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They said that the Otokage was half-devil, and one couldn’t help but think it. A white, sallow countenance with features that seemed to curve into private cunning, a glint in the slants of his eyes, a puff of laughter that blew back the unkempt wisps….The Otokage governed like a king, ruled with a steady and yet sly hand— his enemies would drop softly, like petals from a flower. No one would have known there was a scheme of an uprising until after the very nephew of a perpetrator was scarlet against a faraway tree, his bones to fertilise the soil.
The village lived in constant, yet muted fear. No one dared speak against their leader, who would stroll the very shopping district and smile amiably at the bare shelves, at the hollow cheeks of the grocer’s. The streets would reek of death; hungered bodies were strewn across the dirt, parched mouths hanging open as though they were still pleading for a morsel of bread in the afterlife. For days, the bodies would remain, untempered with. The Otokage wished for them to stay, so that he could watch the process of decay of which he was utterly fascinated by.
The Otokage had never seemed to be troubled by the famine in his village. The gates remained shut, uncaring of the shouts of foreign-nin that carried food aid. He watched his people wither before him, without a grave, with a childlike wonder, as though the devastation at his very feet was a turn at a grand circus. Death ought to have troubled him—after all, didn’t the responsibility fall on him? And yet he was slow to act still, quietly amused, the silent murderer.
Hatred began to spew in the dark shadows of a lamp-lit inn. Fists clenched, empty cups were slammed against the table, and a lone name was cursed, over and over.
‘Damn that Orochimaru. It’s as if we are his toys!’
‘We came to him all those years ago— why, he promised us work! But there’s not a single mission to be had in this wretched village!’
A plan was hatched— gone was the fear established by the fates of these angered men’s predecessors. They believed it was worth it to die trying, rather than tolerate the miserable status-quo of the Otokage’s tyranny an instant longer.
For they had been pushed to the very edge. And even a cornered mouse will bite.
One could not call the crude gathering of kunai rusted with lack of maintenance, and feral battle cries something as honourable as a coup d'état— this was more common than a bloody revolution. It was the merged anger of the downtrodden, their passion and desperation.
The midnight moon hung low in the sky, its pale face a wordless witness of the rampage below. The race to the Otokage’s palace— gargantuan and elaborate, an incessant mockery of the feeble tents and run-down residencies it towered over— kicked up a great din, and the mob grew larger in size as it progressed. Even housewives without a day’s worth of training darted out from their homes, swinging a lone broomstick. Madness had the village in its firm clutches— a sweet, delirious ecstasy promised them all freedom, if only they could all band together and remove the very man that had stifled their suffering for so very long.
The noise had served as ample warning for the Otokage, and, with the leisure of a bobcat, he summoned his four-man guard. They bowed to him, smirking, as they readily anticipated a scarlet festival. They had not been allowed to stretch their legs for a long time, for the people had been well-tamed by terror until this very night.
The palace was soon surrounded. The strongest of the men battered against the stone fortress. Flames erupted into high heat, and molten metal dripped away from its form of chains. Power was combined and the stone was knocked through, and dust arose in a thick, blinding shroud. The villagers ventured onwards, working up into excitement as they entered the Otokage’s grounds.
They were met with the four-man guard. They stood before the villagers, and their palpable strength seemed to taunt their outrage. These men— no, among them was a woman— were casual as they regarded their supposed opponents. A guard with an arrow and crossbow aimed at a man before him without preamble, and struck him in the centre of his breast. The arrow— hardly the ordinary wooden make that the villagers were used to— shot through the body, emerging from the back and leaving a gaping, wide hole.
More arrows flew. Those who had inspired a need for vengeance in the weak hearts of their comrades fell like rotten fruit, as though they had never been once vivacious and full of hope. But even as the massacre continued, it seemed as though the swarm of villagers were not deterred in the least— rather, they had become even more impassioned, wilder, fiercer. They charged forth again and again; they fell and ran on, leaping over the corpses of their loved ones, blades flying.
Alone in his spacious quarters, the Otokage watched the spectacle from his window. He saw for himself the consequences of his neglect. The villagers, as was becoming increasingly evident, would stop at nothing until his head was on a pike. None of them cared any longer, none of them had anything more to lose.
He wondered, briefly, if he had created a danger to be reckoned with. He then chuckled to himself; he knew that was hardly the case. In the next moment darling Tayuya placed her lips on her flute, and the cacophony ceased as the most violent iteration of a lullaby seeped through the air.
Heads yanked back— eyes widened, mouths parted and ears began to bleed. The melody was an acquired taste, the unaffected Otokage mused.
He entered the courtyard, robes swishing past the unseeing eyes, the frozen figures. He peered into them, curious— the villagers had become dumb as orchestrated nightmares danced through their minds, an inner hell.
The flute went on playing. The she-guard was visibly sweating from the effort, unable to pause to greet her master.
The Otokage turned to the other guards. He motioned his order with a swift flick of his hand—
Dispose.
His men obeyed. The dead bodies were crushed into the ground, buried under a mound of hardened earth. Webs wound about those who were alive and then battling an unseen horror. They would awake in bed tomorrow morning with no memory of the night’s events, and would have forgotten their rage.
But it would not, the Otokage understood, be permanently erased. Eventually, they would all rise up again, eager to change their fates.
It was then he remembered a little souvenir he’d acquired on a sojourn in a place he’d once called home.
The Otokage smiled.
The summer heat brought forth a drought so vicious that mewling babies were quietened with nothing but the dripping sweat of their mothers. Still, there was nothing to eat. Still, the attempt of intervention from other villages was not accepted. Still, the curse went on.
There were rumours, however, that provided sufficient distraction. There was a boy, tongues wagged, at the Otokage’s palace. A lowly infantryman had sighted a pale waif by the pond in the courtyard, feet shallowly dipping into the water. His hair and eyes, by contrast, were the deepest black. The infantryman had not been sure if the boy was at all real.
But that hardly mattered. The villagers, once the intrigue passed, felt some concern for the boy—if he was real, he was hardly safe within the vicinity of the Otokage. If he existed, many felt it to be their duty to save him.
Before an impromptu rescue mission could be carried out, the villagers were finally able to see the object of their rumours.
Under the blazing sun the boy walked through the street, dressed in white robes that trailed by his feet. He did not acknowledge the villagers’ stares as he looked blankly ahead, with all the haughtiness a child on the cusp of adolescence could possess.
The adults who had meant to see to his safety found they were unable to talk to him. Troublingly, they rather found that they could not speak at all. Their worry had been clamped shut, somehow, and the boy was able to pass them all without any interference.
When he finally disappeared around a corner they all suddenly gasped, as though emerging from a swim underwater.
What, they wondered, was that?
Despite the oddity, time went on. The famine worsened and food was increasingly scarce. Despair reigned supreme over the villagers. There was no grace in dying from hunger. Those that had imagined an honourable death in the battlefield now fought against their stomach pangs that hounded them endlessly.
They wondered: what of the boy? Was he being fed by the Otokage? Or was he slowly dying too, that slip of a thing, fading into oblivion?
It was too, too cruel.
‘We cannot,’ said the village senior, a balding, wizened old man who often spoke of better days as a warrior, ‘cannot let this continue. We must think of the children. Us grown folks have had our time. But these children are innocent. We cannot allow them to die like this through no fault of their own.’
A hum of agreement all round. He had spoken the truth. They couldn’t stay put any longer.
There was an eerie sense of déjà vu as discussions of taking down the Otokage made its rounds. Had—hadn’t they been here before…?
No matter. There was a child to think of and a tyrant to punish, and none of the villagers had the slightest intention of backing down. Not anymore.
That dreamlike sensation persisted as they approached the Otokage’s palace. Men blinked, sure that this was their very first time in the grounds, and yet the sights seemed so strangely familiar. They shook it off. They had to fight. It was now or never.
The doors swung open. They tensed and clutched their weapons, ready. Before them stood not their dreaded enemy, nor his guards. No— it was the boy again, expressionless and unblinking.
‘Are you alright?’ someone asked.
‘Quick, come with us!’ someone else called. ‘We’ll protect you!’
The boy did not respond at first. They noticed a dark blemish, or bruise, below his pale neck. The villagers then saw that his eyes, previously an endless pool of black, began to brighten to a hue of crimson….
‘There’s nothing to protect,’ he said at last. ‘There’s nothing wrong at all.’
The villagers slowly began to nod, entranced.
There was nothing…nothing wrong at all…..
Winter had arrived. Snow fell in a thick blanket— it was food, perhaps, if one did not mind shovelling it in mouthfuls. And many found that they didn’t— couldn’t— any longer.
When would they be freed? It felt like they were trapped in a cycle, like hamsters on a wheel, chasing a hope that would never be given to them, no matter how hard they tried. Something had given in, and no one was sure if they’d ever been resisting in the first place.
Parents buried their children, and soon joined them in their new underground home. The village had become so terribly quiet. Hadn’t there once been a noise of people, drunk on the opportunity of a new village, a fresh start, a symbol of change? Now there was nothing, and no one was sure where everything had gone.
The villagers wondered and wondered, and then some began to remember…but when they did, there was that flare of crimson, and then they would all be left wondering again. And again….
And again…..