The Demon and the City - By Liz Williams Page 0,104

up onto the portal roof, where it crouched, rattling its head from side to side. Jhai looked up at the creature and gasped. It let out a peal of laughter, shaking its pointed head. Zhu Irzh grabbed her wrist and pulled her toward the doors.

Interlude

The emergency services had been working throughout the festival, in Bharcharia Anh, to repair the damage done by the earthquake. Gardeners moved silently through the green, moist gardens mending the torn soil, replanting the uprooted thousand-flower, bamboo, maple and cryptomeria, pruning and replacing. Now, the gardens were once again serene, wet with dew in the early morning, a light mist rising from the damp grass, and throughout the gardens the air held the scent of flowers and rain.

Iso Matabe preferred this time of day to all others, save perhaps the early evening, those times which were neither one time nor another, halfway between darkness and daylight, the times when the veil which separated the worlds drew thin and the beloved dead could be glimpsed. Matabe was now in her forties; a grave woman with a melancholy gaze. She was held to be one of the greatest poets of her day, hiding behind the walls of her house, walking in her green garden, a recluse who shunned performance. She could not bear to see anyone ever again, except the mute servant who drifted like a ghost around the house. She had lost too many: her beloved sisters, her mother, her lover Arei, and where once the house had resounded with the soft voices of the women, there was only a ringing quietness. Legends had grown up around her in the last twenty years.

Every four or five years she would submit another work to her publishers; long, intricate works, revealing a tormented soul.

The veil was very thin today. Matabe had seen it from the window, and rather than changing into the dark robe that she favored, had hurried down the stairs in her stiff morning kimono and straight out into the garden. The grass was damp beneath her slippers, and a single bird was singing: the canary that she kept in an ancient bamboo cage on the verandah. The door of the cage was always open, but like its mistress, the bird preferred sanctuary. The long, liquid song ran down the morning air, cold as snow.

"Tayu?" she called uncertainly into the rising mist. Through the veil she could see an identical garden, with a dark house beyond, its eaves glistening with frost. In the garden a woman was walking, dressed in a green kimono, almost her mirror image. A few moments after Matabe had called to her, she looked up: the time lag was slight but noticeable. She smiled.

"Tayu? You can hear me?" The mist was rising now, like smoke about her bare ankles, and she could see the veil itself, a gleaming brightness laid across the air, and then it was suddenly gone, as if someone had snatched it up into the sky. Her sister stood before her in the garden, her face a pale oval against the dappled background of the trees. Matabe, after an astounded moment, ran to her and clasped her cold hands. Tayu's composed face crumpled. When they both looked back, Matabe's home was no longer there. The canary still sang, a drift of change in the air.

Fifty-Seven

The plain was bright with snow, a glare that reflected from the sunless sky and dazzled the eyes. There were, perhaps, mountains in the distance, an indistinct line of high country that floated, mauve and gray and a pale dull red, above the distant snow. Whenever Zhu Irzh looked at it directly, however, it faded, a dream far away, like trying to see a star from the corner of the eye. He thought he had come here with others—there was a flickering memory of passing through a door, like an old movie reel—but now he was quite alone.

The snow was real enough, however, a thick icy crust which broke beneath his boots, gnawing at his ankles. Above, the sky was a light ethereal blue, the color of a bird's egg. A few last fat flakes of snow still drifted down. He had no idea where he might be.

Zhu Irzh looked around him, turning in the snow. There was no one to be seen. He was on the crest of a low ridge, which looked out across the plains. As he stepped up over the ridge, Zhu Irzh saw something stretching out before him to the distant