Toshiro’s aunt returned with a paper envelope with ornate calligraphy written on it and set it down at Uncle Nobu’s side. When the elderly man concluded the discussion, Toshiro scooted out from under the blanket and stood. Spencer followed suit, and bowed when Toshiro bowed, and thanked their hosts for the tea.
Uncle Nobu placed a hand on Spencer’s shoulder. “Gishin anki.” He handed Spencer the packet. The crisp crunch of dried leaves could be heard behind the paper.
Toshiro answered him in English. “I understand, Uncle.”
Spencer followed his friend out of the tiny shop into the unlit alley. “Well, what’s the prognosis?”
“Good news and bad news.” Toshiro ran his tongue around his teeth. “Good news is that our official treatment is onsen.”
Spencer couldn’t find fault with visiting a Japanese bath house. The practice was a little exotic to most Americans, but not unpleasant. “Bad news?”
Toshiro scratched his head, then rubbed his hands together. “The bath house in Hell.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Say what?”
“It’s a place called Hell Valley.” Toshiro rubbed his face. “In the mountains. The hot springs up there have sulfur in the water.” Toshiro began to walk. “He says the springs will help your leg.”
Spencer limped along beside him. “What else did he say? I could have gotten the same treatment from the hospital without the tea.” His leg had stiffened, even under the warmed blanket, and while the pain had neither gotten worse nor eased, his muscles protested.
Toshiro grimaced. “We also have to visit a shrine up there for our other problem.” Toshiro ducked his head. “It’s backward–”
Spencer halted his friend. “’Frisco, I’ve sat in sweat lodges and bought blessings from Puerto Rican brujerias. Taking a bath in a hot spring and visiting a shrine isn’t even close to being backward.”
Toshiro started forward, pulling away from him. “You don’t understand.”
Something crawled up the back of his neck and Spencer heard whispering again. “What are you not telling me, ’Frisco?”
Spooky? You feelin’ it?
“Gishin anki. It means ‘doubt raises demons in the dark.’ An old saying.” Toshiro’s mouth tightened. “We made it up, Spooky.”
Spencer’s mind jumped to where his friend’s already was. “It was their doubts. The enemy’s fears.” The howling ghosts, the unrestful souls, the funereal wailings of unburied Vietnamese. All recorded in a sound studio by living people, with words written by a team of other living people who used psychology to spin a ghost story. But part of him—the part that had sat in sweat lodges and paid close attention when little old Italian ladies made gestures to ward off Evil Eyes—often wondered just how truly ‘made up’ the stories really were. “Their demons.”
I’m feelin’ it, ’Frisco.
“They’re ours now.”
* * *
Yukiko knew her choice was well-made when she encountered the man on the sidewalk. He was a tall gaijin, with thick glasses that made his already too-big gaijin eyes look enormous. They had locked gazes for only a moment before Obasan snapped her parasol to protect Yukiko’s virtue. But it was too late. She had already captivated him.
She allowed her lips to curve up as she strolled beside her aunt. Very soon, they would return to their village on the wind as the pull of their nature stole their temporary corporeality. She would be the bride they demanded, but she would bring a modern man’s blood into her people.
“Ai-ya!” Obasan gasped. “Your form!” She pointed to the snowy patch near a bench where they stood.
Obasan’s silk-slippered feet rested above the snow without altering it. No wetness seeped into her shoes. The falling snowflakes passed right through the edges of her kimono sleeves.
For the first time, Yukiko noticed tiny pinpricks of sensation falling on her head and arms. She looked down at her shiny white boots and her own gasp cut through the night. She glanced up again to see her chaperone’s form fading into mist. “Obasan!”
Around Yukiko’s feet, the snow had melted, and flakes rested on her very solid, very real, very human skin.
Chapter 2
The Grandmothers tut-tutted over Yukiko’s condition for a full week. Scrolls were consulted. Incense was lit. Journeys were made to the shrine at Myoko-san’s peak, where the women mingled with the vapors from the vents cutting deep into the restless earth.
In her so-called “weakened” state, Yukiko followed dutifully. The modern dress had been tucked away in a box in favor of a lightly-patterned houmongi, and Obasan wrapped her hair around an ornamented comb in a maiden’s comely style resembling butterfly wings.
The eye-watering fumes mingled with the incense and the whispers of the Grandmothers as they consulted with the other spirits of the waters and the stone. She suspected the outcome of the trip, and was not surprised to hear them pronounce that Her Time Had Come. True to their predictions, her skin temperature heated, her cheeks pinkened, and her lips took on a scarlet hue. Through the mists in the pool behind the ryokan, she saw her features become more real. When she touched the water, it dampened her fingers and she could shake the drops from them.
“You are the Snow Bride,” they said, their whispers the winter winds skirling snow across the peaks of one mountain ridge to the next. “Your destiny has come. Your future has risen.”
Yukiko did not wish to hear their words. Once she became the Bride, her freedom would melt away with the spring thaws. No more trips to Tokyo. No more trips even to the villages in the valley. Be the Bride—enchant the man, bear his daughter, mourn his loss, grieve when your own daughter’s Bride time comes.
She pleaded with the Grandmothers to change their prophecy. In the ancient times, her people had not isolated themselves so high upon the mountain.
“No,” was the answer of the Grandmothers. Their hard eyes were as uncaring as the stars that twinkled out above the peaks on the clear, cold night of the year’s turn. “This is our way.” As unchanging as Myoko-san herself.
* * *
It was one thing for Uncle Nobu to tell Spencer and Toshiro to visit the hot springs. It was another thing entirely to get Uncle Sam to order them there. But Spencer’s persistent Jacob Marley impersonation, night after night, turned his doctor into a post-visitation version of Ebenezer Scrooge, only instead of throwing shillings around, he started tossing around R&R passes. By prescription, in Spencer’s case.
“God bless us, every one,” Toshiro quipped as they compared orders. “Aww, the dates don’t match.” He’d managed to wrangle a leave pass to coincide with Spencer’s prescription for ‘off-site rehabilitation.’
“I’m a big boy. I’ll follow you up by train.”
Toshiro left the name and address of the hotel they would stay in, and the train Spencer was to take. He didn’t have a problem following local customs, but he did have a problem with Toshiro’s parting smartass remark. “Tough break, buddy. I’ll have three whole days of pretty snow bunnies all to myself.”
Spencer’s lips twisted. Toshiro’s mention of pretty girls reminded him of the girl coming out of the shop. More than once, his dreams had included her face. Sometimes the nightmare of the storm cleared and he saw the face of the moon, shining brightly, and the girl dancing in its soft glow, before his dream-self put his foot down on something soft, and the lightning struck again, setting everything on fire.
He spent some time on the train reading a thin book of Japanese folktales he’d found in a Tokyo book shop near the station that catered to Westerners. He knew all the stories already, though, so he set the book down and dozed as best as he could.
The army wouldn’t send him out with painkillers, but the sympathetic nurse had given him a stronger dose just before he left. The meds put him in a light haze as he watched the snow-covered countryside speed by as the train climbed higher into the mountains. The clack-clack of the wheels almost drowned out the whispering voices.
Almost.
<
br /> He exited the train at Nagano in brilliant, chilly sunshine. He found the connecting local line to take him further up into the mountains. He shared space with couples, young families carrying ski equipment, and older people in large tour groups. Some time later, the skies had clouded over with the waning afternoon and by the time he reached the local stop, they were heavy with impending snow.
Buses with the kanji for different hotels and resorts waited outside, but none matched the instructions Toshiro had given him. With a glance towards the sky, Spencer shouldered his pack. He couldn’t wait for a bus with the first, fat flakes starting to fall all around him. He adjusted the pack to ease the load on his scarred leg and set off away from the train station. Toshiro’s directions said the hotel was ‘halfway up the mountain’ and judging from the spectacular view from the station itself, he was already close to halfway up.
He paused at the intersection leading away from the train station. Toshiro’s written instructions, now crumpled in his hand, showed the hotel kanji, and a symbol that looked like a bowl with vapors rising above it—the onsen mark. The signs at the intersection showed the same symbol, and the arrow pointing straight up matched the hotel kanji.
Spencer stuffed the paper back into his pocket and followed the arrow up the mountain. The snow fell gently and no walk in Japan would ever be as bad as one through the sweltering jungle. Small houses stood on either side of the street, thinning out as he passed through the village and into snow-covered woodlands.
Small signs still marked the path with the little steaming-pool symbol. As Spencer climbed, the snow thickened, and the wind picked up, rattling the tops of the trees until he could no longer tell whether the whispering that followed him came from the trees or his own head. The sun, already blotted out by clouds, dipped behind the mountains and washed everything in blue.
He passed another sign and looked up, surprised to find that the night had almost completely fallen, and the only thing he could see was a single lantern above a sign just at a bend in the road ahead. He looked around. The snow in the woods glowed faintly, lighter blue in the indigo dusk. He wasn’t cold—didn’t think he’d ever be cold again, after the night of the storm and all that fire—but he noticed the wind from the way the snowflakes hit his cheek and dotted up his glasses. The little village was below him, somewhere outside his vision after the road had turned a few times and the trees grew taller. His leg throbbed with a steady heartbeat that he only now felt.
Gotta keep moving or the muscles will lock up. Even before the injury, in Basic Training, it was always Keep Moving. Standing still made you realize how heavy your pack was. Standing still made you realize how sweaty and soaked your feet were.
Standing still made you a target. Standing still made you dead.
He took a slow step forward, towards the lantern. When he reached it, he realized the bend was actually an intersection. He pulled the paper out of his pocket and squinted at the kanji.
The wind chose that moment to pick up and the paper was torn out of his hand. He made a grab for it, but the scrap fluttered up and out of his reach. “Dammit.”
The sign beneath the light bore the onsen symbol, but damned if he could tell if the kanji were the right one or not. But it was getting late, and the road leading up had no markings, while the road to the right stood between two stone pillars and had signs of civilization, including another light in the distance, illuminating a low, wooden building. That must be it. I bet that’s it. It has to be it. Any further up, and I’ll be at the top of the mountain.
Without further hesitation, he passed between the pillars.
* * *
The inn looked deserted, except for the single lantern burning to the side of the door. Spencer almost didn’t step up, but where else was he going to go after sunset? Besides—he checked his watch—it wasn’t late enough to be rude. And the snow was falling harder now, nearly covering the clay-tiled roof of the building.
There was a crude bell to the other side of the door. He stepped up onto the porch and gave the rope a shake. The sonorous chime floated on the night air. Immediately, the door opened and a middle-aged woman opened the door. She bowed to him and motioned him inside, shutting the carved wooden door after him.
Spencer stepped inside the entryway and tried some of his basic Japanese. “I’m sorry, not much Japanese. A room here? Onsen? Friend? Toshiro Takeshi ?”
The woman tilted her head, the ornaments of her hair comb twinkling in the lamplight. She nodded and responded. “We have room. You are welcome in this place.” She pointed to the shoe rack where a single, lonely shoe rested alongside a selection of house slippers.
He removed his shoes and did his best to fit his feet into the largest pair of slippers, then stepped up onto the raised wooden floor of the living space. He followed her past the shoji screen into the main area of the inn. It wasn’t a fancy resort, but rather more of a boarding house, and built in traditional Japanese style. He was grateful that Toshiro had given him supplemental lessons in how to behave in a traditional inn that went beyond that of the base’s expected rules of conduct when on furlough.
The lobby’s main floor rose above the foyer and was made of wood, darkened with age and polished to a subtle sheen. The building was actually bigger than the weather and darkness allowed him to see. Translucent shoji screens would no doubt show spectacular mountain views during the day, but simply gave the room an inviting glow at night.
Spencer had been inside enough traditional Japanese buildings to know that the screens that made up the walls could move, and that the concept of privacy was much stronger than its actuality. He hoped his prescriptions would keep him from becoming a disturbance during the night.
Of course, other people needed to be around to be disturbed. Thus far, he hadn’t even seen other hotel staff. But Toshiro had told him all the area hotels ran regular buses up and down the mountain to get to the ski areas, and that most of the people staying in the area were on the slopes from dawn to dusk. Without a leg injury of his own to slow him down, his friend was undoubtedly out there right now, chatting up the ladies. Or back at the ski lodge, snuggled in with snow bunnies. That bastard.
His hostess led him to one of the low tables in the common area. She bowed and gestured for him to sit in one of the cushioned, legless chairs. The last time he did this in a small restaurant in Tokyo, there was an awkward moment while he learned to apologize for not bending his bad leg to sit properly. He stammered through the Japanese and hoped his pronunciation wasn’t offensive. The hostess replied in Japanese he couldn’t follow, but her mothering motions were universal. She settled him, then took his rucksack and disappeared behind one of the solid walls, leaving him alone in the lobby with only his thoughts.
* * *
Yukiko watched the stranger from the upper balcony of the ryokan. The man from Tokyo had come here! She couldn’t believe her eyes, but the evidence was right below her. Anger boiled in her blood as he followed the okami into the inn, his big yan-kii feet stuffed into the house shoes that did not fit. How could he have found his way here? How could any man have found his way here? The gate kept the settlement well protected from the prying eyes of villagers and hikers. So well-protected that only ghost stories spoke of the youkai on the mountain.
He passed beneath her and murmured something to the landlady. A strange curl began in her stomach at the sound of his voice. Yukiko sank to her knees in the shadows, moving back against the wall to remain out of sight.
A stranger! Here! She pressed her fingers to her lips. She could hear the Grandmothers gathering in wisps and curls of smoke. Not just any stranger—the one she had met outside the fashion shop.
But...a gaijin! She crept along the balcony, staying behind the okami and her guest, her ears straining. Oh, the Grandmothers would be gathering tonight. And she unable to trail along behind them. She clenched her fingers, but no amount of will or wishing produced anything but frost on her fingertips.
How had he foun
d his way here? Had the Grandmothers tricked the hapless foreigner? Had the gods themselves?
How often had she watched the growling motor vehicles chug their way up the mountain to the ski slopes, their drivers and passengers oblivious to the turnoff that led to her home? How many times had she begged the Grandmothers to invite, rather than repel? To allow the okami to open her inn to many guests. Let the wise and well-to-do come to us, rather than waiting upon the hapless, ignorant peasant to become lost looking for firewood in an age of coal and electricity.
But...a gaijin! Surely the gates would not open for a foreign devil, yet remain closed to her countrymen. She watched him bow to the landlady, heard him struggle through an apology. She watched his movements carefully and saw the malignant qi around his leg. A flicker of something else caught the corner of her eye, but she blinked and it was gone.
She cursed the solidity of a body that did not permit her to come closer unobserved, or to see all the qi surrounding him.
Curiosity overpowered uncertainty at the foreigner’s presence. She flew down the stairs and around to the back, to the courtyard where the cookfire burned. On her way through the back hallway, she snagged one of the inn’s happi coats reserved for staff and put it on over her yukata. The coat matched the one worn by Okami-san, who could be heard humming softly as she made her way down the guest hall, probably replenishing towels. More likely shaking the dust from them.
Yukiko spared not another thought for the towels or the landlady. Instead, she grabbed for items off the storage shelves—a pot, tea bowls, chasen whisk, ceramic tea caddy—and placed them on a tray with cloths, her hands automatically arranging the items in proper order. She poured hot water from the kettle over the fire into the pot on the tray, and—ai-ya!—sweets! There must be sweets.
Spirits of the Season: Eight Haunting Holiday Romances Page 16