Everything in the village was accessible. I lead us walking through the streets on a direct path from the tea house to my Okiya, and on the way, the tea vendor, the meat vendor, the kimono maker, all within arm's reach. The village was made to be engulfing, with no reason to set foot outside of it, anything for comfort or leisure within reach. It was meant to be a trap with no reason presented to fight it. I was done fighting, though. I could smell the crispness in the air of the coming winter, and instinctively I looked toward the mountain brow. It was far from me then, and the steps I took were away from it, the memories of the winter spent there swept behind me with each pass the hem of my kimono took over the ground. I had my prize.
I turned in my walk, continuing true on the path. I had walked it so many times in my short season living in the Okiya. The two remained only a few paces behind me, but behind me deliberately to show me respect. Respect, I thought, from one so high and mighty as a Daimyo. I must have made a difference after all. I wanted to speak to the two of Mori, to pique their interest in who I had been chosen by, but the expectant expressions on their faces gave me pause. "We're almost there." I decided not to give away the entirety of my simple existence in Miyako. To them, the Kitsune would appear as human as they were.
In the entrance of the Okiya, Takayama placed a heavy hand atop my shoulder to halt my walk, allowing his son to enter ahead of me. Cautiously my gaze turned to his hand in question, but my mind was empty of any words to speak. "Perhaps your mistress can begin the meeting."
Mori was a vigil in the doorway, a ghostly apparition appearing from nothing, and she did not have a welcoming appeal about her. "My mistress?" I held my hand out toward her, motioning, my fingers together to show respect to her. The Daimyo was positioned in the past, looking at me for who I had been, and I had long since outgrown the child he had known. My ways had changed. "Mori is my wife." And the smile that crossed the man's face was one that I could never recall from the past with him in it, a mixture of disbelief and contentment, as I could define it.
Takayama left his son at the doorway with my Kitsune, and somehow trusted me enough to walk away into the field with me. As I tread beside him, I could feel in his presence that his perception had changed, and he had accepted that he should treat me as a brand new encounter. I was content enough to walk beside him in silence, feeling the earth beneath my feet as the grass began to cool with the lowering sun and the closing in of the cool season. My geta, hooked by the strap around my fingers, dangled as my arm swung lightly with the beat of my steps. "You look as if this life has treated you well."
I cast my gaze to him in step beside me, wondering what exactly it was that he had wanted to say to me. "I look as if I had gotten older." A smile caught my lips, and I looked down to watch my feet in the grass. "But I do feel happiness here. I had to learn what happiness was."
"You learned quickly it seems."
"I'm still learning."
He took my hand, stopping our walk, but he meant only to unfurl my fingers to run his thumb against the skin of my palm. "Have you put down the katana for good?"
I could feel some sensation bubbling within the depths of me, but the demon laid dormant still. Instead, it was the Geisha. I retrieved my palm, curling my fingers back in and holding my closed fist close to my chest. I put a few paces of distance between us. "Just for now." Kitsune didn't like katana.
"Your wife. Do you know about her?" He asked the question cautiously, as if he fought himself with every word.
"I know all there is to know." He nodded solemnly. "How did you know?"
A sound escaped him, as he cast his gaze upward into the sky. The clouds hung low and gray, the sun painting a red glow onto the city as it set. "I encountered a Kitsune or two over the years. They all act the same." His mannerisms changed as the subject of conversation shifted, and I became increasingly interested in what was on his mind. "Seishin. I should have said this to you long ago, but I was too proud. I had a wife and a child, and though I was climbing the ranks then when I met you, it wasn't enough. Now you have an Okiya. You have Maiko and Geisha under your roof. You have a wife of your own. I fear it's too late."
"Say what you will, old man." A smirk overcame me, pulled from the depths of me, the seduction of the Geisha I used to be winning over my resolve.
"I wanted to ask you if I could become your Danna."
Such a simple question, normally a welcome deliverance from a life of luxury that hides an undertone of gore. Then, I would have fallen to my knees at his feet to grovel for his question to become his offer. But instead I laughed. What an insult to offer me salvation when I had already dug myself out of Hell with my bare hands. "It is too late." I would belong to no one.