Toshida sat by the spring wondering if his life was cursed. For over a week he had seen nothing but screaming faces and broken bodies, smelt nothing but the reek of decaying flesh, of mens bowels exposed to the harsh light of day. Surely the world contained nothing but horror. Perhaps he had failed in his duties and was now consigned to hell, unaware of the blow that removed him from the peaceful world he had once inhabited. Surely there could be no honor in what he had seen the last few days. Strong men weeping like children as they tried to clutch their insides within them, noble weapons broken and abandoned, faces of children, too young to have even understood the cause they fought for, rigid and grotesque in the face of death, not peaceful, not serene, but terrified and bloody and shattered.

Sitting in his battered armor, wondering if he could ever clean the stains from it's once bright tassels, or if he even wanted to, he waited for death, who had been so busy these past days, to notice him sitting here, forgotten, but with no reason to live. His lord was dead, his fellows lay in smoldering heaps where the peasants had torched the bodies to prevent plague. He didn't even have the strength to stop them.

He hears her behind him, walking softly through the trees. He had thought the peasants would never come into the woods to find him, they seemed too superstitious to enter the forest at night, but she walked fearless, a tiny child bundled into the crook of her arm and a wooden water-bucket dangling from her other hand. She was looking carefully at her feet as she walked, minding her steps, and so did not see him until she was nearly upon him.

He tried not to flinch, but stood as gracefully as he could manage, waiting for her to cry out, for her brothers and kin to issue forth at her scream to drag him to the pyre, to finally join his own brothers in arms. Instead she simply looked at him, sadly, and stepped around him as if he wasn't there, proceeding to the stream.

He turned to face her as she stopped before the water, looking down at it as the simple task of filling her pail was beyond her strength. He heard a sigh of great sadness, as if this was simply one final thing she could not face, and he felt the same, unable to face his own final task. He moved towards her and spoke, startling himself to break the silence of the dark forest. "Can I help?"

She turned to him, eyes wet with tears not yet shed, and swollen, as from tears long past. She looks at him shyly, and slowly extends her child to him. He freezes. Surely she meant that he should take the pail and fill it for her. He was bloodied with the spent lives of many of her villagers, a metal-clad instrument of war. She could not mean for him to hold her child.

Her head dips softly, her eyes avoiding his, but still her arm proferred, the bucket still by her side. "For but a moment, my arm is so tired and I must clean the bucket to fill it. I know a strong warrior such as yourself would never drop him."

Without thinking, responding to the challenge in her tone, he takes her child in his arms, holding the swaddled infant clumsily as she smiles softly and turns to begin washing the pail in the stream.

The baby is small, seemingly a newborn, and Toshida can see that he is a boy, just from his face. He is not heavy, and he doesn't seem to notice that his mother has gone mad and handed her child to a strange bloody killer in a dark forest. He notices quickly that the child seems awkward and heavier than he had first seemed, Toshida no longer doubts that his mothers arms would grow tired quickly.

He looks down startled now, it is as if the child has increased in weight, as if he now carries three children, or perhaps four. He will not complain about the weight of a child to a woman. Surely if she can bear his weight, a samurai, no matter how fallen from grace, can silently bear it for but a moment. Surely, even when the child now feels as heavy as a temple maiden. He feels a new respect for the burdens that a mother must bear without complaint. He does not remember hearing his mother once complain about his weight on her arm. Perhaps mothers too are warriors, in their own unfathomable way.

It is too much, clearly deviltry. The child now weighs as much as Toshidas armor, he feels that his knees must buckle from the pressure, and he croaks to the woman, now leisurely filling her bucket that something is wrong with her child, unwilling to admit that his strength is failing. But she ignores him, and he feels himself sinking slowly to the ground, as she seems deaf to his entreaties. He does not have the strength to walk to her, not without dropping the child to the ground, and he will not admit that this woman and her child have beaten him, he will hold this child to the death. He has already failed once this day, living when he should have died with honor. He will not fail again, not even to save his life.

He settles to the ground, holding the child to his chest as it's weight increases to press against his armor like a millstone. Slowly, he finds himself forced to lean back, unable to bear the childs weight on his legs, and he ends up on his back, with the baby lying against his breastplate, pressing into his ribs with a weight that must surely equal that of a fallen horse.

The baby makes a gurgling noise and he looks down to see that the child is moving his arm and smiling innocently, no demon, no cursed horror, just a smiling infant. He sees the mother turn from the river and smile slightly, as if she has heard her child and he cries out, near surrender, "The child is cursed, he crushes me." She turns absently and resumes ladling water into her bucket from the shallow stream. He feels a burning shame. She is kind to have ignored his breach of honor.

He will not surrender. His dishonor is too great to take another insult. He places his arms around the child and makes to lift it from his chest with all of his strength. It is insufficient to actually lift the child, but enough pressure is relieved that he can take a deep shaky breath, and he holds the baby with all of his strength, trying to buy a few more seconds of breath, of life.

His arms burn and tremble. His muscles are failing and he feels that his heart will burst. He feels no fear, only a redoubling of his shame, for this is not how a warrior is meant to die. Still, he had his chance to die a warrior, but he chose to live without honor instead. Perhaps this is his chance to try to reclaim that honor, or at least show bravery in the face of his fate. He grunts with the strain, sweat pouring down his arms, his face red and straining with exertion. Suddenly, she is standing over him and smiling through her tears, a full bucket of water dangling from her arm, which she sets down beside him as she reaches for her child. He wants to cry aloud in relief as the monstrous weight fades from his chest and his arms fall lifeless to his sides, unable to even support their own weight.

His eyes are blurry, from tears or fatigue he cannot tell, but he sees her rise with nothing in her hands. The child has faded into mist and his swaddling cloth lies empty. Her eyes stream with tears as he realizes that he has failed. He must have let go and her child is now gone.

"Thank you," she says, "no one has ever been strong enough to lift my burden from me. Now I can rest." and she turns and walks away over him and through him, her delicate foot stepping directly into his chest and brushing like a cold wind across his heart. It withdraws as painlessly as it entered as she strides past him directly into a tree. He sees her dimly on the other side of the tree fading into the night as fatigue steals his consciousness.

A dream. Merely a wild fantasy created by his mind, desperate to find a last heroic act to perform to salvage his abandoned honor, to lend meaning to his life, and his death. His eyes burn that his fears would so manifest and he rises shakily to his feet, his hand sinking into cool water as he does so.

He looks down and his hand is resting within a wooden bucket, filled with spring water.

She was real, and she has left him a bucket of spring water as proof. He has no idea what has happened, only that he has somehow been given a second chance. He seizes the bucket, drinks from it and feels strength return to his limbs. It is life she has given him. Discarding his useless sword and peeling away his battered armor, he takes the bucket and walks away from death, into life.