After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

maza
stays close to the 
dohta
,” the screechy one says. 
“When will the 
dohta
wake up?” the girl asks. 
“Two days from now, or maybe three,” the tenor says. 
“One or the other,” says the one with the small voice. 

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474
“Make sure you take good care of this 
dohta
,” the baritone says. “She is 
your 
dohta
.” 
“Without the 
maza
’s care, the 
dohta
cannot be complete. She cannot live long 
without it,” the screechy one says. 
“If she loses her 
dohta
, the 
maza
will lose the shadow of her heart and mind,” the 
tenor says. 
“What happens to a 
maza
when she loses the shadow of her heart and mind?” the 
girl asks. 
The Little People look at each other. None of them will answer the question. 
“When the 
dohta
wakes up, there will be two moons in the sky,” the hoarse one 
says. 
“The two moons cast the shadow of her heart and mind,” the baritone says. 
“There will be two moons,” the girl repeats mechanically. 
“That will be a sign. Watch the sky with great care,” the small-voiced one says 
furtively. “Watch the sky with great care,” he says again. “Count the moons.” 
“Ho ho,” says the keeper of the beat. 
“Ho ho,” the other six join in. 
The girl runs away. 
There was something mistaken there. Something wrong. Something greatly 
misshapen. Something opposed to nature. The girl knows this. She does not know 
what the Little People want, but the image of herself inside the air chrysalis sends 
shivers through her. She cannot possibly live with her living, moving other self. She 
has to run away from here. As soon as she possibly can. Before her 
dohta
wakes up. 
Before that second moon appears in the sky. 
In the Gathering it is forbidden for individuals to own money. But the girl’s father 
once secretly gave her a ten-thousand-yen bill and some coins. “Hide this so that no 
one can find it,” he told her. He also gave her a piece of paper with someone’s name, 
address, and telephone number written on it. “If you ever have to run away from this 
place, use the money to buy a train ticket and go there.” 
Her father must have known back then that something bad might happen in the 
Gathering. The girl does not hesitate. Her actions are swift. She has no time to say 
good-bye to her parents. 
From a jar she buried in the earth, she takes out the ten-thousand-yen bill and the 
coins and the paper. During class, she tells the teacher she is not feeling well and gets 
permission to go to the nurse’s office. Instead she leaves the school and takes a bus to 
the station. She presents her ten-thousand-yen bill at the window and buys a ticket to 
Takao, west of Tokyo. The man at the window gives her change. This is the first time 
in her life she has ever bought a ticket or received change or gotten on a train, but her 
father gave her detailed instructions, and she has memorized what she must do. 
As indicated on the paper, the girl gets off the train at Takao Station on the Chuo 
Line, and she uses a public telephone to call the number her father gave her. The man 
who answers is an old friend of her father’s, an artist who paints in the traditional 
Japanese style. He is ten years older than her father and he lives in the hills with his 
daughter near Mount Takao. His wife died a short time before. The daughter is named 

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475
Kurumi and she is one year younger than the girl. As soon as he hears from the girl, 
the man comes to get her at the station, and he warmly welcomes this young escapee 
into his home. 
The day after she is taken into the painter’s home, the girl looks at the sky from her 
room and discovers that the number of moons up there has increased to two. Near the 
usual moon a smaller second moon hangs like a slightly shriveled green pea.