16
Walking in snowshoes was harder than Hirata had expected. As he plodded along a trail through the forest north of Fukuyama City, he tried to imitate the two barbarians, who moved as easily as across bare, solid ground. But his shoes scooped up and dug into the snow. The old leg injury that hadn’t pained him in years began to ache. He and Detective Marume lagged farther and farther behind the Ezo men, their dogs and sled, and even the Rat, who’d remembered the snowshoeing techniques he’d learned in his youth. Hirata climbed out of a thigh-deep drift, shook snow off his shoes, and paused to rest. Breathing hard, sweaty despite the cold weather, he cursed as he recalled the soldiers’ warning that the Ezo would shake him off and escape.
“If we go back to Fukuyama City without them, the soldiers will laugh at us,” Marume said, panting and doubled over beside Hirata. “Sano-san will be angry because we lost two of his murder suspects. And heaven knows what Lord Matsumae will do.”
“Come on,” Hirata said grimly.
They slogged onward until they caught up with the group. Urahenka spoke, and the Rat translated, “‘What took you so long? You’re slowing us down.”“
Hirata had no chance to retort, because Chieftain Awetok said in clear, fluent Japanese. “Now we are far enough from the city that you can ask me things that you could not before.”
“Now we’re far enough from the city that we can quit pretending you don’t speak my language,” Hirata said with a smile.
“He speaks Japanese?” the Rat exclaimed. “And you knew?” Indignant, he said, “You dragged me all the way out here, when you don’t even need me to translate! Well, I’m going home.”
He huffed down the trail, but Hirata snagged his arm. “Oh, no, you don’t. We still need an interpreter.” Awetok wasn’t the only barbarian Hirata needed to talk with. “And if you tell anyone he speaks our language, I’ll wring your scrawny neck.”
Hirata walked with the chieftain, who slowed his pace for the Japanese. Detective Marume brought up the rear, but Urahenka forged ahead.
“What did you want to ask me?” Chieftain Awetok said.
Hirata had many questions about the barbarians’ world and spiritual practices as well as the murder. “There’s an energy in Ezogashima, like a pulse. I sensed it as soon as we landed here. What is it?”
The chieftain glanced at Hirata, as if surprised that he’d noticed something which Japanese usually didn’t. “It’s the heartbeat of Ainu Mosir.”
“Who is that?” Hirata said, wondering if the chieftain meant some barbarian god.
“Ainu Mosir is our name for this place. It means ‘human land.”
“Oh.”
Hirata hadn’t realized how insulting was the Japanese word for the natives. He was ashamed because he hadn’t known that they minded, or that they didn’t think themselves the wild, half-animal creatures that the Japanese did.
“Why does… Ainu Mosir have a heartbeat?” From now on he must avoid using the words
“Ainu Mosir is alive,” said Chieftain Awetok. “She hasn’t been killed by men who cut down forests, plow land for farms, and build cities.”
“The heartbeat is growing stronger.” It vibrated in Hirata’s bones, behind his eyes.
“The Matsumae have driven Ainu Mosir’s spirit away from the coast. Her interior is where it is most powerful.”
It tantalized Hirata, beckoned him, promised him secrets. He wanted to learn more about it, but snow had begun falling. A few flakes sifting to earth rapidly became thick white veils. The hunting party would have to get to work fast or return home empty-handed. And the murder investigation was Hirata’s first priority.
“I’ve heard some things,” he began.
“People will tell you many things,” Chieftain Awetok said. “That doesn’t mean you should believe them.”
That was wise enough advice, if not the kind Hirata ultimately wanted from the man. “What I heard was about Tekare.” Although the chieftain didn’t react, Hirata felt his guard go up. “She seems to have been a bad woman.”
He described what the gold merchant had told him of Tekare’s ambitious, conniving nature. “Is that true?”
“The truth has many faces,” Awetok replied. “A man may see only one because his prejudices blind him to the others.”
Hirata noted that the chieftain could be as deliberately inscrutable and obstructive as Ozuno, his mentor. Must his fate always lie in the hands of old men who made younger ones work hard for every scrap of information doled out? Impatient, Hirata said, “Did Tekare in fact give herself to men, then climb over them to her position as Lord Matsumae’s mistress?”
“In fact, yes,” Awetok admitted. “But there is more to truth than fact. There is more to knowing Tekare than knowing what she did.
“What else is there?”
Awetok gazed through the veils of snow. Ahead of them, the Rat and Urahenka were barely visible, shadows in a whitening landscape. “Life is dangerous for our women. Japanese men like the gold merchant invade our villages and help themselves to the girls. When Tekare was fourteen years old, a band of traders caught her in the woods while she was gathering plants. She was missing three days before we found her, badly beaten and left for dead. It took months for her body to get well. Perhaps her mind never did.”
Hirata pondered this story and its relevance to the murder. “I don’t understand. If Tekare was mistreated by Japanese men, why would she want anything more to do with them? How could she bear to have them touch her? Wouldn’t she have wanted revenge instead of sex with them?”
“There is more than one kind of revenge.”
Tekare had apparently taken hers by driving the Japanese wild with her charms, extorting gifts from them, then enjoying their pain when she dumped them. But there was something else Hirata didn’t understand. “Was Tekare’s behavior considered acceptable by the Ezo-I mean, the Ainu?”
“Not at all.” The chieftain frowned, as though Hirata accused his people of condoning immorality.
“Then how could she be your village’s shamaness? Isn’t that too important a position for a woman like her?” In Hirata’s opinion, that would be akin to making a courtesan the abbess of a nunnery. “I should think you’d have chosen someone of better character.”
“We do not choose our shamaness,” Awetok said. “The spirit world does.”
“Oh? How?”
“Early in life, a girl who’s destined to be a shamaness will show a sign that the spirits have chosen her as their vessel. When Tekare was young, she caught a terrible disease. She was unconscious for a long time. But she survived. That was the sign. While she was unconscious, her soul left her body and joined with the spirits. They agreed to speak through her and none other in our village.”
Skeptical, Hirata said, “Yes, well, then, didn’t the spirits mind that she was a troublemaker? Didn’t that upset the equilibrium of the cosmos?”
Chieftain Awetok gave him a thin, sidelong smile. “I see you’re still ready to believe everything you’ve heard about us from those who would slander our people. But, yes, Tekare’s behavior did put our relations with the spirit world in danger.”
“And it was your job, as chief, to bring her back to the village and make her behave properly?”
“Yes.”
“Or to get rid of her when she wouldn’t cooperate?”
Awetok’s smile hardened into a grim fissure in his weathered face. “By ‘get rid of,” I suppose you mean ’kill.“ You misunderstand our traditions. We Ainu have no penalty of death for crimes.”
