by Hiromi Goto
The rat raised her small and eloquent nose and tasted the air. “I am Red Jade now,” she answered, her voice slightly raspier than when she had been green.
“White Jade is better,” a voice muttered from the floor.
“Che!”Ms. Wei exhaled impatiently. “Some jade pieces should be kept in a box for all time!” She turned to Melanie. “Ignore him. He is a bitter old cat. He is not worth his weight in cat food.”
“How quickly they forget,” White Cat sighed. “You might be in jail if I hadn’t saved you from the police officer. Oh, well. As long as I know for myself the things I’ve done for you, it is enough. I don’t need gratitude. Don’t mind me. It’s enough just to know that I did my best for you and it helped you and that’s all tha—”
“Okay! Okay!” Ms. Wei exclaimed. “Ms. Wei is grateful! Okay? White Cat saved Ms. Wei!”
The cat didn’t respond with words, but after a moment’s silence a loud purr began filling the room.
The purring, Melanie decided, was even worse. A crooked grin quirked her lips at the mixture of frustration, gratitude, and affection on Ms. Wei’s face. The old woman shook her head, then began to chortle.
Melanie felt a small hand clasp the end of her thumb. Red Jade’s tiny claws prickled her skin. The rat was staring at her alertly, her long tail curled slightly around her wrist.
Melanie saw the place where she had bitten off her smallest finger. To pay the toll. Melanie’s heart clenched almost painfully. She raised Red Jade gently to stroke the rat’s side with her cheek. The coarse fur tickled.
“Oh, Melanie,” Red Jade rasped. “I remember.”
EPILOGUE
THE STREET LAMPS shone orange cones of light against the mistiness of night. Most of the homes, apartment buildings, older-model duplexes were dark, in the quiet stillness of deepest sleep. The city breathed inside dreams and nightmares. In the distance a siren spiraled, the sound signaling the troubles of someone else. A dog in a kennel howled.
The windows of the Rainbow Market, and in the apartment above, were all dark. A cold breeze blew from the north. The possibility of snow was a sweet metallic flavor in the air.
The night was cracked by the loud nasal wail of a baby.
Several seconds passed as the infant continued crying. A pale rectangle of light flicked on from the second floor of the market. The baby’s cries grew louder, and a second smaller rectangle of light, directly beside the first window, was switched on. The glow was brave and warm in the night building. The baby cried and cried for several minutes until the sound began to wane.
The lights remained on, but it was silent once more.
Atop the flat gravel-covered roof of the market apartment sat four creatures. The silhouettes of a large, fat cat, a rat, and two crows were framed in the irregular round of a three-quarter moon.
The cat sighed theatrically, his tail twitching with annoyance. “I still think they should get rid of the baby.” He sniffed.
The rat whipped her tail to whack the cat’s fat rump. The cat yowled indignantly. The two crows rustled their wings, and one gave a low, hoarse caw.
The fur on the cat’s nape puffed out threateningly for several seconds, before he let it lie once more.
“Take care with the words you utter,” the rat said sternly. “The fate of one baby can alter everything. As you well know!”
The large cat yawned.
The two crows opened wide their beaks and made an odd popping sound.
“So the girl saves the Realms, loses her parents, and ends up living with an old woman while they raise a baby,” the white cat said snidely. “Human lives are so pitifully pedestrian. You have to admit it. There is nothing spectacular about them. How awful it must be to be human.”
The rat opened wide her mouth and revealed her long incisors in a great rat grin. “Don’t be so certain,” she said. “Sometimes endings are beginnings in the making.”
The two crows tilted their heads to peer with one eye at the rat.
The rat winked, then scampered across the roof to the gutter. The sound of her tiny claws against the metal set the cat yowling.
“What do you mean?” the cat cried out belatedly, indignantly.
But the rat was already inside, in the warmth of the second-floor apartment.
The cat sat up tall, the fur on his tail bristling. “I hate it when she does that,” he muttered to himself. Affecting indifference, he ambled casually toward the fire escape stairs to join her.
Only the two whispering crows remained.
Dark clouds moved the moon in and out of light. The heavy moisture in the air crinkled into minute crystals of ice.
On the windows of the second-story apartment, frost began to fern and spiral upon the pane of glass. The light was turned off. In the quiet, in the darkness, the frost bloomed into a forest.
ACKNOW LEDGMENTS
A book, finally completed, is not the result of the efforts of a lone individual but the culmination of the generative energies and interactions between family and community, place and time. This book would not have happened without the support, friendship, and love of so many people.
Foremost, thank you to Sae and Koji. You are the best thing that has happened to me for all time.
Kyoko Goto, thank you so much for telling me that the well would not run dry . . . You’re right. The well was not empty. Your words kept me from despair.
During the writing and rewriting of this novel my oba-chan and my father have moved on to the Realm of Spirit. Thank you for everything that you shared with me. Everything I’m learning, still. I miss you. . . .
I am profoundly grateful to Nozomi Goto and Chris Goto-Jones for generously sharing their home with me and creating a space where I could write—I wouldn’t have been able to complete the final draft without this shelter of time. Susanda Yee, for our long conversations and mutual care that sees us through so many realms; I am so lucky to have you in my life. Tortoises rule! (In the long run . . . ) Rita Wong, for your long-time support and kind heart. Your fierce and loving advocacy for social justice continues to inspire. Eva Tai, for seeing the essence of the moment and being unafraid to speak it, your words continue to challenge, comfort, and intrigue me. Tamai Kobayashi, thank you for your generous, generous emergency feedback and faith in my work. Chris Goto-Jones, for providing critical plot analysis on the final draft in the eleventh hour—it bridged the chasm between impossible and possible. David Bateman, for the experience of creative collaborations, Pinky cocktails, and enjoying the glamorous moment. Larissa Lai, for your support and quirky humor and razor-sharp mind. Naomi Goto, for your long-time quiet faith in my writing, and Ayumi Goto, for first convincing me to go on an over-a-month-long retreat, something I’d never done before, and taking care of the home front while I was away. Ashok Mathur, for the quiet of your homespace when I needed a break. And Sae Goto, for your feedback during the final read-aloud edit the night before the deadline.
A huge Rah!Rah!Rah! to the Writing Cheerleading Squad who saw me through the very first draft so long ago! Nalo Hopkinson, Pam Mordecai, Jennifer Stevenson, Larissa Lai, Martin Mordecai, thank you for all the encouragement. Here’s to seeing each other through many more projects!
So many people have been invaluable at different times during the long process of completing this work. My gratitude to Tamotsu Tongu, Kyo Maclear, Baco Ohama, Aruna Srivastava, Roy Miki, Cecilia Martell. And a special thank-you to Roseanne Johnson, my counselor: I swear I’m not gonna go Woody Allen on you!
I am grateful to the 2007 Writer-in-Residency Program at the Vancouver Public Library, the Friends of the Library, and the Canada Council for the Arts.
A special thank-you to Jillian Tamaki for the amazing illustrations and the stunning cover art.
My gratitude to Barbara Berson, who first saw what this book might become, and to Leona Trainer, for finding it a home. Jennifer Glossop, you are an editor superhero! Your perceptive eye and thoughtful feedback are greatly appreciated. I am happy tha
t I got to work with you! Thank you to the people at Penguin Group Canada who have been so supportive (and patient!); I am especially grateful to Jennifer Notman, Marcia Gallego, and Tracy Bordian. My heartfelt gratitude to Sharyn November and Viking USA.
Thank you to the crows that amass on Vancouver evenings and fly home to the darkness of Burnaby Mountain. Thank you to the brilliance of wet moss and lichen. Thank you to the rays of golden brown light slanting in the cool of a green lake. Thank you to the shoals of glinting fish. Thank you to the sweet gems of salmonberries. Thank you to the decaying leaves for their rich brown smell. Thank you to the slugs and wood lice beneath the leaves. Thank you to my plant friends who keep me company as I write. I am deeply grateful to share this cycle with you.
HIROMI GOTO was born in Chiba-ken, Japan, and immigrated to Canada with her family in 1969. Her first novel, Chorus of Mushrooms, examined the immigration experience and was the 1995 regional winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book and cowinner of the Canada-Japan Book Award. She is also the author of The Kappa Child, which was the 2001 recipient of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award (www.tiptree.org), a children’s novel, The Water of Possibility, and, most recently, the short story collection Hopeful Monsters.
She lives in Canada. Visit her Web site at www.hiromigoto.com.
JILLIAN TAMAKI grew up on the Canadian prairies (Calgary, Alberta). In addition to her editorial illustration, she co-created a graphic novel, Skim, with her cousin Mariko Tamaki; it has received great acclaim, including selection as one of the New York Times’Best Illustrated Books.
Jillian Tamaki lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband, illustrator Sam Weber. Her Web site is www.jilliantamaki.com.
