I’m so hungry.
Kenshin finished his exercises and glanced hopefully at his master.
“Done? Then go gather firewood, we need more.”
“Can’t we eat first, Shishou?”
“We eat when I say eat. Now scoot!” Hiko roared.
Kenshin scooted.
“Baka deshi,” Hiko muttered.
The silent little ghost he had taken in had, over the last several months, turned into something more like a normal eleven-year-old boy. A boy with an amazingly large appetite for such a small body. Hiten Mitsurugi Ryuu training was strenuous, true, but… as he watched his pupil run toward the woods, Hiko thought the worn hakama, that had dragged on the ground when he gave it to Kenshin, was getting just a little bit… short.
I don’t know why I’m surprised. Boys grow, after all. Now I have to think about new clothes for the brat. Hiko sighed. Better make a few extra pots. He’d be buying more than rice and sake next time.
Aren’t those more of the mushrooms that we had for supper last night? Those were good. Kenshin picked one and nibbled on it. Yummm, it tasted almost the same. Of course, Shishou’s were cooked – but this was still pretty good. He popped another mushroom into his mouth and picked several more, stuffing them up his kimono sleeve.
It’s too nice a day to practice, Kenshin finally decided. The firewood was heavy and made his kimono feel prickly. In fact, now that he thought about it, he itched all over. The river sparkled in the sunlight. Its water was like crystal; he could see every pebble on the bottom, gleaming different colors. A carp swam by, glowing golden and mysterious, like a magical fish in a story. Impulse became action. He flung down the firewood, skinned out of his scratchy clothing, and plunged into the water.
After the first shock of cold, it was lovely! The water caressed his skin like… he didn’t know what it was like, only that he’d never felt anything so wonderful in his life. Weightless he soared through the water, dove to skim along the bottom and shot upward to scatter drops like rainbow crystals. It was like Ryuu-tsui-sen, only he could stay up as long as he wanted. He laughed, and the sound glittered in the air like drops of water in the sunlight. He flung a handful of water skyward, and the droplets fell around him like the sound of crystalline bells.
He plunged to the bottom and brought up a handful of jewel-bright, glowing pebbles. Their brightness faded, out of the water; sadly he dropped them and watched them float to the bottom. They danced in the water the way petals dance on the wind; he dove to dance with them, gazing up at the sparkling blue surface until his lungs could no longer endure the lack of air and his body rocketed upwards, twisting in the light, coming down in a ball with the biggest splash he could manage. Weightless in the water, he was a dragon, he was the Orochi itself! Part of him felt as dizzy as if he had been drinking Shishou’s sake, but part of him saw and felt everything with clarity as sharp as a blade’s edge.
He dove and soared in timeless delight for eternity, but gradually he grew content just to drift in the water’s icy, silken embrace. It seemed he could feel the sun-sparkles on his skin and the water sang to him, a chuckling, murmuring song of running over stones, falling in sparkling cataracts, past fields and villages and great cities, to lose itself at last in the great sea… and he could be part of that, one with the water, forever, one with the water and the limitless sky…
Baka deshi! It was getting late, and Kenshin still wasn’t back with the firewood! Stupid brat complains that he’s hungry, then he disappears Buddha-knows-where and misses a meal! But now the shadows were lengthening, it was getting close to two meals missed, and Hiko was beginning to worry. This was not like Kenshin. The boy might be dense and stubborn as a rock, but he was dependable as boys went, not given to heading off to the village to play dice or flirt with girls the way some boys were. Bandits? Could someone have…? No. More likely the little idiot had gotten lost somewhere. Hiko sighed and headed into the woods. He was going to skin that brat alive for making him worry like this!
Kenshin’s trail wasn’t hard to follow – broken branches, scuffed leaves, actual footprints in soft ground, a thread or a fire-bright hair caught on a branch. He found one place where the boy had lingered for a while, picking up something… not firewood, though there were signs he had not been completely idle. The trail led toward the river…
The first thing he saw was an armload of wood, carelessly flung down. Then sandals… a worn hakama… a kimono… a fundoshi… no sign of Kenshin, but there were any number of hiding-places along the banks, and the boy could swim like an eel.
Naruhodo. That’s where he’s been. It was a fine day to be in the river, doubly fine if you were hot and sweaty from gathering firewood. Hiko shook his head, secretly relieved that Kenshin was doing something as boyishly normal as goofing off when there were chores to do. I’m still going to make him wish… He began gathering the discarded clothing. Just for that he can come home in his skin. When he picked up the kimono, something fell out of the sleeve.
A mushroom.
He stared at it, turning it over and over in his fingers. It was red with white spots, and looked very much like the mushrooms he had picked the day before, only the colors were brighter…
The colors were brighter.
There were two kinds of red mushrooms with white spots. The paler ones were what he had gathered yesterday. The brighter ones were beni-tengu-take, strongly hallucinogenic and rumored to be poisonous as well. Of course a genius such as himself could easily tell the difference, but his baka deshi…
Hiko’s blood turned to ice. The garments fell from his arms, and he began to run downstream, his mantle flying behind him like great white wings.
Jizo… Hiko was not a praying man, but it was nothing short of a miracle that the boy had hung up on a snag before he could go over the falls. The small body shone white against the dark water, moving a little with the current, long red hair trailing like strange seaweed. It was deep there, the current strong and swift, and the weight of his mantle dragged at him, but he made it back to the bank with his burden. Kenshin’s skin was as icy as the water, but he breathed. He breathed… and Hiko remembered to.
With a length of coarse cloth he normally used to wrap pots, he rubbed Kenshin’s cold skin until it glowed pink. Then he covered the boy with all the extra quilts, built up the fire, and rummaged for the medicine. Not that the stuff was much good, he’d bought it from a traveling peddler years ago when his own master was ailing… but it was the only thing he had. He brewed a strong dose and slowly, patiently, drop by drop, managed to get most of the bitter fluid into his unconscious pupil.
Kenshin tossed restlessly in his sleep, muttering. Hiko caught an occasional word: “No… Sakura-san…”
So. That again. It had been months since his pupil had awakened him with nightmares of the bandit attack. He reached out, brushed the hair back from Kenshin’s sweat-damp forehead. “Baka deshi,” he murmured. “Still carrying the dead in your small hands.” Under his touch, his voice, the boy quieted, the nightmare settling into healing sleep. Hiko’s hand lingered for a moment on the soft hair. A few strands coiled around his fingers with a will of their own, releasing him reluctantly when he withdrew his hand. Better make some soup; he’ll be hungry when he wakes.
The ceiling was strange. It took Kenshin a moment to realize that the shadows dancing across it were made by sunlight and not by the fire. Oro? Did Shishou…? But Shishou’s lessons were usually accompanied by pain, and he didn’t hurt anywhere, he just felt tired. And hungry. He could smell soup.
“So you’re awake, baka deshi.”
“Shishou?”
Hiko dipped soup into a bowl. Kenshin tried to sit up; he felt lightheaded and dizzy.
“I don’t know why I bother,” Hiko growled. “If you’re going to eat beni-tengu-take and then try to drown in the river, maybe I should just take you to the top of the falls and throw you off myself.”
Beni-tengu-take? He could remember finding the red-and-white mushrooms… “Weren’t those the mushrooms we had the other day?”
His master shook his head. “No, baka deshi, they weren’t. And if you ever do anything like that again I will throw you over the falls. Now finish your soup and go backto sleep. Tomorrow you’ll have to make up for the training you’ve missed.”
“Hai, Shishou.” Kenshin obediently snuggled back into the warm quilts. It was strange; he could sense Shishou without looking at him, a fierce protectiveness, intense as the heat of the kiln. He cares, Kenshin thought in wonder. He was really worried that I might die. Not just because I’m his student, but he cares about me.
The realization warmed his spirit the way the soup warmed his body. Drowsy and content, Kenshin watched the shadows spreading across the ceiling, Hiko’s head and the wings of his mantle hovering over him like a great, protecting dragon.
NOTES, EXPLANATIONS ETC.
I wrote this in response to a challenge on the KFFDISC mailing list, to write a story about the time Kenshin ate “bad mushrooms.” I really hadn’t intended to do it, but I tripped over a website on hallucinogenic mushrooms while looking for tengu legends, and one idea led to another…
Given the general inadequacy of pre-modern peasant diet, I think Kenshin’s diminutive size is due to the fact that he never got enough of the right things to eat until he lived with Hiko. (Hiko can’t possibly believe in skimping on nutrition; you don’t get a body like that on leaves and millet husks!) Add the demands of a growth spurt to those of strenuous training and you get a very hungry boy!
Kinoko means mushroom. Beni-tengu-take is the Japanese name for amanita muscaria. Amanitas are what give wild mushrooms their bad name; there are a few edible varieties but most are bad news, with effects ranging from hallucinations to death, and it’s very hard for even experienced mushroom-hunters to tell the difference between edible types and their toxic lookalikes. From the little research I did, muscaria’s most common effects are euphoria and synesthesia – seeing sounds, smelling colors and the like.
Jizo is a Boddhisatva who protects travelers and the spirits of children; he is the little bald figure you see in roadside shrines.
As for my take on Hiko, well, that’s what I think he’s like, I think that under that I-hate-people exterior lurks compassion very nearly the size of his ego. I also refer the reader to “I Promise You” by Elizabeth, found on the Meiji Kenkaku Romantan archive.