The Crane Wife

by Patrick Ness

  ‘Oh, no,’ the man mumbled to himself again, starting to shiver uncontrollably now. ‘Oh, shit.’

  He glanced down. It looked back at him with that golden eye, unblinking, its neck curved against his coat like a question mark.

  There was no solution then. It was too cold. He was too cold. The arrow obviously too thick and strong. It might as well have been made of iron. The crane was going to die. This reed made of stars was going to die right here, in his sad little back garden.

  A tidal wave of failure washed over him. Was there another way? Was there any other way at all? He turned back to the door to his kitchen, still open, letting out every bit of meagre warmth from the house. Could he carry the crane back inside? Could he lift it and get it there without hurting it further?

  The crane, for its part, seemed to have already given up on him, to have already judged him, as so many others had, as a pleasant enough man, but lacking that certain something, that extra little ingredient to be truly worth investing in. It was a mistake women often seemed to make. He had more female friends, including his ex-wife, than any straight man he knew. The trouble was they’d all started out as lovers, before realising that he was too amiable to take quite seriously. ‘You’re about sixty-five per cent,’ his ex-wife had said, as she left him. ‘And I think seventy is probably my minimum.’ The trouble was, seventy per cent seemed to be every woman’s minimum.

  Seventy seemed to be the crane’s minimum, too. It had made the same mistake as all the others, seeing a man when, upon closer inspection, he was only really a guy.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said to the crane, tears coming again. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  The arrow moved unexpectedly in his hands. The crane, seemingly in an involuntary shudder, nudged its wing forward and the arrow slid through the man’s fingers.

  And stopped.

  The man felt something. A small crack in the wood of the arrow. He looked closer. It was hard to see in such dim light, but yes, definitely a crack, one big enough to follow even with frozen fingertips. It spliced through the shaft, no doubt broken there by the struggles of the crane’s great wing. The man could even feel that the arrow was at slightly different angles on either side of it.

  He looked back down at the crane. It regarded him, thinking who knew what.

  An accident, surely. Absurd to think that the animal would have led his fingers to it.

  But also absurd that a crane with an arrow through its wing had landed in his back garden.

  He said, ‘I’ll try.’

  He gripped the side of the arrow closest to the pierced wing and held it as steadily as he could. He took the other end in his fist near the crack. The cold was so fierce now that he was feeling actual pain in his hands. It would have to be now. It would have to be right now.

  ‘Please,’ the man whispered. ‘Please.’

  He broke the arrow.

  A massive sound rent the air, not from the breaking arrow but as of an enormous flag slapping in a gale. The crane surged to its feet, flinging wide both its wings, and the man fell back in surprise onto the concrete slabs at the edge of his lawn. He threw up an arm to protect himself as the pointed end of the arrow flew free, bouncing harmlessly off his arm and leaving a smear of the crane’s blood across it, the other half disappearing into darkness. He would never find either, always firmly believing that the blood had been too tempting for a starving winter fox not to carry them off.

  The bird stood above him now, reaching its head up into the night and calling silently again at the moon. Its wings, fully unfurled, were wider than the man was tall. The crane flapped them in long, slow, powerful movements. It shook the damaged wing once, then once more. The man could still see blood staining the feathers from the wound, but the crane seemed satisfied with its performance.

  It stilled itself, its wings reaching out as far as they could go.

  It turned its head to regard him with that unblinking eye, a shock of gold under its dark, red crown. The man wondered for a fanciful moment if it was going to reach down and scoop him up in those wings, as if this was some kind of test that he’d passed, one that, had he failed, he would never have remembered taking.

  Then he found himself saying something stupid, something that made no sense at all.

  ‘My name,’ he said, ‘is George.’

  He said it to the crane.

  As if in answer, the crane bowed its long, long neck low towards the ground, keeping its shoulders up and wings out. It began flapping them in a different way, one that caused it to almost fall forward onto the man. He scooted back some more, and when the crane left the ground its burning white breast soared an inch from the man’s upturned nose. He looked back to watch it veer sharply upwards to avoid running into his house, carrying on up to the peak of his roof and alighting there for a moment. The moon was bright behind it, cutting it into a frozen silhouette.

  It ducked its head once more, unfurled its wings, and swooped down over the back garden, its thin black legs trailing behind it, then up and up and up and up and up, until it was nothing more than one star among many in the night sky and soon not even that.

  The man, George, rose slowly from the icy ground, a worrying ache starting to curl through his bare torso. He was shivering so badly now it was all he could do to stand, and he wondered if he was falling into shock. He would need a warm bath, and he’d need it soon, though he was already wondering if he’d have the strength to make it back inside–

  A jolt ran through his body as he heard it, one more time. The keening, the mournful call that had brought him out here in the first place. It echoed through the frosty, clear air, as if it was the night itself calling out to him. The crane was saying its goodbye, its thank you, its–

  And then he realised that the call hadn’t come from an impossible bird vanishing from his garden and life and out of the whole world for all he knew. The keen had been set free from his own body, cried out from icy blue lips, torn from a chest that suddenly seemed to hold his irreparably broken yet still beating heart.

  ‘But this says Patty.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what it says here on the order form, too.’

  ‘Do I look like a Patty to you?’

  ‘I suppose they could have thought it was for your wife.’

  ‘My wife is called Colleen.’

  ‘Well, then, Patty would have clearly been wrong for her–’

  ‘I saw the man type it in myself. Pea, ay, double dee, why. Paddy. And yet, follow along with my finger here as I underline the letters, this very, very unambiguously says Patty.’

  ‘Which is what it says here on the order form.’

  ‘But which is not what I saw the man type.’

  ‘I’m guessing maybe they looked at the vest and thought that since it was so pink–’

  ‘They? Who are they?’

  ‘The printers.’

  ‘This isn’t a printers?’

  ‘Not that kind of printers. We’re more of a flyer, poster-design kind of–’

  ‘So you’re a printing shop that doesn’t do its own printing.’

  ‘Not at all, as I say, we’re more of a flyer–’

  ‘Regardless, for printing onto running vests–’

  ‘And t-shirts.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s not just running vests we send out. T-shirts, too. Hen nights, stag dos, that kind of–’

  ‘You send them out.’

  ‘We send them out.’

  ‘With specific orders that someone in this shop types into a form on your screen there.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So when I saw the man, quite a bit older than you, which is to say a grown-up, he typed in, before my very own eyes, Pea, ah, double dee, why–’

  ‘That would have been the specific orders to the outside printing company, yes.’

  ‘Which they didn’t follow.’

  ‘According to you, anyway, but it clearly says Patty on the order form–’

  ‘DO
I LOOK LIKE A PATTY TO YOU?’

  ‘There’s no need for the shouting. We’re just trying to solve a problem, two reasonable men–’

  ‘Neither of whom are called Patty.’

  ‘I’m from Turkey. We don’t have Paddy versus Patty, okay? So how am I to know? Like I said, they probably saw the colour of the vest–’

  ‘That’s the colour of the charity. Pink is the colour of the charity. Breast Cancer. Pink. Because it affects women. Mostly women do the fundraising, but some men do, too. We run, we raise money. It’s the colour of the charity. It has nothing to do with the gender of the vest.’

  ‘Well, now, see, that’s interesting. Would you say vests had genders?’

  ‘Yes, I would say that. Men’s extra large. It’s right there on the tag. Men’s. Extra. Large. Really, am I being filmed? Is that what this is? Ah, here’s the guy–’

  ‘What’s going on, Mehmet?’

  ‘Customer here not happy with his order, Mr Duncan.’

  ‘Do I look like a Patty to you?’

  ‘I couldn’t really say without knowing you better, but I’m guessing no.’

  ‘Then why does this say–’

  ‘Obviously an error. I very clearly remember typing in Paddy with two dees.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘We’ll get that fixed for you overnight.’

  ‘The race is on Sunday.’

  ‘And overnight will be Friday. It’ll be fine.’

  ‘I’m just saying there’s no room for error. Any more error.’

  ‘Don’t you worry. You’ve got my personal guarantee.’

  ‘You hear that? George Duncan’s personal guarantee.’

  ‘Which means exactly what?’

  ‘It’ll be here tomorrow, Paddy, I promise you. If I have to drive to St Ives–’

  ‘Your printer’s in St Ives?’

  ‘If I have to drive to St Ives and pick it up myself.’

  ‘That’s a twelve-hour round trip.’

  ‘You’ve done it? I’ve found the A30 not too bad if you–’

  ‘Just . . . By tomorrow, please. Spelled properly.’

  ‘You have my word.’

  ‘. . .’

  ‘. . .’

  ‘. . . Well, he was a grouchy one.’

  ‘Stop winding up the customers, Mehmet. There’s a recession on.’

  ‘Ah, see, another good point. With the recession on, Patty, does the misspelling of one’s name really amount to so very, very much–’

  ‘What do I keep saying? Customer service. It’s not something I’ve just made up to punish you.’

  ‘They only do that stuff in America, George. Can I Help You, Sir. You Look Fabulous In That, Sir. Can I Get You Some More Iced Tea, Sir.’

  ‘. . . so you’ve never been to America then.’

  ‘Television. Exactly the same thing.’

  ‘Please, just call St Ives, tell them we have an urgent correction. And while you’re at it, ask them where the Brookman Stag Do t-shirts are. The boys are leaving for Riga tonight and they should have been here by–’

  ‘Brookman?’

  ‘. . . Oh, what’s that look, Mehmet? I don’t like that look. Please tell me–’

  ‘The Brookman ones have already gone out. He came by when you were at lunch.’

  ‘Oh, no. No, no, no. I checked the order myself and all that had come in were–’

  ‘The light blue ones with the kittens on the front.’

  ‘Those were the O’Riley Hen Night! Why on earth would light blue kittens be for a stag do? They even said Hen Night–’

  ‘We don’t have hen nights in Turkey! How am I supposed to know the difference?’

  ‘You moved here when you were three!’

  ‘What’s the big deal? They’ll all be so drunk, who’s going to notice?’

  ‘I suspect ten soldiers from Her Majesty’s Coldstream Guards might notice that a light blue cartoon kitten with a hand over its genitals isn’t quite–’

  ‘Paw.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If it was a kitten, it’d be a paw. And what’s it supposed to be doing, anyway? Pleasuring itself? Because how is that a theme for a hen night?’

  ‘. . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Call Brookman, Mehmet. He obviously hasn’t opened his box of t-shirts yet for whatever reason–’

  ‘Yeah, he did seem in a bit of a hurry. Not even enough time to look at them.’

  ‘. . . You’re smiling.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘You are. You did it on purpose.’

  ‘I did not!’

  ‘Mehmet!’

  ‘You accuse me of everything! It’s racist!’

  ‘Call him. Now.’

  ‘I don’t see why I have to do all the crappy jobs around here. All you do is moon around in the back making your precious little cuttings. Like what’s that one even supposed to be?’

  ‘What one?’

  ‘The one you’ve been carrying this whole time. The one you just hid behind your back.’

  ‘This? This is nothing. This is–’

  ‘Looks like a goose.’

  ‘It’s not a goose. It’s a crane.’

  ‘A crane.’

  ‘A crane.’

  ‘. . . like the kind that builds buildings? ’Cause, George, I hate to break it to you–’

  ‘Go. Now. Now, now, now, now, now–’

  ‘I’m going. God. Slavery was abolished two hundred years ago, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I know, by William Wilberforce.’

  ‘And you wonder why no one asks you out. I really don’t think women get turned on by William Wilberforce references. Not that I’d know, I’ll admit–’

  ‘I have had no problems with girlfriends, Mehmet.’

  ‘You mean like the last one? The secret girlfriend no one ever saw who didn’t have a name? Did she live in Canada, George? Was she called Alberta?’

  ‘I don’t even begin to understand those sentences.’

  ‘Musical theatre reference. Like a foreign language to you. Which reminds me, I’ve got an audition–’

  ‘Yes, fine, whatever, just put it in the schedule and make the call. And don’t spend a half hour twittering before you do.’

  ‘Twittering. Was the world in colour yet when you were born, George? And gravity all the time?’

  ‘Do you honestly think you’re a quality enough employee for me not to fire you?’

  ‘Oh, here we go. “It’s my shop. I own it–”’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Fine. I’ll leave you here alone with your goose.’

  ‘Crane.’

  ‘Well, I hope you’re gonna label it, because no one is ever going to think “crane” when they see that.’

  ‘It’s not for everyone. It’s . . .’

  ‘It’s what?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘No, you’ve gone all bashful. You’re even blushing!’

  ‘No, stop, what? Nothing, no. I just. Saw a crane. Last night.’

  ‘. . . by “crane”, do you mean “prostitute”?’

  ‘No! Jesus Christ, if you must know, a crane landed in my garden.’

  ‘. . . And?’

  ‘And nothing, go make the calls!’

  ‘Fine, watch me walking.’

  ‘And quit sighing like that.’

  ‘Customer, Mr Duncan.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said, customer, George. Behind you.’

  ‘I didn’t hear the door–’

  ‘. . .’

  ‘. . .’

  ‘. . .’

  ‘Can I . . . ?’

  ‘My name,’ she said, ‘is Kumiko.’

  People were always surprised to find out that George was American, or at least that he had started life that way. They told him he didn’t ‘seem’ American. When asked what exactly this entailed, they would look uncertain – not uncertain about what ‘seeming’ American might mean but uncertain about how badly they wanted to o
ffend him.

  These people, friends even, many of them highly educated, many who had visited America several times, were surprisingly difficult to budge from their assumption that, George aside (of course, of course), his 300 million compatriots were all of them passport-less, irony-hating Jesus-praisers who voted for apparently insane politicians, all the while complaining that their outrageously cheap petrol wasn’t nearly cheap enough. ‘America is,’ they would say, and so confidently, without fear of contradiction or rebuttal to anything that followed.

  ‘The New Yorker,’ he would reply. ‘Jazz. Meryl Streep.’

  This usually just prompted them to try out their approximation of an American accent, all wheedling brightness and too much blinking. At least it had morphed over the years; for a full decade after he’d moved to England, people would dive ecstatically into J.R. Ewing’s worst twang. ‘I’m from Tacoma,’ he would say.

  No one wanted to hear that people other than themselves might be complicated, that no one was ever just one thing, no history ever just one version. It was oddly hard for them to accept that, though American, he was neither from the Deep South or the East Coast, that his upbringing was in the Pacific Northwest, where the accents were mild and nearly Canadian, and even though his parents had ticked a stereotypical box by being regular church-attenders – which, all right, it was difficult to find American Protestants who weren’t – they’d been slightly laissez-faire about it, as if it were a duty, like vaccinations. His father had been a secret smoker, for example, even though the church was of an evangelical strain and frowned on such things. George also knew from a startling, never-to-be-discussed accidental sighting that his parents occasionally rented pornography on VHS from the gas station down the road. ‘People are legion,’ he would insist, ‘even when it’s inconvenient to a worldview.’

  Take his one anomalous school year. Even that wasn’t a simple story, as if there were any such things. He had sailed through kindergarten (though who doesn’t sail through kindergarten? he thought. Wasn’t it basically just showing up and not choking on things?) and performed above his level through first and second grades – indeed, occasionally being sent up to fourth grade reading groups just to keep the boredom from setting in. The teachers loved him, loved his big blue eyes, loved a compliance that bordered on the slavish, loved a complexion that looked like he was about to grow a beard, aged six.