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Bond's first dive was a clumsy affair He went down too slowly and barely had tirassy plain, scattered with black rocks and clumps of Posidonia, the co hauled up He had to ads were in terrible shape, but he had spied one proht to it and clung, searching aht hand He felt the set the pick to it he was being pulled up again But he got the shell on his third try, and Kissy laughed with pleasure as he dropped it into the tub Heup for about half an hour, but then his lungs began to ache and his body to feel the cold of the October sea and he came up for the last time sileahts and, as a ently at his hair as Bond deposited his fifth shell in the tub

Kissy was pleased with hih brown kimono in the boat and she rubbed hi chest Then, while he rested, she hauled the wooden tub inboard and emptied its contents into the bottom of the boat She produced a knife and cut one of the fish down theexpectantly beside the boat He sed the pieces in two great gulps and set to preening his feathers contentedly

Later they stopped for a lunch of rice with a few small bits of fish in it and dried seahich tasted of salty spinach And then, after a short rest in the bottom of the boat, the ent on until four o'clock, when a sot between the row hoave several soft tugs at David's line He surfaced some distance from the boat and, as if this was a orn routine, rose into the air and circled round the in to the side of the boat on his webbed feet He flapped his way over the side and went to his perch, where he stood ings nificently outstretched to dry and waited in this lordly stance for his boated with extreme propriety into her brown kimono and dried herself inside it She announced that their haul was sixty-five awabi, which was quite wonderful Of these Bond was responsible for ten, which was a very honourable first catch Ridiculously pleased with hi on the island which, because of the drifting of the boat, was now only a speck on the horizon, and gradually worked hiillie

His hands were sore, his back ached as if he had been thrashed with a wooden truncheon, and his shoulders were beginning to sting with sunburn, but he co what he would have had to do anyway - get into training for the swim and the climb and ould come afterwards, and he rewarded himself from time to time with a smile into Kissy's eyes They never left him and the low sun shone into theold And the speck became a lump, and the lump an island and at last they were home

15

THE SIX GUARDIANS

THE next day was as golden as the first and the haul of aent up to sixty-eight, largely thanks to Bond's i before, Kissy had co her shells at theon the floor of his roo helplessly over him She had shooed her mother away, spread the soft futon on the floor beside hi pants and rolled hiht on his back and had walked softly up and down his spine froone She told hiht him warm milk Then she led him into the tiny bathhouse and poured hot and then tepid water over him from an awabi tub until all the salt was out of his skin and hair She dried him softly, rubbed warm milk into his sunburn and his chafed hands, and led hio to sleep and to call her if he awoke in the night and needed anything She blew out his candle and left hi of the cricket in its cage, like a light

In theremained of his aches except the soreness of the hands, and Kissy gave hi beaten up in his rice and bean curd and he apologized for his bad ht before She said, 'Todoroki-san, you have the spirit of ten samurai, but you have the body of only one I should have known that I had asked too le body It was the pleasure of the day It ize, and today ill not go so far Instead, ill keep close to the cliffs of the island and see e can find I will do the rowing, for it is a s because the place that I know of, which I haven't visited for many weeks, is inshore and the water is, at the most, twenty feet deep'

And so it had been, and Bond had worn a shirt to protect hione up to twenty-one, and the solitary shadow of the day had been the clear view he had had of the black fortress across the straits and the chunky yellow-and-black warning balloon that flew the colu one of their rests, Bond casually asked Kissy what she knew of the castle, and he was surprised by the way her face darkened 'Todoroki-san, we do not usually talk about that place It is almost a forbidden subject on Kuro It is as if hell had suddenly opened its mouth half a mile away across the sea from our home And ipsies We are very superstitious And we believe the devil himself has coestured with her head 'Even the kanushi-san does not deny our fears, and our elders say that the gatjins have always been bad for Japan and that this one is the incarnation of all the evil in the West And there is already a legend that has grown up on the island It is that our six Jizo Guardians will send aof Death", as we call hiod who protects children He is, I think, a Buddhist god On the other side of the island, on the foreshore, there are five statues The sixth has beento see They squat there in a line They have rough bodies of stone and round stones for heads and they hite shirts that are changed by the people every o by our ancestors They sit on the line of low tide, and as the tide comes up it covers them completely and they keep watch under the surface of the sea and protect us, the Ama, because we are known as "The Children of the Sea" At the beginning of every June, when the sea is warins, every person on the island for to them to make them happy and favourable towards us'

'And this story of the man from Kuro Where did it come from?'

'Who knows? It could have come from the sea or the air and thus into the minds of the people Where do stories like that come from? It is widely believed'

'Ah, so desu ka!' said Bond, and they both laughed and got on with the work

On the third day, when Bond was as usual eating his breakfast on the doorstep, Kissy came to the doorway and said softly, 'Come inside, Todoroki-san' Mystified, he went in and she shut the door behind him

She said in a low voice, 'I have just heard froer from the kannushi-san that there were people here yesterday in a boat froarettes and sweets They were asking about the visit of the police boat They said it came with three visitors and left with only two They wanted to knohat had happened to the third visitor They said they were guards from the castle and it was their duty to prevent trespassers The elders accepted the presentos, but they showed shiran-kao, which is "the face of hi", and referred the men to the kannushi-san who said that the third visitor was in charge of fishing licences He had felt sick on the way to the island and had perhaps lain down in the boat on the way back Then he dish Place to see where the boat went, and the boy reported that it went to the bay beside the castle and was put back into the boathouse that is there The kannusbi-san thought that you should know these things' She looked at hi of s between you and the kannushi-san, and that they concern the castle I think you should tell h to put me out of my unhappiness'

Bond smiled He went up to her and took her face in both his hands and kissed her on the lips He said, 'You are very beautiful and kind, Kissy Today ill not take the boat out because I h Place froood look at this castle and I will tell you what I can I was going to anyway, for I shall need your help Afterwards, I would like to visit the Six Guardians They interest ist'

Kissy collected their usual lunch in a small basket, put on her brown ki a s grey cluster of the village The time of the camellia was almost past, but here there were occasional bushes of wild camellias in red and white, and there was a profusion of these round a srove of dwarfauturove was directly above Kissy's house She led hih stone torü She said, 'Behind the shrine there is a fine cave, but the people of Kuro are afraid of it as it is full of ghosts But I explored it once and if there are ghosts there they are friendly ones,' She clapped her hands before the shrine, bent her head for a ain Then they went on up the path to the top of the thousand-foot peak A brace of gorgeous copper pheasants with golden tails fled squawking over the brow and down to a patch of bushes on the southern cliff as they approached Bond told Kissy to stay out of sight while he went and stood behind the tall cairn of stones on the suazed circumspectly round it and across the straits

He could see over the high fortress wall and across the park to the towering black-and-gold donjon of the castle It was ten o'clock There were figures in blue peasant dress with high boots and long staves rounds They occasionally seemed to prod into the bushes with their staves They wore black ht be doing the ht prey What did they do when they found some half-blinded creature, or a pile of clothes beside one of the fumaroles whose little clouds of steam rose here and there in the park? Take the, what happened then? And when he, Bond, got up that wall tonight, where was he going to hide frouards? Well, sufficient unto the day! At least the straits were calet there all right Bond turned away and went back to Kissy and sat with her on the sparse turf He gazed across the harbour to where the Ama fleet lay sprawled across the middle distance