The Song of the Wild Geese Read online

  The Song of the Wild Geese

  The Geisha Who Ran Away Volume One

  India Millar

  Red Empress Publishing

  www.RedEmpressPublishing.com

  Copyright © India Millar 2018

  www.IndiaMillar.co.uk

  Cover Design by Cherith Vaughan

  www.ShreddedPotato.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recoding, or otherwise, without the prior written consent of the author.

  Also by India Millar

  Secrets from the Hidden House

  The Geisha with the Green Eyes

  The Geisha Who Could Feel No Pain

  The Dragon Geisha

  The Geisha Who Ran Away

  The Song of the Wild Geese

  The Red Thread of Fate

  This World is Ours

  Haiku Collections

  Dreams from the Hidden House

  Contents

  Preface

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Epilogue

  Thank You!

  The Red Thread of Fate

  The Geisha with the Green Eyes

  The Geisha Who Could Feel No Pain

  The Dragon Geisha

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  This book is humbly dedicated to Benzaiten; the Japanese goddess of good luck for both writers and geisha. May both she and you enjoy the words herein!

  Preface

  “Living only for the moment, giving all our time to the pleasures of the moon, the snow, cherry blossoms, and maple leaves. Singing songs, drinking

  sake, caressing each other, just drifting, drifting. Never giving a care

  if we had no money, never sad in our hearts. Only like a plant moving

  on the river’s current; this is what is called

  The Floating World.”

  Tales of the Floating World

  Asai Ryoi, 1661

  Prologue

  It would not be truthful to say I do not remember my mother. My family. Of course I do. It is just that their memory is dull somehow. Perhaps the best way I can describe it is to say that they seem to me as if I am looking at them through a silken screen. They are there. I can see their features, but they are slightly blurred somehow. Not quite real.

  Of course, many people would say that I am confused. That the life I led with my family was real, and each day since I left them has been the dream. But they do not know. They cannot be expected to understand.

  I think my mother was a pretty woman. She always seemed so to me, at any rate. And my father never took a concubine, so he must also have found her pleasing. Of course, we were poor, so it may be that he simply could not afford a concubine rather than a matter of choice. But I don’t recollect Mother ever complaining that he spent money they didn’t have on courtesans—or even common whores—so perhaps he was a contented man, after all.

  Not that I understood about concubines or courtesans in those days. I was a mere child, the only daughter in a family of five brothers. It may have been simple neglect. After all, what was the point of trying to teach a mere girl anything about life, or anything else for that matter? But I was soon to learn differently.

  In fact, I began to learn the day that my new life began.

  One

  Adults can never

  Truly remember childhood,

  Be it good or bad

  I was eleven years old on the day that Auntie visited our humble village. In fact, it was a week before my twelfth birthday when she took me away from my home and brought me here to the Floating World, to the Green Tea House, so that my new life could begin.

  “Do I have to go, Mama?” I can hear my voice now, plaintive with confusion and worry. “Have I done something wrong? If I’m good, will you come and bring me back home again?”

  Mother’s face was stone, not like her normal, smiling expression at all.

  “Are you hungry, Junko?” she asked. I had no need to think about it. Of course I was. Breakfast—and supper the night before—had been a small bowl of plain rice. My brothers and father, being men, had a small portion of vegetables as well.

  “Yes,” I said simply, even as I wondered what my empty belly had to do with this strange woman whose fierce expression already frightened me out of my wits.

  “We are all hungry, dear. But if you go with Auntie here, then we will all eat. You will never be hungry again, and you will be given nice clothes to wear and you will live in a lovely house. You would like that, wouldn’t you?”

  I said yes, of course. Put like that, there was no choice. So I went quietly with the woman Mama called Auntie, and did not try to jerk away from her grip as she marched me away from our village. I was bewildered as well as frightened. I had never seen this woman before. How could she be my Auntie? But after a while, curiosity overcame fear and confusion, and I asked her—very nicely—how long it would be before I could go back home. She laughed at me.

  “Oh, I think it might be quite a while, child,” she said. I puckered my face in an effort not to cry and she slapped me—quite hard—on the back of my head. “Don’t pull faces. It will give you wrinkles.”

  I didn’t believe her, but that was the last time I pulled a face for many, many years.

  Odd how lessons learned in childhood stay with a person, isn’t it?

  I thought that we walked for a very long time. I tried to distract my mind from worrying about what was happening to me by skipping on my shadow, and I remember clearly that it grew shorter and shorter as we walked, which of course made it far more difficult to try and touch it. It had shrunk to almost nothing by the time Auntie stopped. In fact, she stopped so suddenly I went ahead of her and she jerked me back with a fierce tug on my hand.

  “Are you hungry, child?” she asked. The same question mother had asked hours and hours ago. It made me want to cry and I couldn’t speak. I nodded and she shook me.

  “I asked you a question. When I ask you a question, I expect an answer. Are you hungry?”

  “Yes,” I said simply. Although truth to tell, I was so anxious by then that my stomach was seething with fear rather than hunger. But it seemed rude to say no.

  I was shocked when she slapped my bottom, hard. I burst into tears. It was not just the pain, but also the sheer terror of the whole day.

  “I want to go home!” I wailed. “Let me go. I want to go back to Mother.”

  For answer, Auntie crouched down so that her face was close to mine. She bared her teeth at me and it was like being snarled at by a fox. Instantly, I was sure she was going to eat me and I screamed at the top of my voice.

  “Be quiet.” Her voice was so cold, it was worse than th
e smack she had given me. I was so terrified that I stopped bawling and held my breath to keep the sobs inside. “Forget about your mother, and your family. I am your family now. I am your Auntie. And when you speak to me, you will call me Auntie. Now, we shall try again. Are you hungry?”

  I gawped at her. She raised her eyebrows and stared at me silently. Finally, I understood what she wanted.

  “Yes, Auntie. I am hungry.” I gulped the words on a breath before I could cry again.

  “So am I. We will break our journey now, eat, and spend the night here.”

  She took my hand again and I walked alongside her toward the most beautiful building I had ever seen. Even in my utter bewilderment, I worried that the people who owned the house would allow me to enter. Auntie was very richly dressed. I thought that her kimono alone must have cost more than I could count. My own kimono was patched and darned. Naturally, any money for clothes went to my brothers. I glanced down at my dusty bare feet and then back up at Auntie, beseeching her to tell me to wait outside. Perhaps, if I promised not to run away, she might allow it? Surprisingly, she seemed to understand my unvoiced concerns.

  “Child, do something with your face. Smile, for the gods’ sakes! You have no idea how the fates have favored you today. And for the rest of your life, if you do as I tell you. Listen to me. This is the most important thing you will ever learn. Hold your head up high. Look as if you are important. It doesn’t matter how you are dressed. Do you understand?”

  I glanced down at my ragged clothes and tears welled in my eyes again. Auntie snatched a breath, but before her hand could descend on me, I looked up quickly. I had always been very timid, and I had learned years ago that I didn’t need to actually look grown-ups right in the eye, which they always seemed to expect. Instead, if I looked between their eyebrows, it seemed to make them think that I was really looking at them, and it was enough to hide my shyness. I did that now.

  “Yes, Auntie.”

  I had no idea what she was talking about, but my answer and my raised face seemed to please her.

  “Good. It doesn’t matter how much you play-act, people only see what you let them see. They cannot look into your thoughts or your heart, child. Always remember that.”

  I turned her words over in my mind and found them oddly reassuring. Was Auntie clever at hiding her own worries, I wondered. A glance at her face told me not to be so silly. Nothing could ever scare Auntie. She wouldn’t let it.

  We walked into the building with my hand clasped firmly in Auntie’s hand, and I kept my head up and my eyes wide.

  True to her words, Auntie stared around as if the place disappointed her.

  “A room. For tonight, for myself and my maid,” she said crisply when a man came in answer to her call. I was to be her maid, then. I turned the thought over in my mind. It seemed odd that she had come to our tiny village to choose me as her maid. The knowledge was greatly comforting. At least I now knew what my future was.

  Ah, the innocence of childhood!

  The man bowed deeply and ushered us into a room so grand it stopped the breath in my throat. Futons were already laid on the polished wood floor and there were flowers beautifully displayed in front of a small shrine. It smelled sweet and clean. I tried not to gawp too obviously.

  We ate in the room, but I cannot remember what the food was. Memory insists that it was delicious, but what passed my lips that evening I could not tell you. Soon after the dishes were cleared away, Auntie declared that she was exhausted and we would sleep.

  “We will leave early in the morning. I have instructed the innkeeper to have a palanquin ready for us at first light.”

  And that was it. She rolled herself in her bedding and within minutes her breathing was the regular rhythm of sleep. I, however, could not sleep. Curiosity beat about my head like birds’ wings, and no matter how tightly I shut my eyes, sleep would not come. We were in a ryokan. An inn. We must have walked very far from home, as I had never even seen a ryokan before. And we must have far to go still, as tomorrow we were to travel in a palanquin rather than walking.

  Even above the mystery of it, one thing above all else kept me awake. I had never slept on my own before. Normally, my futon was shared and crowded with two of my brothers. I always slept between them, snug and safe. Whichever way I turned, there was a warm body by my side. On this strangest of nights, my futon stretched forever. No matter where my anxious fingers crept to, there was nothing but emptiness. And it was a cold night.

  Tears blurred my eyes and crept down my cheeks. I was chilled and frightened and lonely. Only one thought gave me a little comfort. Mother had said that if I went with Auntie, then the whole family would eat well for a long time. That pleased me greatly and made me proud. But still, I was cold and getting colder by the minute.

  I eased out of bed and walked across to Auntie’s futon as quietly as a moth. I slid beside her and cuddled against her, stealing her warmth.

  “If you have lice, and give them to me, then tomorrow you will wish you had never been born,” she said.

  “I do not have lice, Auntie,” I whispered.

  She said nothing else, and I slept next to her as close to contentment as was possible for a little girl who had just lost her old life.

  Two

  Snakes must shed their old

  Skins to find comfort. All I

  Must do is change clothes.

  There were mirrors in the Green Tea House.

  It was the first time I had really seen my own reflection—apart from a blurred outline glimpsed in the village pond when I took water from it—and the sight of my face looking back at me was startling.

  I was so fascinated, I turned this way and that, viewing first one profile and then the other. I stuck my tongue out and watched with enchantment as the stranger in the mirror did the same thing. Would wonders never cease! Now, when I have mirrors made of glass all around the house and I can look at myself whenever I choose, I smile as I remember how easy I was to delight in those early days in the Green Tea House. The mirror that intrigued me wasn’t even a particularly good one, as they were made of copper in those days, and my reflection was actually slightly misty.

  My smile of pleasure didn’t last long anyway.

  There was far more in the tea house to terrify me than please me.

  I shared my room with two other girls. My companions were called Aki—which means “Autumn” in English, and Ren, which translates to “Lotus.” Both girls were about the same age as me, Aki being a few months older than Ren. Both of them had been in the Green Tea House for many months. Aki had arrived first. She had been there nearly a year already, and she let me know in no uncertain terms that she was my superior in every way.

  “Finished with the mirror, have you?” she demanded.

  I put it down quickly, embarrassed. I would have liked to explain that I was fascinated by it not from vanity, but because I had never seen myself properly before. But Aki was having none of it.

  “Think you’re worth looking at, do you?”

  Ren giggled dutifully, as she did at most of Aki’s words.

  “Not at all, Aki,” I said politely. I was about to explain, but Aki had no time to wait.

  “Good. Because you’re not. Where do you come from?”

  Before I could give her the name of my village, she was speaking again.

  “Doesn’t matter. I don’t suppose I would ever have heard of it anyway. I wonder how Auntie came to find you, out there in the sticks. Got some special talents, have you?”

  I thought about it, and then shook my head. To my amazement, Aki seemed to find this amusing.

  “You will have when Auntie’s finished with you. I suppose that’s what she sees in you. She likes raw clay so she can model it how she wants.”

  I glanced at Aki curiously, wondering if she realized what she had said. Tongue in cheek, I asked, “Can I expect to be as talented as you and Ren when she has finished with me?”

  The sarcasm when straight over
Aki’s head. She raised her chin and almost smiled.

  “You have much to learn, of course. Can you dance? Play the samisen? Sing? Perform the tea ceremony?”

  I thought about it. I knew Aki would mock me whatever I said, but I spoke anyway. After all, however deficient I was in talents, Auntie had chosen me to be her maid, so she must have seen something in me.

  “I can’t do any of that. But does it matter if I’m going to be a maid?”

  Both girls looked at me, and then Ren began to laugh. Aki followed a second later. I watched them both in bewilderment, deeply hurt that they should find me so funny. Finally, Aki’s laughter was reduced to giggles.

  “Is that why you think she’s brought you here? To be a maid?”

  “That’s what Auntie told the innkeeper near my village,” I protested.

  “Well, she would, wouldn’t she? It wouldn’t be respectable for her to be roaming the countryside on her own.” She wiped her streaming eyes and grinned widely. I sensed she wouldn’t tell me any more until I asked, but Ren jumped in.