They took Seimei's ox-cart and travelled west, towards Settsu. As they passed through the commoner's settlement outside the city gates, Hiromasa huddled deep into the cloak he'd borrowed from his ox-handler. The garment was patched and worn and smelled of sour sweat and animal dung. He'd never worn anything so unclean before, and although he was certain the stench masked his own body scent, he worried that Nose would smell him as they drove close to her hut.

Seimei seemed less concerned. He even peeked out of the ox-cart, as if hoping to see the incense-blender on the side of the road.

Hiromasa fidgeted. He took off the stinking cloak as soon as they'd left the cluster of houses and tucked it under a cushion. Seimei had insisted on the cushions, not just for comfort but also for their scent. Each one was filled with duck feathers and dried flowers from Seimei's garden.

"Mitsumushi made them," Seimei had said when Hiromasa remarked that they smelled like a brothel. "Don't insult her kindness."

The cushion nearest to him smelled of lavender and late autumn roses. Hiromasa was sure he'd placed it on Seimei's side of the cart before they'd started their journey. Now he plumped it up and handed it to Seimei, saying, "Here. I have too many cushions and you don't have enough."

Seimei accepted the cushion and arranged it behind him. With a sigh, he leaned back and closed his eyes.

Hiromasa watched him. Last night they'd been busy preparing for this journey. Seimei had packed very little, and had spent most of the time wandering around his house and garden casting spells.

"Magic needs to be fed," he'd said, catching Hiromasa's questioning look. "We will be away for forty days. The wards guarding my estate will weaken with my absence unless I fortify them now. I have no desire to come home and find demons in residence."

Hiromasa had fallen asleep waiting for him to finish his spells. He suspected Seimei had remained awake all night. He seemed tired now, his face paler than usual and the fine skin around his eyes smudged with shadows. Hiromasa knew he should let him sleep, but curiosity about their journey nagged at him.

He sat forwards. "Where are we going?"

"You'll see." Seimei spoke without opening his eyes.

"When will we get there?"

"Soon."

"Is it –"

"Hiromasa." Seimei looked at him at last. "Be patient. And be quiet."

"You could at least tell me where we're going!"

Seimei heaved a soft sigh. "What did you say at court to explain your absence?"

"I said I was visiting a shrine." Hiromasa remembered the Emperor's vague puzzlement when he'd formally requested leave from his palace duties. "And I told my mother we were going to Lake Biwa to your summer estate."

"My summer estate!" Seimei looked amused. "Do you think I have a summer estate?"

Hiromasa blinked. "You don't?"

Seimei laughed at him.

"You haven't answered my question," Hiromasa said, annoyed. "In fact, you haven't answered either of my questions."

"No, I haven't."

"Really, Seimei. You are the most aggravating man I've ever met."

Seimei hid behind his fan and continued to laugh.

Hiromasa decided to stop asking questions. The combined flowery perfumes emanating from the cushions were giving him a headache, so he parted the curtains and for a while looked out at the landscape. Traffic was light. A few people passed them in the opposite direction, heading towards the city: farmers with carts full of hay or vegetables, a man with a goat tethered on a rope, a barefoot monk in a grey robe.

When he grew bored, Hiromasa settled down. He glanced at Seimei, who was curled on his heap of cushions, his sleeve covering the lower part of his face. He appeared to be asleep. Thinking to emulate him, Hiromasa made himself as comfortable as the jolting ox-cart would allow. He plumped up a cushion and laid his head on it with a deep sigh.

Moments later he sat up. He stared at the cushion, then leaned forward and sniffed it cautiously. Lavender and late autumn roses. Suspicious, he glanced over at Seimei, who was watching him over the edge of his sleeve, mischief in his eyes.

"Seimei!" Hiromasa threw the cushion at him.

Towards the end of the day, the ox-cart came to an abrupt halt. Hiromasa rolled awake, grogginess making his head swing. Mumbling in complaint, he crawled to the back of the cart and jumped down.

Seimei stood on the road, talking to the white ox harnessed to the front of the vehicle. He stroked its muzzle as it blew puffs of air at him.

Hiromasa looked around. "Where's the ox-handler?"

"I don't have one." Seimei patted the ox's nose a final time and returned to the cart. Standing on tiptoe, he brushed aside the curtains and tossed out a few of the cushions from his side of the cart.

"You don't have one," Hiromasa repeated. He groaned, realising that they'd left Heian-Kyo in a cart drawn by a magical ox. Eyeing the beast, he said, "Don't tell me – it's really a beetle. You've enchanted a beetle and now it thinks it's an ox."

Seimei ducked out from beneath the curtain, a puzzled look on his face. "No, it's an ox. I asked it to bring us here."

Hiromasa raised his eyebrows. "But of course you did."

"Animals are a lot more intelligent than humans realise." Seimei busied himself inside the cart again.

"So why did it stop?"

"Really, Hiromasa, have you no imagination? I asked it to stop." Seimei yanked the curtain to one side and pulled a wooden box out of the cart. "From here we go on foot." He lifted the box and held it out to him. "Carry this."

"Carry?" Hiromasa wondered where the box had come from. He hadn't seen it in the cart, and he felt certain it couldn't have been hidden beneath the heap of Seimei's cushions. He took it and staggered under its weight. He'd never carried anything heavier than a kin before. This was much heavier than the delicate musical instrument.

He hefted the box, readjusting his grip on it. "What's inside it?"

"Rice." Seimei dragged a cook-pot from the cart. "Bowls. Cups. Vegetables."

Hiromasa stared at him. "Where are we going?"

"You'll see." Two jars of sake were placed inside the cook-pot. Seimei leaned inside the cart and hauled out what looked like an animal skin.

"What is that?"

"Wolf-pelts." Seimei upended the fur and shoved it into the cook-pot. He swung the whole thing into his arms and huffed. "Let's go."

"What about the cart?" Hiromasa tottered after him, carrying the box.

"It will return for us in forty days."

Hiromasa gasped, the weight of the box already pulling at his muscles, making him ache. He turned to cast a longing glance at the ox-cart. "Are we going far?"

Seimei nodded towards the distance. "There."

Rough ground lay before them, the grasses yellowed from the over-long summer. A dried stream cut through it, the mud on its banks cracked and pale. Beyond stretched a forest, the trees on its outer edge shading from dark green to brown and red. The forest covered a series of hills and dipped into a valley. It looked bleak and endless.

Hiromasa shivered and hugged the box. "What's in there?"

But Seimei had walked away, the cook-pot balanced against one hip as if it had no more weight to it than a lute. Grumbling, Hiromasa followed him.

Within thirty paces, he dropped the box. It landed on the ground with a thud, startling nearby cicadas into silence. He blotted his face with his sleeve and blinked sweat from his eyes. His hands felt slippery, unable to grasp the corners of the box. Hiromasa picked it up and heaved it a little further before it slid from his arms again.

Crouching beside it, his head bowed in defeat, he became aware of the smell of his sweat. Free of his usual fragrance, the scent was not unpleasant. He licked his upper lip, tasting it. Already he thought it was different to the scent Nose had bottled yesterday.

When he looked up, Seimei stood over him. Dust marred the dazzling white of his hunting-costume and streaked the dark blue robe and paler hakama beneath.

"The box is too heavy," Hiromasa complained.

Seimei tutted. He murmured a few words then stepped back. "It's a question of perception. If you think it's too heavy, it will be too heavy. Think of it as light, and it will be light." He tapped his fingers against the round belly of the cook-pot. "Try it now. I want to reach our temporary home before evening."

Mention of a house brightened Hiromasa's mood. He swung up the box, surprised and yet not surprised to find it a more manageable weight, and started after Seimei with renewed vigour.

Soon they reached the edge of the forest. The ground changed, hard-packed earth giving way to a blanketing of pine needles that quietened their tread. Roots broke the surface, knotted and gnarled; brackens rustled; tangling brambles snagged their silks as they passed. Trees rose up, huge and silent.

A deep, nameless dread shook him as they entered the forest. Hiromasa drew closer to Seimei, gripping the box and hunching into his borrowed cloak. Something screeched from the shadows ahead of them. Hiromasa told himself it was just a bird or a harmless creature. It was not a tengu or a lost soul. As distraction, he tried to identify the different types of trees surrounding them. If he could name them, he would feel safe.

They walked deeper into the forest. Hiromasa stumbled over branches, kicked pinecones and snapped twigs. Seimei seemed to move with effortless grace, his gait more fluid here despite the uneven ground than it had ever been over the stone-flagged terraces of the imperial palace. His footsteps were light, his movements brisk.

Watching him, Hiromasa was reminded of an animal – a cat, perhaps, prowling around its territory. He did not want to think about foxes.

The daylight that marked the edge of the forest vanished. If Hiromasa wanted to see the sky, he had to look up. The trees loomed over him, their branches spread to block his view. Red and gold leaves fell, reminding him of Mitsumushi's weaving, dancing flights in her butterfly shape. He wished she'd accompanied them. For all her strangeness, she was something familiar in this frightening, uncivilised place.

Seimei stopped.

Hiromasa leaned the box against a tree-trunk. "Are we…" He paused. He didn't want to ask if they were lost. Instead he asked, "Are we there yet?"

"Yes." Seimei remained motionless, gazing at something Hiromasa couldn't see; then he pointed. "There."

Hiromasa looked. He saw a small clearing, a fallen tree-trunk, and a snarl of bushes around a raised hillock. Puzzled, he glanced at Seimei, who wore a blank expression. His confusion increased. Hiromasa looked again.

Then he saw it. The hillock was not a natural part of the landscape. It was manmade – a dwelling of some kind. Now he understood what he looked at, he could pick out individual features: the brambles crawling over sagging walls, and the vivid green moss covering a bowed roof of yellowish-brown thatch.

"This will be our home for the next forty days." Seimei sounded pleased. "Perhaps we should re-thatch it."

Hiromasa stared at him. Despite what Seimei had said during the journey, he'd been expecting a country villa – nothing grand, but of an acceptable size and staffed with a few servants. He'd thought the box of supplies and the cook-pot were one of Seimei's jokes. He'd imagined them being welcomed with food and sake and lit braziers warming the rooms. Instead they were going to live in a dwelling unfit even for animals.

Hiromasa couldn't summon adequate words. Hoping that this was a bad dream, he trailed Seimei towards the tumbledown hovel. Any moment now he'd wake, and they'd be in the ox-cart. Any moment now, Seimei would turn and chuckle and announce this was all a huge joke.

Seimei picked his way through the brambles and set down the cook-pot outside the hut. Hiromasa dropped the box next to it, uncaring that the items inside clattered and crashed. A sense of unreality floated through him. He wanted to laugh, but saw nothing funny in the situation.

"My grandfather told me about this place." Seimei touched the overhanging thatch above the door. "It used to belong to a hermit."

"Your grandfather?" Hiromasa pushed at the door. Made of woven grass stems set into a frame, it swung open to reveal a room, half the size of Nose's house, in an advanced state of decay. Things rustled and squeaked in a pile of decomposing straw. Lichen patterned parts of the dirt floor. The scent of damp earth and rotting wood hung in the air, rich and heady.

Hiromasa faced Seimei, aghast. "Your grandfather told you about this… hovel?"

"It's built on my grandfather's territory." Seimei flashed him a look. "My maternal grandfather, that is."

Realisation shocked him cold. Hiromasa swallowed. "A – a… your grandfather was a…" He couldn't bring himself to say it out loud. Helplessly, he gestured inside the hovel. "It smells!"

"That's the idea." Seimei looked amused by his squeamishness. He took off his lacquered hat, unfastened his topknot, and shook out his hair before retying it at the nape of his neck. Tucking his hat under one arm, he took hold of the cook-pot and dragged it inside the hut.

Hiromasa followed. Taller than Seimei, and with his court cap still on his head, he bumped into the thatch and cursed as moss dropped onto him. He took off the hat and ducked inside, then with some caution stood upright.

Seimei crouched on the floor, emptying out the cook-pot. He placed the sake jugs against the wall and shook out the wolf-pelts. The fur unrolled to reveal Hiromasa's bow and arrows wrapped inside.

Hiromasa looked at him, speechless.

Seimei shrugged. "We need to eat."

"You expect me to shoot things?"

"Animals. I expect you to kill animals, which we will then eat." Seimei stood and faced him, his usual patient expression slipping. "You agreed to do this."

For a moment Hiromasa couldn't speak. Then he found his voice and words tumbled from him. "I agreed to try changing my scent so we could stop Nose and save the court and us from turning into spirit-summoning incense. I agreed to leave the city because I thought we'd go to your summer estate. I didn't know we were going to live like peasants!"

"In order to change our body scent, we must be willing to change every aspect of our lives." Seimei's voice roughened with a passion his reasonable words couldn't hide. "We must leave our civilised scent behind. We will bathe in the streams; we will eat meat; we will sleep in animal skins. We will get our hands dirty and roll in leaves and we will make love until we smell like one another and create a new scent between us."

Hiromasa looked away. He knew Seimei was right, but his pride rebelled against living in such poor conditions. Ashamed of himself for being so superficial, he complained, "Seimei, I can't stay here. We can't stay here."

"It will be quite habitable after a little work." Seimei bustled around the cramped space, rearranging the wolf-pelts and smoothing them flat. He stood and pushed at the thatch, then jumped back as a section of the roof collapsed. He peered up at the sky through the hole and turned to Hiromasa with a brilliant smile. "We can lay the fire here."

"You're serious? You want us to live here for forty days?"

At the sight of Seimei with a smudge of mud on his cheek and tumbled thatch in his hair, Hiromasa tried to summon amusement. The humour faded as anger and fear built up again. "I've never done this kind of work before. I don't know how to thatch a roof. I don't know how to chop wood. I don't know how to cook…"

"I do," Seimei said. "Cook, that is. I don't know how to thatch a roof, either. But we can learn."

"I don't want to learn!" Hiromasa didn't know if he was angriest with Seimei or with himself. The capital and its comforts seemed like a distant dream. Loss overwhelmed him and he lashed out. "Everything's just a game to you. Why did you bring me here? To save me – or to show how different we are?"

For a brief moment, hurt flickered in Seimei's eyes. Then his face returned to its usual placid blankness. He made to leave the hut, but Hiromasa caught his sleeve and stopped him. They gazed at each other, the silence between them unbearable.

Hiromasa broke first. His voice lowered, became husky. "You have straw in your hair." He reached up and brushed it away, closing his fingers around the stalk so he wouldn't be tempted to touch Seimei the way he yearned to do.

Seimei turned his head and exhaled. "This is not a game."

He went outside.

Hiromasa sighed and rubbed his forehead. He paced around the confines of the hut, imagining himself living there for the next few weeks. He tried to imagine eating meat. He'd eaten quail once, but it had seemed a strange food, fatty and strong tasting. Could he eat it again? Could he eat it for forty days?

He stared up through the hole in the roof and imagined the cold that would gather in this damp forest when evening fell. He shivered and turned his attention to the wolf-pelts. Crouching, he retrieved his bow and quiver full of arrows. He was hardly dressed for hunting, but if it pleased Seimei, he'd do his best to shoot a bird.

He stroked the grey pelts. At least they'd provide some warmth. His mind gave him the image of Seimei laid naked on the fur, his hair tumbling over his shoulders. Hiromasa took a deep breath. Desire twisted inside him as he remembered Seimei saying they'd make love until their scents combined. He stared at the wolf-skin then forced himself to walk out into the clearing.

He found Seimei a short distance away, gathering firewood. It seemed an easy enough task, so Hiromasa joined him. He propped the bow and quiver against the log and rolled back his sleeves.

They worked together in silence, selecting fallen branches and stacking them outside the hut. The forest darkened as the sun began to set. Seimei wandered further from the hut. Wary of being left alone, Hiromasa picked up his weapons and trod quietly after him.

Seimei halted. He tilted his head, the line of his body tense. Hiromasa was about to call out a question when Seimei moved again, a sudden flurry of white silk as he sprang at the undergrowth.

A pair of pheasants squawked from their hiding-place and ran headlong. The smaller, drabber female split from her mate. Hiromasa watched open-mouthed as Seimei chased the hen. Meanwhile the cock pheasant sounded its alarm call, and three other birds scattered. Coming to his senses, Hiromasa grabbed his bow, notched an arrow and started shooting.

By the time he'd retrieved his arrows – one of them buried in a pheasant, the others sticking out of trees and the earth – Hiromasa decided it wasn't so bad living in the forest. His usual good spirits restored, he carried his prize back towards the hut.

Seimei waited for him, the hen pheasant dangling from his grasp. Hiromasa's pride in his catch lessened a little.

"I'm out of practice," he said by way of excuse before Seimei could comment. "I've been too busy. I…"

Seimei arched his eyebrows and smiled.