Chapter 4: Sake Warmed Twice

The wind came back that night, harder than before.

Tomoe lay on the futon with the quilt up to her chin and listened to the hall.

Shiori had not come to bed.

She had not eaten dinner either, only stood in the yard in the dusk with her sword until the snow turned blue.

Tomoe waited.

The lamp burned down to a thread.

At last she got up, wrapped the quilt around her shoulders and went to the kitchen.

She poured a small flask of rice wine into a pot of water and set it on the coals.

She warmed it, took it off.

She warmed it a second time, the way her mother used to, until it was hot enough to smell of fruit.

Then she carried the flask and two cups out to the hall.

Shiori knelt in front of the scroll on the east wall with her hands on her knees.

The writing on the scroll was black and old.

Tomoe did not read it.

She set the cups down on the floor beside the saint and filled both.

"I told you," Tomoe said. "You'll freeze."

"I know."

"Drink."

Shiori took the cup in both hands.

The wine went down, and a little of the blue left her mouth.

"It is eight lines," she said.

"I said them every morning for twenty-three years. I know each one by heart. The fifth is..." She stopped.

"I am not going to say the fifth."

"Then don't."

"I am afraid," Shiori said, "that if I put my hand on you I will not be able to stop."

Tomoe set down her cup very gently.

"That's the first sensible thing you've said all day."

Shiori turned and looked at her.

In the dim hall the scar stood out pale across her cheek.

Her dark eyes were full of a hunger she was holding down with both hands.

Tomoe leaned forward, took the front of the grey robe in both fists, and kissed her.

Shiori made a sound low in her chest, and her hand came up into Tomoe's hair, and this time it did not let go.

The quilt fell off Tomoe's shoulders.

The cups went over and nobody picked them up.

"Not here," Tomoe breathed against her mouth. "It's freezing. Come."

She pulled the saint up by both hands and led her across the hall to their room, and slid the door shut.

The lamp was nearly out.

Tomoe stood in the last of its light and untied her own sash.

Shiori watched her with her lips parted, and her hands hung at her sides.

The sash fell.

The outer robe followed, and the one beneath it.

Then Tomoe stood in her thin white undershirt with the cold on her skin and her braid over one shoulder.

"You can look," she said.

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