Her limbs fizzed and shook. Rain made her scalp sodden. Her clothing clung to her skin, her freezing hands losing all feeling. Isla faltered as she ran, confusion assaulting her senses. She slipped and fell, dizzy, as though she’d downed a whole barrel of shōchū. She was in the shrine. Wind chimes jangled. Wood banged. Rain pelted her face. It made no sense. Was Keiichirō nearby?
She dragged herself upright and lurched past statues and stone walls, hands sliding across slick rock surfaces as she struggled to keep her balance in the roaring storm. She could still see Saigō’s headless corpse in her mind, imagine the samurai rushing down the mountainside with their swords held high, haori sleeves flapping behind them. Keiichirō with them. Her heart felt broken.
A cannon boomed through the night, making her duck, fresh terror surging through her. No, not a cannon, but wooden doors that banged against the wall, sucked open by the wind.
An old woman cried out in shock as Isla almost crashed into her, her umbrella knocked to the side. Isla shivered as she ran. There were so many lights. So many people. Men and women dressed strangely, in suits and jeans and everything else from a half-forgotten life, stopped to stare. A bicycle bell rang in alarm as a cyclist narrowly avoided hitting her. Dizzy turmoil swam in her mind, memories slipping away as she reached for them, as elusive as trying to grab smoke as it coiled through her fingers.
What was happening?
A man swore as she knocked into him. She pushed away from a tangle of limbs and fell into the road. A car honked in warning.
Pain sliced up her arm and along her ribcage. Cold rain fell on her face, icy shards on her skin. Too many lights and voices surrounded her. She struggled to breathe. The sound of an opening car door, a shout to call an ambulance.
‘Oneesan, can you hear me?’ a voice echoed as the shadow of a man knelt above her.
People gasped and backed away. A man in overalls stood nearby, flashing a bright orange baton to redirect traffic. Isla lay on the cold, hard ground as she squinted against the downpour.
‘You’ve been hit by a car. The ambulance is on its way. Don’t move. Where does it hurt?’
She groaned. She couldn’t move even if she wanted to. Bile burned in her throat as her head spun. How ironic if she died here, a million miles away from the man she’d sworn to stay with.
The man cursed. ‘Kuso. Uh . . .’ Isla caught sight of a waving hand as the man searched for English phrases he knew. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Isla.’ Isla groaned into the rain. ‘MacKenzie . . . Isla.’
And then, merciful blackness.
* * *
Maeda Keisuke stared at his bedroom ceiling. Rain hammered his window.
He had been dreaming for months about the same thing. An old village under the shadow of a volcano. Robe-clad samurai, endless war, gruelling death. A redheaded foreign woman, the very same who had been on the news a few months ago when she had gone missing. He had met her in January at the café, had chatted with her. Yet since she had disappeared, he had seen her every night in his dreams.
He knuckled his eyes, sighing, then rolled off his futon.
The scene was the same: a katana sword, heavy in his hand, sweat sticking his long hair to his neck. Fighting imperial soldiers, the low boom of gunfire, the stench of smoke and gunpowder and gore as swords chopped apart bodies and cut off limbs, leaving men screaming in the dirt. The foreign woman had been his friend, his lover, and they had parted ways at the foot of a mountain.
‘Bonnie lass,’ he muttered, the words foreign on his tongue but bittersweet and familiar. MacKenzie Isla. For a second, he felt their final kiss still burning on his lips. Sometimes Keisuke didn’t know what was real, this life in Kagoshima as a medical student and part-time barista, or the life he returned to when he closed his eyes.
It was the middle of the night, early autumn rain beating against his window. The fan hummed as it blew cool air, wonderfully comfortable this humid season.
But right now, he needed to get out of his cramped little apartment.
Keisuke pulled on a rain jacket and slipped on his shoes. Pulling his hood up, he ventured out into the night and set off down the street, going nowhere in particular.
The dreams flashed before his eyes whenever he blinked, like strobe lightning. Running into earth-shattering explosions of cannon fire, choking on smoke, thinking only of the foreign girl who had run away from the battle at his command. No, he hadn’t commanded her. He had begged her, desperate for her to live on, not die in a foreign land surrounded by enemies. His guilt at leaving his friends to die, his sense of retribution as he ran to his death, sword held aloft, bleeding from his injured back.
Keisuke could even feel the agony of bullets striking him, the scent of grass and earth as he collapsed to the ground, breathing his last. He felt these images were more like memories than dreams, as if the torment and grief for friends he never knew were part of himself. He rubbed his chest beneath his jacket, as though expecting to find the ghosts of bullet holes or scars from knife wounds.
He reached the main road not far from the path leading to Mount Shiroyama, where the famous statue of Saigō Takamori immortalised the fabled leader. A leader he had met in his dreams.
An ambulance, its lights flashing amid the rain, blocked half of the road. Keisuke watched in curiosity as some paramedics, calling to each other in their clipped, professional manner, rolled a stretcher towards the ambulance doors.
And on the stretcher a young woman lay, red hair roping in wet strands, dressed in traditional garb. Her eyes were closed and she was pale as death.
Keisuke froze, insides clenching.
It was her!
The woman he had dreamed about for the past nine months. He would know her anywhere. He had touched her, kissed her, made love to her. He had screamed at her to leave the fight, to save herself.
Keisuke stepped forward but was stopped by a traffic warden holding a glowing baton. Rain dripped from his cap.
‘I’m sorry, sir. The road is closed. We apologise for the inconvenience.’
Keisuke watched as they packed MacKenzie Isla into the ambulance. Was she all right? She didn’t look it. What had happened? A car stood in the middle of the road, a harried-looking man clutching an umbrella and talking to the police.
None of this made any sense, but Keisuke had to find out what was going on. He had to speak to her, to work out what all this meant.
* * *
Isla was dimly aware of a crisp English voice as she lay in a hard bed. The strong smell of disinfectant hit her, stinging her nostrils and turning her empty stomach. When she opened her eyes, she was in a dimly lit room, clean and plain and stark white. Raindrops dotted a window to her left, though it wasn’t night-time any longer and the storm looked to have passed; glimmers of sun struggled through the clouds.
‘British exchange student Isla MacKenzie has been found alive after going missing in Kagoshima Prefecture, Kyushu, at the beginning of January this year, and she is currently undergoing tests in hospital,’ said the news anchor on the television.
English sounded almost strange to Isla now. She could understand it, of course, but it was like her brain needed time to adjust. Her body felt weak and malnourished, her right side tender and her arm in a cast, and when she blinked, her eye wrinkled with pain. Her head felt heavy and, as she soon discovered, pain shot across it if she moved it.
A low groan escaped her lips.
I shouldn’t be here. I need to get back to Kei. He needs me, she thought.
A heart monitor beside her beeped as she stared at the television, squinting at the artificial brightness. An old, grainy photo of herself on the screen, cropped from a family picture of a Scottish holiday, her hair long and a huge smile on her face.
‘No, absolutely not. She’s not awake yet.’
Isla’s eyes drifted to a white door. Voices echoed beyond.
The door opened and a middle-aged male doctor appeared, almost unnaturally neat and clean. Isla stared at him, catching a glimpse of a Japanese police officer in the hallway.
The doctor’s coat was far too white, his face clean-shaven and free of scars. ‘MacKenzie-san, it is good to see you’re awake,’ he said in crisp English. ‘I am Doctor Iwasaki. How are you feeling?’
Isla had no idea how she was feeling.
Part of her didn’t want to face everything that was surely to come. The police, the press. How widely known was her case? How many hundreds of people had been involved in her disappearance and were now waiting to ask questions? Questions she couldn’t answer?
‘Take your time,’ said Doctor Iwasaki gently when she didn’t respond. ‘I am here to tell you that you fractured your right arm in two places and one of your ribs, but we expect you to make a full recovery. We hope to make a psychological evaluation and then the police want to question you.’
She let him speak on, staring at the wall. So meticulous, so different from the samurai spitting blood and insisting they were fit to fight when their bodies were ready to collapse. She felt foolish in her cast and tucked into bed.
‘Your parents will be here tomorrow morning.’
Isla glanced up at that, then immediately wished she hadn’t; pain jackhammered up her skull. But her heart lifted. Mum and Dad would be here tomorrow. Tears filled her eyes. She’d finally see her family again.
‘Thank you,’ she managed to croak.
The happiness at this news clashed with her broken spirit. When she closed her eyes, she was still on Mount Shiroyama, surrounded by dead or dying samurai, clinging to the man she loved before he would disappear for ever. She could still imagine his scent of cedarwood, his warm eyes, the way his fingers ran across her skin, leaving gooseflesh in their wake. She felt alien in this sterilised little room.
‘Oh, and a nurse has brought you some menstrual pads. She reported to me your period started last night.’ He bowed to her and left, closing the door quietly behind him and leaving her alone with the steady beep of her heart monitor.
The information took a moment to sink in. A second, smaller punch in her chest accompanied her grief. Fresh tears welled up in her eyes. What had she expected? Hoped for? That her passion-filled nights with Keiichirō would lead to pregnancy?
Maybe she had hoped, at least a little bit. Keiichirō was dead, but perhaps if she had been able to bring something back of him, a piece of him . . .
She closed her eyes. It was a silly thought, but she allowed herself to grieve for the child who would never be. To wallow in disappointment for a lost impossibility.
A nurse came by later to take out the IV drip attached to her arm, and she put a tray of food on Isla’s lap. Isla took in the little bowl of rice, steaming miso soup, grilled salmon with grated radish, a tiny helping of pickled vegetables, and a bowl of fruit, served with a plastic fork.
She was starving, and she began to shovel food into her mouth, not caring about being polite. The nurse busied herself with arranging towels as the stark, strong flavours coated Isla’s tongue. She barely chewed, swallowing great mouthfuls.
She balked. Her throat bulged. Nausea ran up her gullet and she choked. She vomited, rice bursting from her lips. The nurse appeared at her side, patting her back and holding a cardboard receptacle beneath her chin.
After Isla had calmed down, the nurse brought her a fresh bowl of cut-up fruit and a spoon, on a new tray, beside a little paper cup of water.
It was late afternoon when they finally left her alone, and Isla was exhausted. She climbed out of bed and wavered on the spot for a moment, and then took several wobbly steps to her shower room. Struggling with her broken arm, she managed to slip off the hospital gown and switch it on. Steam filled the tiny room.
It was paradise. Clean, fresh, perfect-temperature water spurted from a shining showerhead, soaking her in seconds. She groaned with pleasure as she leaned against the wall, inhaling steam, keeping her cast out of the flow. She wanted to stay here for ever.
It was heaven to lather shampoo into her hair, and to pat herself dry with a towel. She almost cried when she found a toothbrush and a little tube of toothpaste waiting for her beside a tiny sink. Firmly avoiding looking at her reflection, Isla brushed for five straight minutes.
Back in bed, fresher than before, she switched off the television and sighed. She lay back on the bed to stare at the ceiling, shouts and the clashing of swords still echoing in her mind against the sounds of the hospital and the traffic outside. Keiichirō’s lips brushed hers in her memory, as if his ghost lingered. Her ears, attuned to listening for danger, caught far-off sounds. Footsteps and voices around the hospital. The steady hum of the air conditioner. The sigh of the wind. Sirens.
She didn’t know where they had put her yukata, and she didn’t want to call a nurse to find out. The old robe would lead to awkward questions. Her wallet, however, was safe; it lay on her bedside table next to the now empty paper cup, folded and tucked beneath her dead flip phone. The 1,000-yen notes were still in there, the little plastic card with her photo that she had shown Keiichirō and Nene in one of the pockets. It felt like several lifetimes since she had come to Kagoshima in winter, hoping to find information on Hisakichi Kuroki.
But you did find him, flashed across her mind.
She gave a snort, which turned into a giggle. The absurd ridiculousness of it all made her burst into laughter, and she clutched her pillow, burying her face into the cotton.
It took a while to calm down and, when she had wiped her eyes, she gingerly pushed herself into a sitting position.
She had indeed found her third-great-grandfather, but when she had come looking for her ancestor’s history she hadn’t expected to walk right into it.
If she had known what would transpire, would she have ever wandered into those shrine grounds? Would she be here right now, thanks to Hisakichi and Nene escaping the war, if she hadn’t?
The door slid open, and Isla lay back down, closing her eyes. She didn’t want to talk to anyone, least of all a police officer who might have forced his way in. Soft footsteps reached the side of her bed and a metal tray rattled as the newcomer placed it on her bedside table.
The voice was soft. Male. Not the doctor. ‘Isla?’
Isla’s eyes shot open. For a moment, she thought she was dreaming.
High cheekbones, long hair tied in a knot behind his head, and a serious look that melted into a smile of recognition. For an insane moment, Isla thought it was him.
But he couldn’t be Keiichirō. Kei had died over a century ago. The young samurai had not worn a rain jacket.
She gripped the bedclothes. The spicy scent of clove wreathed him, and a memory found its way to her hazy mind. The man before her had served her a cinnamon latte at the coffee shop when she had visited Kagoshima back in January.
What was he doing here, in her hospital room? Why did she look so much like the man she had loved and lost? Was she hallucinating?
Her head felt heavy, and her eyes travelled along his chest, to the twenty-first-century clothes, and bitter disappointment burned in her for him not being Keiichirō.
‘Isla? Good evening.’ The café barista perched on a stool beside her bed. He was too close, too familiar. ‘MacKenzie Isla? Do you remember me? We drank matcha tapioka together once.’
She raised her eyes to meet his. The resemblance was eerie, though there were differences. His jaw was more square, his hairline lacking the distinctive widow’s peak Keiichirō had. But the way he looked at her now captured her attention.
In her confused and bruised mind, she felt in that moment that it was Keiichirō gazing at her. It was foolish – she wasn’t so far gone not to think that – but she clung to the feeling.
‘Who are you?’ she murmured.
‘This might sound odd,’ he said, his warm brown eyes, a freckle near one of them, moving over her hair, to her mouth, and back to meet her gaze. ‘But I know you. And you know me.’
‘Been on the news . . .’ she muttered as a well of emotions threatened to engulf her.
‘No, it’s not that.’ The man pulled his chair closer. ‘It’s you, isn’t it? Bonnie lass?’
Isla gasped in shock.
‘I know this is strange.’ The man took her hand, his fingers warm. She glanced down at his hand, not wanting to pull away. ‘For months now, I’ve been dreaming of you.’