The Crane Wife(57)
Author: Patrick Ness

‘George,’ the voice said again.

He looked up. Kumiko. He was lying in her arms, as she knelt behind him in the grass. Though still only in her nightslip, she seemed oblivious to the cold.

‘How did we . . . ?’ he asked, immediately coughing and having to spit out an alarming black tar.

When he looked back at her again, her eyes were golden.

And brimming with tears.

George felt a catch in his throat that wasn’t smoke. ‘I know you,’ he said, and it wasn’t a question.

She nodded slowly. ‘You do.’

He touched her cheek, smudged as it was with soot. ‘Why are you sad then?’ He ran his thumb down to her chin. ‘Why are you always so sad?’

There was a crashing sound, and they both looked back to the house. The flames fully engulfed the roof now, eating his home with a terrifying ferocity.

‘The tiles,’ he coughed out, quietly. ‘We’ll have to write new ones.’

But Kumiko said nothing, and he moved his hand to brush away the tears that flowed down her cheeks–

(–like the feathers that had brushed his own–)

–and said, ‘Kumiko?’

‘You must forgive me, George,’ she said, sadly.

‘For what? I’m the one who needs forgiveness. I’m the one who–’

‘Everyone needs forgiveness, my love. And for more years than I can count, I have had no one to offer it to me.’ Her golden eyes blazed, though maybe it was just a reflection of the flames from the house. ‘Until I found you, George,’ she continued. ‘You are the one who can. You are the one who must.’

‘I don’t understand,’ George said, still in her arms, still lying across her lap.

‘Please, George. Please. And then I shall go.’

He sat up, alarmed. ‘Go? No, you can’t go. I’ve just found you.’

‘George–’

‘I won’t forgive you. Not if it makes you leave.’

She placed a hand on his chest, as if to calm him. She kept her glance on it, so he looked down, too. Her fingers spread out–

–and seemed to change. A splay of feathers shot from underneath them, white as the moon, white as starlight, white as a wish.

Then they were gone.

‘I cannot stay,’ she said. ‘It is impossible.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘It grows harder by the moment, George,’ she said, another flash of feathers appearing under her hand. And then gone again.

George sat up further, though he had to steady himself. He was still extremely light-headed, no doubt what was causing him to see all these dreamlike things. The fire burning with impossible colours, greens and purples and blues. The night sky above them far too clear on this winter’s night. The stars sharp enough to cut your hand if you touched them. And he was cold, freezing cold–

But also burning up, the fire seeming to rise from his injured feet and blaze through him, coursing a fresh rage into his blood, an anger large enough to–

‘No,’ Kumiko said, though not as if she was talking to him. ‘You have done enough. You know that you have.’

George blinked at her. ‘What?’ But the burning was fading, the overwhelming feeling of eruption subsiding, disappearing into memory. He frowned. ‘My eyes were green just then, weren’t they?’

She leaned to him and kissed him, her own eyes still golden, even though he was between the fire and its reflection. ‘I have found peace with you,’ she said. ‘A peace I was desperate for, a peace I hoped might have even lasted.’ She looked back up at the fire. ‘But clearly it cannot.’

‘Please, Kumiko. Please don’t–’

‘I must go.’ She took his hand in hers. ‘I must be released. I must be forgiven. I can no longer ignore how I ache for it.’

‘But I’m the last person who should be forgiving you, Kumiko. I slept with Rachel. I don’t even know why–’

‘It is not important.’

‘It’s the most important thing of all.’

He pulled away from her. Time seemed to have dammed itself for a moment. How could this fire be blazing so heavily with no fire brigade swarming over the property? How could he no longer be freezing here on this grass? How could Kumiko be saying these things to him?

‘I know you now,’ George said. ‘That’s all I wanted. That’s all I ever wanted–’

‘You do not know me–’

‘You are the lady.’ He was firm when he said it, and calm. ‘You are the crane. You are the crane I took the arrow from.’

She smiled at him, sadly. ‘We are all the lady, George. And I am your crane and you are mine.’ She sighed. ‘And we are all the volcano. Stories shift, remember? They change depending on who is doing the telling.’

‘Kumiko–’

‘I misspoke before.’ She gently wiped some ash from his cheek. ‘You do know me, George, and I need you to forgive me for that knowledge. It has brought you into the wrong story, and it will consume you. So you must forgive me for it.’ Then she repeated her words, full of sorrow, but also full of longing. ‘Everyone needs forgiveness, my love. Everyone.’

George watched as she reached up to her chest and, with the nail of her index finger, drew a line down her skin. It opened like a fissure in the earth, widening until he could see her heart beating its life underneath it. She took George’s hand in her own and guided it there.

‘Kumiko, no,’ George said, a great feeling of grief starting to press against his chest and throat.

‘Take it,’ she said. ‘Take my heart. Free me.’

‘Please don’t ask me,’ George said, his voice cracking, his own heart swiftly breaking. ‘I can’t. I love you.’

‘It is the most loving thing one person can do for another, George. It is what makes life possible. It is what makes it liveable.’

Her heart beat there, glistening with blood, steam rising from it into the cold air.

‘You’ll leave,’ George said.

‘I have to leave either way. But I can leave either imprisoned or free. Please. Please do this for me.’

‘Kumiko–’

But he found he had no further words. He also found that somehow he understood. She loved him, but even that couldn’t keep her tied to this earth. She asked him to forgive her for his knowledge of her, and somehow that made sense, too. As long as it was this story of herself she could tell, not the one he demanded to know, all would have been well.