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like this, I could see that it had been carved with an image of some sort, but I couldn’t tell what the carving was. The priest stepped forward with two assistants who threw incense on the braziers in the room. Everyone else lay down and began to pray softly. The priest fell forward and began chanting in a loud voice.
    He was praying to the Eleven-Headed Kannon—when I squinted, the carving made sense this time: there was the cluster of heads, and the arms and the crossed legs. My fur rose on my shoulders until my skin prickled with the strain. “I hate this,” I hissed at my brother; he just nuzzled me and went back to listening.
    There was no reason to worry. I remembered the priest who had called on Buddha and walked past us anyway. How could this one fare better? His voice went on and on, asking to know where Yoshifuji’s body lay. Smoke from the incense snaked from the braziers and out onto the still air of the garden. One tendril seemed to move toward us as though questing. The tiniest breeze lifted its tip, so like a snake’s head that my courage broke and I bolted, my heart so hot and heavy with panic that I could hardly see the garden I ran through.
    I ran under the storehouse and rushed back into my woman’s shape and stood there, shivering. “Husband?” I called. “Husband? Where are you?”
    I ran through the rooms and hallways, careless of being seen by the men of the household, calling my husband’s name. I was on one of the verandas when Yoshifuji emerged quickly from a brightly lit room, dropping the blinds behind him.
    “Wife?” he said. His face was wrinkled with a frown. “I have emissaries. We could hear you all over—”
    “Husband!” I panted. “I am so sorry—I know this is most unseemly—it’s just that—I was so afraid… .”
    His face softened and he moved forward quickly to hold me. “What happened? The child? It is all right now, whatever it is. I am here.”
    I swallowed, tried to control my breathing. “No, not our son, he’s fine.” What could I tell him? “A snake of smoke, and it was looking for you. I—must have had a bad dream. I woke up and I was all alone and I felt so afraid.”
    “Alone? Where were your women?”
    “They were there. I just meant—lonely for you.” I threw myself against him, my arms tight around his neck and sobbed against his cheek. He held me and made soothing noises. After a while, he loosened my hands and passed me to one of my women, who stood waiting in the shadows.
    “Better?”
    I sniffed.
    He took my hands. “I’ll take care of this little bit of business and then I’ll come and sit with you, all night if you like.”
    “Yes,” I said. “Hurry.”
     
    I waited in my rooms. I sat in the near-dark, and tossed my ball and cried with the horror of that snake of smoke, and longing for Yoshifuji. My son was sleeping but my nurse carried him in to me, and I watched him for a time, curled up in a nest of quilts. “See, my husband must love me,” I said to myself. “Here is the evidence. No Buddha can take this away. No Buddha can threaten his love for me.” Then I would think of the snake of smoke and I would jump up and pace and stare out at our pretty fox-gardens again. And Yoshifuji did not come.
    But the Eleven-Headed Kannon came. He came as an old man with only one head and holding a stick; but I knew it was he: he was not made of fox magic in a place where everything and everyone was. He smelled of the priest’s incense. Who else could he be? He walked across the gardens stepping through the carefully placed trees, our rocks, and the ornamental lake; and he left a path in his wake, like a man raising mud as he fords a stream. The magic tore and shredded where he passed, leaving bare dirt and the shadow of the storehouse overhead. The magic eddied and sealed the break a few steps behind him but he carried the gash of reality with him like a Court train.
    He walked straight through all our creatings, toward the