The Phoenix in a Foreign Labyrinth

Chapter 22 – On the Hilltop

The years meandered by with only the cycle of seasons and festivals marking their passage, although to Yune, the summers recently seemed to have been getting shorter and the winters longer. She had her own routines too. Every week she would travel the few miles to a quiet beach and sit by the ocean listening to her sister Shione speaking in the sound of the tide. Her daily routine, though, began with a now somewhat slow walk up the steep, rocky path that led through the kiri trees to the top of the hill.

She was later even than usual today – there had been air raid sirens earlier, but the “all clear” had sounded long ago so surely it would be safe enough now. On the way up the path, she had come face to face with a sika deer. It stood there transfixed for a moment with its head raised high, eyes wide and nostrils flaring, as if it could sense some dread thing approaching, then it turned suddenly and bounded back into the woods.

When she reached the top, she sat down on the trunk of an old tree that had conveniently been felled by a typhoon a few months before, and surveyed the bustling river valley stretched out beneath her. Once, long ago, there had just been a village surrounded by rice paddies, then the imposing, if somewhat incongruous, cathedral had been built, but now it was mainly given over to workshops and factories.

Yune did not begrudge the change, after all, industry was the life-blood of the nation, especially in wartime. She was sorry that they were now at war with the country that she had called home for almost forty years, the country that had saved her from her destiny as a sexual plaything, the country that had given birth to the only person she had ever really loved, but such were the changing fortunes of this life.

And Japan’s fortunes were changing indeed. Although reliable news was hard to come by, it seemed that their situation was dire and the end inevitable despite everyone’s best efforts. She thought about the munitions factory workers toiling, perhaps in vain, in the summer heat down in the valley below, and memories flooded back of Claude working at his sweltering forge with the sweat running in rivulets down his back.

Then came the memories of Alice too. She caught her breath as she remembered that hot summer night exactly 60 years ago to the very day when they had become lovers, and then the tears welled up once more, as they always did when she thought of their brief time together.

How could so many years have passed by, though, when things still seemed so fresh? She could still recall with absolute clarity the moment when she had first touched Alice’s naked body and had seen her eyes become wild with excitement, as if the door to her prison had just been unlocked. Alice, how I have missed you all these years, please forgive me, my love, forgive me somehow, she thought.

It was at moments like this that she imagined she could almost feel the Ou that had been chiselled into the flesh of her back all those years ago stirring, and today it was stirring more than ever, as if ready to take flight.

Notes:

Shione, 汐音, means “sound of the tide”.