The Crane Wife(18)
Author: Patrick Ness

‘This lake is sourced from the tears of children who have lost their parents, my lady,’ the fisherman replies. ‘As you see.’

‘Ah,’ she says, looking down to see tears falling from her own golden eyes into the water, sending out ringlets across the lake’s surface.

‘It makes the fish tender,’ the fisherman says, reeling in a specimen with shiny golden scales. ‘Though they do taste of sorrow.’

‘I am hungry,’ she says. ‘I have yet to eat anything at all.’

‘Come over to the fire, my lady,’ the fisherman says. ‘I will feed you your fill of grief.’ He tosses the golden-scaled fish into his basket, its gills gasping fruitlessly in the air. ‘And perhaps after,’ he says, almost shyly, but only almost, ‘you will lie with me to show your gratitude.’

He smiles at her. It is full of ugly hope.

5 of 32

She bows her head in reply and flies to him, her fingers delicately skating across the surface of the lake, pulling two long watery arrowheads behind her. She lands next to the fisherman and places her hands on the sides of his head, kissing him gently on the lips.

It is a new sensation. Wetter than she expects.

‘You wish to trap me,’ she says to him. ‘Your thoughts are clear. You will take the spear you have lying next to your basket of fish, and if I do not agree to lie with you, you will use it to force me. You are perhaps not even a bad man, perhaps just one twisted by loneliness. I could not say. But what I do know is that you do not really ask for my body. You ask for my forgiveness.’

The man’s face has become a curl of sadness. He begins to weep. ‘Yes, my lady. I am sorry, my lady.’

‘I believe you,’ she says. ‘You have my forgiveness.’

6 of 32

Quickly, mercifully, she bites out both of the fisherman’s eyes and plunges two sharp fingers through his heart. He slumps to the muddy shore.

‘You have killed me, my lady,’ he says, regarding his body, squelching in the mud between them. ‘You have set me free.’

‘This I do gladly,’ she says.

‘I thank you, my lady,’ says the fisherman. ‘I thank you.’

A wind whirls around them, scattering the fisherman’s spirit, which thanks her until it can thank her no more.

7 of 32

She feeds on his basket of fish. They do taste of sorrow, which is bitter but not unpleasantly so. After she has sated her appetite, she takes the fish that remain and places them back in the water, holding them between her hands until they wriggle back into life and swim off. When this is finished, she rolls the body of the fisherman into the lake, too, bidding him farewell when he catches the current, making his final journey as the angry water hurls him out into the space between the islands.

She looks at her hands, turns them this way and that, as if in curiosity of what she has done with them. She washes them in the river and dries them on the material of her dress.

Then, once again, she takes flight.

II.

‘I want to ask her to move in with me.’

‘Yeah, and I meant to see if you could take JP on Saturday again? I’ve got queue counting to do in Romford, if you can believe it. On a Saturday. Some kind of sporting event, I don’t know–’

‘Did you hear what I said?’

‘Yes. Hiring a cleaner. Blah blah blah. I’d have to drop him off criminally early, like before six, but he’ll easily sleep till eight, so really, it’s just–’

‘Did you hear the reason I’m hiring a cleaner?’

‘The reason? I don’t know. To have a clean house? What kind of question–?

‘I think I’m going to ask Kumiko to move in with me.’

‘. . .’

‘. . .’

‘Move in with you?’

‘Well. I want to.’

‘MOVE IN WITH YOU!?’

‘I know it’s a bit sudden.’

‘A BIT SUDDEN? You’ve known her for two weeks! If that! What are you, mayflies?’

‘Amanda–’

‘Dad, you’re talking crazy. You barely know her.’

‘That’s the thing. I want to know her. I almost feel greedy about it.’

‘And this is how you want to find out? Look, you’re smitten, and I’m happy about you being smitten, but it also makes me worry, George. You break. You love and it’s too big and they can never love you back enough and you clearly can’t ask her to move in with you now, she’ll run a mile. And why wouldn’t she? Any woman would.’

‘She’s not just any woman.’

‘That’s as maybe, but unless she’s an alien–’

‘There’s a thought.’

‘–she’s going to think you’re a crazy person.’

‘You wouldn’t say that if you’d met her. It just seems so natural already, so easy–’

‘See, this is how much too soon it is for you two to move in together. I haven’t even met her.’

‘Why don’t you come out with us for dinner on Saturday?’

‘Because I’m in Romford, and I need to bring JP over–’

‘Come after, when you pick him up.’

‘I can’t. Henri’s got his call with JP that night and I–’

‘I just want you to meet–’

‘Why should I? Why should I even remember her name just before she never speaks to you again for asking her to move in with you after two weeks?’

‘You know, Amanda, I sometimes wonder why you think it’s okay to talk to me like this.’

‘I . . .’

‘. . .’

‘. . .’

‘Amanda?’

‘. . .’

‘Oh, don’t cry, sweetheart, I didn’t mean to–’

‘No, no, I know you didn’t, and that’s why I’m crying. You tell me off and you do it so kindly and you’re right and I don’t know what’s wrong with me and I’m just such an evil shit–’

‘You’re not an evil–’

‘I am! Even this! How can we be sure I’m not bursting into tears so you’ll rush in and tell me how not-evil I am?’

‘Are you?’

‘I don’t know!’

‘Sweetheart, what’s the matter?’

‘. . .’

‘A sigh that long is never a good indicator of–’

‘I think I’ve f**ked it up with the girls at the office.’