Here is chapter 1.  I again put myself at the mercy of the
readers.  Please C&C, I beg thee...

-  - - --c h a p t e r 1-- - -  -


   Movement becomes life and life does not begin to move.  Such is
movement's divine being and its own life.  Life begets life in
charged spiral.  "Life is not a state but a divine being," Jubei
told his servant.  "I have rights, you understand."

   "Oh yes, yes!"  The servant bowed deeply as he took two swords.
They were great!  They took his arms and pulled them to the earth
like a serpent around his arms.  They are great.  They were great!
"Yes, yes!  Have you seen him?  The body!"

   "No I haven't."  He winced as he repeatedly pierced the skin of
his shoulder with an arrowhead.  I steal, and rob graves! he told
a tired mind.  A young Ainu woman had aimed a bow and arrow at his
head and let loose and failed.  His hand blocked the way.  "I
should be able to at a moment's notice?"

   "But yes!"

   "I will see him now?"

   "But yes!"

   Jubei grabbed his swords and flew out the door.  He screamed at
the sun for blinding him.  He fell a swallow with katana and ran for
a destination not ten miles away.  Visions of drama behind him
saturated his head for there was he in a forest longing for death.
Sing, sing a macabre, sing a macabre; a Dutch had made these his
final words as Jubei fell him hours before.  "Maaaah.  Mah.  Cah.
Bah."  Jubei liked the sound.  Europe had no concept of song but that.
That was a nice sound!  Perhaps he could incorporate it into some
conversation and one would ask what it meant.  "Beauty!  You know
nothing!"  And indeed they did.

   He was not a joyous man for he had much to be joyous about.  To
own was joy and he owned nothing.  There were two women which he
enjoyed on a regular basis but it did not make him joyous.

   He did own them, after all.

- - -

   "How does one stop a revolution?"  How to toss ball from one hand
to another?  No; how to take a lake and move it elsewhere.  You have
water and a crater.  One cannot have the former always.  Always the
latter.  Latter comes about all times.  Given the circumstances, a
crater is not a bad choice.  Many things can fill up craters.
"Yes they can."

   "Excuse me?  Yukio?"  Hotarou was easily confused by Yukio's
statements.

   Most were continuations of his thoughts.  Yukio expected most to
understand these thoughts.

   "We can never win.  They always come back," he said.

   "We always win," Hotarou said.  "Kosyamin.  Syaksyain.  Kunashiri."

   "Two hundred years apart."

   "No.  Three."

   There was a small table in the middle of the room.  Scattered
pieces of maps, tea.  Ink.  Stamps of wood, one not done.  A piece of
leather and a feather.  Slivers of wood.  It was simple; one on four,
block of wood on blocks of wood.  Yukio was jealous that his friend
was so simple.  It was impossible for Hotarou to be annoyed by voids.
Voids of uncarved wood.  Nearly all possibilities are imagined while
none are fulfilled.  Fulfilled thoughts and continuations thereof.

- - -

   "Here he is!  See?  He isn't standing up!"

   "He looks of Shakushine, doesn't he?"

   "Oh, of course Jubei.  I've heard he is directly related!"

   "It's amazing what humanity does, with preservation of death."

   "Oh?"  It surprised him, death.  The servant never thought of him
as dead, no.  Only as, simply, not moving.  Movement is all that
matters.  "Preservation of death?  Oh...oh!"  Death is so much more
than lack of movement.  Flowers don't move, but they are most
assuredly not dead.  Still, a dead flower is as useless as a live one
of course; he was strange that way.  Simply disallow something from
movement and it's dead.  It really is dead!  His left hand clasped
his right wrist.

   "They do such items quite well," Jubei said.  "They really are
masters of the craft."

   "The craft?"

   Jubei gestured to the body.  What a beard! the servant thought.
What an amazing beard!  Nothing was his face more than the beard.
Gray and gray and gray; he was gray!

   "What craft?"

   "The craft of death?  Yes."

   "I see!"

   The body stood atop a pedestal and gazed at the visitors.  The light
from the hut's lone window shone brightly upon the face.  Jubei moved
between the body and the window to regard the body more closely.  The
face remained lit.

- - -

   "It's a very large ship," he said to himself.  Shizumaru wandered the
deck a third time that day; he longed to find new sights upon each
iteration and was always satiated.  His first visit gave him a sun
rising above the sea with deep orange hues dispersed widely and wildly
through clouds.  The second, a taste of Dutch language during an
increasingly loud card game.  He thought it...rather brutal, and
brutish.  So short and curt, so loud!  This was his third time on the
deck and the sailors were still there.  They threw cards into the air
and took turns using a slender dark wooden tool.  It exploded once in
each person's hand.

   One, with a particularly large beard, gestured Shizumaru over with
large, powerful strokes of stubby arms.  Into his hands was thrust the
gun.  He immediately recognized it as such; he was at a loss as to why
he was given it and continued inspecting it, fingering the hammer, the
muzzle.

   Another sailor through a card into the air.  "Bang!" he shouted,
and he grabbed the card and crushed in his fingers.  He scratched the
skin around his beard and threw the paper on the floor.  "You try,"
he told the boy; it was rather obvious that Shizumaru couldn't
understand a word.

   The largest of the sailors, a behemoth of meat towering more than
a foot above Shizumaru, snatched the gun from him.  He threw a card
over the railing, a single heart.  He shot it as soon as it floated
below it.  The card shuddered violently as the explosion flew, then
it dropped quickly to the sea.

   Shizumaru ran west, oblivious to the sounds of animals behind him.
The sun was setting, with nothing against his back.  The wind blew at
him and he cut through it easily, a sword through flesh.  He moved
quickly off of the lower deck, and the beasts stayed above.  Such is
the immense design of things.  Shizumaru thought less of himself,
that others might be far more than him.

   Shizumaru longed to become not of this world.

   Nakoruru had much to exercise in terms of money.  How she could
attain such funds, the other two could not and did not fully
understand.  In her coat she kept an immeasurable amount of gold and
silver coins.  For everyone person who required of her such, she gave
full compensation.  Compensation, she had a very good understanding
of that, just compensation.  Such was also a topic she did not
discuss often.  Rimururu asked her of it at one point and she replied
with a long speech on the nature of people and honesty.

   Rimururu learned that people were not honest.  Such was the nature
of people.

   People!

   Shizumaru found her in the small room her sister was able to
acquire.  Nakoruru needed much voice to attain it.  "Rimu-chan,"
he said.  "Rimu-chan, I don't like them."

   Rimururu put on her shoes.  "You don't like them."

   Shizumaru smiled.  People!  "I don't like many."  Rimururu was, he
knew, an honest person.  He knew it.  "Onee-san?"  Nakoruru's sword
was gone.

   "I saw her talking."  She took her blade from the sheets which
were covering the center of the floor.  She tied it behind her,
around her waist; her sister had done the same not an hour ago.
"Talk with me," she whispered.  She walked out the door.  Shizumaru
carried his sword over his shoulder.  He walked out the door.

   "I do," Shizumaru said.  They crossed the framework together.

   As they moved down the hallway, they noticed two had a much larger
room.

- - -

   Death is an established facet of life.  Those allowed to regulated
both often.  To test the blade, the one should never fail to kill, one
killed.  A blade is allowed one life, when it is first made.  That is
why persons fear new blades.  To be a new blade is to be judgement.

   One man collected failed judgement.  Fitting, being he a failed
man.

   To fail judgement!  To fail!  One must cleave the body cleanly at
the torso.  To fail!  Failure is death.  To fail is death!  One must
separate the two cleanly.  One must affect life only.  To be clean in
judgement?  But yes!

   There were many failed which were collected.  In one month, he
gathered more than a dozen judgements.  Three had broken upon breaking
skin.

- - -

   He killed a child.  He quickly forgot, as it was the third.  Worry!
he asked, he asked, worry!  I affect people! Genjuro thought.  I
affect people.  That is what matters!  He moved.  Swift through a
door.  Swift through a table, man, door.

   Swift through a tree.

   He sat by the stump and thrust his feet into the shallow pool.  The
water became unclean.

- - -

   What an honorable man!  For he had much to offer.  With a certain
purpose in mind, of course.  East of Kyoto, the old Imperial capital
city, near the Heian shrine, the home of the emperor's faithful.  He
did as was wished by the emperor and executed what was desired by the
never dead; he considered him never dead; he considered all never dead.
He died in Meiwa 1 for a reason unknown to most men.  Yagyu was
faithful, as his fathers and sons.  They were all faithful.

   An admirable quality.

   Who is he of greater faith?  If faith is equal, perhaps greater
ability decides the greater man?  The man before him, laying before
him.  He was, indeed, a lesser man!  He is, after all, a dead.  Not
simply a dead man...a dead!  A dead!  A pity, though; he had a
wondrous beard, a true wonder.

   He was, after all, a leader.  "Don't you see!" Jubei's servant said
at once.  "Don't you see!  The bug!"

   "The bug?"

   "But yes!  In his beard!"  The servant walked toward the elevated
platform upon which the leader lay.  "Don't you see?"  He gestured at
the man's head with grotesque motions.  "It's right there!"

   "The bug?"

   "But yes!"  The servant reached into the beard and extracted the
cricket.  "See?  Here!"  He offered it to Jubei, in his outstretched
hands.  It was alive, and silent, and refused to move.  Jubei looked
carefully at it and saw he was trying to chirp.  One of its legs was
badly misformed.

   Jubei snatched the life out of his servant's hands and lofted it
against a wall.  It made no sound.

   "I liked him?" the servant asked.  He stared for nearly a second
at the upturned body.  "No?"  He thought of the word and realized he
had not usen it in weeks.  "No," he affirmed.  "I liked him."

   Jubei raised an eyebrow.  "You did?"

   "No.  I liked him."

   Jubei stood over the Ainu and studied his beard.  "What more do
you have for us, little man?"

   The servant beamed.  "Life!" he exclaimed to the world.  He sat
down upon the dirt and shouted again, "Life!"

- - -

   Very few liked the wolf.  He didn't chew what he shouldn't have.
He didn't maim.  He didn't kill, or eat.  He did nothing of
circumstance.  Of those Shikuruu did not know, only one person
decided to like him.  A young boy had once entered Nakoruru's room in
mistake; he at once took a liking to the wolf, and this liking was
returned in kind.

   The boy was to return to Hokkaido with the other Dutch, to help
with the fishing.  He knew little Japanese and was only slighty
better in understanding Nakoruru's and Rimururu's Ainu speech.

   He prayed for them in his sleep.

   He saw them safely off of the ship and onto the stiff ground of
Edo.

   He prayed for them, in his sleep.  But, he prayed to his god, the
god he never knew.



(Here's now just a little bit of Chapter 2.)

-  - - --c h a p t e r 2-- - -  -


   Shizumaru sliced through air with his sword.  There was much to
hate of him, for his father hated him.  The father knew he would be
what he is.  Shizumaru continued to be an introvert and he strove
toward such.  Such was his joy, that he not relish feeling.

   For feelings have hurt.

   As soon as he saw Rimururu drift into slumber, he gripped his
umbrella and started swinging it in numerous arcs around him.

   "Who are you fighting?" asked Nakoruru.

   Shizumaru winced.  "Myself," he replied.  He parried an invisible
blade with his umbrella, then quickly thrust his sword at an
invisible enemy.

   "I know."

   He frowned as he brought both weapons to each side.  "You need
your sleep, Nakoruru-san."

   Nakoruru sat up and reclined against a young elm.  "You need your
sleep as well, Shizumaru."  She watched him in fascination, for he
put full strength in each move...



-Sklathill