Page 40 of The Lost Future of Pepperharrow

‘And now, you owe him your soul.’ The Duke sighed and drank some tea. He did it elegantly, she noticed; he wasn’t as awkward as he seemed. In ordinary life, not trying to explain Keita Mori to an actress, he was probably a graceful man. ‘Now tell me, what manner of creature is it that waits for a person’s darkest moment, and then appears from the shadows, and says, I will save you; come with me?’

She stayed quiet. None of it seemed as stupid as it had a minute ago.

‘You won’t be the only one, you know. That poor fool Kuroda follows him around like a puppy; I guarantee Keita has plans for him and his certain brand of viciousness.’ He paused, but he plainly hadn’t finished. ‘There are records, you know, of others. Like him. I looked into it, once I understood what Keitsune was doing. Folktales mainly, but the resemblance is uncanny. I was puzzled for years why there’s nothing more obviously like him in anyone’s mythology, and then of course I realised that if you are a thing that knows all the futures in the world, it’s quite within your capability to ensure there’s no record of you but murmurs.’

There was always some bored old bachelor in the audience who came up to Takiko or one of the actors after the show and talked earnestly about how the story was all real, and there really had been this or that princess, and she really had been seen floating through foxfire falling from the sky, and do you know, I’m related to her? She was pretty sure that there were stages of bored bachelorhood. First you played cards with yourself, then you cut your own ear off, and then you became a folklorist.

But the Duke didn’t sound like those people. They never looked so resigned, or so aware that what they were saying sounded silly.

‘You’ve heard the stories,’ Choshu sighed. ‘You remember the Winter King, and the two lovers?’

‘No. I don’t know many Japanese stories, my father was English.’ She had a nasty dropping feeling. She hated talking about Christopher Pepperharrow. She didn’t have many memories of him now and handing them out to strangers, like they weren’t precious, felt horrible.

‘Well, I’ll tell it to you.’

It was an ordinary sort of story. There were two lovers who weren’t meant to be in love and, one day, they ran away together through the forest. They didn’t have any money, but they were cheerful. They hadn’t gone far, though, before they saw lights behind them, and heard the voices of their fathers shouting. They were in real despair about what to do when a gentleman in white furs stepped out of the woods. He told them to turn back, but it was all right; he was the winter, and in three days, he would cast the deepest cold over the land for a generation. If they left on that night, the coldest and hardest for decades, nobody would follow them. So they agreed, and went back, apologised to their fathers, and tried again in three days. They were delighted to find that the Winter King was right; nobody followed. Once again they met him on the road, and he walked with them for a little while, and promised that he could arrange for them to be together always. They walked on, through the frost and the new snow, and at last, they came to a deep lake. Winter pointed and said, ‘There is your eternity’. They killed themselves and their souls stayed together always.

‘But that’s just a story about winter,’ Takiko protested. ‘You know. Don’t go out in winter. It’s like Red Riding Hood. Don’t trust strange men on the road, because they’re wolves.’

‘This story was real, in fact,’ the Duke sighed. ‘The couple in question died in sixteen seventy-two. Their deaths achieved a lasting peace between their houses, one of which happened to be the Shogun’s family. It probably stopped a civil war.’ He was studying her now, with no hope at all of convincing her. ‘It happened at Hagi Castle. The familial seat of House Mori. A son of theirs was known very well locally to be a wonderful hunter. He had a knack for catching silver foxes. A gentleman in white fur; makes one wonder, doesn’t it.’

Takiko shook her head. ‘People spin magic out of real stories, it’s what they do. It’s what we do here. What are you saying?’

‘That it is in Keita’s nature to take desperate people, and lead them to a useful death. A death is a powerful agent of change, and whatever he is, he is in this world to change it. Are you absolutely certain he won’t do that to you?’

She had to laugh. It was relief as much as humour. Just for a minute, she’d been standing on the edge of a chasm she had never known was there before, full of undefined things shifting in the deep – the way down into a place where there was a nasty kind of magic. ‘Look, one story about a silly couple dying in winter doesn’t persuade me that Keita is plotting my sudden demise.’

‘He had five brothers, you know. They all died in battle. Supporting the Emperor. Their deaths were a great rallying cry, I tell you.’

‘I know one of them shot him once, with an arrow.’ She wondered suddenly just how much of Mori’s never-spoken-of childhood had been coloured by people like the Duke, who thought he was something unspeakable. He had scars on his hands from sword-flats.

The Duke sighed. ‘Just tell me – have you seen owls yet? Following you perhaps?’

‘What? Owls?’

‘They’re lucky birds. He makes luck. They seem to know that.’ He looked away at the bar and the lady there turning over the roasting chestnuts. He kept his voice arid and librarial. ‘If you find that an owl takes an interest in you, then Keita will not be far behind. I suggest, madam, that at that moment, you walk firmly in the opposite direction.’

‘Owls,’ she said again, less flatly than she’d meant to. There were still talon marks on her old sewing machine.

Something came down over Choshu’s expression. Pride; he couldn’t keep going anymore in a subject that made him seem foolish. ‘Yes, well,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you’re perfectly capable of dealing with him. Good afternoon, Miss Pepperharrow.’

He left measuredly, and not at all with the awkward spring of the sort of person who usually said things like he had. Takiko sat back, not quite able to believe she’d just had such a mad conversation. It made her nervous; not about Mori, but the family. If they were all like that, then no wonder Mori wanted a normal person in his house.

She went round to Yoruji the next day, meaning to tell Mori all about the Duke and to have a good laugh about everything. On the way down, though, she realised that it would be downright cruel to remind him that his only living relative thought he was a witch. So she only said that the Duke seemed like a strange egg and that he’d said something funny about owls.

That did make Mori laugh. ‘I’ll show you.’

Yoruji had an aviary. She’d never seen it before, but it was big and spacious, full of interesting branches and hollows – and full of owls. There was no door; the whole front wall was open. But the owls all seemed to like it inside, and when they noticed Takiko and Mori, some of them glided across and hooted conversationally.

‘We end up with dozens of them here, they seem to like us. They’re all tame, look,’ he added as one settled straight onto Takiko’s wrist and consented to have its chest stroked. It was surprisingly heavy. It narrowed its eyes in an approving way when she rubbed her finger under its chin.

‘I didn’t know owls could be this tame,’ she said, enchanted. The owl told her something in Owl. Her whole heart squeezed. They didn’t seem like normal birds. There was something else in them.

‘I think they fly all over, but they always come back here,’ Mori said, half to her and half to an incredible eagle owl that had just soared across. It landed on the branch next to him, and then stepped onto his arm, looking carefully at its own talons as if it was trying to make sure they didn’t dig into him too much.

That first impression of him she’d had at the theatre came back in force; that sense that he didn’t belong now, but in some other place a thousand years ago. Holding the owl, he seemed medieval, and if Choshu had told her then that Mori had wandered the world since people had first been afraid of the woods, she would nearly have believed it. But it didn’t feel like an ominous impression. The owl was stealing his watch.

‘Do you tell them to visit people?’ she asked. ‘I think this one came to see me once.’