by Eiko Kadono
That was the only time she’d ever encountered poetry, but Kiki knew that whatever was written inside the envelope couldn’t be nearly as childish. What sort of thing do you write in a poem to a boy? That girl seems to know so much….She must have written something lovely. Kiki’s heart raced as she imagined all sorts of things. The more she told herself she couldn’t look, the more the thought of the envelope occupied her mind.
“Jiji, I want to rest for a minute. I’m going to land on the bank.”
“We just took off!”
“But it’s fall,” Kiki answered, knowing that was hardly a reason. Still, she began her descent, soaring in a big arc like a bird. Eventually she touched down in a park that ran along the river. There was no one around, and the swings swayed on their own in the wind. Beyond them, the river flowed by with occasional whitecaps.
“Jiji, if you want to go play somewhere for a little while, you can.” Kiki leaned her broom against a ginkgo tree shedding its yellow leaves, and then sat by the leaf-carpeted roots.
“It’s okay, I’ll stay here. I’m cold. Fall can be over with already.”
“Oh, Jiji.” Kiki smiled tightly. “Why don’t you go take a walk? Look at all the green foxtails growing along the bank. I know you like those,” she insisted.
“Are you saying I’m bothering you?” Jiji narrowed his eyes.
“Yes, that’s what I’m saying,” she said jokily, pushing her hair into place after the windy ride.
“You’re hiding something, aren’t you?”
“Fine, you’re right.” Kiki shrugged. “But it’s not as if I’m going to break it, or lose it, or get it all dirty. It’s just for a second. Just a peek!”
“What are you even talking about?” Jiji frowned and stared her down.
“Jiji, don’t get mad. I have to see what she wrote in her poem. I know it’s wrong, but I need to look. Besides, I think this counts as part of my coming-of-age studies as a witch!” Kiki watched, waiting for his reaction.
“I don’t see why you need all the complicated explanations. Just read it. It’s that pretentious pink sweater girl’s right? This is all very educational for me, too, so read it aloud.”
“Oh, Jiji.” Kiki could hardly believe Jiji accepted her excuses so readily as she pulled the note out of her pocket. The picture of a bouquet of flowers on the front of the yellow envelope seemed to swell off the paper.
“I hope it’s easy to open….”
When she lifted the edge of the envelope, the glue came unstuck with a dry pop. Inside, a piece of paper with the same flower pattern was folded in half. The poem was written in cute, curly letters. Kiki sat the letter in her lap and quietly began to read:
Happy birthday
I wish I could say
But for some reason, I shy away
Happy birthday
I want to look into your eyes as I tell you
But for some reason, I shy away
I want to give you a present
From my hands to yours
But for some reason, I shy away
My heart celebrates you
But still, I shy away
“She’s really shying away a lot, huh? Like a scaredy-cat,” Jiji said upon rereading the letter in Kiki’s lap.
“I wonder if she really wrote it. It hardly seems like her—she was so confident.” Kiki cocked her head. “Well, time to seal it back up and deliver it.”
All it took was an instant. Kiki held the envelope with one hand, but just as she reached for the letter with her other, a gust of wind blew across her lap and the piece of paper slipped through her fingers and into the air. Kiki raced after it, but every time she tried to catch the letter, it fluttered among the falling gingko leaves and whooshed on, teasing her.
“Your broom, your broom! Hurry and get on your broom!” Jiji shouted in a panic.
Kiki doubled back for it, but tripped on a root and went sprawling.
“Oh no!” Jiji screamed.
When Kiki stood up, she caught sight of the yellow paper washing away on the river.
“No!” Her voice carried after it, but her legs weren’t fast enough. By the time she reached the riverbank, the rushing water had taken the paper out of sight. “What’ll I do?” Kiki stood there, dumbfounded.
“This time it’s not my fault.” Jiji said from behind her.
“I guess this is punishment for peeking at someone’s letter.” Kiki’s shoulders slumped. “All I can do is apologize.”
“You could deliver the poem aloud instead.” Jiji did his best to console her.
“No, I understand how important this letter was to her. I wouldn’t want someone else saying it to the person.”
“Then what if you wrote it on one of these leaves? I pretty much remember what it said.”
“That’s true, and it’s anonymous, so…”
“It’ll be fine,” Jiji said with certainty.
“Umm, the first part was ‘Happy birthday.’ You’re going to help me out, right, Jiji?”
Kiki looked around, picked up a big gingko leaf, and sat back down under the tree. Then she took the pen out of her pocket, removed the cap, and began to write.
“After the ‘Happy…’ part, it was ‘I want to say it to you.’ ”
“Yeah, and then it was ‘But recently, I shy away.’ ”
“Oh my goodness, it’s not ‘recently,’ it’s ‘for some reason.’ And then…‘I want to stare into your eyes.’ And then shying away again.”
“She’s not very good at this, is she?” Jiji interjected. “She says the same thing over and over again.”
“Really? I thought it was pretty good when we read it before. Anyway, the next thing was about the present.”
“The pen, right?”
Kiki looked at the pen in her hand.
“This really is easy to write with. So something like ‘matching presents, silver pens’ and…”
Thinking, Jiji looked up at the sky and said to Kiki, “It didn’t say ‘silver’ in there.”
“But I already wrote it. It is silver, so it’s fine. Next is ‘From my hands to yours.’ I liked that part, so I remember it pretty well. And then shying away again. Or does she shy away again? That many times?”
“No. I remember, it was, ‘For some reason, it feels like hide-and-seek.’ ”
“Oh, you’re right, Jiji! I remember the end clearly—it was ‘My heart celebrates you, but I still play hide-and-seek.’ Phew, I’m glad we figured it out.” Kiki sighed.
“Let me see,” said Jiji, peeking at the leaf. “Nicely done.” He smiled.
They read over the recovered poem:
Happy birthday
I want to say
But for some reason, I shy away
Happy birthday
I want to stare into your eyes
But for some reason, I shy away
Matching presents, silver pens
From my hands to yours
But for some reason, it feels like hide-and-seek
My heart celebrates you
But I still play hide-and-seek
Kiki and Jiji took off. They crossed the big river and dodged around the tall buildings, and when they saw the crowd at the zoo, they began a slow descent. She fixed her eyes on the park that sat partway down Dogwood Road. On the withered grass, a lone boy was hitting a tennis ball against a wall.
“That’s him.” Kiki quickly angled the handle of her broom down. “You’re Ai, right?” Kiki asked, approaching him after landing in the corner of the park. “Happy birthday!”
“Huh? To me? Do I know you?” His dark eyes watched her curiously.
“You’re fourteen now, right? The girl who sent me is a secret admirer. I’m just the messenger,” she teased w
ith a smile.
“A girl? Who?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know! She lives in this town. And here’s a present from her.” Kiki took the pen and envelope out of her pocket.
“Cool, it’s so shiny. Looks like a rocket.” The boy lifted the pen up to eye level and turned it around a few times before hanging it over the edge of his collar and patting it.
“Wow, you really do match now!” Kiki reacted with a shout, pointing at the boy’s collar.
“Is the name in the letter?” The boy started to open the envelope. With a sickening feeling, Kiki remembered the leaf inside.
“Hmm, who knows? Well, I’ll be going now,” she spouted before turning and hurriedly walking off.
“Hey!” the boy’s voice called after her. “Who is it? Tell me!”
Kiki shook her head without turning around. “I promised I wouldn’t!” she shouted back.
So I guess she was right—he does want to know.
In her head, Kiki could almost picture the girl’s happy face.
* * *
Three days later, the secret admirer came rushing into Kiki’s shop like a leaf on a gust of wind. Remembering she had lost the letter, Kiki hung her head instinctively, but the girl asked in a singsong voice, “Miss Witch?” She sweetly twisted one of her feet back and forth. Her white boots gleamed.
“Ai found me. He asked if the present was from me.”
“Oh, good,” Kiki answered cheerfully.
“But something was weird. He also told me I ‘really put some thought into that leaf’ and said it was a great idea. Isn’t that odd? Did a leaf somehow get in there when you were flying? I guess it doesn’t matter. He knew it was from me because of the pen, not the leaf. You know, because I have the same one.” The girl pointed to her collar and grinned.
Seeing how happy she was, all of Kiki’s tension melted away as if it had never existed. Feeling lighter, she braced herself and said, “To tell the truth…”
And at the same time, the girl said, “I have a confession to make….”
“Huh?”
They looked at each other.
“You go first, Miss Witch,” the girl said.
“I did something horrible.” Kiki looked down and told the girl how she’d read the letter, how it blew away, and how she wrote the poem on a leaf and delivered it to Ai.
“Wow,” the girl said, a bit disappointed.
“I’m sorry. But I think I remembered the poem right. When you came into the shop, you seemed to know everything. I really wanted to know what kind of poem you would write—so I couldn’t help myself. I hope you can forgive me?”
“What, you thought that about me? I felt the same way about you,” the girl said. “I didn’t really think Ai would come looking for me. If I told him my name, I thought he wouldn’t even care. But when I came here, you were so confident and seemed so much smarter than me, even though we’re the same age. So I was determined to prove myself. I’m sorry. I think we have more in common than I first thought, Miss Witch. I bet we would get along.” The girl smiled, batting her eyelashes as before.
Kiki smiled back at her and said in mock seriousness, “I may be a witch, but you can call me Kiki.”
The girl giggled, then dropped her voice to mimic Kiki and said, “I’m a normal girl, but I suppose my name is no longer a secret—you can call me Mimi.”
Fall was more than halfway through, and cold winds continued to blow every day. The withered brown trees lining the streets had long lost all their leaves, and the dried-up town of Koriko gleamed clear and bright outside the window of Kiki’s shop.
As the wind blew between the concrete buildings, it cut sharp like a knife, then stopped suddenly before whipping up again. And with each gust, Kiki’s humbly constructed shop creaked and shook.
I wonder if they already had their first snow back home….
Listening to the wind, Kiki remembered what the beginning of winter was like in her hometown. One day it would suddenly grow cold, and when you looked out the window, the mountains beyond the northern forest would be obscured behind white as if a lace handkerchief had been draped over them. That whiteness would come down, down, closer and closer, until it covered the entire town. Back home, the sign of winter was the white of the snow, not the sound of the wind.
On the first winter day after Kiki had learned to fly, Kokiri took her out and said, “Everywhere you look is white, right?” She continued, explaining the dangers of the snow-covered roofs around town. “Sometimes the sun’s reflection is so dazzling it hurts your eyes, so be careful when you’re flying. What might look like a bean cake could be the roof of the fire watchtower. And what appears to be a staircase might be the roof of the library. That rectangular shape over there is actually the roof of the gymnasium.”
“Witches are supposedly pretty tough against chilly weather, but the cold in this town seems to go right through me,” Kiki murmured, pulling her collar up as she sat at the front of her shop.
“It’s because you don’t have anything to do. You’re not moving around.” Jiji teased as he jumped into her lap and curled up.
Kiki did have noticeably less work. Perhaps people didn’t pay as much attention to details when it was cold, or they tried to avoid doing anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary?
At times like this, I just want to wrap up in a blanket, drink something warm—like saffron tea—and talk with Mom. Remembering the relaxing smell of the yellow drink, she missed her mother.
“I wonder when’s the best time to plant saffron,” Kiki murmured to no one in particular. She regretted not learning how to grow the herbs Kokiri made every year.
For the hot pepper compress, do you boil them or sauté? She always used to tell me that there’s something you can put in a soup when your stomach hurts. What was that? Kiki tried to recall things her mother used to do, but she couldn’t remember the details. Why was I so annoyed by everything she said? Kiki frowned and lowered her eyes.
Suddenly she felt a gust of wind. When she looked, the door had opened a crack and four eyes peeked in. Then came a whisper.
“I heard that when a witch’s cat gets cold, their eyes shine like a blue-green flashlight, but that’s a lie. They’re not different from any other cat’s!”
“Where? Let me see. Oh, you’re right. Then maybe it breathes fire? The older boy next door said you can use a witch’s cat instead of matches.”
Jiji knowingly exchanged a glance with Kiki, then turned toward the cracked door, widened his eyes, opened his mouth as big as he could, and exhaled, “Hahhhhh!”
“Whoa!” someone yelped, and the door slammed shut.
Kiki and Jiji listened to the nervous voices outside the shop.
“Did you see that?”
“Yeah, but you couldn’t use it instead of a match.”
“Or a flashlight.”
“His eyes didn’t shine at all.”
“Yeah, he’s just a normal black cat.”
Little footsteps pattered away.
“Well, excuse me for being a regular old cat,” Jiji grumbled. “Ugh, it’s so annoying having these neighborhood kids peeking in all the time.” He curled up in Kiki’s lap again.
“Must be tough being so popular,” Kiki teased. “What if you went along with it and dressed up strangely? You could dye your paws red or wear sunglasses or something?”
Jiji shot her a reproachful glance and then made up his mind to ignore her altogether.
A little while later, the phone rang.
“Oh!” Kiki exclaimed. “Maybe it’s a job? It’s been a while.” When Kiki answered, a voice spoke slowly.
“Is…this…Kiki’s…Delivery…Service? Well…I…have…a request….I’m…an old lady…Oh, one…moment…I was holding…the phone…with my head…against my shoulder…and it almost…fe
ll….Both hands…are full…because I’m…busy…knitting….I’m…an old lady….The address is…two twenty-four…Silverberry…Street….Please…come.”
“All…right…I…will.” Kiki started talking slowly herself!
Kiki and Jiji flew over right away, and when they got there, 224 Silverberry turned out to be on a smaller stream that branched off from the big river. The little house had a little pier painted sky-blue. When they went inside, they found that the old woman was little, too. She sat on a chair knitting.
“Oh…please…wait…a moment. This…belly band…will be done…in a jiffy.” She spoke slowly and her mouth seemed to move in sync with her knitting needles. “I said…I could make it…in no time…but then my son…went and said…‘I don’t need…that stupid…thing.’ He’s…still in his…rebellious…phase….Oh, it’s…finally…done.”
Once she’d snipped the yarn with her scissors, she rotated her neck and shoulders. “Ahh, I’m pooped.” Then she looked Kiki in the eye and suddenly spoke at a normal speed. “By the way, Miss Delivery Girl, how’s your stomach?”
“Oh, I just ate, so I’m not hungry.” Kiki bounced on her toes to show she had energy.
“No,” the old woman said. “I’m asking if it hurts.”
“Not at all. I’m in great shape. I can fly anywhere, no matter how far.”
“It’s when you feel that good that you have to be the most careful. Don’t let your stomach get cold. It’s best to always keep it warm. Take very good care of it—your stomach is the center of the universe. And for keeping your stomach warm, nothing can beat a belly band. The best way to knit a belly band is using all different colors of leftover yarn and tying lots of knots. They’re so warm, right? Don’t you think?” The woman nodded in satisfaction without waiting for Kiki’s reply, and then looked at Jiji, who sat at Kiki’s feet. “Oh, and what about you?”
Jiji answered with a rumbling noise in the back of his throat.
“Oh no! That sound is proof your stomach’s chilly. I wonder if I have a belly band somewhere around here that will fit you.”