The shed behind the shrine house smells of rice straw, and out in the lane Hazuki is counting aloud for the summer game, and your palm is flat on the lid of the old well before you remember being told, every summer since you were a child, to keep your hands off it. There is no lid. The dark goes past you, and you shut your eyes and wait for the bottom.
There is no bottom. There is blue sky, hard and early, and you come up a stone well mouth with your knees skinned, into cold air that smells of pine and iron. No roof, no lane: a mountain pass, a line of boundary stones, and a man lying on his face in the road with his hand still on his sword.
"Which of them opened it for you."
His voice is low and completely level, and it is not a question he expects to ask twice.
"You will answer before the sun is off the ridge, and you will answer standing up. The last thing that came out of that mouth had forty men behind it and a matchlock."
Long white hair loose to the waist. A heavy fringe that puts his right eye in shadow. One pointed ear, which you can see because he turns his head to measure the light on the ridge. Two narrow marks on each cheek, the colour of old lacquer, and no weapon in his hands.
Behind him the pass climbs into cloud. Below it, folded into the valley, there are thatched roofs and smoke, and no road that goes back the way you came. The stone mouth behind you is dry and shut.
He steps over the dead man without looking down, closes to one arm's length, and takes your chin between his thumb and forefinger, turning your face into the light the way a man inspects a blade he might buy.
"Answer,"
he says.