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At first Chihiro is doubtful, with reason. "Another bathhouse?"
Haku explains. This one is different, not a bathhouse but an inn with honest hot springs, where the water wells up from the earth willingly, uncoerced. No witches, no indentured servants. A family business. Run by good people.
"People?" she echoes.
He maintains a smile. Chihiro goes along with him, willing to follow although not fully swayed, not even as they wait to check in at the reception desk. Not until the inn owner's youngest daughter comes fluttering past.
Her feathers are stubby and puffed out to their puffiest extent. She wobbles in the air like an overburdened bumblebee. A pink bow sits pertly on the crown of her head.
"Welcome!" she chirps. "Enjoy your stay!"
Chihiro covers her own mouth with a folded hand. An older sparrow--a sister, or maybe a cousin--appears, ready to guide them to their room or to the baths first, whichever they prefer.
"Okay," says Chihiro in an undertone, holding to Haku's arm. "Okay, I'm good with it."
*
The spring water has curative properties. Minerals cloud it to a translucent blue-green, hazy enough that when one sinks into it, everything below its surface is blurred. The blurring agrees with Chihiro's modesty, and agrees with Haku as the two of them are not alone.
"It's a good thing you came when you did," says the other bather, an aged gentleman. "Just a few days ago the place was closed, and this spring was dry as a bone. That's why it's still so quiet in here, you see, word hasn't gotten around that it's open again."
"Really?" says Chihiro. "What happened?"
The aged gentleman tells a story of kidnapping, dowsing, and unlikely heroics on the part of himself and a dog.
"What a hubbub that was! But you know, after all the trouble, I could almost swear the water's better than before. My rheumatism had been bothering me, but now I'm like a new man."
He lifts a wizened hand and flexes it in front of Chihiro's nose to prove his spryness. Rising, Haku moves from across the pool to sit nearer to Chihiro, between her and the aged gentleman. The gentleman is old enough to be her grandfather, and smells harmless, but Haku (while young for his kind) knows that age is no measure of good behavior. And men are men.
He is gravely polite. "You are a regular patron, then."
"As often as I can get down from the village."
"We're told the food here is very good. Is it true?"
"Oh, heavens, yes. Make sure you try the braised bamboo shoots, they dig them up right here on the mountain. If you want to take a stroll through the groves, there's a path out back, through that door over there--"
Under the water Chihiro finds Haku's hand. Her fingers tangle with his.
"A walk would be nice," she says.
*
They dress in cotton robes and wooden sandals provided by the inn. They have scarcely started up the path through the groves when a crescent moon appears, beaming above the rooftop where no moon should be at this hour. Haku stops in his tracks.
Evening peals across the sky in a flood of violet, deep blue, utter black. A moment ago it had been midafternoon. Chihiro turns to him in the startling dark.
"What was that?"
Haku stares up at the moon with narrowed eyes. It is luminous and huge. The rivulets falling from it blur into the background darkness, like trickles of ink, before he can quite convince himself he has seen them.
"Nightfall," he says.
"I got that part." She is less fazed than he; to her one impossible thing is no stranger than another. He finds himself grateful for her aplomb. "Does it usually happen that fast?"
"No." Nor is it sorcery--if it were he would detect the stink of it, but the power of a god doing a god's work is not sorcery, even when the work is capriciously done--and now something, or not something but Someone is blazing toward himself and Chihiro from the direction of the inn, racing at frightful speed. The wind, the air itself heralds immanence. The bamboo rattles. His hackles rise.
Chihiro feels it, too, or feels him tense; either way her eyes grow wide. Grasping her arm, Haku pulls her onto the grassy bank beside the path.
"Make way," he murmurs.
A presence bursts upon them, brilliant and immense. Amid the searing brightness he sees a wolf bearing a flaming mirror, a maiden with eyes of fire, form laid on form laid on a being who cannot be contained. There is no mistake, though Haku has never until now beheld her, never dreamed of beholding her at such a range. His was a small river: he has always been a very small god. He holds his breath. He feels Chihiro against his side doing the same.
The great goddess hurtles past like a meteor, intent on her pursuit.
If she marks their presence, she gives no sign. The path curves, and in another blink she is gone from sight. A riot of flowers surges and vanishes in her wake. The wind subsides.
In the quiet afterward Chihiro whispers, "That wasn't a dog, was it?"
*
By the time they return to their room, night is day again. They sit on the veranda, still in their yukata, to take the air and to see, as Chihiro puts it, whether the sun will set decently this time. A sparrow waitress brings sake and a tray of tidbits in tiny porcelain bowls: blanched butterbur, udo dressed in plum sauce, spring onion salad, bamboo shoots garnished with fresh kinome sprigs.
According to Chihiro, the food is delicious. For the moment Haku confines himself to sake. In one of the rooms on the second floor a shamisen is being played, so that snatches of melody drift down from the balcony above. He scarcely hears them. He cannot help wondering what a celestial deity was doing in this place, what straits had brought her to it. Whether he should have presumed to offer what aid he could give, meager as it is.
Chihiro notices when his cup is drained. She refills it.
"So that was Amaterasu Omikami," she says. "So?"
He blinks, then recognizes how silent he has been.
"It surprised me," he tells her. "She is a heavenly being. They rarely descend to earth, even to the spirit world."
The line of Chihiro's mouth twists. "From my point of view, you're a bigger deal than she is. You should taste these bamboo shoots, they're really good."
Haku smiles faintly. "She is the chief god of the Yamato people. Your people."
"I know that," says Chihiro. "We read the Kojiki at school. She's still not my boyfriend."
If he had been in his other shape, his whiskers would have curled.
"Well, she's not."
The sun does set decently this time. Green shadows among the bamboo in the courtyard darken slowly and lengthen; the moon ascends at an appreciable pace. When the waitress comes to remove their tray, Chihiro asks if someone might let them know when the bath is empty of other guests. The waitress hems and flaps her wings, citing policy, until Haku produces from his sleeve a small but persuasive pearl.