Page 19 of Water Moon
Chapter Nineteen
The Teahouse at Midnight
Keishin listened in on the conversation between the masked creature and Hana from the top of the stairs. The Shiikuin’s chorus of voices sent ice through his veins. He crouched, just out of sight, clutching a kitchen knife in his right fist. He had never stabbed anyone before, but this day was a day of firsts.
When the Shiikuin demanded the truth from Hana about what had happened to her father, he gripped the knife tighter. But as Hana calmly gave her answers, Keishin found himself loosening his grip, understanding in that moment the reason for her father’s ruse. He had ransacked the pawnshop and staged a theft so that Hana would have a truthful story to tell. He had lied so that she would not have to.
“You can come down now.” Hana stared at the door, her arms wrapped around her stomach.
Keishin rushed down the steps, dropping the kitchen knife. He pulled her into his arms. “Are you okay?”
“No.” Hana crumbled against his chest.
“That creature…” He held her tight. “That was the Shiikuin?”
“One of many. They want the missing choice.”
“I heard that part. And their threat.”
“That was not a threat.” Hana stepped out from the circle of his arms. “That was a promise.”
“Then we have to find the choice. Fast. Your father must have taken the choice with him. If we find him, we’ll find the choice.” Keishin checked his watch. “It’s just a few more hours until midnight. We’ll have answers soon.”
“ We? You still want to do this? Even after seeing the Shiikuin?”
“That thing will be back in two days. I’m not about to abandon you now.”
“Kei…there’s something I need to tell you.”
“Hana, there’s nothing you can say that will make me change my mind.” Keishin affixed what he hoped looked like a convincing smile onto his face. “Besides, I’m getting used to jumping into puddles.”
“Puddles cannot take us to my grandmother’s teahouse.”
“How do we get there?”
“We need to share a bed.”
—
They lay next to each other on Hana’s futon, their bodies close enough to feel the other’s warmth. Keishin stared up at the ceiling, trying to summon the most boring lecture he could think of. He imagined himself back in high school, sitting in the back of his history classroom, making up math problems in his head to keep his eyes open. It wasn’t that he found the Renaissance uninteresting, it was just that Mr. Whitecotton’s idea of teaching was to read from their textbook until the bell rang. But not even the memory of his old teacher’s nasal droning could weigh his eyelids down this evening. The Shiikuin’s voices echoed over Elizabeth’s Golden Age, denying him sleep. Keishin sat up and groaned. “This is impossible. I can’t sleep.”
“Lie down.” Hana gently drew him back next to her. “And try not to think about anything. Sleep will come.”
Keishin rested his head on a pillow and sighed. “Are you sure we can’t just dive into a pond or a puddle?”
“I have never met a man like you.” Hana turned to face him. “You are unlike anyone who has stepped through the pawnshop’s door.”
A lock of silver hair slipped over Keishin’s eyes. Hana ran her fingers through his hair, pushing it from his face. Keishin stiffened, inhaling sharply. Hana met his startled gaze. A smile crinkled his eyes and softened them. Keishin took Hana’s hand, gently pressing it to his cheek. “In what way?” he whispered, the corner of his lips grazing her palm.
“I…uh…I’m sorry.” She stared and blinked at him, withdrawing her hand. “What did you say?”
A dimple dug into Keishin’s cheek. “In what way am I different from your other clients?”
Hana blushed. She did not bother to hide it. “All our clients, even if they do not know it, come looking for help. You are the first one to ever offer it. You jump into the unknown without thinking twice and do not hesitate to take my word when I tell you that the way to find my grandmother is through a dream. You are a good man, Kei.” She laced her fingers over her stomach. “Perhaps too good.”
“I didn’t realize that wanting to do the decent thing was a character flaw.” Keishin propped himself on his elbow.
“It is not a flaw. It is a weakness. It makes it easier for people to hurt you.”
“The only motives and actions I am responsible for are my own. How people choose to respond to that is their problem.”
“It becomes your problem when they cause you pain. I have seen enough tears in the pawnshop to know that this is true in both our worlds.”
“Do those tears include your own?”
She turned her back to him. “We should try to sleep.”
“Hana…”
“It is almost midnight.”
Keishin lay down. “You wouldn’t happen to have a spare bottle of your father’s sleeping medication lying around, would you?”
“Close your eyes and listen to my voice. I will tell you a story.”
“A bedtime story? Are you serious?”
“Trust me.”
Keishin lowered his eyelids. “Fine.”
“A long time ago, there was a fisherman named Urashima Taro. He was fishing when he saw some children torturing a turtle. Taro saved the turtle and set it free in the sea. The following morning, an old turtle swam up to him and told him that the turtle he had saved was the daughter of Ryūjin, the Emperor of the Sea. Ryūjin asked the turtle to invite Taro to his kingdom to thank him. The turtle gave Taro gills and led Taro to Ryūjin’s underwater palace. At the palace, Taro met Ryūjin and his daughter, Otohime, who had turned from a turtle into a beautiful princess.”
Hana’s voice soothed Keishin like a lullaby, bundling him up and rocking him. He followed Hana’s words as though they were crumbs on a forest trail, each leading him closer to a dream of the sea.
“Taro stayed with Otohime for three days but found himself longing to see his elderly mother. Otohime regretfully agreed to let him go. Before he left, she gifted him with a mysterious box that would protect him as long as he did not open it. The old turtle took Taro back to the shore of his village.”
Keishin struggled to stay awake, torn between exhaustion and curiosity. Hana turned on her side and rested her head on his chest. Keishin held her to him, no longer sure if he was dreaming or still awake.
“Hold on to me,” Hana whispered over his heart. “I will lead you through the dream.”
Keishin nodded, half asleep. “What happened to Taro?”
“When Taro returned to his village, he discovered that everything had changed. Three hundred years had passed. Everyone he knew was gone. Distraught, he opened the box from Otohime…”
—
Hana watched him sleep. She was going to join him soon, but for now, she let him dream. In a way, she felt like she had gone ahead of him and was already dreaming. Keishin was the stranger in her world, and yet since he had arrived, nothing around her was familiar anymore. Her room. Her bed. Even her own skin. All it took was the briefest of glances from Keishin to set it humming, tingling from the top of her head to her toes, the way it did when she had climbed the tallest tree along one of the mountain trails she enjoyed exploring as a child. Her father had told her not to, but still she climbed, higher and higher, away from the echo of his rules, above the walls of everything she had been told she could or could not do. Looking down at the world from her quivering perch, she was unable to tell if the current buzzing in her limbs made her feel alive or terrified. A gust of wind whipped the canopy beneath her into a blur of green and gray. Hana looked up in time to see an angry sky break open. She clung to a trembling branch.
Icy shards of rain struck her fists, awakening the glowing paper cranes tattooed on her skin. The flock took flight across the back of her hand, oblivious to the wet lashing. Hana envied their wings. She loosened her fingers around the branch and considered letting go, if only to know, for the sliver of time before she lay broken on the rocks, what it was like to fly.
Curled on her mattress next to Keishin, her face near enough to feel the warmth of his breath on her lips, Hana dangled from a tree that towered over everything she knew. From this distance, the world below was tiny, and she was free from its grasp. Still, she had no wings. She nestled her cheek against Keishin’s chest and closed her eyes, wondering if falling into him would hurt as much as crashing into the ground and shattering all her bones.
—
Gravel crunched by his ear. Keishin snapped his eyes open. He sat up and looked around. An arched bridge stretched out in front of him. A long line of people dressed in white sleeping robes made their way over the bridge from a gravel road, their pace unhurried.
“That is the Midnight Bridge. It connects night and morning.” Hana stood up and brushed the dust and gravel from her clothes. “People cross over it in their dreams. My grandmother’s teahouse is across the road.”
“Where?” Keishin craned his neck to see over the people in line for the bridge. A large, fiery tree that reminded him of the maple trees in his old university’s courtyard grew in a garden across the road.
“That is Sobo’s teahouse.”
“The tree?”
“It’s called a kito tree. It means ‘calm,’ which I think is quite appropriate. My grandmother’s teahouse offers refuge to those suffering from nightmares.”
“Nightmares?” Keishin glanced at the people lining up for the bridge and noticed that their eyes were closed. “They’re all asleep…”
“Yes. And so are we. The difference is that we know that we are dreaming. My grandmother taught me the way to her teahouse when I was a little girl. You turn left when you fall asleep and turn right at the end of your second dream.”
Keishin watched Hana’s breath turn into mist in the night air. In the middle of a dream, next to a bridge that led to morning, he took comfort in knowing that at least some laws of science still held true. Most people mistakenly believed that you saw your breath simply when the weather got cold. Humidity, however, played an equal part in turning one’s breath into minuscule water droplets that floated in the air. “Dew point,” Keishin murmured absently like it was a memorized prayer.
“Did you say something?”
“I…uh…was just saying that I was glad that we didn’t wake up in the river.”
“Yes. I have seen what happens when a person falls into it.” Hana stared at the rushing water. “During one of my visits to my grandmother, I saw a Night Market vendor being chased down this road by a Shiikuin. Everyone on the road and the bridge froze in place. Only the vendor ran. The Shiikuin moved slowly, and sometimes it paused mid-stride, not moving at all.”
“I thought that the Shiikuin was chasing the vendor?”
“It was, but time passes differently for a Shiikuin. My father said that while we may see them standing still, they could be racing through time, living several lifetimes in the blink of an eye. They never run because they know they don’t have to. There is nowhere any of us can hide from them. They will always catch us in the end.”
“Why was the Shiikuin chasing the vendor?”
“For the same and only reason they hunt down anyone from this world. The vendor failed in his duty. He fell asleep while tending his stall. I will never forget the terror on his face. The Shiikuin nodded at the people on the bridge and they began to move like puppets on a string. They grabbed at the vendor, ripping his clothes and tearing his skin. He screamed and tried to shove them out of the way, but they were too many. They blocked the end of the bridge, keeping him from reaching morning. He jumped into the river, choosing to drown rather than get caught.”
Keishin watched the violent water sweep a fallen tree away. “It was a good thing it was only a dream.”
“The vendor was in a dream, but the Shiikuin was real. The vendor never woke up. Anyone who falls into the river will never be able to cross over to the morning.”
Keishin stared at the river and swallowed hard. “We should keep our distance from it then.”
“Unfortunately, crossing the bridge is our only way back.”
—
A manicured roji stood as a mossy border between the gravel road and the large kito tree. Keishin sensed a change in the air as soon as he entered the tea garden. The gentle breeze drifting over the serene landscape of sculpted evergreen bushes felt solemn and sweet, a silent signal that a tea ceremony had begun with his first step. Each stepping stone laid over the grass took him further from the mundane.
“The tsukubai is for purifying ourselves before entering the teahouse.” Hana stopped by a stone washbasin surrounded by artfully arranged stones. She picked up a bamboo ladle and proceeded to wash her hands and rinse her mouth.
Keishin followed her lead. A pleasant, soothing tinkling, similar to the music made by a zither, echoed from the ground next to the basin. “Do you hear that?”
“That is the suikinkutsu. I helped my grandmother make it. We put a hole in a clay pot and buried it upside down. When water drips through the hole, it falls into a small pool of water and makes the pot sing.”
Keishin did not remember most of his dreams, but he hoped to hold on to the suikinkutsu’s song when he woke up. “It’s magical.”
“There is nothing magical about a buried pot.” Hana walked over to a bamboo lattice gate by a hemlock hedge. “Do not be so quick to fall in love with things in this world, Kei. You will find that many things here are not as they seem.”
“A beautiful song is a beautiful song.” Keishin’s eyes lingered over her face. “Whatever world it’s from.”
The gate swung open, inviting them into the teahouse’s inner garden. Hana stepped through the gate without looking back. Keishin followed her into a more intimate, rustic scene. Shrubs were left to grow naturally in the shade of the kito. Keishin looked up at the tree’s dense, sprawling canopy. Even in the moonlight, its leaves looked as though they were on fire. He ran his hand over the tree’s trunk and felt it beat beneath his palm like a heart. “I still can’t imagine how your grandmother’s teahouse is inside this tree.”
“It grew inside it when it was still a seed,” Hana said.
“A seed?” Keishin’s mind raced with possibility. “I don’t suppose your grandmother would have some extra seeds I could take back with me? They could solve—” He wrinkled his nose, regretting his words. “Sorry. Forget I said anything. Bad habit.”
“We could ask her, but I am not sure how well such a seed would grow in the ground. The mind is a thousand times more fertile than any kind of soil.”
“Good point.” Keishin chuckled. Lightning streaked across the night sky. The wind blew, carrying the scent of rain. Even in a dream, Keishin could not escape terrible weather.
“We should head inside.” Hana rapped her knuckles against the tree’s trunk.
A long branch reached over from the side of the tree and clasped a ridge in the trunk with fingerlike twigs. It pulled the bark open like a door. Another branch tapped Keishin on the shoulder. He jumped and twisted around. The branch nudged his chest.
Hana tried to hide a small smirk. “It is telling you to go in.”
The branch continued to tap Keishin. “I’m going. I’m going,” he said, removing his shoes. He left them on a flat stone by the entrance to the tree.
“Kei, wait.”
“What is it?”
“I think it would be best if we do not mention anything about my mother being alive to my grandmother. We do not have any concrete proof, and it might upset her.”
“I understand.”
—
Though it had no windows, the empty teahouse was warmly lit by the glow of fireflies, flying freely across the shop’s high ceiling. A sky filled with dancing stars. An old woman dressed in a simple kimono looked up from a wooden counter that grew from the shop’s mossy floor. Behind her, knobby shelves displayed an assortment of tea stored in clay jars.
“Hana?” A smile spread over Asami’s face, crinkling the lines around her eyes.
“Sobo.” Hana ran to her grandmother and embraced her tightly.
Asami hugged her back. “What a nice surprise. Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?” She glanced at Keishin. “And who is your friend?”
Keishin hesitated, unsure of how Asami would react to his presence.
Hana gave him a quick look, prodding him to answer.
“I’m…uh…Minatozaki Keishin.” Keishin bowed to her.
“I thought I had met all of Hana’s friends,” Asami said, eyeing him.
“Keishin is…” Hana drew away from her grandmother’s arms. “Not from here.”
Keishin held his breath.
“Not from here?” Asami furrowed her brow.
“He is from the other world.”
Asami’s hand flew over her mouth. “What have you done, Hana? Why did you bring him here?”
“Keishin is helping me find my father.”
The veins on Asami’s neck tightened. “Your father? Why? What happened?”
“I woke up this morning and found the pawnshop ransacked and Otou-san…gone.”
Color drained from Asami’s lips. “Did the Shiikuin—”
“No.” Hana clasped her grandmother’s hands. “They are looking for him too. That is why I need to find him first. He left clues that led us here.”
“We were hoping that you would have some answers,” Keishin said.
Asami ignored him, fixing a sharp gaze on Hana. “This is about your mother, isn’t it? Your father paid me the strangest visit two moons ago. He said the oddest things about her. I thought that he must have been overworked or drunk. I told him to go home and rest.”
“What did he say?” Hana said.
“Foolishness.” Asami shook her head. “It would shame me to repeat it.”
Hana gripped her grandmother’s hands tighter. “But it might help us find him.”
Keishin bit his lip, resisting the urge to jump in and help Hana plead their case. It was clear that Asami did not want him there.
“Forget about all of this. Go home, Hana.”
“I cannot. You know what the Shiikuin will do to him if they find him first. You must tell me what my father told you. We are not leaving here until you do.”
“You are as stubborn as your mother. I will not lose you too.”
“You won’t. I promise.”
“That is not a promise you can make. Only the Shiikuin can decide your fate. They will make you suffer as your mother did.”
“Not if you help us,” Keishin blurted.
Asami scowled at him. “This does not concern you.”
“Hana is my concern.” Keishin raised his voice louder than he had intended but did not regret it. The image of Hana being chased into a river by the Shiikuin filled his mind. “I’m begging you.” He softened his tone. “Please tell us what you know. It might be the only way to keep Hana safe.”
Asami glared at him then exhaled, deflating her tiny frame. “Toshio…” she said, lowering her voice. “He told me that he was going to retire soon and that he was finally going to be able to make things right.”
“How?” Hana creased her brow.
“He said that he had a plan that would keep you safe while he…” Asami’s eyes blurred with tears. “While he searched for your mother. I tried to tell him that she was gone, but he had a wild look in his eyes and insisted that she was alive. He said that as soon as you took over the pawnshop, he was going to look for her.” She clenched her jaw. “As I said, utter foolishness.”
“But what if…” Hana said, “he was not being foolish?”
“No one wants your mother to be alive more than I do, but that is not reality. The Shiikuin came to me after she died and gave me a kioku pearl containing her last day.”
“A kioku pearl?” Keishin asked.
Asami looked at him pointedly. “You may look like one of us, but your ignorance reveals where you are really from. If you do not wish your presence to be discovered, then you must watch what you say when you leave here. There are many who would not hesitate to betray you. You will wish that the Shiikuin find you before I do if any harm befalls my granddaughter because of your carelessness.”
“I’m sorry.” Keishin bowed his head. “I will be more careful.”
“A kioku pearl is a vessel for memories,” Asami said. “The Shiikuin made one to contain Chiyo’s trial to show me what happened that day. The Shiikuin wanted their warning to be clear. There is only one fate for those who fail their duty.”
“You never told me that you had a kioku pearl from that morning,” Hana said.
“I don’t. I threw it away. Why would I keep such a cruel thing? All I have tried to do since I saw Chiyo’s last moments was forget them. If I had been there, I would not have just stood by like…” Her words died on her tongue.
“Like my father did?” Hana said.
“It is in the past,” Asami said with a heavy voice. “But your father convinced himself that the past was not as it seemed.”
“What do you mean?”
“He was convinced of the impossible. He thought he could find Chiyo if he turned back time.”
—
The queue of dreamers moved at a snail’s pace toward the bridge, but none of those in line seemed to be in a hurry. Each was too preoccupied with navigating a dream to notice the gravel crunching beneath their feet. But Keishin was keenly aware of every pebble and every second that passed as he waited for his turn to cross over into morning. He rubbed the back of his neck. “Would it be so terrible to jump the line? Everyone here is asleep anyway. They’d never notice.”
“Yes,” Hana said. “It would.”
“I wish I had half of your patience.”
“When you spend your life dreading your future, you learn to welcome anything that makes you wait.”
“Is it really that awful? Running the pawnshop? I mean, apart from the Shiikuin, not that they’re easy to set aside. But the pawnshop itself helps a lot of people from my world. You do a lot of good.”
Hana kept her eyes on the bridge.
“Hana? Did you hear what I said?”
“I cannot stop thinking about what my grandmother said about my father’s plan to turn back time.”
“I know that your world doesn’t care about science or any of its rules, but even your grandmother said that time travel isn’t possible,” Keishin said. “We should find another lead. What about that pearl your grandmother mentioned? She said that it showed her what happened the day of your mother’s trial. Is there a way we could get our hands on another one?”
“A kioku pearl of an event can only be made by those present during the occasion. I do not think that asking the Shiikuin if they have a spare one would be wise. Finding another pearl containing that same memory would be harder than traveling through time.”
“So we’re at a dead end. Again.”
“Maybe not. I know that time travel is not possible, but my father is not the kind of person to throw around words he does not mean, no matter how drunk he is. It is when he is drunk that he is the most honest. Time must have some part in his plan to find my mother,” Hana said. “What does your science say about time?”
“Nothing definitive. But we have our theories.”
“What kind of theories?”
“Well, for example, we know that space can be bent by gravity. This means that space-time can be bent. In theory, that means that time can be bent too.”
“ Bent …” Hana gnawed the corner of her lips.
The people in line froze mid-step. Hana cursed.
“What is it?” Keishin asked. “What’s wrong?”
“They are here.”
Keishin twisted around. A masked figure stood at the end of the road, its dark eyes boring into him. “Shiikuin.”
Hana grabbed his hand. “Run.”
—
Hana bolted up from her futon, her clothes soaked in sweat. Dawn spilled through a slit between her bedroom curtains. She gripped her arm, remembering the cold, rotting hands that had tried to keep her from crossing the bridge. Their touch had turned her marrow to ice, extinguishing her warmth and courage. Keishin had pushed them back, using his body to shield her. They clawed at him, drawing blood. He had screamed for her to run, telling her that he was right behind her.
He was not.