Back in the dressing room, Travis was first to notice something was wrong. His clothes were hung up in a very strange order. If he had taken off his jacket first, then his shirt, then his pants, they should not be on the peg pants first, then jacket, then shirt. Not unless they’d been taken off and replaced by someone in a hurry.

“How’d your clothes get on my peg?” Fahd was asking Andy.

This was even more curious. There was no mistaking big Andy’s clothes for anything of Fahd’s.

“Someone’s rifled through my hockey bag,” said Lars.

“Mine, too,” said Jesse.

They carefully checked through everything, and nothing appeared to have been stolen. Mr. Dillinger apologized, saying it hadn’t seemed like they ever locked dressing-room doors in Japan, so he hadn’t insisted. But someone had obviously been in the room.

The mystery began to clear, if only slightly, once they got back to the Olympic Village apartments. Travis had the key to their apartment in his left pants pocket–or so he thought. When he dug deep for it, he found nothing.

Travis wasn’t alone. Three others couldn’t find their keys either.

Whoever had stolen them had known where the Owls were staying and had raced back to the Village before the team arrived. Someone had been inside the little apartments. Drawers were left open and clothes thrown about the rooms.

“Looks like I unpacked for everybody!” said a surprised Nish when he saw what had happened.

No one could figure out what the burglar was after. Money? Clothes? It was hard to figure out, because nothing had been taken.

In the morning, still with no idea why their apartments had been broken into–the Screech Owls set off to visit the Zenkoji Temple. They took the bus down to the train station and walked up Chuo street toward the sacred temple.

Mr. Imoo met them at the front gate. Until he smiled, the Owls might not have recognized him. He was wearing the frock of a Buddhist priest and looked much like any of the other priests hurrying about the entrance to the various temples–except, of course, for the missing teeth.

“You must see all of it,” he told them. “Zenkoji is nearly three hundred years old. But even before that, for hundreds of years, this was a place of worship. Come–let me show you a bit.”

Mr. Imoo’s tour was incredible. He showed them the walkway to the main hall–“There are exactly seven thousand, seven hundred and seventy-seven stones here,” he told them. “Good mathematics problem, designing that”–and he showed them the darkened area in the main hall where the sacred image of Buddha is said to be, which only the highest priests are ever allowed to see.

“More important than Stanley Cup!” Mr. Imoo said, laughing.

Travis couldn’t figure him out. Here he was, a priest in a church–Travis guessed this Japanese temple was much the same as a North American church–and though it was clear that the hundreds of visitors milling about were deadly serious, Mr. Imoo was forever joking about things. “Buddha likes laughing,” he said at one point. “Buddha enjoys good joke same as anyone.”

He showed them the huge stone pots where visitors burned incense, the air sickly-sweet with the smell. He showed them a statue of a man where older visitors lined up just to rub their hands over the smooth stone. “Binzuro,” Mr. Imoo explained. “Smartest doctor who ever lived. They rub him to feel better. Try it–it works!”

Some of the Owls did rub their hands over the smiling figure, but they could feel nothing. “Because you’re young,” Mr. Imoo said. “Come back to Nagano when you’re old–you’ll see it works.”

Mr. Imoo had his own chores to do and couldn’t stay any longer, but he left them with a tour guide and some maps of the huge temple complex and told them all that there was one thing they really should do if they got the chance.

“You must experience O-kaidan,” he told them. “Under the main temple is tunnel. You can see people over there lining up for it. It is very dark down there. Sometimes people get frightened. But when you reach the end, you will find the way out. Stick to the right. And feel for the latch to the door. We call it the ‘Key to Enlightenment.’ I can not explain it to you, but after you have been through it, you will know.”

“I’m going right now!” said Nish.

“You certainly need some enlightenment,” said Sarah.

“I’m not going down in some stuffy room with him,” Fahd said. “Nish’ll stink it out.”

“This is a temple!” Nish barked at him, outraged. “You don’t do things like that in a place like this.”

“Hey!” cheered Sarah. “It’s working! Nish finally sees the light!”

“C’mon!” Nish said to Travis.

Travis shook his head. “Maybe later.”

Travis moved off quickly. He only had to imagine the dark tunnel underneath the temple and he shuddered. Travis hated enclosed dark spaces. He didn’t even like long elevator rides. He’d do whatever he could to avoid going.

Travis moved on toward the souvenir section, where visitors were lining up for incense and postcards and small silk banners with paintings of the temple on them.

Data wheeled up to him, smiling and excited.

“The others are going to push me through,” Data told him. “Here, you hang on to the camera. There’s no point taking it down into a dark tunnel. Take some shots of the other temples if you get a chance.”

Travis nodded. It was a beautiful sunny day. The pines surrounding the temples were bright and dripping with melting snow.

There were pigeons strutting all over the walkway. Hundreds of them. Thousands of them. An old woman was dumping out bags of dried bread, and the sound of hundreds of more pigeons landing was almost deafening. They darkened the sun. They landed on her arms, her shoulders, her head, all around her. People cheered and children danced and cameras were raised to record it all as the old woman, grinning from ear to ear, stood with both arms out and pigeons by the dozen tried to find a roost on her.

Got to get this for Data, Travis thought.

The video camera was easy to work. He simply pointed and pressed a button with his thumb.

Everything seemed smaller through the lens. Smaller, but somehow sharper. A cloud of pigeons would fall, another would rise, and in the centre of the shot the old woman turned as if on a pedestal, her grin almost as wide as her outstretched arms as the pigeons fought for a foothold.

A small child ran out into the middle and spooked the birds, a thousand wings roaring as the pigeons rose as one and headed back toward the trees. The child spun, bewildered at their sudden disappearance. Travis giggled, knowing he had caught a delightful scene on Data’s camera.

He raised the camera back toward the old woman and for the first time saw, through the lens, that someone was pointing at him.

It was Eyebrows.

The waiter who had run over Nish.

The man at the ski hill.