Chapter 23: Harvest Moon

The harvest moon rose over the Gate House, huge and gold, and the light between the pillars opened.

Mai felt it before she saw it.

A warm wind came out of the doorway and lifted the hair off her neck, and it smelled of cut grass and woodsmoke.

Odile stood between the two white stones with the blue book open in her hands.

"It has answered," she said, and her voice shook. "I have not seen it do this in three hundred years."

The glittering air in the Gate was wide enough to walk through, and in it Mai could see a hill.

It was dark, with a paper lantern burning at the foot of two grey stone pillars.

A thermos lay on its side in the grass.

"That's the thermos," Mai said.

"It's still there!"

"Of course it is. Nobody picks up after me but me."

Hinata laughed, and her laugh broke into a sob.

She wore a plain white robe and red hakama, the oldest set from the cedar chest, and the red cord shone on her finger.

"Lady Mai," Odile said, and closed the book. "Lady Hinata. The Gate will hold until the moon sets."

"Not longer?"

"Not tonight. It will open again every harvest moon, for as long as the book holds."

"And the book holds as long as you two do."

Odile's grey eyes were wet.

"Go home. Be back by moonset."

They stepped through hand in hand.

The air closed around them, and the world went white.

Then the white was the cool sharp dark of a hill in autumn.

Mai stood in the grass, with her feet on real dirt, and breathed in.

It smelled like cedar and wet leaves and the faint cold of Tokyo's far-off lights.

"Hinata."

"I know."

"We're home."

"I know."

Hinata was crying openly now, her face turned up to the real moon, a single pale one, with the stars thick around it.

Mai picked up the thermos and shook it.

It sloshed.

"Barley tea," she said. "It's still barley tea."

"It's been a month."

"It's gone cold, then."

They sat on the grass and drank it anyway, passing the cap back and forth.

It tasted like every night of Mai's life.

Down the hill the shrine house windows glowed gold.

A lantern hung at the porch, and someone had swept the path.

"Hinata?" A man's voice called, thin and hopeful, from the lit doorway. "Is that you out there?"

"It's me!"

"And Mai?"

"I'm here too," Mai called back.

A long moment passed, with the two of them standing at the foot of the hill.

Then a woman's voice floated up, tight with tears.

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