white Ninja by Eric Van Lustbader

Author:Eric Van Lustbader
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Published: 2012-08-21T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 4

Asama, Japan / Zhuji, China

Tokyo, Japan

Summer, 1970-Winter, 1980

IS THAT ALL YOU'RE GOING to tell us?” the young girl said.

“You promised to tell us the end,” her brother said.

The sensei looked at them with some humor. “This is a story that has no end,” he said.

“But you promised,” the boy, Senjin, always the more impatient of the two, said.

“What happened after they went over the waterfall?” Shisei, his sister, asked.

“Ah, the waterfall,” the sensei said, as if her words reminded him of why they were there, not just there at this moment, but there on the planet.

He was the River Man. At least that is the only name Senjin and Shisei knew him by, although to his face they always called him sensei, teacher. He was father to them, these waif-like twins. He was mentor and companion, tutor and friend. He was Haha-san's brother. He was, in essence, their universe, and they loved him above all else, even each other. They knew him as the River Man because that was where he took them to learn, in the depths of a shadowed, leafy valley, by the bank of a wide, snaking river. He was very much at home there, living at times as much in the water as on dry land, as wholly amphibious as the frogs that sunned themselves on the hot rocks of the river, waiting to snatch unsuspecting midges out of mid-air with their lightning tongues.

“The waterfall was like a star in the sky,” the River Man said, “resonating with unimaginable energy, an engine of life and of destruction. When the two brothers, locked in mortal combat, were taken over the falls, something happened. The universe shuddered. Perhaps it shuddered at the moment when Zhao Hsia died, his lungs filled with churning water as So-Peng held him with the force of his will against the rocks at the base of the waterfall. Or then again- perhaps it shuddered when So-Peng emerged, dripping and gasping, upon the black muddy shore. For he had lived and Zhao Hsia, his childhood friend, had not So-Peng had had it in his power to save his brother, but he had elected to drown him. He had been judge, jury and executioner in the trial of Zhao Hsia. There was no justice here. At least, none that we can readily understand. Justice, no matter how harsh, must be admired. Anything less is to be reviled - and avenged.”

So this is how it began. Amid a sylvan river glade, leafy and green, lush in the fullness of summer's heat. Morality imprinted upon two young, growing minds, so full of trust in a world not yet fully defined. But whose morality did they so readily absorb? Haha-san had no one but her brother, sensei, the River Man. Unlike her sister, the woman who had given birth to Senjin and Shisei, Haha-san had chosen to remain unmarried. She carried with her from childhood a morbid distrust of men. She did not understand sex, and was afraid of it.

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