I took up the pole reluctantly. The rain was pouring down even more heavily. The room was dim, the light greenish. We seemed to be in a world within a world, isolated from the real one, bewitched.
It started like an ordinary practice bout, both of us trying to unsettle the other, but I was afraid of hitting her face, and her eyes never left mine. We were both tentative, embarking on something utterly strange to us whose rules we did not know. Then, at some point I was hardly aware of, the fight turned into a kind of dance. Step, strike, parry, step. Kaede's breath came more strongly, echoed by mine, until we were breathing in unison, and her eyes became brighter and her face more glowing, each blow became stronger, and the rhythm of our steps fiercer. For a while I would dominate, then she, but neither of us could get the upper hand. Did either of us want to?
Finally, almost by mistake, I got around her guard and, to avoid hitting her face, let the pole fall to the ground. Immediately, Kaede lowered her own pole and said, “I concede.”
“You did well,” Shizuka said, “but I think Takeo could have tried a little harder.”
Lian Hearn (a pseudonym) studied modern languages at Oxford University and work as a film critic and arts editor in London before settling in Australia. A lifelong interest in Japan led to the study of the Japanese language and many trips to Japan, and has culminated in the writing of Across the Nightingale Floor.
This excerpt is from Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn