Thomas Randall - Spirits of the Noh

In Miho and Sakura’s room, they looked through the finished pages of the manga Sakura and Kara had done about ketsuki, and then-as Miho told them the story of Dojoji, the Noh play that the club intended to perform-Sakura began to sketch what the characters might look like in a manga version. As she drew the lines that would make the demon serpent woman, Hannya, Kara shuddered. She’d had enough of monsters for a while.

With a private smile, she chided herself that she was being silly. Miho was right, after all. It was only a play.

Kara is at home, in her bedroom in Medford, Massachusetts. The walls are a pink wash and the curtains are sheer lace. A breeze washes through the windows, billowing the curtains, the smell of an imminent rainstorm in the air. The room is just as her mother decorated it for her, right down to the hand-painted fairies above the headboard of the bone-white sleigh bed.

They share a love of fairies, Kara and her mother.

She lies in bed, a sleepy smile on her face, turns over and settles deep into her bedclothes, relishing the cool breeze and the distant rumble of thunder. It’s heaven. Her mother created this little slice of paradise for Kara when she turned seven, as a present, and painted those fairies herself. This isn’t right, of course. Kara redecorated in the eighth grade, painted the walls white-too old for pink, now-and her mother even helped her brush thick, eggshell finish right over the fairies. That was not long before…

This isn’t right, but it’s perfection.

Bliss.

A soft rap comes at the door, punctuated by a crack of thunder, the rainstorm coming nearer. Sprinkles patter the windows as Kara rises on her elbow, genuinely curious.

“Who is it?”

The knob turns, the door opens a crack, and from deep inside her there comes a sense of painful longing, of fluttery, excited certainty that her mother is about to enter the room, perhaps to tell her that breakfast is ready.

But the door swings open on darkness. Green eyes-cat eyes-stare out at her from the black shadows, growing huge-a massive, bent, bestial silhouette separating itself from the deeper darkness. The face dips into the room, shadows coalescing around it, but she can see the horns and the twisted mouth and jutting fangs of Kyuketsuki, the demon whose ancient whispers spoke a curse upon her.

Terror seizes her, but all Kara can do is burrow deeper into the bed, a little girl again. Her breath catches in her throat and she bites her lower lip, tasting blood.

Something tumbles from the shadows, as though spilling from the Kyuketsuki’s own darkness, and sprawls to the floor.

Hachiro. Dead. Limbs twisted up like some castaway doll, eyes open, dull and glassy.

Kara opens her mouth to scream, but no sound emerges.

“It’s all right, sweet pea,” a voice says beside her.

Hope surges through her, and love, and a kind of lightness of spirit that she has forgotten is even possible. Kara turns in bed and looks up into the face of her mother, her sandy blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, blue eyes smiling.

“It’s all right, K-baby. It’s only a dream. Watch.”

Kara watches as her mother strides across the room, Hachiro’s broken body dispersing into smoke, and closes the door, shutting out the darkness and the demon and its curse.

“There, see?” Annette Harper says as she walks back to her daughter. “All gone. Trust me, honey. There’s nothing in the dark that isn’t there in the light.”

Kara’s mother climbs into bed beside her and Kara snuggles close, wrapped in her mother’s arms, her pulse slowing, relief and contentment sweeping through her. Outside the window, the rain begins to fall harder and the breeze kicks up, the curtains rising like ghosts. The storm is here now, but Kara doesn’t mind at all. She has her mother…

And she wakes.

When Kara opened her eyes she saw rain pelting the windows, the sky gray and heavy with storm. Tuesday morning had arrived, but it was impossible to discern the time from the gloomy daylight.

In the lingering embrace of the dream, she felt emotion well up within her and tears began to slip down her face. As she attempted to brush them away, her breath hitched, and she started to cry more fiercely.

Part of the dream had been a nightmare-but, really, it was only an ordinary nightmare. She had had others. The fear and unease would dissipate, as they always did.

But to dream of her mother-her smile and the comfort and security of her embrace-and to wake to the reality that she would never see her mother again-that was an anguish that would never go away, and a weight on her heart far worse than any nightmare.

Kara thought of those fairies on her bedroom wall back home, and how her mother must have felt the day she painted them over. A small thing, really, but God, how she wished she had seen the hurt of it then, even afterward, so that she could have apologized.

If only.

The two saddest, loneliest words in the world.

A beautiful job, Kara. Keep up the good work.”

Kara smiled up at Miss Aritomo and gave a little bow of her head in silent gratitude. No matter how much she wrestled with her own feelings about her father dating the art teacher, she could never say the woman was anything but sweet. Even when she had first arrived at Monju-no-Chie school, Miss Aritomo had been incredibly nice.

But as Miss Aritomo walked away, Kara grimaced. With a sigh, she brushed her blond hair away from her eyes, and then realized she’d smeared green paint on her forehead and laughed at herself, bending to pick up her paintbrush again.

“You do not seem like a girl who is having a good time,” Sakura said.

Kara froze and shot a guilty glance over her shoulder, but Miss Aritomo had already left the room.

“Is it that obvious?” she asked.

Sakura nodded. “It probably helps that you’ve been complaining all week, but it’s obvious to me. Aritomo-sensei doesn’t seem to have noticed.”

Kara dipped the brush into a bucket of green paint and began applying a second coat to the carved piece of wood that would eventually represent a tree in the background of the set.

“Good,” she said.

“You could just tell her you want to quit, you know,” Sakura said, head cocked, eyes narrowed as though Kara was some puzzle she wanted to decipher.

“It isn’t that easy,” Kara replied. “Miho would be heartbroken.”

Sakura shrugged and went back to painting. Kara said nothing more, but she had other reasons as well. Her father had been so pleased that she had been spending this extra time under Miss Aritomo’s guidance that he would be upset if she bailed on it now. Though obviously he didn’t understand just how little time this volunteer gig provided for teacher-student interaction.

The previous Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, after she and Sakura had finished with calligraphy club, they had come down into the basement room where Miss Aritomo held the Noh meetings and volunteered their assistance. It had seemed like such a good idea at the time that Ren-who was also in calligraphy club-had joined them. If Hachiro hadn’t had baseball club and been wholly devoted to the game, he might have done the same.

Now Kara thought that Hachiro was the lucky one. After more than a week of helping the Noh club prepare for its performance, she was racking her brain, trying to figure out some way to gracefully excuse herself from the obligation.

Sakura and Ren didn’t seem nearly as bored. Noh theater had been fascinating to Kara in concept, but she had quickly learned that in execution, that fascination waned considerably. Back home in Medford, she had taken part in a couple of different school productions, including My Fair Lady and A Christmas Carol. The cast and crew would form a family unit, an easy camaraderie that created friendships between kids who might never have stopped to talk to one another in the cafeteria or the halls. Working on Miss Aritomo’s pet project, she had imagined a similar arrangement, but had encountered something entirely different.