"Thank you for waiting," she said politely as she knelt fluidly to serve them. Matt found with the first sip that the steaming green tea was much better than he'd expected from his few experiences at restaurants.
And then there was silence. Mrs. Saitou sat looking at the teacup, Obaasan lay looking white and shrunken under the futon cover, and Matt felt a storm of words building up in his own throat.
Finally, even though good sense was counseling him not to speak, he burst out, "God, I'm so sorry about Isobel, Mrs. Saitou! She doesn't deserve any of this! I just wanted you to know that I - I'm just so sorry, and I'm going to get the kitsune who's at the bottom of it. I promise you, I'll get him!"
"Kitsune?" Mrs. Saitou said sharply, staring at him as if he'd gone mad. Obaasan looked on in pity from her pillow. Then, without waiting to gather up the tea things, Mrs. Saitou jumped up and ran out of the room.
Matt was left speechless. "I - I - "
Obaasan spoke from her pillow. "Don't be too distressed, young man. My daughter, although a priestess, is very modern in her outlook. She would probably tell you that kitsune don't even exist."
"Even after - I mean how does she think Isobel - ?"
"She thinks that there are evil influences in this town, but of the 'ordinary, human' kind. She thinks Isobel did what she did because of the stress she was under, trying to be a good student, a good priestess, a good samurai."
"You mean, like, Mrs. Saitou feels guilty?"
"She blames Isobel's father for much of it. He is a 'salaryman' back in Japan." Obaasan paused. "I don't know why I have told you all this."
"I'm sorry," Matt said hastily. "I wasn't trying to snoop."
"No, but you care about other people. I wish Isobel had had a boy like you instead of her daughter."
Matt thought of the pitiful figure he'd seen at the hospital. Most of Isobel's scars would end up invisible under her clothes - presuming she learned to speak again. Bravely, he said, "Well, I'm still up for grabs."
Obaasan smiled faintly at him, then put her head back down on the pillow - no, it was a wooden headrest, Matt realized. It didn't look very comfortable. "It's a great pity when there has to be strife between a human family and the kitsune," she said. "Because there are rumors that one of our ancestors took a kitsune wife."
"Say what?"
Obaasan laughed, again behind concealing fists. "Mukashi-mukashi, or as you say, long ago in the times of legend, a great Shogun became angy at all the kitsune on his estate for the mischief they made. For many long years they were up to all sorts of pranks, but when he suspected them of ruining the crops in the fields, that was it. He roused every man and woman in his household, and told them to take sticks and arrows and rocks and hoes and brooms and flush out all the foxes that had dens on his estate, even the ones between the attic and the roof. He was going to have every single fox killed without mercy. But the night before he did this, he had a dream in which a beautiful woman came and said she was responsible for all the foxes on the estate. 'And,' she said, 'while it is true that we make mischief, we repay you by eating the rats and mice and insects that really spoil the crops. Won't you agree to take your anger out just on me and execute me alone instead of all the foxes? I will come at dawn to hear your answer.'
"And she kept her word, this most beautiful of kitsune, arriving at dawn with twelve beautiful maidens as attendants, but she outshone all of them just as the moon outshines a star. The Shogun could not bring himself to kill her, and in fact asked for her hand in marriage, and married her twelve attendants to his twelve most loyal retainers as well. And it is said that she was always a faithful wife, and bore him many children as fierce as Amaterasu the sun goddess, and as beautiful as the moon, and that this continued until one day the Shogun was on a journey and he happened to accidentally kill a fox. He hurried home to explain to his wife that it hadn't been intentional, but when he arrived he found his household in mourning, for his wife had already left him, with all his sons and daughters."
"Oh, too bad," Matt muttered, trying to be polite, when his brain elbowed him in the ribs. "Wait. But if they all left..."
"I see you're an attentive young man," the delicate old woman laughed. "All his sons and daughters were gone...except the youngest, a girl of peerless beauty, although she was just a child. She said, 'I love you too much to leave you, dear father, even if I must wear a human shape all my life.' And that is how we are said to be descended from a kitsune."
"Well, these kitsune aren't just causing mischief or ruining crops," Matt said. "They're out to kill. And we have to fight back."
"Of course, of course. I didn't mean to upset you with my little story," Obaasan said. "I'll write out those amulets for you now."
It was as Matt was leaving that Mrs. Saitou appeared at the door. She put something into his hand. He glanced down at it and saw the same calligraphy that Obaasan had given him. Except that it was much smaller and written on...
"A Post-it note?" Matt asked, bewildered.
Mrs. Saitou nodded. "Very useful for slapping on the faces of demons or the limbs of trees or such." And, as he stared at her in complete amazement, "My mother doesn't know all there is to know about everything."
She also handed him a sturdy dagger, smaller than the sword she was still carrying, but very serviceable - Matt immediately cut himself on it.
"Put your faith in friends and your instincts," she said.
Slightly dazed, but feeling encouraged, Matt drove to Dr. Alpert's house.