Madame Sato’s promised farmhouse was a rustic, drafty affair with a grass roof and an infestation of praying mantis. I was well satisfied with it.

The surrounding wall was sturdy and high, closed by a heavy steel lock, impossible to force. Madame had kept her promise, and I believed that wall would protect both me, and others from me. I was prepared to stay there for a very long time, and the rest of my life if necessary.

Madame Sato also provided me with reel upon reel of raw silk. It filled the largest room in the house, and I began work at once.

Looking back, it was a mistake to do so, but with a room filled with silk, I didn’t know how to work gradually. I wove through the night and the succeeding day. I slept in short stretches, as had been my former habit.

I was surprised with my work. It wasn’t the silk of sunshine and flora I had worked under Ansei’s protection. The shadows of my past had combined to produce a new quality in my weaving. The work yielded emotion of a type I had never produced before. So visceral was the effect, I withheld much of it from Madame Sato.

When I did show a piece to her, she viewed it silently. I couldn’t tell what she thought of it, but she took it all away without complaint.

Then she resupplied my thread—this time with a fortune in raw silk. I worked quickly and steadily. The product would not dress brides, perhaps, but it was filled with emotion and my execution was perfect. At last, I was resolved. I would show Madame everything.

But alas, I showed Madame Sato much more than silk.

* * *

On the eve of Madame’s scheduled arrival, I descended into dreams. I had no memory of having done it, but I awakened to a ruin of creation. The silk was strewn about me, sliced to brilliant ribbons. I had destroyed it. All of it.

Fear gripped the pit of my stomach. While in a deep dream-like trance, I had ruined a fortune. Madame would soon discover my madness, and once knowing the truth, she would be well justified in making an accusation.

I would be tried. The evidence was abundant and a judge would certainly be sympathetic to a noble woman. At last, I would be executed.

Madame’s knock resounded like the crash of judgment I anticipated, and I ran to hide, but couldn’t prevent her entry. She had a key, and at last she used it.

Madame’s shocked gasp for air hissed through the hall as she entered and viewed the silk strewn in ruined heaps up to her knees. I believe she examined every piece before she began her search for me. The minutes lengthened to hours.

At last, she found me where I crouched, within the futon closet, fists clenched and jaw trembling.

“I’m mad, Madame. Please kill me.”

Madame Sato was not young, but she was yet strong. She grabbed me hard by the wrists and pulled me from the closet.

“Get out of there!”

I collapsed at her feet and sobbed.

She stood silently above me for a seemingly interminable interval. Finally, she spoke. “Don’t you have a drop of tea anywhere? I cannot think without tea.”

Madame brewed a pot in the kitchen while I lay, still tearful and confused under a heap of silken threads. At last, she emerged from the kitchen with a steaming pot, and served herself and me a cup. She took tea in silence for ten minutes. Then she asked, “Have you a comb?”

“A comb?”

She combed my hair, and composed my robe. When I was neat and seated in polite seiza, she finally spoke to me.

“I think we must re-evaluate our strategy.”

“Madame, I—”

She made an impatient gesture with one hand. “Anyone can see what you have done here. Destruction is the obverse of a creative mind. You have great creativity, but you must find your center again, or you will ruin me.”

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I couldn’t believe my ears.

“The loss here is quite extensive. I will not supply you with so much temptation forthwith. Take a week and rest. Try to recuperate your strength. Work with something besides silk for a while. I can send you something. Busy yourself with that. Take time in your garden. When you feel quite well, then I will supply more raw silk.” She paused. “How does that sound?”

I managed a groveling expression of gratitude.

“I cannot get my money back by punishing you. And it is obvious you did not destroy it purposefully. I need you to be well so that I can recoup my losses. In the meantime, I will take some pieces of what you have done and see if they might be salvaged somehow. Goodbye, Furi.”

* * *

I requested seeds from Madame, and started them in small pots. And in the early spring, I planted the garden, which was then uncultivated, outside of two lonely plum trees. I pruned the plum trees and planted an additional persimmon. Finally, I began turning over a piece of ground for a vegetable garden.

Life sprung up hopeful in every corner. Green shoots and lavender blossoms opened bravely, trusting me in spite of everything. And I meant them well and tended them faithfully. Seated on the ground, measuring their growth, the seedlings stood in for priests, and I confessed to them.

I was as sane as I ever was. No voices, no ghosts. Only my heart of ash and the tiny shoots, and perhaps some listener somewhere. Someone always bears witness to confessionals.

In my way, I reached out to Ansei. The growth was a bridge, and I planted my thoughts and wishes into the earth as though the roots might spring out and travel the great distance from me to him.

Madame returned—not completely empty handed. Instead of silk, she brought a koto, of all things.

“Madame, I do not play.”

“No one else is playing it. It belonged to my daughter, Fuyuko.”

“You and your daughter are noble. Peasants never play it.”

“Only because they have no leisure for learning such things. Perhaps you do not have the leisure, either, but you are quick—if you have an ear anything like your eye.”

She knelt, threw back her head, uncoiled her hair and let it spill like a stream of water down to the small of her back. The loose strands fell forward, concealing her eyes as she bent over the instrument. Nothing, however, could conceal her emotions as her fingers played nimbly across the strings. Emotion opened up nakedly as the song built toward climax. I held my breath and nearly gasped to hear the pain vibrating from those dead strings.

This was Madame’s confessional. When she finished, we were both in tears.

Over the next several weeks, Madame taught me musical notes and a few simple songs. I made a start toward learning, and Madame seemed satisfied with my application, but we both knew it was not so much what we did as much as what we felt. We were both in mourning. There was no hurry.

In time, Madame supplied me with more raw silk, without any instructions for urgency, but I was by then hungry for my familiar medium and I wove it quickly into fabric. It felt good to pass the glistening yardage to her and see the light in her eyes as she examined my workmanship.

“This is very well, Furi, but I do not like you to push yourself too hard. Take your time. Work in the garden, play the koto. Let yourself grieve. The weaving will come.”

Still, Madame supplied me with more silk and, if not comfortable, at least I was able to bear the pain of my memories, and I felt that the work did me good.

Soon, Madame began to visit the house with greater frequency. To my own surprise, I didn’t mind her intrusions.

They were always intrusions. Madame was a noblewoman. Everything she did came wrapped in grace and ritual. I couldn’t receive her without serving her a ceremonial tea first.

Madame took her tea beautifully, perched in the noblest seiza I had ever seen, her eyes low, her fingers and hands moving without excess. As much as she liked to talk, she liked to watch, and me she took in expansively.

“Perhaps tea seems to you an over bourn tedious rite, does it Furi?”

“No, Madame,” I said, though I knew she would detect my evasion.

“It is an effort to observe the formula, and to do it well, but once having mastered it, your vision can become so acute—as if observing through a magnifying lens. Do you understand me?”

“No, Madame.”

“Grace is not only about prettiness—although something pretty is very nice by itself. More important, however, is observation. Awareness. When you discipline your focus just so, you may reach a new state of being. You can connect to your peers at tea in a new way—detect even minute distraction, deception, focus and loyalty. Call it a sixth sense.”

This kind of focus or awareness was not a complete mystery to me. I often felt I reached the same state when I was at work at the loom. “I think I understand you, Madame.”

“So, you can see how a ceremonial tea might become very important between rivaling warlords,” Madame said. “The same applies when you are entertaining guests, or even sitting down with your own sons and daughters. It is well to observe.”

“Yes, of course.”

“I think I will stay here tonight, Furi. A rainstorm is brewing.”

“No, indeed! Madame,” I coughed on my tea, in a complete loss of composure. “I cannot let you stay here. It is too high a risk!”

Madame paused, indicating I should collect myself.

“Furi. You do not come to be my age, survive complicated childbirth, overcome deadly plagues of illness and outlive four healthy children by living in fear. If I am to die now, so be it, but I do not think you will harm me.”

“Madame, I beg you to reconsider.”

“No, Furi. I will send my servant home and tell him to come back when the weather clears.”

But Madame, I—” I gestured in frustration. “I don’t even know how to cook.”

* * *

That evening, Madame prepared what she called: a simple meal. It was the most elegant of my life. Soon after, Madame made up her futon in the single bedroom. I didn’t know whether I dared lie down to sleep with Madame present, but sleep would come, invited or not.