She delayed Akane’s deflowerment until the girl was almost seventeen, not wanting to have her damaged physically or emotionally, and she chose one of her favorite clients-Hayato, younger son of a middle-rank warrior family, a good-looking man, not too old, who adored women but was not possessive and was adept in the art of love. Others had offered more money for Akane’s virginity, but Haruna disqualified them for various reasons: too old, too selfish; drank too much; could often not perform.

Akane enjoyed sex as much as she had thought she would. She had other clients besides Hayato, though he remained her favorite and she was grateful to him for all he taught her, but she regarded them all with the same amused detachment, and as Haruna predicted, it made her all the more desirable. By the time she was nineteen, her fame had spread throughout the city. People came to the house on the side of the mountain hoping for a glimpse of her. Haruna had to employ extra guards to dissuade rowdy hopefuls who turned up drunk and amorous. Akane rarely went outside, other than to walk in the shrine garden and look out over the bay with its steep-cliffed islands fringed with white in the indigo sea. From the top of the volcano, where sulfurous steam issued from the old crater, she could see the whole city: the castle rising opposite from the sheer seawall that her grandfather had built, its white walls gleaming against the dark forest behind it; the huddle of houses in the narrow streets, the roofs glistening after rain in the morning sun; the fishing boats at the port; the canals and the rivers. She could even see the stone bridge rising from between its bristles of scaffolding.

The bridge was finished in the spring, just as new green leaves were bursting from willow and alder by the river, beech and maple on the mountain, poplar and ginkgo in the temple gardens. Akane had gone with Hayato to look at the cherry blossoms around the shrine, and when they returned, Haruna drew the man aside and whispered to him.

Akane walked slowly ahead to her room and called to the maid to bring wine, feeling the anticipation of pleasure that Hayato always aroused in her. He made her laugh; his mind and tongue were as quick as hers. The air was soft and warm, full of the sounds and scents of spring. She gazed at the white arch of her foot and could already feel his tongue there. They would spend the rest of the afternoon together and then bathe in the hot spring, and she would see no one else after him but eat and sleep alone.

However, when Hayato came into the room, his face was somber and full of pity.

“What is it?” she said at once. “What’s happened?”

“Akane.” He sat down next to her. “Your father is to be sealed within the stones of his bridge. Lord Otori has ordered it.” He did not attempt to allay or soften the news but told her carefully and clearly. Yet she still did not understand.

“Sealed? His body?”

He took her hands then. “He is to be buried alive.”

Shock closed her eyes and momentarily wiped all thoughts from her mind; a bush warbler called piercingly from the mountain. In another room someone was singing of love. A fleeting regret came for the pleasures she had expected, which now had to be laid aside, which would be smothered by grief.

“When?”

“The ceremony will be held in three days’ time,” Hayato replied.

“I must go to my parents,” she said.

“Of course. Ask Haruna to order a palanquin. Let my men escort you.”

He touched her gently on the side of her face, meaning only to comfort her, but his sympathy and the feel of his hand combined to ignite her passion. She pulled at his clothes, feeling for his skin, needing his closeness. Normally their lovemaking was slow, controlled, and restrained, but the collision with grief had stripped her of everything but the blind need for him. She wanted him to cover her, to obliterate her, to reduce her to the basic drive of life in the face of brutality and death. Her urgency fueled his, and he responded with a new roughness, which was just what her body craved.

Afterward she wept with long, gasping sobs while he held her, wiped her face, and held the wine bowl to her lips so she could drink. The depths of her grief, the ferocity of the passion, and his tenderness all undermined her. She felt on the verge of wanting to cling to him forever.

“Akane,” he said. “I love you. I will speak to Haruna about you. I will buy your freedom from her. I want you to be my own. I will do anything for you. We will have children together.”

She allowed herself to reflect, once, How pleasant that would be, while at the same time she thought coldly, That will never happen, but she did not reply.

When she finally spoke, it was to say, “I want to be alone now. I must go to my mother before the end of the day.”

“I will arrange the escort.”

“No,” she said. “You are very kind, but I prefer to go alone.”

Everyone would recognize whose men were with her. It would be as good as announcing she was his mistress already. Haruna had not been consulted, and anyway she would not let any man own her. She would not fall in love with Hayato, though she knew she had been on the edge of love earlier, when her body had known such gratitude for the intensity of both his passion and his tenderness. She drew back from the crater where love’s fires burned and steamed; she would never allow herself to plunge into it.

AKANE STOOD WITHOUT moving; she would not weep. Her mother was doing all the weeping at home, had been prostrate with grief for days.

“Don’t make it harder than it has to be,” her father had said, just once, and Akane had resolved then that she would save her tears for when he was dead, when he would be beyond all suffering and fear and would not be weakened or shamed by her sorrow.

The priest was shaking a white-tasseled stick over the parapet that had become a tomb. The stone bridge, completed after six years, was festooned with new straw ropes and white streamers tied to fresh young willow wands. Chanting rose from the crowd, and drums were beating sonorously and rhythmically. From the far side of the bridge, the young boys who served at the shrine to the river god came, dancing the heron dance.

They were dressed in yellow and white, with tassels like feathers bound around wrists and ankles. Each held a talisman in his right hand, with a design made of bronze metal that reminded her of a heron’s skull-the small brain pan and the huge beak, the empty eye-sockets.

Did he hear the drums and the chanting? Did any sound penetrate into his grave? Did he regret the obsession that had driven him to build this beautiful thing that now spanned the river with its four perfect arches and had brought him to this end, sacrificed to placate the river god and to prevent him from ever building anything to rival it?

People said it was built by sorcery. Many still poled across the river in ferry boats rather than use it. It changed the song of the river. More than fifteen workers had died during its construction, as though the river had already extracted payment for the arrogance and effrontery of man. Yet the head of the clan, Lord Otori himself, had ordered its building; and the same Lord Otori had ordered her father’s death to quieten the fears and suspicions of the people, and maybe also to placate the river god who had so nearly taken his younger son, Takeshi, and had taken Mori Yuta, the oldest son of the horsebreaker.

The dancers came from the southern end of the bridge, their feet almost soundless on the smooth stone. On the northern side, a small wooden platform had been erected, matted like an outdoor room, the sides swathed in silk cloth, the roof a canopy. On either side, banners rippled in the soft breeze, so the Otori heron seemed to fly.

Lord Otori sat in the center of the platform, flanked by his brothers on his right, and his two sons, Shigeru and Takeshi, on his left.