Two hours later Ikuo was back, redolent of fresh foliage and grasses, and he asked Kizu if he'd noticed them passing by in the woods. Racing through the forest with a group of young men seemed much better able to revive him than spending time shut up indoors with an older man. Kizu just listened as Ikuo enthusiastically talked about what he'd found out about Gii.

"He seems to be about fourteen, though his mother has never disclosed his birth date, so even on his family record it's not clear how old he is. This is why Gii says there are people here who insist he's adopted or even stolen. Did you know that until she graduated from high school, Satchan lived as a man?

"Anyhow, Gii's only about fourteen, but he lives with a woman, if you can believe it, an old friend of Satchan's who came back here awhile back; she does dyeing. Gii helped her collect the tree branches she needed for her plant dyes and that's how they became friends. Gii says he finds it amusing how, no matter what he says, the older woman always replies, 'No way!'"

That afternoon, Kizu and Ikuo happened to run across that same woman at the crossroads at the main bridge. At first Kizu thought she was bald. The head on top of her well-balanced muscular body had sparse red- dish hair wrapped around it.

Just as it had upgraded to having vending machines, the general store at the crossroads had begun to accept parcel post deliveries, and Kizu wanted to check on the art materials donated to him by the store in Tokyo. Accord- ing to the owner of this local shop, a thin, gloomy man who never looked you straight in the eye, several boxes had indeed been delivered, but this was before anyone from the church had moved into the Hollow, so he'd returned them to the main office in Matsuyama, where they were in storage.

After some tiresome haggling with the owner, they agreed that he would go pick them up, provided Kizu paid for it, the owner finally coming out from the entrance of the old wooden building to accept their documents. A woman who had been in the back of the dirt-floored entrance preparing a long box for shipping ran after him.

"Hello, Professor! It is Professor Kizu, isn't it? I'm Mayumi, the one you helped arrange an exhibit of Japanese dyed cloth in New Jersey. I'd heard from Gii that you were here."

Kizu searched his memory as he gazed at the woman, clad in a white – and indigo-dyed dress, her face with its taut tanned leathery skin smiling at him.

"I must look very different to you, I'm sure. I used to have quite luxu- riant hair, but this spring I developed a rash from the dyes, and look what's happened. I'm sorry if I startled you."

Kizu's memory was still a little hazy, but Mayumi was sure he remem- bered her and continued, bashful at her own recollections.

"Would you mind talking for a while? There's no coffee shop along the river, but there is a nice little place just right for having a talk."

Kizu and Ikuo agreed, and Mayumi led them on, a basket woven from arrowroot swinging at her side.

"Just up the river from the main bridge there's an old bridge at the next curve in the road. No one drives on it anymore, and it's perfect to sit there and have a chat or to cool off. In fact that's how the local people have been using it."

The bridge had a weathered railing made of coarse granite, with a line of logs set up to keep cars out and thick knobby stumps and short logs ar- ranged for people to sit on, making the bridge into a small park. Mayumi led them to the center.

On the opposite shore a grove of zelkovas formed a screen with their still, soft, light-green leaves. Seeing Kizu observing the trees so closely, Mayumi explained about the zelkovas and the broad-leafed woods on both sides of them.

When she moved into the small house next to the farm, construction on the cross-Shikoku highway bypass was in full swing, and the cypress and cedar woods had all been mercilessly leveled. Cracks and holes appeared all through the broad-leafed woods that ran down to the riverside. But in the years since, the forest had recovered, and looking from below, at least, greenery covered the remaining wall of the bypass that ran though it-so much so that if a major economic downturn came and the bypass were to close, trees and vines would soon cover the slope completely, returning it to the state it was in before human beings inhabited the valley.

"It's past the season for it, but when the new leaves are sprouting and the flowers are in bloom it's a remarkable sight. Over there are beeches and oaks. And just up the river a little way when the kpjii flowers are in full bloom, a shiny golden light-green, they're absolutely magnificent. Behind the chapel it's all one line of dark green, right? Those are Chinese hawthorns, and the place where they come together with the kpjii is beautiful. The temperature's cooler than by the river, and it's in the shade for a long time, so the flowers were in full bloom until a short while ago."

As Kizu obediently listened to her, he looked around the expanse of broad-leafed trees, and up at the cypress and cedars beginning to be shaded with an indigo that, to him, was as pleasant as the throng of young leaves.

From the bright cloudy sky a layer descended-snow or fog, it was hard to tell-the tips of the pillars of fog at the top of the forest rising to touch the darker layer, the tops of this lower layer visibly blending with the cloudy sky and forming a contrast with the forest below.

"Gii formed the Fireflies in order to work out his concept of creating a community independent of the outside world, didn't he?" Ikuo ventured.

"Yes, but these long-distance trucks run day and night down that high- way, with no connection whatsoever to production and consumption in this valley. And as long as that continues, the bypass to the highway won't be closed to traffic like this old bridge was. Gii's not the sort to amuse himself with the impossible. 'My daydreams aren't real,' he told me once."

Feeling snubbed, Ikuo turned his dark face toward the river's surface, from which fog was also rising. For her part, sensing distrust of what she'd just said in his attitude, Mayumi continued seriously.

"Still, Gii has a concept of what the future holds and insists that there is a sense of reality to it. When he says that, the only thing I can say is No way! to put a damper on it.

"The kind of future Gii envisions is one in which the outside world has died out and the world constructed by the Fireflies is all that survives. This goes way beyond the notion of closing down the highway, but I can tell you he's dead serious about it!

"Gii's mother, Satchan, and I go way back. When she and Gii's father were running the Church of the Flaming Green Tree, one of their support- ers was a woman pianist who also worked in international exchanges of vari- ous sorts. In a storage shed at the Farm, Gii ran across a Bach CD of a Russian pianist whom the woman had invited to Japan at one time.

"Gii was moved by the performance, but he got a hint for his concept from a poem the pianist wrote. Particularly the line Perhaps the world has already passed away. Listen to the Italian concerto, Gii said, the second move- ment, the andante, and that's how he began conceiving his unique vision of the future.

"Since the world has died, the people living in it are, of course, dead themselves. They're just pretending to be alive, Gii says. But sometimes, very rarely, you'll run across someone who is truly alive, like this Russian pianist, who stands opposed to the already dead world. Gii decided that in the future he wants to act the same way-as someone alive in an already dead world."

"I've felt the same thing," Kizu said, "that there are two coexisting worlds, one already dead, the other living. The two worlds overlap, and the world we know is a mix of the living and the dead."