Read an Excerpt
Window in the World
By ROBIN HONE
Trafford Publishing
Copyright © 2013 Robin Hone
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4669-7369-5
Chapter One
Pressing her hands together, she stared into the dark and prayed as she had been taught, to ask for divine help. First, she prayed for the pain in her legs and feet to stop and she wouldn't hurt anymore, then she asked for sleep. She prayed that she wouldn't be cold anymore and that the hunger gnawing at her insides would go away and she wouldn't feel like she was starving. She
was starving. She was completely exhausted but sleep would not come. After a time, almost miraculously there seemed to come an answer to her prayer. The pain
did recede, she didn't shiver from the cold and finally she dozed fitfully.
Having known and overcome severe hardship, hunger and deprivation in her childhood, she thought as an adult she was well prepared for and could easily accept the worst with which this place with the foreign name could assail her. Again, she was wrong. The first few months at the Hidaka-sammyaku school of discipline were worse than anything Fumiko Fuchida could have imagined in her worst nightmares. In addition to the rigorous physical and mental conditioning to survive under adverse and adversarial conditions, the meals were of rice they had to grow themselves and fish they had to catch by hand. Her hair was cropped close, painfully hacked to less than an inch by a sharpened piece of flint for she was not yet allowed access to metal of any kind. She was permitted no possessions other than her rice bowl, a kimono, a belted jacket and pants and a pair of sandals. She didn't even have underwear.
She slept on a thin pad, on a bare floor in an eight-by five-foot room with no windows and no heat. Initially, as the only woman, she had the small room to herself but that gave way to her sharing a room with four other students, all men. She said her name was Fumiko but with her fair skin and crimson hair, she was certainly not Japanese.
The buildings were originally constructed of rough logs; the cracks between filled with a form of adobe. Over the many years that followed, the walls, porches, walkways and patios had been hand-finished, intricately carved and shaped. Dye and enamel were used to adorn the structures. The floors were rubbed smooth by thousands of bare and sandled feet over hundreds of years. In winter when severe cold and blowing snow assailed the tiny community, a hibachi in each room and their own body heat didn't keep them warm but it did keep them from freezing to death.
She and her fellow students learned how to move silently, to blend in with their surroundings and take advantage of the ever-changing shapes of light and darkness. They learned to capture and hold a person's attention with certain hand motions and the sound of their voice speaking softly, the ancient and later resurrected form of hypnotism.
Drugs, potions and ointments made from plants, the elements of the earth, the toxins of animals and reptiles and even those that could be purchased commercially were made into both healing and killing compounds.
Fumiko was always aware of them looking at her, wanting her, lusting after her body but she had no fear of an attack upon her person by any one or all of them together. That was part of the discipline to which they were subjected. A nearly—and occasionally completely—naked woman close enough to them to reach out and touch by young men with raging hormones, but forbidden to them thus added to the discipline training. At first she had suspected that this was the real reason she was here, just an instructional tool.
Then came the physical combat; how to attack and how to defend. The men were so much stronger, faster, more aggressive, resistant to the kicks, blows, chops and punches she attempted. Even attacking with a weapon such as a lance or a knife, they just took it away from her, bowed politely and handed it back which infuriated her. Whirling rapidly on one foot, arm outstretched and rigid, in precise form she could deliver a perfect spinning back-fist to an opponent's jaw which would momentarily stun him, at best, drop him to his knees for an instant. However, he would be on his feet and on guard again before she could deliver the follow-up blow. Whereas a simple open-hand slap to the face would flatten her to the ground and put her on her back so dazed she couldn't immediately get up. They would politely help her to her feet.
They never hit her or kicked her hard. A leg-sweep cut her feet from under her and landed her on her butt. Her opponent would bow, offer an apology and a hand up and say, "Gomen nasai, Fumiko."
An over-the-shoulder judo throw was pulled up at the last second allowing her to land in a rolling tumble rather than hard and flat on the ground which could have broken her spine. Their kicks and punches were to muscle which hurt, not to bone or joints that could disable and cripple. The young men were not so considerate to each other.
On the lean diet, she lost weight. They gave her small portions of their own meager rations, and she hated them for it. They set a snare and caught a rabbit, cooked it on a spit and gave it to her with rice and soy sauce, cabbage and baby ears of corn. With some understanding but mostly with pity and disgust they all sat and watched her eat the rabbit, ripping the half-raw flesh from the bones with her teeth. She hated them for giving her the food.
Over the next few months, she continued to fight with determination and a reckless disregard for her own safety. Gradually, with the teachings of the Master and help from the other students but mainly because she was bigger than they, she began to achieve some degree of success in hand-to-hand combat. On the few occasions when she actually won, they all gathered around to congratulate her. It only made her mad.
Even with the narrow loincloth-type undergarment they all used, any exaggerated arm or leg movement would pull the kimono apart enough to reveal her breast or her pubic area. That would attract the eyes of the men like a powerful magnet. She began using a narrower loincloth revealing more of her pubic area, and then she wore none at all. If only for an instant, in the middle of a long practiced, memorized and instinctive movement, her opponent's eyes would flick to her thick, rose-colored nipples or the light-colored hair visible between her legs and in that instant his discipline was gone and his training forgotten. In that instant, she struck, bringing the heel of her hand up to slam into his chin, then the hardened edge of her palm crashing down onto the bridge of his nose. She could feel the cartilage break under the blow. The shock and the pain were enough to immobilize, if only for two seconds. Two seconds was enough. It was enough time to follow-through with another spinning kick to the knee or a fist to the sternum; not enough to break but enough to hurt.
Slowly, over the following months, momentarily exposing herself and then striking, she began to win more fights than she lost. The men weren't polite to her anymore and they fought harder against her. She fought back just as hard and she didn't hate them anymore.
Weapons were issued, knives, throwing stars, thin needles and six-foot spears with razor-sharp broadheads twenty-eight inches long, swords and daggers with blades honed to incredible sharpness, and bows and arrows. Surprisingly in this modern world, firearms were not allowed here. They learned the nerve centers in the body that would paralyze, pressure points that would stop the blood flow. They learned how to survive, how to heal, how to dazzle and how to kill.
She gave up displaying her body. Using her sex to gain advantage over them no longer worked for they no longer succumbed to it. It remained, however, a powerful tool in her arsenal of weapons she could use later as was the deadly clear poison with which they all were taught to paint their sharpened fingernails.
The sharpening of the nails was cunning and perfected over centuries. The nails were not cut or filed to a point because it would be too obvious, particularly on a man. They were edged like a knife blade from beneath by hours of slow, careful shaving with a tiny file. Appearing to be normal from all outward appearances, they were poison-covered razor blades.
Along with the change in the curriculum to lessons more serious, the Masters were beginning to teach them how to use mind and imagination to create visions and illusions, and to make them real. Once learned, physical hardships, pain, hunger and cruelties could be ignored. Manifesting the mental illusion of lounging upon a sofa in silks in a warm comfortable room before a blazing fireplace, after a delicious dinner with the finest wine in a warm place, and one could sit and slowly freeze to death while never feeling the cold or being aware of dying.
The key to mastering the mental abilities was the same as the one perfecting their fighting skills. One must believe! Believe that you are stronger and faster and more deadly than your adversary. Believe that you are invincible, and you will be. Believe that you can control your body so that you can walk through fire, that you can ignore hunger and pain, and you can. In the final stage, believe that you are invisible and you won't be seen, believe that you are a phantom and you can walk through walls. It is said that it can be.
Belief comes from faith and faith must be blind and all accepting. All truths and absolutes must be forgotten. Belief comes from a faith in a power beyond what is known and seen and heard. That it is only real if you can touch it is no longer true. Belief and faith and power are part of the oriental religion taught at Hidaka-sammyaku.
Three days into the final week she used her mind to create the illusion of warmth with no hunger and no pain. She knelt, put her hands together and prayed. It dulled her senses to an attack, but it was better than feeling the cold, the exhaustion, and the ravenous hunger of one naked, freezing, starving and hunted on the steep mountain slopes of Hidaka-sammyaku. If discovered and captured by some the hunters, there would be humiliation and possible expulsion. If found by others, there was the possibility she would be raped, even killed. This was survival of the fittest.
Crawling through and crouching down in the weeds, the bushes and the undergrowth, amid the trees and the spires of jagged rock, hiding by day, moving carefully by night, her body bare and shivering, afraid for her life, striving, fighting to live, her mind and her imagination took her to that warm room with the fireplace, the wonderful meal and the delicious wine. She would use her mind and pretend that she didn't feel the cold, the hunger and the deprivation. She would live within her imagination and pretend that she wasn't naked, dirty and weaponless. She would create illusions, believe in them and make them real. She could be warm, safe, comfortable and not hungry. She knew how to project those illusions. She could hypnotize with her eyes, her voice, and the subtle movements of her hands and her body. She could command and people would obey, she could immobilize and paralyze an adversary long enough to gain a second's advantage. She knew how to kill in a second. She already knew how to use her sex to get what she wanted from men, now she knew how to use it to attract, to capture and hold, to elicit information and secrets, to put them completely under her control.
Oh! It happened so quickly! One moment she was alone and then he was suddenly there, right in front of her. He was reaching for her as she huddled beneath a bush, hunted, cold, naked and afraid. She didn't think. Her body reacted. Fingers straight and locked, she shoved them up in a lighting-fast jab into his throat that crushed his larynx before he could move or deflect the blow. She had not intended to kill Isoroku, but she did. On his knees, gasping for breath that would not come, agony and terror he tried to whisper, "Fumiko." Then he collapsed and died beside her.
"Isoroku!" she cried, grasping his body, lifting him and cradling him in her bare arms. "Forgive me," she continued, speaking English for the first time in months, momentarily forgetting her fluent Japanese. "I didn't mean ..." The tears poured from her eyes and she was lost in the tragedy of what she had done. With no reason, in blind panic, she had killed a fellow student, a roommate and a friend because of fear. She had lost her discipline and her focus.
"Oh, God, why did they make me do this?" she cried out in anguish, once again reverting to the Japanese language.
No longer caring what happened to her and with what little remained of her strength, bruised and bleeding from cuts and scrapes, she carried and sometimes dragged Isoroku's body toward the camp at Hidaka-sammyaku, falling often, crawling on her knees, crying over him to confess to her Master what she had done.
From above, higher up on that cold, mist-enshrouded slope there came the sound of heavy footsteps tramping toward her. Bushes and saplings were brushed aside, weeds, grasses were crushed under foot, and a form appeared from out of the dense, wet fog not ten feet from where she lay, clinging to Isoroku's cold body. It was a shape in the form of a huge, powerful man-like creature with a massive bare chest, glowing green eyes and the face of something not human. In her delusions, she thought it said her name, her true name.
Starving, exhausted, her throat parched, in the depths of sorrow and anguish, she drifted into delirium and collapsed once again just barely conscious. Her strength was now completely gone along with her will to live. As she lay there dying, she imagined that the man creature she had seen earlier—the naked man- shaped monster with the terrible inhuman face—appeared beside her, towering over her, regarding her with fierce, green glowing eyes. Gently it took them—she and Isoroku—in powerful arms, depositing each over a broad shoulder and carried them away.
She awoke from what had been the strangest dream she ever had. In surprise, she found that she had somehow managed to make her way—with Isoroku's body—all the way to the closed gates of the compound where she once again collapsed and sank into unconsciousness.
At dawn, they discovered them, Isoroku dead and she close to it. Word was dispatched and the news spread quickly to the others scattered over the mountainside. The trial had ended. They abandoned their tactics and gathered quickly to learn the details surround the incident with Fumiko and Isoroku. The contest was over. It wasn't a game anymore.
The next day when she was rested and had eaten a bowl of rice with tender bamboo shoots, mushrooms and pieces of fish, seated on her knees in the main room, dressed in a warm kimono, she tearfully confessed to the Master and all the others standing around her what she had done.
"Dry your eyes, Fumiko. What is done, is done," the Master said. "It is karma. Tears and sorrow will not return Isoroku to life nor will it absolve you of his death. You must accept what is."
"He wasn't going to hurt me. He only wanted to help me. I didn't have to ... I don't know why I did—"
"Do you know that? For certain, Fumiko, do you he wasn't going to hurt you?"
"Yes. Yes. We ... we liked each other."
"All of you were sent out for five days, pitted against nature and each other to determine who would survive. You reacted as you have been trained to do. You survived."
"But I don't want to survive this way," came her mournful reply. "Yukimasu."
"No, Fumiko. That is not permitted. You will not go. You will stay. You will finish your training and learn to live with yourself."
"I cannot!"
"You will!"
"How can I?"
"You will."
"Yes, Master."
"In almost every class since the school began four hundred years ago, someone has died. Often, several have died. We have come to accept this." The Master looked around at the assembled group of rugged, handsome young men. "All of you knew that when you came here and you accepted the danger." Returning his attention to her, he said, "Fumiko, all of us, including me, I am sorry to say, thought you would be the one to fail, to die out there. We thought you the weakest."
"I know that."
"Death is, after all, but a part of living, the final act of being. It is natural and inevitable, something to be understood and accepted. Only the western culture and religions teach a fear of death and a desire to live forever. You live with honor and you die with honor. Sometimes a life must be taken as you move along the way but that changes nothing in the overall scheme of things, not for he who died or the one who cause it. Had it not meant to be, it would not have been."
"Is this true, Master?"
"It is true."
"I understand and I accept."
"Yet something still troubles you, Fumiko."
"Yes."
"Can we help you?"
"I don't know."
"Let us try."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Window in the World by ROBIN HONE Copyright © 2013 by Robin Hone. Excerpted by permission of Trafford Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
