-.-.-.-.-
-13-
-.-.-.-.-

-I'll leave any further unrelated and embarrassing details aside, as they don't concern the Incident at hand.

The next morning Renko and I were chatting over breakfast.

"I think we should go back to Hieda manor today," she said to me as I took a bite of my pickles.

"To see Akyuu? You already heard all about the Incident yesterday though, didn't you?"

"Well, I've been thinking about it since then. I still think our basic assumptions might be wrong."

"You were mentioning that before. Something about the phantoms?"

"Exactly. I should have pressed the issue more yesterday. If the assumptions are incorrect then all the reasoning that follows from them is necessarily invalid too."

"And you think the assumption that all of those phantoms we're seeing are recently released human souls is wrong? What do you expect they are then? They certainly look and feel like phantoms."

"Well I'm pretty sure they're souls, but are they human souls? Do phantoms have to be human?"

I blinked in surprise and let out a breath. "Oh. Hmm." When one thinks of a ghost, the image that comes to mind is certainly human and all of the ghosts we had met so far in Gensokyo had been of the human sort, but folklore was full of stories of ghosts of animals or things that might once have been human but had become something else. In a place like Gensokyo might there even be such a thing as a ghost of a youkai?

"All of our worries were predicated on the assumption that this sudden surge of phantoms originated from dead humans. If these aren't human spirits though, then that might explain where they come from despite there not being any major wars or catastrophes that we know of occurring in the Outside world. For example what if they're the phantoms of a locust swarm? Those come up at infrequent intervals then die off in huge numbers as part of a regular cycle."

"Then all your dramatic posturing and speculating yesterday was for nothing?"

"Well, it's still a possibility, but it's not the only one. We should rule out other possibilities before assuming that one."

"If you want to know about phantoms, wouldn't it be better to ask Youmu or Yuyuko?"

"I'd love to, but we don't have an easy way of getting to the Netherworld and back unless your lookalike feels like helping out again."

"I don't think 'helping' is how she operates."

"Alright then, as soon as we've finished breakfast, we'll go have a chat."

"Renko it's Monday. We have classes to teach at the temple school."

"Ah..." Renko's hand froze, chopsticks poised above her rice bowl. "I was kind of hoping that the school would be closed what with there being an ongoing Incident."

"As far as anyone in the village knows, this Incident just entails a lot of flowers blooming. I don't think Keine would close the school for that."

"You're probably right, Merry. OK then, I don't have students until second period. I'm going to take a stroll until then. Ask around a bit, see if anyone can give me a solid definition of what a phantom is, exactly. I'll be back before lunch."

"Suit yourself. If you're late and I end up having to teach the kids even one equation, I'm going to bill you by the minute for my services though."

Renko put her head down and began rapidly shoveling rice into her mouth with great speed and a determined expression. I sighed and handed her my cup of tea to wash it down as she coughed and thumped her chest with a clenched fist.

-.-.-.-.-

For my class today, I administered a creative writing assignment as a skills test. Tests were good for getting the children to focus, as long as they weren't too long, and discussion and sharing of the class' output once we were done would be a good solution for a day when the children were too distracted by all of the flowers to listen to a lecture.

The subject of the composition was simply 'what happened yesterday.' I imagined that with the flower Incident having only begun yesterday the children would find it easy and enjoyable to write about, and sharing would give them a chance to talk about anything exciting they had seen, which, I hoped could then be redirected into some actual lessons on grammar and punctuation. At the very least it would be interesting to hear about the Incident from the children's perspective.

I imagined I'd have lots of opportunity to highlight and focus on emotion words -sentences like 'the flowers made me happy' or 'I was sad because my parents were really busy' or 'I was bored because miss Keine's homework was so long' played through my head as I prepared to diagram out clauses and conjugations.

"Teacher, what did you do yesterday?"

"Me? Well, I had a lot of fun seeing flowers all around town. Miss Renko and I walked all the way to the Bamboo Forest of the Lost and back and saw all kinds of different flowers.

"I saw miss Merry and miss Renko chasing eachother yesterday!" One of the students shouted aloud. I froze in place, and could feel the blood draining from my face. Had they seen my conversation with Renko? Had they heard it? I suppose in the end I had nothing to hide, but to realize that a private moment was being watched is always a bit of a shock.

"I saw it too! Miss Merry ran around the whole village. Were you and miss Renko playing tag, teacher?"

"I wanna play tag with teacher too!"

"I don't, she's really fast!"

"Okay everyone, let's talk about that later. Right now we need to be focusing on our writing please. This is about what you all did yesterday, right?"

I sighed to myself, counting the minutes left in first period as the children put their heads down and focused on their brushwork.

-.-.-.-.-

Eventually the bell was rung and first period ended.

"All right, thank you to those who shared their writings with the class. Is there anyone who hasn't finished yet?" A few hands shot up. I made a show of deliberating for a moment. "Hmmm, what should I do? Anyone who can't finish their work in class probably needs to review with homework the most..." Several nervous faces grimaced up at me, one child shook his head side to side in an exaggerated display. "All right, just hand what you have up to the front and I'll collect it. No homework today." Sighs of relief and blatant exhaltations filled the room, even from those children who had successfully finished.

Languages had always come easily to me, and I remember as a child being amazed when my classmates struggled with 400 word compositions in elementary school. For these children though, the most important thing was to foster a love of reading and writing in them. Making the assignment into drudgery wouldn't achieve that. I'd just have to take a look at what they'd managed to write and adjust my lessons to cover any weak spots.

I collected the papers from the children, packed my things and left the room. Second period would be starting momentarily. I wondered if Renko had come back yet. I saw her exiting the staff room as approached the end of the hall.

"Ah, Merry. Good work in there. Is that an essay? You're working them hard today."

"Hey, Renko. Did you manage to see Akyuu?"

"I tried, but she wasn't in," she said, slumping in defeat.

"There, there Renko. Go teach your class like a good girl and when you're done we can leave dismissal and cleanup to Keine today and both go try at the manor again."

She gave me a grin and a wink as we passed.

As I walked into the staff room Keine was reading something at her desk. I nodded to her and went to my own desk with the stack of essays to begin grading.

"Keine, it's good to see you here. I would have expected you to be busy with the watch during an Incident like this."

"Akyuu sent a message yesterday saying there was no great danger from this Incident. There have been a few drunken brawls and a couple occasions of children wandering out of the village picking flowers, but other than that things are pretty peaceful. There's no particular need for me there at the moment."

At this point I had learned that Keine had risked her life and suffered a rather unpleasant evening in order to defend the village against Remilia and her maid last fall. The fact that the two of them hadn't actually been intending to attack the village didn't feature in Keine's version of the story. I didn't doubt though that if the current Incident were to actually present a threat of any sort she would be ready to stand in harm's way.

"So then the increasing number of phantoms aren't considered a problem?"

" No, not really. It's inconvenient, but no one's worried about it. Why would they be?"

"I guess the people of Gensokyo really aren't afraid of ghosts then, huh?"

"Ghosts are one thing, but even most of those are harmless. These are just phantoms. Don't people in the Outside world become phantoms when they die?"

"Huh, that's difficult to answer. Some people certainly believe they do, but I had never seen one before coming here."

In the backwards days of 20th century science, the existence of the soul was generally denied. The science of the time, in its relentless and single-minded pursuit of a single empirical truth denied the existence of a wide variety of mental and spiritual phenomena. The development of spiritual research and Relative Psychology in the era after the collapse had lead to a general acceptance, both within the scientific community and within broader society that these narrow-minded views were not necessarily correct. The end of the 21st century, where Renko and I had come from, was said to be the birthing ground of a new era of acceptance and reconsideration in science. The dawn of the so-called Scientific Century, in which all of academia was to be re-examined through the lens of the scientific method, and no claim, tradition, experience or data was to be thrown out as impossible or unthinkable.

As two people involved in an occult circle, Renko and I went further beyond what was generally considered to be acceptable grounds for scientific debate than most academics, but Renko was determined to conduct her investigations into the unknown mysteries of the world with the same meticulous rigor and spirit of discovery that had fueled the great discoveries of the previous era, though hopefully with enough open-mindedness to explain the things that the societies of yesteryear could not and had instead discarded or pretended didn't exist.

In the Outside world, although a small number of people believed in ghosts, even they would agree that souls didn't routinely manifest as the wispy, transparent blobs that could be seen floating about between the flowers right now. Furthermore, unlike in Gensokyo the question of what happened to an individual after death was ambiguous -aside from being unverifiable there were also countless conflicting views on the fate of, or even existence of individual souls. In short, there was no consensus.

Here in Gensokyo the opposite was true: any child in my class could tell you the same - after death souls leave the body as phantoms and are ferried across the Sanzu River by the shinigami. Upon arriving on the far shore they are judged by the Yama and sent onto their fate - reincarnation for most, rebirth in the heavens for those of a saintly nature on the path to nirvana and condemnation to one of the hells for those sinners whose crimes are judged to be irredeemable.

This view, though it shared numerous concepts with religions found in the Outside world, was completely unique in that no Outside world religion could offer proof of a soul's fate in the afterlife, or even that one existed. Here in Gensokyo, the afterlife was apparently a place you could go visit, provided you had the means. Individuals like the Child of Miare even had the ability to return from the other side time and again with their memories intact, offering a first-hand account of the conditions of the afterlife. A version of the Outside world where everyone knows what happens to a soul after death had even been the focus of a sci-fi novel in the 2010's, but that was where such a concept had remained -as a fictional premise.

I wondered if, like many of the other of the impossibilities Renko and I witnessed on a daily basis, this particular aspect of the world served a purpose in maintaining order. Here, villagers had to stay alive to preserve their function as a source of power for the youkai. Despite that, humans living in the village were much closer to death at any moment than those in the Outside world. There was no advanced medical technology within the village, and taking even a step outside of it was taking one's life into their hands. Perhaps having reliable knowledge of what happened after death helped to make village life more tolerable and hence kept the human population more manageable for the administrator of this world.

I spent a few minutes explaining this theory to Keine and asking her opinion of it. When I had finished, she gave me that all-too-familiar look indicating that I had said something that loudly proclaimed my status as an Outsider again.

"It's not as simple as you're making it out to be," she said.

"Oh?"

"Most of us aren't the Child of Miare. Death is generally seen as a one-way door. Even if you might some day be reincarnated, once you're dead you'll become an inarticulate phantom, completely indistinguishable from any other, unable to see or hear or speak. Past that, no one ever really knows just what sort of judgement lord Yama might deliver or what your fate might be after that. Of course the people of Gensokyo still fear death. Just as much as Outsiders do, I would imagine. If not, why would we bother building graves or worshipping ancestors?"

She had a point - even if phantoms didn't bother people with their presence, death was still the ultimate unknown.

"Think of it this way," she continued. "I'm sitting right over here, living my life as a half human, half hakutaku. If I were to tell you that as of tomorrow you too were to become like me, and could never go back to being fully human again, that would be scary right? You've seen that I can go on living just fine, but you still wouldn't want to give up what you have for something unknown and unknowable, right?"

I didn't know what to say to a question like that. It certainly hadn't been my intention to imply that Keine's current way of being should be considered in any way less valid than my own. As I looked down in shame, Keine smiled.

"Sorry, I made that into a bit of a nasty question. I didn't mean to accuse you of anything. My point is that when we see phantoms, it's not the phantom we're afraid of, but what they represent. They are... distasteful? mournful? Unpleasant reminders of our limited time in this world, let's say. Nothing dangerous, but that doesn't mean our attitudes toward death are any different from yours."

I thought about that for a minute, then brought up a question that my conversation with Renko over breakfast had left tumbling around in my head. "Keine, what about things other than humans? Do they have phantoms to leave behind too? Animals and youkai and the like?"

She pondered that for a moment, tapping her chin with back of her brush. "Hmmm, beasts certainly have souls as far as I'm aware. They're born, live and die just as we do. Youkai I don't know about. Supposedly they have finite lifespans, just much longer ones than humans. Typically, if a youkai were to die, it would be because it was no longer feared, or no longer had a purpose. Injury or sickness is only really ever an inconvenience to them. As long as they are still are feared, then they can just come back. Only something that annihilated the concept of a youkai altogether or something that made people stop being afraid of them could really be deadly to youkai. That said, if they died I suppose they might leave a phantom behind. If they did, it would be much like the phantom of a beast -sightless, voiceless, insubstantial. More or less indistinguishable from any other phantom, I imagine.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. To live in Gensokyo was to be recognized as one of its residents. That was what sustained creatures here. It stands to reason that death would then be the opposite of that, to become unrecognizable, indistinguishable and eventually to be forgotten. Such was the immutable law of existence and non-existence in a world where things that should be impossible were commonplace. Thus was the providence of Gensokyo.

-.-.-.-.-
-14-
-.-.-.-.-

I was still grading the children's essays when Keine went out to ring the lunch bell signaling the end of second period. We said our goodbyes and Renko and I headed out toward the Hieda estate, hoping that Akyuu might have returned home for lunch. As we walked, I relayed to Renko the conversation I had had with Keine.

"Ha! What'd I tell you!" she exclaimed when I got to the bit about our discussion of the possibility of phantoms arising from animals. "Renko Usami, bang on the money again!" Renko punctuated the statement by tossing her hat into the air.

"Well that was just Keine's guess at the matter. She may well be right, but it would be better if we could talk to an expert. I wonder if anyone would be willing to send us to the Netherworld?"

Renko grimaced as she caught her hat and plopped it back on her head. "Yeesh, don't say it like that, Merry, they might take you literally. I don't want you running up to someone and saying 'I'm dying for you to send me to the Netherworld!'" She shot me a moronic grin.

When we arrived at Hieda manor, a maid informed us that Akyuu was still out and wasn't expected to return until evening.

"Well, where to now Renko?"

"Hmmm, Keine would still be in class at the moment... Oh! I know!" she said, clapping her hands together. "We met someone yesterday who seemed to know a lot on the topic."

I thought back through yesterday's events. "Oh? Who do you mean?"

"Someone who mentioned to us that poltergeists and spirits are different, if you remember."

"The Prismriver Ensemble?"

"The very same. I want to ask her to explain exactly what she meant by that."

I did remember the girl with the keyboard mentioning something like that, but there was a problem with Renko's suggestion which I didn't see a way around. "Renko, how do you intend to find the Prismrivers? You barely met that girl."

"I'm sure we'll figure something out. For one thing I know where they live. I heard it's an abandoned western-style house not far from the Scarlet Devil Mansion."

"Where in the world would you have heard something like that?"

"Sakuya told me, a while ago."

"Sakuya? When?"

"Does it matter? We know the way, so let's go! It's time to go see the Prismriver Ensemble live and in person!"

"You sound like the sort of fan every performer dreads, Renko."

It was useless to argue, Renko had already set off toward the gate leading out of the village. Once again I followed along, her drive to discover leading the way and my own need for her companionship pushing from behind. Stuck there in the middle was me, being lead by the hand and complaining ineffectively.

-.-.-.-.-

We headed out of the village on the road leading north, toward Misty Lake. Renko didn't know exactly where the house of the Prismriver sisters house was located, but we had never noticed it while walking to the Scarlet Devil Mansion, so it seemed reasonable to assume it must be off the path to the lake somewhere, tucked back among the trees of the forest.

As we arrived at the lake, we found it covered in a placid and uniform milky-white mist despite it being a few hours past noon. The flat non-color of the mist was a counterpoint to the hundreds of brilliant flowers that bloomed around the lake's shore, as if the lake were turning aloofly away from the garish displays. There was no sign of any phantoms here, but their translucent forms could easily have been lost in the billowing mist.

"I figure Meiling will probably know where to find the Prismrivers' house" Renko reasoned. She was pushing ahead through the banks of fog that drifted over the shore of the lake and obscured the path circumnavigating the waters. Given the warmth of the day, the chill of the mist was surprisingly intense. Within just a few minutes of walking through it, I found myself shivering slightly with goosebumps covering my bare arms. Renko had been holding my hand the whole way, but as the chilly mist surrounded us, I drew closer and snuggled against her for warmth as we walked. Suddenly, a flash of moment out over the lake caught my eye.

"Hey Renko, look, over the lake."

"Hmm where? Oh! Someone's playing danmaku again."

The two figures were so high up that with the mist shrouding us they were difficult to make out. Shielding our eyes from the sun, Renko and I peered up at them. One of the combatants was tiny, firing steams and clouds of glimmering projectiles that caught the light of the sun in every direction at once, regardless of where their opponent was at any given moment. The other was moving extremely fast, flitting instantly between gaps in the barrages but rarely returning fire.

"Hey Merry, is that miss Shameimaru?"

"I think so. I don't recognize the other one. She's tiny though. A fairy, maybe?"

"Oh there's supposed to be a little ice fairy that lives on this lake that all the fishermen know. Maybe it's her!"

The moment Renko said that, a stray projectile came whistling down and splashed into the lake a few meters from us. It was a glistening, sharply pointed icicle. Where it pierced the surface of the water a small raft of ice bobbed to the surface a moment later. Anyone hit by one of those would have more to worry about than frostbite. I felt another shiver go through me, though whether it was from cold or anxiety I couldn't have said.

"Ah, it's decided!" Renko called excitedly while I was still staring at the sharpened point of the floating icicle. I looked up just a moment before the roar of a huge gust of wind washed over us, ripping the mist away from a huge, fan-shaped area of the lakeshore and bringing with it the diminutive body of what looked like a small girl surrounded by a halo of floating icicles. She rocketed down, propelled by the fierce draft and splashed through the surface of the lake with an impact that sent a shower of water droplets into the air which all rained down as fine snow. A moment later she bobbed to the surface, lying flat on her back, floating atop a child-sized iceberg. As the noise of the splashing subsided it was replaced by the whirr and click of a shutter as Aya mercilessly compounded her victory, flitting from position to position overhead as she snapped shot after shot of her defeated opponent.

Aya snapped a last picture and seemed about to turn away when she noticed us standing on the shoreline, in a broad stripe now devoid of mist and highlighted with colorful flowers. Upon seeing us she raised a hand in greeting and dived toward us, landing with clack of her geta on the stony shore and skidding briefly to a halt in front of us.

"Ayaya, the detectives! Are you guys participating in this flower Incident too?"

"I don't know about participating, but we're investigating it," Renko said with a friendly grin. "I assume this is part of your coverage of the event?" She said, gesturing to the fairy bobbing insensibly on the surface of the lake.

"As Gensokyo's most trusted purveyor of truth and information, the people rely on me to provide first-hand coverage of the events that shape their world. I'm seeking out a culprit among the many humans and youkai who are all stirring up a fuss about this Incident. I don't suppose you have any juicy leads?"

The two of us exchanged a brief look of surprise. Did Aya not already know the truth behind the nature of the Incident? Given her close association with Akyuu that was a bit surprising, but if the Incident had last happened sixty years ago, perhaps that had been before her time.

"So how about it?" Aya prompted, "Any idea what's going on?"

Renko spoke up before I could volunteer anything. "Not a clue," she bluffed. "How about your information network, pursuing any leads?"

Aya tilted her nose skyward. "Don't underestimate the tengu," she crowed. I'm hot on the trail of a certain flower youkai. She's missing from her home in the Garden of the Sun. Rather suspicious, wouldn't you say?

"You mean Yuuka Kazami?"

"Oh, you know her then? Apparently she's been flying around at random, tormenting any fairies or youkai she comes across."

"Yuuka? Tormenting fairies, are you sure?"

"Well she has a certain reputation as that sort of a bully, doesn't she?"

Our experience meeting Yuuka had certainly suggested otherwise, but who knew what she was like on a bad day? It was undeniable that she possessed a powerful and threatening aura and I remembered how nature had seemed to still and quiet itself in her presence, as if she were a powerful predator on the prowl.

"At any rate, I should be going if you don't have any information. I've got leads of my own to track down."

Aya's wings stretched out from her back, but before she could vanish, Renko reached out to lay a hand on her shoulder. "Ah, just one moment, if I may. Do you happen to know where the Prismriver sisters live? We've been told its somewhere in this area.

Aya blinked in surprise at the question then narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "The noisy poltergeist band? What do they have to do with any of this?"

-.-.-.-.-
-15-
-.-.-.-.-

Following Aya's directions we found the Prismriver's house with little difficulty. It was tucked a ways back into the woods, but was in no way concealed, with a small dirt path leading up to the clearing where it stood. In all, it was surprisingly easy to find, enough so to make me wish Eientei was so easy to get to.

Looking at it, the house was a comfortable and well-appointed three story western-style dwelling that had gone a long time without proper maintenance. The façade was weathered and worn with peeling paint and visible warping in the wooden planks making up the porch. If the Scarlet Devil Mansion had the look about it of the proper setting for a mystery, then this looked like the perfect place to film a horror movie. And here we were, two college girls willingly walking up to it.

"Renko, isn't this exactly how those old slasher movies always started?"

"Don't worry Merry, there were never just two girls in those. As long we don't have a half dozen more people show up to party we'll be fine."

Somehow that logic seemed dubious to me.

My own anxieties aside, it was undeniable that the building was a ruin. There were visible cracks in the stucco that made up the outer walls which travelled halfway up the side of the house. Most of the house's façade was choked by a dense mat of clinging ivy vines and some of the windows on the second and third floors were broken. The roof of the building had an unhealthy sag to it, seeming to be on the verge of collapse. Judging by the exterior it didn't look suitable for human habitation, but I wondered if such things would matter to a ghost. Or in this case, to a trio of poltergeists.

Renko strode up to the house and across the creaking boards of the porch without a moment's hesitation, seizing the brass knocker on the door and giving it a rap. We waited a full minute without an answer.

"Seems like it's not your day for calling on people, Renko. Maybe they're out playing a concert somewhere."

Renko gave the doorknob a twist and to my surprise, the door yawned open when released, creaking loudly as it did.

"The door's unlocked, Merry. That's got to mean someone's here, right?"

"Or it's a trap for nosy humans without the good sense to turn back. That seems a bit more likely to me."

"Pardon me, is anyone home?" Renko hollered as she pushed the door open and stepped inside.

"Renko! Don't you ever wait?"

"Relax, Merry. If they're not here, we'll just find someplace to sit and wait for them."

"If you end up getting haunted, it's not my fault, Renko."

"That's the sort of thing a vengeful ghost would do. I have it on good authority that poltergeists are completely different. Now come on, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for an intimate backstage visit with star performers!"

"Hey, don't pull me!"

With that, Renko stepped boldly into the house, dragging me by the hand as usual. Moments after we entered, a gust of wind passed by outside and the air pressure swung the front door shut behind us with a bang. I turned in reaction to the sudden noise then turned again to glare at Renko. She shrugged with feigned innocence.

Directly before us was a large staircase leading to the second floor. The stairs went up to a landing before turning at right angles and splitting in two directions to complete the ascent. On the wall above the landing there hung a large, faded portrait of a young girl, damaged and blackened by age and moisture now. The light streaming in through the windows and the occasional crack in the walls bounced off of the floors, providing enough illumination to see, albeit dimly. The carpet was ragged and threadbare and here and there bits of plaster were crumbling away. Beyond that though, there was no dust. No cobwebs or signs of infestation by rats or bats greeted us either. The house was unquestionably a ruin, but it was a beautiful one, a stately memory slowly sinking into nature.

"It's like the ruins of Odaiba, Merry. All those old empty skyscrapers and apartment towers out in the bay. Nothing to be afraid of though."

"You've never taken me to Odaiba, Renko. Referencing Tokyo landmarks isn't going to mean much to someone who's not from a lonely rural town like that. And I'm not scared."

Renko was smiling, but in a way that looked like the corners of her mouth were being forcibly drawn up by fishhooks. Her grip on my hand was tighter than I might normally expect as she looked around. "Now, if I were a poltergeist, where would I be..." she muttered.

If this were a horror movie, it wouldn't have been unusual at this point for us to be startled by the sound of a piano -typically a discordant crash of something smashing against a keyboard. What we heard instead, however, was the unmistakable and sudden sound of a trumpet. It was no less startling. A single loud, high note reverberated from somewhere above us. The floors and walls of the house seemed to shiver with excitement at the sound, quaking in harmony. As the note faded, there was a pronounced wooden creaking from above us. I looked up to see a suspended chandelier rattling as it swung back and forth. Had it been a minor earthquake? As if in response to my question a picture frame on the second floor rattled then began to spin unnaturally in place and a vase on a table beside us toppled over and crashed to the ground.

"Renko..."

"What are you afraid of Merry? We're experiencing an exclusive live performance by Gensokyo's most popular poltergeist band!"

After a moment of relative silence the sound of the trumpet resumed, much quieter now, and playing a soft, enticing melody rather than the single blaring note that had shaken the walls. The music was coming from upstairs. It seemed rather obviously like something intended to lure us further in. Renko payed no mind though, excitedly starting up the staircase, gripping my hand all the way. Why was she so excited to meet the Prismrivers, I wondered. I was preoccupied enough with that question that I didn't even notice anything near me until all at once I felt something soft and cold brush past my ear. I let out a small shriek of surprise.

"Agh! What was that?" I cried, looking around for what had touched me.

"There!" Renko thrust out an arm to point beside me. "It's a phantom! Hey little guy, did you come here following the sound of a trumpet?"

Sure enough, when I looked where Renko was pointing a wispy, insubstantial white puff with a long tail was twisting through the air toward the top of the stairs. It wasn't alone either. Since the music had started perhaps a dozen of the small blobby things had appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. As we watched, another of the phantoms flew in through a broken window. Bit by bit the temperature was dropping as more and more of the spirits gathered. The scene was quickly becoming reminiscent of our time in the Netherworld. I wondered just how closely related phantoms and poltergeists might be, and if perhaps I shouldn't have thought to bring my cloak, despite the pleasant warmth when we had set out.

All at once, a door opened on the second floor and a girl leaned out into the hall, a trumpet floating in the air just over her shoulder. She turned her head toward us, then shrunk back in surprise.

"Whoa! Humans. Sisters, there's two humans here, did you call them?" She was dressed in pale pinkish-white, with short wavy hair hanging loosely about her young features. A moment later a violin bobbed into sight behind her, floating in the air and a moment after that another girl followed it, this one wearing black, with a short blonde bob and a sleepy expression.

"I didn't call for any humans. Maybe they're just ghosts pretending to be humans, look how many phantoms they have surrounding them."

And that was how we came to meet the last two members of the Prismriver Ensemble, in a house surrounded by phantoms, with both parties staring at the other with a look of confused wonderment.