After a short rest, he felt his head and found his hair wet with blood and a large, painful swelling behind his right ear. Otherwise he seemed whole, though very sore in places. He looked up. If memory served, he had fallen from the fourth level to the second. The beam had caught his shoulders and kept him from landing headfirst on the stone floor of the entrance level. He must have been unconscious for hours if it was nighttime. He listened. All was silent outside the pagoda. The market was over, and people had left without discovering his fall. Or, more likely, they had ignored it.

He got to his hands and knees and crept backward down the stairs. In the almost complete darkness he had to trust his sense of touch not to step through a hole and fall the rest of the way. When he finally reached solid ground and stood up, the world spun dizzily for a moment. He staggered toward the lighter rectangle of the doorway and looked out.

The night was moonless, and the courtyard lay deserted. In the darkness, the shapes of trees, buildings, and walls loomed strangely, and he suddenly remembered the reputation of the temple. Sweat broke out on his body and his hair bristled unpleasantly. Everybody knew deserted temples were dwelling places for demons and hungry ghosts. With a shudder he shrank back into the doorway. But a strange rasping sound, followed by a skittering noise, came from under the stairs, and with a mighty leap Tora plunged down the stone steps and into the open.

Almost immediately a loud wail rose from somewhere near the monstrous black shape of the old temple hall. Tora froze. Several dark figures detached themselves from the hall and moved toward him, gliding low across the ground and wailing loudly. With a hoarse cry, Tora ran for the gate.

When he had put some distance between himself and the haunted temple, he stopped to orientate himself. He wished himself elsewhere with all his heart, but having come this far he would find that bamboo grove.

After a false turn and falling once over some garbage in an alley, setting off a dog’s barking, he found a wall over which a thick tangle of bamboo branches drooped their rustling leaves, sere and shredded by the winter winds but still dense enough to hide the house behind the closed gate. The wall was too high to climb and the gate looked sturdy. Tora tried to make out the inscription over the gate, but the characters were in Chinese. Inside, a sleepy crow gave a hoarse croak.

At that moment, the gate creaked open. Tora shrank into the shadow of the wall. A small hooded figure emerged, relocked the gate, and walked slowly up the street.

Tora was after him in an instant. “Stop!” he cried, grabbing the other man’s shoulder. “Let’s have a look at you.”

The hood slipped back, and he caught a brief glimpse of a round, ugly face under bristly gray hair. Then the man seized his arm with both hands, twisted, and jerked. Pulled off balance, Tora released his hold and tried to recover. Too late. With another mighty shove in the back, he went sprawling, and when he scrambled to his feet, the hooded man had disappeared.

Cursing, Tora ran this way and that before giving up and returning to the gate. He decided to see how large the area was. A narrow path followed the wall toward the back. He had only taken a few steps along this track when it happened. A moment before the excruciating blow struck the back of his head, he had a dim impression of running steps. Then he pitched forward and passed out.

TWENTY

A Hell of Ice

Yori disappeared the day of Tora’s adventures.

Because Harada’s condition had worsened, everyone in the Sugawara household was preoccupied with his care, and the boy was left to amuse himself. Yori’s absence was not noticed until the hour of the midday rice. At first it caused only mild concern, because Yori had wandered off before. But when time passed without his return and it grew colder outside, a search was organized, first of the house, gardens, and stable, then of the immediate neighborhood.

By midafternoon both Tamako and Akitada were pacing the floor. Unable to wait any longer, Akitada threw on an extra robe, put on his warm boots, and rushed out into the street. He knocked on every gate and personally questioned every resident of the surrounding streets, every passerby, every vendor, every beggar, and every passing servant, asking if they had seen the child. Nobody had.

Toward dusk, Akitada, now frantic with fear, picked up the first news at one of the mansions in the next quarter. A house-boy had passed the Sugawara mansion on an errand during the morning and noticed a small man with short bushy gray hair hovering by the open gate. The man had been gesturing to someone inside.

Then Saburo came rushing up with more news. In the next block, a cook’s children were playing in the alley when a hooded monk passed them, leading a small boy by the hand. They had stared because the boy had worn a very pretty red silk robe. It had to be Yori. And the hooded monk?

Akitada was seized with a sudden, gut-wrenching, irrational fear, but he told Saburo calmly, “I believe I know where he is. Tell your mistress that I have gone to bring him back and not to worry.”

Noami! It must have been Noami. The bushy hair, barely grown out; the children thinking of a monk, because Noami, dressed in monk’s robes, had probably covered his head against the cold. It did not explain why he had taken Akitada’s son.

Akitada set out for the painter’s home at a loping run, telling himself that there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for what had happened.

What was more likely than that Yori, bored and left out of his elders’ activities, had spied Noami passing the house? The boy, remembering the interrupted painting lesson, would have begged the artist for another one, and Noami, unwelcome in Akitada’s house, would have offered to teach Yori at his home.

The distance between Akitada’s house and Noami’s Bamboo Hermitage was nearly two miles, and Akitada kept to the most direct route. Rushing along, he attracted stares and soon began to perspire in spite of the freezing cold.

He was no longer accustomed to exercise and soon tired, but he kept up his pace until he reached the artist’s place. It was getting dark, and the narrow street was as deserted as it had been the last time. When he pounded on the gate, the dry leaves of the bamboo rustled mysteriously and he half expected to hear the raucous cry of the crow again. Instead there was the sound of someone shuffling through the fallen leaves inside. A wooden bar was pulled back and the gate swung slowly open.

Noami stood before him. A slow smile stretched the wide mouth, his large yellow teeth making him look more than ever like a grinning monkey.

Like the monkey that ate the plum, Akitada thought, and snapped, “Do you have my son here?”

“But certainly, my lord.” Noami bowed and threw the gate wide. “The youngster has enjoyed himself enormously. Please come in.”

Relief washed over Akitada and left him wordless. He followed Noami down the path to his studio. At the entrance they both removed their boots. Akitada said peevishly, “May I ask why you brought him here?”

“To paint.” Noami raised his brows in surprise. “I came by to see if he might like a lesson. The boy told me that you and your lady were busy, but that he might visit my studio. I was about to bring him back.”

It sounded plausible. Yori was very likely to have said such a thing if he wished to go. Still, Noami’s high-handed invitation had put them all to immense trouble and worry. Akitada said brusquely, “We did not know and have been searching for him since he left.”

“Oh, dear,” said the painter blandly. “I am so sorry. It is amazing what youngsters can get up to. Please come in.”