Free Lord of the Darkwood by Lian Hearn

obsessed.”
    Shika was surprised at the strong emotion that welled up in him, part jealousy, part affront, but also, mingled in, gratitude and relief. Before he met Ibara, he had assumed Hina had died in the massacre of the Kakizuki women and children. Now Ibara was convinced she had not drowned. But where had she gone? What had happened to her?
    â€œYet she was only a child,” he said. “And how old was he?”
    â€œWell over thirty, I would imagine,” Ibara replied. “She was about eleven years old. He intended to make her his wife—but he had not touched her,” she added, maybe noticing Shika’s face.
    The shutters rattled as the wind howled against them. The snow fell with the lightest of sounds, like insects swarming.
    *   *   *
    On sunny days, when the snow did not fall, they rode out through the forest—no longer the dark wood but gleaming white. The horses plunged through the deep snow, snorting with excitement. Gen was light enough to run over the frozen surface. They took their bows and hunted hares and squirrels. Sometimes they saw wolf tracks. Every now and then, Shika caught sight of his antlered shadow, blue-black on the snowy ground. Each time he felt the shock anew.
    Will I ever be rid of it?
    As spring approached, the snow fell with rain mixed in. The icicles that clung to the roof began to drip in the sun. The stream melted and the water roared with its new fierce flow. The deer dropped their antlers. Nagatomo and Ibara collected them, polishing them. Fawns were born, and bounded after their mothers on long, delicate legs.
    The short summer brought biting flies and heavy humid air. Violent thunderstorms crackled round the mountain peaks. In the autumn, drums sounded from far away, giving a rhythm to their own dances. Another winter passed: the same deep drifts of snow, the same long conversations in the smoky hut. They saw no one else and began to forget they were fugitives. No one ventured so deep into the forest, or so they thought, until one day in early spring when Nagatomo returned from collecting water, saying, “Am I going mad and hearing things, or is someone beating a drum in the distance?”
    Once he mentioned it, they all heard it, a dull, monotonous pounding on a solitary drum. It stopped for a while, then started up again. It was the wrong time of year for the drum festivals and, in truth, the playing did not sound skillful.
    â€œSomeone practicing?” Ibara suggested.
    After the drumming had persisted for a full day and a half, Shika said, “I’m going to see what it is.”
    The Burnt Twins exchanged a swift look, and said together, “We should go.”
    â€œYou still act as if it matters whether I live or die,” Shika said, with amusement.
    â€œIt matters to us,” Nagatomo said.
    Shika was touched, though he did not show it. “Well, you can come with me. Ibara, do you mind keeping guard here?”
    The drumbeat was halting and uncertain, yet there was something compelling about it. The mask responded to it in some way. He felt the rhythm pass through his skull and reverberate within the antlers.
    The snowmelt filled the streams and the trees were just beginning to put on their first green sheen. Frogs rejoiced and birds sang, skirmished, mated in their urge to raise young ones before the short summer ended. The horses trotted eagerly, nipping at one another and bucking occasionally for the sheer joy of being alive.
    On the edge of the forest, where the huge trees gave way to bamboo groves and then to coppice, the stream widened into a marshy lake. Sedge and susuki reeds grew around it; a snipe took off at their approach with a sudden cry of alarm.
    A shaggy northern pony, dun colored with a brown mane and tail, threw up its head from where it had been grazing and whinnied loudly. The drumbeat stopped abruptly. A young boy, about ten years old, got to his feet, took one look at the antlered