Wonderland

by Marie O'Regan

  Airi sparks up a cigarette. Summer night air lies blanket-heavy across her bare shoulders. She grew up in rural Itakura in a house without air conditioning. On those stifling nights, all you could do was sweat, listless on a stripped-down futon, the futile drone of oscillating fans pushing hot air around. A sluggish breeze through the windows, if you were lucky. Here in Osaka the whirring cicadas compete with main-road traffic to produce the most noise, and the humidity is laced with diesel fumes, the stale heat pumped out by a thousand air conditioners. Sweat-dappled forehead, the persistent cling of damp clothes. The musty scent of unwashed bodies in too-small apartments.

  She exhales. It is not yet full dark; the apartment blocks are hazy silhouettes against a sky the hue of a fading bruise. Grey smoke rises from her parted lips, hanging still in the air for a long moment. The complete absence of a breeze feels like punishment, and yet she persists. Summer in Osaka is yet to defeat her, and remaining outside is an act of defiance, breathing smoke into the soup-thick night. To retreat to her tiny air-conditioned apartment would feel too much like failure. Not that she has anyone to prove herself to; her friends are scattered across the city, and the luckier ones are probably embracing the chilly relief of their own air con; skin gleaming rather than glistening, the deliberately cultivated glow of the young and the beautiful, while she sweats punitively on her tiny balcony.

  Down on the darkening street, something small and quick darts across the road. Sometimes, in the height of summer, the rats move in. They chew on the electrical wires and cables, build nests beneath the vending machines. They scurry through the children’s park, feasting on the remnants of dropped snacks, the detritus of small children. The ripe trash bags left out by her less disciplined neighbours, improperly sorted, marked with lurid red “rejected” stickers and left to rot.

  For a long moment, she sees nothing; everything is still save for the maddening dance of mosquitos, insubstantial as heat haze. And then it emerges from behind a parked car. A fox, russet hide blood-dark in the gloom. It is strangely unhurried as it enters the children’s park, incongruous against the sand-pale gravel. Every few steps it pauses, looks around, as though surprised to find itself here, surrounded by looming apartment blocks. Airi nestles her chin in the cup of her palm as she watches it, this well-fed beast with its full, thick tail. She has seen foxes before, but never here, deep in the heart of urban Osaka, and never once such a regal-looking creature.

  The skitter of sandals on sun-warm concrete, loud in the still silence. On the other side of the road, a small child; a tiny girl clutching something small and white, dark hair cropped short. She is surely no older than three. Airi frowns. The streets are deserted; not even the ubiquitous bicycles are out tonight, and the roads are conspicuously quiet, as though the entire city has collectively and secretly agreed to remain inside. Airi leans over the balcony, scanning the street below. Surely there must be a parent in tow. Perhaps they have been distracted by their cell phone. Perhaps the child has wandered out onto the street while they browse the chiller cabinet in the Family Mart, entranced by the fox. Any moment now some harried-looking mother will burst into view, calling after their little darling.

  The child bolts into the road. Instinctively, Airi flinches. The girl does not look before she runs; she is so small, eggshell-fragile in wisteria blue. That there is not a single car on the road does not register to Airi as she stubs her cigarette out on the bricks. She leaps up, pushing the screen door aside and into the apartment, weaving through that narrow, cluttered space, pausing to grab her keys from the dish and tug on her sneakers as she scrambles out the front door. The frantic pitter-patter of her feet on the stairs. Out past the bike racks and onto the pavement, squinting in the serene blue glow of the streetlamps. The child is gone.

  Her heart thuds with exertion as she crosses the road—so empty, so eerie. The harsh rasp of her breathing sparks a recurring memory. Mizuki’s voice, insistent, exasperated: You really ought to quit smoking, Ai-chan, you’re not supposed to have lungs like an incinerator at our age. Rich coming from Mizuki, who subsists on the pizzas she delivers on her hellishly noisy Honda scooter, and who swoons at the thought of walking further than two blocks. The child, Airi realises, is not there. Impossible; a child so small could not have disappeared completely in such a short space of time. She turns in a useless circle, peering down the road; small birds sit silhouetted and static on the power lines, gradually blending in with the blooming dark. Into the children’s park, where there is no child, no fox, no living thing at all save for the languid summer bugs circling the streetlamps. The swings cast spindle-limbed shadows across the gravel. A breeze kisses the treetops; dry leaves whisper conspiracies. A plush rabbit toy, abandoned.

  Scrape marks in the gravel indicate movement. A thin pall of yellow-gold dust lingers in the still air. She has missed the child by mere moments. But this is impossible; there is no path beyond the low bushes, nothing but wire fence and brick wall. A single exit and entrance. But both fox and child are nowhere to be seen. She follows the marks towards a cluster of bushes, a low-hanging tree. She kneels, tentative. “Hello?” Hesitant, so as not to startle. She knows well enough that a cornered fox might bite. A cornered child might, too. There is no sound from the bushes, no motion; a strange, pregnant silence, as though something is holding its breath. As though something is poised and ready to strike.

  Ridiculous. She’d grown up on farmland, curious and wary in equal measures of the mamushi snakes, watchful for suzumebachi nests; there is nothing in the city that can scare her quite so much. She is unfazed by drunks, will glare at subway gropers until they back away, cowed. She reaches a slow hand out, brushing back foliage. The warm-wood scent of temple incense rises up. The space between the leaves is dark. Her hands are wet when she pulls them back, dappled as though with rain. She turns her wrists, examining her skin, the rivulets running down her forearms. And there, inside the bushes, the distant echo of footsteps on stone, the low hiss of rain in the trees. Airi glances back into the still Osaka night, at the cloud-curdled sky and the bone-dry gravel, the perfect stillness of the strange, empty roads. Deserted balconies and darkened windows. The sound of rainfall echoing, impossibly, from deep inside the bushes. A plush white rabbit, abandoned in the middle of the park. All of these things are true.

  A firefly flicker of gold catches her eye, a flutter of motion as something turns, disappears into the deep shadow. She follows before she realises what she’s doing. She is a child again, chasing frogs into the reeds, incurably curious. Headlong into the bushes, into a darkness so full and profound that it feels, just for a moment, like she may never see the sun again.

  * * *

  The patter of rain shocks her summer-warm skin. Instinctively, she ducks beneath an outstretched bough; her damp hair clings to the curve of her forehead. She blinks slowly, adjusting to the deep, sudden gloom. The rich odour of leaf mulch and damp moss and incense, somewhere close by. The air is thin here, sharp with pine-scent; there is a narrow path creeping steeply upwards, choked with thick foliage, a carpet of ferns. Innumerable torii gates burn vermilion in the moonlight, lining the path, disappearing into the blue-dark wilderness.

  She has seen this before, in a different space, a different time. Stone foxes dappled with bright moss, eyes weathered and watchful. A child’s tired legs, and the seashore murmur of a thousand tourists, a hundred unfamiliar tongues. The sweet-salty scent of fresh yaki dango. But this is not that vibrant, sacred place. These paths are unlit, choked with ferns, untroubled by human feet. A lost, moonlit wonderland. The torii gates are weathered and crooked, listing at broken angles like a long and twisted spine. A severed shimenawa rope dangles limp from the lintel, a length of damp, weatherworn twine. The forest has crept in, wrapped lush fingers around pillars, and the paths are engulfed in its mossy gullet.

  A sudden rustling in the undergrowth. She turns, curious, afraid. What silent, dark-dwelling creatures might live in this forgotten place? What has scented her str
ange flesh, is watching her from the shadows? So many places to hide up here. So many places to watch, and to wait. But when it emerges at last—slow, careful, perched in the branches of a black pine—it is only a calico cat, rheumy eyes gleaming jade-green in the dark. A thin creature, pitiful flesh stretched tight over sharp ridges of bone. It regards her with feral suspicion; she remembers these too, the half-wild beasts who haunt the Inari shrine like sleek ghosts. The cat descends; it slips from branch to branch as though half-liquid, all serpentine spine and whiplash tail. In spite of its thinness, it is enormous. It is bigger than any cat she has ever seen, and its claws are half-sheathed sickles, teeth like slivers of bone. Its eyes meet hers, incurious, unthreatened.

  “I’m sorry,” she tells the cat, quite sincerely. “You look so hungry, and I haven’t got anything to give you.” Her bare legs feel exposed, vulnerable; the cat could close its jaws around her ankle, drive sharp teeth into the meat, shredding tendon and bone. There are food carts at the bigger shrines—thick, glistening skewers of grilled beef, cloud-soft mochi—but this shrine belongs to the forest, and this cat is nobody’s pet. It must sustain itself on the small creatures that scurry and hide, that cower in the long grass, so still and quiet. Pickings must be lean of late; up close she can count each vertebra, see the undulating topography of its ribs.

  She thinks of the child, then, wandering deeper and deeper into the twilight forest. Might a hungry cat stalk a lost child? Might it follow them through the trees, into the enveloping darkness, waiting for them to stumble? Might it scent blood, sense the terrified adrenaline, the weakness of exhaustion? There is no sign of the girl here, but she must have come this way, and she cannot possibly have travelled far. She must be within reach.

  The cat turns its hungry gaze towards the gate-tunnel, into the distance, where the path is swallowed by shadow. And in that shadow, a cluster of distant lights like bright eyes, the flicker of flame, white-pale as they pass through the forest. A late-night pilgrimage to the shrine, perhaps, though there is no sound, no sense of motion. It seems the lights are travelling of their own accord, like obon lanterns buoyed on a gentle current. Surely a child would be drawn to those lights.

  Wet ferns brush at her ankles as she ascends, passing beneath the severed shimenawa. The dark unnerves her, the way it bleeds through every gap, every fissure, ebbing like a gentle tide. Like black water at the mouth of an unseen river. The relentless hiss of rain and her exposed skin rippling with gooseflesh. Into the gate-tunnel, in search of the girl-child, alone and vulnerable. A lost and sodden pilgrim following the procession of lights.

  * * *

  The gates are infinite. They are a parade of arthritic limbs held at abject angles, a gallery of dilapidation. Her feet ache miserably; raw skin and damp bones, and still she treads with caution, for mamushi make their home in places like this. Uneven ground underfoot, the sway of loose ankles. She is dressed for hot weather, but the sweat in her hair has long evaporated, the weight of Kansai summer cut loose and drifting; the damp cold permeates her flesh like a fever chill. It feels as though she has been walking for days, and still the lights remain maddeningly distant.

  She could turn back, still. She could leave the child and return to that quiet threshold, that black and empty space between spaces. It is not too late to go home. But when she turns, footsore and rainslick and tired, the path is swaddled by pale, impenetrable mist, the road lost. She cannot go back. The only way out is through, like a sweltering fever dream; she is all aching bones and empty, growling stomach and the mist mocks her, accuses her: Did you really think…? Are you actually that stupid…? Would you truly leave that child to die…?

  And no, of course not, of course she would never, but the lights are as far away as ever, and the girl is nowhere. No child so small could have travelled such a distance so quickly. She must have wandered off the path, somewhere. She must be lost in the deep woods, or asleep beneath a persimmon tree, or perhaps she is warm meat in the stomach of something enormous. Perhaps she is close by, weeping softly in the green-black dark. Airi does not particularly like children. She wards off questions of dating and marriage with blunt force, leaving a string of disappointed relatives and nonplussed friends in her wake. This is not some frustrated maternal crusade but a sense of obligation, of responsibility; no other soul saw that child disappear but her. Nobody would ever think to look for her here. She imagines those small bones couched in bright moss. A scrap of wisteria blue like a flag in the breeze.

  “You’re lost.”

  She looks up. A tall, thin boy, or perhaps a girl, long in the limb and fine-boned, narrow face and summer-dark skin. Underfed and cautious. Thick hair snarled and knotted as though it has never known a comb, half-hidden beneath the hood of a grey cloak. And those eyes, as sharp and green as sea-ice.

  “It can’t be.”

  Lips part in a wide, bright grin. The teeth are needle-sharp. “Can’t it?” The voice is half a purr. A glimpse of a thick, heavy tail flickering between narrow ankles. Airi recalls childhood stories of the weird and the monstrous, her ojisan’s insatiable love of folklore; tales of bakeneko, old and wily cats who shift shape, who dance wild jigs with napkins draped over their heads. Who might lead a man to his doom, if the fancy takes them. “You underestimate what is possible. But then, I’d expect nothing less from a human.”

  There is no obvious hint of threat in the bakeneko’s voice, but cats are capricious beasts; their whims change with the direction of the wind. “You’re right,” she says. “I don’t even really know where I am right now. I came here to find a lost thing and now I’m lost myself.” A small, frustrated laugh. “Could you tell me how to get out of here?”

  “Well, that depends,” the bakeneko purrs. “Where exactly do you want to end up?”

  “If I can at least find a way out of the torii…”

  The grin widens, a flash of garnet tongue. “Why do you suppose I’d help you?”

  “Either you’ve come here to kill me, or to help me.” She looks the bakeneko in the eye, tries not to flinch at the way its pupils dilate. A bear might let you live if you play dead; a cat will only make a toy of your corpse. Mizuki would call her insane, and perhaps Mizuki would be right, but Mizuki is not here. “If you’ve decided to kill me, there’s nothing I can do to stop you. And I’ve nothing to offer you to convince you to help me. But I hope you will.”

  The hollow drum of raindrops on old, rotting wood, a maddeningly familiar rhythm. Somewhere out in the forest an unseen animal calls out, low and eerie. Her heart thrums loud in her ears. The bakeneko’s eyes are bright jewels in the shadow of its hood, unblinking, watching her with what might be suspicion, or admiration, or anger. Her heart plummets into the depths of her gut; her body stiffens, taut-muscled, ready to run, but she is so tired, so lost.

  “Follow the lights,” the bakeneko says at last. “And whatever you do, you must not let them see you.”

  “I’ve been following—” But the bakeneko’s grey cloak melts into the surrounding darkness, dissipating with the smooth ease of ink in water until nothing remains save for a hint of pale green iris, watchful even in its absence. She turns back to the path, to the lights, which have progressed no further, drawn no closer. Their steady distance infuriates her. On aching feet she walks on.

  * * *

  The bakeneko, at least, is true to its word. Further up, the path forks. One leads upwards, a steep track carved into the hillside, slick mud glistening; the other leads down. Here, the gates grow sparse, blasphemous in their disrepair. The loamy smell of rotten wood. Fragments of red-painted pillar nestle in the leaf litter. And between the trees, glimmering in the near distance, the procession of lights. So close, now, that she can almost make out the shapes of the lantern-bearers; indistinct, a slow-flowing river of half-lit figures meandering through the forest.

  The way down is a gauntlet. Thick roots grasp at her ankles; the thin moonlight of the upper slope barely reaches down here, in this deep green gully. If there
are snakes down here she will never see them. The forest floor is cut through with shallow streams, rocks gleaming with wet moss. The descent looks endless.

  She wonders if they can sense her, if they are possessed of keen hearing, a sharp sense of smell. If her flesh carries with it the sour tang of gasoline and cigarette smoke. The bakeneko’s warning nags like an old ache. What will they do if they find her? Their lamplit silhouettes are vague, varied; they look motley, misshapen, but light plays tricks, and so do cats. Are they keen-eyed and fierce-clawed? Are they strange beasts at all, or merely quiet, solemn men searching for some long-forgotten shrine?

  Unpainted torii sprout from the mulch as though grown spontaneously from seed. Enormous sugi trees marked here and there with shimenawa; here the kodama dwell, the tree-spirits who, her ojisan claimed, would curse any man who dared to fell the trees in which they lived.

  “Steady, now.” A whisper from the trees. She looks up, startled, but it is no kodama. The bakeneko peers down at her from a low branch, thin cat-body poised as though to strike. Its ears swivel, tracking sounds too fine for her dull human ears. “You’re almost upon them. If you are truly determined to save the child—well, then you’re an idiot, but that’s no problem of mine. If you must go, go in disguise. If they sense that you are human, they will show no mercy.”

  Airi frowns. “I never said anything about a child.”

  The bakeneko smirks. “And yet, why else would you be here? Strange enough that one human might happen upon the parade. But for you to stumble in after her on those great, clumsy feet, well… Coincidences are so lazy, aren’t they?”

  “The parade…?”

  “Did you not think it strange, human, that your realm would be so empty, so quiet? Didn’t you ask yourself why?” The bakeneko stretches; sickle-sharp claws graze old bark, and Airi knows this is a deliberate reminder; it could still turn on her, if it wanted to. “The night parade is coming. They will leave this forest and pass through into your world. Any human who looks upon them will drop dead on the spot, such is their power. Did you not feel it? That terrible unease, like a sickness, warning you to stay inside?”