Palimpsest

Sei bites her lip and looks down at her toes, a strangely childlike pose, but she cannot

help it, with a rabbit-man so near. “Have you … seen my mother? Since she stopped working for you.”

The rabbit stares at her incredulously and looks to the Third Rail for help. The red-faced woman shrugs, and Plenitude shakes its strokes apologetically “Wrong train, girl,” he finally says, laughing. “I think it's my relations you want to talk to.”

“And who are they?”

“Mine is not the only moon, child. My cousin the mole lives on Triton, and Phobos has a fine fox. Ganymede has a whole family of turtles. The Horse in the Sun is chewing her oats a few cars down. She is not talkative, though. If you brush her, you may feel that you hear a kind of low chant in the basement of your heart, like nuns singing through a cloud of incense. There are other horses in the stable car, too. We have such a large family. The blue Arabians of Vega, the two-headed Appaloosas of Sirius, the monochrome Bay of Arcturus. But you'll want the snow monkeys on Charon, who while away their long orbits in hot springs and ice huts. No candies for them, joyless lot. They hammer out souls. Perhaps she is there, pounded flat into a paste.”

Sei grimaces, but tries to turn it into a smile, and hands the rabbit a shovelful of sugar to cover her embarrassment.

“And this train is going there?”

“Of course not. What funny ideas you have! Didn't you hear me? We are all going to the seashore-you might call it a family reunion.”

Sei does not know how to proceed past him. She wants to hug him, to stroke his ears and his mangled paws and ask how he came to be so wretched. But she feels it would shame him, and she will not do it.

“My name is not Usagi,” she says, “but I would like to help you.”

“There is only one way you can help us, Sei.”

“Tell me.”

“I have not been authorized to give you that information.” His voice sounds oddly automated, like a telephone operator. “But you can take your mother's place, if you like.”

The rabbit holds out his hammer to her, and it is surprisingly light, like a huge feather in her hand. She steps into the rice barrel as though she means to crush wine grapes with her toes, and he stands behind her to help her with her stance. She thinks of the men in exclusive Tokyo golf courses with their bored instructors holding them just so. Plenitude winces and holds its breath, sure it will be dislodged and crushed into rice-candy Sei lifts the mallet and he corrects her grip quickly before she brings it down with a shout of joy and glops of sticky rice fly against the sides of the barrel.

The rabbit in the moon kisses her on the temple, sweetly, tenderly, like an uncle proud of his blood.

The Third Rail watches them as Sei gleefully sets about smashing sugared rice to paste. She says nothing, but her eyes are full of red and viscous tears.

ONE

EIGHT THOUSAND DOORS

Sei held Sato Kenji's book before her like a lantern meant to illuminate her path. She consulted it as frequently as an address book, and followed it, believing in his accuracy.

The book led her to this: Sei stood on the main platform with Sato Kenji's book clutched to her chest. She wore black, her best effort at a suit, her silver-black shirt of that first journey south with Kenji at her back rendered respectable by a business jacket. She thrust her face into the wind whipping down the empty tracks.

I have been told of a secret society in Tokyo that requires its members to take shifts monitoring certain pla forms. It is easy to believe that the men in black suits who stand beside you or me waiting for the train are held to the same standards and schedules as we are, that they have appointments to keep, meetings to attend, supervisors who do not tolerate truancy. But it would seem that some of them are not, but instead are sentinels of a sort, and the blank looks on their faces are careful masks of religious significance.

The society believes that a train pla form is a nexus, a crossroads that connects many cities that do not otherwise touch border to border. They believe that in the beginning of the world, the first gods stood not upon a bridge of light, but on a high train platform buffeted by winds, and from this place they thrust their jeweled spear into the ocean and created all land and mountain and shore.

Thus, they reason, this primal pla form must exist yet in some part of Japan, though surely fallen from its greatest height in the heavens, and they have many warring theories about which it is. So, upon almost every platform on the Japanese Isles members of this society stand watch, ready to alert their brothers of the arrival of the Train of Eight Thousand Doors, whose engine was fashioned from that very jeweled spear which dwelt for millennia beneath the sea until it was unearthed by devoted monks, at least according to the majority faction. The minority argument goes that Japan Railways desired it greatly and funded recovery operations.

In any event, the Train of Eight Thousand Doors is believed to traverse the known world, its doors opening onto London one moment, Ulan Bator the next, Tokyo, Montreal, São Paulo, and so forth. One must only attend to the station callings within the great train and one may enter or exit at any platform in the world. To be possessed by this train is the desire of every black-suited initiate, and he would give his soul for such a ticket.

I have myself stood watch with them, and they are pleasant enough gentlemen, if single-minded. I am sorry to report that only the neighborhood local and the express to Asakusa arrived during my vigil.

Both were punctual.

Kenji would not tell her a thing was possible if it was not. If such a train existed, it would take her there. Sei was sure of it. Sure of him. There had to be another way in.

I'm so tired, she thought.

I'm so tired. Her mother had said this, more often than anything else. Why am I always so tired?

Because you have all those tigers to fight, Mama, she had said. And you have to swim all the way to the bottom of a lake to read my book for me.