With one blink, I perceived I had awakened alone. Ansei had risen before me and seemed to have disappeared. I lifted my head and suppressed a groan. Every muscle protested as I tried to stand. I scanned the clearing. All was still.

I found the moon, and judged the night to be half spent. This surprised me. It meant I had slept an hour beyond my typical sleep interval, having done so soundly, and so exposed to night predators.

Ansei must have risen to scout the trail. I removed my flask from my trouser pocket and took a long pull of the cold water, then replaced it and limped my way gingerly up the trail to find Ansei.

At a distance beyond where I would have expected to find Ansei, I spied a figure in a pale robe crouched beside the trail. It could only be Ansei, and so I went on. When I drew nearer, I realized my mistake. It was not Ansei, but a strange young woman, clutching a small baby in her arms.

I didn’t stop to consider the rationality of what I saw. The woman trembled; her shoulders hunched, apparently overcome with emotion. She needed my help.

“What are you doing out here alone?” I asked through labored breaths.

The woman hung her head, mute, but she lifted her baby to me to take the bundle. I responded reflexively, reaching for the child and cradling it with both arms, but as I did so, the wrap parted and I started.

A nest of tiny spiders crawled from beneath the wrapping.

The crying woman was a jorogumo!

I gave a cry and the jorogumo seized me by the shoulders, shaking me roughly in her enormous hands and shrieking in my ears.

Then all at once she faded to Ansei’s hands, and Ansei’s voice calling my name. I shook my head from the fog that had enveloped it to the awareness of deep darkness.

“Furi! Wake up!” Ansei pulled me to standing.

I struggled to regain my bearings. “Where are we?”

“You were walking in your sleep. You returned to the forest.”

I gasped, “I saw a strange woman!”

“She was a jorogumo, luring you away.”

I trembled. “It was so real!”

“Deadly real,” Ansei shuddered. “Can you run?”

I ran ahead of Ansei. This time, when we finally passed through the arc of the thinning trees, we didn’t stop. We pressed upward over the mountain pass.

Adrenalin and the haunting image of the woman’s infant nest in my arms goaded me upward, against wind and protesting muscles. And when my strength slackened, Ansei unburdened me of my bedroll. When I could go no farther, he lifted me onto his back and carried me bodily up the mountain.

* * *

A day and a night passed before we ascended the height of the pass. Then Ansei left the trail.

“We’re not far away now. You cannot see the cave from here, but it lies behind that bulge in the rock face. Do you think you can make it?”

Breathing hard, I couldn’t answer audibly, but I began my way up the rock face, determined to make the attempt.

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Ansei’s jaw hardened. “My people are climbers, but your people are not. Let me carry you.”

“I can make it,” I insisted. “Let me try.”

Ansei relented. He had to. Carrying another person up so sheer a climb was near impossible, even for him. He must have known it. I followed him upward on the volcanic rock face, craggy with holds that ripped and scraped my skin even as I braced my grateful weight atop them.

Slowly, I forced my body up to a bulge in the rock, but my muscles trembled and melted into throbbing deadweight. No matter how I willed them, they refused to continue. I was so weakened, I could go no further.

Ansei climbed up ahead of me and I waited, breathless and exhausted, until he lowered a knotted section of rope.

Near the top, Ansei gripped my sweat-bathed arm by the wrist and, not slipping an increment, pulled me safely up and over the rock bulge. I collapsed against him, mouth parted and chest heaving. His arm encircled my shoulders and I shifted upward a half inch to rest snugly against his chest.

There we rested, Ansei cradling me in his arm with an ease belying the mortal danger I meant to him. Yet, I had no illusions. His breathing should have gradually relaxed.

It escalated. I could hear the pulse of his heart racing in his chest against my ear. He bent his head. Slow. Patient. Determined—a perfect mask of the torment he must have felt. I pressed my palm over his heart, wishing to slow it—fearful it might burst for pressure and speed.

Still, he closed his mouth over mine in not only a kiss, but I think, the the extraction of a promise. So help me, I yielded it without knowing how I could follow through.

* * *

I had never seen a cave made civilized before. The mouth of the cave opened wide and welcoming, flanked by a heavy wooden door, stabilized by a groove cut along the threshold. The door was ornamented with a skillful carving of a river landscape.

When Ansei had made a small fire and had lit a torch at the cave’s mouth, we ventured within. Following the orb of light, I gasped at the refinement all around me. The cave revealed domestic comforts of every kind. Tatami covered rooms. Shelves and tables of stone. A water basin. A proper kitchen. Someone had perfected the ventilation by means of thin grooves cut into the rock. I could not fathom the patience and skill it had taken to accomplish this, and stared at the industry in wonder. But I didn’t know what was coming.

We crept through a narrow tunnel that opened up into a broad natural cavern. I gasped as the torch’s glow cut the darkness, and the cavern shimmered in glittering reply. The walls throughout the vast expanse were jeweled with crystals. Amethyst. Gypsum. Quartz. I couldn’t identify all the minerals glittering under the low glow of the torchlight.

Fitted between the stones, on shelves, stood volume upon volume of hand-bound histories.

“This is the library?” I could scarcely catch my breath for surprise. I pointed to a column of shelves. “The histories are set into the wall between the mineral deposits.”

Ansei lifted the lamp to examine the spines of the histories. The copies dated back several thousand years from our time.

I reached and pulled a book from the shelf. “Look at it,” I said, and hugged the volume to my body. (It was too heavy for me to hold it any other way.)

“All true,” Ansei whispered, “Within this cavern we had no politics to offend. No ideologies demanding compliance. The great indulgence of a secret library is perfect honesty. You will never read anything less guarded.”

I caressed the spine of the book. “Where are my mother and fathers' journals?”

“They were more recent than these,” Ansei said, examining the shelves. “It may take some looking.”

Most of the spines were neatly labeled with ancient characters, but Ansei was the more literate between us. He found the volume, even while I stood awestruck by the sheer sight of the cavern—mind reaching to understand the magnificent creative genius that had come to bear in creating the place.

“I could never have imagined a place like this.”

Ansei let his gaze drop. “I should have brought you long ago.”

“Yes. But you have at last. Thank you.”

He wordlessly reached for the volume and surrendered it to me.

I shook my head. “Read my father’s account to me.”

* * *

Ansei read to me, but when the sun set, I sent him ahead of me to sleep, and I stayed up much of the night, reading slowly through my father’s account.

It was an emotional journey, pouring over those pages. Sometimes it broke my heart to know my father’s suffering, but near the end, I understood that suffering was only one thread that wove through all of his experience. Only love was unique. And it was this strange love, and not the familiar pain of his experience, which motivated his choice to be with my mother. I could detect no hint of regret, though the ultimate cost was dear.

My mother had given up her position among immortals. And she had borne much of the burden of her choice. Would she feel the same?