Chapter 5

“She deserves to rot!” Tanenaga growled. “Then I will make an example of her rotted corpse. My love, you have done your duty with diligence. You are thus released from her care. Leave her to rot in her prison.”

I bowed. “Of course, my dear.”

From inside the room, Mitsuyo called out in a high whining voice. “Tanenaga! Come warm us!”

Tanenaga kept his eyes on me to judge my reaction to Mitsuyo’s calculated impertinence, and was pleased to find my face expressionless, passing his test of obedience.

By the following morning, I had convinced myself that being removed from my duty as Kiyo’s warden was a good thing. A healthy thing. I forced myself to believe what I always ought to believe, which was that she was nothing more than a wretched creature that deserved her fate.

That first day without seeing her, I spent the day forcing her out of my mind, with the best techniques of meditation I could muster. I spent the morning composing poems and reading folklore, and in the afternoon, when the clouds had parted enough to spill beautiful drops of warm sun, I strolled the gardens. I watched the koi swim lazy laps beneath the red maple leaves that floated on the gentle pond. I found a place to sit and indulged in the pleasant feel of the gnawing warmth of the sun mixed with the crisp chill of the autumn. But I found I could not enjoy any of it. I could not remove Kiyo from my mind. In fact, she remained etched there like scripture on a temple garden stone. I saw her looking up at me from her felled position in the dark, cold cell, the slight and precious smile on her forlorn yet still beautiful face. The signs of starvation already appearing in the sallowness of her cheeks, the failure to take revenge for her parents and her people haunting her as she slowly withers away.

I played compulsively with my dagger. I could end her suffering. Such an easy thing to do, to give her the mercy of a swift execution. Tanenaga would never forgive me for it. Did I care?

The second day without seeing her, I tried more of the same and perhaps fared better than I did the first day. I focused on calligraphy, then with my handmaidens put together a design for a new winter kimono, of a pattern that evoked white cranes soaring over blue mountains, which pleased me. Kiyo came to me still, but not so starkly, so it occurred to me that she would simply fade like a bad dream. It would only be a matter of time. A thought that brought me guilt.

The third day away from Kiyo, I fell into a deep malaise. I tried my best to avoid thoughts of her, but whenever I was able to put her out of my mind, my mind clung onto other depressing thoughts. Thoughts of my son, most of all. My dear, poor son who was not nearly old enough to do anything to deserve his terrible fate, and it was only my own failure as a mother, my own ineptness, stupidity, and recklessness that had caused him to perish. He had starved because I could not produce milk for him, and there was not a wet nurse who he would accept. He needed me, and I had failed him. Why the depressing thoughts had returned to me so viciously at a time like this, I did not know.

I slept uneasily, and dreamy lucidly that night. A baby’s cry from the deep shadows caused my eyes to open to a stark and empty plain and I saw my precious son there, lying in blackness, his face contorted and red hot with pain, confused, helpless, and I was helpless to do anything about it. My husband Tanenaga was there too, standing with his arms crossed, staring at me, demanding with his eyes that I do something to help my son, but I could do nothing. And then I saw Kiyo, sitting politely, her legs bound, and her wrists. I went to her and tried wresting the iron clasps off her, because I thought that somehow, by freeing her, my child could be saved. But I could not save her. I could not break her chains. I was not strong enough. My baby child cried again, crying for me to free Kiyo. I could not save her, just as I could not save him. She would starve, just like my son, and there was nothing I could do about it, and so I wept. I screamed, and my scream filled my lungs with fire and the fire grew in my chest and was a searing pain.

The pain woke me, and then I realized that the pain was real. Except that it wasn’t a searing pain as I had dreamed, but a pain of heaviness. A pain of… fullness. My chest, or more specifically, my breasts, were hard, tight, tender. I touched them and found my kimono was wet in the chest area. Then I caught a whiff of a familiar, musky scent. Breast milk. My breast milk.

My mind still swimming in a vertigo of dream, I parted my kimono front. I saw in the moonlight, pale white dewdrops beading at the tips of my taut, swollen nipples. Needlessly, I stole one bead with a finger and touched it to my tongue and gasped at the strong taste of the rich colostrum milk one produces at the start of lactating.

A dreadful fright overwhelmed me. To be without child and to be full of milk, one possibility dawned on me — that they were right, that Kiyo was a demoness, and that it was she that had a curse from her prison cell to impart in me a cruel remembrance of my child to coax me into producing milk, a final overture of malice in the wake of her failed vengeance.

But no anger stirred within me. Rather perplexingly, an excited thought came to me. A strange thought. An idea, a compulsion. I could save her.

I wasted no time crawling out of bed and slipping out of my quarters.

I snuck through the castle halls, avoiding the portions of the floors that were nightingale floors, and the main arteries and great halls where the castle guards patrolled, and made my way down the stairs to the prison cell.

Kazuo was sitting on his stool at the prison door. He grinned pleasantly when he spotted me and stood and bowed, obviously oblivious to the queerness of my appearing in the dead of night.

“I am not supposed to be here, Kazuo, but please let me see her,” I said, with too much desperation in my voice.

Gratefully, Kazuo acted unquestioningly, opening the prison door for me.

I stepped into the cell. My heart sank when I saw her in the pale beam of moonlight. She lay in a fetal position on the floor, her skin stretched thin on her bones like leather on a rack. Her kimono was opened, allowing me to see, even in the dim light, the toll the days without food had taken on her – the shadows accentuated her rib cage. She moved her head to see me and smiled, but could do nothing more than that, but in that smile, I saw that she was delighted to see me.

I sat quietly beside her, glanced back to ensure the cell door was shut concealing us from view, then I undone the top of my kimono, and let it drape loosely around my waist, baring my engorged breasts.

“What are you doing?” Kiyo croaked, startled at my odd behavior.

I remained silent and, knowing it would take too much strength for her to sit upright, I lay beside her, facing her eye to eye. Despite the onsetting effects of starvation, she was still achingly beautiful. She was precious. I put my hand on her cheek to warm her, and she closed her eyes and her smile grew deeper, and this strengthened my resolve.

“I’m lactating,” I muttered.

Kiyo frowned, then laughed, then frowned again when she realized what I meant by such a statement.

“You’re not serious,” she replied.

I kept my gaze fixed on her eyes. “I need to do this, Kiyo. Please let me do it.”

For a moment, I could see that she wrestled with the decision, and I could see why she would wrestle with it — she was given a choice of committing herself to her death, or to buy herself more time by drinking the breastmilk offered to her.

But I could not allow her to reject me. Not when I had this opportunity to do what sorely needed to be done. I cradled her head and brought her lips my breasts. She finally complied and put her lips around my areola and sucked.

I let out a small shuddering breath at the intense sensation of her lips touching my sensitive breast skin, and I flinched when I felt her tongue and the wetness of her mouth and then sighed when I felt the pleasant release of milk from my breast with every sucking motion.

I caressed Kiyo to warm her cheeks and wrapped my body around her to warm her body. Her warm mouth, her tongue, the slight raking of her teeth against my soft breast pleased me immensely.

Just a moment, and I could already see life and energy returning to her. A moment later, she unlatched from my nipple, and licked her lips and, chuckling, said, “It tastes good. No… It’s exquisite…”

I stroked her cheek, and replied, “you’re starved. Keep going until you are full and cannot take a drop more.”

She did as I said and wrapped her lips around my nipple again to continue sucking. She sucked until it did not flow as easily. I presented to her my other breast, and she took it in her mouth as if it were natural for her to do so, and she brought herself as close to my body’s warmth as she possible could, and I tightened my embrace of her.

It had been far too long since I had known such tenderness — the warmth held between our bodies, the eager pull of her mouth, the fragile rhythm of heartbeat. The sensation was as she had described the taste of my milk. Exquisite.

In a momentary lapse of my emotional reticence, I uttered a pleasured moan, and when she paused momentarily, I uttered, “keep going,” not realizing my slight but profound transgression. How could I? My head swum with desire, and my heart raged with it, and it was a desire that came from something more than simply the comfort and gratification in providing an imprisoned, starved woman nourishment. It came from desire that I had long not felt. To touch sensually. To touch someone warm. To have them touch me. To feel truly alive again. No, I did not realize my transgression. Not at first, at least. Not until I felt that she had paused sucking milk from me. I looked down and caught her surprised eyes. I stayed frozen with unclear anticipation, while my chest labored with heavy, nervous breathing as the realization dawned on me that I had just let known a desire that I had tried in vain to keep secret even to myself.

She smirked slightly then returned her lips to my hard nipple but did not suck this time. Rather she kissed it softly. I gasped and quickly bit my lip to quench the pleasure sound I made.

“Please, drink…” I said, my voice coming out like a soft a mewl. The dutiful instruction veiled thinly its true intent, which was to coax her into pleasure me more strongly with her mouth, and she saw through the veil, and rather than sucking, slowly drew her tongue around my nipple, heightening my pleasure to a level I had either not ever known, or had utterly forgotten, and when she seemed satisfied with my reaction, she returned to sucking my milk.

After a while, she stopped and brought herself to a sitting position, already with the strength to do so.

“I cannot drink another drop,” she said. A daze sat upon her face as she sat panting to catch her breath after feeding so vigorously, the same daze I wore, perhaps. She kept her eyes on the floor with an eager intent to not look into my eyes, but she bowed and said,

“Thank you, lady Keiko.”

I quickly covered myself with my kimono and stood and before leaving, said to her, “I will feed you again tomorrow night.”

“I’ll be waiting,” she said. I realized she spoke facetiously, but I did not laugh. My stomach churned with too much confusion, too much… guilt, perhaps, but also… frightful delight. I did not say another word. I darted out and shut the door quietly behind me.

Kazuo, sitting in the chair next to the door, cleared his throat and spoke.

“Yes, Kazuo?” I replied after my heart had returned to its place.

“I have something I’ve been meaning to tell you.”

He stood up and shifted his feet bashfully.

“I’ve been meaning to offer condolences to you for your father… He was a great man and I, well, I looked up to him. His death was hard for me, so I can only imagine what it must be like for you.”

Flustered with why Kazuo decided this was the proper time to tell me this, my cheeks turned hot.

“He was indeed a very nice man,” I responded, mustering as polite a smile considering the tumult of emotions that roiled inside me.

“He was a great samurai. An honorable one,” he said.

“Mm,” I intoned in agreement. I went to leave but Kazuo spoke again.