Eventually Haseo was surrounded by a wall of rocks and

stopped. “It’s no good,” he said. “There are too many for us to

move. Let’s go back before we wall ourselves in.”

Akitada listened. “The whistling has stopped,” he said.

Haseo listened also and started groping around again.

“Wish we had a light. I can feel the air in my hair. Wait a

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301

minute.” There was clatter, then the rocks beneath them seemed

to come alive and shift.

“Watch out,” cried Akitada as he fell on his back and was

carried downward. Haseo began to curse amid the rumble of

falling rocks. When the noise stopped, Akitada cried, “Haseo?

Are you all right?”

“Yes. I think so.” Haseo’s voice came from somewhere

beyond the rock pile.

“Where are you?”

“You were right. We’re through. The tunnel goes on from here.

Come on, but watch your feet. I got a nasty cut on my ankle.”

“Stand back in case it shifts again.” Akitada groped his way

to the top of the pile carefully, found that he could wiggle

through beneath the roof of the tunnel, then sat and slowly slid

down on the other side.

Their success gave them new hope and they moved forward

again. But soon the tunnel narrowed sharply and the ceiling

dipped until they had to crawl again. It looked as though they

were coming to the end of the lode. Haseo was in front, and

when Akitada got down on his hands and knees, he felt some-

thing wet on the ground. He raised his hand to his nose and

sniffed. Blood.

“Wait, you’re bleeding,” he cried.

Haseo gave a snort—“I know”—and kept crawling.

“It must be bad. We should stop and tie up the wound,” said

Akitada.

“There’s not enough room,” grunted Haseo. Then he

stopped and said, “Amida. I don’t believe it.”

“What?”

“I can see the stars. Either that or I’m dying.”

Since Haseo’s body blocked the crawl space almost com-

pletely, Akitada could not see, but his heart started hammering.

“Can you get out?”

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I . J . P a r k e r

A muffled “Yes, oh, yes” came back on what sounded like a

sob. Then Haseo slid away from him and there, barely lighter

than the tunnel, was a patch of night sky.

Akitada crawled forward like a man in a dream. His hands

touched the moist coolness of grass and he felt his shoulders

brush past the mouth of the tunnel as he slipped through, then

rolled down a steep slope and came to rest in a batch of bracken,

breathing the scent of pine and clover and looking up at a

starry sky.

C H A P T E R E I G H T E E N

T H E G O L D E N P H O E N I X

Little Flower asked to see Tora the next morning. He had just

finished his bowl of watery rice gruel without complaint—he

did not mind sharing with Oyoshi’s large brood—when the

request came. His hopes that Little Flower might have some

new information about Wada to impart were quickly crushed

by the landlady’s knowing wink.

“I’m pretty busy this morning,” he hedged, scratching one of

the flea bites he had picked up overnight.

She grinned her gap-toothed smile and slapped his back

with a cheerful, “Go on, handsome!” Tora, conscious of his new

rank, thought her manner overly familiar, especially when she

added, “You’re the first man Little Flower has lost her heart to.

She deserves something nice for a change.”

He reached for his helmet and edged toward the door. “I’ll

look in later,” he lied.

“It’ll just take a moment.” Oyoshi firmly took his arm and

led him to the back of the hostel.

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I . J . P a r k e r

She flung back Little Flower’s door and pushed him in,

slamming it behind him with a giggle.

Little Flower had taken pains with her toilet. She wore a

garishly printed robe, covered mostly with red and pink peonies

and brilliantly green leaves, and had tied a yellow sash about her

tiny waist. Her face was powdered, the eyebrows black smudges

painted on her forehead, the eyes ringed with charcoal, and her

lips rouged into a tiny rosebud. Someone, perhaps Oyoshi, had

brushed her hair and draped it artfully over her thin shoulders.

On either side of her painted face, a portion of hair had been

whacked off in the style that little girls wore. These small black

wings framed her face, making it appear incongruously young.

Tora, still scratching, simply stared at her.

She smiled—carefully, so as not to disturb the thick layer of

powder—and revealed black teeth. “Do you like it, Master

Tora?” she asked. “I wanted to show you that I can be quite

pretty when I’m not sick. I’m much better today.”

Tora swallowed. “I’m glad.”

She sat down and patted a cushion beside her invitingly.

“Why don’t you keep me company for a little while?”

“I . . . I have things to do.”

Her eyes grew large with hurt. “You don’t like me like this?

The hair? I should have pinned it up. Or perhaps you prefer less

paint? Master Wada doesn’t like me to paint. He wants me to

look like a child, but I thought you . . . you would be used to the women in the cities . . . very elegant and beautiful . . . oh, I

shouldn’t have bothered.” Forgetting the thick white paint, she

hid her face in the peony sleeves and wept.

Tora muttered a curse and knelt beside her. “Don’t do that,

Little Flower,” he said gruffly. “You are really very pretty just as you are. You shouldn’t try to please that animal Wada or me.

You should go home to your family and find some other kind of

work where you don’t get hurt by men.”

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305

But it did no good. She sat there, weeping sadly into her

finery, and after a while, he got up and left.

For once Turtle was nowhere to be found, and Tora

walked to the harbor alone. The day was overcast and a chill

wind whipped up the incoming tide so that the fishing boats

bobbed like chaff among the whitecaps and dirty yellow foam

covered the shore. Gulls swooped with raucous cries, diving for

the small creatures the sea had thrown up on land and which

scrambled madly to return to the safety of the ocean. This land

was inhospitable to man and beast. The scene filled Tora with

more gloom and a sense of urgency.

A few bearers were moving remnants of the previous day’s

cargo, but no new ships from the mainland had arrived, and

the harbor was without its usual staff of constables. Tora

strolled along the street of ramshackle wine shops, warehouses,

and port offices toward the end where some trees and more

substantial roofs signaled better accommodations. He passed

the wine shop where he had first stopped after disembarking. It

was empty, but then it was still early in the day.

The grove of trees was behind a building that bore the sign

“The Golden Phoenix.” Tora stopped and looked the place over.

So this was where Wada had met Little Flower. Somewhere in

back must be the place where he had almost beaten her to

death. He wondered how often a man like that needed to repeat

this sort of experience. There seemed no shortage of poor

women willing to take their chances with such men, but how

sharp were Wada’s appetites? Did he indulge them once a

month, every week, or more often? He wished he could send

Turtle to ask some questions for him. Where was the rascal

when he was needed?

It was much too early for business, and no one seemed

about. Tora decided to play the curious visitor and take a stroll

about the premises. He put his head in the main house first. It