to bleed.
The boy sips his tea.
*
In the other, perfect world, Yukio was a woman and married to Daisuke. They had two beautiful children.
In this grey, awful world, Yukio must work in the field beside Daisuke as Daisuke brags of his exploits in the Ishikara brothel and how he loves old Shigeru’s daughter.
Yukio pays no heed to boy or cart or old man.
Just prays the moon will turn red once more.
*
How can you stomach it? Do you know what it is that Hashirama’s kin did to your people? To your mother and father and brothers and sisters? Out of fear. Out of envy, or to slake their thirst for power?
I do. Better than you.
And yet you will sit there placidly and do their bidding like a dog waiting for a bone when the meat has been carved off. How pathetic you are?
*
You are very handsome. Where are you going?
The others flinch at the question that should be left unasked. Shizuka was kicked in the head by an ox as a child. She is a good worker but prone to fits and soft in the head. She does not understand the danger. Only notices this boy and wishes to be noticed by him.
The boy smiles a little, but does not reply.
*
Does it pain you how they sent you to kill me? Then you will be the last. But perhaps not always. Perhaps in time they will will give you some girl of their choosing and tell you it is a reward. Perhaps in time they will send your child to kill you.
Nobody sent me. Nobody knows I’m here. They do not know you escaped death. I came for myself.
Indeed. Why?
The boy’s throat moves as he swallows. To give you the gift that was given to me.
What could you give me, boy?
The boy raises his head to look him in the eye. Grandfather, I forgive you. And I have come to take you home.
*
There is rice, wrapped up in bamboo leaves. A little bread. The boy thanks them.
Are there bandits on the road ahead?
Some, says Shota.
Some desperate enough even to rob a dying man and his grandson. Shota’s brother-in-law is among them. Shota leaves food out for him sometimes, in the winter, because it is what his wife would have wanted, though he knows Kensuke must have been among the men who raped and killed the widow Ikari in her home last autumn.
Some, but I’m sure they will not harm you.
Best not to scare the boy.
*
The boy expects the knife.
Madara moves like a snake striking, but his knife only rents the fabric of an old tunic, that is fluttering in place suddenly, where the boy once sat. The boy is suddenly right the way across the room. The speed of it is beautiful. Even the Yellow Flash could not match it. If he had such a power… If only he could be whole again…
The coughing fit catches him mid-strike. There is blood on his hand. In an instant, his opponent is gone again, and the old tunic floats to the ground as gently as snowfall.
The boy catches him before he falls.
*
The constabulary find the five bandits bound hand and foot in their jail cell at change of watch. No one knows how they got there, but one of the men matches the description of the wall-eyed ninja who murdered three constables on the equinox.
The chief constable, who had trained with the Konoha Keimu Butai many years ago, when such things were allowed, sees the knots with which the men are tied and wonders.
But says nothing.
*
His body betrays him. It crumples like an old nag that can no longer withstand the whip.
The boy helps him to the bed and presses the cool cloth to his brow. His hand unsteady in this as it is in nothing else. The Uchiha are raised to know fire and death. They learn little of the healing arts.
Sleep comes on Madara like a wolf on its prey, landing heavy on his back and forcing him down-- down.
*
When Day sinks into night. The cicadas fall silent.
The cart moves along the road.
Without a lantern.
*
When he wakes the boy is beside his bed, reading a tattered book in the half-light.
When he tended Obito, sometimes he would ask him questions of Konoha. Of the people there, of the girl he loved, of how the winter sun would look when it slanted through the trees.
Those questions meant nothing. They were nothing. Just ways to draw the boy’s hatred into the open.
This boy squints at the close text of the book, in a way that is unbecoming of the last Uchiha.
The cracked spine reads “The Tale of the Gutsy Ninja”
“Very well,” says Madara. "I will accept your gift."
*
The Kitakami river is angry and swollen with the flood and it speaks to Aiko in hisses and sighs. The Kitakami outpost has never been breached in all the time she and her men have served the Daimyo, through forty years and three wars. When the river is in summer flood, there is no other safe crossing along the Kitakami, save at the falls of the stone giants, which is sacred to the nin-kind and known to be haunted by demons.
In three years’ time, when Aiko passes from the lump that is growing even now on her breast, her captain will speak of how she never let a man pass unchallenged.
But tonight, she opens the gate for the boy without a word and will not remember in the morning that she did.
*
The boy waits for his assent.
He nods and the blade flashes down.
And then it is done, the root severed. The tree withers all at once.
His life bleeds away in seconds.
*
Even at night now, the gates of the village stand open. In the era of peace there is no need for gates.
But the guards stand, alert and watchful nevertheless.
In his haste, the boy does not want to be seen.
So, the guards at the gate do not see them.
*
After many miles the gelding must rest, and the boy too. The boy sleeps with his arm around his sword. With his face eased in sleep he looks his true age, a child of 17 years.
He thinks back to that night – warm sake, soft words and of his friend's promise.
If the gods are just then he will never see his friend again.
But if the gods are merciful, perhaps in some other world they can sit and drink together once more and he can admit to his friend that about this too he was right.
*
As the sky lightens two figures climb the cliff path, one leaning upon the other.
The old man can no longer catch his breath but dares not stop. He staggers on.
And then, at last, they stand on the top of the world.
I stood here once. I stood here and dreamed of a world where children did not have to die before they saw seven summers. But my dream became a horror.
His knees buckle and he sinks to the ground. He looks out at the valley, at the splendour and strangeness, until he can no longer bear it.
He looks up at his companion. Do you have a dream, boy?
My brother – no – my brothers, their dreams are precious. For their sake, I want to guard those dreams. That’s become my dream. He swallows. I'll guardYours too. If you’ll let me.
He needs more time. A hundred years is still not enough. A thousand would not be enough. There is so much more to do. So much more he could achieve. He could rule this world. He could make it perfect. He could bring a lasting peace. He could teach this boy the history of which he seems so ignorant.
Or he could sit in the sunlight in peace and watch the boy become a man.
I leave it to you. Guard it well.
Dawn breaks over the village hidden in the leaves.
He rests.
*
In the heat of the midday sun, a boy with one arm digs a single grave on the cliff above the great stone faces. An ancient tree spreads its branches wide overhead and gives what shade it can to the cloth-wrapped figure that lies beneath it.
After a time, a second boy joins the gravedigger on the clifftop. He does not speak a word, but jumps down into the grave and takes up his shovel to work alongside the first.
As night falls, together they place the wooden marker into the earth and say their prayers.
In the valley below, the lights of their home glitter like stars.