The Crane Wife(51)
Author: Patrick Ness

There she stands.

She is at an easel, on which rests the final tile. He sees the feathers gathered there, already cut and assembled loosely on the black square. The cutting is not yet finished, even in his briefest glance he can see that there are spaces to be filled, spaces that will complete this shape, make it cohere.

He barely takes in the room around him, can only vaguely sense an empty white space, containing nothing at all but her and the easel and the tile, though that can hardly be possible, can it?

But what he sees of her can hardly be possible either.

She is wearing a thin, silky robe of a light rose colour, with inky edges and wide sleeves. The robe is open, and she has let it gather at her elbows, a swoop of cloth low across her bare back. She is na**d underneath, and as she turns towards George her fingers are pressed between her br**sts.

Where she is plucking a feather from her skin.

For she is not Kumiko at all, she is a great white bird, pulling out a feather to add to the others she has already plucked for the tile on the easel. The feather comes loose, as if she can hardly stop herself from finishing the action, now that she’s started it.

He sees her feathery skin twitch with pain at the feather breaking away, sees as she holds it in the air between her long, slender fingers – between the edges of her long, slender beak – between her long, slender fingers.

The feather has a single drop of red blood quivering at its tip, full of potential, full of life and of death.

George looks into Kumiko’s brown eyes – her golden eyes – her brown eyes. He sees the surprise and horror there, sees her reeling through every consequence of his presence.

But more than anything else, he sees a sorrow so deep and ancient that it nearly rocks him off his feet.

He knows, in an instant, he should not have seen this.

He knows, in an instant, that all would have been well, that the future would have taken care of itself, if he had never come here.

He knows, in an instant, that it is now only a matter of waiting for the end.

He woke on the small, anonymous sofa in Kumiko’s small, anonymous sitting room. She stood in front of him, her robe closed around herself again, though from how she was leaning over him he could see the skin on her upper chest and down to her breast.

Smooth, of course. And featherless.

‘George?’ she said. ‘Are you all right?’

He looked up into her face, and there was the same understanding, the same mystery that made his heart ask to be sent somewhere where it could just look at her forever in peace. ‘What happened?’

‘You have a fever.’ She pressed her hand to his forehead. ‘A bad one. You stormed into my bedroom, looking very terrible, George. I am worried. I was about to call a doctor. Drink this.’

He took a glass of water from her, but didn’t drink it. ‘What did I see?’

She looked confused. ‘I don’t know what you saw.’ She pulled the robe tighter around herself. ‘It seemed to disturb you a great deal.’

‘What was Rachel doing here?’

‘Who?’

‘I saw her coming out the front just now. I saw . . .’ He trailed off, suddenly unsure.

She frowned at him. ‘It is a big building, George. Lots of people come and go. I did see an old friend this afternoon, but I can assure you beyond all shadow of a doubt that it was not that woman.’

That woman was said so pointedly that guilt throttled him, to the point where even ‘old friend’ seemed an unreasonable enquiry to chase at the moment, so he finally just said, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘For what?’ she asked.

He swallowed, felt how dry his throat was, drank the water down in one. Maybe she was right, maybe his fever really was that bad. He couldn’t have seen what he thought he did in the bedroom, obviously, so maybe he hadn’t seen Rachel either . . .

He didn’t know whether this felt like good news or not.

‘You are so difficult to know,’ he heard himself whispering.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘And for that, I am sorry.’ Her face softened. ‘Why did you come here today, George?’

‘I wanted to show you this,’ he said, and reached for the cutting, which Kumiko had placed on the table. She took it, looking at it through the plastic. He started to speak again, but her glance stayed firmly, actively on the cutting, on the words and pages and angles and curves and voids that formed the erupting volcano.

‘This is perfect, George,’ she said. ‘This is everything it should be.’

‘I just went with what I felt. I didn’t even know what it was until I finished.’

She leaned forward and put a soft hand on his cheek. ‘Yes. Yes, I understand. I understand everything.’ She stood, keeping the cutting. ‘You rest here. Lie back, close your eyes. I won’t be long.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘This is the final piece of the story. I shall use it to make the last tile.’

George cleared his throat, feeling as if his whole life depended on the answer to his next question. ‘And then?’

But she smiled again, and his heart leapt in a kind of terrified, vertigo-dazzled joy.

‘And then, George,’ she said, ‘I will gather my final belongings and move into your house as your wife, and you, my husband. And we shall live happily ever after.’

She left him then, as he lay back like she’d suggested, his heart pounding, his brow still feverish but perhaps cooling, and he turned her words over and over in his thoughts, wondering how she had made ‘happily ever after’ sound so much like ‘goodbye’.

Amanda held the pregnancy test over the toilet bowl, ready to be widdled on.

She’d had it since she first vomited, but it had remained steadfastly in its box, so tonight at least marked a sort of progress.

Because what if she was?

But what if she wasn’t?

But what if she was?

In her calmest moments – or at least calmer – she kept reminding herself she still wasn’t all that late. Her cycles had careened so wildly as a teenager her mum and dad had agreed to the pill for a while at age fourteen just to get things regulated, and when she was off it these days – having, since Henri, not much reason to be on it – it was almost as bad, especially since the birth of JP.

So she was still in her plausible window. Yes, she was. Indeed. And she hadn’t thrown up unexpectedly any more, despite, all right, a vague, persistent nausea and a vague, persistent fever, which were probably just flu season and the germ factory that was any small child. Yes. All those things. And that’s what the pregnancy test would tell her. Of course it would.