A Wintered Heart

The snow was falling again.

She was washing my hands. Running her slender fingers along the mess of scars and callouses, exploring them with the softest touch I had ever known. She was beautiful. She was austere. She reminded me of the mountain beside the village, beautiful and mysterious. A looming contradiction to me, whose harmony with this place was as certain as its belonging and whose purpose escaped only me. In many ways she was my time here, right before me. Reflected in some tangible form to which I could not touch, feel, or decipher. She washed my hands like a wife would wash a husbands, pouring warmed rose-water over them until the aches in those battered bones was soothed away and I had relaxed to her touch.

I had never seen her cry for her husband. I had never felt any anger or discontent from her. She was a well of feeling, a sensitive creature whose heart lay concealed to me. Hidden beneath their way. Their code. The grace with which she tolerated my imprisonment, and her charge, was as deeply moving as her beauty. And yet, despite it, I was always aware that I was the cause of her sorrow. That I had taken from this woman a husband. A family. A chance to be a mother, a lover, and happy.

She had fashioned for me a kimono, a soft wrap of blue cotton that she dressed me in each morning, and removed from me each night. My nudity now, and always, embarrassed her. She suffered it by keeping her eyes downturned, ignoring for my benefit perhaps the way my length swelled against the touch of her soft fingers along my hands, and arms. Ignoring, perhaps for her own sake, the heat she coaxed in me.

I had attempted many times in the three months since my capture to imagine an American woman tending to a man that had stolen her love from this world, I tried to imagine an American woman with the depth of strength and quiet grace that she had shown me. I could not.

I had never known such a thing could exist until I had been imprisoned her.

Free to walk around, free to experience this village and learn of it. Free to eat, and sleep, and live with the people whom I had attempted to destroy. Free to do everything but leave.

There was a power to this place, and it was changing me. Empowering within me a great awareness of life's quiet pleasures, small miracles. I saw it in their happiness, in the traditions to which the held and the code to which they answered. This woman, who had suffered heartbreak at my hands, kneeling behind me now to run a warm cloth along my shoulders. The muscles beneath her fingers different than her husband's own, the skin a different shade of tan. How foreign was I to her? How evil? Did she loathe me?

I did not think so. I felt only respect and mistrust and a great curiosity. I wondered how badly she wished to ask me why I had killed her husband, why I had come to Japan to fight in this war. The questions lingered in her heart, twisted and knotted there, and yet she never asked them. Never allowed me to truly see past the soft, feminine mask of propriety she held. I had never seen her undressed, not even a glimpse of her shoulders. I had never seen her mourn her husband, or heard her cry.

And yet she had seen everything of me. My body, littered with the small scars of war. My face, wrought with the guilt I felt for disrupting her life so. She had seen me clean my revolver, the very same that had killed her husband. She had watched me take lessons in the sword and sat while her Lord, my captor, read me poetry and explained to me his thoughts on life, the war, and battle.

I knew nothing about her. She was a mystery. The only conclusion I had come to was that within she was a tumult, a powerful coil of feeling. There existed some great will, some power she had to contain it. Seldom our eyes met, but when they did, I saw through the veil for only a moment, capturing muted glimpses of what laid beyond.

Her fingers strayed along my chest, following the contours of the muscles. My body a corded stretch of them, ruggedly built. Fashioned by war. By evil deeds. If the Lord denied me anything here it was liquor, to which I had sated my demons and sustained for a year's time. I faced them now without it, and they wrought a dark tremor in my heart. In her face I saw an image of every wife I had widowed, every child I had orphaned. The grave claim of war adding to a balance to which I could not pay, bereft of penance and of means.

Her hands soothed me, kissed lightly over the rugged stretch of my body. I had suffered her bathes quietly for months, enduring the quiet intensity of my want and the quietly broken heart that yielded to me. My prick, standing proud, meant to go neglected again. The great length of it standing from my lap and the dark nest of hair at its base, curved faintly upward. The time would come when her fingers ran along it as well, a time I wished most to see past the veil of her dark lashes and into the pools of her eyes.

A time when she most surely would not look at me.

Outside it was snowing, a white blanket settling over the village with winter's arrival. The village outside carried on, faintly audible through the walls of her home. Men were working, women cooking. She was to bathe me, dress me, and escort me to the Lord's manor.

And I would go, as I always did. But this time, I would go knowing her name.

"I am Roland McCall." My words offered as her fingers spread along my belly, pushing the rag through the dark nest of curls lining down from my navel. They froze when I spoke.

I waited for her reply.

This thread is closed.

"I am Roland McCall."

He had never before spoken during his bathing ritual and as he spoke my hand stilled and I dared to briefly glance upwards dropping the cloth I held before quickly lowering them once more. I became acutely aware of him, his unique scent, the heat radiating from his skin to caress the softness of my hand pressed illicitly against his lower belly. I froze and time stood still..........

I had watched as he was marched into our busy village, a man beaten but possessed of tenacity that I could see and feel even from distance that separated us. I didn’t know the name of this Gaijin and had never asked for it. He had killed my only love. He staggered unaided as he was herded by our warriors towards my house; Lord Katsumoto, overseeing from his horse.

I lowered my head as he was pushed towards me, calming my breath enough to listen to my Lord’s carefully measured words. This stranger would enter my home, enter my life, I was to tend his wounds be keeper to the monster who had murdered my husband! Stoically, I said nothing removing my waraji as I preceded him across the threshold of my humble abode, to the room he would occupy during his stay. He tripped and fell forwards and I had watched dispassionately as he landed in a heap on the hard plinth which would serve as his bed. I quietly slid the door closed and turned, Lord Katsumoto was gone.

I had looked at the muddy boot prints tracked all over my clean floor and had set out to methodically clean every last drop of dirt from the floor outwardly composed but my mind a whirl of conflicting emotions.

My name... he wanted to know my name? Sumika; meaning a pure thinking child, at that moment my mind was far from pure it was clouded with hate and resentment.

It was the way of my people, if something was taken, something was given, a dept incurred and honorably repaid. I wanted nothing, least of all this gigantic man who was sprawled in the small room meant for my first born. He was huge, he was ugly, and he smelled bad; didn’t Americans bathe I thought wrinkling my nose with distaste.

I remember That I had followed Lord Katasumoto to his palace, and going against years of my conditioning I had ranted and raved begging him to remove this Tsuwamono from my home; offering to commit jigai rather than endure what I saw as only shame. He had refused me and I returned home resigned, “I wish to know my enemy and you will help me!” he had told me determined; his word, his law final.

When I was young I had obeyed my father, when I married Yuki Osiati I had obeyed him in all things, now that I was widowed I should have had a son to obey , but this stranger had taken my husband and denied me my legacy. I was adrift and so in the way and tradition of my upbringing I straightened my shoulders; I would obey my Lord’s wishes and tolerate this man in my house. There was no other course open to me and ironically my daimyo had given me a purpose; by housing this man I was helping my village, assisting its harmony. Perhaps my lord would gain the knowledge he sought and that it would ultimately help protect us all!

I was however, determined; I would make this stranger well and strong so that he could converse with my Lord, but I had no wish to know more of him, he was my enemy and I had no sympathy for the one marooned in our village.

And as winter began so did our journey…..

Silently I had tended to his needs outwardly offering him the politeness and respect etiquette demanded of me. I had watched as he struggled to get well and as he wrestled with his inner demons, offering him no compassion. I saw his attempts to understand our culture and master our language, and it mattered not except that I came to understand his words.

When had my perception towards him changed? When had I come to attuned to his presence, when had he started to enter my thoughts as I undressed to bathe…..when had I started to betray my husbands memory?

Confused, I took a small careful step away from him and slowly raised my eyes to his. The electricity I felt between us was like physical entity holding me to the spot upon which stood trembling. Bow, leave! my mind told me clearly, but still I remained rooted to the spot.

“Sumika,” I whispered into the small space between us finally lowering my eyes; they slipped downward across his naked form missing nothing. I had tended to this enigma for weeks but never had I looked at him!. My heart beat skipped a beat; my name meant pure thinking child, and in that single moment my thoughts were anything but pure……..

I felt her small fingers, soft and slender spindles of sensation resting idle along the smooth plane beneath on my navel. The dark curls of hair along my skin damp from her cloth, warm water and the heat of her hands stirring my flesh. They did not venture further as they had in the days before, frozen by our first dialogue since my arrival. Beneath them, as if fleeing the sparks of sensation her touch wrought through me, my prick stretched out hard and proud. A column of smooth skin, silk over steel, ending in the great thickness of a velvet crown.

Intimacy.

Before my arrival I had always believed that it was a state between two people of care for one another. A form of affection passed between those of like hearts and minds. But in this place, my prison of snow and solitude, I had learned that there lay a special intimacy between enemies. A conduit of emotion forged by hardship and loss. War bound all, honorable and dishonorable. It had forged a strange bond between me and the people of this village, a special one with its Lord and this Lady.

I could feel her behind me. Her breath quickened. The subtle change in the feel of her, the emotions washing through the air between us like a heat, bathing the wet skin of my back and shoulders. Little puffs of air against my shoulder, potent expressions.

There was no measure by which to count the times I had desired to apologize to her. Trapped, here, within the house she had shared with a husband. I felt his death in every corner, through every window. The weight of shattered dreams and lost hopes had settled upon this place; burdened it like some great and liquid weight. There had been a happiness here that I had stolen away. And a deep mourning that I had intruded upon.

There was so much to apologize for.

And yet I could not bring myself to. I did not know why but I felt, I knew, that my apology would be an insult somehow to the trials to which she was enduring. And so I sat beneath her fingers, still and quiet, waiting for her to resume her wash. Aware, and shamed, by the ferocious want I felt for her. The way my heart ached with her great nearness and my body lay tense against her soothing touch, a coil wound too tight. Bound, burdened by desires that had forged my prick into an iron brand before her fingers had even begun their wash of its great length.

She rose before any words could come, slipped from me. The air between us suddenly going cool, her fingers scratching one last caress through the nest of dark curls framing my hard length before I felt her absence entirely. I turned to watch her go, expecting to see the last flickers of fabric trailing in the wake of small, swift steps. But she stood before me, her eyes beautiful in the dim light. Darkened by uncertainty, walking over the bared stretch of my body and the hard lines of my face. I could not imagine what she was looking for.

"Thank you."

I had not thought of what to say. It'd come on a breath. Smothering a ragged, almost wanton sigh that trembled from my powerful form in a raspy rush that I hardly recognized as my own. I remembered how but a moment before her body had trembled behind me, her fingers curling some, a sudden contrast to their previous immobility. The scrape of her nails, the tips of her fingers, through the nest of dark hair gave my flesh reason to flex. The muscles along the base of my length tightened as I remembered, causing it to bob, sway as she once more issued the gentle shudder of surprise.

But I was glad the words that had escaped me were sincere, spoken briefly. The only means by which I had to be polite. In the moment it seemed as though the words carried with them every ounce of feeling that I had, both of apology and appreciation. A contrasted tangle of emotions to which I had hoped to have done justice, to have conveyed in a means by which she could accept, or understand, or feel.

His words cut through the stillness like a knife shifting the very fabric of time releasing it's hold on me. Lowering my eyes I picked up the forgotten wash cloth and resumed his bathing ritual. This time my deft fingers explored the plains and crevices of his skin searching for truth and meaning, each scar imparting its tale of lives lost, of his pain and sorrow. As if reading Braille I absorbed the essence of this stranger into my soul, against my will I listened and explored. From the hard expanse of him, an awareness passed from him to me perhaps for the very first time; it covered us both like a heavy blanket warm and cloying causing time to slow making my movements feel as if I were pushing through warm molasses as I bathed the tortured map work of his healing flesh.

I circled him once more to rinse away the soap watching mesmerized as the tiny rivulets of water as they ran in crazy ziz-zag patterns down his skin until once more I was kneeling before him. I ran my hand briefly along the length of his thick shaft before I patted every inch of him to dryness.

Reverently, I placed the kimono I had fashioned for him smoothing it across his broad shoulders from behind crossing it across his chest and finally tying the sash just so. He was in that moment a clash of cultures ours and his own; standing too tall in the garments of the Samurai. Solemn, reigned in, he reminded me somehow of a caged tiger. Each time I had dressed him in this manner I had felt resentment, this time I felt only resignation; as if I saw the writing written clearly in stone of that which would soon come to pass.

Stepping back I bowed slightly, steadfastly avoiding his eyes, wrestling hard with the demons of my past, my present.

“I take you to Lord Katsumoto,” I said slowly in my halting English.

Backing from the room I turned, picked up a covered basket, and slipping on my sandals crossed the threshold knowing he would follow. Today, I changed my routine, usually I would kneel apart and observe his visit, today I left him outside of the gate. “I return soon,” I told him before making my way in my small dainty steps through and away from the village towards a hidden bathing pool.

Putting down my basket I gazed at the surrounding beauty for a moment before taking out the soap, sponge and large bath wrap and laying them on the rocks. I slipped from my Kimono and carefully folded it before stepping from my sandals.

Raising my hands to my hair I unwrapped it allowing the soft silken blue black strands to cascade straight and long to far below my tiny waist. I kissed the comb that had held it, a gift from my murdered husband; it still smelled of our combined scents both buried in the polished wood a potent reminder. Reverently I placed it on to of my kimono. I took a step to stand at the edge of the pool shivering slightly in the cold breeze which easily penetrated the thin shift that was my only clothing. I clung to my sorrow like a life line in this private place where I could mourn alone with no fear of being disturbed.

Suddenly I did the unthinkable, ignoring years of ingrained tradition and propriety I slipped the shift over my head allowing it to fall from my fingertips unheeded to the ground. I stood for a moment naked and proud before picking up the soap and sponge, I stepped into the icy water until it reached my breasts; I stood there for some moments as if doing penance for my wayward actions. Goosebumps arose on every tiny surface of my slender body, my nipples becoming rock hard marbles as they were caressed by the icy waters surging around them. I reveled in the devilish cold as it pushed its way between my legs to douse even the jealously guarded warmth imprisoned there. Why? I silently questioned, why now, is this test?

After what seemed like an eternity but was only mortal minutes I walked into the warmest regions of the natural pool which was fed from underground hot springs; my body was suffused with warmth, bringing with it a painful pleasure. I lathered my breasts and hair savoring the feel of my hands as they softly brushed across my traitorous skin my hands becoming his….my own tears falling to become one with the bubbling water of the pool. My heart turned traitor mourning for the one…the ones, neither of which time or tradition would allow me access to.

I dipped beneath the surface one last time to rinse the soap away and took sat down on one of the rock like seats fashioned by time alone. Resting my head on the rocks behind me I closed my eyes and was soon lost once more in my memories. A wedding ceremony with my childhood friend turned husband, our friendship growing into a deep abiding love, honor, duty above all else, I would have died for him. His love for me, his hands on my body touching, caressing, a ritual of abiding love, sacrilegious worship which should have lasted a lifetime, cut short by the actions of another. His eyes devouring me; eyes that against my iron will became the eyes of another. The deepest cobalt blue, looking into my soul, needing that which I could not, should not willingly give. Calloused hands caressing my skin causing me to tremble…no longer those of Yuki …His!

My eyes flew open trying to escape the vision to see the phantom of my memories standing in the water facing me naked, immobile, made of stone. I reached out my hand to touch feeling his sizzling heat leap across the small space between us to sear its way down my arm and bury itself deep within my aching belly! My eyes widened this apparition was breathing he was very very real.


“Roland McCall,” alien syllables rolled off my tongue like an unbelievable caresses before I quickly pull my hand back to cover my mouth….. as if by that single action I could force them back.

Speak thine enemies name aloud and he steals your soul.. Perhaps in this case your very heart!

I shuddered waiting........

.

A small hand, fingers outstretched. For a moment it hung infront of me, reaching, as though to cross far more than the faint space that existed between us. I had always found her beautiful. Veiled in austerity, unreachable. In the home she had taken me into I had existed without conversation, left only to my thoughts and the cold weight of her sorrow as company. I looked now at the soft shape of her in the waters, ivory skin and gently feminine curves. Hints of emotion that had otherwise been hidden from me.

I thought of the Lord's words, cut short by affairs of state. He was torn from me sometimes, truly torn, for I had come to realize he enjoyed my company. We learned from one another, exchanging freely. I opened myself honestly, more honestly than I had ever before. And in that honesty I had found a deep and soul-stirring serenity, a strength of mind that I had long gone without. It was only after our talks that I did not crave a drink, that my thoughts no longer haunted me.

He had noticed, before I did, Sumika's departure. I had looked to the empty place where she had once kneeled only after his gesture, a regal lift of a long-fingered hand.

"My presence pains her." I said. My Japanese was not good, stuttered and sloppy. It was a relief that the Lord spoke English.

"No." He answered. I was aware that his eyes were now studying my own. "The past pains her. Memories. It is different."

"How? How could it be when I caused her loss and those memories?"

"You did not cause anything. Her husband chose to go to war and to fight. You were merely there, a witness to his crossing. The instrument of his death is far greater than you or I."

I shook my head and did not believe him. I had listened to him talk to me about the transfer of spirits from the grass to the tree, from the tree's flower back to the grass. He spoke of a continuity in life, a flow of energies between things. He explained to me that fate and destiny governed these movements and that to go against them merely made life harder, more difficult.

And I had been rapt until he was taken away, leaving me alone on the wooden porch outside his manor.

It had taken me some time to reach her, to find her. The clothes to which I had come to know her lay beside the spring, a gentle heap of softer piles. Was it prudent. Proper? I could not say. I imagined not. But I was compelled, shedding the Kimono she had given me, and slipped into the waters.

Now I stood amidst them, the warmth soothing aches in my body. The vision of her a sultry expression, a long-hidden vision of gentle femininity. The years had passed since I had seen, let alone had a woman. By the night they visited sometime, in my dreams, vague remnants of memory echoing the subtle sparks of desire that lingered in the depths of my cold heart. Here, so close to her, I could feel my body react unimpeded. The massive stretch of my prick swelling swiftly beneath the waters, reaching as though to meet her hand. Hardening, a smooth column of iron beneath silk, the velvet crown thick and dark and blushed.

She had said my name. It'd have been nothing but she had not seen me. Her eyes had been closed, flanked by those sooted lashes. The only image of me she had captured had existed in the confines of her mind, the secret places where men could not hope to see. And so I reached for her, committed but wondering, wondering how she'd react when my strong hand slipped along her hip beneath the water and slid slickly along to the hollow of her back.

I made to pull her into me, here in the water, until her softly-curved frame lay crushed in the warmth of my arms and against the scarred plane of my chest.

My eyes were locked to his and unknowingly the hand I held to my mouth began to move, one slender finger becoming a small caress across my lower lip. I felt frozen in place, trapped by unseen living tendrils of pure shimmering energy; as parts of my very essence were drawn across the space between us, I watched them being inhaled between his softly parted sensual lips. I was not given to flights of fancy but the more I stared at him the more they became like viable living entities traveling where I would not willingly seek to go.

His hand moving softly across my naked hip went unnoticed, as it splayed across my lower back it went unnoticed, but as he pulled me towards him the spell was broken and my world came sharply back into a crisp clear focus.

The sounds of bubbling water, my heart thudding behind my breasts, his huge hand like a fiery brand, and above, all eclipsing all, was the potent feel of his ardent erection insistently prodding at the softness of my lower belly.

Forbidden temptations! I …

"No!"

I splayed both of my hand across his chest and dropped my eyes, what I saw outlined beneath the water, took my breath away, and my heart seemed to shudder to a stop, my eyes flew back once more to his wide and full of wounder!

“Please,” I whispered, “we…. you can not do this it…it is forbidden to you!”

It was forbidden to me also, I had no business to allow this man, any man to see me thus, even with my husband our coupling had been shrouded in propriety, why had I not simply run?

Without conscious volition my small hand gently moved to cup the side of his face, it was trembling.

“Why?”

The single whispered word slipped from my lips and hung between us.......