The bishop of Yokawa, on Mount Hiei, a holy and learned man, had a mother some eighty years old and a sister in her fifties. In fulfillment of a vow made long ago, they had been on a pilgrimage to Hatsuse. The bishop’s favorite disciple had been with them. Having finished their prayers and offered up images and scriptures, they were climbing the Nara Slope on the return journey when the old woman was taken ill. She was in such discomfort that they could not ask her to go on. What were they to do? An acquaintance had a house at Uji, and it was decided to stop there for a day or two. When the old woman failed to improve, word was sent to the bishop. He had determined to remain in his mountain retreat until the end of the year, not even venturing down to the city, but there seemed a danger that his mother, of such an age that she could go at any time, might die on the journey. He hurried to her side. He himself and certain of his disciples whose ministrations had on other occasions been successful set about prayers and incantations — though one might have told them, and they would not have denied it, that she had lived a long enough life already.

The Uji acquaintance was troubled. “I have plans for a pilgrimage to Mitake, and for a week now I have been fasting and otherwise getting ready. Can I risk having a very old and ailing lady in the house?”

The bishop understood, and the house was in any case small and shabby. They would proceed back towards Hiei by easy stages. Then it was discovered that the stars were against them, and that plan too had to be abandoned. The bishop remembered the Uji villa of the late Suzaku emperor. It would be in the vicinity, and he knew the steward. He sent to ask whether they might use it for a day or two.

The messenger came back to report that the steward and his family had left for Hatsuse the day before.

The caretaker, a most unkempt old man, came with him. “Yes, if it suits your convenience, do please come immediately. The main hall is vacant. Pilgrims are always using it.”

“Splendid.” The bishop sent someone to make an inspection.” It is a public building, you might say, but it should be quiet enough.”

The caretaker, used to guests, had simple accommodations ready.

The bishop went first. The house was badly run-down and even a little frightening. He ordered sutras read. The disciple who had been to Hatsuse and another of comparable rank had lesser clerics, to whom such tasks came naturally, prepare torches. For no very good reason, they wandered around to the unfrequented rear of the main hall. Under a grove of some description, a bleak, forbidding place, they saw an expanse of white. What could it possibly be? They brought their torches nearer and made out a seated human figure.

“A fox? They do sometimes take human shapes, filthy creatures. If we don’t make it come out I don’t know who else will.” One of the lesser monks stepped forward.

“Careful, careful,” said another. “We can be sure it’s up to no good.” Not letting his eyes wander for an instant from the thing, he made motions with his hands towards exorcising it.

The bishop’s favored disciple was sure that his hair would have been standing on end if he had had any. The bold torchbearer, however, advanced resolutely upon the figure. It was a girl with long, lustrous hair. beaning against the thick and very gnarled root of a tree, she was weeping bitterly.

“Why, this is strange. Maybe we should tell the bishop.”

“Very strange indeed,” said another, running off to report the discovery.

“People are always talking about foxes in human form,” said the bishop,” but do you know I have never seen one?” He came out for a look.

All the available domestics were at work in the kitchen and elsewhere, seeing to the needs of the unexpected guests. These postern regions were deserted save for the half-dozen men watching the thing. No change was to be detected in it. The hours passed, the night seemed endless. Daylight would tell them whether or not it was human, thought the bishop, silently going over appropriate spells, and seeking to quell whatever force it might be with mystic hand motions.

Presently he reached a conclusion. “It is human. It is no monstrous apparition. Go ask her who she is and why she is here. Don’t be afraid. She is no ghost — though possibly a corpse thrown away hereabouts has come back to life.”

“A corpse thrown away at the Suzaku emperor’s own villa? No, Your Reverence. At the very least it is someone a fox spirit or a wood spirit or something of the sort has coaxed away from home and then abandoned. The place will be contaminated, and for our purposes the timing could hardly be worse.”

Someone called for the caretaker, and the summons echoed menacingly across the empty grounds. He came running out, a somewhat ludicrous figure with his cap perched high on his head.

“Do you have any young women living here? Look at this, if you will.”

“Ah, yes. The foxes are at it again. Strange things are always turning up under this tree. Two years or so ago, in the fall it would have been, a little boy, maybe two years old, he lived up the road. They dragged him off and left him right here at the foot of this tree. It happens all the time.” He did not seem in the least upset.

“Had the child been killed?”

“Oh, no. He’s still alive, I’d imagine. Foxes are always after people, but they never do anything really bad.” His manner suggested that such occurrences were indeed commonplace. The emergency domestic arrangements seemed to weigh more heavily on his mind.

“Suppose we watch for a while,” said the bishop, “and see whether or not we observe foxes at work.”

He ordered the brave torchbearer to approach and challenge the strange figure.

“Who are you? Tell us who you are. Devil, fox, god, wood spirit? Don’t think you can hold out against His Reverence. He won’t be cheated. Who are you? Come on, now, tell us who you are.”

He tugged at a sleeve. The girl pressed it to her face and wept all the more bitterly.

“Come on, now. The sensible thing would be to tell us.” He tugged more assertively, though he rather hoped he would not be permitted a view of the face. It might prove to be the hideous mask of the eyeless, noseless she-devil he had heard about. But he must give no one reason to doubt his mettle. The figure lay face in arms, sobbing audibly now.

“Whatever it is, it’s not the sort of thing you see just every day.” He peered down at the figure. “But we’re in for a storm. She’ll die if we leave her out in it, that’s for sure. Let’s move her in under the fence.”

“She has all the proper limbs,” said the bishop,” and every detail suggests that she is human. We cannot leave her to die before our eyes. It is sad when the fish that swim in the lake or the stag that bays in the hills must die for want of help. Life is fleeting. We must cherish what we have of it, even so little as a day or two. She may have fallen into the clutches of some minor god or devil, or been driven from home, a victim of foul conspiracy. It may be her fate to die an unkind death. But such, even such, are they whom the Blessed One will save. Let us have a try at medicines and seek to revive her. If we fail, we shall still have done our best.”

He had the torchbearer carry her inside.

“Consider what you are doing, sir,” objected one of the disciples. “Your honored mother is dangerously ill and this will do her no good.”

“We do not know what it is,” replied another, “but we cannot leave it here for the rain to pound to death.”

It would be best not to let the servants know. The girl was put to bed in a remote and untenanted part of the hall.

The old nun’s carriage was brought up, amid chatter about the stubbornness of her affliction.

“And how is the other?” asked the bishop when the excitement had somewhat subsided.

“She seems to have lost her very last ounce of strength — sometimes we wonder if she is still breathing — and she has not said a word. Something has robbed her of her faculties.”

“What is this?” asked the younger nun, the bishop’s sister.

“Not in my upwards of six decades have I seen anything so odd.” And the bishop described it.

“I had a dream at Hatsuse.” The nun was in tears. “What is she like? Do let me see her.”

“Yes, by all means. You will find her over beyond the east door.”

The nun hurried off. No one was with the girl, who was young and pretty and indefinably elegant. The white damask over her scarlet trousers gave off a subtle perfume.

“My child, my child. I wept for you, and you have come back to me.”

She had some women carry the girl to an inner room. Not having witnessed the earlier events, they performed the task equably.

The girl looked up through half-closed eyes.

She did not seem to understand. The nun forced medicine upon her, but she seemed on the point of fading away.

They must not let her die after she had been through so much. The nun called for the monk who had shown himself to be the most capable in such matters. “I am afraid that she is not far from death. Let her have all your best spells and prayers.”

“I was right in the first place,” he grumbled. “He should have let well enough alone.” But he commenced reading the sutra for propitiating the local gods.

“How is she?” The bishop looked in. “Find out what it is that has been at her. Drive it away, drive it away.”

“She will not live, sir, I am sure of it. And when she dies we’ll be in for a retreat we could perfectly well have avoided. She seems to be of good rank, and we can’t just run away from the corpse. A bother, that is what I call it.”

“You do talk a great deal,” said the nun. “But you are not to tell anyone. If you do you can expect an even worse bother.” She had almost forgotten her mother in the struggle to save the girl. Yes, she was a stranger, nothing to them, if they would have it so; but she was a very pretty stranger. Everyone who saw her joined in prayers that she be spared. Occasionally she would open her eyes, and there would be tears in them.

“What am I to do? The Blessed One has brought you in place of the child I have wept for, I am sure of it, and if you go too, I shall have to weep again. Something from another life has brought us together. I know that too. Speak to me. Please. Say something, anything.”

“I have been thrown out. I have nowhere to go.” The girl barely managed a whisper. “Don’t let anyone see me. Take me out when it gets dark and throw me back in the river.”

“She has spoken to me! But what a terrible thing to say. Why must you say such things? And why were you out there all by yourself?”

The girl did not answer. The nun examined her for wounds, but found none. Such a pretty little thing — but there was a certain apprehension mingled with the pity and sorrow. Might a strange apparition have been dispatched to tempt her, to challenge her calm?

The party remained in seclusion for two days, during which prayers and incantations went on without pause. Everyone was asking who this unusual person might be.

Certain farmers in the neighborhood who had once been in the service of the bishop came to pay their respects.

“There has been a big commotion over at the prince’s place,” one of them remarked by way of apology. “The General of the Right was seeing the prince’s daughter, and then all of a sudden she died, of no sickness at all that anyone could see. We couldn’t come yesterday evening when we heard Your Reverence was here. We had to help with the funeral.”

So that was it. Some demon had abducted the Eighth Prince’s daughter. It scarcely seemed to the bishop that he had been looking at a live human being. There was something sinister about the girl, as if she might at any moment dissolve into thin air.

“The fire last night hardly seemed big enough for a funeral.”

“No, it wasn’t much to look at. They made it as small as they could.” The visitors had been asked to remain outside lest they communicate the defilement.

“But who might it be? The prince’s daughter, you say — but the princess the general was fond of has been dead for some years. He has another princess now, and he is not the sort to go out looking for new wives.”

The old nun was better and the stars no longer blocked the way. Everything that had happened made them want to leave these inhospitable precincts as soon as possible.

“But the young lady is still very weak,” someone objected. “Do you really think she can travel?”

They had two carriages. The old nun and two others were in the first and the girl was in the second, with an attendant. They moved at an easy pace with frequent stops. The nuns were from Ono, at the west foot of Mount Hiei. It was very late when they arrived, so exhausted that they regretted not having spent another night along the way. The bishop helped his mother out. With many pauses, the younger nun led the girl into the nunnery. It was a sore trial to have lived so long, the old nun, near collapse, was no doubt saying to herself. The bishop waited until she had recovered somewhat and made his way back up the mountain. Because it had not been proper company for a cleric to find himself in, he kept the story to himself. The younger nun, his sister, also enjoined silence, and was very uneasy lest someone come inquiring after the girl. Why should they have found her all alone in such an unlikely place? Had a malicious stepmother taken advantage of an illness in the course of a pilgrimage, perhaps, and left her by the wayside? “Throw me back in the river,” she had said, and there had been not a word from her since. The nun was deeply troubled. She did so want to see the girl restored to health, but the girl did not seem up to the smallest effort in her own behalf. Perhaps it was, after all, a hopeless case — but the very thought of giving up brought a new access of sorrow. Secretly requesting the presence of the disciple who had offered up the first prayers, the nun told of her dream at Hatsuse and asked that ritual fires be lighted.

And so the Fourth and Fifth months passed. Concluding sadly that her labors had been useless, the nun sent off a pleading letter to her brother: “May I ask that you come down and see what you can do for her? I tell myself that if she had been fated to die she would not have lived this long; and yet whatever has taken possession of her refuses to be dislodged. I would not dream, my sainted brother, of asking that you set foot in the city; but surely it will do you no harm to come this far.”

All very curious, thought the bishop. The girl seemed destined to live — in that matter he had to agree with his sister. And what then would have happened if they had left her at Uji? All that could be affirmed was that a legacy from former lives had dictated a certain course of events. He must do what he could, and if then she died, he could only conclude that her destiny had worked itself out.

Overjoyed to see him, the nun told of all that happened over the months. “A long illness generally shows itself on a person’s face; but she is as fresh and pretty as ever she was.” She was weeping copiously. “So very many times she has seemed on the point of death, and still she has lived on.”

“You are right.” He looked down at the girl. “She is very pretty indeed. I did think all along that there was something unusual about her. Well, let’s see what we can do. She brought a store of grace with her from other lives, we can be sure of that. I wonder what miscalculation might have reduced her to this. Has anything come to you that might offer a clue?”

“She has not said a word. Our Lady of Hatsuse brought her to me.”

“Everything has its cause. Something in another life brought her to you.”

Still deeply perplexed, he began his prayers. He had imposed upon himself so strict a regimen that he refused to emerge from the mountains even on royal command, and it would not do to be found in ministrations for which there was no very compelling reason.

He told his disciples of his doubts. “You must say nothing to anyone. I am a dissolute monk who has broken his vows over and over again, but not once have I sullied myself with woman. Ah, well. Some people reveal their predilections when they are past sixty, and if I prove to be one of them, I shall call it fate.”

“Oh, consider for a moment, Your Reverence.” His disciples were more upset than he was. “Think what harm you would be doing the Good Law if you were to let ignorant oafs spread rumors.”

Steeling himself for the trials ahead, the bishop committed himself silently to vows extreme even for him. He must not fail. All through the night he was lost in spells and incantations, and at dawn the malign spirit in possession of the girl transferred itself to a medium.

Assisted now by his favorite disciple, the bishop tried all manner of spells toward identifying the source of the trouble; and finally the spirit, hidden for so long, was forced to announce itself.

“You think it is this I have come for?” it shouted. “No, no. I was once a monk myself, and I obeyed all the rules; but I took away a grudge that kept me tied to the world, and I wandered here and wandered there, and found a house full of beautiful girl s. One of them died, and this one wanted to die too. She said so, every day and every night. I saw my chance and took hold of her one dark night when she was alone. But Our Lady of Hatsuse was on her side through it all, and now I have lost out to His Reverence. I shall leave you.”

“Who is that addresses us?”

But the medium was tiring rapidly and no more information was forthcoming.

The girl was now resting comfortably. Though not yet fully conscious, she looked up and saw ugly, twisted old people, none of whom she recognized. She was assailed by intense loneliness, like a castaway on a foreign shore. Vague, ill-formed images floated up from the past, but she could not remember where she had lived or who she was. She had reached the end of the way, and she had flung herself in — but where was she now? She thought and thought, and was aware of terrible sorrows. Everyone had been asleep, she had opened the corner doors and gone out. The wind was high and the waters were roaring savagely. She sat trembling on the veranda. What should she do? Where was she to go now? To go back inside would be to rob everything of meaning. She must destroy herself. “Come, evil spirits, devour me. Do not leave me to be discovered alive.” As she sat hunched against the veranda, her mind in a turmoil, a very handsome man came up and announced that she was to go with him, and (she seemed to remember) took her in his arms. It would be Prince Niou, she said to herself.

And what had happened then? He carried her to a very strange place and disappeared. She remembered weeping bitterly at her failure to keep her resolve, and she could remember nothing more. Judging from what these people were saying, many days had passed. What a sodden heap she must have been when they found her! Why had she been forced against her wishes to live on?

She had eaten little through the long trance, and now she would not take even a drop of medicine.

“You do seem bent on destroying all my hopes,” said the younger nun, the bishop’s sister, not for a moment leaving her side. “Just when I was beginning to think the worst might be over. Your temperature has gone down — you were running a fever all those weeks — and you seemed a little more yourself.”

Everyone in the house was delighted with her and quite unconditionally at her service. What happiness for them all that they had rescued her! The girl wanted to die; but the indications were that life had a stubborn hold on her. She began to take a little nourishment. Strangely, she continued to lose weight.

“Please let me be one of you,” she said to the nun, who was ecstatic at the prospect of a full recovery. “Then I can go on living. But not otherwise.”

“But you are so young and so pretty. How could you possibly want to become a nun?”

The bishop administered token orders, cutting a lock of hair and enjoining obedience to the five commandments. Though she was not satisfied with these half measures, she was an unassertive girl and she could not bring herself to ask more.

“We shall go no further at the moment,” said the bishop, leaving for his mountain cell. “Do take care of yourself. Get your strength back.”

For his sister, these events were like a dream. She urged the girl to her feet and dressed her hair, surprisingly untangled after months of neglect, and fresh and lustrous once it had been combed out its full length. In this companionship of ladies” but one year short of a hundred, “ she was like an angel that had wandered down from the heavens and might choose at any moment to return.

“You do seem so cool and distant,” said the nun. “Have you no idea what you mean to me? Who are you, where are you from, why were you there?”

“I don’t remember,” the girl answered softly. “Everything seems to have left me. It was all so strange. I just don’t remember. I sat out near the veranda every evening, that I do half remember. I kept looking out, and wishing I could go away. A man came from a huge tree just in front of me, and I rather think he took me off. And that is all I remember. I don’t even know my name.” There were tears in her eyes. “Don’t let anyone know I am still alive. Please. That would only make things worse.”

Since it appeared that she found these attempts at conversation tiring, the nun did not press further. The whole sequence of events was as singular as the story of the old bamboo cutter and the moon princess, and the nun was uneasy lest a moment of inattention give the girl her chance to slip away.

The bishop’s mother was a lady of good rank. The younger nun was the widow of a high-ranking courtier. Her only daughter, who had been her whole life, had married another well-placed courtier and died shortly afterwards; and so the woman had lost interest in the world, taken the nun’s habit, and withdrawn to these hills. Yet feelings of loneliness and deprivation lingered on. She yearned for a companion to remind her of the one now gone. And she had come upon a hidden treasure, a girl if anything superior to her daughter. Yes, it was all very strange — unbelievably, joyously strange. The nun was aging but still handsome and elegant. The waters here were far gentler than at that other mountain village. The house was pleasingly furnished, the trees and shrubs had been set out to agreeable effect, and great care had obviously gone into the flower beds. As autumn wore on, the skies somehow brought a deepened awareness of the passing days. The young maidservants, making as if to join the rice harvesters at the gate, raised their voices in harvest songs, and the clacking of the scarecrows brought memories of a girlhood in the remote East Country.

The house was set in against the eastern hills, some distance above the retreat of Kashiwagi’s late mother-in-law, consort of the Suzaku emperor. The pines were thick and the winds were lonely. Life in the nunnery was quiet, with only religious observances to break the monotony. On moonlit nights the bishop’s sister would sometimes take out a koto and a nun called Shōshō would join in with a lute.

“Do you play?” they would ask the girl. “You must be bored.”

As she watched these elderly people beguiling the tedium with music, she thought of her own lot. Never from the outset had she been among those privileged to seek consolation in quiet, tasteful pleasures; and so she had grown to womanhood with not a single accomplishment to boast of. Her stars had not been kind to her. She took up a brush and, by way of writing practice, set down a poem:

“Into a torrent of tears I flung myself,

And who put up the sluice that held me back?”

It had been cruel of them to save her. The future filled her with dread. On these moonlit nights the old women would recite courtly poems and talk of this and that ancient happening, and she would be left alone with her thoughts.

“Who in the city, now bathed in the light of the moon,

Will know that I yet drift on through the gloomy world?”

Many people had been in her last thoughts — or what she had meant to be her last thoughts — but they were nothing to her now. There was only her mother, who must have been shattered by the news. And Nurse, so desperate to find a decent life for her — how desolate she must be, poor thing! Where would she be now? She could not know, of course, that the girl was still alive. Then there was Ukon, who had shared all her secrets through the terrible days when no one else had understood.

It is not easy for young people to tell the world goodbye and withdraw to a mountain village, and the only women permanently in attendance were seven or eight aged nuns. Their daughters and granddaughters, married or in domestic service, would sometimes come visiting. The girl avoided these callers, for among them might be one or two who frequented the houses of the gentlemen she had known. It seemed absolutely essential that her existence remain a secret, and no doubt strange theories about her origins were going the rounds. The younger nun assigned two of her own maidservants, Jijū and Komoki, to wait upon the girl. They were a far cry from the “birds of the capital” she had known in her other life. Had she found for herself the “place apart from the world” the poet speaks of? The bishop’s sister knew that such extreme reserve must have profound causes, and told no one of the Uji events.

Her son-in-law was now a guards captain. His younger brother, a court chaplain and a disciple of the bishop, was in seclusion at Yokawa. Members of the family often went to visit him. Once on his way up the mountain the captain stopped by Ono. Outrunners cleared the road, and the elegant young gentleman who now approached brought back to the girl, so vividly that it might have been he, the image of her clandestine visitor. Ono was little nearer the center of things than Uji, but the nunnery and its grounds showed that the occupants were ladies of taste. Wild carnations coyly dotted the hedge, and maiden flowers and bellflowers were coming into bloom; and among them stood numbers of young men in bright and varied travel dress. The captain, also in travel dress, was received at the south veranda. He stood for a time admiring the garden. Perhaps twenty-seven or twenty-eight, he seemed mature for his age. The nun, his mother-in-law, addressed him through a curtained doorway.

“The years go by and those days seem far away. It is good of you to remember that the darkness of our mountains awaits your radiant presence. And yet —?” There were tears in her voice. “And yet I am surprised, I must admit, that you so favor us.”

“I have not for a moment forgotten the old days; but I fear I have rather neglected you now that you are no longer among us. I envy my brother his mountain life and would like to visit him every day. But crowds of people are always wanting to come with me. Today I managed to shake them off.”

“I am not at all sure that I believe you. You are saying what young people say. But of course you have not forgotten us, and that is evidence that you are not like the rest of them. I thank you for it, you may be sure, every day of the year.”

She had a light lunch brought for the men and offered the captain lotus seeds and other delicacies. Since this was of course not the first time she had been his hostess, he saw no cause for reticence. The talk of old times might have gone on longer had a sudden shower not come up. For the nun, regret was added to sorrow, regret that so fine a young man had been allowed to become a stranger. Why had her daughter not left behind a child, a keepsake? Quite lost in the nostalgia these occasional visits induced, she sometimes said things she might better have kept to herself.

Looking out into the garden, alone once again with her thoughts, the girl was pathetic and yet beautiful in the white singlet, a plain, coarse garment, and drab, lusterless trousers in harmony with the subdued tones of the nunnery. What an unhappy contrast she must be with what she had once been! In fact, even these stiff, shapeless garments became her.

“Here we have our dead lady back, you might almost think,” said one of the women;” and here we have the captain too. It makes you want to weep, it really does. People will marry, one way and another, and it would be so nice if we could have him back for good. Wouldn’t they make a handsome couple, though.”

No, never, the girl replied silently. She had no wish to return to the past, and the attentions of a man, any man, would inevitably pull her towards it. She had been there, and she would have no more of it.

The nun having withdrawn, the captain sat looking apprehensively up at the sky. He recognized the voice of the nun Shōshō and called her to him.

“I am sure that all the ladies I knew are here, but you can probably imagine how hard it is for me to visit you. You must have concluded that I am completely undependable.”

They talked of the past, on and on, for Shōshō had been in the dead lady’s service.

“Just as I was coming in from the gallery,” he said, “a gust of wind caught the blind, and I was treated to a glimpse of some really beautiful hair. What sort of damsel do you have hidden away in your nunnery?”

He had seen the retreating figure of the girl and found her interesting. How much more dramatic the effect would certainly be if he were to have a good look at her. He still grieved for a lady who was much the girl’s inferior.

“Our lady was quite unable to forget her daughter, your own lady, and nothing seemed to console her. Then quite by accident she came on another girl, and she seems to have recovered somewhat from her grief. But it is not at all like the girl to have let you see her.”

Now this was interesting, thought the captain. Who might she be? That single glimpse, a most tantalizing one, had assured him that she was well favored. He questioned Shōshō further, but her answers were evasive.

“Oh, everything will come out in the end. Just be patient.”

It would not have been good manners to press for more.

“The rain has stopped and we do not have much more daylight,” said one of his men.

Breaking off a maiden flower below the veranda, he was heard to m............