Chapter Forty-Four The Library of the Lost
Chapter Forty-four
The Library of the Lost
Hana stood in the shadows of a bamboo grove, clutching the pages Yasuhiro had given her. She crumpled them in her fist. “He was right about the rumor being unspeakable. Those poor children.”
“They weren’t children, Hana,” Keishin said.
“It wasn’t their fault they didn’t have souls. It was my fault and my father’s.”
“It happened long before you were born, even before the pawnshop was your father’s responsibility.”
“It doesn’t matter. It is still my family’s shame.”
“We don’t know the whole story.”
“We know enough. We know that the vendor’s grandfather was a porter and that the Shiikuin ordered him to collect a package from the Horishi’s home and to bury it. And now we know what the package turned out to be.” Her voice broke. “A soulless child.”
“It’s a terrible story, but don’t you see, Hana? Now we have a real trail to follow. Yasuhiro’s mother knows where her father took the child, the field where he heard the voices and wailing of children beneath the ground. This has to be the same place the Shiikuin imprisoned your mother. What could be a crueler punishment for a mother desperately missing her own child?”
—
The sun glowed behind the clouds as Hana and Keishin trekked up the narrow steps chiseled into the side of a mountain’s gray face. The snaking path, slippery from wear, was the only way to and from a village that did not seem to want to be found. Only the wooden doors dotting the slope gave Yasuhiro’s mother’s hometown away. Hana held on to a guide rope that ran the length of the steps and tried to keep her eyes from the ground.
“I never thought I’d say this,” Keishin said, “but I prefer the Night Market’s ladders to this. Whoever had the idea of carving homes into a mountain must have needed a lot of excitement in his life.”
“It could be worse.”
“How?”
“We could be climbing up these steps at night or in the rain.”
“Don’t give the weather any ideas.” Keishin gripped the rope tighter. “I told you, it hates me.”
Hana rolled her eyes. “And I told you that the rain that has been following us around is because of me.”
“Fine. I won’t argue with you. At least not until we’ve found Yasuhiro’s mother and are safely behind one of these doors.”
Two children skipped down the path toward Hana, not noticing or caring about how narrow or slippery the steps were. They grinned at Hana and bowed.
A vision of monstrous, soulless children took the place of the two who stood in front of her. Hana froze. Keishin gave her shoulder a comforting squeeze as though reading her mind. Hana blinked the image away. “Oh…uh…hello. Do you know where a woman named Nakano Hiroko lives?”
The shorter of the children looked up at a door directly above them.
“But she is never home,” the older child said. “She spends her day at the library.”
“Where is the library?” Keishin asked.
The children pointed to a door at the very top of the steps. “Over there.”
—
The door of the library was taller and wider than any of the wind-worn doors along the mountain’s face. It was as shiny and black as a piano key and, with the exception of its brass door knocker, showed little signs of wear. A blackened dragon held a ring in its mouth, waiting for visitors to come its way. Hana gripped the brass ring and rapped it against the door twice. Shuffling footsteps echoed behind the door.
“Hello?” a woman’s voice answered through the door.
“Hello,” Hana said. “We are looking for Nakano Hiroko.”
The door opened inward with a loud creak.
“I am she,” the woman standing in the doorway said. Her hair was as gray as the rock the library was carved into, her smile as warm as the sun shining on Hana’s nape.
“Nakano-san.” Hana bowed. “My name is Ishikawa Hana, and this is my friend Minatozaki Keishin. Your son, Yasuhiro, told us that you could help us find…” Hana hesitated, reluctant to mention the soulless children out in the open. “Something.”
“I do not know what you are searching for, but if you have misplaced ‘something,’?” Hiroko said with a smile, “the Library of the Lost is a good place to start looking for it.”
—
Towering stone shelves, sculpted from the mountain, fanned out from the large circular reading room like the rays of the sun. Fireflies, in far larger swarms than in the teahouse of Hana’s grandmother, swirled above the shelves and illuminated the library’s aisles with dancing light. Hana ran her hand over the chisel marks on the shelves, trying to imagine the time and will it took to carve out a library that looked more like a fortress than a place that stored dusty books and scrolls.
“I can see that you have the same question written on your face as everyone who visits this library for the first time,” Hiroko said. “You want to know what treasure requires the safety of such a formidable sanctuary. I wanted to know the answer to that question too ever since I first set foot here as a child, but the map on my skin told me that my duty was at my husband’s side at the Night Market. My question had to wait until I had retired.”
“And have you found your answer?” Hana asked.
“I have. The library guards everything and nothing at all. Books do not find value when they are written. They find value when they are read. Every book here is both worthless and priceless at the same time. It depends on who you ask. As I have not yet had the pleasure of reading half of the library’s collection, I can say that only the books that I have taken from the shelves and stored in my heart are truly precious.” Hiroko gestured to a shelf across the room. “That section of the library is my favorite. It is where all possible endings live. When a writer changes his mind about the fate of a character, his story’s alternate path finds its way here. It’s quiet now, but when the books wake up, all the endings like to argue which one is best.”
“I think I could live in this place,” Keishin said.
“I share your sentiment.” Hiroko chuckled. “I am as much of a fixture here as these shelves.”
“Why is it called the Library of the Lost?” Keishin scanned the shelves.
“It is named after its prized collection,” Hiroko said. “The library houses a little trove that my family’s stall at the Night Market has contributed to over the years. Sometimes, things that are far more precious than pens and coins fall through the cracks. We bring those items here. Unsent love letters. Abandoned stories. Childhood diaries. Yellowing postcards. Borrowed books that were forgotten beneath a bed and never returned. Were you interested in anything in particular? The other world’s books are quite strange, but are worth browsing.”
“We aren’t looking for a book, Nakano-san,” Hana said. “We were hoping that you could help us find a place.”
“A place?”
“The place where your father heard children cry beneath the ground.”
Hiroko clamped her hand over Hana’s mouth, her eyes darting around her. “Do not say another word.”
—
Hiroko led them to a dark corner of the library whose shelves were covered by cobwebs and a thick layer of dust. “This section houses all the stories with happy endings. As you can see, it is not very popular. Even the fireflies avoid this place.”
“Why?” Keishin said.
“People come here to escape, not to envy.” Hiroko glanced down the empty aisle. “We can talk here.”
“I wish we did not need to ask you about the children,” Hana said. “But lives depend on it.”
“I did not know that words I had spoken as a child would follow me into my old age. I suppose that this is my punishment for spreading a secret that was not mine to share. All I could think about then was that I did not want to be like those letters I had found.” Hiroko’s eyes glossed over with tears.
“Letters?” Keishin asked.
“Lost, unsent letters from the other world. I found them rotting inside a damp, crumbling box. They smelled foul and were covered with mold and dirt, all their words and sentiments decayed. That is what happens when words are left unsaid. It does not matter how beautiful they are. In time, everything rots. That is how I knew that my father’s secret rotted inside me too. I could smell its stench. I had to tell someone. Anyone. I told a friend, a porter’s son, and made him swear not to tell anyone. Before the day was over, everyone in the market knew my crime. And now you have carried my shame to the one place I thought it would never find me again.”
“We are sorry,” Hana said. “We did not realize that this would cause you so much distress.”
“It is not your fault. It is mine. My father did not know I had followed him to the field. He always said that I was too curious for my own good. He was right. There is not a day that I do not regret hiding in the ruins of that temple and seeing the ‘package’ the Shiikuin had ordered my father to bury among the wildflowers.” Hiroko covered her ears with her hands and squeezed her eyes shut. “The children…their voices…I can still hear them rising from the ground, louder than the gurgle of the stream.”
“Where is this field, Hiroko-san?” Hana said.
Hiroko dropped her hands to her sides. “Please believe me when I tell you that this is not a place you wish to find.”
“I have no choice. I need to find it.”
“The only choice we have in this world is to be content,” Hiroko said. “But I was a willful and greedy child who wanted to see more than the world outside my window. I disobeyed my father. It is a mistake that I will have to live with for the rest of my life. The cries in my head will never let me forget. I will take them with me to my grave, no matter how much their secret rots inside me.”
—
Keishin sat on the steps of the mountain, his eyes not daring to wander past his feet. He did not want to look at Hana. Their search for her mother and father had come to an end, becoming the latest addition to the library’s dusty collection of lost and unfinished things. “I’m sorry, Hana. We tried.”
Hana stared out into the valley.
Keishin reached for her hand then changed his mind. Holding her was only going to make him feel more helpless. There was nothing he could say to comfort her, no way to hold her tight enough to make her feel that everything was going to be okay. He dug his hands into his pockets. Something hard and cold brushed his fingertips. He pulled out the coin Yasuhiro had given him. It had failed to bring them any luck, and Keishin had half a mind to hurl it off the mountain. He gripped the coin, raised it over his shoulder, and stopped, remembering a way to put it to better use. He set the coin on the step and spun it, following a script from another life. The coin twirled dangerously close to the mountain’s edge, slowing Keishin’s thoughts and muffling the noise inside him enough to hear the advice of an old friend.
—
Keishin hurriedly weaved through the packed Indonesian restaurant and nearly ran into a server. He pulled out a chair across from Ramesh and sat down, panting. “I need to find a field.”
“A field?” Ramesh set his fork down. “Now that’s a first. What kind of field?”
“The kind you bury secrets in.”
Ramesh rubbed his chin. “Interesting. Go on.”
“The only person who knows where to find it refuses to tell me where it is. I’ve reached a dead end.”
Ramesh folded his arms over his chest. “What did that person say exactly?”
“Hiroko said a lot of things. Just not anything useful.”
“Good.” Ramesh spooned vegetable curry and rice into his mouth and chewed slowly.
“How is that a good thing?”
“She could have just said no when you asked her about the location of the place and that would be the end of this conversation. It would be a shame to waste all of this food. ‘A lot of things’ gives us something to work with.”
“I wish that were true. But Hiroko just went on and on about how much she regretted secretly following her father to the field.”
Ramesh smiled. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“We are?”
“If Hiroko followed her father without him knowing it, then I’m guessing that she found a good place to hide.”
“She did. She hid in a—” Keishin’s brows shot up. He jumped from his seat, knocking over his beer. “Thanks, Ramesh. I can take it from here.”
“You’re welcome.” Ramesh sighed, looking longingly at the food they had barely touched. “Good luck.”
—
The spinning coin fell from the side of the mountain, taking Hiroko’s deafening refusal to reveal the field’s location with it. In the silence, Keishin heard all the words she did say. “She hid in a ruined temple…that’s it.”
“What are you talking about?” Hana said.
“I know how to find the field.”
“You do? How?”
“Hiroko may not have told us its exact location, but whether intentionally or not, she gave us a chance to find it. I think that a part of her did want to set the secret free. She told us three things about the field that we didn’t know before. First, there are ruins of a temple near the place her father buried the creature. Second, the field is covered in wildflowers. Third, there is a stream close by. Temple ruins. Wildflowers. Stream. That should narrow our search considerably.”
Hana jumped to her feet. “We need a map.”
—
It looked more like a campsite than a train station. An assortment of colorful tents ran alongside the tracks, some as large as decent-sized homes. People cooked over bonfires on the platform while others hung their laundry from ropes strung along the station’s posts. Some had even managed to plant vegetable gardens. Children chased one another between tents, giggling as they ran. No one, Keishin thought, seemed to be concerned that the sign meant to announce the arrival times of the trains was blank.
Hana walked back to Keishin with a handful of maps. “This is everything I could find.”
Keishin stared at the makeshift village on the platform. “Why are they camped out here?”
“They are waiting for their trains.”
Keishin raised his brows. “How long have they been waiting?”
“A while.”
“How often do the trains come by?”
“This is not like Tokyo Station. The trains here do not have a schedule. They arrive when they arrive. Some of the passengers were born waiting here, and some will die without even getting a glimpse of their train.”
“And they’re okay with that?”
“They do not have a choice. The railways do not always stay in one place, especially the ones that travel over oceans. Currents change. The train tracks can drift and send the trains on very long detours,” Hana said. “Come. We need to find a place where we can take a look at these maps.”
—
They walked over to a less crowded part of the station. “Do you want to hear something weird?” Keishin said.
“Stranger than trains that get lost at sea?” Hana knelt on the floor and set down the maps.
“Not that strange.” Keishin smirked. “I don’t like maps.”
“Why not?”
“They remind me of all the things people pretend to know, all the things we make up to make us feel like we understand everything and are in control. Maps are more of an art form than a science. They’re designed at the discretion of their makers. Some things are shrunk, others are enlarged, some places are kept, and some are left out. We draw thick red lines around spaces we claim as our own as if we could actually see where one space ended and another began. But borders are simply constructs. They exist only in our minds.”
Hana kept quiet, unsure how to completely yet politely disagree. Borders were real, and the ones that were the most difficult to cross were not the invisible lines between towns, but the walls people built around themselves. Borders were necessary. They kept secrets safe. “Then you will be happy to know that our maps are a bit different from the maps you are familiar with.” She spread out a map over the floor and revealed a blank page.
“I can see that.” Keishin crouched next to it. “How do we find anything on it?”
“We do not. The maps will find the place for us. If we ask nicely enough.”
“Given that I’ve never had a conversation with a map before, you should probably do the talking.”
Hana smoothed down the map’s edges. “Excuse me, but can you help us find a field?”
The map shivered on the floor. A crescent-shaped mountain range formed over its surface, creasing the page. The map rippled and carved a field into the range’s inner curve. It shook, as though asking Hana if this was the field she was searching for.
“A field with wildflowers and a temple,” Hana said. “And a stream.”
The mountains over the map receded, leaving the paper as smooth as it was before they had appeared. The map folded itself back into a rectangle.
“Maybe the next map will know where it is,” Keishin said.
Hana spread out a second map and asked it the same question.
The map refolded itself.
Keishin chewed the nail on his thumb.
Hana unfolded the third map and asked it about the field. She spoke slowly to make sure that the map understood every word.
The map lay flat and still.
Hana reached for the fourth map.
The third map trembled. Two mountains rose over opposite corners of the blank sheet, leaving a valley between them. The valley creased and formed a temple. A strip ripped across the middle of the valley, exposing the floor beneath it.
“Kei…” Hana stared at the rip, transfixed. “I think that’s a…”
“Stream.” He squeezed her hand.
A train rumbled over his voice. Cheers erupted through the camp. A fourth of the people on the platform scurried around, stuffing their belongings into bags and balancing things that couldn’t fit in their arms. A man made his young daughter ride on his shoulders as he ran toward the train with two bulging bags in each hand. His daughter bobbed as he ran, hugging a small potted plant to her chest. The small group they had shared a tent with chased after them to wave goodbye.
Keishin ignored the commotion, focusing his attention on the long strip of paper hovering over the map. It twisted in the air, shredding itself into tiny petallike pieces. The shreds turned the palest blue before falling like rain over the map and scattering over the paper valley. “Wildflowers…”
The map grew still. Its shreds re-formed, and in less time than it took to blink, the map was pristine and whole. Brushstrokes slowly appeared over the page where the valley had been, revealing the field’s location one carefully painted word at a time.
“We did it!” Keishin threw his arms around Hana as the train pulled away from the station.
More words formed on the map. Hana’s eyes darted over the completed directions. She stiffened in Keishin’s embrace.
Keishin released her. “What’s wrong?”
“I know where the field is.” She stared at the empty tracks. “And we just missed the train the map told us to catch to get there.”
—
A blanket of quiet settled over the tent village as its residents retreated into their makeshift homes and went to bed. A few pockets of hushed conversation remained, exchanged between groups huddled around bonfires. They had talked about the same thing for hours, none of them growing tired of reliving the excitement of the train’s arrival earlier that day.
Hana sat among a small group gathered in a circle around a fire, warming her hands by the flames. “What if the train never comes?”
Keishin put his arm around her. “It will. It has to. We’ve come too far to give up now.”
“You’re new here, aren’t you?” said an elderly man sitting next to Keishin.
“We are,” Hana replied.
“Welcome. I am Ono Aritomo. I can always tell who the new arrivals are.” The man flashed a nearly toothless grin. “They are the ones in a rush. I was that way too when I arrived here with my mother.”
“Your mother?” Keishin tried and failed to hide the surprise in his voice.
Aritomo smiled. “I was a young boy then, barely twelve. I wed and raised a family here. My wife’s train arrived ten years ago. Our son went with her.”
“I am sorry to hear that, Ono-san,” Hana said.
“Why?” Aritomo scratched his chin. “My wife was on her own journey and I am on mine. When her train arrived, she had to get on it. There is nothing to feel sorry for. I have lived a good life. I have been a son, a husband, and a father. To many of the people here, I am a friend. I have grown a garden and fed the hungry, and built a tent where strangers have found rest. What more can a man ask for? Arriving at one’s destination is never promised. Only the journey is. Waiting is part of that journey.”
Keishin nodded slowly. “You are a wise man, Ono-san.”
Aritomo shook his head. “Not wiser than any of those who wait here. We have been blessed with the time to think. It has allowed us to realize that life is about finding joy in the space between where you came from and where you are going. I may never get to where I want to go, but I can look back on my life and say that I did not waste a second of it being bitter that I was not someplace else. Happiness does not exist in a place. It lives in every breath we take. You need to choose to take it in, over and over again.”
Aritomo’s words warmed Keishin more than the bonfire did, finding and filling empty spaces he didn’t know he had. “I am grateful that I met you.”
“There is no need to thank me. I have met all sorts of people over my years at this train station. Some pass through quickly, some stay for a while. Everyone I have ever encountered, no matter how brief, has either taken something or left something behind. Rude people can rip the smile from your face. Kind ones can give it back. I have learned that there is nothing to be gained from stealing other people’s happiness. No matter how much you have stolen, it is not something that you can ever use for yourself.”
—
Hana lay curled against Keishin, molded into his chest. “Could you be happy here? Could a vegetable garden on a train station’s platform make you as happy as your neutrinos and stars?”
Keishin rubbed her shoulder with his thumb. “As much as I would like to pretend to be as wise as Aritomo, I know that I couldn’t be content here.”
“Why?” Hana turned to face him.
“Because I refuse to break my promise to you, Hana. We will find your parents one way or another. I don’t care how far away the field is, how difficult it is to get there, or how many Shiikuin chase after us. We will find them.”
“I’m sorry,” a woman sharing the tent with them whispered to Hana. She pulled her dark hair from her tanned face and coiled it into a loose bun. “I didn’t mean to overhear your conversation.”
“I…I apologize for waking you,” Keishin stammered.
“You said that you are looking for your parents?” the woman said. “And that the Shiikuin are looking for you?”
Hana paled.
“Don’t worry. I can keep your secret. My name is Keiko. I am no friend of the Shiikuin. I know how cruel they can be. I lost my father to them. He was sick and had fallen asleep at his stall at the Night Market, and the Shiikuin chased him into the river for it.”
“I’m sorry,” Keishin said, remembering the story that Hana had told him.
“There is another way than by train to get to where you are going,” Keiko said.
“There is?” Hana said. “But the map told us that—”
“No map would suggest this manner of travel,” Keiko said. “It is spoken of only in the darkest corners of the Night Market, and only by the most desperate.”
“Why?” Keishin said.
“Because people believe it to be shameful and dishonorable,” Keiko said. “But if the lives of those I loved depended on it, I do not think that I would care about honor.”
“Neither would I,” Hana said. “It is only a matter of time before the Shiikuin find us here. We do not have the luxury of waiting for our train.”
Keiko nodded. “The Forbidden Way will take you wherever you need to go, but it will not be easy.”
“We will do it,” Hana said. “When can we leave?”
“Soon. There is something that both of you must do first.”
“What must we do?” Keishin said.
“Drink.”