Cover

YUME

YUME

Sifton Tracey Anipare

Copyright

Copyright © Sifton Tracey Anipare, 2021

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purpose of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

All characters in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Publisher and acquiring editor: Scott Fraser | Editor: Whitney French

Cover design and illustration: Sophie Paas-Lang

Printer: Marquis Book Printing Inc.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Yume / Sifton Tracey Anipare.

Names: Anipare, Sifton Tracey, author.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200373676 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200373706 | ISBN 9781459747371 (softcover) | ISBN 9781459747388 (PDF) | ISBN 9781459747395 (EPUB)

Classification: LCC PS8601.N483 Y86 2021 | DDC C813/.6—dc23

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Ontario, through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and Ontario Creates, and the Government of Canada.

Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.

The publisher is not responsible for websites or their content unless they are owned by the publisher.

Rare Machines, an imprint of Dundurn Press
1382 Queen Street East
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4L 1C9
dundurn.com, @dundurnpress

To my dad, Victor Charles Anipare, who showed me my first anime

Ho, ho, fireflies come!

Over there the water [is] bitter

Over here the water [is] sweet

Ho, ho, fireflies come!

Ho, ho, come by the mountain road!

— “Hotaru Koi”
(Children’s song from Akita, Japan)

序章

THE WOOD WHERE THINGS HAVE NO NAMES

万事は夢

All things are dreams

There is a quiet forest upon a mountain on a spring day. The sky is blue, the grass is a lush green, and the sun is shining. A wide dirt path winds through an assortment of trees: thousand-year-old oak, majestic redwood, thick reedy bamboo, baby spruce, short fat pine, many others with no names. There are no sounds except for the occasional breeze that does not affect the foliage. There are no living creatures, save two: a young man and woman down the road. They hold hands as they walk in silence.