Back | Next
Contents

Eighteen

A young couple was strolling across the sand. Their heads were close together, and the girl began to laugh, helplessly. Breaking away, she ran down the beach until she was lost in the glare at the edge of the sea. Inari, watching them from her perch high in the rafters of the pier, sighed enviously. She had never been so free from care, not even in the more recent days of her marriage when she had at last made a tentative attempt to find her own freedoms. Humans seemed to think that her kind were so powerful, that they could do whatever they chose and take whatever they wanted, but when you were locked into the rigid and ritual hierarchies of Hell, you realized that this simply wasn't so. Inari leaned back against the dank, weed-strewn struts of the pier. The badger-teakettle, which had remained vigilantly in its animal form, lay fast asleep in a damp bundle in her lap. For the thousandth time, Inari tried to decide what to do. She knew that her husband would be worried about her, but she could not go home in case the assassin was still there, and she did not want to get Chen into further trouble. Moreover, the feng shui tides of the city made her feel small and threatened, and the ground would burn her feet if she spent too long walking around. The day seemed too huge and too bright, but the sun was already past its height and beginning to sink through the haze. She would wait until twilight, a more comfortable time for her, and then perhaps she would venture out and try to find money to call Chen, or maybe even steal a phone. In her flight from the houseboat, she had taken nothing with her, and now she cursed her own panic. Even under the circumstances, she should have tried to think ahead. The badger stirred in her lap. The young couple was out of sight along the sand. Inari gazed like an owl into the distance, waiting for night.

 

Back | Next
Framed