A Winter of Ghosts (The Waking Series)

A Winter of Ghosts

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Winter had come to Miyazu City,
yet instead of the silence and darkness it so often promised, it had brought
Kara Harper happiness and renewal. Most people making their way through the
shop-lined streets of downtown Miyazu seemed trapped in a long, grim hangover
now that the holidays were over. The city had to return to business as usual. In
two days, school would start again and Kara would have to do the same, but she
was looking forward to it.

A new year. After the nightmares
come to life that had plagued her first two terms at Monju-no-Chie school, she
relished the idea of a fresh start.

"Hey, lovebirds, wait up!"
she called in English, hurrying to match stride with her father, Rob, and his
girlfriend, Yuuka Aritomo.

Her dad and Miss Aritomo were both
teachers at Monju-no-Chie, a private school on the outskirts of Miyazu City,
where he taught English and American Studies, and she taught art. Their
relationship had taken Kara a lot of getting used to — her mother had
been dead only two years — but she had come to accept it. For a long time
she had worried that her father would never be happy again, but it had still
been hard for her when he had fallen in love. Now, though, she knew that his
love for Yuuka didn't mean he had stopped loving, or missing, Kara's mother.

It helped that Kara had also
fallen for someone. After all that they had endured, it seemed so improbable
that she and her father would both be so happy at the same time, but she never
spoke about the unlikeliness of their good fortune because she did not want to
jinx it. Kara had definitely had enough of curses to last her a lifetime.

"You're speaking English?"
her father said, arching an eyebrow. "Do you want to look like a tourist?"

Kara grinned, switching to
Japanese. "Dad, it isn't like they can't
tell
we're tourists."

Miss Aritomo chuckled softly. Kara
liked it when she laughed. She was a very pretty woman, delicate and graceful,
but being around Rob Harper had seemed to allow Yuuka Aritomo to exhale a
little. Japanese culture had so much to do with what was proper and correct
that, to Kara, most of the adults always seemed stiff and serious. But her
father and Miss Aritomo had given each other reasons to smile.

"I don't know how you
talked me into this," her father said.

"I didn't talk you into
anything," Kara insisted. "I need boots. It's winter, in case you
hadn't noticed."

"It's not like we've had
much snow —"

"My feet are cold!"

"You have boots, Kara,"
he said.

Kara rolled her eyes and looked
to Miss Aritomo for help.

"Her boots are old and ugly
and barely fit her," the art teacher said.

"Exactly!" Kara said,
linking arms with Miss Aritomo. "See, Dad, women understand this stuff."

He sighed. "All right,
where's the shop again?"

Kara made a small, gleeful noise
and linked her other arm through her father's, hurrying the two adults along
the street. "It's just up here!"

Miyazu City seemed to have a
hundred different neighborhoods, from lovely parks to teeming business
districts, from upscale suburbs to moldering apartment complexes, and from busy
roads lined with markets to gentrified shopping areas. Kara found them all
interesting in their own right, and nearly always took her camera with her when
she went into the city. What she loved most of all was the way that ancient
arches and temples and shrines could be found in the unlikeliest of places, and
the juxtaposition of the cityscape with the low mountains on one side, or the
blue waters of Miyazu Bay on the other. Visually, it was a fascinating place to
live.

Now she marched her dad and Miss
Aritomo along the sidewalk of a street lined with markets and noodle shops,
passing a fabric store and a butcher's. The aroma of cooking noodles and frying
foods wafted from stalls and open doors. She could still taste the squid she'd
had for lunch. They were fried in long strips that reminded her of churros, and
though they were nearly always chewy, she had come to like squid prepared that
way.

Men in uniform swept the street
and people rode in all directions on bicycles, the last snow having melted from
the stone street days before, although the mountains were still capped with
white. Telephone wires crisscrossed above them, poles and lamp posts only
slightly more numerous than the vending machines that popped up on every block.

On the corner ahead, three pine
trees had been left standing around a small shrine. Kara steered her dad and
Miss Aritomo to the right and onto a street that sloped gently down toward
Miyazu Bay. From here, they could see Ama-no-Hashidate, the finger of white
sand and black pines that jutted across Miyazu Bay and was considered one of
the three most beautiful sites in Japan. Kara had taken hundreds of photos of
the bay and of Ama-no-Hashidate, and though she thought she had probably used
enough film on it, she still found the sight beautiful. It cheered her even
more and she picked up the pace.

"Slow down, daughter,"
her father said. "What's the rush?"

"It's not my fault you're
old."

"Okay, that's enough
teasing me around my girlfriend," he said.

Kara laughed. "Yuuka loves
you anyway. Don't you, Yuuka?"

Miss Aritomo blushed slightly as
they hurried along, arm in arm. "I think I love him a little more when you
tease him. I want to protect him from abuse."

Kara bumped her gently as they
walked. "No you don't."

"But I do!" the woman
protested.

"Maybe you should keep it
up then, Kara," her father said.

They passed a music shop, a
small bookstore, and what seemed like a dozen clothing stores. Two feuding
pizza restaurants stood on opposite sides of the street, facing one another. Kara
had tried them both and thought the crappy little joint down the street from
her favorite noodle shop was much better, and much cheaper. Her two best
friends, Sakura and Miho, had showed her the best places to buy clothes and
hair accessories and music, but her boyfriend, Hachiro, could be counted on to
bring her to the tastiest and most out of the way restaurants in Miyazu City.

"Kara," Miss Aritomo
said, "I've been meaning to remind you. School starts again in two days. When
we are around other teachers and students — even your friends — you
cannot call me Yuuka. It isn't —"

"I know," Kara said.
"It isn't proper."

The temptation to tease Miss
Aritomo about Japanese propriety, especially when it came to sleeping with her
father, was great, but she knew the woman would be absolutely mortified and did
not want to embarrass her like that. After the horrors they had endured at the
beginning of the fall, the death they had seen and the curse that had now
touched them all, the rest of the fall term had passed so quietly as to allow
them a cautious optimism. And the holidays had been nothing short of joyful.

Only a tiny fraction of the
Japanese population identified itself as Christian — most were Buddhist
or Shinto — but Japan had long ago embraced Christmas. People ate a
special cake on Christmas Eve, which was considered a night of romantic
miracles. Being with your significant other that night was a big deal, and
Hachiro had called her from home and spent an hour telling her how much he
wished he could be with her to celebrate the night. It meant a lot to her
because she knew it meant a lot to him.

She and her father had chosen to
celebrate as Japanese a Christmas as possible, exchanging small gifts with each
other and with Miss Aritomo, who had joined them for dinner both on Christmas
Eve and Christmas Day. Kara had received a locally made Teddy bear and a small
emerald ring from her father, and Miss Aritomo had brought her flowers and a
hand-knit scarf. Kara had bought Yuuka a small handbag with her own money, and
her father had given her a necklace that Kara had helped pick out.

Yet, though Christmas displays
were often up just as early as they were in America, the New Year was a much
bigger deal in Japan. People started preparing for New Year's celebrations even
before Christmas, sending tons of New Year's cards called
nengajo
to
their families, friends, and colleagues. Marking the passage of the old year
and recognizing the affection or support that others had given them, as well as
their hope for the relationship to continue in the new year, was a major part
of the celebration. People spent the time leading up the end of the year
cleaning their homes and offices, inside and out. The faces of buildings —
even temples — were cleaned, painted, or refreshed in some other way.

It had all sounded sweetly
sentimental to Kara, right up until New Year's Eve, when she and her father had
gone out for a dinner of
toshikoshi
soba noodles at a
sobaya
shop
and encountered an almost comical number of drunken people. Almost comical,
because it stopped being funny when she saw a man walk into a lamp post,
bloodying his nose and lip. It turned out that New Year's Eve in Japan was
soaked in even more alcohol than the holiday was back home in Massachusetts,
and that was saying something.

Still, they had enjoyed it. Miss
Aritomo had gone to her uncle's for dinner, but returned to watch the various
celebrations on television at their house and ring in the new year with a toast
at midnight, stepping outside to listen to the bells tolling from the city's
Buddhist temples. There were other traditions, of course. Many people would be
at the shrines, offering prayers and hoping to receive a promising fortune
scroll from one of the maidens in white kimonos who looked after the shrines
that night. But Kara and her father and Miss Aritomo had opted to stay at home.
Yuuka had spent the night for the first time, and had made them
ozoni
,
the traditional New Year's soup, the next day.

They felt like a family.

Kara tried not to think of it
that way — she still struggled with the idea that she was somehow
betraying her mother — but sometimes she couldn't help it. She liked that
her father was happy. He deserved it. She thought they both did.

Now, as she made her way toward
the shop where she had seen the perfect boots for winter, arm-in-arm with her
dad and Yuuka, several older people looked at them oddly. They did make an
interesting trio. Miss Aritomo usually tried to hold on to her very Japanese
propriety when out in public with them, but at the moment, she apparently
couldn't keep the grin off of her face.

"Here we are," Kara
said, guiding them into the shop.

"How much are these boots,
anyway?" her father finally thought to ask.

Kara gave him an innocent look.
"Dad, they're lined and waterproof. Can you put a price tag on keeping
your loving daughter's feet warm and dry?"

He gave a good-natured sigh.
"That much, huh?"

Inside the shop, where several
customers were lined up at the register and others milled about, trying on
winter coats and boots, Kara stopped and batted her lashes at him.

"Not that much, but . .
."

"But?"

"There's this jacket you're
going to love just as much as I do. White and gold and puffy —"

Her father turned to Miss
Aritomo and hung his head. "Save me."

The art teacher laughed and nodded
to Kara. "Go on. Show us these boots."

Kara gave a little squee and
darted through the racks, leaving the adults to weave a path behind her. She
really did need boots and a new jacket, and had known that her father would buy
them for her, but she always enjoyed tormenting him just a little bit. They
teased with love, never with malice.