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  Isamu’s face darkened. His mouth pinched into a thin line. He glared at me. I stared back calmly, elated at the knowledge that he no longer held any fear for me.

  “You think so?” he snarled. I smiled sweetly. “I could have taken the bird without your help. All you did was care for it. I owe you nothing. And I will not take you to the Floating World.”

  “We took Soru together,” I said calmly. “And you will take me to the Floating World,” I added.

  Isamu stared at me incredulously. His expression suddenly became sly. “I suppose you’ll keep on making my life a misery with your nagging until I agree, won’t you?” he said.

  “I certainly will.”

  “Very well. I’ll take you to the Floating World with me. On one condition.”

  I was delighted; I had never expected it to be this easy. I was about to agree immediately, and then caution laid hold on my tongue. Isamu was grinning widely, and I knew he was hiding something.

  “And what is your condition, brother?”

  “I’ll take you if you fight me and win. Here and now.”

  I thought about it, but not for long. “With swords or jujutsu?” I asked casually. Isamu blinked, and I knew I had surprised him. Good; the first point to me!

  “Better make it jujutsu,” he said. “I could beat you with a sword using only one hand. I don’t want you whining that it wasn’t a fair fight.”

  “Most certainly.” I turned away from him and unfastened my obi. The knot was stiff, and I fumbled at it angrily, hoping that Isamu didn’t take my slowness for fear. I discarded my kimono quickly, standing in only my undergarments—a han-juban undershirt and sasoyoke loose underskirt. They were fluid enough to move with me. I kicked off my zori so I would have a better grip for my feet.

  It was a chilly day. Gooseflesh pimpled my exposed skin, but I didn’t worry about it. I would be warm very soon!

  Isamu glanced at me curiously and bowed his head without speaking. We faced each other across the dojo and—even though we were brother and sister—bowed politely to each other. Had this contest been between sumo wrestlers, the man mountains who entertained the crowds with their skill throughout Japan, there would have been a strict protocol. No action would have taken place until the umpire gave the word. But we had no umpire, only ourselves, and once the traditional bow had been given, there were no more rules.

  We circled each other like a pair of crabs preparing to fight over a choice morsel. I watched Isamu’s body, not his eyes. He would keep a stone face and give nothing away. Isamu had not thought it necessary to discard any clothing. I saw his kimono tighten over his chest and a scant moment later he rushed at me. Isamu was quick, but I was quicker. Before he could try again, I grabbed his kimono front and attempted to throw him.

  Jujutsu is all about using the strength of one’s opponent and turning it against them. But Isamu was far more skilled and practiced at the art than I was, and of course he knew that. I had no advantages except speed and surprise. I grunted in annoyance as he slipped from my grip at once.

  “Riku-san has taught you well,” Isamu said. I didn’t answer. I needed all my breath for fighting. “But is it well enough?”

  He was smiling, tilting his head to one side, inviting me to look at his face. I did not; I concentrated on his mid-section. Riku-san had told me to do that, over and over again.

  “You are a woman, and weak. Your opponent is always going to be bigger and heavier and stronger than you. If you are fighting a samurai, he will also be far more experienced than you.” He threw me almost casually as he spoke. He finished his lecture standing over me. “You must use the talents you have that he does not. You are very perceptive, so depend on that. Watch his body. He can control his face, but not his muscles. He will tense before he moves. Wait for that before you decide to attack or defend. If it is a matter of defeat or victory, do not hesitate to fight outside the rules. If you are down and have nothing left, knee him in the kintama.”

  In spite of my aching back, I laughed out loud.

  “That is hardly honorable, Riku-san!” I protested.

  “No, but it’s better than being taken prisoner or—in your case—being violated by some man who thinks he has won the right.”

  I remembered Riku-san’s wise words now. Sadly, I decided I could not disable Isamu by kicking his kintama. If I did, once he got his breath back, he would no doubt accuse me of cheating and say our bet was void. I would fight fair, and if I lost, I had only myself to blame.

  Isamu lunged at me again. I feinted to the right, but he was not deceived. He followed me immediately and in a moment, his arms were clamped around my waist. He lifted me off the ground, and I thought the fight was over.

  I was wrong. Instead of throwing me to the ground and keeping me there, Isamu hesitated. His groin was rubbing against the thin, slippery silk of my underwear and I realized at once that he found the sensation arousing. His tree was hardening as it touched me. He gasped—in surprise or desire?—and his grip faltered. I took my chance at once, wriggling away. My evasive maneuver was too good. I found myself on the hard ground with the wind knocked out of me.

  Isamu circled me warily. His tree was tenting the front of his kimono. He stared down at it as if he was perplexed to find it there. I didn’t stop to think, I just acted on instinct and took my chance.

  Before he could make his brain triumph over his lust, I snaked across the dojo and grabbed his tree. I risked a glance at Isamu’s face. His expression was blank, but his eyes betrayed him. His pupils were huge, his eyelids half-closed. Amazed, I understood the power a woman has over a man who desires her. And that I had won.

  Isamu was breathing far harder than he had been when we were fighting and I was beginning to be worried. If I let go, he would throw me. Once down, he would not let me rise again. If I carried on trying to hurt him, it appeared he would simply enjoy it. We could hardly stay here all day while I pleasured him! I hissed with indecision and then acted impulsively.

  Riku-san had drilled it into me that the basic principle in jujutsu was always to use your opponent’s strength against them. It seemed to me that all my brother’s strength—and certainly his sense—was concentrated in his tree, which was firmly in my hand, so I used it to my advantage.

  Before Isamu could react, I tugged with the strength of desperation on his tree. Betrayed by his lust, he was off balance immediately. Before he could regain his poise, I stuck my foot out and tripped him neatly.

  He hit the floor so hard I was sure the air must have been knocked out of his lungs. To make sure, I sat on his back, my legs straddled on either side of his ribs.

  “My game, brother!” I crowed.

  He was silent and still. For a horrible moment, I was sure that he had broken his tree off when he fell and that he must be dead. Then I realized I could feel his lungs heaving between my legs and I relaxed.

  “You cheated,” he panted.

  “I did not,” I said firmly. “You took advantage of the fact that I was half-naked when you lifted me up. It made it easier for you. And besides, it was nothing to do with me that your tree decided to rise.”

  “You think so?” His voice was so odd, I slid away from him and stood up, still concerned that I had really hurt him. He rolled on his back immediately, and I was relieved to see that his tree had shrunk to what I considered a normal size.

  “I won,” I repeated firmly. I was about to say, “Now will you take me to Edo with you?” But I changed my mind. “You will take me to Edo. To the Floating World.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “I suppose so,” Isamu said sulkily. I saw a crafty gleam come into his eye and waited suspiciously. “I will, but only if you cut your hair first.”

  “No!”

  I spoke automatically. Emiko had told me often enough that I would never be pretty. But I was very proud of my hair. It was as thick and glossy as a freshly-washed cherry. Unlike Emiko’s hair, which was inclined to be straggly, unbound my hair fell to well belo
w my knees in a straight curtain, as thick at the bottom as it was at my shoulders. I knew if I had wanted it longer, I could have grown it so that it trailed on the floor behind me, just like the lady in Emiko’s print. And now Isamu was telling me to cut it!

  “Why? Why should I cut it?”

  “So you can come to the Floating World with me,” Isamu said. His gaze ran down the front of my body assessingly. I resisted the urge to shield my breasts and my sex with my arms and took a step back instead. Isamu grinned and raised his eyes to my face. “It needs to be no longer than this.”

  He reached out to me—the movement awkward as I was now standing so far away from him—and cut his hand through the air just below my shoulder blades.

  “Why?” I asked again, deeply suspicious that this was some trick to make me change my mind.

  Isamu laughed. He bent and scooped up my kimono and threw it to me casually.

  “Because I cannot take a lady into the Floating World with me. A woman—unless she is a geisha or a yujo—has no place there. I will take you if you’re sure that’s what you want, but I will not take my little sister, but I will take a boy. Get dressed, Keiko, and we will see.”

  Eleven

  I wonder if my

  Reflection looks back at me

  And sees what I see

  I clenched my teeth so hard to stop my lips from trembling that they ached. I wanted to cry. It was only the knowledge that a true onna-bugeisha would never shed a tear over something as trivial as having her hair shorn that stopped me from bawling. That and the knowledge that Isamu would be delighted if he thought he had upset me.

  I had been deeply reluctant at first. I was proud of my hair, if nothing else. And Isamu wanted to cut it?

  “Can’t I just wear a wig?” I asked hopefully.

  “No,” Isamu said simply. “It wouldn’t work. You have far too much hair to tuck up. Anybody would see you were wearing a wig at once. If you want to go to the Floating World, then you must become a boy and your hair has to go first. It needs to be about the same length as mine so I can show you how to put it up in a samurai topknot.”

  He was beginning to enjoy himself, I could see. Isamu never did anything half-heartedly, and now that he had committed himself to my demand, he was going to do things properly or not at all. I looked at his hair and ruefully agreed with him. His hair was smoothed back loosely from his face and tied on the top of his head in a loop. All samurai wore their hair like that, but Isamu was fortunate in having very thick, glossy hair, much the same as mine. On him, the style looked fashionable rather than martial.

  “There, little sister. Done,” he announced. He waved the scissors in front of my face to emphasize his words.

  I turned my head, trying to see over my shoulder. Shook my head experimentally. Instead of flowing around me as it had always done when it was loose, my hair flopped over my face. I pushed it back and shook myself. I had expected to feel bereft, as though some vital part of my body had been lost. Instead, I was amazed to feel liberated, as though a weight had been taken from my shoulders.

  I stood and turned my head from side to side. Ignoring Isamu, I picked up a hand-mirror and moved it up and down until I had seen myself as far as my waist. Isamu was grinning widely at me. I returned his smile.

  “I don’t look like me,” I said slowly. It wasn’t quite what I meant, but I couldn’t put my real feelings into words.

  “No, you don’t,” Isamu agreed. “It’s not just your hair that’s different. It’s the way you’re standing. The way you’re holding your body. You’re nearly ready to go to the Floating World, Keiko. There’s just one more thing.”

  I stared at him suspiciously.

  “I need to pluck your eyebrows. They’re the wrong shape.”

  After losing my hair, this was nothing. I sat patiently and let him nip at my eyebrows for what seemed forever. When Isamu handed me the mirror finally, my mouth fell open in shock.

  The face that stared back at me was no longer mine. I raised my brows, and the effect was immediately even stranger. My face looked foreign, even to my own eyes. I wiggled my brows again and bit my lip. The face that stared back at me was neither—or did I mean either?—male or female. I could have been a young woman or a boy just growing into manhood.

  “See?” Isamu said triumphantly. “Before, your brows were shaped so that your face looked womanly. Now, if you could stop smiling and frown a bit, you would look more like a young samurai.”

  I turned my mouth down and saw that he was right.

  While I had been peering at my reflection, Isamu had been gathering up my shorn hair. He had tied it with a ribbon and bowed as he handed it to me.

  “You will probably want this made into a wig. That way when you return, you can wear it and nobody need know that you have cut your hair so much shorter.”

  I took the hank of hair from him and stroked it almost nervously. Already, it felt distant from me, as if it had never been part of my body. I put it down quickly. I would have it made into a wig; oddly, I felt I would be happy to wear it that way. A wig was impersonal, something that could be put on or off at will like a kimono. Not something that had ever been a part of me.

  Matsuo chose that moment to wander in. He went straight to his master and waited patiently to be petted. As soon as Isamu had stroked him, he came and sat in front of me. I felt as if he was inspecting me thoroughly, and I was ridiculously pleased when he made a small huffing noise and thrust his wet nose into my hand.

  “See? Even Matsuo approves!” Isamu grinned. He clicked his fingers at the dog. I was amazed when Matsuo hesitated and glanced at me before obeying his master’s command. “Well, sister? Are you ready for a taste of life in the city? If you are, we shall go to Edo tomorrow. Father will be missing for a few days. I doubt Emiko will notice we are gone. And if she does, I’ll tell her I took you to visit a prospective suitor.”

  I looked at him reproachfully, thinking his words were a joke in bad taste. I was horrified when he smiled and added, “It’s not far from the truth. Father mentioned he had several husbands in mind for you. One of them lives in the suburbs of Edo, not too far from the shogun’s palace. We might even see him in the Floating World.”

  “Do be sure to introduce me to him if we do,” I said drily. “Dressed as a boy and with my hair in a topknot, with a little good fortune he’ll be terrified of me.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Speaking for myself, I rather like the idea of you looking like a boy. In fact, I think I shall introduce you to everybody in the Floating World as my kagema.” I stared at him stonily. A kagema was a male prostitute. Not a role I relished at all. Seeing my expression, Isamu went on cheerfully. “You don’t care for that idea? Very well, what about a wakashudo relationship? Now that is perfectly honorable. Everybody knows about the samurai tradition of an older samurai taking a much younger male lover. Most samurai do it.”

  “Father never did,” I pointed out.

  “He did, you know.” I gawped at my brother in sheer disbelief. “It was before you were born. I was too young to know about it, but after I had my genpuku coming-of-age ceremony when I was thirteen, Father took me on one side and told me all about it. You know his lover, he’s been in the house many times. Eiji-san.”

  My mouth hung open in disbelief. I had seen Eiji-san often when I was a child. He had been kind to me in a pleasant, distant fashion. As the years had passed, he had come to visit us less and less often and had finally stopped altogether some time ago.

  “Really? Why happened between them? I haven’t seen Eiji-san in years.”

  “He got older,” Isamu said simply. “Wakashudo only works where the much older man takes pleasure in teaching the younger one. Eiji-san reached an age where he was no longer a boy. Perhaps he began to look for a boy of his own, I don’t know. In any event, Father never bothered to replace him.”

  “And you, older brother? Do you follow the tradition of wakashudo?”

  “If I find a younger lover who ap
pealed to me enough, I may well do,” Isamu shrugged. “But then again, I like women. What do you say, Keiko? Would you like to take me as your lover? With you looking like you do at the moment, it would surely be the best of both worlds, boy and girl in the one person!”

  He spoke lightly, but I remembered his erect tree during our game. I smiled politely.

  “And what would my future husband say to finding that his bride had been deflowered by her own brother?”

  “You really think that would be a problem?” Isamu was suddenly serious. “Love between mother and son and father and daughter—or brother and sister—isn’t exactly uncommon, is it? Your future husband is likely to be so elderly, he’ll probably be delighted that I had already prepared you in all the arts of love to save him the effort.”

  Isamu was looking at me so intently, I was deeply uncomfortable. He was right, of course. Incest was common. So common it was almost taken for granted and rarely caused gossip unless the woman in question was unfortunate enough to become pregnant by her familial lover. Mother and son relationships in particular were regarded as being a good thing for the boy. If he were kept happy by a doting mother, he would not dilute his essential being in chasing yujo. And of course, a mother’s services were both loving and disease-free. But none of that meant that I fancied taking Isamu for a lover. I did love him, of course. But not as a lover!

  “Thank you. But no thank you. I shall save myself for my husband,” I said with dignity.

  Isamu shrugged. “Suit yourself. I suppose that’s because you are still a virgin. Your vital forces have never been aroused. You might change your mind once you taste the delights of the Floating World.”

  I remembered Emiko being sadly disillusioned by the performance of her handsome, worldly-wise lover and shrugged.

  “I doubt it,” I said loftily.

  Isamu grinned at me slyly. I threw a cushion at him and we both laughed. But I was still a little wary when he pressed against me to tie up my hair in a samurai topknot and insisted on helping me to dress in his own clothes. I pulled on the divided-leg hakama and tied a robe on top of them, finishing with a plain obi. I took a couple of steps and found I was walking with a swagger. Isamu regarded me with the tip of his tongue poked between his lips.