Heaven's Net Is Wide by Lian Hearn (good books to read for 12 year olds .TXT) 📕

with bare legs, a pole across his shoulders, face hidden under a deep hat, he looked and felt like a servant. He swallowed again, the irritation abrading him inside.

“Good-bye.” Matsuda nodded briefly to the monk.

“When shall we expect you?” he replied.

“Oh, sometime. Whenever.” Matsuda waved vaguely. “You’d better send some more supplies if we’re not back in a month.”

The smell from the basket was already making Shigeru’s stomach ache with hunger, but it seemed a depressingly small amount of food for a month.

The deep shade of the outer gate was pleasant; beyond, the sun seemed hotter and the air stickier. They did not take the stepped path that led down to the inn at the foot of the mountain but instead went upward, following a small stream that cascaded down the slope.

The bundles were not heavy, but it was awkward carrying them through the heavy undergrowth, and the footing was slippery. Insects whined around his head and horseflies bit. Matsuda went at a swift pace, clambering upward as agilely as a monkey, while Shigeru scrambled behind him. Before long he was dripping, soaked as much by the wet grasses and bushes as by his own sweat.

After two hours or so, the path turned away from the stream, toward the northwest. They stopped there to rest for a few moments, drank from the cool water, and splashed it on hands and face.

“I’m glad you decided not to leave,” Matsuda said airily, taking off his hat and wiping his face on his sleeve. “Had you done so, I might have felt obliged to accept Iida Sadayoshi’s invitation to visit him at Inuyama.”

“Inuyama?” Shigeru repeated, astonished. “Why would you go there?”

“Sadayoshi seems to think his son would benefit from my teaching. He would not risk sending him into the Middle Country; he hopes I will go to him.”

“And you would have gone?”

“Well, I don’t like Inuyama. It’s too hot in the summer and freezing in winter. But the Iida are not a family to be lightly insulted,” Matsuda replied. “And Sadamu has a growing reputation as a mighty warrior.”

“But you have become a monk: you have given up that life.”

“I’ve learned I am a teacher above all. A teacher is nothing without worthy pupils who value and appreciate his teaching. I don’t know how much Iida’s son could learn from me, to be honest. He is already in his twenties: habits good or bad are usually set irrevocably by then.”

“You will not teach Iida Sadamu or anyone else from the Tohan,” Shigeru said furiously. “I forbid it and my father would too!”

Matsuda said, “If there are any worthy among the Otori, I do not need to look elsewhere.”

Shigeru remembered his thoughts from the previous night; all those desires now seemed shallow and frivolous. Yet to open his mouth and plead his own case seemed equally contemptible. He stood and picked up the carrying pole and the wooden swords, saying nothing, determined to master his anger and his pride.

They walked mostly through forest, though sometimes this cleared into grassy slopes dotted with flowers-clover, buttercups, pink vetch. Twice, startled deer leaped away, and once a cock pheasant rose whirring almost under their feet. Kites mewed overhead, their dark pinions outlined against the blue sky. The clouds were clearing; the breeze came from the south.

Around midday, Matsuda halted on the edge of one of these clearings and sat down on the grass in the shade of a huge oak. He opened the basket and lifted out one of the containers. Six small rice cakes lay on a bed of perilla leaves. Matsuda took one and held out the wicker tray to Shigeru.

Shigeru put his hands together and bowed in thanks; inside his mouth the rice cake seemed even smaller, and by the time it hit his belly, it was no more than a grain. The second one disappeared as quickly and made as little impression on his hunger.

Matsuda made up the fire, adding dry grass and twigs to the glowing charcoal. He seemed in no hurry to continue. He lay back, saying, “There are not many pleasures that can compare to this!”

Shigeru leaned against the oak’s trunk, hands behind his head. Matsuda was right, he thought; it was pleasant to be outside, unknown to anyone, unbothered by retainers and attendants, free to be oneself, to know who one really was. After a while the old man fell asleep. Shigeru’s eyes were heavy, but he did not think he should sleep; he did not want to be taken by surprise and killed by bandits. He gazed up into the branches of the oak; they spread above his head, seeming to touch the sky. The tree had a majesty about it that was almost sacred. Staring up at it lifted his own spirit skyward, made him imagine a world unknown to him that existed all around him and that he had never noticed. Spiders’ webs stretched between the twigs, catching the sun as the south wind stirred them. Insects hummed around the tree, and birds chirped and fluttered among its leaves… And always the drone of the cicadas, the constant sound of summer. It was an entire world to these creatures, giving them food and shelter.

He fell into a sort of waking dream, lulled by the warm afternoon and its myriad sounds. The sun glinted through the dappling leaves; when he closed his eyes, he could still see the patterns black against the red.

He heard a loud and unfamiliar birdcall in the branches above and opened his eyes. Perched just above him was a bird he had only ever seen in pictures, but he knew it at once: it was the houou, the sacred bird that appears when the country is at peace under a just rule. For the Otori it had special meaning, for they wrote their name with the same character and had done so ever since the Emperor had decreed it at the same time as the sword Jato had been given to Takeyoshi and