Chagum was drenched in sweat. Balsa looked at him, her hands on her hips. “Are you tired?” He nodded, unable to speak. After Tanda left, Balsa had begun teaching the boy some basic self-defense moves on the grassy space in front of the hut. The moves were the first forms of a martial art known as chiki, which she had learned at the age of six. Each movement was made in time to the rhythm of one’s breathing — in, out, in, out, thrusting, striking, and kicking in slow motion. One hand struck while the other moved to protect a vital point, combining attack and defense in a single form, each designed to be practiced without a partner. After only twenty repetitions, Chagum was already gasping for breath. “This will never do,” Balsa said. “We’ll have to build up your strength first. You’re still a child and your bones aren’t fully formed yet, so I don’t want to push you too hard. But you’ll have to at least get to the point where you don’t run out of breath.” Chagum wiped the sweat from his eyes and winced. He hadn’t known that sweat could sting so much. “How long must I practice before I become like you, Balsa?” “Twenty years,” Balsa answered calmly. “Twenty years! That is impossible!” “Chagum, you should say ‘I’ll never make it’ or something like that to sound a little less regal. You don’t want people to guess who you are every time you open your mouth, do you? As for not making it, a boy of your age with just a few months of training could never be a match for the kind of men who are after you.” “Then why should I bother — I mean, what’s the point?” Chagum demanded indignantly. “Simple. You’ll have a better chance of escaping if you’ve practiced than if you haven’t. Listen, Chagum. The tiniest thing can make a difference between life and death. If you can confuse your attacker for even one second, it just might give you the chance to get free. And an opening like that increases my chances of saving you. Believe me, it’s better to have practiced than not,” Balsa said. Suddenly she whipped around, her spear pointed toward the bushes. “Who’s there?” The bushes rustled and a monkeylike figure appeared. Balsa’s eyes grew round with surprise. “Tor — Master Torogai!” The magic weaver snorted. “What? You’re here too? Looks like you’re still reckless, lugging around that dangerous weapon as usual. And who’s that kid?” Chagum was staring dumbfounded at this strange old woman dressed in tattered clothes. Her eyes narrowed suddenly. Without a word, she brushed past Balsa, stood squarely in front of him, and stared at him intently. They were almost the same height. When she placed her gnarled hand on his forehead, he shrank away from her. “Don’t move!” she commanded, and he froze as if her words had gripped and bound him. Barely touching him, her fingertips traveled from his forehead to his chest. The next moment, Chagum experienced a strange sensation: Her fingertips seemed to penetrate his clothes, his skin, even his muscles — to go right into his chest. He broke into a cold sweat; although the feeling was not painful, it was so strange he felt nauseated. Just when he thought he could bear it no longer, she removed her hand, and suddenly he was free. He crumpled to the ground like a puppet cut from its strings and sat there limply. A thin sheen of sweat covered Torogai’s brow. “Well, well,” she muttered and, shaking her head slowly, turned to look at Balsa. “This must be what they call fate. The threads that tie us together in this world are strange indeed. Did the Second Queen hire you?” Balsa nodded. There was no point in being surprised; Torogai was one of the sharpest people she had ever met. “Master Torogai,” she said. “I was looking for you. If this is fate, then for once I must be thankful for it.” Torogai grinned. “Me too. You’ve saved me a lot of trouble. But still —” She broke off for a second to look at Chagum, who had managed to get back on his feet. “A long life has its rewards. To think that I would live to see the egg of Nyunga Ro Im, the Water Guardian, with my own eyes.” Chagum’s eyes widened. “You — You saw it? The thing inside my chest? Tell me what you saw. I command you to tell me!” Torogai looked hard at him, then threw her head back and laughed. “Oho! Now I see. You’re the Second Prince, are you? No wonder those hounds that came after me were so desperate.” After she had had a good laugh, she turned back to him. “Your body is here in Sagu — because you are a creature of this world, you see. There’s no egg embedded in your flesh or anything like that. I must say that I’ve never seen anything like it before: a creature of Nayugu superimposed on a creature of Sagu. What I saw was a small egg that glowed bluish-white. It doesn’t have a hard shell; it’s soft, like a fish egg.” Chagum grimaced. Despite her reassurance that it was not actually in his flesh, the idea was still repellent. He shook his head, struggling desperately to fight down his nausea. The magic weaver, however, paid no attention. “What did you do anyway?” she demanded. “How did you wind up with the egg?” He glared at her. “I don’t know. I remember nothing. I hoped that you would answer this question for me when we met. Why must I bear this spirit’s egg?” “You thought I would know? Well, boy, I hate to tell you, but there are some things that even I don’t know! Hmm, too bad … I would love to learn how Nyunga Ro Im lays its eggs. Well, maybe you’ll remember later — I guess I’ll just have to wait. Hey, Balsa! Where’s that dolt of an apprentice? Did you eat him?” Balsa laughed. “I’m not so hungry as that! Tanda is —” she began and then turned to look behind her. A moment later, the bushes stirred and Tanda appeared, his hair covered in leaves. He stopped dead when he saw all three of them staring at him. “What? What? Oh! Master Torogai! I’ve been looking for you!” His timing was so perfect that Balsa, Chagum, and Torogai looked at one another in disbelief. “You know the saying, ‘Speak of the sun and it shines’? Looks like there’s some truth in that,” Torogai said to Chagum with a grin. Then she turned to Tanda. “Look at your hair!” she yelled. “It’s full of leaves! You’ll never find a wife if you don’t take care of how you look.” Tanda sighed. “You’re covered in leaves too, and you have much more important work to do right now than worry about me finding a wife. Why don’t we have some tea and something to eat while we talk?” He brushed the leaves from his hair and entered the hut. They shared their adventures while sipping the aromatic tea that Tanda made. When they finished, Balsa said, “Let me get this straight. Nyunga Ro Im is some kind of spirit or creature that lives in deep water and breathes out clouds. Because it can’t move by itself when it becomes an adult, once in a hundred years, just before it dies, it lays an egg in a creature of Sagu to be carried to the sea. If that’s the case, then why don’t we just hurry to the sea with the egg now?” But Torogai shook her head. “No, I don’t think that will work. It’s not time yet. Chagum’s dreams about water and the way he tries to walk into it are, I think, caused by the egg’s memories of a time when it was in the water in Nayugu, and maybe it helps the egg get used to the water of Sagu. You said the water seemed thick and gluey, right? Perhaps as the egg matures it can change the water of Sagu like that. At any rate, I think that, when it’s time, Chagum will start to move toward the sea without even thinking about it.” “Is it true that if the egg is protected until midsummer my life will be saved?” Chagum interrupted. Torogai nodded. “I think so. Many years ago a creature of Nayugu told me that the egg laid by Nyunga Ro Im does not hurt its host.” Chagum looked relieved. Tanda placed a hand on his shoulder and smiled, but then turned to Torogai with a serious expression on his face. “But if it isn’t protected, it will be eaten by Rarunga, right? Like a hundred years ago. Still, it’s strange. I know there was a terrible drought at that time, but it didn’t last a hundred years. Do you think Nyunga Ro Im really creates the clouds?” Torogai shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know everything, you know. But if you think about it, there’s a lot more to this world than the Nayoro Peninsula. Clouds form everywhere. Perhaps there is more than one Nyunga Ro Im. Or there may be more spirits that make clouds, just as there are many creatures that lay eggs — fish, birds, snakes. Some of the same creatures even lay their eggs in different ways. “The one thing we know for sure is that here on Nayoro Peninsula, if Nyunga Ro Im’s egg doesn’t grow up and hatch, we get one heck of a drought. We have no choice but to protect that egg.” “I know,” Tanda said. “And not just to save ourselves from drought. We must protect it because Chagum’s life depends on it.”
The conversation paused, and Tanda refilled everyone’s cups. Chagum, his eyes on Torogai as she slurped her tea with relish, blurted out a question he had been longing to ask for some time. “Torogai, Tanda said I was the Moribito, the Guardian of the Spirit, because Nyunga Ro Im is a cloud spirit. But the masters at Star Palace taught me that a spirit is formed when the life forces of many things combine together, and that spirits are invisible beings with strange and mighty powers. Can something that is hatched from an egg and then lays eggs itself really be a spirit?” Torogai looked up. “So that’s what you Yogoese think, is it? Listen, boy. People from different countries who speak different languages have different ways of thinking. You know that, don’t you? Take Balsa here. She’s from Kanbal. The Kanbalese believe that thunder is a god. Right, Balsa?” Balsa nodded. “That’s right. In the beginning, the darkness created a whirlpool, and from it sprang the light. This was Yoram, the god of lightning.” Torogai returned her gaze to Chagum. “You see? You, Chagum, are Yogoese, and the Yogoese believe that their god is a giant formed when the world began through the merging of the most powerful life forces in the universe. When this god stirred the darkness, the heavens, which are lighter, rose above, while the earth, which is heavier, sank below. The earth gave birth to the goddess, and the goddess, together with the god, created the first human, the founder of your imperial line. Am I right?” Chagum nodded. This story of the origins of his people was very sacred to him, and he stiffened, expecting the magic weaver to make fun of it. Seeing his expression, Torogai smiled suddenly. “Don’t fret, boy. I’m not so foolish as to ridicule the myths and legends of other people. For countless generations, people, no matter where they’re from, have been trying to understand this world of ours. The Yogoese believe in a giant god; the Yakoo believe that the first being was a swirling snake. How can I possibly say which is true? Nor is the Yogoese idea of spirits the same as the Yakoo idea. For us, spirits are things related to water, earth, fire, air, and wood that have great power. Take the trees growing in the mountains. A tree that has lived thousands of years comes to have great power, and we Yakoo think of it as a spirit. Even if it was just a little wee seedling thousands of years ago, we still call that tree a spirit.” “Great power? What kind of power?” Torogai sighed. “Now listen here. It’s not something that can be easily described in words. A tree spirit, for example, has a strong force, something like the power of life. That’s what we call great power. As for Nyunga Ro Im, it can control water, breathe clouds, give birth to the rain. These great powers are what make it a spirit…. That’s the kind of thing I mean.” Seeing the serious expression on Chagum’s face as he pondered this, Balsa burst out laughing. “You look just like Tanda twenty years ago. Me, I find such abstract ideas impossible to follow. Do you like this kind of thing?” Chagum thought for a moment and then said, “I wouldn’t say that I like it. It’s just that when I don’t understand something, I have to think about it until I understand it clearly.” At this, Tanda smiled. “Chagum is more suited to being a scholar than a prince. Mind you, if princes were as thoughtless as Balsa here, the country would be in terrible shape.” “You can say what you like,” Balsa snorted. “But getting back on topic, no matter what this Nyunga Ro Im is, we must protect Chagum from two things: Rarunga, the Egg Eater; and the Mikado’s men.” Torogai scratched her chest roughly. “It will be much easier if those Star Reader fellows heed my message and mend their ways. Ah, but it makes me glad to know that that little girl in Yashiro village remembered the story of Nyunga Ro Im. If such little traces remain, there’s hope yet.” “But I wonder why we lost that knowledge in the first place,” Tanda said. “The story of Nyunga Ro Im is so important, it could save the country from famine. How could it vanish so easily from people’s memories?” Torogai glanced briefly at Chagum before answering. “I’m sorry to have to say this in front of the Second Prince, but I blame politics. The story of Nyunga Ro Im is directly tied to the legend of Torugaru founding this country. The Star Readers want to control everything in the universe, and therefore they can’t let the people believe in the legends of the Yakoo. Yet, even so, some people still know them, like me and Noya’s granddaughter. I learned the story of Nyunga Ro Im from my teacher, Gashin, and Tanda learned it from me. Unfortunately, our knowledge is incomplete. We lost the most important part of the story: how to destroy Rarunga. Yet some precious wisdom has still survived, like a thread slipping past the eyes of those who run the country.” Chagum frowned at Torogai. “Do the wise men in Star Palace truly manipulate the people the way you say? How would they do it?” “By using things like the midsummer festival,” Torogai replied. At this the boy’s eyes narrowed. “The midsummer festival is a festival celebrating our sacred ancestor’s triumph over the water demon and the purification of this land. What about it?” Torogai shook her head. “For the Yakoo, it was originally a festival to pray for a bountiful harvest. The Water Dwellers of Nayugu told me that midsummer’s day is the day that Nyunga Ro Im will hatch its egg. I believe we passed on the knowledge of how that could be done safely through the midsummer festival. But now the festival has been changed into a celebration of Torugaru’s victory. Even magic weavers like me have no way of knowing what the original festival was like or what knowledge has been lost…. That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about.” Listening to their conversation, Tanda again felt a snatch of memory come unbidden to his mind: the festival song he had sung as a child when his grandfather let him rattle the nahji’s bones. Fly, nahji, fly! Fly to the sea and make the rain fall; make the rice grow tall. He remembered four wooden posts drenched in oil that were set ablaze on both banks of the river — how black they had burned; a play in which warriors used burning torches to fend off and corner a wildly dancing papier-mâché demon that was then slain by a hero; the sound of people singing an incantation to bring the blessed rain. Something tugged at his mind, but before he could grasp it clearly, Torogai began to talk again. “I don’t think those Star Readers could have forgotten something so important. The written word can be very powerful at times like this. If the way to beat Rarunga is preserved anywhere, it will be in their records. Of course, they’ve been so busy trying to run the country that they’ve forgotten their true purpose! It’s been two hundred years, so insects might have chewed up all their books…. Even so, unless they are total fools, they’ll realize something important is going on. They won’t kill the prince if they don’t have to.” “That’s right,” Balsa interjected. “Even when they attacked us, they weren’t trying to kill Chagum.” The boy looked at her in surprise. “That’s why I was able to rescue you,” she said, turning to him. “You didn’t notice, but they had a perfect opportunity to kill you. If that had been their goal, they would have done it then. But instead, they changed their positions so they wouldn’t hurt you and attacked me instead. I ran away from them so I could come back and rescue you when they split up and there was only one of them with you.” Chagum leaned forward eagerly. “That means, then, that my father — the Mikado — he’s not trying to kill me?” Balsa glanced quickly at Tanda. Before Torogai could open her mouth, he said, “Of course your father doesn’t wish to kill you if he can avoid it. That would only be a last resort. But that doesn’t mean you can relax. The Mikado is not an individual. He must think of the country first, of keeping it stable, before his feelings as a parent, so you must still be careful.” He spoke with compassion, and Chagum accepted his words readily. “At any rate,” Tanda added, “We can’t go wrong if we prepare for the worst. I think we should move to the hunting cave early this year.” Torogai and Tanda kept firewood, dried food, and other provisions in a cave deep in the mountains. Even in the midst of winter, when everything was buried in snow, they could live there without freezing to death. In the end, they decided to leave the hut as soon as possible in order to make the cave livable before the snows came.
The next morning, while Tanda was off buying provisions in town, Balsa took Chagum to check the hunting traps. They spent the rest of the day smoking the fresh rabbit and deer meat. Chagum hated skinning the rabbits; the worst of it was that they were still warm, which made them feel alive. He sobbed as he pulled the skin off the way Balsa showed him. “The trick is not to think about it, Chagum. That will only make it worse. Move your hands without thinking.” Balsa took her hunting knife and cut the outsides of the animal’s leg joints, then snapped the bones in them one by one: crack, crack. She quickly sorted the entrails into those that were edible and those that were not, finished preparing their catch, and hung the meat in the smoke shack while it was still light. “If you smoke the meat,” she told him, “it lasts much longer and tastes better too.” They continued working into the night. Balsa tanned the hides they had stripped from the animals and packed the smoked meat into bags. Tanda tied herbs into bunches or ground them into powder. Even Chagum helped, jumping up to do whatever he was asked. Torogai, however, did nothing. After supper, she drank the wine that Tanda bought her, then stretched out beside the hearth, the warmest spot in the room, and began to snore. Her face as she slept was the picture of happiness. Within two days they finished packing. They closed up the hut and set off for the hunting cave, deep in the Misty Blue Mountains.
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