The bellies of the goats hung heavy and round when the weather turned. Birds flocked and flew. The time had come for me go.

I packed up camp and set my face toward the lower lying winter pasture. It would be the first and last time my Uncle Jiro would recognize my return as anything more than the arrival of the new goats.

He waited, staff in hand. My breath caught in my chest at the sight of the bundle of clothes tied up in a woolen cloth, readied in advance so that he needed only to push it at me and send me away from our ancestral land, though by rights it was mine, and my last connection to my father.

I hesitated at the gate while he hailed me from beneath the eaves. I bowed low, calculated my assets and laid them down at my uncle’s feet.

When I sat with him at table, gods-forgive-me, I confessed everything, from the gamey reek of my mother’s blessings to the color of Furi’s apron. It was my first betrayal of the alliance I needed most. Only the first.

He listened to my story about Furi with surprising interest, given his decade long resolution against all war, earthly or celestial.

“Could you find the farm again, if you were pressed to it?”

“I could never forget the look of the territory. The Earth Kumo gave me good instructions. I’m certain she meant me to find my way back when the time is right.”

My uncle sighed, laid his arm across my shoulder in almost paternal approval.

“We’ll decide when the time is right, Ansei. We will decide.”

Knowing about Furi—and her weapon potential, my uncle’s commitment to pacifism passed, so to speak.

“The right partners in war are everything. One man or woman might be worth hundreds, even thousands of good hands with swords. The best warrior could turn the direction of a battle with the breath of the mouth…” His gaze fell on the clan totem, “But we are finished with blood wars.”

He talked of a kind of war he called bloodless.

“Only this kind of conflict,” he said, “can pacify the world.”

I didn’t know what the burning in his eyes meant, but I knew I had supplied the tinder. I listened as one hypnotized to his plans—not really for war—but for peace and nodded while he talked of building an army and rousing young striplings for the purpose.

“Men like me are too old. They’ve too little imagination, too much blood lust. I want brave warriors, brave enough to rise up, but then walk away from the same fight.”

Like an idiot, I volunteered.

That same evening, he carved a spider character upon the clan totem, and even spoke my mother’s name softly, saying, “She supplied us with a weapon for our liberation. It’s enough.”

* * *

I had paid my way to my uncle’s favor, but that fee didn’t go far enough. Within the week, the glow of torches in the dooryard called my uncle out of the house. The clan elders huddled around him, rising voices demanding to have me out. I knew what the elders’ visit meant. And with his worried glance back at the house, I saw my uncle had given me up.

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Before he returned, I took the bundle he had packed for me the week prior and crept out of the side door toward the northern route from the village. I filled my lungs with our thin, conquered, mountain air and resolved to leave it behind me, though with the next breath I swore to take it back one day, with or without my uncle’s help.

Once setting foot to the soil, I knew better than to walk.

The northern route was a steep decent through the terraced fields of the Nagaishi domain. The elders’ sons would know their father’s business and be watching this road. My appearance on it would mean the withdrawal of my uncle’s protection. The symbol of my exile. And the Nagaishi sons would be merciless.

Within minutes, predatory eyes picked me out on the dusky road and a call cried out ragged and feral. In seconds, several forms sprang out onto the road after me, grabbing up whatever makeshift weapons were close to hand: rocks, sticks, clods of clay.

I let loose all speed for the trees, footfall peppering the red ribbon of earth beneath me. My pursuers’ aim was accurate, even against a moving target. As I leapt a fence, sharp edged stones pelted my backside, cutting and welting my skin.

I veered from the road and down to the irrigation canal, autumn vapor rising up thick around the water, my best hope for screening this side of the trees. But the pursuers had anticipated me, sprinting up parallel from the opposite bank and cutting off access to the forest’s shelter.

Any moment, one would leap the canal and then there would be a brawl. I sprinted back to the road and plowed down the gravel decline. On my toes, I belted straight for the edge of village. In the near distance stood the old tavern and the village boundary.

But the bar keep watched just inside the door, hard grimace contorting his face. Seconds from safety…only seconds away… but the bar keeper leapt into the road and I planted my feet to pivot, but the man kept sharp ahead of me, barring me with his staff.

I stared as he loomed opposite, oaken staff in hand ready to strike. I braced myself for the blow as he thrust the staff for my middle, but the weapon stopped short of striking.

Was he offering it to me?

I blinked in confusion and the barkeep finally pushed the staff into my hands and turned me about. At the same moment the first of my pursuers caught up, skidding his feet in the dust. Rocks and sticks already spent, he stood weaponless against my staff. I brought it up defensively and barred my teeth.

His eyes twitched with fear as he recognized a change in our relative advantage, but his brothers soon caught up. They stood weaponless, but together they had me half surrounded. Though I’d beaten them all at least once individually, together, they knew they could take me. On signal from my cousin, they jumped.

I swung wild with the beam, and it connected hard with soft flesh, felling two boys to the earth and surprising even me with the resounding crack from the hit.

One boy circled wide and leapt on my back, arms choking the breath in my throat. I swung my body again and flung him free like a large beetle. I didn’t watch him fall, both because of its distance and for my own dizziness from the force of my spin. Then I realized what my mother’s latest gift had done to me—for me.

Four hands seized me by the legs and would have brought me down hard on top of them, but I thrust the staff down on their heads. The blow broke their hold, and I stepped outside and walloped them again on their backsides. I had fought Hiro back once already, but he threw himself at me, seizing my weapon in his two hands, and then wrenched hard to pull it out of my grip. I clung all the harder, brought him around, and sent him falling into his felled younger brother before he could rise from the ground where he lay.

At this, my attackers fell back, heads down, gazes averted. I knew what they were thinking. I was the outcast and symbol of Nagaishi defeat—fitting that I should set off to ally myself with an occupier’s showcase military force. This made me a traitor all over again—though they had forced me to it. They hated me, and yet the shogun’s military force demanded their grudging respect as well. I would have excellent war training. If they could not beat me now, then they could not expect to do it if ever I returned again. This was their last chance and they had failed, and their lips curled with the bitter taste of it.

I credited my mother’s gifts for the surprising physical strength—surprising enough that the boys did not follow me beyond the village boundary. Even so, gratitude came hard. Mother was the source of vulnerabilities, too. The same that would someday kill me.