The Demon and the City

bear to see anyone ever again, except the mute servant who drifted like a ghost around the house. She had lost too many: her beloved sisters, her mother, her lover Arei, and where once the house had resounded with the soft voices of the women, there was only a ringing quietness. Legends had grown up around her in the last twenty years.
    Every four or five years she would submit another work to her publishers; long, intricate works, revealing a tormented soul.
    The veil was very thin today. Matabe had seen it from the window, and rather than changing into the dark robe that she favored, had hurried down the stairs in her stiff morning kimono and straight out into the garden. The grass was damp beneath her slippers, and a single bird was singing: the canary that she kept in an ancient bamboo cage on the verandah. The door of the cage was always open, but like its mistress, the bird preferred sanctuary. The long, liquid song ran down the morning air, cold as snow.
    "Tayu?" she called uncertainly into the rising mist. Through the veil she could see an identical garden, with a dark house beyond, its eaves glistening with frost. In the garden a woman was walking, dressed in a green kimono, almost her mirror image. A few moments after Matabe had called to her, she looked up: the time lag was slight but noticeable. She smiled.
    "Tayu? You can hear me?" The mist was rising now, like smoke about her bare ankles, and she could see the veil itself, a gleaming brightness laid across the air, and then it was suddenly gone, as if someone had snatched it up into the sky. Her sister stood before her in the garden, her face a pale oval against the dappled background of the trees. Matabe, after an astounded moment, ran to her and clasped her cold hands. Tayu's composed face crumpled. When they both looked back, Matabe's home was no longer there. The canary still sang, a drift of change in the air.

Fifty-Seven
    The plain was bright with snow, a glare that reflected from the sunless sky and dazzled the eyes. There were, perhaps, mountains in the distance, an indistinct line of high country that floated, mauve and gray and a pale dull red, above the distant snow. Whenever Zhu Irzh looked at it directly, however, it faded, a dream far away, like trying to see a star from the corner of the eye. He thought he had come here with others—there was a flickering memory of passing through a door, like an old movie reel—but now he was quite alone.
    The snow was real enough, however, a thick icy crust which broke beneath his boots, gnawing at his ankles. Above, the sky was a light ethereal blue, the color of a bird's egg. A few last fat flakes of snow still drifted down. He had no idea where he might be.
    Zhu Irzh looked around him, turning in the snow. There was no one to be seen. He was on the crest of a low ridge, which looked out across the plains. As he stepped up over the ridge, Zhu Irzh saw something stretching out before him to the distant horizon. It was once more the Great Meridian, a path of energy. On either side of the bright path, a fire was burning. The voice of his own intuition spoke inside his mind, and it said: This is where you must go . Striding down the ridge, Zhu Irzh headed for the Meridian.
    As he walked, he saw that a gate was beginning to raise itself along the Meridian. It started as a swirl in the air, a frosty glitter emerging from the ground and winding the frozen grass into its design. Within minutes the pillars of the gate were complete, hardening into a lacquered darkness the color of old blood. Along the horizon, clouds were building before the wind and the unseen sun faded as though a shadow passed across it. The pillars stretched high into the heavens, and now the lintel of the gate was building itself; each side putting out a tongue of air, which solidified, hardening to become the carved, curling roof.
    The gate was fully made now, a finished and perfect structure, glowing against the bright air. Through it the light wavered, as does the air above a source of heat. It reared above him now, and as he gazed at it he saw with dim surprise that Mhara was standing on the other side.
Interlude
    The office worker was nearly ready to drop, snatching lungfuls of the inexplicably cold air as he swung around, dizzy in the grip of the demon's powerful arms. Her roaring had deafened him. His ears had stopped bleeding now, but the rivulets of dried blood down each cheek itched. Why he should be aware of so small and