Heartstorm

"The wind blows again," she says when she enters my room tonight, my only warning the slight squeak of door hinges and her barely audible footfalls against the slick floor, like a cat's. "Though it was calm this morning."

"It does not matter," I say calmly in return. "Perhaps it only means there will be a storm."

"You like storms," she replies, stopping behind me, one hand draping gracefully on the back of my chair. When she was still a child, she would seek me out at night when the wind moaned through the trees like howling wolves and stay curled up next to me in my bed till morning. I never touched her. That would have been like crushing a flower before its full bloom, like trampling petals under booted feet. She had been a rushing river through the melting snow, the spring wind through budding grass, the blue sky before the storm.

But her reflection in the mirror is of a woman now, hands clasped respectfully together, head bowed, long hair loose and robe undone as she stands behind my chair, waiting. She is always waiting. I cannot remember a time when she was not waiting for me, and it is strange for me to think of a time perhaps when she will no longer be.

I do not like to think of it, though I know what all our fates must be, in the end.

"Soi."

Her head lifts a little and she stares boldly at my eyes in the glass. I have the urge to turn, suddenly, to see the real woman standing there. I have the sudden urge to touch her.

"Nakago-sama," she says. "There will be a storm."

I do not remember when she stopped coming to my room when the wind moaned and the lightning crashed, but the visits must have become fewer before they ceased entirely. I have no memory of that, though I search the chambers of my thoughts. There is simply the girl with her trusting, honest eyes becoming the woman in the mirror who now comes to me not willingly, but only because it is her duty.

It comes over me that perhaps even she is not real, that if I were to turn now to look, my eyes would meet only empty air.

"You must be tired," I say suddenly, and there is the bewilderment in her chi before she catches herself, her sense righting itself until there is nothing there again but the gentle thrumming of woman's blood and desire through the space around her. "You should go."

"You are displeased with me."

"I am not displeased," I say. "It does not matter. The wind does not blow favorably today, perhaps."

"I don't understand."

I dare not look at her face because I know what I will see there. I do not want to see it today, the life emptying from it to be replaced by the stark blankness she has come to wear so well. In my memory, all their faces are blank too, and I cannot see their eyes, only a terrible whiteness, like visages of ghosts. It strikes me that perhaps that is what she shall become too in the future, and suddenly, irrationally, I am afraid.

"Soi," I say, and there is the rustle of cloth, a shiver of movement in the mirror, and then her breath is warm against my cheek. The two arms embracing my shoulders are real, as is the feel of her mouth on my neck, skin against skin, and I shudder. The kiss she gives me twines the bottom of my mouth, traces along the edge of my jaw, and I cannot breathe.

"There can be no storm," she whispers, "without the lightning."

I stare into the mirror long after she is gone, hearing the wind murmur through the trees outside the window, and I think I can see in the glass still her form standing behind me, though when I finally turn around, she is not there.