Chapter 14

Hiro and Father Mateo walked down the passage and paused at the top of the steps that led to the kitchen.

A large brick oven stood at the center of the room. Two covered kettles sat atop the cooking surface, sending up curls of steam that smelled of overfermented miso and spoiling fish.

On the left side of the kitchen, a sliding wooden door stood slightly ajar, allowing light and air into the room. A mostly-depleted pile of firewood sat to the left of the door, while a trio of barrels lined the wall to its right. Faint scuffmarks marred the earthen floor where Ana had pulled the barrels forward. The last one remained just far enough away from the wall for Hiro to see the edge of a hole behind it.

Ana appeared in the outer doorway, holding an armful of kindling.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“We could ask the same of you,” Hiro said. “You claimed you could not cook in these conditions.”

The housekeeper stepped inside and set the kindling on the stack beside the door. “If I don’t, we’ll all go hungry.” Ana wiped her hands on a towel that hung from her obi.

“We came to see the rat hole,” Father Mateo said.

She gestured to the barrels.

Hiro descended the steps, slipped on a pair of the kitchen sandals that sat beside them, and crossed the room. The sour smell grew worse as he approached, so he breathed shallowly as he pulled the barrel farther away from the wall to expose the hole.

Something had dug away the plaster, leaving an indentation about the size of a saké flask. Although the hole had ragged edges, he saw no obvious marks from teeth or claws.

“Why would a rat make a hole that doesn’t go anywhere?” Father Mateo asked.

Hiro pushed the barrel back against the wall. “Rats did not make this hole. It looks like a hiding place to me.”

“A hiding place?” The Jesuit asked. “For what?”

“Hm.” Ana picked up a broom and swept the earthen floor. “The only things hiding in that hole are rats.”

Hiro switched to Portuguese. “Perhaps whatever the innkeeper’s wife is missing.”

“We should ask her about it,” the priest agreed.

“Not unless you want to spend the afternoon searching for a woman’s misplaced baubles.” Hiro returned to the steps, slipped off the kitchen sandals, and switched back to Japanese. “Ana, keep an eye on that hole and tell us if a rat—or anything else—appears inside it.” The housekeeper raised the broom. “If a rat appears in there, it will be the last thing he ever does.”

Mist descended from the cloudy sky, swirling down to obscure all but the closest houses. Even the towering trees had turned to shadows, looming behind a foggy veil. Nothing moved on the road or between the houses.

The village seemed as dead as the woman lying in the ryokan.

Hiro squinted into the mist. For a moment, he thought he saw a shadow move at the far end of the road, near the place where the yamabushi had appeared the day before.

When he looked again, he saw only swirling fog.

With Father Mateo at his side, he crossed the strip of ground between the ryokan and the house next door. The humble, single-story building featured a steeply peaked thatch roof with a wooden beam that ran along the ridge. Overhanging eaves protected the walls from snow and rain. Unlike the ryokan, the house sat at ground level with no veranda or raised foundation. A six-inch wooden beam across the entry door created a simple threshold at the end of the muddy path that connected the house to the travel road.

As they approached, Hiro noted that all of the frozen footprints around the door were adult-sized. The door swung open before he knocked, and he wondered if every woman in the village spent her days watching the road from behind the door.

The woman who stood in the opening looked no more than twenty. Her eyes, which seemed too large for her tiny face, reminded Hiro of a deer. She wore a dark kimono hand-embroidered with flying cranes, an unusual choice for a country girl, especially in winter. But her most striking feature was the streak of pure white hair that began at the top of her head and trickled through her thick, dark braid like a waterfall over obsidian cliffs.

She bowed. “I am sorry. My husband is at work. But you can come back, if you want to see him.” She clasped her hands together as she spoke.

“Perhaps we could talk with you instead.” Hiro’s unusually gentle tone drew a look from Father Mateo.

The woman bit her lip. She gripped her hands until her knuckles whitened.

“We mean no harm,” Hiro continued. “Have you heard what happened in the burial yard last night?”

The woman dropped her voice to a whisper. “She came back. We must not say her name. It is not safe.”

“That is precisely why we came.” Hiro gestured to Father Mateo. “This man is a priest of the foreign god, from across the sea. His faith has special rites to cast out evil. He wants to help—”

“Do they work?” the woman asked eagerly. “The rites?”

“When evil is present.” Father Mateo gave Hiro a sidelong glance.

“Please come in.” The woman stepped away from the door, though she watched the road as if expecting an attack at any moment.

The front half of the one-room house had an earthen floor packed down by years of use until it looked and felt like stone. To the right of the door, a waist-high wooden fence enclosed a rectangular area four meters long and a little more than two meters deep. A pair of buckets sat beside a wooden gate at the near end of the fence, beside the door. One bucket held water, the other a combination of grain and straw. More rice straw covered the floor of the stall, and a coiled rope with one end tied in the shape of a halter hung from a peg attached to the wooden gate. The area emitted a distinct, and pungent, bovine smell that lingered in the air along with the more familiar scents of smoke and tatami grasses.

An earthen stove squatted near the center of the living space. It radiated pleasant warmth, if not much light. Beyond the stove, the rear half of the house contained a knee-high platform covered with tatami. A brazier on the floor beside the platform filled the house with smoky light.

The woman gestured to the tatami-covered area. “Please sit down. I will make tea.”

“You don’t—” Father Mateo began, but Hiro spoke over him.

“Thank you. We will wait.” He led the priest to the edge of the platform, removing his shoes before stepping onto its tatami-covered surface. Switching to Portuguese, he murmured, “Do not refuse the tea, and drink it slowly.”

“Why?”

“It gives us a way to control the conversation,” Hiro said. “As long as tea remains in the cups, it would be impolite for her to make us leave.”