The piles of brick appeared a part of some chaotic landscape, the few remaining oaks casting strange shadows, blue as the moon, across of the corpse of the foundation.
"Tucked within one of the gardens of Kyoto is a shrine to unborn children, to lost children, to children who are too soon dead, a hidden altar, really, a stone on which women place azalea blossoms, or chrysanthemums; whole oranges, sprigs of cherry, offerings left in groups of seven or five, or three: harmony, they believe, in odd numbers," Walbert writes of a shrine overlooked by Mount Hiei. Her prose is deft and light though the subjects she deals with are anything but; the worst is often merely hinted at and easily missed. And it is the worst she deals with: the detritus of war, of societal norms, of loss.