Little Yokozuna by Wayne Shorey

going over.
    "Oh, please!" gasped Libby, leaping up and over the ridge herself. She grabbed Q.J.'s arm and tried to pull her over, which is the hardest thing to do with a heavy weight. Two, three, four, five, six goblin warriors came stooping around the bend, swords drawn. They still seemed to be having trouble seeing into the garden, but suddenly with another gravelly roar they leaped forward.
    "Oh, please!" wailed Libby, pulling on Q.J.'s arm with all her might. And even as she pulled, she felt the stone floor dissolving below her as the tiny garden enlarged and rushed outward expanding, to take her into itself and far away.

CHAPTER 11
Annie and Knuckle ball Almost
Miss Kyoto

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    It was on a lovely, dream-like Sunday in April when Kiyoshi-chan's father took his son and the two American children on an excursion to Kyoto.
    "It is the ancient capital of Japan," he said. "You
must
see it before you go back to Massachusetts."
    "And," said Kiyoshi-chan with a significant look at Annie and Knuckleball, "it has many, many temple gardens."
    "Yes, yes, yes," said his father, raising an eyebrow. "I know that you must see your gardens. I will close my market tomorrow so we can spend two days there. Sunday night we will spend with my sister in Uji."
    Annie and Knuckleball had finally given their whole story to Kiyoshi-chan's family, and though the father had laughed at the parts he couldn't believe in, the mother and old grandparents had taken it all very seriously.
    "We will show you gardens then," the father had finally said. "Until your parents come to get you. We will show you gardens and gardens and gardens until you decide to go home by airplane instead. Of course traveling by gardens is cheaper, but at least airplanes take off on a schedule." He laughed, not unkindly, but as if he thought of them as two rather nice lunatics.
    "Domo arigato gozaimashita,
" Annie and Knuckleball had both said. "You are being very kind to us."
    So they traveled to Kyoto by train, leaving by the first departures on Sunday morning. The children slept for the first part, laying their heads on each other's shoulders as the train rocked and rattled along, and as the aisles in front of them grew gradually more crowded with curious people. There were many stops, the next station often visible from the last, and the noise of hissing brakes, scuffling feet, and tinny announcements all mingled with the children's dreams and drowsy thoughts.
    They changed trains several times, once at a great booming, roaring madhouse of a station where they had to run up flights of steps, weaving through the crowd, and then down onto another platform, where they were jammed at the last second into a packed train by uniformed attendants.
    "I'm glad we don't have to do this very often," said Knuckleball, peering up at Annie from his place in the crush of bodies. "I can hardly breathe."
    "I would think there would be a
    line to Kyoto from Tokyo," said Annie to Kiyoshi-chan's father. "The bullet train. Wouldn't that be faster, and less crowded?"
    He looked at her in a bewildered way, so she wondered if she had offended him. Maybe the famous bullet train was too expensive, and she had hurt his feelings by mentioning it? But then with a sick feeling she remembered the whole business about Yazu and Taiho and the rest, and she wondered weakly when the
Shinkansen
had first been built. She turned and looked out the window, trying to put it from her mind.
    As they left Tokyo behind the crush eased somewhat, and after another change or two they were able to get seats again, but on opposite sides of the train, and separated. Annie gazed out the far window, watching the tiled roofs, neat green fields, and dusty roads flowing by. There were bicycles everywhere, and men and women walking here and there with huge loads on their backs. In places there were children playing, but once there was a schoolyard full of uniformed children doing some kind of organized Sunday activity.