"The Shrine for Lost Children" by Poul Anderson (first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October-November 1999; reprinted in Anderson's collection Going for Infinity, 2002)
This was Anderson's contribution to the 50th anniversary edition of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. He wrote it after he and his wife Karen had visited Japan and were impressed with the kindness and generosity of the Japanese people; he wrote: "After returning home, what else could I do but make this story a tribute to that beautiful land and her people?"
It is a gentle story about a woman who is haunted by the ghost of her unborn twin sister. The haunting has defined her life with failures of relationships to others, in both love and work. Told in reverse order snippets from adulthood to college to high school to her childhood, it is also interspersed with a present day pilgrimage to the temples of Kamkura. Japan, where she comes across a shrine for lost children. Here, she finds both redemption and peace...
A brief gentle, and evocative story from a master of science fiction and fantasy. Poul Anderson (1926-2001) was one of the most respected writes in the genre. He was named a SFWA Grand Master in 1978 and was inducted in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2000. Anderson won seven Hugo Awards, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the Inkpot Award, the Locus award (along with some 41 nominations), the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, the Prometheus Award (along with four nominations and being being awarded a Special Prometheus Award for Lifetime Achievement),a Pegasus Award, and was nominated five times for a Nebula Award. Anderson was a founding member of the Society for Creative Anachronism and of the Lin Carter-organized Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America. He serves as the Science Fiction Writers of America seventh president. He was also a member Citizens' Advisory Council on National Space Policy.
A prolific but always careful author, Anderson wrote planetary adventure, space opera, hard science fiction, fantasy, sword and sorcery, historical novels, mysteries, children's books, poetry, Scandinavian folklore, Sherlockania, and nonfiction, as well as editing several anthologies. Among his major series were the Technic History (including sub-series about Nicholas van Rijn and Dominic Flandry), and , the Polytechnic League, the Time Patrol, Hoka, the Guthrie Family, the King of Ys, the Last Viking, Operation Chaos, Maurai, and Rustrum, If science fiction ever had a renaissance man, it was Poul Anderson. I cannot find a book by him that I cannot recommend unhesitatingly.
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