“It feels as if something terrible will happen during the night-crossing this year.”

The adults’ gossip reached the boy’s ears.

The second school term had just begun. Summer vacation’s high spirits had not yet dissipated.

There was a gathering of parishioners on shrine grounds, which was also the boy’s playground. He had to keep it down this time of year, however, because of the Shinto ritual.

“Let’s take a peep inside Bonfire Hall,” his friends tempted him. They’d heard someone was in seclusion in there, and it piqued the children’s curiosity. The boy was also curious, so they sneaked into the grounds, but didn’t manage to take a peek inside. It was on their way home that the boy heard some passing adults talking about it.

(Something terrible...?)

What? He tilted his head quizzically.

Every year at this time Frost (Shimo) Shrine would hold an ancient festival called the bonfire ritual. The shrine’s deity was the divinity called the ‘God of Frost’. The boy had heard that the festival was supposed to keep fires burning continuously so the god would not be bothered by the cold, and the frost would not come before the rice plants ripened.

The adults were speaking of the night-crossing festival held on the last day.

“Something extraordinary is going to happen.”

(Something extraordinary? What...?)

The boy was so distressed he couldn’t sleep that night.

(Is she going to be okay?)

He was worried about his younger sister.

They were twins, and both had turned twelve this summer. She had been chosen for this year’s ritual as maiden of the bonfire.

The bonfire maiden was ‘shut away’ in Frost Shrine’s Bonfire (Hitaki) Hall for 59 days to tend the fires that would warm the god. This year it had fallen to his sister.

The ritual began in mid-August. Frost Shrine’s object of worship was moved to the divine seat in Bonfire Hall on the evening of August 19. The bonfire was lit on that day.

The maiden would remain in Bonfire Hall and tend the fire beneath the divine seat for 59 days, and was not allowed to set foot outside the shrine in that time.

His sister had already been ‘shut away’ for a month. He was slightly jealous she didn’t have to go to school even after summer vacation had ended. Everyone in his primary school agreed. But to be locked inside for two months? The boy would have found it absolutely unbearable.

Looking at Bonfire Hall at dusk with his grandmother, the boy thought of his sister inside.

“Onpachi-sama appears to be quite happy this year,” she said smiling. “Not a sign of a cold snap; we’ll have a bumper drop.”

His grandmother laughed, but the other adults seemed somehow different than usual, and it worried him. As the days passed, he grew more and more sensitive to their increasing agitation.

 
“More and more strange things are happening in Bonfire Hall.”

The rumor reached him at the beginning of October.

“Something terrible is going to happening during the night-crossing this year, I’m sure of it,” the boy dimly heard the adults say as golden ears of rice swayed in the wind blowing through the field.

 
The day of the homecoming ceremony arrived.

It had been 59 days. The bonfire maiden would extinguish the fire and finally leave Bonfire Hall. Then the ‘God of Frost’ would be carried in a portable shrine back to Frost Shrine.

The night-crossing festival would take place the night after next. Called the fire kagura ceremony, many people from neighboring villages would make a pilgrimage to the shrine on this night.

His sister, dressed in a beautiful white robe, entered the grounds along with the singers and dancers.

(Huh...?)

Everyone gasped as they caught sight of her. For an instant even the boy couldn’t believe she was his sister.

The bonfire blazed up to scorch the sky.

Illuminated by its bright flames, his sister seemed a different person altogether. The boy stood frozen in place. She was as sublime and beautiful as if she were truly a messenger from the gods.

(She’s so pretty...)

The beat of a drum resounded within Kagura Hall.

Another instrument joined in—a flute playing a strange melody.

The kagura performers danced in front of the fire with bells twinkling in their hands.

Everyone gazed at them, entranced. It was as if they were gazing on a scene from the age of gods.

The boy was still motionless and speechless.

It was midnight in autumn.

The chilly air wavered with the bright resounding twinkling of bells.

Beautiful dancers.

The still form of the white-robed bonfire maiden.

Flames scorched Aso’s night sky.

At last it was time to extinguish the bonfire and scatter the charred remains of firewood, over which the dancers crossed in their bare feet along with the bonfire maiden.

The bonfire maiden’s white feet trod on the god’s fire.

At that instant—

Suddenly the embers burst back into flame.

The worshipers screamed. The priests cried out, goggling, and leapt to their feet. The boy’s parents screamed.

The surging bright red flames swooped fiercely down on the little girl.

Or so it seemed.

(Huh...?)

The boy’s eyes widened.

The bonfire maiden stood unmoving within the flames.

It had not burned her. The red flames coiled around the girl protectively like a giant undulating dragon.

Everyone cried out at the unbelievable sight.

But that wasn’t all.

The flames took on the clear shape of a great serpent.

Everyone gasped.

The serpent coiled around the girl, who quietly cast her eyes downward without surprise.

At last the serpent raised its head towards the sky and danced up into the night, pulling its long tail of fire after it.

In clear sight of all witnesses.

The fire serpent soared through the night toward Aso’s peaks.

The boy gazed after it for a long time, dazed, before finally coming back to himself and turning to his sister.

Her sublime eyes were solemnly fixed on the night sky.

On the line of flame which had vanished into the deep blackness of the Aso night.