Musuko (Book Two of the Kakureta Hana series)

I: Ichi

My earliest memories were of two little girls.  One was like staring into a mirror excepting the colors of our eyes; the other was a shy shadow that limped away from any who could hurt her.  The last time that I remember all three of us together was the day that we left my mirror image behind with the shinobi, Emi holding onto her hand as she cries.

Sakura's face had tightened with sadness, and for a brief moment, she seemed ready to return to snatch up the girl.  Ryuu bent close to her and whispered, "It had to be done.  It was the only way."

Despite his words, her body remained coiled with tension, her body angled back towards the child that we had left behind.  In my young mind, I worried that she would leave me behind to remain with the girl, and I reached my little hand up as far as I could until our fingers barely touched.

At the feel of my fingers against hers, Sakura looked down, and a melancholy smile touched her lips.  Gently, she picked me up, though I was nearly too old to be carried like a child.  Reassured, I rested my head against her shoulder and glanced backwards to find my mirror image watching us still.

A pinch of sadness touched my heart, but by the time that a few months had passed, I barely remembered that there had been someone else living within our home.  It was not out of spite; rather, it was to drive away the pain that accompanied the remembrance of the past.

After that, my memories consisted of the frustration of a young child being forced into learning something that they had no interest in.  The man who was to be in control of our clan until the day that I came of age, Lord Motome Taro, had insisted that when I turned three that I begin to train with wooden weapons that I could barely lift.

The man who was in charge of my training took perverse pleasure in the young and mostly defenseless boys that he taught.  Ryuu and Lord Motome engaged in a violent argument after one incident in which he threatened to force me to train without clothing.

Least to say, Ryuu won the argument, and I returned back to the home I had known to train under the man that had once been my father's trusted general.  Sakura had wept that day as well when he had brought me back, her arms tight around my small frame and my face buried in her shoulder.

Despite the anger that Lord Motome expressed every time that he came to visit the three of us, neither Ryuu nor Sakura would allow me to remain in the fortress for more than a day.  Several times, I heard the three of them discussing the fact that an agreement had been long broken, and when Lord Motome could not convince them to hand all responsibility of me over to them, he stormed out.

Even as the memories of one of those little girls faded into the lost bits of childhood, I saw the shadow of a girl quite frequently.  She was the child of Lord Motome, and regardless of how bitterly that he would argue with Ryuu and Sakura, his wife would visit us often with her daughter in tow.

On the days that my time was not consumed with the aching lessons of battlecraft and the dull ones of leadership, the two of us would play in the garden, each of us seeming to be the only true friend the other one had.

Eventually, though, even she no longer came with Yori, her own days being taken up with lessons on how to be a dutiful wife.  Something that she remarked that she despised every time that we managed to steal a moment with each other.

When I turned ten, Ryuu was called off to battle, the longest one that I could remember in my childhood.  Sakura seemed all right to a casual observer, but I could see how much his absence pained her.

It was in those days that I did something that I had never even contemplated before.

The first and only time that I dared to call Igarashi Sakura 'Mother', she placed a hand across my mouth and pulled me close.  For a long moment, she was silent, no part of her moving except for her chest and the tears that fell from her eyes.