Little Yokozuna (8 page)

"Maybe," said Libby. "Or maybe Daddy. Or Mummy." She laughed. Since seeing the stone garden, anything seemed possible, and that bend ahead seemed full of magic chances. They were almost running when they finally reached it.

"Here we go!" cried Libby, and they ran around the bend, hand in hand. They thudded to a stop against another black wall of stone.

"A dead end!" wailed Libby. "A dead end!"

"It can't be," Q.J. said, arguing with her own eyes. "Both ends of the tunnel can't be a dead end. It's impossible"

"It's impossible," said Libby, fighting back the tears. "But it
is
."

 

 

 

"Now listen," said Annie. She was squatting on her heels in front of the garden of Kiyoshi-chan's family. Knuckleball and Kiyoshi-chan were on each side of her, in the same position. There was the pungent aroma of cooking soba coming from the kitchen window, where the head of Kiyoshi-chan's mother, wrapped in a blue print kerchief, was visible. It was finally no longer raining over Kashiwa, and there were even bits of blue sky overhead.

"Now listen," said Annie again. "We need to go about this more
scientifically
. We've been wasting too much time."

"Go about what?" asked Knuckleball.

"Go about gathering everyone together again," said Annie, "and finding Little Harriet, and getting back home again."

"Oh," said Knuckleball. "Is that all? Piece of cake."

He said "piece of cake" in literal Japanese, just like the rest of the conversation, which confused Kiyoshi-chan a lot. It took a while to explain the expression to his satisfaction, and even then he wore a puzzled look afterward.

"Especially," said Annie, "we need to figure out everything we can about these garden passageways we've been using. There must be some rational, scientific explanation for them. If we can only figure them out better, maybe we can learn how to
control
them."

"That would help," said Knuckleball. "So far they've just been dumping us places, but at least they've kept us on the track of Little Harriet. This last time was weird, though. It almost killed us all."

"Oh, don't exaggerate, Knuckleball," said Annie. "It was just uncomfortable for a second, like somebody was trying to keep it shut. Or like we were too late, trying to squeeze through a closing door. Who knows?" She shrugged.

"Yeah," said Knuckleball, "but then it blew us all in different directions. Who knows where the others are now?"

"Exactly why we need to approach this more systematically," said Annie. "Now, let's put together everything we know so far about this... this... means of transportation."

"OK," said Knuckleball. He straightened his glasses, as he always did when he was about to act like a professor. "We know that it gets us places in a hurry," he said, "even halfway around the world."

"Right," said Annie. "Distances seem to mean nothing to it. And neither does... " She stopped without finishing her sentence.

"And neither does what?" asked Kiyoshi-chan.

"Never mind for now," said Annie. "I'll tell you when I find out for sure. So what else do we know?"

"Well," said Knuckleball, "we know that not
all
Japanese gardens are gateways from one place to another. We've tried plenty just in the past few days that didn't get us anything but facefuls of shrubbery."

"Actually," said Annie. "We don't even really know if
only
Japanese gardens are gateways. Maybe other gardens would also serve as gateways."

"Do people in other countries make such gardens?" asked Kiyoshi-chan. "Gardens that are supposed to be bigger on the inside than they are on the outside?"

"I don't know," said Annie. "I never really thought about it. I don't think most people in other countries have a philosophy of gardening, like the Japanese do. Most people just garden according to what seems nicest to look at."

Kiyoshi-chan's old
obaa-san
poked her white head out the door and looked with friendly curiosity at the children in the yard. Moving very slowly, she slid the door shut and shuffled down off the porch toward them. The children stood up and bowed to her, as she smiled and bobbed at them. Her face was as wrinkled as a dried peach. She moved away, pottering meaninglessly.

"She's very beautiful," said Annie.

Kiyoshi-chan gaped at her. "Beautiful?" he said. "How can you call my grandmother
beautiful?
Did you use the wrong word?"

"No," said Annie. "I used just the right word. She is more beautiful than almost anyone I ever saw. I can't explain why exactly. In some people the years add up differently than in others. You can see at one look how hard she's had to work all her life, but there's no sourness in her at all."

"It's true that she's had a hard life," said Kiyoshi-chan. "So many wars. She had an older brother who died fighting the Russians."

"The Russians?" said Knuckleball. "I don't picture the Japanese fighting the Russians. You mean in World War II?"

"No," said Kiyoshi-chan. "I mean in the old war with the Russians."

Annie looked at Knuckleball, who was puzzled. "Nineteen-oh-four, Knuckler," she said, then wished she hadn't, as she saw him look hard at the old woman again.

"No
way
" he said. "She's not
that
old."

"Well," said Annie, quickly, "back to the gardens. What else do we know?"

"We know we can't go back the way we've come," said Knuckleball. "The gateways seem to close up as soon as we come out of them."

"Do we know that for sure?" asked Annie. "Have we really tried it? Why, Kiyoshi-chan saw Little Harriet come right out of this garden and then dive right back in."

"That's true," said Knuckleball. "I didn't even
think
of that. I hate when I don't think of things."

"Maybe I dreamed it," said Kiyoshi-chan.

"What else do we know?" asked Annie. "Think hard."

They squatted on their heels and thought hard, while Kiyoshi-chan watched them. Brown house sparrows hopped around the branches of a budding cherry tree over their heads. Knuckleball took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes to concentrate, while Annie stared at a particular knot in the twine that tied the bamboo fence together.

"Nothing," admitted Knuckleball at last. "We know nothing else. We've just been blindly stumbling our way along after Little Harriet. We can't possibly figure out

how to control these gardens, or to choose where we go. They take us wherever they want. And so far they've wanted to take us wherever Little Harriet went."

"Until last time," said Annie. "Then only two of us, and now we've lost her. I thought this garden might be the key, but if it's a gateway it's obviously closed." She stood up and stamped her foot on the very spot where Kiyoshi-chan said he had seen Little Harriet dive into the earth. A little cloud of dust poofed out around her shoe.

"Listen," said Knuckleball. "Maybe it has something to do with the person, not the garden. Maybe there's something about
Little Harriet
that opens the passages between gardens. She was the first one to have a garden open up to her, there in Boston."

"Maybe," agreed Annie. "Maybe that's why the oni is lugging her around with him. Maybe she's like a
key
."

If there wasn't such a sadness always in them about their little lost sister, they might have smiled at the mental picture of the demon warrior sticking Little Harriet in a door lock and turning her like a key. No one smiled now.

"Maybe she was his key, you mean," said Knuckleball. "He seems to have lost her now, or she got away, or something."

"And maybe we didn't stay close enough to her. Maybe that's why we've lost her now," said Annie.

"Maybe, maybe, maybe," chanted Kiyoshi-chan, smiling.

"Maybe we have to learn a magic spell," said Knuckleball. "Like certain words to open up the garden, Open Sesame or something.

"Maybe there are certain places to stand," said Annie. "Certain times of day. Certain weather conditions. Certain positions, certain gestures. Certain combinations of circumstances. We just have to keep experimenting until we hit on it. The scientific method, and all that."

"Maybe," said Knuckleball, "it's all mathematical somehow. Maybe all the Japanese gardens in the world are arranged in some pattern, and open up according to a regular timetable, like a train schedule."

"Maybe, maybe, maybe," said Kiyoshi-chan again.

"Maybe," said a feathery old voice, "the gardens wish to keep it all... a surprise"

They turned to see the old
obaa-san
smiling beside them."

"What do you mean, honored person?" asked Annie, very politely, using the full Japanese range of respectful speech for her question.

"You are trying to understand the gardens," said the old woman, "by binding them up in a net of words. If you weave your net well, you think, you can catch the thing you seek."

"Is that wrong?" asked Annie. "We're only trying to understand them so we can use them."

"Wrong?" repeated the old woman, smiling as if the word was a great joke. "Wrong?" She chuckled.

"Help us," said Annie. "We need your help."

"If you catch anything in a net of words," said the old woman, "you have taken the first step to losing it. Words make a great thing small enough to hold in your hand, but what use is it to you then?"

"Could you explain that?" asked Annie.

"The ocean washes the whole world," said the old
obaa-san
, "but if you take your ink brush and write the character for Ocean on a piece of rice paper so you can hold it in your hand, can you sail a boat on that piece of paper?"

"I don't think I understand," said Annie.

"And I
know
I don't," said Knuckleball. "I still think we need the scientific method."

"Good," said the old obaa-san, but it wasn't at all clear what she was calling good. "It is time for dinner." She gestured toward the house and shuffled in that direction, bowed almost in half.

As they went back to the house, Knuckleball lagged behind to speak to Annie.

"Annie, I've been thinking," he said. "We're finally in a place where we can call Mom and Dad and let them know where we are. I haven't seen a phone here, but there must be one somewhere that we can use."

"I don't think that would work," said Annie. "Trust me."

"Why not?" asked Knuckleball, persistent. "Just because we have no money with us? Can't we just call collect?"

"That's not the problem," said Annie.

"Well, what is?" said Knuckleball. "You're hiding something from me. Does it have something to do with that
Yazu stuff?
"

"
Later
, Knuckler," said Annie, in a no-nonsense voice. They went in to dinner.

 

 

 

 

Q.J. and Libby wandered back along the impossible tunnel, the hand-hewn mine with no entrances. They felt drawn back to the end with the stone garden, as to a familiar place. They stepped across the tiny stream and paused for a second on its bank.

"Nothing bigger than a tadpole could get in or out this way," said Q.J., pointing to the stream. "It hasn't exactly cut a very big channel through here. Looks like ghosts carved out this tunnel."

"Brrrr," said Libby. "I wish you hadn't said that."

In fact, there was no apparent point of entrance for the stream at all. It trickled out of the wall near the ceiling, then washed down the side of the cave in a wide, thin, steady sheet of falling water. Having made its scanty way across the cave floor, it then disappeared into the rocky rubble at the base of the other wall.

"Can we at least drink it?" asked Libby. "I'm very thirsty."

"I would think so," said Q.J. "It looks very clean. Look how it sparkles in my light. But it'll be ice cold, I bet."

Libby got down on her hands and knees and scooped up some of the water to drink. She sat up making a pained expression.

"Ow!" she said. "Feels like my teeth are frozen."