“Thank you, but we are not here to purchase anything. Nakajima-san told us that you could provide us with answers to some questions we have,” Keishin said.
“Nakajima Natsuki? The porter?”
“Yes,” Keishin said.
“If Natsuki sent you my way, then I assume that your questions are not the sort that would be wise to say out loud.” The vendor fetched a notebook from the back of the stall and plucked a blue pen from one of the store’s jars. “Here,” he said, handing them to Keishin. “Write your question down and I will see what I can do.”
Keishin closed his hand around the pen, struck by how itsweight and shape felt familiar and odd at the same time. He could not recall a day that he had not grabbed a pen to scribble down a reminder or an idea as he darted off to a class or worked at the university’s lab. He kept two pens in a chipped mug on his nightstand for the all too frequent nights when one of the resident questions in his head decided that it couldn’t wait until morning to chatter away in his ear. But Keishin had not held a pen since he had arrived in Hana’s world, and tonight it felt more like an exotic artifact than a commonplace tool. He opened the vendor’s notebook and wrote a question down on a blank page. He steered the pen over the paper, mindful of every stroke. Control was a luxury in a world where he had done nothing but chase one strange question after another while running for his life. He savored every second of it.
The vendor ran his eyes over the notebook. He ripped the page out and burned it in the flame of one of the lanterns in his stall. He blew out the lantern and scattered the page’s ashes over the cloud.
“I will need to have words with Natsuki for sending you here,” the vendor said after making sure that every bit of ash had been swallowed by the cloud. “I am not inclined to give her any business for a while.”
“Will you help us?” Hana said. “My father…”
The vendor held up his hand. “I do not want to know your reasons. The less I know, the better. I will help you only because I know that Natsuki has already made you pay a hefty price for an answer she could not give.” The vendor pulled out a stool and sat down. He hunched over the notebook and wrote so feverishly that Keishin worried he was going to rip the paper. The vendor tore out two pages, folded them in half, and gave them to Hana. “This is everything I know.”
“We owe you a great debt,” Hana said.
“You can pay it by leaving the Night Market and never coming back. I do not even wish to know your names. But you may have mine. It is Nakano Yasuhiro. Tell my mother that I sent you.” The vendor reached into a jar and tossed a coin to Keishin. “And take this for luck. You will need it.”
Chapter Forty-four
The Library of the Lost
Hana stood in the shadows of a bamboo grove, clutching the pages Yasuhiro had given her. She crumpled them in her fist. “He was right about the rumor being unspeakable. Those poor children.”
“They weren’t children, Hana,” Keishin said.
“It wasn’t their fault they didn’t have souls. It was my fault and my father’s.”
“It happened long before you were born, even before the pawnshop was your father’s responsibility.”
“It doesn’t matter. It is still my family’s shame.”
“We don’t know the whole story.”
“We know enough. We know that the vendor’s grandfather was a porter and that the Shiikuin ordered him to collect a package from the Horishi’s home and to bury it. And now we know what the package turned out to be.” Her voice broke. “A soulless child.”
“It’s a terrible story, but don’t you see, Hana? Now we have a real trail to follow. Yasuhiro’s mother knows where her father took the child, the field where he heard the voices and wailing of children beneath the ground. This has to be the same place the Shiikuin imprisoned your mother. What could be a crueler punishment for a mother desperately missing her own child?”
—
The sun glowed behind the clouds as Hana and Keishin trekked up the narrow steps chiseled into the side of a mountain’s gray face. The snaking path, slippery from wear, was the only way to and from a village that did not seem to want to be found. Only the wooden doors dotting the slope gave Yasuhiro’s mother’s hometown away. Hana held on to a guide rope that ran the length of the steps and tried to keep her eyes from the ground.
“I never thought I’d say this,” Keishin said, “but I prefer the Night Market’s ladders to this. Whoever had the idea of carving homes into a mountain must have needed a lot of excitement in his life.”
“It could be worse.”
“How?”
“We could be climbing up these steps at night or in the rain.”
“Don’t give the weather any ideas.” Keishin gripped the rope tighter. “I told you, it hates me.”
Hana rolled her eyes. “And I told you that the rain that has been following us around is because of me.”
“Fine. I won’t argue with you. At least not until we’ve found Yasuhiro’s mother and are safely behind one of these doors.”
