The Twelve Kingdoms: A Thousand Leagues of Wind

the Five Mountains? By the time she returns, Lady Suibi will have been back for ages."
    There was rank among wizards as well. Riyou herself was a class-three wizard. In order to be one of her servants, you had to have barely enough talent to be listed upon the Registry of Wizards, but nothing more than that. The girl called Honma was the lowest-ranked of the lesser wizards.
    "What a fine mess. In the middle of this freezing cold, we're supposed to go to Mount Go and dig up gyokkou stones? And then to the Kyokai to catch proverb fish? And on top of that, jewel grass? At this time of year, with winter coming on, tell me, where's anybody going to lay their eyes on jewel grass?"
    "Damn it all, with her finally leaving town for a few days, I was counting on taking things easy for a change."
    "Honma can do the cleaning and painting. That's all she's good for, anyway."
    Their censorious eyes all fell upon the girl and she fled.

    She ran into the garden, to the trunk of an old pine tree in a corner of the garden nestled up against the cliff. There she wept.
    When Riyou spoke to her in that manner, how else was she supposed to respond? If it had been any of the other servants, they would have said the same thing. It wasn't her fault. In the first place. Riyou had no intent of letting her servants slack off during her absence. This was always the way she did things. Everybody in the grotto should know that by now.
    "What's this now?" came a voice behind her. It was the old man who kept guard over the garden. "Oh, don't let it get to you. They're taking it out on you because they don't have the guts to stand up to her, either. It'll be okay once they get it out of their systems, Mokurin."
    The girl shook her head. "That's not my name."
    Back in that world she so dearly longed for, she used to be called Suzu. An itinerant monk had taught her the three Chinese characters of her Japanese name, Ooki Suzu. Most people, though, mixed the second and third character together, and because in Chinese ki (or "wood") is pronounced moku, and suzu (or "bell") is pronounced rin, they called her Mokurin. At least when they weren't using some insulting term like Honma, among others. None was her real name.
    Her old home on a gently sloping hill amidst the rolling mountains, the moments of warm conversation, she'd lost it all. Already, a hundred years had passed since she'd been swept away to this world. The slave trader had taken her away, and while crossing the mountain pass she'd fallen from some kind of precipice and had ended up in the Kyokai.
    "Why does she have to be like that?"
    "Because that's the kind of person she is. Don't worry about it so. After all, her being so headstrong was what got her sent packing in the first place. Giving her this grotto was the tactful way of easing her out."
    "I know that, but . . . . "
    Suzu had been suddenly thrust into this strange world, not being able to communicate, not having the slightest idea what was going on. And all at the age of fourteen.
    From the small, seaside village she'd been sent to a bigger town. Not knowing what was going to happen next, she was trundled here and packed off there for days. Finally, she was taken to a big city and was handed over to a troupe of traveling entertainers.
    She had spent a little over three years with the troupe. To Suzu, it was a solid blur of incomprehension. They visited cities hither and yon, high and low, met many, many people. All she gathered was that she had somehow been separated a great distance from the land she knew. There were mountains that pierced the heavens, cities surrounded by high walls, strange manners and customs, a strange language. All of it was far beyond her grasp. That was the conclusion she was forced to come to.
    With every new city, Suzu harbored fresh hope that, by some happy accident, she would run into a person who could understand her and could send word back to her village. Every expectation was dashed. About the time she began to abandon hope that such a person existed, they arrived in Jin County and there she met Riyou.
    In four years she hadn't learned a single one of the troupe's performances. She was consigned to cleaning duties. She knew it was because she didn't understand what anybody was saying.
    No matter where they went, she didn't recognize the language people spoke. No matter how many times people talked to her and she talked to other people, nothing made sense. Nobody knew the way home. She had no idea what