The Crane Wife(45)
Author: Patrick Ness

It was childish, maddening, but George marrying Kumiko felt like she had somehow missed the best chance of her life. Everything after would be diminishment. She still guarded the devastatingly beautiful tile Kumiko had given her (because devastating was right, wasn’t it? She looked at it and was devastated) with a fierceness that bordered on desperation. She kept it in a sock drawer now, hidden away and never taken to work again, and she didn’t speak of its existence to anyone, not even George.

If she was honest with herself, which was difficult because the truth was so markedly uncomfortable, she admitted she was probably guarding all these things – the tile, the fingertips, her jealousy – against the thin, flickering hope that one day Kumiko might share all her unknowable secrets with Amanda. And perhaps that meant one day Amanda might be able to share hers, to finally show someone the flaw underneath the carapace of her personality, to maybe, possibly, even discover it wasn’t a flaw after all . . .

Which was all impossible now because of course George would be the person Kumiko confided in now that they were marrying. No matter how dear her and Kumiko’s friendship might grow, Amanda would never be the one with whom Kumiko discussed all those impossible things. And that made her sad enough to well up, again. None of it made any logical sense, and oh God, if pregnancy was the explanation–

‘Mama?’ JP asked from his bed. ‘Are you crying?’

‘No, no, sweetheart,’ she said, wiping her eyes quickly. ‘It’s only the moonlight. It’s so beautiful, don’t you see?’

‘I am sometimes the moon. When I sleep, I am.’

‘I know,’ she said, brushing away a lock of his hair. ‘That’s why you’re always so hungry in the morning.’

He smiled and closed his eyes. She stayed for a moment to make sure he was settled – and to make sure she neither needed to cry nor vomit any more this evening – and headed back to her own bedroom, feeling her way down the darkened hallway, her thoughts crowding up despite her best efforts.

Because what if she was? Oh, hell, what if she was?

She put her hand on her stomach, not knowing how she felt about it in the slightest little particular. It’d be eternally awkward to explain to people why JP looked so very much like his brother or sister, and it would be a very, very long secret to keep from Claudine–

Who was she kidding? It’d be a disaster. A wreck.

Which was okay, because she wasn’t pregnant. The end. A single night of regretful sex that ended in pregnancy was another thing that only happened in movies.

Except it would have its good points, too, of course. She loved JP more crazily than she’d thought herself able, and a second boy or a girl . . .

She sighed. It was practically a case study of the term ‘mixed blessing’.

‘But you’re not,’ she whispered to herself, slipping back into bed, finding a cool spot in the sheets. ‘You’re not, you’re not, you’re not.’

Which was when the sound came again.

It was much clearer this time, so deep and sonorous and unearthly she practically leapt from the bed to look out the window.

She saw nothing, just stilled cars again. No movement, not even in the shadows, though there were plenty of corners where anything could have been lurking.

But her heart was still pounding because whatever it was hadn’t sounded like it had come from four storeys below. It had sounded like it was right outside her window. There was nothing there, of course, and not even a proper ledge on which something could have been standing, but the sound, the call, the keen–

Where had that word come from? It seemed right, though. It had been a keening sound. Old-fashioned, more than old-fashioned, ancient, but not ancient like Egypt, ancient like an old forest which you suspected was only sleeping. Something had keened right outside her window, and she didn’t know why or for whom, but it hit her heart so purely she gave up trying not to cry altogether, even as she lay back on the pillow, and it felt proper this time, like the right thing to do, the right sadness to be holding.

Because what was sadder than the world and its needs?

She dreamed again of a volcano, but this time she alternately was the volcano and being ravished by it – a word she thought of, even in her dream, ravished, yes – his hands trailing up her na**d torso, his thumbs marking the upward curve of her burgeoning belly, reaching her br**sts, which were now somehow under her own hands as she leaned her head back against the hills and cities of her neck, and feeling the importance, somehow, that the volcano should open his eyes, open them so they could be seen, but no matter her entreaties, he refused, keeping them closed even as he entered her, and before she could object, before she could demand again, he was doing what all volcanoes must inevitably do, erupting, erupting, erupting, the stupid pun of it making her laugh, deeply, raucously, even in the dream, even while it kept happening–

She didn’t wake this time.

Mainly because she didn’t want to.

19 of 32

And so comes the final day.

She has followed him to another war. The earth splits apart in seams and crevasses, spouting fire and lava and steam, chasing the volcano’s minions who race through the narrow streets of some city or other, killing its men, raping its women, dashing its babies to the pavement.

She flies through the carnage, the looting, the pillaging, skating her fingers through pools of blood. She weeps for the world that is their child but was never their child, she weeps for her love and wonders if it is lost. She does not wonder if it was true. It was true, for both, that much is obvious.

But is it enough?

20 of 32

The volcano is everywhere and nowhere in the war, all things to it at all points and therefore, in an important way, absent by ever-presence. She finds instead this army’s small general, one who thinks he leads his troops, when of course he no more leads them than horns lead a stampeding bull. His chin is covered in blood where he has been feeding on an enemy.

At the sight of her, the small general drops his enemy and bows to her respectfully. ‘My lady,’ he says.

‘You know me?’

‘Everyone knows you, my lady.’

‘You fight for my husband.’

‘Aye, my lady.’ He gestures to his disembowelled enemy, now grasping at his viscera and trying to shove them back into his body. ‘But so did he. We all fight for your husband, my lady.’

‘Are you not tired?’ she asks, stepping around him in a slow circle.

He looks up, surprised. ‘Aye, my lady,’ he says, his voice full of weariness and disappointment.