Sisters of Heart and Snow Read Online Free PDF Page A

left alone, objects remain in the same unchanging state for all of eternity. An object at rest will remain at rest unless acted on by an unbalanced force. Boulders sit on mountaintops, worn down over thousands of years by rain. Trees untouched by lightning or fires keep on growing.
    But then that unbalanced force appears, and suddenly stationary objects are set in motion.
    So it began for Tomoe Gozen, the greatest woman warrior who ever lived.
    The daughter of a samurai retainer, Kaneto, and a mild-mannered wet nurse, Chizuru, Tomoe started life as an unremarkable little girl living in the mountains of central Japan in the late twelfth century. Her younger brother Kanehira and their foster brother, Yoshinaka Minamoto, lived a quiet life on a farm. Yoshinaka and Kanehira were the ones meant to be samurai, to fight for the title of shogun. Tomoe’s father rescued Yoshinaka from the murderous Taira clan, who killed Yoshinaka’s father, or so they had been told.
    Tomoe might have been content to stay a normal little girl. To grow up and marry a boy from a neighboring farm. But then Yoshinaka and the stick set her in motion.
    Had it been a thin, reedy branch off the dead plum tree, the kind of twig that crumbled into dust with a touch, Tomoe would have forgiven the quick pain. Instead, Yoshinaka chose a thick length of sticky pine, a proper switch, the kind used on prisoners.
    That cool spring morning, seven-year-old Tomoe squatted in the square kitchen garden on the north side of the house, picking moth larvae off her spinach plants. All of her concentration was on looking for the bugs, placing each wriggling green worm into a basket to feed to the chickens. The earth was soft and damp from watering, black and fertile. She hummed to herself, a melody of her own making.
    â€œI’m very sorry,” she said to the third worm. “But you’re making far too many holes in my plants.”
    The worm twisted in her pinched fingers, its white jaws grasping at the air. She threw it into the basket and examined the tender sprigs of spinach. Soon she would pick these, and she would help her mother prepare them for supper with some soy sance and a bit of sesame oil. She imagined her father closing his eyes at the rich, salty taste. “What a good gardener our Tomoe is!” he would say. Her foster brother, Yoshinaka, would have sauce dripping down his chin.
“Oishikata!”
he would roar. Delicious. The dish was his favorite. One of his favorites, anyway—the boy ate everything.
    Then something solid hit Tomoe’s left rib. A stinging slap. She fell over, knees and hands in the dirt, pebbles embedding in her hands, so rough for a girl of only seven. Her blue-black hair escaped its head wrap and fell over her face. All she saw was a blur of legs going past. She didn’t need to see to know who was to blame.
    Tears stung her eyes, mixed with hurt and anger. What had she done? That was a real hit. An ambush.
    â€œHa ha!” a boy called from the other side of the garden. Yoshinaka. He wore a gray kimono and loose pants, doing a dance in his bare feet. He waved the branch in his hand. “Taira scum, come get me.”
    Kanehira joined him. “You can’t catch us.”
    Those ungrateful troublemakers. She was always saving them. Tomoe had pulled Yoshinaka out of a frozen pond the previous winter. Always impetuous, he had run ahead onto the ice, not bothering to stop to check its thickness. Tomoe had seen the dark, semi-frozen color and shouted, “It’s not safe!” Then she heard the cracking. Yoshinaka turned to her with an expression of surprise before the icy water swallowed him up. Kanehira ran to help and fell through, too. Tomoe lay on her belly, reached out her hand and hoisted them out, first Yoshinaka, then Kanehira.
    She put her hand on her throbbing side. The flesh swelled around the bones. How dare they? What if they’d missed and hit her eye? Or caught her in the