Seasons Between Us

by Alan Dean Foster

  I relaxed a bit. She let go and put her hands on my shoulder. I fidgeted a bit. I didn’t really like being touched, even by Mom.

  “I suppose it’s possible,” she said, completely serious. “There’s a lot science doesn’t understand yet. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

  I had no idea who Horatio was, and she must have guessed this, because she quickly added, “This is in a play written by Shakespeare. He was a famous author. Maybe next year I can start taking you to the theatre with me. If you’re mature enough for those UFO Magazines of yours, you are mature enough to see a play for adults.”

  Grandma sometimes went with her, but Great-Grandma hated the theatre. My mom always told her it was her only indulgence.

  “I would be happy to share your indulgence,” I said, and Mom laughed again.

  “You’re eavesdropping on me, I see.” She rubbed her eyes.

  I almost told her, “And you’re reading my magazines,” but decided not to say anything.

  I needed to think this over.

  The streetlight burned out before the end of winter. Did I finally ruin it by glaring at it so much? People in municipality uniforms came with a truck and tried to fix it. They gave up after a while, and just left the broken streetlight there. When the snow fell, the moonlight sparkled on it even when the corner was dark.

  “Are you going to say goodbye to Tamara?” Grandma asked.

  I shook my head. “Tamara is not my friend anymore.”

  “Oh. She looked like such a nice girl.”

  Mom pulled Grandma away and whispered something; I only heard the word anti-Semites. Grandma only responded with another “Oh,” but she left me alone after that. I didn’t understand, but they wouldn’t explain. Anti-Semitism was about Jews and we weren’t Jewish. Or were we? We had a Catholic Bible.

  I packed my toys into large, boring boxes of brown cardboard. My mom gave me a bag of Hungarocell pieces, but I told her I hated the sound they made when they brushed against each other. So I just put my toys in the boxes and my mom poured the Hungarocell pieces on top.

  Outside, the birds were returning. My mom bought me a bird guide for kids. It had drawings of all the birds and where they travelled and when. I liked it a lot, but now it had to go into the box too.

  Packing relaxed me and helped me think. No one else flew across the room when they tried to tackle me, though that was also because I learned to fight better, and I wasn’t taken by surprise. But there were enough strange things happening around me to keep me wondering.

  The news said Uri Geller was a fraud, and there was a big back and forth. I felt bad for him a bit, but I was also angry a bit, because what if he really was a fraud? That would be bad for the people who could really bend spoons and move things with their minds, and maybe even find oil. Now nobody would believe them. Maybe nobody would believe me.

  I put my book about Hungarian folk beliefs into the box too. My mom got this for me after I explained the bit about Uri Geller finding oil. She said villagers used to find water underground with a dowsing rod, but not everyone was equally good at it. The book explained how to make a dowsing rod from a willow branch, but I didn’t work up my courage yet to try. Besides, would I then dig up the playground? I didn’t want to shovel. In any case, I was sure Hungarian villagers back in the day had no human-alien hybrids, and yet some of them could still find water underground, so I decided there was a chance I was human after all. Or maybe a mutant, like in those new American comics I started reading. It was cool to read about people like me, even if they were just in flashy, made-up stories.

  Or maybe it was my grandfather who had been the human-alien hybrid. He foretold the future, after all. But it wasn’t like I could ask him about it anymore. Or maybe some people were just magic, had always been. Now it was allowed to talk about such things, but after forty years of occupation, no one knew about magic anymore. Instead of strange alien powers, it was strange human powers.

  In the new town, maybe I could even learn Hebrew and find out what the Bible really said about aliens. Or strange human powers. I grabbed the Bible I’d smuggled into my bedroom permanently during the winter. No one had noticed I had it—that I still had it. I put it on top of the book about Hungarian folk customs, and I hoped that wasn’t a sacrilege either way. Could I learn about these, both? I figured I could, and if somebody didn’t like it, I could defend myself. With my punches and kicks, if not with my powers.

  The chalkboard was the last thing left. It still said THE HIDDEN KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY. Maybe once we moved, I could find some new friends who could join the Society. We could try bending spoons with our minds, though to be honest, I tried bending the spoons in the school dining hall, and they were so weak I could bend them just with my hands.

  Maybe this meant I was becoming a big girl, after all.

  Of course, then Auntie Margit yelled at me for destroying school property, but it was worth it. Even though I had to get extra points in all my math assignments to make up for the black marks because of my improper behaviour.

  We were moving. Life would get a fresh start.

  Outside, I heard a loud rumbling, and I stepped to the windowsill. Next to the streetlight, a repair truck was pulling up, all shiny and new, and people in coveralls jumped out of it, cheerful in the springtime sun.

  Author’s Notes to My Younger Self: Rabbi Tarfon says in Pirkei Avot (2:16), “It is not upon you to finish the work, but you also aren’t free to neglect it”. Improving the world is a lengthy process that might appear endless, but every little bit genuinely helps, and contemplating that can help us go on.

  The Light of Stars

  Amanda Sun

  Natsumi is sweeping the stone pathway around the main shrine when the elderly couple tumble over the edge of the cliff. She catches the man’s eyes for a moment, looking at her with vague recognition, before the two topple with linked arms, their pale blue and dusty rose yukatas billowing behind them. Natsumi’s broom clatters to the ground, her body lit with fiery shock as she stumbles toward the vacant clifftop. The path around the shrine buildings is well marked, and far from the edge. And yet they stood there, and now they do not, falling toward the beach far below.

  Natsumi leaps over the rope marking the path, her red hakama skirt sticking to her legs in the Okinawa heat, the stones scattering in a spray underneath her. She slows near the edge, her sandals slick against the rock. She drops to her knees, grabs the sharp cliff with desperate fingers, thrusts her head forward to gaze down at the beach and the broken bodies below.

  There’s no one there. Only a scrap of cornflower blue fabric, swirling with the lapping of the tide, spinning lazy circles in the clear turquoise water.

  Has she imagined it? But how can she imagine two entire people, arms linked, with her own eyes wide open? Her heart pounds against her chest, even as relief takes hold. If it was true, there would be bodies. There is only the curl of water and foam on sand. The humidity of a Naha summer has clouded her mind, perhaps.

  But she’s so certain of what she’s seen. She can’t forget the man’s gaze as the couple willingly dropped forward, his eyes locked with hers, as though he knew her.

  After another moment she stands, smoothing her crimson hakama skirt, her long white sleeves. She makes her way back to the rope barrier, steps over the fraying cord. She picks up her broom and sweeps the stones she’s scattered back off the pathway.

  There are no bodies. And so she must dismiss whatever she is certain she has seen.

  She’s been at Namanoue for nearly two months now as a miko, a shrine maiden, though she’s never seen anyone stray from the path before. It was her grandmother who suggested this as a good part-time job while Natsumi studies at the Naha College of Nursing.

  “I’m not sure they will take her on,” her mother had said with
hesitation. She had run her fingers through Natsumi’s hair after, as if in apology, twisting the strands into tiny golden brown curls. “Another job might be more suitable.”

  “Halfs are so much more common these days,” her grandmother had countered. She’d always been as sharp as the prickle of an Adan tree. She didn’t believe in making space for feelings. Such things were unnecessary. “No one will bat an eye.”

  Of course, that hadn’t been completely true. One of the priests had raised his eyebrows at Natsumi’s brown hair and paler skin, and had turned to whisper to another of the ordained kannushi. “Do you think she can read Japanese?”

  Natsumi had pretended not to hear, as she had pretended all her life. And in the end they passed her the forms to fill out, all feigning that nothing was different. On hearing her grandmother had once been a miko there, too, they gave her the job. But the weight of their words has not left her shoulders. She has to prove herself as capable as a full-blooded Japanese girl, whatever that might mean.

  Which is why she doesn’t want them to find her sprawled over the cliff, shouting desperately for an elderly couple that doesn’t exist.

  When the stones have been cleared away, Natsumi leans the broom against the far side of the shed tucked behind the old maple tree. She walks the slow maze of paths, stopping to politely direct a tourist, then another. She walks around the looming red of the main shrine, bird chirps echoing from high above in the musty, wooden rafters. A woman in a broad-rimmed sun hat grabs hold of the thick rope draped from the ceiling. As she shakes it from side to side, the suzu bells rattle and clank above. The lady claps loudly, head bowed. The man next to her is throwing yen into the tithing box, coins clinking against the wooden slats.

  Natsumi walks through all of this, feeling at once both invisible and exposed. She is as much a part of this shrine as the bells and boxes and stone Shisa dog-lions that line the pathways. She ducks through the main shrine, under the cloth lightning bolts that drape from the thick prayer rope tied above. There is a small building to the right, and she lets herself in the side door, curving around the boxes stacked on the ground.

  “Otsukare,” she says as she approaches Misato near one of the windows, to let her know she’s here to replace her. The other miko smiles, rising to her feet. She’s not from Okinawa like Natsumi, but lives with her boyfriend above the steak house near Onoyama Station.

  “Otsukare-sama,” Misato answers, lifting a hand to smooth back her black hair. “We’ll need some more of the En-Musubi charms.”

  Natsumi nods, striding toward the window and the waiting customers. She has barely a moment in between sales to reach for a replacement box, filling the baskets on the table in front of her with omamori, the shrine charms.

  There are golden pouches with embroidered white flowers, and long crimson ones with stitched gilded kanji. There are floral discs with tassels of crimson and navy blue, and even pairs of bells tied to woven rainbow thread. She nods her head in quick bows as she wraps them for each pilgrim, sliding them with a jingle and crinkle into the tiny white paper bags, sealing them with a Naminoue sticker before she passes the bags through the window with both hands, bowing her head as they’re taken. And yet through it all her thoughts fall on the elderly couple, on that moment as they went over the cliff.

  A bead of sweat rolls along the curve of her face. It must be the heat.

  There were no bodies.

  And yet.

  “Protection from Evil, please,” says the next man in line.

  She nods, reaching for the golden pouch with unfurling stitched flowers. She crinkles the bag open, slides the charm inside, traces the red Naminoue sticker with her fingertips to seal the bag.

  “Thank you,” she says, pressing the bag into his hands. As he turns, she sees the edge of his amused smile, the satisfied glint in his eyes.

  Eyes that swirl with stars.

  “Success in Exams, please,” the girl next in line says, but Natsumi is staring at the man walking away. He wears an old-style kimono, an elaborate golden obi tying the cobalt fabric swirled with embroidered ravens. Half of his hair is swept into a samurai bun, and his wooden sandals clatter against the stone.

  The stars in his eyes whirled and churned, the colours in them drifting as though they were lenses into the galaxy. The shock is as cold as space, and as isolating. It is impossible, and fears clings to her as she drifts alone through the chill of something beyond reality.

  Bodies falling and vanishing like spirits. Stars orbiting where eyes should be.

  She begins to wonder if she’s gone mad. And she fears either answer.

  She searches up Naminoue Shrine on her phone as the small four-car train jerks her around the curves of Naha City. She looks for any news articles about an elderly couple plummeting from the cliff, or accidental drownings on the beach. She thinks about looking up eyes made of swirling stars, but even she knows that it’s ridiculous. The heat has finally gotten to her, rippling like a mirage. She clings to the explanation the way the heat clings to her skin. She has prayed to the kami at Naminoue countless times; never has she considered the terror of something answering her.

  She doesn’t speak of the cliff or the stars when she arrives home. She knows what she’s seen doesn’t make sense. Instead, she strips off her hakama and blouse, unties her long brown hair and puts on shorts and a tank. She pores over her stack of textbooks for the pathogens exam she has in the morning. She searches for symptoms of psychosis, of heatstroke, of mental breakdown.

  When she turns out her light, she stares up at the spackled white ceiling, and she sees the couple falling, and the kimono man’s strange eyes. The edge of his knowing grin.

  She rides the train to the Naha College of Nursing, scribbles down her answers on the exam, and attends her lectures. She walks to Naminoue, passing under the towering stone Torii that arches over the entrance to the shrine. She climbs the steps toward the chozuya, dipping a bamboo ladle into the cool basin of water to drip it over her fingers. A ripple extends out from the other side of the chamber, and she looks up.

  A little boat made from a walnut shell teeters along the surface of the water, bobbing from side to side as it sails toward her. Someone has put a tiny maple leaf in the centre as a mast and sail. The little shell tips and swirls as it glides between the ladles poised along the edge of the basin.

  Natsumi catches the walnut shell in her ladle and lifts it out, cupping the walnut shell in her hand. The chozuya is for purifying visitors before they pray at the shrine. She needs to move this child’s creation.

  But as she sees its cargo, she drops the shell with a startled cry. Two water bugs dash out as it hits the ground, racing for the safety of the underbrush. They leave a trail of tiny wet footprints that fade quickly in the unforgiving Okinawan sun. The tipped walnut lies at Natsumi’s feet. The mast curls against the ground, the maple leaf puckering under the weight of the shell.

  She wonders what child had the time and skill to coax two of the horned bugs into the shell, to bring them all the way here to the shrine above the beach. Is such a thing possible?

  But it is not old, worn feet pushing away from sheer rock. It is not a dark gaze scattered with swirling light.

  She puts down the ladle and carries on to the sales building to get changed.

  She walks past the shrine, a child tugging the thick rope back and forth. He’s wearing an old-fashioned straw hat like they wear in the ricefields, and overalls that are patched and stained. Is he the one who brought the water bugs? Is he lost? Natsumi looks for his parents, but sees no one else.

  The child turns to leave, a tuft of tail swishing behind him.

  Natsumi’s bag clatters to the ground.

  When she looks up again, the child is gone, and a tanuki is scampering toward the stairs. The straw hat lies on the ground, its brim lifting in the breeze.

 
; She hears a laugh, and turns her head.

  The man in the cobalt kimono reclines across the tiles of the shrine roof, his eyes swirling with moving stars.

  Near her feet two ravens flutter into the sky with a clatter of wings and a squawk as loud as the pound of her heart.

  When she looks again, the man is gone.

  “Are you all right, child?”

  Natsumi barely makes it over the edge of the foyer before she collapses on the hallway floor. She is studying hallucinations in class, the deterioration of reality. She knows the signs to look for. “Grandmother,” she says. “I . . . I’m not well.”

  “Come and tell me what’s happened,” her grandmother says. She wraps her short arms around Natsumi, but she’s small and old, and lacks the strength to pull her up. Natsumi stumbles to her feet, follows her grandmother into the tatami room of their tiny old house. She pours a glass of cool oolong tea, gives it to Natsumi as she strokes the girl’s brown hair.

  “Now then,” she says. “Tell me everything.”

  Natsumi doesn’t want to speak. She doesn’t want to tell her grandmother all the strange things she’s seen, how the gold sculpted dragon’s eyes moved to look at her, how the Shisa statues wagged their tails and scratched at their stone ears when no one was looking. How a lurking shadow jumped aboard the back of a salaryman who forgot to tie his unlucky fortune paper to the post. She doesn’t want to disappoint her grandmother further, the way she must’ve when she was born with brown hair, when she learned her military father’s English faster than her mother’s Japanese.

  But fear causes her to relent. She has drifted in its isolating grip too long. She sips the cool oolong tea, her fingers like tips of frost on the glass.

  “I saw a man and woman fall,” she says at last. “An elderly couple, past the rope barrier. They went over the edge, Grandmother.”