*
That night, the foreigners are gone, and Kawataro is back. It tells her about the shogun’s daughter. How she would stand in the river and wait for him, her robes gathered around one fist. How her child, when it was born, was green, and how she drowned it in the river, sobbing, before anyone else could find it. How Kawataro had stroked her hair and kissed her cheeks and—Makino doesn’t believe this part—how it had grieved for its child, their child, floating down the river.
“And what happened?” Makino says, trailing one finger idly along Kawataro’s shoulders. They are sitting together on the edge of the tub, their knees barely visible in the water.
Kawataro’s tongue darts over its beak. Makino thinks about having that tongue in her mouth, tasting the minerals of the bathwater in her throat. She thinks about what it means to be held in a monster’s arms, what it means to hold a monster. Kappa nappa katta, kappa nappa ippa katta.
Am I the leaf he has bought with sweet words, one leaf of many?
Kawataro turns to her, face solemn as it says, “She drowned herself.”
It could not save her, perhaps; or didn’t care to, by then? Makino thinks about the shogun’s daughter: her bloated body sailing through the water, her face blank in the moonlight, the edges of her skin torn by river dwellers. She thinks of Kawataro watching her float away, head bent, the water in its sara shimmering under the stars.
Katte kitte kutta.
Will I be bought, cut, consumed?
She presses her damp forehead against Kawataro’s sleek green shoulder. Have I already been?
“How will this story end?” she asks.
It squeezes her knee with its webbed hand, then slips off the ledge into the water, waiting for her to follow. She does.
She spends Christmas Day in the hospital, alternately napping, reading to Tetsuya, and exchanging pleasantries with the doctors and nurses who come to visit. She leans as close as she can to him, as if proximity might leech the pain from his body, everything that makes him ache, makes him forget. It won’t work, she knows. She doesn’t have that kind of power over him, over anyone. Perhaps the closest she has come to such power is during sex.
The first time she and Tetsuya made love he’d been tender, just as she imagined, his fingers trembling as he undid the hooks of her bra. She cupped his chin and kissed his jaw and ground her hips against his, trying to let him know she wanted this, he didn’t need to be afraid. He gripped her hips and she wrapped her legs around him, licking a wet line from his neck to his ear. He carried her to the bed, collapsing so that they landed in a tangled pile, desperately grappling with the remainders of each other’s clothing. His breath was ragged as he moved slowly inside her, and she tried not to cry out, afraid of how much she wanted him, how much she wanted him to want her.
On his lips that night her name was a blessing: the chant of monks, the magic spells all fairytales rest on.
Now he stirs, and his eyes open. He says her name with a strange grace, a searching wonder, as if how they came to know each other is a mystery. “Makino?”
“Yes, my darling?”
His breath, rising up to her, is the stale breath of the dying.
“So that’s where you are,” he says at last. He gropes for her hand and holds it. “You’re there, after all. That’s good.” He pauses, for too long, and when she looks at him she sees he has fallen asleep once more.
*
The next time they meet, they spend several minutes soaking together in silence.
She breaks it without preamble. “Kawataro, why do you love me?” Her words are spoken without coyness or fear or fury.
“A woman in grief is a beautiful one,” it answers.
“That’s not enough.”
Kawataro’s eyes are two black stones in a waterfall of mist. It is a long time before it finally speaks.
“Four girls,” it says. “Four girls drowned in three villages, before they fixed the broken parts in the bridges over the river. My river.” It extends its hand and touches the space between her breasts, exerting the barest hint of pressure. Her body tenses, but she keeps silent, immobile. “You were the fifth. You were the only one who accepted my hand when I stretched it out. You,” it says, “were the only one who let me lay my hands upon you.”
The memory breaks over her, unreal, so that she almost feels like Kawataro has cast a spell on her—forged it out of dreams and warped imaginings. The terrible rain. The realization that she couldn’t swim. The way the riverbank swelled, impenetrable as death. How she sliced her hand open on a tree root, trying desperately to grab onto something. How she had seen the webbed hand stretched towards her, looked at the gnarled monkey face, sobbed as she clung for her life, river water and tears and rain mingled on her cheeks. How it tipped its head down and let something fall into her gaping, gurgling mouth, to save her.
“I was a stupid little girl,” she says. “I could have drowned then, to spare myself this.” She laughs, shocking herself; the sound bounces limply against the tiles.
Kawataro looks away.
“You are breaking my heart, Makino.”
“You have no heart to break,” she says, in order to hurt it; yet she also wants to be near it, wants it to tell her stories, wants its cold body to temper the heat of the water.
It looks to the left, to the right, and it takes a moment for her to realize that it is shaking its head. Then in one swift motion it wraps its arms around her and squeezes, hard, and Makino remembers how kappa like to wrestle, how they can force the life out of horses and cattle by sheer strength. “I could drain you,” it says, hissing into her ear. “I could take you apart, if that would help. I could take everything inside you and leave nothing but a hollow shell of your skin. I do not forget kindness, but I will let you forget yours, if it will please you.”
Yes, she thinks, and in the same heartbeat, but no, not like this.
She pushes against it, and it releases her. She takes several steps back and lifts her head, appraising.
“Will you heal my husband?” she asks.
“Will you love me?” it asks.
The first time she fell in love with Tetsuya, she was making tea. The first time she fell in love, she was drowning in a river.
“I already do.”
Kawataro looks at her with its eyes narrowed in something like sadness, if a monster’s face could be sad. It bows its head slightly, and she sees the water inside it—everything that gives it strength—sparkling, reflecting nothing but the misted air.
“Come here,” it says, quiet and tender. “Come, my darling Makino, and let me wash your back.”
*
Tetsuya drinks the water from Kawataro’s sara.
Tetsuya lives.
The doctors cannot stop saying what a miracle it is. They spend New Year’s Eve together, eating the osechi-ryori Makino prepared. They wear their traditional attire and visit the temple at midnight, and afterward they watch the sunrise, holding each other’s cold hands.
*
It is still winter, but some stores have already cleared space for their special spring bargains. Makino mouths a rhyme as she sets aside ingredients for dinner. Tetsuya passes her and kisses her cheek, thoughtlessly. He is on his way to the park for his afternoon walk.
“I’m leaving now,” he says.
“Come back safely,” she answers. She feels just as much affection for Tetsuya as she did before, but nothing else. Some days her hollowness frightens her. Most days she has learned to live with it.
When the door shuts behind him, she spends some moments in the kitchen, silently folding one hand over the other. She decides to take a walk. Perhaps after the walk she will visit her mother. She puts a cucumber and a paring knife into her bag and heads out. By now the cold has become bearable, like the empty feeling in her chest. She follows the river towards the bridge where she once nearly lost her life.
In the middle of the bridge she stands and looks down at the water. She has been saved twice now by
the same monster. Twice is more than enough. With a delicate hand, she carves the character for love on the cucumber, her eyes blurring, clearing. She leans over the bridge and lets the cucumber fall.
CONTRIBUTORS
Kathe Koja’s 16 novels include The Cipher, Skin Buddha Boy, Talk, and the Under the Poppy trilogy (Under the Poppy, The Mercury Waltz, and The Bastards’ Paradise). Her work has been multiply translated and optioned for film. She creates immersive events with her performance ensemble, nerve.
Michael Kelly is the Series Editor for the Year’s Best Weird Fiction. He’s been a finalist for the World Fantasy Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the British Fantasy Society Award. His fiction has appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including Black Static, Best New Horror, Postscripts, and Supernatural Tales. He is the proprietor of Undertow Publications.
Nathan Ballingrud is the author of North American Lake Monsters: Stories, from Small Beer Press; and The Visible Filth, a novella from This Is Horror. His work has appeared in numerous Year’s Best anthologies, and he has twice won the Shirley Jackson Award. He lives with his daughter in Asheville, NC.
Siobhan Carroll’s research has required many tea sessions at the Scott Polar Research Institute and much time spent squinting at explorers’ handwriting. However, ‘Wendigo Nights’ represents the first time the Arctic appears in her fiction. She suspects this development triggered the 2014 discovery of the HMS Erebus through some mysterious entanglement of the universe. When not globetrotting in search of dusty tomes, she lives and lurks in Delaware. Her other fiction can be found in magazines like Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Lightspeed. For more, visit http://voncarr-siobhan-carroll.blogspot.com/
Michael Cisco is the author of novels The Divinity Student (Buzzcity Press, 1999, winner of the International Horror Writers Guild award for best first novel of 1999), The Tyrant (Prime, 2004), The San Veneficio Canon (Prime, 2005), The Traitor (Prime, 2007), The Narrator (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2010), The Great Lover (Chomu Press, 2011), Celebrant (Chomu Press, 2012), and Member (Chomu Press 2013). His short story collection, Secret Hours, was published by Mythos Press in 2007. His scholarly work has appeared in Lovecraft Studies, The Weird Fiction Review, Iranian Studies, and Lovecraft and Influence.
Considered a modern master of the short story, and one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, Julio Cortázar was an Argentine novelist, short story writer, poet, translator, and essayist. Born in 1914, Cortázar died in 1984.
Amanda C. Davis has an engineering degree and a fondness for baking, gardening, and low-budget horror films. Her work has appeared in Crossed Genres, Shock Totem, Goblin Fruit, and others. She tweets enthusiastically as @davisac1. You can find out more about her and read more of her work at http://www.amandacdavis.com
K.M. Ferebee’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Strange Horizons, Shimmer, and Tor.com. Formerly a musician with the band Beirut, she holds an MFA in Creative Writing from The Ohio State University, where she is currently pursuing a PhD in Rhetoric. She can usually be found on the Internet.
Karen Joy Fowler has written literary, contemporary, historical, and science fiction. She’s published three collections of short stories, most recently What I Didn’t See. Her novels include Sarah Canary and The Jane Austen Book Club. Her last novel to date, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, won the 2013 PEN/Faulkner, the California Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker in 2014. She lives in Santa Cruz, California.
Two-time winner of the John Dryden Translation prize, Clarion alum Edward Gauvin has received fellowships from the NEA, PEN America, the CNL, ALTA, and the French Embassy. His books include Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud’s selected stories, A Life on Paper (Small Beer, 2010), winner of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Award, and Jean Ferry’s The Conductor and Other Tales (Wakefield, 2013). His work has been nominated for the French-American Foundation Translation Prize, the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize, and the Best Translated Book Award.
Vince Haig does design, layout, and illustrative work. Find out more at barquing.com
Cat Hellisen lives near the sea in Cape Town, South Africa. She is the author of the fantasy novels When the Sea is Rising Red, House of Sand and Secrets, and Beastkeeper. She likes Bloody Marys, miserable folk songs, and long walks in nuclear fallout.
Kima Jones has received fellowships from PEN Center USA Emerging Voices, Kimbilio Fiction and The MacDowell Colony. She has been published at Guernica, NPR, PANK and The Rumpus among others. Kima lives in Los Angeles and is writing her first poetry collection, The Anatomy of Forgiveness.
Caitlín R. Kiernan is a two-time recipient of both the World Fantasy and Bram Stoker awards, and the New York Times has declared her “one of our essential writers of dark fiction.” Her recent novels include The Red Tree and The Drowning Girl: A Memoir, and, to date, her short stories have been collected in twelve volumes, including Tales of Pain and Wonder, A is for Alien, The Ammonite Violin & Others, and the World Fantasy Award winning The Ape’s Wife and Other Stories. Currently she’s editing her thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth collections—Beneath an Oil Dark Sea: The Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan (Volume 2) and Cambrian Tales (Subterranean Press) and Houses Under the Sea: Mythos Tales (Centipede Press). She has recently concluded Alabaster, her award-winning, three-volume graphic novel for Dark Horse Comics. She is working on a screenplay and will soon begin work on her next novel, Interstate Love Song. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island.
Born in Poland and educated at the Polytechnic Institute in Wroclaw, Tomasz Alen Kopera now lives and works in Northern Ireland. His work is inspired mainly by surrealism and symbolism. He is fascinated with the work of famous painters such as Z. Beksinski, J. Malczewski and H.R. Giger. He is a talented and skilled artist, whose already developed artistic workshop convinces about high susceptibility; what is more, accuracy of drawing and his unique perception of colours are of the highest artistic level. “Throughout my works I try to reach and influence human subconsciousness. I always wish to embrace the viewer’s attention for a while; to evoke necessity for contemplation, thinking and considering. I hope to have created some specific climate of anxiety and mystery at the same time. The subjects of my paintings are connected with visualisation of reality, with variety of emotions and sometimes with fears I experience in everyday life. It happens that my works awake negative feelings and, to some extent that is intended; but what really matters is the rule to affect senses by contrasts. Eventually I would like the viewer to find positive aspects of life.” His new paintings are eagerly sought by a growing body of fine art collectors both in his native Poland, Ireland and Great Britain. His work was also recently accepted for inclusion in the 124th Royal Ulster Academy of Arts Annual Exhibition in Belfast.
Rich Larson was born in West Africa, has studied in Rhode Island and Edmonton, Alberta, and at 23 now works in a small Spanish town outside Seville. His short work has been nominated for the Theodore Sturgeon and appears in multiple Year’s Best anthologies, as well as in magazines such as Asimov’s, Clarkesworld, F&SF, Interzone, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, BCS and Apex. Find him at richwlarson.tumblr.com
Carmen Maria Machado is a fiction writer, critic, and essayist whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, The Paris Review, AGNI, NPR, The American Reader, Los Angeles Review of Books, VICE, and elsewhere. Her stories have been reprinted in several anthologies, including Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2015 and Best Women’s Erotica. She has been the recipient of the Richard Yates Short Story Prize, a Millay Colony for the Arts residency, the CINTAS Foundation Fellowship in Creative Writing, and a Michener-Copernicus Fellowship, and has been nominated for a Nebula Award and the Shirley Jackson Award. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop, and lives in Philadelphia with her partner.
Usman T. Malik is a Pakistani writer resident in Florida. His fiction has won the Bram Stoker
Award and been nominated for the Nebula. His novella The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn is out at Tor.com. In 2013, he led Pakistan’s first speculative fiction workshop in Lahore in conjunction with Desi Writers Lounge. He can be found on Twitter @usmantm
Nick Mamatas is the author of several novels, including Love is the Law and The Last Weekend, and over one hundred pieces of short fiction. His stories have appeared in Weird Tales, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Best American Mystery Stories and many other magazines and anthologies. Nick works as an editor for VIZ Media, and recently co-edited the anthology of Japanese SF/fantasy crime fiction, Hanzai Japan. His fiction, non-fiction, and editorial work has been nominated for the Hugo, World Fantasy, Shirley Jackson, and Bram Stoker Awards.
Sunny Moraine’s short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Nightmare, Shimmer, and Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History, among many other places. They are also responsible for the novel trilogies Casting the Bones and Root Code. Her first collection of short fiction, Singing With All My Skin and Bone, is due out in 2016. They unfortunately live just outside Washington DC in a creepy house with two cats and a very long-suffering husband.
Heir to Jean Ray and Thomas Owen, Jean Muno, born in 1924, is considered the greatest of Belgium’s Silver Age fabulists. A member of Belgium’s Royal Academy of Language and Literature, Muno is the author of nine novels and four short story collections. In 1979 he received the Prix Rossel. He died in 1988.
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