(eng) Patrick Ness by The Crane Wife

Author:The Crane Wife [Wife, The Crane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

He woke. Not with a cry or a sudden sitting up in bed, heart pounding. Nothing so dramatic. He merely opened his eyes.

They were wet with tears.

‘Kumiko?’ he asked of the solitary darkness of his room, knowing she was at her own home tonight, knowing this was a night where he slept alone.

He asked it again anyway. ‘Kumiko?’

But there was no answer.

‘I want you,’ he said. ‘Oh, how I want you.’

And, being George, he was ashamed of his greed.

III.

Amanda brought it to work with her. Not every day, but often. Which wasn’t even remotely appropriate given the money certain people seemed increasingly willing to spend on them, but also because it was precious to her for deeper reasons, ones she couldn’t properly articulate to herself, much less be able to explain if anyone asked. Which was the risk of bringing it to work. If anyone saw it, they’d definitely ask.

So this morning, when she left the flat, she made the firm decision not to bring it. And then, like she had a number of times before, she changed her mind.

It was the usual black tile, like the one she’d seen in her father’s shop, and upon it had been placed segments of white feathers, cut and trimmed and woven to suggest a horizon and a sky, and in that sky, against a bed of shimmering down, a bird in flight. A white bird against a white sky, but definitely separate, definitely soaring but somehow, also, still. At rest.

Below the bird, one of her father’s cuttings from the pages of a book, which she (and, to be fair, often he) had always dismissed as ‘aimless natterings’, but here given new power, new context. These words – and words they were, bold ones, earthy ones, sometimes literally, a fungus here, an eggplant there and just down at the bottom, tucked away so you almost couldn’t see it, a plaintive little arse that moved her somehow, every time – these words made a mountain, as solid and present as the eternal earth, anchoring the tile in place, solidifying the stillness of the bird. There was peace here, with hints somehow that it was perhaps ragged, perhaps hard-earned, but peace nonetheless.

She hid it in the top drawer of her desk and, opening the drawer to look at it now, she felt the same as the first time she’d seen it, that she was atop a precipice and about to fall, that though it was dizzying and frightening, there was also a possible liberation in the falling.

Looking at it actually made her short of breath.

Because it also felt like–

Well, it was a stupid word, wasn’t it? Worse, a stupid notion, one that clearly hadn’t been intended, though kindness obviously had, but she could never say it out loud, never think on it too long even in the privacy of her own head.

Because it also felt like–

Well, goddammit, it felt like love. Like forgiveness, somehow, which maybe were the same thing sometimes.

At which point she always told herself that it was just a tile, for God’s sake.

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