Page 23 of Water Moon

Chapter Twenty-three

Sand

The most comfortable bed in the world was the one you needed to get out of before you were fully awake. In this instance, the bed wasn’t a bed, but a rubber raft floating on extremely purified water. Keishin turned to his side and reached for a snooze button that wasn’t there. He pressed it anyway. The last few minutes of sleep were always thicker, creamier, and more delicious than all the hours that came before them.

“Kei,” Hana said. “You need to get up.”

Sand whipped against Keishin’s face. He spat grains out and pried his eyes open. Sunlight shimmered over golden dunes.

“We’re here.” Hana turned her collar up against the blowing sand.

Keishin scanned the desert. Every trace of the Super-Kamiokande detector had vanished, but the memory of Hana’s lips on his remained. Understanding how he felt about the kiss was easy. Hana was an intelligent, beautiful woman, and Keishin did not deny being attracted to her. But finding words to describe what he felt about her was proving to be more difficult. She was the moon in the water, close enough to touch, yet beyond reach. “Where is ‘here’?”

“The end of your song,” Hana said.

“I can see why we couldn’t use water to travel to this place. Please tell me that the museum isn’t far.”

“It isn’t,” Hana said. “This is the Kyoiku Hakubutsukan. We are standing on it. We need to purchase tickets so that we can go inside.”

“Is this the part where you fish something out of that magical bag of yours?”

“I wish I could, but the only currency the museum accepts is time.”

“And how exactly are we supposed to pay with time?”

“We spend and waste time every day. This is no different. The price of a ticket is little more than a few seconds, but they need to be precious ones.”

“Precious? Does that mean that I have to give up a happy memory?”

“Not a happy one. A mistake. It will be stored in the museum’s archives.” Hana grabbed a fistful of sand. She straightened and unclenched her fingers, letting the wind snatch the grains from her palm. “As these are.”

Keishin gaped at the endless ocean of sand. “All of this is time? Moments from other people’s lives?”

Hana nodded.

“But what does the museum want with our mistakes?”

“This is the Museum of Education. How else are its visitors supposed to learn if not from other people’s mistakes? Some lessons are bigger than others, but all are grains of wisdom.”

“Should I be worried that what you’re saying makes perfect sense to me?” Keishin said. “So how do we do this? How and where do we pay for our tickets?”

“The ticketing clerk should be here soon.”

—

A swirling column of sand rose a few feet from where Keishin and Hana stood, twisting and morphing until it took a shape that resembled a woman’s body. Arms. Legs. Tail. The face of a fox. It moved slowly and lithely toward them, dispersing and gathering, collecting more sand with each step it took. It stopped a foot from Hana, growing to twice her height. Hana and Keishin bowed to it. It bowed back.

“Greetings, Kitsune-san.” Hana craned her neck. “We wish to purchase tickets to the museum.”

“Are you aware of…” The sand fox scattered and collected itself. “The price?”

“A grain of time for each ticket we require,” Hana said.

The fox nodded, its features of sand shifting in the wind. “Choose your payment well.” It dispersed into nothing and re-formed. “And I will judge if it is worthy of a place in the archive.”

Keishin shuffled through his mistakes, trying to find one that he wouldn’t miss. Though each had caused him varying degrees of embarrassment, disappointment, and pain, it was difficult to select one that he could live without. What he once thought he would have easily and gratefully forgotten felt like hard-fought treasure, each mistake a precious, priceless scar. The kitsune had asked for only one grain of his life, but Keishin found himself wondering if it was that one grain upon which everything else was built.

“I will pay for both of us,” Hana said.

“No,” Keishin said. “I can pay my own way.”

“You can, but you mustn’t.” Hana pulled him aside. “Losing time, no matter how small, changes you.”

“Which is exactly why I need to pay for my ticket.”

“But it will affect me less than it will affect you. My fate is set. Yours is not. No matter how much of my time I give up, my way will always be clear. Yours could swerve in ways you cannot even imagine.”

“For a person who has lived her entire life without making any real choices, you seem to be very good at making them for other people.”

“I am sorry, Kei, but you do not have the privilege of being stubborn, and I do not have the luxury of time to argue with you. I will not change my mind.”

Keishin looked into Hana’s eyes and saw that she was telling the truth. He threw up his hands. “Fine.”

Hana walked up to the kitsune. “You may take your payment.”

The kitsune’s face took human form as its body shrank to Hana’s size. It cradled Hana’s face in its hands and gently pressed the briefest of kisses on her mouth. It stepped away, leaving its gaze on Hana’s lips. Two specks of light, each no bigger than a grain of sand, drifted from Hana’s half-parted lips and floated in the air. The kitsune took a deep breath, drawing the lights into its mouth. A warm glow pulsed in its chest and spread throughout every grain in its body. The kitsune nodded solemnly at Hana and, without uttering a word, scattered in every direction. Two gold keys appeared in its place.

Hana picked up the keys and handed one to Keishin.

“Did it hurt?” Keishin asked softly, taking a key from her. “Do you feel any different?”

“No,” Hana said.

“Are you sure?”

“As certain as anyone who has no memory of what they gave up can be. The time I paid to the kitsune is gone, erased from my life and my mind. It is as if those moments never happened. If I have changed, I would not be able to tell you what has changed or why.”

Keishin planted his hands on his hips, lowered his head, and sighed.

“You are still upset with me,” Hana said.

“I don’t have any right to be.”

“And yet you are still angry.”

“No.” Keishin shook his head, his shoulders heavy. “I’m not. It’s just that I came on this trip to help you and all I seem to be doing is making this more difficult.”

“You’re not.” The wind tousled Hana’s hair. “But if you want to leave—”

Keishin tucked wayward strands of Hana’s hair behind her ear. “I don’t.”

—

Keishin followed Hana’s instructions and drew a door in the sand with his fingertip. He rolled his eyes and groaned at his crooked sketch. “I’m horrible at this. Can we compute the velocity of this desert’s wind instead?”

“All that matters is that you fit through it.” Hana stuck her key into her drawing. “Just do what I do,” she said, twisting her key in the sand.

Keishin did the same.

Their doors shimmered. The wind picked up, stirring the sand.

Hana shielded her face with her coat. “Try not to breathe. Don’t worry. This will be quick.”

A gust of wind blew in their direction, carrying away the sand from their sketches. Sand stung Keishin’s eyes. He held his breath and braced himself. The wind howled in his ears and, just as swiftly as it started, grew quiet.

Hana shook the sand from her hair. “The doors are open.”

Keishin glanced down. Two bottomless holes, in the shape of the doors they had drawn, replaced their sketches. Keishin leaned over them and grimaced. “Let me guess. We’re supposed to jump in, right?”

Hana smiled at him over her shoulder, leapt into the hole, and disappeared into the dark.