Hyakkimaru's Birth
Book 1 of the Dororo Novel Series
Toriumi Jinzō
Part 1 - Kurama
Chapter 1
The sun had already set, leaving the overgrown path leading down the mountain in total darkness. The path connected Ōhara and Ebumi, but when they reached Shizuhara, Jukai was forced to leave most of the navigating to the horse. He kept the horse' s pace to a slow walk throughout the journey to avoid jostling the baby in his arms. He didn't want to give the infant a sudden shock, since that would undoubtedly worsen his condition.
I wonder if he'll live long enough for us to get home...
Jukai was surprised that the baby had managed to live this long. When he brought his face close to the baby's, he felt faint breath coming from his mouth and the hole where his nose should be.
A flying squirrel passed in front of the horse and startled it. The horse neighed and reared, but the baby didn't react at all.
Jukai sighed down at the pitiable little thing. He didn't have much experience caring for newborns, and it was impossible to think of this boy as an ordinary infant. He looked more like a moth or a worm than a baby. An ordinary baby would cry or thrash around if they were hungry or upset, but this boy wasn't capable of either.
But he was definitely alive. It would probably do him a world of good to be bathed and fed.
The mountain air was always colder after sunset. Jukai did his best to keep the baby warm, but he needed a hot bath as soon as possible. Jukai rushed home as fast as the horse's slow pace would allow. It wouldn't be good for the baby if he caught a cold.
By the time Jukai arrived at his home in the mountains, the moon had already risen. Sakuzō, Jukai's former patient and helper, came out of the house with a lamp. He stumbled over his own feet in his haste and called out in a hoarse voice, "Master, welcome home."
Sakuzō's gaze dropped from Jukai's face to what he was carrying. He appeared puzzled. He had no idea what Jukai was clutching to his chest so carefully. He knew at a glance, however, that it wasn't the medicinal herbs that Jukai had gone to gather that morning.
Jukai dismounted and held the baby out to Sakuzō. He was still wrapped in the small kimono. "This is a very important patient," Jukai said. "Don't drop him."
"Huh?"
Sakuzō set his lamp down on the rocky ground and accepted the baby with exaggerated care. When the baby's face was illuminated in the light of the lamp, his eyes widened.
"Oh...uh..."
Sakuzō gasped wordlessly, but said nothing. He'd never seen a baby with all four limbs missing before.
"Bring in hot water," Jukai said. "We should heat up some milk as well."
Sakuzō shifted the baby to rest against his torso, then picked up his lamp and went back inside the house he lived in with Jukai, wondering about the tiny creature Jukai had brought home.
It had been two years since Jukai returned from China. He'd lived in this abandoned mountain estate ever since his return. It used to be a secret retreat for members of the Imperial Court, but a pirate named Genkai Namitarō had managed to acquire it some years before. He'd probably obtained it illegally. Jukai never asked him too many questions.
The estate was surrounded by mountains and reasonably far from villages and cities, which suited Jukai just fine. Mount Kurama loomed large over the area and blocked access to the estate from that side. Sometimes loggers and woodcutters came to fell cedars and elms in the mountain's forest, but the estate was well above the start of the tree line in a very rocky area. Aside from the narrow path Jukai had just traveled, the only way to reach the estate was to ford a wide, deep stream that separated the rocky area from the forest.
Jukai typically looked forward to going outside and enjoying the sights and sounds of nature. The soothing environment helped him forget the chaos and violence of cities. He usually went down to the stream for a cool, refreshing drink when he came home, but today was different. The moment he finished stabling his horse, he hurried toward the bathroom.
Sakuzō was there ahead of him. He had filled a bucket with hot water and stood waiting for Jukai with the baby in his arms. He stared at the baby's face in fascination, like he was trying to look right through him.
Jukai unfolded a wide piece of clean cloth and placed it on the floor. "Pass him to me," Jukai said. "Be careful."
Jukai accepted the baby from Sakuzō and removed the small kimono. Then Jukai lowered the baby gently into the bucket.
The baby seemed to enjoy the sensation of hot water on his cold skin. It was difficult to tell because of his lack of limbs and eyes, but his skin took on a healthy pink tone that hadn't been present before.
Jukai considered the idea that the baby might be lacking senses other than the obvious ones. He couldn't see, or hear, or smell—but could he feel anything? Heat? Cold? Pain? He didn't remember the baby reacting to the cold. His skin turning pink might be a purely physiological reaction. It seemed likely that he was completely numb.
Bathing the baby was difficult. He had no limbs to support himself with and couldn't float. Jukai also found it hard to keep his grip on the baby's smooth, slippery wet skin. Sakuzō looked on nervously from behind him as if he was expecting Jukai to drop the baby at any moment. Hours had passed since Jukai had first found him, but he was very obviously still alive. He must have an astonishingly strong will to live.
Jukai snipped the baby's umbilical cord cleanly off, then washed around the cut and removed the baby from the bucket. He wrapped him up in a clean cloth and dried him. He was pear-shaped and difficult to handle, but Jukai thought he was getting used to it as he rubbed the cloth up and down to dry the baby thoroughly.
"Sakuzō, this unfortunate boy was abandoned and thrown away just after he was born. He has no ears, no nose, and no eyes. I don't know if he has any way of knowing what's going on around him at all."
Sakuzō nodded sadly and grunted in acknowledgement.
"He can't even hear us," Jukai said.
"Yeah."
"We won't be able to teach him to speak."
"Poor thing." Sakuzō's face went pale. He seemed frozen to the spot as he stared at the baby.
"He's even worse off than you were."
Sakuzō nodded reflexively and looked down. He knew better than anyone what it was like to live with wounds and deformities that wouldn't heal.
When Sakuzō first met Jukai, he was forty-one years old. He was the leader of an uprising in Settsu Hanoi, the area near Yamada Castle. On the nineteenth of July in 1447, the village of Nishigaoka rose up under the leadership of some wandering samurai and occupied the temple to the east of the capital.
Sakuzō led the common people and the other samurai in the revolt. He didn't come from Nishigaoka, but the nearby village of Kaede. The temples in the area were charging absurdly high interest rates on loans, so many people were in danger of losing their land. The people all gathered together, swore an oath before the gods, and drank consecrated water to seal their pact to cooperate against their oppressors.
More samurai came to put down the rebellion and burn the village. The fighting was fierce and drawn-out. The enemy didn't stop with killing the people on the battlefield: they hunted down survivors and burned down other villages as well. Sakuzō took an arrow in the throat during the battle. His shin was also sliced open by the blade of a naginata.
The enemy samurai received more reinforcements; the battle was lost. Some of Sakuzō' s allies picked him up and fled with him to the home of some woodcutters in Shizuhara. In the days that followed, all the survivors of the battle were hunted down and punished severely. If Sakuzō had been caught, he would have been sentenced to death by hanging. The shōgun's deputy, Hosokawa Katsumoto,1 sent troops through Otokuni in Yamashiro province to Kaede, Sakuzō's home village.
Sakuzō was hiding out in Shizuhara at the time. Jukai returned from a visit to China in October of that year. He passed by one of the woodcutter's sheds in Shizuhara and met Sakuzō by chance. When Jukai heard what had happened to him, he slapped him on the shoulder to encourage him and said, "You fought with everything you had, like wild dogs. No one can ask more from you than that."
Sakuzō was the first person Jukai treated after his return from China. Fortunately, the tip of the arrow had only grazed Sakuzō's throat. Jukai managed to remove the damaged tissue and clean the wound without putting his life in danger, but he knew of no way to restore Sakuzō 's lost voice. Sakuzō was able to speak a little in time, but only with significant pain.
By the time Jukai completed treatment on his throat, his left leg below the knee was black with infection and rot.
"Remember how hard you fought against those who hurt you," Jukai said. "You need that courage now. Be strong. I need to cut your leg off."
Sakuzō went pale and tried to refuse, but all that came out was, "Uh...ah..."
Jukai understood his refusal clearly even without words. He was afraid of losing his leg. An infected leg seemed like less of a problem to him than a missing one.
"If I leave it," Jukai said, "the infection will spread to your entire body and kill you."
Sakuzō hung his head dejectedly.
"Don't worry. I'll cut your leg off, but I'll also make sure you can walk again. I promise."
"Huh?" he asked. There was no way he could walk with just one leg.
Jukai had Sakuzō carried to his home in the mountains so that he could amputate the leg in a clean environment. He cut the leg off at the knee, but that wasn't the end of the care that Sakuzō needed. In the spring of that year, Jukai fitted him with an artificial leg and helped him practice walking. The prosthesis was designed to lock when he put weight on it and bend when he lifted it like an actual knee joint, so it was relatively easy to walk after he got used to it.
Sakuzō was happy and relieved that Jukai had kept his promise. He stayed with him at his estate in the mountains and served him after that because he wanted to express gratitude. Jukai was unmarried and lived alone, so Sakuzō made himself useful by taking care of the house and the basic necessities of day-to-day living. This freed up Jukai's time for gathering herbs, doing research, and treating patients.
One day, Sakuzō asked, "What do...the Chinese...call doctors?"
"They call them 'ishō, '" Jukai said. "Highly respected ones are called 'taifu. ' Why?"
"I'll...call you...taifu, then."
"'Ishō' is fine," Jukai said. "Really."
"You...saved...my life. Taifu." So that was what Sakuzō called him.
About two months after that, Jukai started making his rounds in the area, searching for people who needed help and checking up on existing patients. He gave herbs and medicines to the local villages and treated their sick and injured people. He never charged for his services. In almost every place he visited, he saw men and women who had lost limbs in fighting or the fires of war.
The people who lived near the capital were often crushed beneath the shogunate' s totalitarian policies. Many villages banded together as allies and gathered warriors and lordless samurai together to protect themselves. They took up hoes and axes and farming tools in place of swords and were summarily slaughtered. Common people weren't trained to fight. Battlefields were always littered with their corpses.
When Jukai visited Kaede, he found Sakuzō's wife and told her of his whereabouts and how he was doing. He also gave her a bit of money and some precious items that Sakuzō had asked him to deliver. Sakuzō's wife bowed to him and placed her forehead on the ground.
Sakuzō's wife told Jukai that more samurai had come to Kaede looking for Sakuzō in recent days. Jukai prayed that Sakuzō would be able to go home one day.
It had been two years since Jukai had first treated Sakuzō’s wounds. Sakuzō held the freshly bathed baby in his arms and looked at him in fascination. He was the strangest patient Sakuzō had ever seen. When his fingers brushed against the baby' s tiny penis, he laughed.
Sakuzō looked reflexively at Jukai, who smiled. It was odd, but that part was the only normal and healthy-seeming one on the baby' s entire body.
"I wonder if we can raise him," Jukai said.
"Yeah." Sakuzō wrapped the baby in a dry blanket and picked up a covered bamboo cup fitted with a thin tube that served as a straw. There was warm milk mixed with honey in the cup. Sakuzō angled the straw into the baby 's mouth and fed him by tilting the cup slightly. This device was something Sakuzō had made to feed sick or injured livestock that couldn 't feed themselves. He'd never tried using it with a baby.
The baby drank the milk in the cup greedily. Sakuzō was glad to see that he had such an appetite. Jukai and Sakuzō exchanged relieved glances as they took turns feeding him.
"He's certainly doing his part to stay alive," Jukai said.
"I...want us...to save him," Sakuzō said. He was already attached to the baby. He wanted him to live.
After the baby was bathed and fed, he seemed sleepy. He didn't have eyes, so he couldn't close them, but Jukai and Sakuzō heard his faint and even breathing after he fell asleep.
Translator's Note:
1 Hosokawa Katsumoto was the leader of a powerful military faction in medieval Japan whose dispute with Yamana Sōzen, the head of the powerful Yamana Clan, resulted in the Ōnin War (1467–77).↩
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