The Night Parade (2 page)

They drank cold barley tea as Grandma worked in the kitchen to finish dinner. She stuffed them with thick homemade miso, cold noodles, and chilled tofu with soy sauce. When Saki refused a second helping of eggplant, Grandma tried to sneak a little more into her bowl when Saki turned her head toward the open doors to the forest.

“You're so skinny,” Grandma said. “You can eat as much as you want while you're here.”

“Make sure to finish everything,” Saki's mother warned her. “We're lighting the Welcome Fire as soon as everyone's done with dinner. I don't want you two leaving food to waste and then complaining later that you're hungry.”

“Right away?” Saki stopped halfway through a sip of tea. “We just got here.”

“It's the first day of Obon. If we don't light the fire today, when else would we do it?” Her mother raised an eyebrow, the silent answer to her own rhetorical question. “Besides, I heard someone complaining in the car about hating to be bored…”

Saki bit her tongue and stabbed her chopsticks into the noodles.

“Saki, dear, can I ask you to do a little favor for me?” Grandma pressed her hands together around her tea cup and smiled.

Saki shifted her legs on the floor. So this was how their vacation would begin. “Um, sure…”

“We'll need a branch for the Welcome Fire tonight. Your father and your brother are helping chop the wood for the pyre, so if you wouldn't mind… There's a special group of sakaki trees in the grove around the shrine. One of those branches would make the perfect centerpiece for tonight.” Her eyes turned soft. “Grandpa used to get sakaki branches from the shrine every year, but my knees just aren't up to climbing that steep path. Do you think you could help fetch one for the fire?”

The rest of the family was looking at her. She couldn't exactly refuse. “Uh, sure? I'll…try to find a dry one.”

“Oh, if you could, please get a fresh branch. We want to welcome the ancestors with something green and full of life. I'll give you my gardening scissors to take with you. You might have to stretch a little, but I'm sure you can do it. You've gotten so tall.”

“Okay, Grandma. Whatever you say.” Saki tried to return Grandma's smile, but there was an empty space in her heart. She recalled a vague memory from when Grandpa was still alive. She used to ride on his shoulder as he went up the path to cut a sakaki branch, her fingers swatting at the leaves overhead. Now that he was gone, she didn't see any good reason to trudge all the way up the path for a piece of wood. They would just burn it anyway.

When they were finished with dinner, Grandma cleared the dishes and Saki's father took her brother around the side of the house to the woodpile. His voice drifted into the twilight calm of the forest as he explained the basics of building the fire. Saki stood on the stairs outside the front door and craned her neck toward the mountain path up to the shrine. A piece of cool metal tapped the bare skin of her arm.

“These are the sharpest cutters I could find,” her mother said. “Make sure you get back down before you lose the daylight.”

Saki took the gardening shears with a grimace. “What if I get lost?”

“Follow the path. It might be a little overgrown, but it shouldn't be that hard. Grandpa used to take you up there all the time.”

Shooting her mother a dark look, Saki shoved the scissors into her back pocket and jammed her feet into her sneakers. The path to the shrine jutted up through the trees, and she had to quell the urge to kick every rock she came across. The trail cut up the side of the mountain in a steep zigzag, turning this way and that in no particular pattern.

The path was overgrown with weeds and vegetation, just as her mother had predicted. Visitors only came to the shrine on New Year's Day to make a wish, and without a dedicated priest like Grandpa to clear the path, it had grown wild and unruly. None of the forest animals feared humans. More than once, she had to step over the snakes slithering home after a lazy afternoon sunning themselves on the weather-worn rocks.

Saki scowled as the dust on the path coated every clean bit of her new white sneakers. As she climbed, the haze of the heat and the rhythmic cries of cicadas drowned out every other thought. Even through her breaking sweat, her eyes drooped with fatigue and boredom.

Saki hopped over a little brook at a bend in the path and veered around a fallen trunk of bamboo. A fat frog jumped out onto the trail, and Saki snapped to a halt, her foot frozen in the air. With a low croak, the frog hopped away, unaware of how close it had come to getting trampled.

“Excuse you,” she called after the creature. “Why don't you watch where you're going?”

She climbed closer and closer to the sinking sun, yet the path turned dark as the forest thickened. Only little patches of sunlight streamed through the shifting leaves, twisting and reappearing before her eyes. Her breath came quick and raspy, the cries of the cicadas dropped off to a dull murmur, and Saki brushed her fingers against the handle of the gardening scissors in her pocket just to make sure they were still there.

Finally, the sharp form of a torii gate appeared between the trees, its bright red paint faded and peeling where it met the earth. The symbolic gate was made of a round pillar on either side of the path, with two beams raised across the top to mark the entrance to the sacred grounds of the shrine. It was small compared to the huge torii gates of Tokyo shrines, and her father could have easily touched the top of the first beam, but it barely fit beneath the treetops on the mountain. Though it was the newest of the gates, the looping calligraphy of her family's name was faded and worn. Older gates, each more battered than the next, continued up the narrow path.

The last torii gate had no paint. The beam across the top had been rounded down by rain and wind. Moss clung to the base, as if nature meant to reclaim it for the forest. Saki stopped to catch her breath against one of the rough-hewn pillars, the wood humming beneath her fingers.

The shrine grounds rested below the mountain summit, a tumbledown collection of sticks and weeds before the underbrush and a treacherous slope overtook the peak. The handful of neglected structures dotted the open area, all in various states of disrepair. Halfway across the grounds, a stone water basin waited to purify visitors. The water was still and stagnant but didn't look too dirty. When Saki had come up with her grandfather, he'd taught her each step of the washing ritual. She picked up the ladle and sloshed a little water over her fingers on one hand, then switched to wet the opposite one. She didn't clean out her mouth, the last of the three steps, but no one was around to see.

Saki passed the empty donation box in front of the main shrine building and the rusted prayer bell dangling from the overhang. The first of the sakaki trees sat on the slope behind the structure. The tree was dead and lay half-eaten by termites, their paths carved out in the bark. Beyond the rotting stump grew the rest of the grove, the living trees' smooth bark unblemished by decay. Some of the trees' shiny, oval leaves had fallen to the ground and shifted with every step Saki took. Yet even in the midst of the greenery, her nose caught the thick odor of the rotting tree.

Farther into the grove, the branches grew a full arm's length above her head. Saki tilted her chin up into the last slanting rays of the sun and groaned.

“Ugh. Are you kidding me?”

She stretched to reach the lowest hanging leaves. When she finally caught a branch, she bent down to slip the gardening scissors out of her pocket. With a snap, the leaves in her hand tore away from the branch. It whipped up, leaving Saki holding nothing but scissors and a handful of leaves.

“Fine, I didn't want yours anyway… Jerk.”

As she toiled, the wind caught her scent, and a host of mosquitos descended on the grove. The pack swarmed around her exposed arms and legs, and Saki threw the leaves in her hand as she swatted the bugs away. She tried to lose them by moving to a tree higher on the hill, but the swarm found her wherever she went. Every time she stopped to reach for another branch, she had to fend off a cloud of bloodsuckers raring to eat her alive.

She was too slow to land a swat on any of the winged things, so she kicked the trunk of the closest sakaki tree.

With a rustle of leaves, something fell from the branches and plopped onto her head. Saki shrieked and brushed an eyeball-sized tree crab out of her hair. It scuttled across the ground and disappeared underneath a pile of leaves.

“This is disgusting! I'm going home!” she shouted to the woods. The forest answered with an indifferent breeze.

Saki trudged back to the shrine. On her way there, she passed the fallen tree, one ragged branch still poking out from its carcass. Saki slipped the gardening scissors back into her pocket. She wouldn't need to cut a branch that was half fallen-apart. With one foot braced against the softened wood, Saki held the base of the branch and yanked it off the tree in one pull. A pair of sick, yellow-tinged leaves fell to the ground by her feet. That would be good enough. A fresh branch wouldn't burn right anyway, and what Grandma didn't know wouldn't hurt her. Holding the branch away from herself with two fingers, Saki shuffled back to the main path in front of the shrine.

As she left the shrine grounds, the underbrush stirred. Something moved behind her, but when she whirled around to check, the wind had only blown a crunchy leaf across the sharp edge of a stone.

She hurried down the hill until she reached the very first torii gate. The view of the shrine had disappeared behind the darkening trees. A wind picked up and whistled past her ears, stirring the hair on the back of her neck. She jogged the rest of the way down the hill to Grandma's house without looking back.

• • •

Saki tapped her foot. The rest of the family watched her brother pile up the cedar wood that their father had cut, piece by agonizingly slow piece. Their father stood behind and waited until the tower fell apart before he showed Jun and Saki both how to fix a proper pyre. After years of practice during his childhood on the mountain, her father's technique was flawless, but Saki could see his hands hesitate as he placed the wood, uncertain movements in his eyes as he tried to recall the distant memories.

The bare earth was far enough away from both the forest and the house, but her mother had scattered water buckets all around to be certain there was no chance of a stray ember catching the wind and setting the whole mountain alight. When the pyre was ready, Grandma came forward and placed the withered sakaki branch at the very top.

“Bit smaller than usual, don't you think?” Saki's father asked.

Grandma squinted at the branch but waved his concern away. “Oh hush. Saki got the best one she could. Now don't take too long or you'll be praying to my ghost too.”

With a laugh, her father struck a match and lit the kindling. The rest of the tinder burst into flames.

They fanned out to watch the fire catch on the cedar logs. The wood cracked and shifted, but the forest noises seemed to hush as Saki's father recited the invocation.

“Now is a time to remember those who have come before us, as well as those we have lost. Even though Grandpa won't be with us this year, tonight we light this fire so that he can find his way home. Let's hope his spirit will continue to watch over us in the future.”

Grandma smiled and clasped her hands together. She stood in silence for a moment, her eyes reflecting the hopping flames, then excused herself back to the house.

As Saki stared into the fire, her father put a hand on her back.

“Thanks for helping Grandma out. I know it seems silly that she wanted a branch from those particular trees, but it was very kind of you to go to all the trouble. You made her pretty happy today.”

She couldn't tell him the truth, not after that praise.

Saki had always wondered why her father had left the countryside. There were times when she'd seen him look at the forest with regret. After her grandfather died, he seemed to look that way more and more. The village was as boring as a rotten log, but a part of her wanted to know what he was seeing.

Grandma returned with a plate of watermelon slices. Saki hung back, still watching the fire. There was a roiling knot in her stomach that wouldn't let her feel hungry.

“It's so nice of you to wait for everyone else, Saki,” Grandma said when she came around with the plate. Saki's parents had their hands full trying to keep her brother from poking sticks into the pyre.

“I guess,” Saki replied, looking down at her shoes. “It's not like there's a hurry or anything.”

“Yes, yes, that's exactly right.” Grandma tried to catch her eyes. “I have a present for you. Would you hold out your hand?” Grandma put the tray down on a stack of the unused cedar logs and felt around for something in the sleeve of her yukata. “Oh, dear… Now where did it run off to?”

“That's okay, Grandma. I don't need a present.”

“No, no. I want to give it to you.”

Saki hoped it wasn't a porcelain cat or one of those folding fans that Grandma collected.

“Oh, here it is.” Grandma placed something small and cool in Saki's hand. “This belonged to your grandfather. I think he'd want you to have it.”

Saki uncurled her fingers. It was a tab of flat iron about as long as her little finger. The metal was inscribed with a long verse of calligraphic characters that Saki couldn't read.

“Grandpa always carried this good luck charm with him when he took care of the mountain shrine. The mantra engraved on the front is supposed to protect you. Grandpa strung this charm on his prayer beads until the string snapped… But here, look, I made a little strap so you can hang it on your phone. Your mother told me that you like things like this.”

The strap was a pretty silk brocade from one of Grandma's old kimonos. It showed part of a moonlit reflecting pool.