The Crane Wife

by Patrick Ness

  ‘We will have to go out the window,’ Kumiko said, almost calm, but he could see the beads of sweat pouring down her forehead. The temperature in the bedroom had risen with alarming speed.

  ‘Yes,’ George agreed, following her to it. She opened it and looked out. They were directly over the kitchen and could see smoke pouring out from the ground-floor windows below.

  ‘It is far,’ she said, ‘and onto concrete.’

  ‘I’ll go first,’ George said. ‘I’ll try and break your fall.’

  ‘Chivalrous,’ she said, ‘but there is no time.’

  She put a foot on the windowsill to lift herself up.

  An explosion rocked the house, it sounded like from somewhere in the kitchen. Kumiko lost her grip and fell back into George’s arms. They tumbled to the floor.

  ‘Gas main,’ he said.

  ‘George!’ Kumiko called out in alarm, looking behind him. The bedroom floor was starting to sag, as if it was melting into the room below, something that turned out to be almost unfeasibly frightening, because George only realised how much he counted on floors to stay flat when they suddenly stopped doing so.

  ‘We must move!’ Kumiko said over the roar. ‘Now!’

  But before they could even rise there was a sound like an angry yawn and the far end of the bedroom completely gave way. One of the bookcases George kept there (mostly non-fiction) vanished immediately into the fire below. The bed started to slide, too, down the still-tilting floor.

  Kumiko grabbed the windowsill, now the only thing to hold on to as the floor continued to slide away from them. The bed juddered to a halt for a moment, caught on something, and flames streaked up the mattress. George caught a quick, hellish glimpse of the sitting room below, consumed by fire, before smoke started pouring into the bedroom like a tidal wave.

  ‘Try to pull yourself up!’ he shouted. He was lying below her as the floor continued its tilt. It could only be a matter of seconds before everything went. He pushed her up towards the window, and she made it easily, one foot on the sill, her arms on the window’s sides, ready to jump. She turned back to him, fear across her face.

  ‘I’m right behind you!’ he coughed, trying to rise.

  But with another judder the bed fell through, taking most of the floor with it. George fell, too, catching his upper arms on the sudden ledge remaining below the window. His legs swung down into the burning lower level of his house, and he screamed in pain as flames seized his bare feet.

  ‘George!’ Kumiko yelled.

  ‘Go!’ he shouted back to her. ‘Jump! Please!’

  His mouth filled with smoke at every syllable, even the taste of it knocking his senses off-kilter. He tried to curl his legs away from the burning below him, could feel the soles of his feet blistering, the smoke, the pain, the fear, all of it filling his eyes with tears.

  He looked back up to Kumiko.

  Who wasn’t there.

  Thank God, he thought, grateful she’d jumped, grateful she’d at least got away. Thank God.

  He felt himself succumbing to the smoke – so fast, so fast – his thoughts slurring and slowing, the world shimmering away.

  He was distantly aware of his grip slipping.

  Distantly aware of falling into the raging fire below.

  Distantly aware of being caught.

  In his dream, he flies.

  The smoke curls around him under the swoop of two great wings. He thinks at first that the wings are his own, but they are not. He is being carried, held, he is not sure how, but the grip is firm around him.

  Firm but tender.

  The wings swoop again, slow but with a strength so sure he has no fear, even though a fire big enough to consume the world is burning below him. They pass through a wall of smoke, and the air is suddenly cooler, fresher, easier to breathe.

  He is flying through open air now, arcing up and out like the path of an arrow.

  He weighs nothing. His burdens fall away like the world below him. He glances up but he cannot see exactly what it is that carries him.

  But even in his dream, he knows.

  A long neck, graced with a crown of scarlet and a pair of golden eyes, turns back to look at him, just once, the eyes filled with tears of their own.

  Tears of sadness, he thinks. Tears of depthless sorrow.

  And he grows suddenly frightened.

  The arc continues its downward momentum. The ground approaches again. He touches the grass first with his feet, its coolness a sudden balm on skin that he now remembers is burnt and roiling with pain.

  As he is laid gently down, he gives out a long slow moan.

  He calls, he cries.

  He keens.

  Until long white feathers wipe away his tears, brush across his forehead and temples, and enfold him in soft, soft whiteness.

  He longs for his dream to end.

  He longs for it never to end.

  It ends.

  ‘George?’

  He blinked open his eyes, starting to shiver almost immediately. He was naked against the frost-covered grass of his back garden.

  ‘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 f
rom 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.

  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 h
im, 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.’