Fuka-Eri must have been the conduit. That was the role she had been assigned, to act as the passage linking Tengo and Aomame, physically connecting the two of them over a limited period of time. Tengo knew this must be true.

“Someday I’ll tell you exactly what happened then,” Tengo said, “but right now I don’t think I have the words to explain it.”

“But you really believe it, right? That the little one inside me is your child?”

“From the bottom of my heart,” Tengo said.

“Good,” Aomame said. “That’s all I wanted to know. As long as you believe that, then I don’t care about the rest. I don’t need any explanations.”

“So you’re pregnant,” Tengo asked again.

“Four months along,” Aomame said, guiding his hand to rest on her belly.

Tengo was quiet, seeking signs of life there. It was still very tiny, but his hand could feel the warmth.

“Where are we moving on to? You, me, and the little one.”

“Somewhere that’s not here,” Aomame replied. “A world with only one moon. The place where we belong. Where the Little People have no power.”

“Little People?” Tengo frowned slightly.

“You described the Little People in detail in Air Chrysalis. What they look like, what they do.”

Tengo nodded.

“They really exist in this world,” Aomame said. “Just like you described them.”

When he had rewritten the novel, he had thought the Little People were merely the figment of the active imagination of a seventeen-year-old girl. Or that they were at most a kind of metaphor or symbol. But Tengo could now believe that the Little People really existed, that they had real powers.

“Not just the Little People,” Aomame said, “but all of it really exists in this world—air chrysalises, maza and dohta, two moons.”

“And you know the pathway out of this world?”

“We’ll take the pathway I took to get into this world so that we can get out of it. That’s the only exit I can think of.” She added, “Do you have the manuscript of the novel you’re writing?”

“Right here,” Tengo said, lightly tapping the russet-colored bag slung over his shoulder. It struck him as strange. How did she know about this?

Aomame gave a hesitant smile. “I just know.”

“It looks like you know a lot of things,” Tengo said. It was the first time he had seen her smile. It was the faintest of smiles, yet he felt the tides start to shift all over the world. He knew it was happening.

“Don’t let go of it,” Aomame said. “It’s very important for us.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t.”

“We came into this world so that we could meet. We didn’t realize it ourselves, but that was the purpose of us coming here. We faced all kinds of complications—things that didn’t make sense, things that defied explanation. Weird things, gory things, sad things. And sometimes, even beautiful things. We were asked to make a vow, and we did. We were forced to go through hard times, and we made it. We were able to accomplish the goal that we came here to accomplish. But danger is closing in fast. They want the dohta inside of me. You know what the dohta signifies, I imagine.”

Tengo took a deep breath. “You’re having our dohta—yours and mine.”

“I don’t know all the details of whatever principle’s behind it, but I’m giving birth to a dohta. Either through an air chrysalis, or else I’m the air chrysalis. And they’re trying to get ahold of all three of us. To make a new system so they can hear the voice.”

“But what’s my role in this? Assuming I have a role beyond being the father of the dohta.”

“You are—” Aomame began, and stopped. The next words wouldn’t come. There were several gaps that remained, gaps they would have to work together, over time, to fill in.

“I decided to find you,” Tengo said, “but I couldn’t. You found me. I actually didn’t do anything. It seems—how should I put it?—unfair.”

“Unfair?”

“I owe you a lot. But in the end, I wasn’t much help.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” Aomame said firmly. “You’re the one who guided me this far. In an invisible way. The two of us are one.”

“I think I saw that dohta,” Tengo said. “Or at least what the dohta signifies. It was you as a ten-year-old, asleep inside the faint light of an air chrysalis. I could touch her fingers. It only happened once.”

Aomame leaned her head on Tengo’s shoulder. “We don’t owe each other anything. Not a thing. But what we do need to worry about is protecting this little one. They’re closing in. Almost on top of us. I can hear their footsteps.”

“I won’t ever let anyone else get the two of you—you or the little one. Now that we’ve met each other, we’ve found what we were looking for when we came to this world. This is a dangerous place. But you said you know where there’s an exit.”

“I think so,” Aomame said. “If I’m not mistaken.”

CHAPTER 31

Tengo and Aomame

LIKE A PEA IN A POD

Aomame recognized the spot as they got out of the taxi. She stood at the intersection looking around and found the gloomy storage area, surrounded by a metal panel fence, down below the expressway. Leading Tengo by the hand, she crossed at the crosswalk and headed toward it.

She couldn’t remember which of the metal panels had the loose bolts, but after patiently testing each one, she found a space that a person could manage to slip through. Aomame bent down and, careful to keep her clothes from getting snagged, slipped inside. Tengo hunched down as much as his large body would allow, and followed behind her. Inside the storage area, everything was exactly as it had been in April, when Aomame had last seen it. Discarded, faded bags of cement, rusty metal pipes, weary weeds, scattered old wastepaper, splotches of hardened white pigeon excrement here and there. In eight months, nothing had changed. During that time, perhaps no one had ever set foot in here. It was like a sandbar on a main highway in the middle of the city—a completely abandoned, forgotten little spot.

“Is this the place?” Tengo asked, looking around.

Aomame nodded. “If there’s no exit here, then we’re not going anywhere.”

In the darkness Aomame searched for the emergency stairway she had climbed down, the narrow stairs linking the expressway and the ground below. The stairway has to be here, she told herself. I have to believe it.

And she found it. It was actually closer to a ladder than a stairway. It was shabbier and more rickety than she remembered. She was amazed that she had managed to clamber down it before. At any rate, though, here it was. All they needed to do now was climb up, step by step, instead of down. She took off her Charles Jourdan high heels, stuffed them into her bag, and slung the bag across her shoulders. She stepped onto the first rung of the ladder in her stocking feet.

“Follow me,” Aomame said, turning around to Tengo.

“Maybe I should go first?” Tengo asked worriedly.

“No, I’ll go first.” This was the path she had come down, and she would have to be the first to climb back up.

The stairway was colder than when she had come down it. Her hands got so numb that she thought she would lose all feeling. The wind whipped between the support columns under the expressway. It was much more sharp and piercing than it had been before. The stairway was aloof and uninviting. It promised her nothing.

At the beginning of September when she had searched for the stairway on the expressway, it had vanished. The route had been blocked. Yet now the route from the storage area, going up, was still here, just as she had predicted. She had had a feeling that if she started from this direction, she would find it. If this little one inside me, she thought, has any special powers, then it will surely protect me and show me the right way to go.