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

he had married one of the Emperor’s concubines. Shigeru saw its red chest, the flowing pinion of its wings, its bright golden eyes.

It gazed at him with these bright eyes, opened its yellow beak and called again. All other sounds ceased. Shigeru sat transfixed, hardly daring to breathe.

A ripple of wind set the leaves dancing; a ray of sunlight struck his eyes, dazzling him. When he moved his head to look again, the bird was gone.

He jumped to his feet, peering up into the dense foliage, waking Matsuda.

“What is it?” the old man said.

“I thought I saw… I must have been dreaming.” Shigeru was half ashamed, thinking he had fallen asleep after all, despite his good intentions. But the dream had been so vivid-and a visitation even in a dream was not to be discounted.

Matsuda stood and bent down to pick up something from the ground. He held out his hand to Shigeru. On his palm lay a single feather, a white plume, its edges tipped red as though it had been dipped in blood. “A houou has been here,” he said quietly. He nodded two or three times and made a grunt of satisfaction. “The right time, the right person,” he said but did not explain more. He put the feather carefully away in the sleeve of his robe.

“I saw it,” Shigeru said excitedly. “Right in front of me; it looked directly at me. Was it real? I thought it was just a myth, something from the past.”

“The past is all around us,” Matsuda replied. “And the future… Sometimes we allow ourselves to see into both. Some places seem to act as crossroads: this tree has often proved to be one of them.”

Shigeru was silent. He wanted to ask the older man what it meant, but the words he had spoken had already diminished the memory and he did not want to weaken it further.

“The houou is special to the Otori,” Matsuda said, “but it’s a long time since one has been seen in the Three Countries. Certainly not in my lifetime. There is one feather at the temple, but it is almost decayed from age, so fragile it is no longer exposed to the air; it would fall apart at once. I will keep this. It is a message for your future: that it is you who will bring peace and justice to the Three Countries.”

He added quietly, “But the white feather is red-stained. Your death will be in the cause of justice.”

“My death?” Shigeru could not imagine it; he had never felt more alive.

Matsuda laughed. “At your age we all think we will live forever. But each of us has only one death. We should make it count. Make sure when you die that it is the right time, that your death is important. We all hope our lives have meaning; for our deaths to be significant is a rarer blessing. Value your life: don’t cling to it, but don’t discard it trivially.”

“Do I have that choice?” Shigeru wondered aloud.

“The warrior must create that choice,” Matsuda replied. “Moment by moment he must be aware of the paths that lead to life or death-his own, his followers’, his family’s, his enemies’. He must decide with a clear mind and unclouded judgment which path each must take. To develop this clarity is one goal while you are here.” He paused for a moment as if to let his words sink in. When he spoke again, his voice had lightened. “Now we must get moving again, or we’ll be spending the night in the forest.”

Shigeru picked up the wooden swords and the bundles and slung them over his shoulders. His impatience and rebelliousness of the previous day had disappeared. He pondered Matsuda’s words as he followed the teacher up the steep mountain path. He would strive to follow them and choose his own death, strive always to be conscious of the right path-but may it be many years ahead, he prayed.

10

The sun had slipped behind the mountain peaks and a blue dusk was descending when they came to a hut at a fork in the path. It was small, its roof thatched; a lean-to along one side sheltered a pile of neatly stacked logs. It had one door, a heavy wooden one, and no screens. They paused to wash their hands and drink from the nearby spring. An animal scampered under the veranda at their approach. Matsuda heaved at the door, slid it open, and peered inside. He chuckled. “It’s withstood winter well. No one’s been here since last summer.”

“No one but rats,” Shigeru said, looking at the droppings on the floor.

Shigeru had placed the bundles on the wooden step-hardly a veranda, though it served the same purpose. Matsuda knelt to untie one and took out a handful of wood shavings. He put the embers from the iron pot in a small brazier, added the shavings and blew gently on them. When they began to smoke, he stood again and took up a broom.

“I’ll do that,” Shigeru said.

“We’ll share these simple chores. You go and find kindling.”

Mosquitoes whined around his head as he searched for dry wood in the gathering darkness. The forest here was beech and oak, with one alder by the pool where the spring overflowed. Here and there were white mountain lilies and arum, and near the stream kingcups gleamed. The first stars were appearing through the heavy foliage above.

He breathed out deeply.

The fallen branches on the ground were still sodden after the rain, but there was enough dead wood on the lower limbs and trunks of the trees to gather an armful of kindling. He could smell the pine shavings from the hut, a friendly human smell in the lonely forest. When he returned, a frog was calling from the pool. Another answered it.

He broke the kindling into small pieces and carried them inside. The floor was clean and Matsuda had lit a small lamp and spread out the thin hemp bedding and quilts