Some of the Best from Tor.com: 2014: A Tor.Com Original

by Various Authors

  I am an ugly woman now, she thinks, but looking at its gaze, she doesn’t believe that. Instead she says, “Kappa don’t save people. They drown them.”

  “Not I,” it says.

  Makino does not remember drowning in the river. She does not remember any of those days spent in bed. Her mother told her afterward that a policeman saved her, or it might have been the grocer’s son, or a teacher from the nearby elementary school. It was a different story each time. It was only after she was rescued that they finally patched the broken portion of the bridge. But that was so many years ago, a legend of her childhood that was smeared clear by time, whitewashed by age. She told Tetsuya about it once, arms wrapped around his back, one leg between his thighs. He kissed her knuckles and told her she was lucky, it was a good thing she didn’t die then, so that he could meet her and marry her and make love to her, the most beautiful girl in the world.

  She blinks back tears and holds her tongue.

  “I will tell you a fairytale,” the kappa says, “Because I know you love fairytales. A girl falls into a river—”

  “Stop,” she says, “I don’t want to hear it.” She holds out her hands, to keep it from moving closer. “My husband is dying.”

  * * *

  Tetsuya is asleep during her next visit. She cradles his hand in hers, running her thumb over his bony fingers—so wizened now, unable to heal anyone. She recalls the first time she noticed her love for him. She was making koicha, tea to be shared among close companions, under her teacher’s watchful gaze. Tetsuya wasn’t even present, but she found herself thinking of his teeth, his strange nervous laughter, the last time he took her out for dinner. The rainbow lights of Roppongi made zebra stripes across his skin, but he never dared kiss her, not even when she turned as the train was coming, looking at him expectantly. He never dared look her in the eye, not until she told him she would like to see him again, fingers resting on his sleeve.

  She looked down at the tea she was whisking and thought, this tastes like earth, like the bone marrow of beautiful spirits, like the first love I’ve yet to have. It is green like the color of spring leaves and my mother’s favorite skirt and the skin of a kappa. I’m in love with him. She whisked the tea too forcefully, some of it splashing over the edge of the cup.

  “Makino!” her sensei cried.

  She stood, heart drumming in her chest, bowed, apologized, bowed again. The tea had formed a butterfly-shaped splotch on the tatami mats.

  Tetsuya’s sudden moan jolts her from her thoughts—a broken sound that sets her heart beating as it did that moment, long ago. She spreads her palm over his brow.

  Does a kappa grant wishes? Is it a water god? Will it grant my wish, if I let it touch me? Will I let it touch me?

  She gives Tetusya’s forehead a kiss. “Don’t leave me before the New Year,” she says. She really means don’t leave me.

  * * *

  This time, it appears while she’s soaping her body.

  It asks if it can wash her hair.

  She remains crouched on her stool. The suggestion of touch makes her tremble, but she keeps her voice even. “Why should I let you?”

  “Because you are dear to me.”

  “That isn’t true,” she says. “I do know about you. You rape women and eat organs and trick people to get their shirikodama, and I’m not giving you that, I’m not going to let you stick your hand up my ass. I don’t want to die. And Tetsuya needs me.”

  “What if I tell you I need you? What if I could give you what you want? What if I,” it looks down at the water, and for a moment, in the rising mist, it looks like Tetsuya, when she first met him. Hesitant and wondering and clearly thinking of her. Monkeylike, but somehow pleasing to her eyes. “What if I could love you like him?”

  “You’re not him,” she says. Yet when it reaches out to touch her, she does not flinch. Its fingers in her hair are long and slim and make her stomach curl, and she only stops holding her breath when it pulls away.

  * * *

  The grocery is full of winter specials: Christmas cakes, discounted vegetables for nabe hotpot, imported hot chocolate mixes. After Christmas is over, these shelves will be rapidly cleared and filled with New Year specials instead, different foods for osechi-ryori. Her mother was always meticulous about a good New Year’s meal: herring roe for prosperity, sweet potatoes for wealth, black soybeans for health, giant shrimp for longevity. They’re only food, however; not spells, not magic. She ignores the bright display and walks to the fresh vegetables, looking for things to add to her curry.

  She’s almost finished when she sees the pile of cucumbers, and ghostlike, over it, the kitchen of her childhood. Mother stands next to her, back curved in concentration. She is carving Makino’s name into a cucumber’s skin with a toothpick. “We’ll throw this in the river,” Mother says, “so that the kappa won’t eat you.”

  “Does the kappa only appear in the river, mother? And why would the kappa want to eat me?”

  “Because it likes the flesh of young children, it likes the flesh of beautiful girls. You must do this every year, and every time you move. And don’t let them touch you, darling. I am telling you this for you are often silly, and they are cruel; do not let them touch you.”

  “But what if it does touch me, mother?”

  “Then you are a foolish girl, and you cannot blame me if it eats up everything inside you.”

  Young Makino rubs the end of the cucumber.

  Is there no way to befriend them, mother? But she doesn’t say those words, she merely thinks them, as her mother digs out the last stroke, the tail end of no in Ma-ki-no.

  She frowns at the display, or perhaps at the memory. If I throw a cucumber in the hot spring it will merely be cooked, she thinks. She buys a few anyway. At home, she hesitates, and then picks one up and scratches in Tetsuya’s name with a knife. She drops it into the river while biking to work the following morning. The rest of them she slices and eats with chilled yogurt.

  * * *

  When it appears next it is close enough that if it reached out it could touch her, but it stays in place.

  “Shall I recite some poetry for you?”

  She shakes her head. She thinks, the skins we inhabit and the things we long to do inside them, why are they so different?

  “I don’t even know your name,” she says.

  The way its beak cracks open looks almost like a smile. “I have many. Which would please you?”

  “The true one.”

  It is quiet for a moment, then it says, “I will give you the name I gave the rice farmer’s wife, and the shogun’s daughter, and the lady that died on the eve of the firebombs.”

  “Women you have loved?” Her own voice irritates her, thin and breathless in the steam-filled air.

  “Women who have called me Kawataro,” it says. “Women who would have drowned, had I not saved them and brought them back to life.”

  “Kawataro,” she says, tears prickling at the corner of her eyes. “Kawataro, why did you save me?”

  “Kindness is always worth saving.”

  “Why do you say I am kind?”

  It tips its head, the water inside sloshing precariously. It seems to be saying, will you prove me wrong?

  She swallows, lightheaded, full of nothing. Her pulse simmers in her ears. She crosses the distance between them and presses herself against its hard body, kisses its hard little mouth. Its hands, when they come up to stroke her back, are like ice in the boiling water.

  * * *

  Kawataro does not appear in the onsen the next time she visits. There are two foreigners sitting in the bath, smiling at her nervously, aware of their own intrusion. The blonde woman, who is quite lovely, chats with Makino in halting Japanese about how cold it is in winter, how there is nothing more delightful than a warm soak, or at least that’s what Makino thinks she is saying. Makino smiles back politely, and does not think about the feeling rising in her stomach—a strange hunger, a low ache, a sharp and painful reli
ef.

  * * *

  This is not a fairytale, Makino knows, and she is no princess, and the moon hanging in the sky is only a moon, not a jewel hanging on a queen’s neck, not the spun silk on a weaver’s loom. The man she loves is dying, snowfall is filling her ears, and she is going to come apart unless somebody saves him.

  The bakery closes for the winter holiday, the last set of customers buying all the cakes on Christmas Eve. Rui comes over as Makino is removing her apron. “Mizuki-san. Thank you for working hard today.” She bows. “I’ll be leaving now.”

  “Thank you for working hard today,” Makino echoes. She’s not the owner, but she is the eldest of the staff, the one who looks least attractive in their puffy, fluffy uniforms. Rui and Ayaka are college students; Yurina and Kaori are young wives, working while they decide whether they want children. Makino gets along with them well enough, but recently their nubile bodies make her tired and restless.

  She never had her own children—a fact that Tetsuya mourned, then forgave, because he had a kind heart, because he knew her own was broken. She used to console herself by thinking it was a blessing, that she could keep her slim figure, but even that turned out to be a lie.

  Rui twists her fingers in her pleated skirt, hesitating. Makino braces herself for the question, but it never comes, because the bell over the door rings and a skinny, well-dressed boy steps in. Rui’s face breaks into a smile, the smile of someone deeply in love. “Just a minute,” she calls to the boy. He nods and brings out his phone, tapping away. She turns back to Makino, and dips her head again.

  “Enjoy yourself,” Makino says, with a smile.

  “Thank you very much. Merry Christmas,” Rui answers. Makino envies her; hates her, briefly, without any real heat. Rui whips off her apron, picks up her bag, and runs to the boy. They stride together into the snowy evening.

  * * *

  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 fe
ll 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.