Tall pine trees pierced the dim blue sky above her. Smoke veiled stone lanterns and orange lilies in the garden where she lay. She smelled smoke and heard the crackle of fire. Moaning, she sat upright. Nausea assailed her; the pain in her head intensified, and she covered her ears to muffle the loud clangs of the bell. Then she saw the house, some twenty paces distant, beyond red maples circling a pond.

It was a rustic, one-story cottage built of plaster and weathered cypress, with bamboo lattice over the windows and deep eaves shading the veranda. Fire licked the foundations and crept up the walls, curling and blackening the paper windowpanes. The thatched roof ignited in an explosion of sparks and flame. Instinctively she opened her mouth to call for help. Then the first hint of returning memory stifled her voice to a whimper of dread. Through her mind flashed disjointed impressions: a harsh voice; the taste of tears; a lantern glowing in a dark room; loud thumps and crashes; a violent thrashing of naked limbs; her own running feet and fumbling hands. But how had she arrived here?

Baffled, she examined herself for clues. Her brown muslin kimono was wrinkled and her long black hair tangled; her bare feet were dirty, her fingernails torn and grimy. She struggled to piece the fragmented recollections into a comprehensible whole, but terror obliterated the images. The burning house radiated menace. A sob rose from her aching throat.

She knew what had happened, yet she did not know.

As the firebell pealed its urgent call, an army of priests clad in leather capes and helmets, carrying buckets, ladders, and axes, raced through the crooked lanes of the Zōjō temple district. A burgeoning cloud of black smoke rose from one of the subsidiary temples enclosed in separate walled compounds. The fire brigade stormed through the gate, whose portals bore the circular symbol of a black lotus flower with pointed petals and gold stamens. Inside, priests and novice monks stampeded the lanes between the temple’s many buildings, up the broad central flagstone path leading to the main hall, toward the rear of the compound and the source of the smoke. Children from the orphanage followed in a chattering, excited flock. Nuns in hemp robes chased after the orphans, trying in vain to herd them away from danger.