“Hana…”
“It is almost midnight.”
Keishin lay down. “You wouldn’t happen to have a spare bottle of your father’s sleeping medication lying around, would you?”
“Close your eyes and listen to my voice. I will tell you a story.”
“A bedtime story? Are you serious?”
“Trust me.”
Keishin lowered his eyelids. “Fine.”
“A long time ago, there was a fisherman named Urashima Taro. He was fishing when he saw some children torturing a turtle. Taro saved the turtle and set it free in the sea. The following morning, an old turtle swam up to him and told him that the turtle he had saved was the daughter ofRyujin,the Emperor of the Sea.Ryujinasked the turtle to invite Taro to his kingdom to thank him. The turtle gave Taro gills and led Taro toRyujin’sunderwater palace. At the palace, Taro metRyujinand his daughter, Otohime, who had turned from a turtle into a beautiful princess.”
Hana’s voice soothed Keishin like a lullaby, bundling him up and rocking him. He followed Hana’s words as though they were crumbs on a forest trail, each leading him closer to a dream of the sea.
“Taro stayed with Otohime for three days but found himself longing to see his elderly mother. Otohime regretfully agreed to let him go. Before he left, she gifted him with a mysterious box that would protect him as long as he did not open it. The old turtle took Taro back to the shore of his village.”
Keishin struggled to stay awake, torn between exhaustion and curiosity. Hana turned on her side and rested her head on his chest. Keishin held her to him, no longer sure if he was dreaming or still awake.
“Hold on to me,” Hana whispered over his heart. “I will lead you through the dream.”
Keishin nodded, half asleep. “What happened to Taro?”
“When Taro returned to his village, he discovered that everything had changed. Three hundred years had passed. Everyone he knew was gone. Distraught, he opened the box from Otohime…”
—
Hana watched him sleep. She was going to join him soon, but for now, she let him dream. In a way, she felt like she had gone ahead of him and was already dreaming. Keishin was the stranger in her world, and yet since he had arrived, nothing around her was familiar anymore. Her room. Her bed. Even her own skin. All it took was the briefest of glances from Keishin to set it humming, tingling from the top of her head to her toes, the way it did when she had climbed the tallest tree along one of the mountain trails she enjoyed exploring as a child. Her father had told her not to, but still she climbed, higher and higher, away from the echo of his rules, above the walls of everything she had been told she could or could not do. Looking down at the world from her quivering perch, she was unable to tell if the current buzzing in her limbs made her feel alive or terrified. A gust of wind whipped the canopy beneath her into a blur of green and gray. Hana looked up in time to see an angry sky break open. She clung to a trembling branch.
Icy shards of rain struck her fists, awakening the glowingpaper cranes tattooed on her skin. The flock took flight across the back of her hand, oblivious to the wet lashing. Hana envied their wings. She loosened her fingers around the branch and considered letting go, if only to know, for the sliver of time before she lay broken on the rocks, what it was like to fly.
Curled on her mattress next to Keishin, her face near enough to feel the warmth of his breath on her lips, Hana dangled from a tree that towered over everything she knew. From this distance, the world below was tiny, and she was free from its grasp. Still, she had no wings. She nestled her cheek against Keishin’s chest and closed her eyes, wondering if falling into him would hurt as much as crashing into the ground and shattering all her bones.
—
Gravel crunched by his ear. Keishin snapped his eyes open. He sat up and looked around. An arched bridge stretched out in front of him. A long line of people dressed in white sleeping robes made their way over the bridge from a gravel road, their pace unhurried.
“That is the Midnight Bridge. It connects night and morning.” Hana stood up and brushed the dust and gravel from her clothes. “People cross over it in their dreams. My grandmother’s teahouse is across the road.”
“Where?” Keishin craned his neck to see over the people in line for the bridge. A large, fiery tree that reminded him of the maple trees in his old university’s courtyard grew in a garden across the road.
“That is Sobo’s teahouse.”
“The tree?”
“It’s called a kito tree. It means ‘calm,’ which I think is quiteappropriate. My grandmother’s teahouse offers refuge to those suffering from nightmares.”
“Nightmares?” Keishin glanced at the people lining up for the bridge and noticed that their eyes were closed. “They’re all asleep…”
“Yes. And so are we. The difference is that we know that we are dreaming. My grandmother taught me the way to her teahouse when I was a little girl. You turn left when you fall asleep and turn right at the end of your second dream.”
Keishin watched Hana’s breath turn into mist in the night air. In the middle of a dream, next to a bridge that led to morning, he took comfort in knowing that at least some laws of science still held true. Most people mistakenly believed that you saw your breath simply when the weather got cold. Humidity, however, played an equal part in turning one’s breath into minuscule water droplets that floated in the air. “Dew point,” Keishin murmured absently like it was a memorized prayer.
“Did you say something?”
“I…uh…was just saying that I was glad that we didn’t wake up in the river.”
