Eighty

    It was close to dark, and he was still woozy from the fall – how long had he been passed out? And what happened to the storm that had been chasing him? – but Hideaki knew he had found the place.

    Beneath the field, there was a condominium development for local politicians who wished to escape their city apartments and come out to relax with their own kind in a manufactured enclave, but he knew it was the same place. He could see the Garden – shining through the artifice of the phony antique Japanese housing materials – could see the intricate paths and the people and the sculptures and his long deceased, beloved brother.

    The area above the condos had been preserved as an open park. The waterfall was still beneath – though it had to be fed by forced tubing that channeled water – it was still the same.

    On one side of the park stood a plaque, describing how this had been a famous butterfly breeding ground and watching area for many generations. As the day dissipated into night he could see a few small, white butterflies fluttering along the periphery.

    He had brought a digging tool with him, on some pretense that he knew disguised the real reason.

    Relying on instinct, he began digging. It was much further down than he had remembered, as if time had made it shrink from the earth which had forgotten its memory, but soon he found the flat top of the remains.

    After all these years the brick remained, they were in perfect shape and would make a fine addition to his research. He dug around them, for the privilege and the pleasure of seeing the body of the dragon take shape before his eyes, as if it hadn't been all those years, either in his own life or in the life of the country.

    He excavated the centuries of amnesia away and the body of the dragon was resurrected.

    He stood back and admired it. Proud of his reverence for the beast that had given them so much, had given its life – in vain? No, that couldn't be said. Though the pots had been destroyed, they had been part of the forging of Shuji into a great potter, so nothing had been wasted.

    He got the urge to fully remove the dragon from the grave of the past, and started prying bricks apart with the tool. After the first few gave, the rest came unglued.

    As he went down, layer by layer, he knew it was here, but dared not hope too keenly.

    Preserved in a virtual vacuum seal created by a thin layer of clay, between the penultimate bricks and the layer before the ancient earth reasserted itself, was a wrapped package. It was thin and promised deliverance. He laid it on the ground and gingerly peeled back the layers of time. The wrapping was a coarse burgundy tunic that appeared to have its arms wrapped around the potter's notebook for centuries. In the final fold between fabric and book cover, was a small, broken porcelain egg.

    Hideaki held the partial shell up to the last of the light and peered through the translucent memory.

    Opening the book, from the back first, he saw there was an addendum that was not in the old samurai's hand. He carefully separated the pages and read the beginning of the postscript.

    It began, "You are the tenth in the line . . . "