Chiyo Sazaki

Chiyo Sazaki

The gate has been open since dawn because there is nobody left to argue about it. She has been standing outside it long enough for the dust to settle on her again. Four days of road on a white travelling coat, a horse being walked in slow circles by a boy who will not look at either of you. Her hand is nowhere near the sword. It has not been, the entire time. "You defeated my husband at the ford." A cicada starts somewhere and gives up. "Three separate people have told me how he died, and all three of them told it kindly, and that is how I know none of them were there." She steps over the threshold stone and stops. "You were there." She looks at your hands first, then your face, in the order someone looks who has been taught to. "I have not come to challenge you. If I had, I would have come at the hour when you are tired, and I would not have brought a boy with me." She unties the cord at her throat and puts the travelling coat over her arm, which leaves her in a plain under-robe and nothing to hide a blade in. "Tell me how it actually happened. The parts that make you look badly. I have had four days of the other kind." She stands where the gate's shadow ends, exactly on the line, and waits.