Outlander meets Shōgun in this romantic time-travel adventure from Scottish-Japanese author Poppy Kuroki. When Isla MacKenzie travels to Japan to learn more about her ancestry, a vicious typhoon hurls her through a strange white gate and back to 1877, amid the dawn of the Satsuma Rebellion – the conflict that ended the samurai. In this thrilling extract, follow Isla as she seeks shelter from a storm and gets more than she bargained for…

Gate to Kagoshima
By Poppy Kuroki
Published by Magpie

The cold set deep beneath Isla’s skin and shakes racked her body. She had to find her way back to the road or she might suffer symptoms of exposure. While there wouldn’t be any cars out – people’s phones would be beeping with weather warnings of the sudden storm – Isla promised herself that once on the road she could find shelter. She couldn’t even tell where the shrine building was. 

Blinded now with heavier rain, her outstretched fingers found a wall. Exhausted, she stood there with her head bowed, but the stone wall offered no protection from the weather. Isla stepped close to the wall and rested her forehead against it. She didn’t know how long she’d been lost in the rainfall. It could be hours – it felt like hours, certainly – but it might only be minutes. The wet had sunk deep into her trainers, soaking her socks. Her clothes clung to her skin and she could barely feel her freezing fingers. 

Perhaps it would be better to hunker down here and wait it out. This typhoon or storm, whatever it was, lashed at her clothes, blowing her off balance, a fierce and sudden maelstrom in the middle of a city. 

She had never experienced anything like it.  

She wished she had worn more than her leggings and hoodie. She wished she had stayed in the hotel. She wished she was anywhere but here. 

Isla pulled out her phone and flipped it open. It was dead, fat droplets splashing on to the screen reflecting her scared face. Her breath ragged, she pulled her hood over her head. 

The wind wailed above like she was stuck somewhere in the mountains, not in a city. A beast raged in the clouds, roaring like a battle of gods. 

Isla squinted into the grey. The murk was clearing in one particular space. There! A white torii gate. A back entrance to the shrine grounds, maybe? 

It didn’t matter, as long as she could get out of here. In twenty minutes, Isla promised herself, she’d be in her hotel about to step into a scalding shower, and tomorrow she’d be back at the café to see the friendly barista, regaling him with her tale of getting lost in the rain. 

But as she headed towards the torii gate, things felt more wrong. 

Her fingers tingled, pins and needles prickling her digits. Dizziness assaulted her, a wave of what felt like drunkenness, and she stumbled. She fell against a stone wall as rain thrashed her face once more. 

What was happening? 

Isla clutched the wall, breathing hard. Where was she? She needed to reach, well, somewhere. She had a vague sense of a hotel, the scent of coffee, a smiling young man… 

Whispers surrounded her and she cowered, wondering if she were hallucinating. Her head turned as she searched for where the voices came from. But, try as she might, Isla couldn’t make out what they were saying. What she could hear felt like murmurs from beyond the veil, encouraging her, yet also mocking. 

‘What?’ she croaked, forcing herself upright. She took several staggering steps forward. The weather was disorientating her, making her doubt herself. 

She wanted to see cars, people with umbrellas being whipped away by the wind, the glow of streetlights. But everywhere was greyish white. The mist was strange, an otherworldly fog that had no business here among this heavy deluge. Isla made her way forward, her steps dragging. She had to find civilisation soon. Wasn’t that why she was here? She couldn’t quite remember. 

The tingling intensified, spreading across all her limbs. A voice whispered, making her start. She struggled to think. The rain was ice on her skin, or was this because of who was talking to her? 

The shape of a tree emerged like a mirage in the fog. Isla huddled beneath it and curled into a ball, confusion and desperation mingling as one in her petrified heart. 

The wind chimes jangled, a requiem of dread. 

She must have slept. 

When she opened her eyes orange streaked the sky, setting the clouds aflame as the sun sank beneath the horizon. Isla was stiff and uncomfortable, chill and damp still deep in her skin. She pulled herself to her feet. Every movement felt sluggish and exhaustion settled in her bones. 

Isla shuddered in the winter air. She badly needed to get back to her hotel, peel off her clothes, and take a long, hot shower. That had been no normal storm, but at least it was over. 

She looked around her. The lion statues stared back, frozen scowls on their carved faces, as she tried to make up her mind which direction she needed to go. She couldn’t see the buildings from earlier, though that was likely because it was getting dark. 

Isla felt confused but wasn’t at first sure why. Then she realised there were no streetlights or lights from buildings in sight, nor the sound of traffic. But why? She was in a built-up area. 

Isla picked her way through the rapidly falling darkness, searching for a light, a voice, a car engine. Anything.  

Fear pricked her skin. She felt more alone than she ever had done in her life. 

Had she passed out? Had she been blown away? Had the typhoon caused so much damage it had knocked out the city’s power? Yes, that was likely. 

But she found herself hurrying forward all the same. 

The clouds cleared, their retreat so rapid it was almost unnatural. Stars glinted above, lighting her way. And there was the wall of the shrine. For a moment, she was pleased to see something she recognised. 

Isla’s fingers grazed the stone, her breathing loud in her ears. Her hair stuck to her neck, her soaked hoodie doing little to ward off the chill. She pulled down her hood and raked fingers through her red locks as a new sensation flooded her. 

As long as she lived, she never wanted to see this shrine again. She glanced at the building, to where the rope gently swung. Along the roof were painted symbols, a vertical cross within a circle. 

She turned her back on the building and rubbed her hands together. 

Ahead, there was nothing. No road, no concrete path. Before her was a cinder track and grass and starlight.  

Long grass caressed her shins. None of this made sense. Kagoshima was full of cafés, roads and shops, with a bright, twenty-four-hour convenience store every fifty feet. 

All there was now in the starlight was a hill and a bamboo forest ahead, its stalks pale. A half-moon emerged from behind a cloud, bathing her surroundings in silver. 

A movement in a nearby group of trees caught her eye. A woman emerged from the shadows, wearing a kimono and obi belt, both grey in the darkness, for the faint moonlight sucked the colour from the world. Isla’s heart lifted. The woman had a youthful face with her hair in a bun at the back of her head. She looked like somebody on her way to a festival, her straw sandals silent in the grass. Her short steps were careful and delicate, as though she was trying not to be seen. Was she lost, too? 

The girl jumped violently when she saw Isla, her eyes wide. 

‘Excuse me,’ said Isla in her limited Japanese. ‘Do you know how to get to—’ 

The girl shrieked, almost falling as she backed away. Her tight kimono skirt hindered her as she pushed her way into the trees, screaming a single word. 

‘Yōkai!’ 

Gate to Kagoshima by Poppy Kuroki is published by Magpie, priced £16.99.