The Bride Who Read the Contract novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: The Storehouse
Fumika runs into the burning storehouse, the oni lord walks through the fire after her and carries out her mother's books, she shames her stepmother before the clans and walks out, and in the motorcar he tells her he never asked for a bride.
Fumika ran.
She went out through the open screens in her split-toed socks and across the wet moss of the garden.
Behind her the whole banquet hall came pouring out to watch.
The storehouse stood behind the main shrine, two floors of thick white plaster and black tile.
She had slept in its loft for eight years.
Smoke was rolling out of the little high window over her bed.
The iron door stood open, and nobody had opened it to save anything.
The old steward was standing beside it with a bucket he hadn't filled.
"My lady, don't!"
Fumika went in.
The heat hit her.
The ground floor was shelves of shrine ledgers, already curling and blackening in the smoke.
Her mother's books were upstairs, in a red lacquered chest under the loft window, where she had hidden them from Kinue.
She got her foot on the ladder.
The rung above her hand caught fire.
She pulled her sleeve over her fist and kept climbing, and the smoke filled her mouth and her eyes until she couldn't see the top.
Then a hand closed on the back of her collar and lifted her off the ladder.
"Where?" said a deep voice behind her.
She couldn't speak.
She pointed up.
The oni lord set her on the floor by the door, which was the only clear air left, and went up the burning ladder.
It broke under him halfway.
He went up the wall instead, by the shelves.
She heard the loft boards crack over her head.
Outside, someone was screaming that the oni would bring the roof down on all of them.
Fumika counted.
She got to eleven.
He came down through the smoke with her mother's red chest on his shoulder, his black haori smoking, his long hair singed at the ends.
He set the chest at her feet on the moss outside.
The roof of the loft fell in behind him with a sound like a great breath.
"This one?" he asked.
She knelt and opened it.
Her mother's notebooks were all there, every one, her neat small hand on the covers.
Only the top one was scorched.
Fumika looked up to thank him and saw his hands.
The skin across both palms was blistered and black.
While she watched, while the whole banquet watched, the black flaked away and the skin underneath came up pale and smooth.
A woman from one of the clans made a noise and covered her mouth.
He flexed his fingers and looked bored.
"It's not a party trick," he said to her. "It just itches."
The envoy came through the crowd licking sugar off her thumb.
"Cousin," she said, "your sleeve's still on fire."
He patted it out.
Fumika stood up.
The steward was still holding his empty bucket.
He was an old man who had swept the shrine steps since before she was born.
"Who had the storehouse key tonight?" she asked him.
He opened his mouth.
His eyes went, just once, to her stepmother.
Kinue stood at the front of the crowd in her purple silk, her fan open under her chin.
"She left a lamp burning," Kinue told the clans. "She always does. She reads in bed like a clerk."
"I've never had a lamp in that loft," Fumika said. "You took it away when I was sixteen. You said I'd burn the records."
A murmur went along the crowd.
Kinue's fan moved faster.
"Clumsy girl," she said. "Now look what you've done."
Genzo came down the garden path in his white robes with his hands folded.
"Enough," he said gently. "Fumika, you've embarrassed this house twice tonight."
"Three times," Fumika said. "You're forgetting the fire."
"You won't speak to your mother like that."
"She isn't my mother."
"You'll call her Mother," Kinue said.
"No."
Her father's soft voice went softer.
"Then understand me. After tonight you're not a Hinase. You belong to the mountain."
Fumika picked up her mother's chest.
It was heavy, and her arms were shaking, and she didn't put it down.
"My mother was the Hinase," she said. "You married her and took her name. Don't tell me what I am."
The clan heads looked at the moss.
Somebody coughed.
She turned to the oni lord.
"Are we leaving tonight?"
"The car's at the bottom of the steps," he said. "Unless you'd like to burn anything else first."
"No."
He held out his hands for the chest.
She hesitated.
"I'll only carry it," he said. "You'll keep the key."
She gave it to him.
They went down the ninety-nine steps with the envoy behind them.
The smoke went up behind the shrine, and the whole banquet watched from the top.
Halfway down Fumika heard running feet.
Kaede came down the steps after her, holding up her pink skirts.
She had Fumika's old grey winter coat over her arm, the patched one from the loft hook. Fumika didn't know how she had got it.
Kaede pushed it at her.
"It's cold on the mountain," she said.
That was all.
She didn't say sorry.
She didn't say goodbye.
She looked at the oni lord's horns, went white, and ran back up.
A long black motorcar waited at the bottom, with silver on the doors.
The oni lord put the chest on the back seat.
The envoy climbed in beside it and opened a paper bag of sweets.
He held the front door for Fumika, then folded himself in behind the wheel.
They drove out through the dark streets toward the north road.
He drove it himself.
For a long time nobody spoke.
The gaslights went by.
Fumika held her coat in her lap and smelled smoke in her own hair.
"Why did you accept?" she asked at last. "All of it. You didn't even argue."
"Why would I argue? You read the contract. Nobody reads the contract."
He kept his eyes on the road.
"And the pact says I can't refuse a bride the shrine offers."
"Then why did you send for one?"
His gold eyes slid to her for one second.
"I didn't," he said. "Your father wrote to me this winter and offered me a Hinase bride. I never asked for one."
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