Read Across the Nightingale Floor for Free Online

something up.”
    “The Tohan have been persecuting
the Hidden,” Ichiro said astutely. “Tell me he's not one of them.”
    “If he was, he is no longer,” Lord
Otori replied with a sigh. “All that is in the past. It's no use arguing,
Ichiro. I have given my word to protect this boy, and nothing will make me
change my mind. Besides, I have grown fond of him.”
    “No good will come of it,” Ichiro
said.
    The old man and the younger one
stared at each other for a moment. Lord Otori made an impatient movement with
his hand, and Ichiro lowered his eyes and bowed reluctantly. I thought how
useful it would be to be a lord—to know that you would always get your own way
in the end.
    There was a sudden gust of wind,
the shutters creaked, and with the sound the world became unreal for me again.
It was as if a voice spoke inside my head: This is what you are to become. I
wanted desperately to turn back time to the day before I went mushrooming on
the mountain—back to my old life with my mother and my people. But I knew my
childhood lay behind me, done with, out of reach forever. I had to become a man
and endure whatever was sent me.
    With these noble thoughts in my
mind I followed Chiyo to the bathhouse. She obviously had no idea of the
decision I'd come to: She treated me like a child, making me take off my
clothes and scrubbing me all over before leaving me to soak in the scalding
water. Later, she came back with a light cotton robe and told me to put it on.
I did exactly as I was told. What else could I do? She rubbed my hair with a
towel, and combed it back, tying it in a topknot.
    “We'll get this cut,” she muttered,
and ran her hand over my face. “You don't have much beard yet. I wonder how old
you are? Sixteen?”
    I nodded. She shook her head and
sighed. “Lord Shigeru wants you to eat with him,” she said, and then added
quietly, “I hope you will not bring him more grief.”
    I guessed Ichiro had been sharing
his misgivings with her.
    I followed her back to the house,
trying to take in every aspect of it. It was almost dark by now; lamps in iron
stands shed an orange glow in the corners of the rooms, but did not give enough
light for me to see much. Chiyo led me to a staircase in the corner of the main
living room. I had never seen one before: We had ladders in Mino, but no one
had a proper staircase like this. The wood was dark, with a high polish—oak, I
thought—and each step made its own tiny sound as I trod on it. Again, it seemed
to me to be a work of magic, and I thought I could hear the voice of its
creator within it.
    The room was empty, the screens
overlooking the garden wide-open. It was just beginning to rain. Chiyo bowed to
me—not very deeply, I noticed—and went back down the staircase. I listened to
her footsteps and heard her speak to the maids in the kitchen.
    I thought the room was the most
beautiful I had ever been in. Since then I've known my share of castles,
palaces, nobles' residences, but nothing can compare with the way the upstairs
room in Lord Otori's house looked that evening late in the eight-month with the
rain falling gently on the garden outside. At the back of the room one huge pole,
the trunk of a single cedar, rose from floor to ceiling, polished to reveal the
knots and the grain of the wood. The beams were of cedar, too, their soft
reddish brown contrasting with the creamy white walls. The matting was already
fading to soft gold, the edges joined by broad strips of indigo material with
the Otori heron woven into them in white.
    A scroll hung in the alcove with a
painting of a small bird on it. It looked like the green-and-white-winged
flycatcher from my forest. It was so real that I half expected it to fly away.
It amazed me that a great painter would have known so well the humble birds of
the mountain.
    I heard footsteps below and sat
down quickly on the floor, my feet tucked neatly beneath me. Through the open
windows I could see a great gray-and-white heron