It was the fourth month of the seventeenth year of Kaho. In the great spring garden of Heian-kyo, apricot and pear blossoms were opening late, and half the capital had drifted there in a haze of delight. Haru Fujiwara had spent half the day being trapped by a few pretentious men who insisted on reading him incomprehensible poetry. He had finally escaped them, only to discover that his personal attendant had gone missing as well. Annoyed, he turned to leave the garden and had almost reached the gate when a bright voice called from overhead that she could not get down. Haru looked up. Among the dense high branches, a goose-yellow robe shone brighter than the apricot blossoms themselves. The girl among them was all candid face and careless laughter, complaining that the tree was too tall even as she smiled at her own predicament. Against the blue sky and white clouds, she looked strangely familiar. Haru smiled, already remembering how she had once jumped down from a tree into his arms, carrying with her a faint scent that had remained on his sleeves and in his memory for the next ten years. He had not yet moved when another man's lazy voice called up from below, asking who had told her to be so kind as to return a fallen baby bird to its nest. "Jump," the man said, opening his arms. "I'll catch you." The girl leapt without hesitation and landed in his embrace. As she moved, a little jade Buddha slipped out from her collar, and that same dim remembered fragrance floated by once more. Only now she was in somebody else's arms. Haru called to her, voice full of hope, "Akizome Yoshino. Little Akiko." She turned, puzzled. Did she know him? Haru, radiant as sunlight after snow, pointed at the jade Buddha. He was her little Haru, he said. She thought for a while and could not remember any such person. The man beside her spoke first. Was this another of her admirers? It was Osamu Saito, the capital's most famous rake and poet. He began talking at once of all the beauties of Kanto, and Akizome listened with eyes bright as stars, begging that next time he take her with him. Saito touched her hair with easy indulgence and asked under what name he should take her. Her cheeks flushed instantly. The soft look she turned on him was enough to light every dark tile and white wall in the world, and in Haru's eyes it was also an arrow. In a single instant the sunlight after snow inside him became a frozen waste. The girl he had carried in his thoughts for ten years already belonged elsewhere. The jade still hung at her throat, but she had forgotten the boy who gave it to her.
Once he returned to the palace, Haru found that he could not forget the smile, or the cry from the tree, or the fact that after ten years she no longer knew him at all. He remembered every detail. Time had smoothed away her memory, but it had done nothing to lessen his longing. So he threw down the half-finished calligraphy before him, went straight to the imperial study, and knelt before the emperor. In the fifth month the decree came down: the Crown Prince, approaching his coming-of-age rites, was to take as his consort Akizome Yoshino, youngest daughter of General Yoshikawa, commander of the realm's armies. The marriage would take place half a year later. On that same day Osamu Saito, the bright young poet, was promoted and dispatched far away to govern Kamakura. When the wedding came at the beginning of winter, all the realm celebrated. Haru took Akizome's hand beneath the heavy bridal veil and found her fingers cold as ice. Through the cloth he could not see her face. He saw only the joy on her father and brother's faces behind her. That night, when the guests were gone and they were alone in the Eastern Palace, she threw back the wedding veil and stared at him for a long time. Then she said she knew who he was now. He picked up the veil and set it carefully aside. He promised that he would treat her well. She cut him off before he could say more. He had married her only to secure her father's soldiers and stabilize his place as heir, she said. For his selfish ambition he had sacrificed her whole life. So she wished him exactly what he wanted: the empire in his hand, and loneliness all his days. Her voice was colder than metal. She hated herself for ever having gone to the spring garden. One moment she had been walking beside Osamu Saito through flowers and warm wind; the next she was named Crown Princess, her whole future locked away. Haru listened in silence, then told her the plainest truth he knew: he had married her because he loved her. All the painted empire under heaven, he said, was nothing beside her smile. Even if she hated him, he would keep waiting. He had been waiting for ten years already. What was the use of all that feeling if not to be squandered on her?
On the wedding night Haru carried his own quilt out to the outer chamber. The emperor must not hear that things were strained between them, he explained, so however much she hated him, he would stay in the same suite, only in the warmed outer room. If she needed anything, she had only to call. She shut the inner door in his face with a cold laugh. In truth, he had lied to her. No one in the palace lived so closely together, not even the emperor and empress. He had lied only because he wanted to remain as near as possible, close enough to hear her breathing if not to touch her. From then on he treated her with absurd devotion. Gold and silver, gauzes and silks, antique curiosities and rare books, he brought them all to her in endless streams, as if by emptying out the whole world before her he might persuade her to look once at the heart doing the giving. She threw everything into storage. There his gifts mildewed together with the heart that had sent them. In the second year, when Haru completed his own coming-of-age rites, courtiers praised Akizome endlessly in public as a woman fit one day to be mother of the realm. In private, though, not even Haru's warmth could melt the mountain of ice between them. On Double Ninth he rose before dawn to gather great gold chrysanthemums from the imperial garden and sent them to her. She laughed that he gave her rice dumplings at the Dragon Boat Festival, mooncakes at Mid-Autumn, chrysanthemums at Double Ninth, and might as well send incense and funeral flowers at Qingming too. That night Haru drank an entire jar of chrysanthemum wine alone in the dew. Yet after a few days of gloom he began again. One early winter afternoon he found her in the courtyard sun with a half-eaten almond cake in her hand. He took one too and said it had been his favorite as a child, and that tomorrow he would have the kitchen make the lotus-seed kind for her as well. Perhaps the cakes were good. Perhaps the sun was too warm. Perhaps her mood simply happened to soften. For once she looked up and smiled at him and said yes. Haru, who had grown used to nothing but cold looks, was so stunned by that single smile that he stood there speechless in the bright noon with joy breaking all through him. Sometimes, he thought, the world turns unexpectedly gentle. There are trees overhead, sunlight in the branches, and you beside me, and for one instant a whole lifetime passes.
Then politics intruded again. The power of the Left Chancellor, Lan Mo, kept growing, and Haru's advisers urged him to take the chancellor's daughter as secondary consort in order to balance the court and secure broader support. Haru refused absolutely. With no heir yet born to the Crown Princess, he said, taking a concubine could only plant the seeds of future bloodshed. Akizome heard of it and only sneered. They had never once shared a bed. What legitimate heir was he talking about? Clearly he simply did not want Lan Qi and was using her as a shield. One night Haru did not return to the main rooms at all. After waiting a long time, Akizome went looking for him, intending to tell him that she had already been sacrificed to this dark palace and would not let any child share such a fate. Better that he take other wives and have done with his fixation on her. Light showed under the door of the study. She had just reached to open it when she heard the Grand Tutor ask whether Haru was really worried about illegitimate sons, or whether there were not plenty of medicines in the palace to prevent even a favored secondary wife from conceiving. Akizome meant to slip away then, but Haru let out a long, slow sigh, and the sound fixed her where she stood. He said the harem was a dark place. The tutor had watched Akizome grow up. He knew how simple-hearted she was, how unfit for palace warfare. Haru had already ruined her dreams and taken her smile from her. He would not also destroy the last clean space inside her by forcing her to fight with other women. He wanted only to grow old with her. For this whole life, he said, he would never take another wife. Outside, Akizome stood in the night with all the moonlight and all the silence of the courtyard pressing in around her. She could not see his face as he spoke, but she could imagine the look in his eyes, because she had seen that look every time he looked at her: infinitely gentle. Suddenly she could not bear it. She fled the study in panic and, without knowing where she was going, wandered until she reached the Cold Palace. There, amid broken lanterns and overgrown weeds, a discarded woman in old silk was singing a tune once famous in the capital years before. Seeing Akizome, the woman grabbed her hand and babbled that once she too had been beautiful and favored. Then youth had gone, no son had come, and now she was left here to decay. Again and again she repeated the same line: the sunlight is warm, the years are peaceful, and yet if he does not come, how dare I grow old? Looking at the ruined splendor before her, Akizome's eyes filled. In the palace, beauty fades in an instant and the years of abandonment stretch on forever. Old tears are not dry before new laughter sounds elsewhere. Yet the man destined one day to rule the realm had said under the moon that he would never take another wife. He wanted only her. How was she supposed to bear that?
That night she went back to her rooms but could not sleep. Much later she heard Haru come in very quietly. Only then did she realize she had already learned the sound of his footsteps. Unsure how to face him, she turned her back and pretended to be asleep. He sat by the bed for a long time, touched the hair spilling from beneath her quilt, tucked the cover more carefully around her, and left. The light in the outer room remained on, though no sound came from it. At last she slipped from bed and looked through the half-open door. Haru sat with his back to her, holding something close to the lamp. It was a little gold lock in the shape of drifting clouds engraved with wishes for long life. At once a gate opened in memory. When they had both been children, she had once climbed a tall tree in the Yoshino garden and found she could not get down. A little boy passing below had caught her when she jumped, and the two of them had rolled together on the ground laughing. He had come to the Yoshino house with his father. He was Haru Fujiwara, and they had called one another little Haru and little Akiko. He had given her the jade Buddha. She had given him the gold lock. Each had hung the gift about the neck at once, as if it were treasure. He had told her he lived in a lonely, dark place. She had promised she would always keep him company. She had forgotten. He had not. Her heart began pounding so hard that it hurt. Yet what claim did a child's promise have upon adult lives? However guilty she felt, anger still remained. After all, it was he who had torn her away from Saito. She fell back onto the bed with memory, guilt, and resentment all knotted into one unbearable mass. She never saw him, later that same night, take out a large wooden box from beneath the table and look through it again. Inside it were scraps of paper, some old and brittle, some newly written, every one of them bearing Akizome Yoshino's name. For ten years Haru had been collecting every rumor, every story, every trace of her life.
The strain broke her at last. After hearing Haru's confession at the study and recovering those childhood memories, then drifting in the cold night air, she fell ill with fever. The physicians said the disease itself was not grave, but Haru still stayed by her bedside day after day, brewing medicines, bringing tea, refusing help. When she slowly recovered, he had grown visibly thinner. She no longer rejected his kindness, but the looks she gave him were full of confusion and words unsaid. That ambiguity only frightened him more. One day he overheard one of the maids say that she had been staying up late reading songs from Kanto, old regional pieces like The Song of Wu and Picking Lotus. At once his heart sank. So that was where the knot in her heart still lay. In Saito. All this time he had thought that the movement of the years might loosen Saito's hold over her, but instead she had only wrapped herself tighter in it. That night Haru thought for a very long time. If loving someone meant wanting her happiness above all else, then perhaps he had to let her go. When an imperial order sent the Crown Prince to inspect Kanto the following spring, Haru insisted that the Crown Princess accompany him. Akizome assumed he meant to torment her by dragging her back toward the place she had once dreamed of reaching for Saito. During the long journey the two of them sat in the same carriage and spoke almost not at all. When they finally reached Kanto, even Akizome had to admit that Saito's descriptions had been poor compared with the real thing: green water, long embankments, peach blossoms half a city deep, painted boats and clear wine and flute song till dawn. That night, unable to sleep, Haru raised his head and spoke at last. He said he could no longer bear to watch her grow thinner and sadder by the day. Tomorrow she would see Saito. If Saito still loved her, Haru would announce publicly that the Crown Princess had died in Kanto, and she could remain there under another name. He asked only one selfish thing: if possible, every few years she might let someone send a painted likeness back to the capital so he could know she was alive and happy. But he begged her not to let the painting include Saito. Akizome could not turn to look at him. At last she was about to be given what she had once wanted most, and all she felt was sorrow tightening around her heart like a spider's web.
No one had imagined what they would find the next day. When they entered Saito's residence, what stood behind Osamu Saito was a complete household: wives, concubines, children everywhere. He came hurrying forward in mortified confusion and kowtowed before them, unable even to conceal how embarrassed he was by what they had seen. He was a romantic man and a gifted one, but men like that do not stop for one woman any more than butterflies stop for one flower. Even had he married Akizome back then, he would never have lived all his life for her alone. All this time, in the deep quiet of the palace, Akizome had kept dreaming of apricot blossom roads and the rain of Kanto, thinking his heart matched hers. Standing now in the thin spring rain, watching his flustered face and stumbling movements, she understood that the old dream had become untouchable. Without meaning to, she measured the two men against one another. Haru Fujiwara had waited more than ten years without resentment, enduring her coldness and still holding the sky up over her head. Osamu Saito had not managed even two. What good were talent and charm if a man's heart could not remain? Haru kept his eyes fixed on Akizome's face. As it grew paler and paler, he hurriedly took his leave of Saito, led her back outside, and spent the entire day sitting beside her while she cried herself empty. Deep into the night, when her tears at last began to subside, he handed her a warm handkerchief, helped her out of her outer robe, spread out the bedding, and told her to sleep. The next morning, when she came out from the inner room, he sprang up from the chair in the outer chamber with the excitement of a boy. In one hand he held a plump little Shigaraki clay doll with a wrinkled, crying face and swollen red eyes. Did it not look like her, he asked? Before she could answer, he produced another, this one grinning like a laughing Buddha, and asked whether that one looked like him. Akizome finally burst out laughing. Haru stared, dazzled by the sound. From that morning on, perhaps she might come to like him, she thought, because he could make her smile. But she still did not love him. Not yet. He could not make her cry.
Then came Qingchuan and the flood. On the return to the capital an imperial order diverted them to a region where days of storm had burst the great dike and left tens of thousands homeless. Haru arrived and immediately sent men to repair the breach, dispatched urgent riders to the surrounding prefectures for grain and medicine, and arranged the entire relief effort before escorting Akizome to the prefectural yamen for safety. Then he rode back to the collapsing embankment. By midday she could no longer sit still. A terrible unease had taken hold of her, and by late afternoon Xiaojing came running in wild-eyed with the news that the work site had collapsed and the Crown Prince had been swept away. Akizome stood straight in the midst of the officials' panic, like a stake driven into the cold dark weather. She did not waste time blaming anyone. She divided the men into three groups: one to reinforce the dike, one to distribute food and medicine, one to search for Haru. For three days and three nights she remained calm enough to command every detail, though she could neither eat nor sleep no matter how she forced herself. On the fourth morning Haru was finally brought back alive, covered in wounds and too exhausted to breathe properly. The flood had carried him downstream until he caught hold of a tree crown rising above the water and clung to it for three days and nights. When he saw Akizome's disordered hair and the black shadows under her eyes, he forced his own open and told her not to worry. He had come back. At that she broke and wept openly for the first time. She was as fragile as a sheet of paper soaked in rain and then dried too quickly in the sun. Haru wanted to wipe her tears away but had no strength even to lift his hand. He could only whisper thank you. She told him stiffly that there was no need for thanks. If anything had happened to him, all the rest of them would have died with him. But Haru smiled and said he was not thanking her for managing the relief or for sending out search parties. He was thanking her because she had cried for him at last. Akizome touched her own wet face in astonishment. Why was she crying? Yet in those three days and nights, every time she opened and closed her empty hand, it had been his gentle words, his warm smile, his stubborn honest heart that she had reached for. Haru's back had become the safest place in the world to her without her ever noticing. Only when she thought it might be gone forever did she realize how utterly empty her hands were without him.
By the time they set out for the capital again, the mountains were already softening into early summer. Rivers unrolled beneath them, young lotus leaves were just beginning to green, and time slipped away like a light boat passing through ten thousand ridges. Akizome remembered, as if from another lifetime, the day she had jumped from the tree and called out to the little boy below. When he caught her then, a hidden fragrance had risen between them. Even now, years later, that scent still lingered like the cool clean breath of lotus leaves stretching to the horizon without end.