The Crane Wife(58)
Author: Patrick Ness

But he had demanded. He had been stupidly, stupidly greedy for knowledge of her. And he had found out.

He knew her.

But wasn’t that what love really was, though? Knowledge?

Yes. And then again, no.

And now she was right, there was no choice. There was only how she would leave to be decided.

He held his hand above her chest, hesitating.

‘Do not!’ a voice boomed across the garden.

Rachel stood at the side gate, her eyes a green so bright George could see them even in shadow, almost as if she was burning from within. JP stood by her side, sucking his little thumb, wild-haired and startled, Wriggle blanket over one shoulder.

‘Rachel?’ George said. ‘JP?’

‘Grand-père?’ JP said around his thumb. ‘Mama went– ’

‘You will not do this!’ Rachel yelled, dragging JP forward so abruptly he called out in surprise. ‘You will not!’

George tried to stand, but the burns made it impossible. Kumiko rose behind him, though, getting to her feet, the wound on her chest now gone (and he hadn’t really seen it, had he? That had just been the smoke inhalation . . .). She stood strangely before Rachel, extending her arms, as if expecting a fight.

JP let go of Rachel’s hand and he ran over to George. ‘Mama went into the house!’ he said, eyes wide.

‘She what?’ George said, looking back at the blaze, an inferno with no escape. He turned to Kumiko and shouted, ‘Amanda’s in there! Amanda’s in the house!’

But the world had stopped.

The volcano approaches the lady across the field of battle, the world behind him burning. The lady still carries her wound, he sees, blood dripping from her outstretched wing. It gladdens him that she still suffers, but his heart breaks for it, too.

‘You will not do this,’ he says to her. ‘It is not for you to decide. It is for me.’

‘You know this is not true,’ the lady says. ‘You know that I have given the choice to him.’ She frowns. ‘No matter how you may have tried to persuade him otherwise.’

The volcano smirks. ‘This body,’ he says, referring to the form he wears. ‘It fights back in surprising ways. I have been in it since before its birth, but it is . . .’ He flashes a look, almost of admiration. ‘Surprisingly strong.’

‘Is it not time to free her?’ the lady asks.

‘Is it not time to free him?’ the volcano replies.

The lady looks down at George, frozen there in a moment of time, his voice caught in a terrible plea, one she knows will need an answer.

‘He loves me,’ the lady says, knowing it to be true.

‘That he does, I admit,’ the volcano says, his eyes burning. ‘Despite being given ample opportunity to destroy the love you returned. They are great destroyers, these creatures.’

‘So speaks a volcano.’

‘We build as well as destroy.’

‘You could not come between us. Though you tried.’

‘But it is inevitable, my lady. Once he knew you, he entered our story, and the harm I may do him here is so much easier to accomplish.’

‘You think so, do you? You think it is that easy?’

‘I have started already.’ He gestures to the blaze behind him. ‘This form and I have set fire to your world. To his. It is only the beginning of what we shall do to you, my lady.’

‘Are you sure the fire is yours? Can you say that this is your destruction with the utmost certainty?’

The volcano frowns. ‘I will not listen to your riddles, my lady.’ He looks at George. ‘This is not the way our story ends. You know this.’

‘Stories do not end.’

‘Ah, you are right, but you are also wrong. They end and they begin every moment. It is all about when you stop the telling.’

He has reached her now. They are closer than they have been for eternities, and they have also always been this close. With a shrug, the volcano steps out of Rachel’s body, his green eyes gleaming, and she falls to the grass and out of the battlefield. The volcano reaches a hand to his chest and opens it, exposing his granite heart, beating in a field of molten lead.

The bullet still lodged within.

‘I wish to end this, my lady,’ he says, solemn now. ‘The victory is yours. I see now that it always was.’ He kneels before her.

‘There is no victory,’ she says. ‘I have made no triumph.’

‘I only ask of you what you asked of him, my lady. Free me. Forgive me, at long last.’

‘Then who will be left to forgive me? I do not think he will be able to let me go, in the end.’

‘It is the eternal paradox, my lady. The only ones who can free us are the very ones who are too kind to do so.’

He leans his head back, closing his eyes, presenting his heart to her, beating in its crater.

‘And now. Please.’

She could wait, she knows. She could stretch out their story forever, but she also knows she would never move from this moment, not until their story was finally told. The volcano is correct. There is only this end. There has only ever been this end.

And so the lady grieves, weeping larger than the heavens, filling oceans with her tears.

The volcano waits, silently.

It is, finally, an easy motion. She reaches into his chest and first removes the bullet of herself. As it leaves him, he groans in exquisite pain. She clenches her fist around it, and when she opens her hand again it is gone. He weeps for its loss. She brushes the tears from his eyes and waits for him to gather himself, returning the courtesy of patience he has just shown her.

‘My lady,’ he whispers.

Then she reaches into him again and, with a sigh of ancient grief, pierces his heart with her fingers. In her hand, it crumbles instantly to ash, blowing away in the wind.

‘Thank you,’ the volcano says, relief shedding from him in waves of fire and dying lava. ‘Thank you, my lady.’

‘Who will take my heart now?’ she asks as he rises and solidifies, reaching for the horizon as he becomes, simply, a mountain.

Perhaps he makes to answer, but he is already stone.

Rachel collapsed to the ground at George’s feet. He clutched JP tightly to him still and looked back up at Kumiko, who stood as if frozen. He shouted her name again. And once more.

Finally, she seemed to hear him. ‘George?’

‘Amanda’s in the house! She went in to save us!’

Kumiko looked back to the raging fire. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I understand.’