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

workings of fate that had brought them together in this way. The heir to the Tohan lay beneath his feet, dead or dying… The men grinned nervously, as if they felt the same awe and shock.

The birds’ screaming quietened suddenly, and in the silence they heard a voice echoing up from the depths below.

“Can you hear me? Get me out of here!”

“He lives! It is Lord Iida. Let me go. I must go to him.” The man struggled against the hands that held him. Shigeru made a sign to Komori, and they moved away to one side so they could talk unheard.

“Could he have survived?”

“People do, sometimes. It’s not the fall that kills them-it’s starvation, usually.”

“Is it possible to rescue him?”

“We’d do better to leave him there. Throw this man down, too, and pretend we know nothing about it. If Sadamu’s gone, Sadayoshi will go soft.” Komori’s eyes were gleaming with excitement.

“The men that rode off saw us. They will construct more lies about what really happened and blame the Otori for Sadamu’s death. It would give the Tohan the excuse for war. But if we rescue Sadamu and return him to his clan, it will give us many advantages.”

Like the return of the Kitano boys, Shigeru thought.

“If it is Lord Otori’s will,” Komori said, sounding disappointed.

“You can get to him?”

“I can get to him. Whether he can follow me out-that’s a different matter.”

“Would you descend through this opening?”

“No, it’s too deep, and anyway there’s nothing here to lash a rope to. But, luckily for Sadamu, there’s a passage linking this cavern with another; less deep, and with trees around it. It’s very narrow, though.”

Komori called to the Tohan man. “How fat is Lord Sadamu?”

“Not fat at all!”

“But he’s a large man, right?”

When the other man agreed, Komori muttered, “I may have to persuade him to strip!”

“Help!” the voice cried from the darkness. “Can anyone hear me?”

“Tell him I’m coming,” Komori said. “Tell him it’ll take a while.”

The man crawled to the side of the slope, where the land fell away toward the cave’s opening. The grass was slippery and sharp-edged. He called out, his voice still weak with shock.

“Lord Iida! Lord Iida! Can you hear me?”

“He won’t hear that,” one of the Chigawa men said scornfully. “We should throw you in; then you can tell Sadamu in person.”

The man who had been so eager to join his lord in death had now had time to recall all the joys of living, and for his natural reluctance to leave them to reassert itself. He begged the Otori to spare him, to save Lord Iida, making many promises on behalf of his clan, the Iida family and his own. Shigeru left him to try to communicate with his lord, guarded by half his men, while he himself rode with Komori and the rest over the grassy hills for more than an hour, he thought, until they came to another depression in the earth where the fragile limestone, eaten away by water and weather, had collapsed into the honeycomb of caverns below.

The hills formed a gentle slope here, and water oozed from where it had collected between the rocks. Several pines grew in the moistened earth: two had sacred straw ropes around them, gleaming palely in the dark shadow of the trees, and a small wooden shrine stood between them and the cave’s mouth, with offerings of fruit and flowers placed on it.

They dismounted, and Komori went to the shrine, clapping his hands to summon the cave god and bowing low three times. Shigeru did the same and unexpectedly found himself praying for the life of his enemy.

They prepared the lamps and lashed the ropes to the pine closest to the edge. Komori stripped down to his loincloth and rubbed his body all over with oil, to slide more easily between the narrow rocks. He debated whether to take a weapon, but in the end decided against it.

“If Iida kills me, he’ll die there alongside me,” he said philosophically.

Two other Chigawa men were lowered down after Komori: they lit a small fire at the bottom to help guide him back. Shigeru sat on the edge of the slope by the rope, watching the flames below, waiting for the time to pass.

The sun crossed the sky above them: the sky was bright blue and cloudless. Slowly, the shadows swung from one side of the grove to the other. The sun was low over the rim of the hills when Shigeru heard the sound of hoofbeats. One of his men came at a gallop, shouting, “Komori has reached Lord Iida and they are on their way back!”

He tried to imagine the drama that was taking place below him-the darkness, the narrow passage. What beings dwelt in the caves? Bats, spiders, snakes probably, and maybe goblins or demons. Komori’s courage was a rare kind-he would rather face a hundred warriors than go into that underground world.

The sun set and the flames below seemed brighter. The fire smoked blue in the twilight; the shapes of the men around it became dark and featureless and seemed to float above the ground like ghosts.

Then suddenly there was movement, shouts of relief. Komori crawled from the narrow opening, turned, and pulled another figure after him.

The heir to the Tohan clan was naked, soaked in oil and water, skin lacerated and bleeding from a hundred tiny cuts and grazes. With the help of the ropes, he was raised to the surface, where Shigeru gave him Komori’s clothes to dress himself in, averting his own eyes, not wanting to humiliate the man further or to seem to be glorying in the situation.

Sadamu went to the spring and crouched by it, washing his body carefully, wincing now and then but not uttering a sound. Then he dressed himself in the borrowed clothes. He was a bigger man than Komori, and they did not fit well.

Shigeru gave orders for food to be brought. Fires were lit and water boiled. Sadamu drank soup and