The Twelve Kingdoms: A Thousand Leagues of Wind

a cliff. Suzu teetered there on the edge. She dropped everything and reached out for the man's hands, a nearby branch, a clump of bushes, anything, but could not grab hold. She was just about to tumble in when she was struck by a torrent of rain. It roared in her ears like standing underneath a waterfall.

    Suzu's memory was intact up until the moment she thought she was going to fall. Then her head spun. She was thrown by the flood of water. She came to herself again. She seemed to be half-submerged in a river. But what river? It was so deep she couldn't feel the bottom. The water washing into her mouth was salty.
    The dark water swallowed her up. She lost consciousness. When she next opened her eyes, she was resting on a gently swaying bed. A handful of men were staring down at her.
    Suzu aroused herself with a start, blinked. The concerned looks on the faces of the men softened. They said something she didn't understand. She sat up and took in her surroundings. Her mouth dropped open in amazement. She was on a platform of old boards that barely jutted above the surface of the water. Raising her eyes, she saw that the black water went on forever, meeting the sky at the distant horizon in a straight line. It was the first time in her life that she had seen such a wide expanse of sea.
    She searched for the big camphor tree she had fallen under. Behind her was a cliff so high she had to crane her neck to take it all in. The cliff was deeply rutted. Here and there white threads of water streamed down the face. The wide platform of boards had been built out from the foot of the cliff. Piers lined the outer edge of the deck. Three small boats were docked there.
    Her only thought was that somehow she had been washed down the river and had ended up in the ocean. She'd heard that if you sailed all the way down a river, it would get bigger and bigger and eventually take you to the ocean.
    The ocean.
    The water was black as night. She placed her hands on the edge of the platform and stared down into the water. It was nothing like the lakes or river she knew. The water was amazingly clear, but she could not see the bottom. It continued on and on until it was swallowed up in a faraway blackness, where twinkling lights swam together in swarms.
    Somebody called to her, gently jostled her shoulders. Suzu finally tore her gaze away from the ocean. The men looked at her with distressed expressions on their faces. One of them said something to her that she didn't understand.
    Suzu replied with a blank look. "What? What are you saying?"
    The men glanced at each other in noisy consternation. They all spoke at once, words flying back and forth, but Suzu didn't comprehend a thing.
    "Hey, where am I? I've got to get back. What's the best way to get back to my village from here? The road to Tokyo would do as well, I guess. Do any of you know where Aoyagi- sama lives?"
    This set off another flurry of chatter amongst the men. Confused expressions clouded their countenances.

    The men huddled together in a conference. Suzu sat down on the deck and took a closer look around.
    The cliffs rose straight up as if the edge of the land had been torn off. The inner face of the cliff was hollowed out. There was a waterfall deep within the mountains near where she lived, but the height of these cliffs far and away exceeded the slope of that waterfall. The cliffs stretched out to the right and left or her, almost seeming to enclose the floating platform.
    If a section of the decking were removed, there would be no beach or base of the cliffs to be seen, only this huge, floating, raft-like deck jutting out from beneath the cliffs. Boats were tied up where the raft met the water. In the other direction, where the raft touched the cliffs, was a line of small houses.
    That makes sense, Suzu thought to herself. There's no beach so they built a beach. But how would anyone climb that cliff? When she tilted her head back and looked more closely, there were stone steps and ladders running up the tall cliff face. That must be how they got up and down.
    "Climbing a ladder like that would make my head spin," Suzu muttered to herself.
    The men glanced back at her. Pointing, they drew her attention to the top of the cliffs. Then they escorted her across the platform to the stone steps carved into the face of the precipice.
    It was the beginning of her gauntlet. She climbed the face of the cliff. Whenever she wanted to stop and sit down, somebody gave her a push from