I must be quick, she thought. Makoto must not stop me.
But it was not Makoto who made the knife fall from her hands; it was a girl’s voice crying from the hall, “Mother!”
Miki ran into the garden, barefoot, her hair loose. “Mother! You have come!”
Kaede saw with shock how like Takeo Miki had become, and then she saw herself in her daughter, at that age, on the brink of womanhood. She had been a hostage, alone and unprotected; she had been without a mother throughout her girlhood. She saw her daughter’s grief and thought, I cannot add to that. She remembered that Miki had lost her twin sister and her tears flowed anew for Maya, for her child. I must live for Miki’s sake, and Sunaomi’s, and Chikara. And of course Shigeko, and even Hisao, or whatever he is to be called—for all Takeo’s children, for all our children.
She lifted the knife and threw it from her, then opened her arms to her daughter.
A flock of sparrows alighted on the rocks and grass around them, filling the air with their cheeping. Then as if at some distant signal they rose as one and flew away into the forest.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank:
Asialink, for the fellowship that enabled me to go to Japan for twelve weeks in 1999/2000;
The Australia Council and the Department of Trade and Foreign Affairs, for supporting the Asialink program;
The Australian Embassy in Tokyo;
Akiyoshidai International Arts Village, Yamaguchi Prefecture, for sponsoring me for that time;
Shuho-cho International Cultural Exchange House program, for inviting me for a further three months in 2002;
ArtsSA, the South Australian Department for the Arts, for a mid-career fellowship that gave me time to write;
Urinko Gekidan in Nagoya, for inviting me to work with them in 2003;
My husband and children, who have supported and encouraged me in so many ways;
In Japan, Kimura Miyo, Mogi Masaru, Mogi Akiko, Tokuriki Masako, Tokuriki Miki, Santo Yuko, Mark Brachmann, Maxine McArthur, Kori Manami, Yamaguchi Hiroi, Hosokawa Fumimasa, Imahori Goro, Imahori Yoko, and all the other people who have helped me with research and travel;
Christopher E. West and Forest W. Seal at www. samurai-archives.com;
All the publishers and agents who are now part of the Otori clan around the world, especially Jenny Darling, Donica Bettanin, Sarah Lutyens, and Joe Regal;
My editors, Bernadette Foley (Hachette Livre) and Harriet Wilson (Pan Macmillan), and Christine Baker from Gallimard;
Sugiyama Kazuko, calligrapher, who passed away early in 2006.
Lian Hearn, The Harsh Cry of the Heron
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