At least, I think that’s what she says. It’s in a more formal style than modern Japanese. Judging by her clothing, I wager a guess at Early Middle Japanese, which is really unfortunate. I’m much more fluent in the modern dialect.
I hold up my hands in front of me to show I’m not a threat. “A friend,” I reply. “I want to help you.”
At least, I think that’s what I said. I mold my face into the same lines of sympathy Dad always used, just in case.
Her gaze narrows. “Where am I? I do not recognize this place.”
“A wood,” I tell her, “where lost people sometimes find themselves.”
I’m not usually so direct with my answers; most travelers jump at the chance for someone to lead them home, even a stranger such as myself, whether their questions are answered or not. But this girl’s fear doesn’t shut her down; it wakes her up. If I’m going to get her to cooperate, I need to be as forthright as possible.
“Where are you from?” I ask, taking a step closer.
She stiffens. A band of sunlight glints off her blade.
“Please,” I say. “I’m just trying to help. Don’t—”
But she’s already running, barreling toward me like a bull at full charge. I duck at the last second, pivoting myself around her and catching her wrist in my hand. She jerks to a stop. In her split second of shock, I grab her other wrist, pinching her hands behind her back until the dagger loosens from her grip and sticks point-first in the earth.
“I don’t want to hurt you. See?” I pick up the knife and throw it into the trees. “I just want to help.”
“Why?” she spits.
“Because you’re not supposed to be here. Don’t you want to go home?”
Her body relaxes slightly at that word. Home.
I take a deep breath. “Tell me where you live.”
She hesitates, then mutters, “Heian-kyō.”
Heian-kyō. The city now known as Kyōto.
“What year?” I ask, but I must not ask it in the right way, because she doesn’t seem to understand.
“Who is the emperor?” I try again.
“Takakura.”
There is only one Heian-kyō threshold, so I’m not worried about sending her back to the wrong time, but it’s important to keep track of the threshold’s current timeline for the council’s records. I’ll have to double-check to be sure, but if I remember my Japanese history correctly, that would put the threshold somewhere near the end of the Heian period.
“I’m going to let go now,” I say. “You have two choices here. You can run away and stay lost, or you can follow me and go home. Understand?”
I’m really winging the Japanese now, but she nods anyway. She follows me down the paths without saying a word. A cloud moves over the sun as we walk, and the blood in my veins jerks at the sudden darkness. A primal reaction, but logic quickly takes over, as it always does on cloudy days. The wood doesn’t change until night falls, and I know exactly how much time I have left.
Two hours to sundown.
We finally reach her threshold, an empty pocket of space between the trees, only distinguishable by a break in the logs lining the paths and the decrepit shingle hanging above it that bears her city’s modern name: Kyōto, Japan.
“If you step through the trees here,” I say, “you’ll find your way home.”
“Home?” she repeats.
I nod.
She smiles and carefully takes a step forward, then another, walking underneath the shingle. And then she disappears entirely, as if she were never here to begin with.
*
This is my favorite time in the wood. The hour just before sunset, when the wind slashes through the green canopy above me, cutting open squares of orange sky like patches in a quilt. Fireflies flit through the trees, little lanterns in the encroaching darkness. I put out my hand and catch one in my palm. Its blue body is different from the fireflies others see outside the wood. Dad told me once that they are an evolved species, that our wood is littered with evolved species the rest of the world will not see for a millennium.
I stroke my finger down its silver-striped back and its wings flutter, revealing the lower half of its body. Pinpricks of light swirl in a clear shell, an entire galaxy of stars and planets and sunshine trapped in its tiny frame.
At least, that’s what it’s always looked like to me. Dad used to say it reminded him of oil slicks, the way the rainbow would swirl through the black, but he loved working on cars and I love astronomy, so I guess it all depends on what you want to see.
I press my lips against my wrist and blow until the bug flies away. I wish I could stay longer, but the sun is closing in on the horizon, and mist is already starting to unfurl from the trees surrounding me, collecting on the paths like a ghostly blanket. It’s as if the mist knows the rules change after dark. As if it would hide the paths and the thresholds from me so I couldn’t find my way home.
This is the moment when I wish my feet wouldn’t betray me. When I wish I could stay in this exact spot, staring up at the patches in the leafy quilt until they turn velvety black, speckled with stars, and letting the trees take me so I can find him.
But then my feet shuffle toward home. Halfway there, the wood becomes less dense. I see the light from the kitchen through the gaps in the trees, and I remember why I can’t disappear.
Mom would be all alone in this world, and she would never forgive me for doing that to her.
I would never forgive myself.
She wants me to stop coming out here. We argue about it sometimes but Mom knows there’s no fighting it. The wood calls to me like a siren, tugging an invisible thread that reaches deep into my core, so that I have no choice but to follow. A puppet on a string.
Uncle Joe mediates when he can, but he’s not always around.
I know I’ve stepped over the threshold into the normal wood—the one that everyone else sees when they drive by on 315—when the breath rushes out of my lungs in a single huff and the regular noises of the world, the cars honking and the hum of the streetlights blinking on and the sound of the river, swollen from the previous night’s rain and lapping against the edges of our neighbors’ yards, slam into my ears.
It’s always like this. Heart drumming, lungs burning, as if I’ve been holding my breath for hours. I feel heavier somehow, rooted to the ground, and yet disconnected from all of it.
I sit down on the giant rock that bears my parents’ initials inside a heart and watch the sunset. Mom spots me from the window above the kitchen sink and waves. I try to wave back, but I’m still not completely in control of my body, and my hand doesn’t leave my side. I smile at her instead.