Is the darkness ahead, she wonders, growing less dark?

Hope pushes her onwards. She makes out another corner.

Rounding it, Orito sees a small triangle of moonlit stone.

A hole in the House’s outer wall, she realises. Please, please let it be big enough.

But after a minute’s slow struggle, she finds the hole little bigger than a fist: just the right size for a cat. Years of ice and sun, she guesses, loosened a single lump of stone. Were the hole any larger, she thinks, it would have been noticed from the outside. Anchoring herself, she places her hand against the stone adjacent to the hole and pushes with all her strength until a painful crick in her bent neck obliges her to stop.

Some objects are potentially movable, she thinks, but this one, never.

‘That’s it then.’ Her murmured breath is white. ‘There’s no escape.’

Orito considers the next twenty years, the men, and the children removed.

She retreats to the second bend, turns around with difficulty and propels herself forwards, feet first, back to the outer wall and wedges herself tight: she plants her heels on the adjacent stone and pushes…

I may as well, Orito gasps for breath, try to shift Bare Peak.

Then she imagines Abbess Izu, announcing her Engiftment.

Jack-knifing herself, she kicks at the stone with the flat of her feet.

She imagines the Sisters’ congratulations: gleeful, spiteful and sincere.

Barking her shins, she kicks at the stone again, again and again…

She thinks of Master Genmu pawing and gnawing her.

What was that sound? Orito stops. Was that a grating sound?

She imagines Suzaku pulling out her first baby; her third; her ninth…

Her feet kick the stone until her calves hurt and her neck throbs.

Grit trickles on to her ankles – and suddenly not one but two blocks tumble away and her feet are sticking out into empty space.

She hears stones thump down a low slope, and settle with a thud.

The snow is scabby and ruckled underfoot. Orientate yourself, Orito is dazed to be outside the House, and quickly. The long gully between the ramped foundations of the House of Sisters and the Shrine’s outer wall is five paces wide, but the wall is high as three men: to reach its ramparts, she must find the stairs or a ladder. Left, towards the northern corner is a Moon Gate in the Chinese style: this, Orito has learnt from Yayoi, leads into a triangular courtyard and Master Genmu’s fine quarters. Orito hurries in the opposite direction towards the eastern corner. Passing the end of the House of Sisters, she enters a small enclosure accommodating the hen-coop, dovecote and stalls for the goats. The birds stir slightly as she passes, but the goats stay asleep.

The eastern corner is connected by a roofed walkway to the Masters’ Hall; by a small storehouse, a bamboo ladder is propped against the outer wall. Daring to hope that escape is just a few moments away, Orito climbs up to the rampart. Level with the Shrine’s eaves, she sees the ancient Column of Amanohashira, rising from the Sacred Coutyard. Its spike impales the moon. Such arresting beauty, Orito thinks. Such silent violence.

She pulls up the bamboo ladder and lowers it over the wall’s outer face…

The dense pine forest comes to within twenty paces of the Shrine.

… but the ladder’s feet don’t reach the ground. Perhaps there is a dry moat.

The thick shadow below the wall makes it impossible to guess at the drop.

If I jump and break my leg, she thinks, I’ll freeze to death by sunrise.

Her numb fingers lose their grip and the ladder falls and shatters.

I need a rope, she concludes, or the means to fashion one…

Feeling as exposed as a rat on a shelf, Orito hurries along the rampart towards the Great Gate in the southern corner, hoping that freedom can be won over the body of a soundly sleeping sentry. She climbs down the next ladder to a gully between the outer wall and the barn-sized Kitchen and Dining Hall. There is the smell of latrines and soot. Amber light leaks from the Kitchen door. Knives are being sharpened by an insomniac cook. To disguise her footfalls, Orito steps in time to the metallic scrape. The next Moon Gate leads her into the Southern Courtyard, overlooked by the Meditation Hall and populated by two giant cryptomeria: Fûjin, the Wind God, bent under his sack of the world’s winds; and Raijin, the Thunder God, who steals navels during thunderstorms, holding up his chain of hand-drums. The Great Gate, like Dejima’s Land-Gate, consists of tall double-doors for palanquins, and a smaller door through the gatehouse. This door, Orito sees, stands slightly ajar…

… so she creeps closer along the wall until she smells tobacco and hears voices. She crouches in the shadow of a large barrel. ‘Any more charcoal?’ a voice drawls. ‘My nuts are nuggets of ice.’

A scuttle is rattled empty. ‘That’s the last,’ says a high voice.

‘We’ll throw dice,’ says the drawler, ‘for the privilege of getting more.’

‘So what are your chances,’ says a third voice, ‘of having those nuggets melted in the House of Sisters during Engiftment?’

‘Not good,’ admits the drawler. ‘I had Sawarabi three months ago.’

‘I had Kagerô last month,’ says the third voice. ‘I’m at the back of the queue.’

‘The Newest Sister’s bound to be chosen,’ says the third voice, ‘chances are, so we acolytes shan’t snatch a peep all week. Genmu and Suzaku are always the first to dig their hoes into virgin soil.’

‘Not if the Lord Abbot visits,’ says the drawler. ‘Master Annei told Master Nogoro that Enomoto-dono befriended her father and guaranteed his loans, so that when the old man crossed the Sanzu the widow had a stark choice: hand over her stepdaughter to Mount Shiranui or lose her house and everything in it.’

Orito has never considered this: here and now, it is sickeningly plausible.

The third voice clucks admiringly. ‘A master of strategy, our Lord Abbot…’

Orito wishes she could tear the men and their words to pieces, like squares of paper…

‘Why go to all the bother to get a samurai’s daughter,’ asks the high voice, ‘when he can pick and choose from any brothel in the Empire?’

‘Because this one’s a midwife,’ answers the drawler, ‘who’ll stop so many of our Sisters and their Gifts dying during labour. Rumour has it she brought the Nagasaki Magistrate’s newborn son back from the dead. Cold and blue, he was, until Sister Orito breathed life back into him…’

That single act, Orito wonders, is why Enomoto brought me here?

‘… I’d not be surprised,’ continues the drawler, ‘if she’s a special case.’

‘Meaning,’ asks the third voice, ‘that not even the Lord Abbot honours her?’

‘Not even she could stop herself dying in childbirth, right?’

Ignore this speculation, Orito orders herself. What if he’s wrong?

‘Pity,’ says the drawler. ‘If you don’t look at her face, she’s a pretty thing.’

‘Mind you,’ adds the high voice, ‘until Jiritsu is replaced, there’s one less-’

‘Master Genmu forbade us,’ exclaims the drawler, ‘ever to mention that treacherous bastard’s name.’

‘He did,’ agrees the third voice. ‘He did. Fill the charcoal bucket as penance.’

‘But we were going to throw dice for it!’

‘Ah. That was prior to your disgraceful lapse. Charcoal!’

The door is flung open: bad-tempered footsteps crunch towards Orito who crouches into a terrified ball. The young monk stops by the barrel and removes its lid, just inches away. Orito hears his teeth chatter. She breathes into her shoulder to hide her breath. He scoops up charcoal, filling the scuttle lump by lump…

Any moment now, she shakes, any moment now…

… but he turns away, and walks back to the guardhouse.

Like paper prayers, a year’s good luck was burnt away in seconds.