It was not yet nine when Akiko came in sight of the shrine precincts. It was a beautiful morning, the sky clear blue and the breeze just strong enough to be pleasant. The leaves of the trees were a myriad shades of green, from the dark shadings of the cedar needles to the fresh near-yellow of the new growth. As the wind caressed the trees, the pattern of the shades shifted and changed, always on the verge of becoming a coherent image but never quite making it.

Akiko turned her gaze to the entrance. She could just pick the torii out through the trees, and the stone steps leading up to it were clear. But, for a moment, she couldn’t bring herself to walk forward.

Everything had seemed so obvious when she woke up. She had immediately started the bath, and put rice on for breakfast, something she almost never did. After washing herself more thoroughly than she could ever remember, she had soaked in the bath for a good twenty minutes. Breakfast, which she ate dressed in her bathrobe, was plain rice, without so much as something to sprinkle on it.

The mood had broken when she went to get dressed, and realised that she was looking through the cupboard for a kimono. She didn’t own a kimono. She had never owned a kimono, and had never worn one; she’d even graduated in western-style clothes. What was she thinking?

Even then, the impulse to visit the shrine was undeniable, and she had selected her best suit, carefully brushing it down. When she realised that she was inspecting her underwear to find the cleanest, however, she put her foot down, and simple took the newest. Her clothes were all clean, for goodness’ sake.

But now that she could see the shrine entrance, the last trace of certainty seemed to have evaporated in the sunlight. What on earth was she doing there? For a moment, she wanted to turn round and go straight back home, but she brought the impulse under control. She realised, now, that she had been avoiding the shrine for the last few days, and she wasn’t going to let her life be controlled by stupid fears.

<em>There is no giant snake,</em> she told herself. The childish banality of the sentence helped strengthen her resolve. <em>Of course there’s no giant snake. How could there be? It’s just a shrine.</em>

She walked briskly forward to the entrance, and stopped at the base of the steps to look up. The road was cut into the hill, even this near the top, so there was a near-vertical wall reaching above her head, crowned by the trees of the shrine forest. The steps were cut back into it, their black stone splashed with green lichen but carefully swept clean.

As she waited, a middle-aged man appeared at the top of the stairs, dressed in a suit, and came down them towards her. As he reached the bottom he nodded to her.

“Good morning.â€

“Good morning,â€ Akiko responded, as the man walked on. Turning back to the shrine, she took a deep breath, suddenly realising how nervous she was, and began to climb the steps.