“Well, look what got stuck by the stove!” Stonebird’s son poked me with his index finger.
“Let me go!” I bit the son’s finger like a frightened kitten.
“Say, she can see me. Even in this dim light. A Polonia, huh?” Shaking his sore finger, the son smiled ruefully.
I had no time to process his words.
“Why couldn’t you simply stay in your room? I never thought you’d get up to mischief.” Stonebird clicked her tongue. “Well, you heard everything. I can’t use you anymore. Come!”
She began to drag me. Her command had been for the fire in the stove, because again, a flame flew out and lit the way.
“No! NO! I won’t go to that awful place!” I cried.
I had learned, moments before in this room, that the world held wonders I had never seen. I had begun to look forward to leaving this prison someday, and to seeing the world for myself. Now I faced a real dungeon. My heart broke. Tears flooded my face.
“So you’ve had a look downstairs.”
Stonebird dragged me down the stairwell. My bottom smacked into the stairs, but the dungeon scared me more than any pain.
“Mother, what about the pearl? This girl is the one, right? The Polonia? Even you will have a hard time finding someone to replace her.”
Stonebird’s son followed us.
“I’ll figure it out. The pearl is the only object left,” Stonebird answered. “I’ll buy another child. I’ll buy dozens more.”
She opened the door to a cell with one hand, and prepared to fling me in.
“Is the spell complete?” I heard the voice of the man in his cell nearby.
“All she needs is the moon,” I answered. “Then the coronation will happen! And her ghost son will become king!”
I was shouting. Stonebird slapped my cheek. “What are you talking about?”
I slammed into a wall.
“Say, Prince, it’s you! Still alive, huh?” the son asked. “Just like my mother said. I can barely see you now.”
The son peered into the man’s window and smiled. He had called the man in the cell Prince.
“Listen. Listen to me.” For the first time, the man with white hair showed his face at the window. Pure skin and bones. They’d said he was now twenty, the same age Stonebird’s son was when he died, but he looked decades older, this man who was the real prince of the land.
“I know where you can find the pearl,” he said.
“You do?” Stonebird exclaimed.
“I discovered it, and I’ve been hiding it. No one can find it now.”
“MOTHER!” Stonebird’s son implored her to do something.
“He’s found it, has he?” Stonebird said. “If it’s true, then I’m in a bind, aren’t I?”
“You are.”
“Here I tried to keep my plan secret, to prevent something like this,” Stonebird said, her face disappointed.
“It’s because you made him dive like the others! What’ll you do now?” the son demanded, grabbing Stonebird’s cloak like a spoiled child.
“Only a child’s eyes can see through the lake’s murky depths. And Polonia children can see even better. But there aren’t many Polonias, Son. And this lake is large. My one choice was to get many children to dive, so I made him dive too. He discovered the pearl long ago, it seems … Prince, you duped me completely,” Stonebird finished.
She glanced at me again. She had once more said Polonia.
I heard someone gasp. The woman prisoner threw her body against her door and looked out with her sightless eyes. She opened her mouth as though to speak, but only stood there, gripping the bars in her window.
“Even a child knows when he’s found something precious,” the prince continued. “You’re the fool, Stonebird, for thinking I would give it to you.”
“How dare you! How many children do you think I brought here? Are you saying that it was all a waste?”
Stonebird stomped a foot angrily. “So what do you want from me?” she asked, glaring at the prince’s window.
“I’ll give you the pearl. In exchange, you let us out of here. All three of us.”
“Aaaah!” The woman prisoner called, unable to contain herself.
“How can we?” Stonebird’s son muttered.
“We have no choice,” Stonebird reminded him.
“If you release them and people learn this man is the prince, what happens to me?” her son raised his voice.
“The spell is complete,” Stonebird reassured him. “All we need now is the pearl. At any cost. The prince who comes back to life for the coronation will need to be a strong, handsome youth. Everyone will see that you are the man who fits that description! If the prince went to the castle today and shouted that he was the long-lost heir to the throne, who would believe him? People would think him mad—they might even toss him into the castle dungeon. Plus, he has lived in this mansion since the day after his birth. He doesn’t even know the way to the castle!
“I took good care of him. He had food. He had a warm place to sleep. If he leaves, what can he do? It’ll be all he can manage to stay alive.” Stonebird sneered.
As Stonebird said, it seemed impossible for the prince to return to the castle. Still, I thrilled at the thought that he might not be kept here anymore.
“Well, you should return,” Stonebird told her son. “Once the spell takes effect, you will have to be in the castle for it to work. I’ll take you to the graveyard.”
Stonebird and her son climbed the steps.
“Will you let us out?” the prince called after her.
“Yes. When I come back, I’ll have you give me the pearl,” Stonebird replied. “On the first day of the new year, you’ll live outside this mansion for the first time. Looking forward to it?” Cackling, she vanished up the steps.
I remained in the corridor, never locked into my cell. They had forgotten about me.
The prince peered out of his window.
“Where’s the pearl?” I asked him, unthinking.
The prince brought his finger to his lips to quiet me. Then he mouthed, “I don’t know.”
“What?!” I almost screamed, and then quickly covered my mouth with both hands.
“Are they gone?” he mouthed next, pointing up the stairs with his finger. He wanted to make sure Stonebird had taken her son away. I nodded and ran up the steps.
I sat on the top step and looked toward the terrace. Before long, I heard Stonebird speak again.
“It was a good New Year’s Eve, wasn’t it?” she said. “We’ll have the pearl soon! It’s just a waiting game now. The castle will soon be ours.”
“I’m sick of being a ghost,” her son answered. “The coronation can’t come soon enough.”
The two of them flew on the broom into the falling snow. I was determined not to be tricked this time. I watched intently as they disappeared in the blizzard.
“She took her son back,” I said to the prince as I rushed down the stairs. “I wonder where they went.”
“They went to the castle,” he answered. “Many years ago, Stonebird’s son tried to seize the castle in a takeover and failed. He was captured and executed. Now he’s a ghost that haunts the execution ground. She brings him here every New Year’s Eve.”
“So he is a ghost?” I cried. “He looks like a normal person!”
“Because of his mother’s magic, he now becomes visible when in direct light,” the prince said. “When I was a child, he was nothing more than a shadow. When the spell takes hold, he really will return to life.”
I began to nod in response. Then, I realized I had been able to see the son without light. I had bit his finger. I began to mention this, but then the prince spoke again.
“More importantly, now’s our chance. Where could that pearl be?”
I thought he was addressing me. I shook my head and began to say I didn’t know.
But the woman answered.
“Until now, the large jewels have either been snared in water
plants in the north part of the lake, or sunken in fish nests in the southeast. Stonebird believes that large jewels don’t move around in the currents, but she could be wrong.”
“The east side is the only place that’s never been searched,” continued the prince. “So Stonebird thinks the pearl is on the east side. But the east side is the path for water from the west side. The current is swift, so there aren’t many fish and no water plants can grow. The lake bed is smooth there. There’s nothing for jewels to get caught in.
“Stonebird began her search in the north part of the lake,” he went on. “When I was a child, I dove there. The pearl may well have washed through the northeast part. Have you seen anything it might get tangled in?”
The prince was addressing me this time. Suddenly I couldn’t speak.
“Don’t be afraid. We are not actually enemies.”
“We’ve been tricking Stonebird so she wouldn’t pay attention to us. If she knew that we had discussions, she would have separated us.”
The prince and the woman took turns speaking.
“As I said before,” the prince went on, “I don’t know where the pearl is. As a child, I believed Stonebird was my mother. I dove in the lake and searched for jewels for her, like a good boy.”
His face twisted in sadness. He’d been raised in this place since the day after his birth. He couldn’t help but think of Stonebird as his mother back then. And Stonebird, for her part, had used his feelings to benefit herself. I could never forgive her.
“The woman I thought of as Mother shut me into this dungeon,” the prince continued. “Even if she treated me horribly, I wanted to believe she was my mother. When I realized this wasn’t the truth, my hair turned white in a single day.”
For the prince, having his royal status taken away must have been far less troubling than having who he thought of as his mother betray him.
“This is our last chance to escape this place. Based on our experiences and those of others, we might be able to solve this,” the prince said.
“What do you think?” he asked me. “Do you have ideas as to where the pearl might be?”
Stonebird was correct: this prince was a strategist.
I remembered the north end of the lake bed. I had seen it only from far away while diving elsewhere, but through the murk, something had struck me as strange.
“The boulders beneath the cliffs on the north end. Something could be there,” I said. “But—”
I fell silent.
We heard Stonebird’s footsteps on the stairway.
The story in Daisy ended here.
CHAPTER NINE
Dead Ends
I looked up from Daisy to find it had gotten dark outside. In the enclosed porch at Mrs. Andō’s, the ceiling light had been switched on. A glass of barley tea sat next to me with a plate of mizu yōkan.
“Was the story interesting?” Mrs. Andō asked. She wiped her hands on her apron as she watched me.
“It was. I—I’m sorry, what time is it?”
How long had I been sitting there?
“It’s past seven. Why don’t you have supper before you go? I was about to call your mother.”
Mrs. Andō must get lonely eating supper alone, I thought. I would have stayed, but I worried that if I did, I would tell her about Akari—that is, about Saori.
As I got up, I asked Mrs. Andō, “May I please borrow the magazines? I’ll take good care of them, I promise. I’d like to show the story to a friend.”
Akari deserved to read “The Moon Is on the Left,” even if it was unfinished. And there was no way I could bring her here.
Mrs. Andō thought for a moment. “Sure, that would be fine,” she replied. “You were so absorbed in reading it! I think stories would rather be read than collecting dust on a shelf, don’t you?” She put the issues of Daisy in a shopping bag and handed it to me.
“I’ll take good care of them,” I said. “As soon as I can make a copy, I’ll return them.” I headed out and loaded the shopping bag into my bicycle basket.
As I pedaled home, I broke into a sweat. Mrs. Andō’s air conditioner had been on full blast. I’d been so into the story, set in a blizzard, that I’d forgotten it was summer.
“And what took you so long, young man? I hope you weren’t bothering Mrs. Andō!”
Mom’s tone was harsh, but she’d known where I was. She wasn’t actually upset.
“I needed something for summer homework.”
Such a useful excuse.
“The president of the neighborhood association won’t be coming again. Right?”
Mom had hated that. I waved my hand to show it wouldn’t happen again.
After supper, I took “The Moon Is on the Left” to the convenience store and copied the entire story. I took the copy to Akari’s house.
She was there.
“I can’t believe it, Kazu! How wonderful! I’m amazed you found this, even if it doesn’t have the ending. I’ve so wanted to read it again … thank you, thank you!”
Akari clasped her hands to her chest again and hopped around.
I wanted to tell her she was holding a copy made from her own issues of Daisy, but I kept my mouth shut.
I went home and fired up Uncle Junichi’s computer. I got my sister to show me how to look up books online. Akari had said the bookstores didn’t stock “The Moon Is on the Left,” and sure enough, it got no hits. The story must not have been finished. I felt let down. I wanted to know what would happen to Adi.
I got no results for the author Mia Lee, either. Where was she from? Was she Chinese? Maybe the whole story was out in Chinese! But my sister didn’t know how to search for that.
I gave up and went to sleep. Stumped yet again. Nothing new.
The next day at radio exercises, I looked around for Akari. I spotted her and felt relieved. But she looked less cheerful than the night before. Her eyes were puffy. She’s been crying, I thought.
She jogged up to where I stood. “Thank you so much again!” she said. “The story was every bit as good as I remembered!” I realized that she must not have cried; she had only stayed up late reading “The Moon Is on the Left,” through the last page we had.
“I used to get so excited to read the next installment of that story every month … I would wait so impatiently for the next issue. I never forgot it.”
Akari knew that I knew who she was now, so she talked about her old life easily.
“I read the story too,” I told her. “I even looked it up online, but I couldn’t find anything by searching for the title or author. I wonder if she finished it? I wonder if she’s from China?”
“She’s probably not from abroad—”
“But, Mia Lee!”
“If the story had come from abroad, wouldn’t they give a translator’s name?”
She was right.
“Well, maybe it was written in Japanese,” I said.
“True—people from outside Japan sometimes write in Japanese,” she agreed.
“Or maybe a Japanese writer used a pen name,” I added.
“Well, look who’s here!” Yūsuke said as he ran up and clapped me on the shoulders. He was all worked up. He looked from me to Akari and back again meaningfully.
“Hmm …” I started to say.
“We were talking about a serialized story in an old magazine!” Akari broke in. “Kazu read it too!”
“Whoah. Kazu, you read something?” Yūsuke opened his eyes wide.
I nodded vaguely, and the music for radio exercises began.
Akari skipped off to where the girls were.
“Kazu, something’s up with you. Do you like Akari?” Yūsuke looked as though he couldn’t fathom another explanation.
“We read the same story, that’s all. She just told you!” I said.
“Is it really that good?”
“Yeah, and it has no ending. So it’s hard to stop thinking about it.”
He and I talked while doing our exercises halfheartedly.
>
“What do you mean, there’s no ending?” he asked.
“It was published in a monthly magazine, but we don’t have all the issues,” I said. “It’s from forty years ago, so it’s hard to track down.”
“Forty years ago? That’s ancient history!” Yūsuke swung around. “Are you really OK?”
“Of course I am, you idiot!” As I said that, I realized that for three days, I had learned things but had made tons of mistakes. I was disappointed in myself. Maybe that meant I was growing up. Yūsuke may have picked up on that. I sighed.
When radio exercises ended, he and I headed home. Akari caught up with us.
“Kazu, you want to go to the beach tomorrow?” Yūsuke was asking me. “We’re setting up a stand at Mitohama.”
Yūsuke’s family doesn’t sell merchandise only at their store. They sometimes set up shop in large hospitals, factories, and civic offices in the mountains. Long ago, folks in these isolated areas appreciated having merchants come to them. Even now, when people have cars and shop in town, Yūsuke’s family has clients at a cannery in Mitohama, on the coast about two and a half hours from Minami Ōdori. Since preschool, I’ve ridden there with them and swum in the sea with Yūsuke. His dad drives us to the beach and hangs out with us, which his job doesn’t usually let him do. He likes taking his son for a treat, but since he can’t swim, he never ventures into the water himself. If anything, he sunbathes. He says that a summertime tan is stylish.
“Yeah, the beach sounds good,” I said to Yūsuke. I turned to Akari. “Akari, you want to come?”
“Really? Wow! I’d love to!” Akari answered, hopping in her usual way.
Yūsuke looked at me questioningly. Confused or not, he would never mistreat a future customer.
“Sure, come with us!” he said, nodding as if he’d never been mystified.
Temple Alley Summer Page 11
