"I wrote, you know," Noriko told her former teacher.

"I did not know. Though we tried to receive messages directed to the house, to have them held for delivery to one of us, I am sure there are many we missed." Ikue resettled herself into a pose of listening calm. "How much do you know about what happened here? What happened to you?"

"It was at the end of the Boshin war that I was cast adrift," Noriko said. Her voice was soft, her cadence almost poetic. Any observer, ...