It had been unseasonably humid: clinging hot, the air choked with moisture but completely still, not the slightest wisp of a cooling breeze, and the day had passed without a drop of rainfall--unusual weather for October. The onset of night would offer little relief from the muggy temperature, for as the sun neared the horizon beyond Ishikawa Bay the clouds gathered over the island into a solid white canopy, blocking out the blue sky and trapping the day's heat.

A man stood on the beach of coarse sand and stared westward across the calm, crystalline-green waters. Near his feet rested an enormous bundle of driftwood--sticks, small log chunks, fragments of lumber. He was Kinjo Jo-ken, the wood-collector of Kin, a tiny village a mile inland from the upper end of the bay. He had been born in Kin in 1890, about ten years after the annexation of the Ryukyuan Kingdom, and he had lived there most of his sixty-six years.

Like other Okinawans, Kinjo was short and wiry, his weathered face the color of a walnut shell. Deep lines radiated from the corners of his squinting eyes, suggesting a lifetime of looking into a bright sun over glistening waters; indeed, he had been a fisherman most of his life. His close-cropped hair was black, only a little gray at the temples, but his scraggly beard betrayed his years--pure white.

Unlike others, Kinjo wore no American military cast-offs. Instead, he dressed in the old way: an indigo wraparound top and knee-length pants, both secured by a wide black sash. On his feet he wore the traditional thonged wooden clogs.

Kinjo continued to stare westward. Slowly, the sun sank into the sea, transmuting the water to copper and the cloud canopy to bronze. For a few more minutes Kinjo stood motionless, listening, watching, smelling, tasting, feeling, checking all the weather signs...

Soon, he decided, very soon, the Wind of Steel would come from the south, slashing across the island like a great sword. He turned slightly to his right, facing south, and rechecked the signs. Yes, soon...

But not tonight.

Relaxing, Kinjo squatted. Even with his failing eyesight, he enjoyed the alchemy of the sunset, experiencing the details clearly in his memory, which still was sharp. He had watched the sunset from Ishikawa Beach most of the days of his life, and he never tired of the spectacle. But always, especially in the fall, he checked first for signs of the Wind of Steel returning from the Philippines.

Only once had his routine been disrupted for any long period of time. During the great war he had been conscripted by the Japanese as a laborer, and he had spent three years filling sand bags and digging gun emplacements at Shuri Castle near Naha at the southern end of Okinawa. For sixty days the planes and big guns from the sea had pounded the emplacements around Shuri Castle. Finally, nothing had remained of the most sacred monument of the Ryukyuan Kingdom.

Kinjo rubbed his tired eyes, remembering his fear when the big guns finally stopped and the American sea-soldiers invaded in the spring of 1945. Giants! And the Japanese had told the laborers that the sea-soldiers were cannibals! He shuddered. A few of the surviving laborers had followed the Japanese to the cliffs of Mabuni, preferring seppuku to a dishonorable fate at the hands of the barbarians.

Kinjo sighed, his thoughts returning to the present.

Now, as an elder with poor eyesight, he seldom ventured farther from Kin than Ishikawa, the large village five miles south. But Ishikawa was turning from the old way. The tea houses had become neon-lit bars with loud music and pillowing girls for the sea-soldiers. Even the people were changing: clothes, habits, manners ... they were trying to be Americans.

Very sad, Kinjo thought. He snorted. A frog can never be a bird, no matter how high it can jump. Of course, the Ishikawans thought the people of Kin were backward rice-growers and ignorant fishermen--

A tug at his sleeve interrupted Kinjo's reverie.

"Ah, Grandfather! Come along quickly!"

"What is it, Mongoose?"

"It's one of the foolish ones, Grandfather," the boy announced in a breathless voice, pointing down the beach at three figures.

Still dressed in his black school uniform and cap, the boy explained that he had wandered several hundred yards down the beach collecting wood. He had been startled when two policemen appeared suddenly from the dunes screening the beach from the coastal Naha-Nago Highway. They were trying to restrain a naked woman by tugging on a thin rope tied around her neck. The female prisoner refused to be led along, rubbing her shaved head and moaning as if in painful agony. Mongoose had recognized her as one of the foolish ones. He darted back up the beach to inform his grandfather of the rare sight.

"A foolish one--?" Kinjo couldn't see figures clearly in the darkness with his poor eyesight, but he knew the boy referred to one of the possessed from the asylum near Ishikawa. "A woman, Mongoose?"

The boy took the old man's arm and guided him along the beach. Soon they drew close to the noisy group. The nude prisoner, squatting in the sand groaned angrily, "Iiee, nooo..."

Kinjo stopped the boy a safe distance away. It wouldn't be wise to get too close and tempt the spirit of the evil ancestor that possessed the foolish one. No, indeed. And he felt sorry for the policemen, forced by duty to take such a risk.

At first the two men tried to jerk the woman up with the rope tied around her neck. She coughed and made gagging noises, but stubbornly refused to rise. Then the policemen tried to coax her with soft words and promises, but the woman only dug her bare feet deeper into the sand. Finally, each of the men grabbed an arm and dragged the screaming woman back through the grassy dunes to the highway.

Kinjo marvelled at the two men's courage. As the group disappeared, he patted his grandson's back. "Come, Mongoose," he said, "we must get our wood and return to Kin."