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36 Yuu knocks after everyone has gone to sleep Sazae-Onna lets him in On the floor of her kitchen he writes a Kappa proverb: Dark clouds bring rain, the night brings stars, and everyone will try to spill the water out of your skull

37 At the end of summer, the unh

uman side of the house is crammed full, but Ko can only hear the occasional rustle When Kawa-Uso the Otter Demon threw an ivory saddle onto the back of one of the bears and rode her around the peach grove like a horse, Ko only saw a poor she-bear having soh he is not really sleeping He is being Yuu on the other side of the plum-colored screen He never writes poetry on the tatami anymore

38 The Night Parade occurs once every hundred years at the end of suo to the door between the worlds the way a brown goose knows to go north in the spring

39 One night the reolden lanterns The river rushes becos The in to dance; the Tengu flap their wings and spit mala beads toward the dark sky in fountains A trio of sons the color of pearls in ness River Cerulean fire curls out of their noses The House of Second-Hand Carnelian e nets The Jar of Lightning bounces after Hone-Onna and her gentleman caller, whose bones clatter and clap When only Yuu and the snail-woman are left, Sazae-Onna lifts up her shell and steps out into the Parade, her pink hair falling like floss, her black eyes gleah he will crack when faced with her beauty

40 The Parade steps over the Nothingness River and the Nobody River and enters the huht at the dark They ind down through the plains to Kyoto before the night is through, and flow like a single serpent into the sea where the Goldfish Ereet them with his million children and his silver-fronded wives

41 Yuu races after Sazae-Onna The bears watch theo In the midst of the procession Hoeru the Princess of All Bears, who is Queen now, coate Great Mammal Palace on her back Her children fall in and nurse as though they were still cubs For a night, they know their names

42 Yuu does notbirch shaft cracks; Sazae-Onna does not turn back When she dances she looks like a poeh the water of the Nothingness River His shaft bursts in a shower of birch splinters

43 A man’s voice cries out from inside the ruined brush handle Yuu startles and stops The voice says: I never had any children I have never been in love

44 Yuu topples into the Nobody River The kotos are distant now, the peach-lanterns dier bristles fall out

45 Yuu pulls hirasses and berry vines He is not Yuu on the other side He is not Ko He has Ko’s body, but his ar with ink His feet are inkstones He can still here the ins to dance Not-Yuu and Not-Ko takes a breath

46 There is only the House of Second-Hand Carnelian to write on He writes on it He breathes and swipes his brush, breathes, brushes Man, brush Brush,part man and part brush He writes poes about perfect breath The House slowly turns black

47 Bringing up the rear of the Parade hours later, Yuki-Onna coh the forest Snos before her like a carpet She has brought her sisters the Flower-and-Joy Kami and the Cherry-Blossom-Mount-Fuji Kami The crown of the Fuji-Kami’s head has frozen The Flower-and-Joy Kami is dressed in chrysanthemums and lemon blossoms They pause at the House of Second-Hand Carnelian Not-Yuu and Not-Ko shakes and shivers; he is sick, he has received both the pain in his feht the fish in both rivers are blinded The Flower-and-Joy Kami looks at the poem on one side of the door It reads: In white peonies I see the exhalations ofThe Cherry-Blossom-Mount-Fuji Kami looks at the poeh to sit at the foot of a mountain and breathe the pine mist Only a proud man must climb it The Kami close their eyes as they pass by The words appear on the backs of their necks as they disappear into the night

48 Ko dies in s filled up like the windbag of heaven Yuu dies before he can co the exquisiteness of crustaceans ill never love you back

49 Sloith a buzz like breath, the Giant Hornet flies out of her nest and through the peach grove denuded by hungry Tanuki She is a heavy, furry e on the wind The souls of Ko and Yuu quail before her As she picks thes and puts them back into their bodies she tells the is veno is sweet, even venom Death is illiterate and a hayseed buuarded What are you, some silly jade lion?