The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Fifth Annual Collection

It was a tiny neighborhood temple, but quite tidy and well-kept. The little graveyard beside it showed much tending. As we walked the step-stone path up to the temple, we came to a stone basin in front of a small statue of Kwannon, goddess of mercy. An inscription on the basin declared it to be a repository for prayers to those whose graves were far away or of unknown location. But what held my eyes was a little pink silk peony attached to a wooden prayer tag that lay at one side of the basin. With trembling hands, I picked up the tag. The prayer upon it asked the Amida to reunite the petitioner with a lost loved one. No name was on the tag, yet I knew with a certainty who had left it. “Poor Lady Tsuyu,” I murmured.

“Poor Tsuyu!” Gyunyuko hissed. “Pah. She chose her path. Our duty is to protect our lord.”

“I think he knows what she is. Is he not choosing his own path as well? Do we have the right to interfere?”

A gentle cough behind us made me jump like a guilty child caught stealing a piece of fruit. A bald priest stood there with a patient expression, as if people fished about in the prayer basins all the time. Though it was quite improper, I held up the prayer tag and said, “Could you possibly tell us who left this? We think it might have been ... a relative of ours.”

The priest looked at me dubiously, but answered, “It is interesting that you picked that one. It was left some nights ago by a mysterious woman in pale kimonos. The priest who saw her was quite astonished as, he said, she resembled a woman who was rumored to be two years dead. He tried to speak to her, but she hid her face and hurried off into the night. If she is, indeed, a relative of yours, you might put that poor priest’s mind at rest by telling us who she is. ” Gyunyuko then said, with a glare at me, “Forgive our misstatement, holy one. The woman who left this is not our relative. She was betrothed to our lord, Shinzaburo, and she has indeed been dead for two years. She is a ghost.”

The priest’s eyes widened. “Is it so? Well, that is not reassuring at all. Are you certain?”

“She is so pale and delicate, she hardly seems a creature of this world—” “Many women try for such an effect,” the priest said.

“But when we saw her up close, we saw her death scar on her neck.”

“Ah,” said the priest.

Gyunyuko said, “We have come to ask how we may protect our lord from her—”

“Or if he needs to be protected,” I added.

“Well,” said the priest, “if she is a ghost, then your lord should be protected. For though her visit may be for love, still she will drain his life from him, for she needs it to remain in this world. ”

“I am bothered that our lord does not see the danger himself. ”

“Well, it is said that ghosts have the power to delude those who love them. No doubt your lord thinks her the beauty he once knew. But this is a very inauspicious time for her visitation. On the last night of O-Bon, she must leave this world and return to the Hollow Land.”

Gyunyuko sucked her breath between her teeth. “Then it must be that she intends to take our lord with her when she leaves. Please tell us, holy one, how may we protect him?”

“You must be sure that they are not together the last night of O-Bon.”

“That is tomorrow night, holy one. How might we safely accomplish this?” The priest rubbed his cheek, then brightened. “Wait here,” he said, and strode back into the temple.

Gyunyuko said nothing to fill the silence he left behind. I think she was angry that I lied to the priest, or that I doubted what we were doing. I looked down and saw that I still held Lady Tsuyu’s prayer tag. I gently placed it back in the basin beneath the statue of Kwannon.

Some while later, the priest returned, a bundle of old scrolls in his arms. “Here you are,” he said, handing them to me. “We have extra copies of these sutras. You may have them for your lord’s protection. Cover all the entrances to your house with these. Then, so long as the entrances are closed, no ghost may enter. This will keep her out on O-Bon night. And if she returns on the next,” the priest shrugged for emphasis, “then you know she is not a ghost.”

We thanked the priest and bowed to him many times, and carried the sutras home. We hid them behind the household shrine, and planned what we should do. The rest of that day, and that evening, we did nothing different. Even when Lady Tsuyu came again, we treated her as an honored guest. It was difficult for me to dissemble, though. Lady Tsuyu seemed more pale and ghastly than the night before. Perhaps, I thought, because of our visit to the priest I am no longer burdened with delusions and I see her true form. There was so much love in her eyes for our lord, however, that I could not hate her. Shinzaburo seemed to sense something was wrong with Gyunyuko and me, for he gave us strange glances. Still, we left him and the lady alone that night and I prayed their last night together would be a joyous one.