“Is it the man from before?” her sister whispered. “Ko? What does he want, Ko?”
Komako didn’t answer, didn’t say, Me, it’s me they want. Instead she loosened the drawstring, pried open the mouth of the pouch.
It was filled with a silky silver dust.
* * *
Jacob waited two more nights, and then he went back.
He didn’t know if the girl had got the little pouch of dust he’d left for her, didn’t know if she’d be angry to see him, or suspicious of his motives, or what. He’d thought maybe, with the cholera raging, he’d find the theater half-empty, or nearly so, and that it’d be easy to slip unnoticed into the back halls, and find her. But it wasn’t easy, not at all.
For one thing, he wasn’t alone.
No one else outside the old theater seemed to notice the woman. She wore the same old-fashioned dress from the dream, with the ruffled linen collar, and the long dark cloak with the little silver clasp, and the same silk bonnet with the curved wire frame. And though he should have felt menaced, anxious at the very least, Jacob found himself instead feeling a strange dreamlike solace, as if she had come in kindness and in hope. And so he turned and joined the flow of people pouring in to watch the kabuki.
He wavered in the low entryway, amid the torch smoke, surprised that he was not stared at more, and then as the first gong crashed he slid back around the corner and saw the apparition watching him from a side corridor, and then she slipped away. He followed, a dreamlike slowness in his every movement. The dark woman led him through a labyrinth of dim airless passageways, sliding screens, crooked flights of steps, until at last he entered a small still room at the top of the theater, a brazier burning in the middle of the floor, and there she was, the girl, Komako.
She was kneeling at Teshi’s side and she rose to her feet as he appeared. He glimpsed a rope, tied to an ankle, as if to restrain the little one.
“Who let you in here?” Komako demanded.
She didn’t wait for his reply, but turned and opened the screen and led him away, into the creaking hall, then up a narrow stair that had been hidden in darkness, to a trapdoor in the ceiling. He found himself outside on the high roof. The city spread out below, a dizzying sea of little fires and colored lanterns. The muggy air smelled of rain. The girl was already ten feet above him, climbing nimbly across the clay roof tiles in her bare feet. She didn’t pause, didn’t look back to see that he followed.
When he reached her at last, she was on a sheltered balcony, gabled, with a low dark door behind her, looking locked and unused for years. The railing was a kind of wickerwork, very old and very beautiful, but Jacob didn’t trust it with his weight.
The girl sat, dangling her feet through the railing, like a kid, exactly like a little kid, and Jacob was reminded again with a sudden pain just how young she really was. He took off his hat, sat next to her, his hair sticking to his temples.
“What is this place?” he said quietly.
“You shouldn’t have come,” she said. “I don’t want to see you.”
He didn’t point out that she’d dragged him up to the roof, that she could’ve said that below, or just refused to talk, or even hollered for someone to remove him.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I’ve angered you.”
“I’m not angry.”
He wanted to smile at that. But he just regarded her gravely, remembering how he was at her age, when Berghast had found him in the grime of Vienna, how old he’d felt, peering at the wealthy clothes and soft face of the older man, how he’d felt like that man couldn’t know anything about the world, not really. And he’d felt such fear, too. He felt it still. He searched the girl’s face and tried to think of some way to begin. “Your English is excellent.”
She shrugged. “It was my father’s tongue. My mother made me learn.”
“I’m lucky that she did. What’s wrong with your hands?”
She hesitated. Then she slowly unwrapped the linen bandages, held up her hands. Her small fingers were chapped and red. “They’ve always been like this. Yours aren’t?”
“No.”
“When did you … know?” she asked, choosing her words with care. “I mean, that you could do—？” She flicked her hands, as if shaping dust. Suddenly it was obvious to him how much she needed to talk, how many questions she must have. He determined at that very moment to be as honest and direct with her as he could.
“Always,” he said.