Zumaya Publications
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The cool damp air hung in curtains through the valley as patches of sunlight fought the thick mist to illuminate the hard-packed road. Small puddles remained in evidence of the night's rain. A figure ran down the narrow, tree-lined road, the pace patient as it covered the ground. A dark robe, shabby, dusty, and muddy, was tied up in front to allow thin, muscular legs their freedom. Mid-back length raven hair flowed behind, confined by a plain cotton band around the runner's forehead. A staff of hard wood, strapped to his back, came up over his left shoulder for easy access. His bare feet, hard and callused from years of being unshod, slapped rhythmically on the road.

Little could be discerned about the traveler, yet those who shared the road knew what he was. Traditionally, such runners were messengers from monasteries. There, young men learned the fighting arts from the monks and did servant-like tasks prescribed for the novices. Sou Kiyohara had entrusted the runner from a Kyushu monastery with a scroll of military strategy for Lord Sanematsu. Thus, the student warrior made the journey up Honshu, the main island of Japan.

The messenger took no notice of the travelers. The people, on the other hand, were fully aware of the runner's presence. Those who walked, were carried in kaga or rode on horseback moved away and bowed with respect, not for the runner, but for the banner carried on a tall slender pole strapped on his back. The sashimono was adorned with the cipher of the Sanematsu clan. In the years since his wife's crossing into the Void, Sanematsu had changed the mon to the Nihonese character for 'bird' along with two parallel hawk feathers. The banner gave unhindered passage to the road.

The runner had many hours for thought between the island of Kyushu and the mountains of Honshu. The miles passed in almost oblivion, his mind blank with only the rhythm of his feet in his brain. He concentrated on only one thought...Kyoto.

Seldom were the novices allowed such freedom, left alone to travel over the long distances. At the temple, going into the small village for provisions, the students were chaperoned by the older monks as if they were young maidens. Rarer still were they allowed to visit the Capital of Peace and Tranquility, the seat of both the arts and religion; the burlesque and the irreligious. The great palaces and pavilions as well as the temples excited the messenger. He was to lodge at the Daigo-ji temple, a monastery established by Emperor Muromachi, so he dismissed the possibility of sleeping at the court of Go-Kashiwabara and the Ashikaga Shogunate. After sixteen years of careful isolation, he was uncertain whether entering that social sphere of his birth was prudent just now. But his father was there so there was Sanematsu Washi's heart.

Three years had passed since Washi had last seen Lord Sanematsu, a father who had spent most of those one thousand and ninety-five days (and Washi had kept accurate count) in battle or with other military concerns in an attempt to end the long years of civil war plaguing Nihon. He was, after all, Lord of the Satsuma Province of Kyushu and rapidly becoming the most powerful of Ashikaga's Court.

Washi came to the hills surrounding Kyoto. At midday, a red sun bore down on the city. Its bright beams coated the temples' gilt roofs, reflecting the light back up to the novice who stood at rest before the mouth of the road winding down into the capital. The sixteen-year-old had run for most of the ten days to cover the distance between Kyushu and Honshu.

Standing on the hill, Sanematsu Washi could well be taken for a young boy, as was her father's intention. Years of studying the fighting arts under the direction of Sou Kiyohara had made her muscles firm and strong. Her shoulders were wide and square, and tapered to a waist a man could encompass with two hands. Her stomach and abdomen were flat and hard; small rounded buttocks filled out the torso. She stood on long straight legs.

When she was eleven years old and discovered she really was a girl, her foster mother had explained her mysterious birth. She had lived until then hidden away in the Mount Aso temple, trained and taught things of boys and men, those of samurai.

Washi pulled her long raven hair up to air her neck. Her breath slowed beneath the tight bonds of silk around her chest keeping her female breasts from becoming evident. The binding would have hindered her running breath had she not lived with it twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, since that fateful eleventh birthday.

Her eyes sparkled with the thought of the adventures she would have in Kyoto. Those eyes, almond-shaped and wide, were an unique green with brown motes. She had accepted her strange eyes with reluctance. They made her different from others, but her father often sat and stared at her. Washi speculated he was reminded of her Barbarian mother.

Washi smiled to herself. At Mt. Aso, she rarely went a day without Sou Kiyohara's chastising her for some trouble she had gotten herself into. At least in Kyoto, her mischievous spirit would bring her to her father's attention. She loved her father more than anything and he was the one person she missed while at Mt. Aso. Her mission to Kyoto would bring her to her father's presence and that excited her the most.

Sanematsu Washi of the clan Minamoto, heir to the Lord of the Satsuma Province, could hardly be blamed for not knowing she had been sent to Kyoto on a sham of an excuse and that her most difficult days lay ahead as she went to Kyoto to undergo her gempuku, a ceremony to honor her attainment of age. She went to become samurai.

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