AKI’S ROOM WAS CLOSEST TO the grand foyer along the hallway.
Kokoro took a deep breath.
‘No hesitating this time,’ she said quietly.
She was going to save Aki.
She was going to bring that tricky girl back.
To stay in the castle past the agreed curfew was an act of suicide. And yet she’d done it anyway.
Aki’s words always seemed to have a spiteful edge.
So our memories vanish. So what?
It’s OK, isn’t it, if a wish comes true? If someone finds the key, I mean.
If we can’t see each other in the outside world, all we’ll have left at the end is our memories, no? Isn’t that a bit of a waste?
Wow, that’s really something – parents considering your future and stuff. Not like our parents, right, Kokoro?
Gently, she turned the handle to Aki’s room and pushed open the door.
The wardrobe was open. She looked around quickly for the X inside it. There it was.
She placed the tip of her forefinger over the mark.
And Aki’s memories came flooding in.
✦ ✦ ✦
THE SMELL OF INCENSE.
Aki was sitting in front of the commemorative photograph of her recently deceased grandmother.
She was wearing her school uniform and sitting beside her mother and cousins.
The man seated beside her mother was her stepfather.
Her mother always said her father had been totally self-absorbed. He had left them when she was still very young. ‘If I hadn’t got pregnant with you,’ she said, ‘we would probably never have got married. In the end we broke up, so there we are.’
This was how she explained things to her daughter.
Despite this, whenever their relatives got together, she’d go on about how his sports business in Chiba provided all the equipment for the local teams that went on to play in the national baseball tournament in Koshien Stadium.
The commemorative photograph showed her grandmother when she was much younger. Her uncles complained that the last time she’d had a decent portrait taken was a long time ago, and so the only photos they had of her were out of date.
When Aki dyed her hair, her grandmother had let out a shriek.
Aki was sure she was going to shout at her, but actually her reaction was joyful. ‘What a lovely colour!’ she said, and Aki was both deflated and happy.
Her grandmother had been a lively character who loved a joke, the total opposite of Aki’s mother. So different that it made Aki wonder how she could possibly have given birth to her. ‘Don’t let your mother find out,’ her grandmother said whenever she gave her any money. ‘If she finds it, she’ll spend it. This is our little secret, Akiko, just you and me,’ she added, with a clumsy wink.
When Aki introduced her to Atsushi, a college student she’d met through telephone dating, her grandmother’s only reaction was to exclaim ‘Goodness gracious,’ before presenting him with senbei crackers, green tea and pickled vegetables. Aki was embarrassed by her old folks’ hospitality, but Atsushi enjoyed it.
‘I didn’t expect you’d introduce me to your family so quickly,’ Atsushi said.
‘Sorry,’ Aki said. ‘Is it a bit depressing?’
‘Not at all,’ he said.
Atsushi was twenty-three, but had never had a girlfriend. ‘You’re my first,’ he said, ‘and I want to look after you. I don’t have much money, but I do want to get married.’
But Atsushi didn’t come to her grandmother’s funeral.
They hardly communicated these days. She’d send him a message on his pager, and get no reply.
‘Atsushi-kun’s the only person I really wanted to be there.’
‘You poor child.’
This was from an old woman who said she was a friend of her grandmother. She turned to Aki’s mother and scowled. ‘You’ve never paid her any attention.’
Aki wanted her to mind her own business.
But my mother’s house is the only place for me to go, thought Aki, so what’s going to become of me?
✦ ✦ ✦
AKI WAS BACK FROM THE funeral, and alone in her bedroom, when she heard a familiar voice.
‘Maiko, Maiko. Where are you?’
He’d come looking for her mother, even though Aki’s mother had said she was extremely busy and would be back home late.
Aki hoped he’d give up and leave, but it only made him keener: ‘Maiko! Maiko! Hey, Maiko!’
‘She’s not here!’
He barged suddenly into her room, and Aki drew up her legs on the bed and screamed, ‘SHE’S NOT HERE. She’s not home yet.’
‘Oh, Akiko, you’re here.’
Aki’s stepfather had forced open the sliding door to her Japanese-style room, and was now staring at her. His necktie was askew, the buttons on his shirt undone.
His face looked flushed and his breath stank of alcohol. Aki shrank back further.
Oh God, she thought. Usually she hid in her mother’s wardrobe, staying totally quiet while he was around.
She made a sudden dash to get out of the room.
‘Wait! Where are you going?’
He tried to catch her by the shirt and cajole her into staying. When she ignored him, he grabbed her bare arm, his sweaty palm finding a firm grip. Her legs began to tremble.
‘NO!’ she shrieked.
Her stepfather pulled her towards him, clamping down her arms.
‘ATSUSHI-KUN!’ screamed Aki.
He slipped his hand inside the neck of her school shirt. With his other hand he covered her mouth.
‘Help me!’ breathed Aki.
She began to kick and kick. She turned and managed to knee him between the legs, broke free and fled into the living room, propping the sliding door shut with a broom handle. She grabbed the telephone sitting on a small table in the corner, knocking over the memo pad, calendar and pen stand. She struggled to recall the correct numbers she needed to send a message, frantically converting the letters of her message into the appropriate numbers.
Four-one – Ta … three-three – Su … two-four – Ke … four-four – Te. Each set of numbers standing for a Japanese syllable. Ta-su-ke-te … Help!
‘Akiko! Akiko!’ shouted her stepfather from beyond the sliding door, shaking it so violently she thought it might break.
She threw the phone on the floor and let out a long scream. At that moment, a small but distinct light caught her eye.
A small mirror lying on the floor had begun to shine.
Usually it was the mirror in her bedroom that shone, but this light came from her mother’s small hand mirror. The Wolf Queen had told them she wouldn’t allow any mirror to shine if adults were around.
‘Akiko!’
A roar came from behind the sliding door which her stepfather was vigorously rattling. It wouldn’t take much before it came crashing to the floor. She placed her hand on the small round face of the shining mirror and let herself slip inside.
It was a small mirror, but strangely enough her whole body passed smoothly through it.
She looked around and realized she was back in the grand foyer of the castle.
Her heart was pounding, her arms and legs still covered in goosebumps. The top buttons on her shirt were ripped open.
The Wolf Queen was standing in front of her.
She was holding a small hand mirror, the size of the one Aki had just passed through. And it was shining, in rainbow colours.
‘Wolf Queen!’
Aki’s breathing was still ragged. Why had she made her mother’s mirror shine? She’d allowed her to come here, even when an adult had been around.
‘I had to step in. Because you were in a tight spot,’ the Wolf Queen said.
Aki knew the Wolf Queen had seen everything. The Wolf Queen cocked her head – not in her usual sneering way, but in the manner of a small girl.
‘You mean, you’d rather I didn’t help you?’
‘No.’ Aki shook her head. Over and over. ‘Not at all. Thank you, thank you, thank you.’
Now the tears came, flowing down her cheeks. Her body started to tremble. She reached out to hold the Wolf Queen’s hand. The Wolf Queen didn’t refuse it.
It was warm, and smooth, and tiny. Holding it made Aki feel as if she too could be pure and beautiful.
‘Can’t I … live here properly?’ Aki asked, shoulders heaving.
Her grandmother’s face misted over in the distance.
‘That’s completely impossible.’
The Wolf Queen had resumed her customary arrogance.
Aki gritted her teeth.
‘But I don’t want to go back …’
Spending every moment trying to avoid her stepfather, her friends, her school – she hated all of it.
I was always the best player on the volleyball team, she thought, and it irritated me to see the other girls just standing there. ‘Stop being so spaced out!’ I used to shout. Perhaps I overdid it a bit. We’d gather the younger, less experienced girls, and we older ones would surround them and demand they tell us exactly what the hell they thought they were doing.
Every club used to do it, and it wasn’t as if I was the only one, yet before I knew it those kids, and everyone else, were telling me they wouldn’t put up with my attitude.
My presence was destroying the volleyball team.
They told me I was a bully.
That wasn’t what I intended, and yet it turned out I was the one they wanted out. There was nothing for it but to leave the team.
‘That’s completely impossible,’ the Wolf Queen said again.
But she seemed to be keeping something back. She didn’t shake off Aki’s hand, but instead held it tightly. Which made Aki very happy.