by Sarah Bird
But no sign comes. I go down so far that the moon shrinks away to a tiny pearl far overhead. My lungs scream for oxygen. The phosphorescent orbs wobbling beside me show me how easy it is to breathe water. All I have to do is exhale the dead air in my lungs and breathe in and it will all be over. In the same instant, a swoosh of water swirls up against me and the shadow of a large sea creature passes by. Drowning is one thing, but I do not want to be eaten by a shark. I flail at it, and my hand hits what feels like the rounded edge of a heavy table. It’s solid as furniture and not sandpapery the way sharkskin is supposed to be. Then the shadowed thing tips its head up toward the last glimmers of moonlight penetrating the dark water and I see the hooked profile of a sea turtle. She hovers directly in front of my face so that the beat of her flippers lofts my hair up and down.
Codie has sent a sign.
I struggle to rise to the air. But I’m too far down. I fight toward the surface, but a wave like a giant fist slams into me, holding me down, pushing me farther and farther back under. It bashes my head against the reef at my back, and, with a crack that shoots a bolt of pure white pain through me, the film in my brain stops.
TEN
Anmā, where are we? The water is gone. The girl is gone. Why did the wave put us here?
Because the kami willed it.
Where is the girl?
The girl is where the kami will her to be.
But we need her.
The kami know that. They will bring her to us again.
ELEVEN
The next thing I am aware of is rolling over onto my side and vomiting up roughly ten gallons of seawater along with another couple salty gallons that pour out of my sinuses.
I sprawl on the gritty sand, too exhausted to even roll over, until a chill sinks into my bones. I hoist myself up on wobbly arms and see that I’ve been spit out on a steep patch of deserted beach. The sand is smooth except for the tracks left by a handful of busy crabs. I can’t see any marks from where I came ashore. It’s like a giant hand has dropped me here. Cliff walls jut up all around, caging me. The tide creeps closer, and I realize that very soon I’m going to be trapped. Codie didn’t save me just so that I would be battered to death against a cliff. I study the stone walls locking me in and search for a way out.
The moon is operating-room bright over my shoulder. It casts a pattern of pocked shadows across the sheer stone faces and reveals that rather than rising, the rock walls tilt outward. I don’t have the strength to climb a regular cliff; you’d have to be Spider-Man to scale a jagged cliff that leans out like that.
There seems no way out until I notice a crevice where the cliff walls join. With no other choice, I haul myself up, and, hoping the opening leads to an escape route, or at least to higher ground, I scramble into the slit. There’s just enough moonlight for me to make out that the opening leads back into a tunnel. I follow it. The instant the rock walls close in around me, I am overwhelmed by a monstrous stench. With the tide rising behind me, though, I have no choice but to forge ahead. As the last few flickers of moonlight fade, darkness worse than a nightmare of being buried alive closes in around me.
As I go farther back into the cave, the sand turns to hard rock ground beneath my feet. I am on an incline that rises slightly as I follow it even farther back, praying that it leads to an escape route or at least to ground high enough for me to wait out the incoming tide. I feel my way along with a hand on the clammy stone wall. The ocean roars at my back, echoing off the rock walls and filling the narrow tunnel with a salty mist denser than the densest fog. I glance back. The moonlit mouth of the cave is lost in a whiteout of surging surf as the tide roars in. Soon the opening will be completely blocked, and even if there were a way out on the beach, I won’t be able to get there. I briefly regret not taking the swan-dive option from the top of the cliff when I had the opportunity. Even worse for my mom than Codie’s closed-casket funeral would be if my body gets trapped in this stone labyrinth and she has nothing to bury.
A second later, the rock walls echo with a thin chirping cry. All I understand from it is that the crier is female, Asian, young, and scared.
The water rises up around my ankles and I pray that whoever’s back there calling for me knows how to get out. I run up the gentle slope toward the far end of the cave. The voice grows louder and a glow appears. At first I think the phosphorescent orbs have returned, but the closer I get, the brighter the glow grows. Its source is hidden behind a bend in the cave walls. I hurry toward the feeble glimmer. When I round the bend, I catch a whiff of kerosene.
The cries are so strong now that, even above the roar of the waves, they grow louder. I rush toward the voice and scraps of memories of my grandmother speaking to me come back. “Konbanwa!” I call out.
As I get closer, the light from the kerosene lamp quivers, reflecting wetly off the oozing cave walls. It draws me closer with its homey incandescence. I turn the corner and there she is, an Okinawan teenager, collapsed beside a kerosene lantern that is sending up a black snowfall of soot. Her wavy black hair hugs her round face in a bowl cut. A few dingy scraps of what was once a school uniform cling to her skeletal limbs. She is so emaciated by hunger and disease that she lies sprawled on the damp rock floor of the cave, her torso barely propped up against the slick walls. A bandage black with dried blood hangs from one stick arm.
As ravaged as she is, however, the girl’s eyes light up when she sees me. She stretches hunger-hollowed cheeks in a grin and joins her hands in a prayer that seems to be thanking and begging me at the same time. I realize she thinks that I have come to rescue her.
“Who are you? How long have you been trapped here?”
Of course, she doesn’t understand English. In fact, from her expression, it almost seems as if she’s never heard it before. As if the sound of my voice terrifies her. I grab the lantern resting beside her on a flat rock, hoist it up, and shine it around the cave. No crevice, no chink in the rock, no way out is revealed. Worse, I see now that the rising tide is pushing the line of foam deep into the cave. The drowning waves will follow.
The cold salt water flows in and she speaks, a pleading stream, her hands pressed together in front of her heart, begging me to help her. Her eyes are bright and so filled with intelligence that they shine in spite of the gloom of the cave and her dire condition. What is she asking? She’s beckoning me forward, begging me to come to her. Does she expect me to carry her out? Is that what she’s asking?
“I can’t.” I point to the dot of pearly foam blocking the exit. “The waves. The tide is coming in. We can’t go out that way. How did you get here? Show me the way out.”
Of course she doesn’t understand. I curse my mother for never teaching me Japanese. The roar of the advancing waves echoing off the rock walls rises to a deafening level. The girl locks my gaze with hers and, without the slightest gesture or word, compels me to come forward.
I lean in closer, feeling as I do as if the ground is tilting under me, tipping me toward her. The closer I come to the girl, the softer the sound of the waves behind me becomes. By the time our foreheads are nearly touching, the roar is a silence more total than any I’ve ever known. Into that quiet comes a sound so soft that at first I can’t identify it. I listen hard and hear a sick mewling coming from somewhere beneath her blouse, as if she has the runt of a litter of kittens hidden there. It’s the whimpering of a newborn. An infant. A dying infant. That is who she is pleading for. That is who I was saved to save. The strange gravity pulls even more strongly at me, dragging me forward.
The girl raises her arms, begging me to save her baby. The bandage around her wrist slips off, and maggots like dancing rice boil out from the blackened gash of a wound on her forearm. They spill out over her body in unstoppable white waves. It is a vision from the nightmare I’ve had every night since Codie died. The image imprints itself on my mind and only gets worse when the kerosene light goes out and the cave falls into blackness. I feel like I’m being pulled down. And then I am fal
ling. Wind rushes through my hair. There is no end to the descent.
Exhausted, I sag down onto the cave floor. It is far cozier than my own bed. I could rest in this dark place, silent except for the white-noise roar of the sea. Really, truly rest. It would be unimaginably peaceful to simply lie here as, one by one, all the torments of life dwindled away until I could finally sleep. And all I have to do is lie quietly until the tide comes in to fill this stone hole like a swimming pool.
“Luz? Luz, are you back there? Luz?”
I consider answering the distant voice, but even as I do, a weariness so complete overtakes me and my eyelids droop shut and I am asleep before I can open my mouth.
“Luz!” Jake’s voice echoes as it recedes, moving farther and farther away from me. The first touch of a wave reaching back into the cave shocks me for a second. It is cold and alarming; I almost jerk awake, but the wave recedes and, easy as switching TV channels, I tune back in to the program where I am warm and carefree. I’m snuggling up against the luxuriant rock when I bump into what must be a sea urchin, because a spine like a steel pin pokes me, and I cry out from the pain.
Suddenly I’m awake and there’s a girl and a baby who need help. I feel blindly for the wall. My hands scrape against rock on all sides as I make my way out into the main tunnel. A pulse of light gleams faintly against the wet walls. I follow it into the tunnel, where the beam from a flashlight is disappearing.
“Jake, wait!”
“Luz.”
The beam bounces crazily off the damp walls as Jake runs, sloshing through the rising tide, back to me.
“Hurry, she’s in here.”
Jake, who’s wet from the waist down and holding the flashlight over his head to keep it dry, follows without any questions. He gives off a vibe like my mom when she’s in emergency mode and is just thinking about what needs to be done and how to do it. I rush ahead back into the dark. The kerosene lamp is still out, but the flashlight throws a smear of illumination onto the entrance to the chamber.
“She’s back in there. She has a baby.”
Jake nods, as if this is what he expected to hear.
I step aside and let him go in first. I can’t make myself face my nightmare, of Codie wounded, suffering. Not with a full light. I wait at the entrance to the chamber. The tide rises higher against my ankles.
“Jake, hurry. We have to get them out of here.”
I wait to hear Jake speaking to the girl in Japanese. But no sound emerges until he says, “Luz?”
I take a deep breath to steady myself and notice that the stench has disappeared. The cave now smells like stone washed by clean seawater. The only way I can make myself go back into the chamber is by keeping my eyes trained on Jake’s face. He’s calm in a way I’ll never be able to fake in a million years. My skin prickles from feeling the girl, lost in the black shadows at our feet, watching me, waiting for me to save her and her baby. The tide pulls away, back out of the cave, as Jake directs the flashlight down to the girl at our feet.
“Luz?” There’s a tenderness in his voice I’ve never heard before. “Is this what you mean?” I brace myself to see the girl revealed in its glare. Images flash through my mind of prisoners in dungeons, lepers in caves, shrinking from a harsh glare. But the light falls on nothing except bones. Bones so white and bleached they’re pieces of art made of ivory. There’s not even anything definably human about them.
Jake touches my shoulder. His hand, warm and steady, makes me aware that I’m shivering. “We have to leave.” Seawater splashes in, rising this time to our shins. “Now. Before the tide completely floods us in.”
Jake takes my hand and pulls me away. At the last second, something makes me turn back. I grab at the space where the sea urchin was, snatch up what I find there, stuff it into a pocket that I zipper shut, and Jake and I haul ass as fast as we can back down the tunnel.
The opening is lost in the foaming roil of water rushing in through the chink in the cliff that is our only way to escape. The waves surge in, pushing against our legs.
“The tide is in!” Jake yells. “We can’t get out!”
“No!” I scream back over the roar of the waves. My death is one thing, but Jake is absolutely not going to die too just for being kind. This time I’m the one who channels my mom, and when we catch each other’s gazes in the sputtering beam from the dying flashlight, we both know what we have to do. We brace ourselves against the battering power of the water, and Jake, using his surfer’s wisdom, calculates. At the exact moment that the flow reverses, he orders, “Dive!” The flashlight dies. I plunge forward into the torrent and am sucked into the wet darkness.
TWELVE
Anmā, she’s leaving; the stranger is leaving. You can’t let her leave. She was the one the kami sent to us.
Don’t fret; she will be sent again.
You should have killed her. She was ready. Why didn’t you kill her?
The kami stopped me.
But why? Why did they bring us up from the bottom of the sea here to this place to meet her if they didn’t wish us to claim her?
The kami knew we weren’t ready.
They made a mistake.
The kami never make a mistake. It is only we who make mistakes when interpreting their will.
No, Anmā, they made a mistake. They sent a demon who speaks demon language. And a girl besides. Why would they send a demon girl?
Because our fate is bound up with hers.
How do you know this? You’ve never even encountered a demon before.
I block the terrible memory that tries to twist into my mind.
Listen, my son: We knew long before the war came to our shores that the Americans were demons.
Because that is what you were taught in school?
No, Hatsuko and I didn’t need our Japanese rulers to teach us that. My father, your grandfather Shojin Kokuba, had already proved to us that our enemies were soulless monsters when he took us to the foreigners’ cemetery near the port of Tomari. Since we have to wait now, shall I tell you about it?
Yes.
All right, then. The visit was dangerous. To express any interest in the imperialistic enemies of the emperor was a treasonous crime, punishable by public flogging if the commander was merciful and beheading if he was not. But our father took the risk, because he believed it essential to impress upon his daughters that, in the unlikely event that the Americans did manage to overcome the invincible Imperial navy and invade our island, we, the young women of Okinawa, had to understand that Americans were not human, and that we would be used in beastly, unspeakable ways.
The round lenses of Father’s spectacles flashed like the beacons of the great lighthouse at Zanpa Saki as he nervously checked in all directions before we entered the neglected plot. Who knew what spies might be lurking about? But the only soul who passed was a bowlegged old man with whiskers long and white as Confucius’s, and a stack of dried pandanus leaves taller than himself lashed to his back. When Father was certain it was safe, he shooed us in like our mother driving her silky-eared goats before her.
At our approach, chartreuse-spotted monkey lizards skittered away from the weeds and vines choking the strangers’ graves. I reached for my big sister Hatsuko’s hand. Even in the still afternoon heat, her fingers were chilled by the presence of the unquiet spirits that occupied this shunned place. Weathered headstones lay flat on the ground, where any passing dog could lift its leg on them. Odd stick-letter words were etched horizontally into the foreigners’ grave markers.
I caught Hatsuko’s eye and jerked my head from side to side like a crazy girl, pretending to read the strange letters that made a person’s eyes twitch back and forth in such an unnatural way. Hatsuko rewarded me with a tight smile that she immediately covered, and I made the crazy-girl face again.
Our father cracked his walking stick against my backside. “Tamiko,” he hissed. “Do you think this is funny?”
“No, Father.” Fortunately it was his stick made of bamboo,
not the sturdy one of banyan wood, and the smack only stung for a moment. Overall, I preferred the bamboo cane to the times when Father disciplined me by making me kneel on rice with my hands tied behind my back for so long that when my punishment was over, Hatsuko had to help me stand, then dig out the grains embedded in my knees with the tips of her fingernails.
Father had been a schoolteacher before the day when he both married our mother and was adopted by her father, your great-grandfather, Masahide Kokuba. My mother’s father was a well-off farmer cursed with six daughters and no sons to inherit the family’s land or mortuary tablets or carry out the funeral rites that would ensure that Grandfather Kokuba would be with his kin group in the next world. That day in the barbarians’ cemetery, Father was once again the stern schoolteacher as he tapped the stick letters engraved on the tombstones, and said, “These are the names of four of the sailors who came with Commodore Perry on his expedition to force open the closed door of the mighty Japanese Empire and lay it bare to America’s imperialistic greed. When our king would not meet with him, Perry marched on Shuri Castle with two hundred of his men and they bullied their way through Shurei Gate like the barbarians they are.
“Though there had been no weapons on our island since the Japanese claimed Okinawa in 1609, and Commodore Perry and his men wore gleaming swords at the high waists of their white trousers and were guarded by soldiers carrying rifles with bayoneted tips that reached to the top of their impossibly tall hats, our brave king refused to meet with him. Instead, with smiles and gentle words, Perry was put off and forced to meet with a lowly regent in Hokuden Hall, where only the most minor of trading envoys were received. The people of Okinawa rejoiced at this brutal snub. They were certain that their king had shamed the mighty American commodore so thoroughly that he would slink away in disgrace.”