Murasame's Song

14 avril 2009

As I walk among the shadows I am looking for you my beloved my brother are you gone too on that day did you disappear the whispers in my ears are they yours ? I am wondering my brother my beloved have you forsaken me as I walk among the shadows?

This story begins with a little girl kneeling in the cool murmuring grass and waiting for the shouting to cease. Around her the darkness is suffused in moonlight -- but there, beyond the bamboo grove, where the shouting is, a fire is burning. She is humming, that little girl, a song of rain and insects, a littling song, so that she can disappear like a bug, trickle into the ground like water.

But no. The terrible brocade of red, gold and black that is being weaved beyond her corner of soft gloom is creeping up to her; in grown-up terms, it is called murder and rape and blaze and pillage. Her father, her oldest brother and their retainers put up quite a fight, but they are quickly outnumbered and killed. It is then the turn of her mother and sisters. The assailants will leave survivors, however -- otherwise who would tell of their exploits, their bravery and their relentlessness?

This is how they stumble upon the little girl kneeling in the cool murmuring grass, only a few feet away from the body of her dying sister, Matsukaze, who used to be so pretty and gentle but is now lying twisted and broken like a discarded toy.

They laugh and grip the little girl's hair, they discuss her fate -- and what decides them to spare her is this: she looks up at them with her eyes so dark and grave, not one tear on her cheek, and says Don't hurt me, please don't hurt me, I'm just a girl. A sentence that she will come to use a lot in the coming years, innocently at first, then no longer so truthfully.