"Surely you must be blind," said Sotoko, "to have not seen the carriages and cohort of the Fujiwara."
"But Lady," said the first guard, peering through the garden gate, "the road is empty."
"It is true, Sotoko," I finally said. "I am here alone. A tengu flew me here."
The guardsmen backed away, waving paper talismans before their faces. "Tengu!" they cried.
"Come," said Sotoko, extending her hand to me. "You can explain all this where it is lighter and warmer, and where there is better company."
I allowed her to lead me up to the mountain lodge. As we went past the hawk on its perch, it screeched at me. "I am pleased you were still awake," I said to Sotoko. "I don't know what I would have done if you had not been here to see me."
Sotoko laughed. "Our household is quite unlike our father's home in Heian Kyo. We keep very odd hours here, and sleep and rise when we please."
How different the house looked from when our family had first taken refuge there. The walls had been repapered, and the wood beams and floors polished. The rooms were well-lit with lamps and lanterns, and adorned with sturdy chests and sword racks. I had to gasp in revulsion, however, when I saw the animal skins laid out on the floor as rugs.
"I know," Sotoko said. "It is a trial to Buddhist sensibilities, neh? Lord Tsubushima wanted Court ladies as wives for his sons in hopes we would teach them civilized ways. But I fear I have changed more for my husband's sake than he for mine. But it is not all bad," she added as she pulled out from a chest of drawers a silk cushion for me to sit on. "Riko doesn't demand that I hide behind curtains, and I have learned many new things."
"Like how to call a hawk?" I asked.
"So you saw that? Yes, and guess what else? He gave me a horse of my very own!"
"What an unusual sort of pet," I said. "You don't let it in the house, do you? And it cannot sit upon your lap. All one can do is ride them. I know Lord Tsubushima made you ride one at your wedding, but surely your husband does not expect a noble lady such as you to want to do such a lowly thing."
Sotoko laughed again. "But that is exactly what I do with the horse. Riko and I often go for rides in the woods nearby. It is very pleasant."
"Amazing!" I said, half in shock, half in admiration. "You have nearly become a barbarian yourself."
Just then, a young man, small and muscular, with a trimmed beard, sauntered in. "What is this?" he asked with a grin. "We have guests, and you did not tell me, Sotoko?"
"Only one guest, Riko, and her visit was a surprise to me. This is my sister, Mitsuko, come all the way from Heian Kyo. Mitsuko, this is my husband, Tsubushima no Riko."
I held my sleeves up in front of my face, but he said, "No, no, there will be none of that formality in my house. You are family, and therefore I may see you, neh?"
I glanced with uncertainty at Sotoko, then slowly lowered my arms. "As you wish, my Lord."
"None of that, either. You may call me Riko. Everybody does. So, where is the rest of your party? Did your servants get quarters and your horses get stabled?"
"I came alone," I said. "There is no one with me."
Riko's grin fell, and he stared at me. "Alone? Up the Western Road? Impossible. Any lone travelers would fall prey to highwaymen or the warrior monks of Mount Hiei."
I sighed, remembering just such an attack on my family two years before. "Of course, but I did not face such dangers. I flew here on a tengu's back."
"Oh." Riko seemed to turn a little pale, and he rubbed his beard. "Yes, your father's skill at sorcery is renowned. I will never forget the day Sotoko and I were married-the dragons in the clouds and the army of black-armored horsemen who turned into birds. Naturally, your father could send you here on the wings of a tengu."
Actually, it had been I who talked the tengu into creating the illusion of an army on the day of Sotoko's wedding, and King Ryujin who had sent the sky-dragons, but I did not contradict Riko. After all, it might be better for my father's diplomacy if he were thought to be a great sorcerer. "Of course," I said.
"Well, then. There must be some weighty reason for him to send you to us."
"I have an important reason to be here, yes. I… we need your help with what will, to you, seem a very small matter."
"Let us hear it, then," said Riko with an expansive sweep of his arm. "I will be glad to lend assistance to the great Fujiwara."
Hope began to fill me, and I knew I had done the right thing. "There is a shrine to the south of here, in the forest. It is only a little shrine to a Shinto kami, but it sheltered my sister Amaiko and me during our… troubles two years ago. I… my father, in gratitude to the kami, wishes to repair the shrine, for it was in very poor condition."
Sotoko gazed at me with a curious frown. I hoped she would not question me, for I did not want to tell her I was lying. I wondered how many times I would have to copy the Lotus Sutra in penance for my falsehoods.
"You are right," said Riko. "That should be simple enough. Scarcely a day's work for me and some of my men. I will be happy to oblige your father in this way. I think I even know the shrine you mean. Some of the hunters around here claim it is haunted."
"Yes, that is the one," I said happily. "No doubt the kami is upset because its shrine is so poorly kept, and that is why it haunts people nearby."
"All the better, then, that we should fix it!" said Riko. "We'll leave first thing after breakfast tomorrow. Will that suit your father?"
"Yes," I said, bowing low to hide my smiles. "That will suit splendidly."
I slept well that night in my sister's house, though the air was more chilly than I was used to. My dreams were peaceful, but I had the sense of something waiting… out there in the dark forest.
***
We rose before dawn and ate with our breath steaming out of our mouths. I tried to ignore the fact that Riko and Sotoko were eating eggs. I had only onion-and-radish soup, but it tasted very good on a cold early morning.
After breakfast, Sotoko took me down to the newly built stable and proudly led her horse out. It was a short, shaggy, coarse-haired creature, but I praised it highly for her sake. As servants put the saddle on, Sotoko said, "You will ride with me."
"But I don't know how!" I protested.
"Surely a girl who rides on the backs of tengu can ride a simple horse."
"It isn't the same thing. You can recline on a tengu's back as if it were a cushion. Horses have no feathers to grab on to."
"You will have to hold on to me. And grasp the horse between your legs."
This seemed very unladylike, and I said so.
"Hmph. You are beginning to sound like Amaiko. Do you want to go to your shrine or not?"
Once I would have found the comparison to our eldest sister complimentary. Now it stung. "I am not nearly so stuffy."
"Good. Come on, then." She led the horse over to a large garden stone. Sotoko stepped up onto the stone and from there easily swung one leg over the horse's back to sit on it. I tried to do the same, but my many layered kimonos, so elegant when one is just sitting, were distinctly in the way. Finally, one of the guardsmen had to come up and grab me by the waist and set me on the horse, behind Sotoko.
"Now you see why I dress like I do," said Sotoko.
"Yes," I sighed. It was most embarrassing.
Riko and two other men came riding up to us then, dressed in lacquered-wood breastplate and epaulets. They wore no helmets, but each had a bow and a quiver of arrows slung on his back.
"Are you expecting a battle?" I asked Riko.
He shrugged. "Not really, but you never know what you'll run into in the forest. There may yet be bears foraging before they sleep for the winter, or starving villagers hoping to rob unwary travelers. Or perhaps we will be lucky and come across a deer. Better to be prepared, neh?"
I shuddered, hoping the kami of the forest would be kind and hide any deer from us.
The guardsmen opened the garden gate for us, and we rode out. I had to grasp Sotoko's waist hard to keep from rolling off the pony's back. As we crossed the Western Road and plunged into the dark shade of the pine forest, I shivered with remembered dreams.
"It is a little cold, isn't it?" said Sotoko. "But when the sun gets higher, it will be warmer. It is always so in the mountains."
I did not answer but watched for signs that we were on the right path. The night that Amaiko and I had fled into this forest was so long ago, and it had been so dark, and I had been so afraid, that I doubted I would recognize anything. I could only hope that Riko was right and knew the way to it himself.
Unsettling, wayward breezes blew through the pine tops. Sometimes I thought I heard laughter, or perhaps it was just the clattering of branches, one against another. As we rode deeper into the forest, dark shapes that were not clouds obscured what little sunlight filtered through the trees. Then there came deep croaking, like the caws of enormous crows, above us.
"What is that?" said Riko.
I smiled. "They are tengu."
"Tengu!" cried one of the warriors behind Riko. He took his bow off his back and fitted an arrow to the string.
"No!" I cried, but before I could explain, the warrior let the arrow fly with a mighty twang.
The tengu above us shrieked and laughed. "Awwwk! You missed! You missed, fool!" It dove down toward us. Sotoko's horse screamed and leaped, and I tumbled off its back into the bushes.
"Ai!" Sotoko cried as the horse bolted with her still on its back. The warriors' horses fled, too, with the men vainly trying to stop them. Only Riko managed to hold his horse somewhat in check. He looked down at me and up after Sotoko, clearly torn.
"I am all right," I told him. "Go find her."
"I will return for you as soon as I can," said Riko, and he sped in the direction Sotoko's horse had gone.
The cawing laughter and the shouts of the men dwindled into the distance. I began to feel uncomfortable sprawled in the bushes, and so I stood. Or
tried
to, as my kimonos were caught in the tangle. I'm sure I ruined at least two of them getting myself unstuck.
By the time I was free of the brambles, the forest was silent, save for the wind in the pines. I felt silly just standing there, so I stepped out of the bushes and peered around. I found myself on an overgrown path, and I followed it a little ways. Just past a pair of very large pines, I stopped and gasped.
There was the kami shrine! I ran up to it, certain it had to be the same one: It looked just like a miniature house, about as high as I am tall. But it was in even worse shape than when Amaiko and I had taken refuge there. The thatched roof had fallen in on one side, and the walls leaned, and one of the sliding doors had broken off. Bits of broken pottery from old offerings crunched beneath my feet. It was a sad sight. And Dento had been right, there was nothing impressive about the trees or view to indicate what the shrine might be dedicated to. Only a small, overgrown hummock behind it.
Still
, I thought,
it should be no hard work for Riko and his men to repair the roof and those walls.
"
Fujiwara no Mitsuko
," said a voice cold as death behind me.
"Y-yes?" I shuddered, pulling my kimonos tighter around me, but I dared not move.
"
So. You have returned
."
Timidly, I glanced over my shoulder. A man dressed all in gray stood there, his hair long and unbound. I should say he floated there, for when I glanced down, I saw he had no feet. A ghost. "Are… are you the kami of this shrine?"
The apparition nodded once, his expression hard and unfriendly. "
I am. And you are late
."
"Forgive me," I said, turning at last and bowing deeply to him. "I had not remembered my promise until recently. But… but I am here now, and it will be easy for my sister's husband to repair your shrine and make all well again."
"
You did not understand me
," the ghost said. "
You are too late
." He raised his arm and, with a sweeping gesture, brought a great gust of wind that blew my hair over my eyes and nearly blew the kimonos off my back. When the wind subsided, the little shrine was in pieces-the thatch of the roof scattered over the forest floor, the walls flat on the ground.
"What did you do that for?" I exclaimed before I could stop myself. Then I bowed again and said, "Begging your pardon, Most Ancient One, but now it will be much more difficult to repair."
"
I do not want it repaired
," he growled. "
Look there.
" He pointed at the small hummock that rose behind where the shrine had stood. More of it was revealed now that the shrine had collapsed. On the side of the hummock, in the center of a slab of stone, was a square block of wood with an iron ring in the middle. "
Open it
," he commanded.
"But… but I-"
"
Open it! And see what an error you have made by disrespectfully forgetting your promise to me
."
I looked around, hoping that Riko and the others would return, but I saw no one. Not even the tengu. I walked up to the stone, grasped the iron ring, and tugged on it. It took several tugs, using all of my body's weight to pull the wood free. This revealed a dark opening in the stone. By the dim sunlight, I could discern, beyond the opening, stone steps descending into the hillside. Faintly foul air drifted out.
"It is a tomb," I whispered. "That is what the shrine was dedicated to."