SNOW AS IT FALLS, by Patricia Correll 6/10
The other cranes were wary of her. Perhaps the smell of Shigeru clung to her and she no longer noticed, having stayed so long in his nest. She pretended not to see, but the distance they kept felt like cold needles of rain on her heart. The crane had never been shunned before, and it gnawed at her insides.
Nor had she ever felt sorrow, so it took her a long time to understand what the cold, hard stone that had settled in her stomach was. For the first time her joy was tempered. The thrill of marsh water flowing over her feet, the rustle of wind in her feathers- these pleasures felt hollow because Shigeru was not there to share them. At night she stood alone, away from the others, and thought about him. She thought of the warmth and crackle of the fire, the sound of his voice rising and falling. She remembered his laughter and his tears. As the days passed, memory became longing. She wished to hear him call her ‘Lady Crane’ again. She might have returned to him, but she was a beast. He had been kind to look after her, to save her life, but surely he preferred his own kind. The crane wished she could weep, but her eyes remained dry. If she had the words to pray she might have prayed, but she didn’t know what to pray for.
One morning she woke with the dawn as she always did. She felt cold, very cold, and wet. She opened her eyes and immediately closed them again, dizzy and frightened. Everything looked too bright, fuzzy around the edges. She blinked cautiously. She tried to stand, but her legs bent the wrong way. Finally she balanced herself, spread her wings- but she had no wings. She stared at the long, naked limbs, with what looked like worms dangling from the ends. They looked like Shigeru’s hands. She threw back her head and laughed, startling herself.
She began the journey to Shigeru’s nest that very day. She kept to the edge of the marsh and later the forest. She ate berries and insects when she could find them, but winter was coming and the crane felt hungry much of the time. Once she came upon a tiny house. A woman hung robes from a line strung between two trees. A little girl played nearby. When she ran behind the house the woman followed, calling, “Yoko, Yoko!” She darted forward and snatched a robe from the line. She wrapped it tight around her body as she fled back to the forest. She had no feathers, and her body brought with it an unfamiliar sensation: shame. Eager as she was to face Shigeru, she couldn’t do so naked. And so her other new emotion, remorse, was drowned in necessity.
She came with the first breath of winter. Shigeru was fixing a hole in the roof when the woman limped into the yard. Her robe was too thin for the cold weather, and she wore no tabi or sandals despite the frost that clung to the grass. Her hair fell in tangles over her shoulders, but Shigeru could tell that it was black as the space between the stars. Her skin was chapped, but it was the pure white of snow when it falls. And her lips were red as blood. The woman said nothing, only stared with great, beseeching eyes. Shigeru came down off the roof and brought her inside. He gave her a cup of tea and draped a blanket over her thin shoulders. When he asked if she had any family she only shook her head.
“What is your name?” He said.
The woman was silent a moment. “Yoko.” She replied in a soft, uncertain voice.
They slept on opposite sides of the fire. Yoko didn’t speak much, but she listened to Shigeru with such an expression of admiration that he didn’t fault her for it. She seemed ignorant of many things, and Shigeru thought perhaps she had been in an accident, hit her head and lost her memory. He taught her to boil water for tea, to mend broken sandals and torn cloth. He went to the village and bought her a used robe and a silver pin. He thrilled at the wonder in her face as she ran her hands over the cheap cloth and tucked the pin into her hair. If only he wasn’t a poor farmer, he would have bought her everything in the market.
One evening as he showed her how to use chopsticks, their hands brushed. Yoko’s white face flushed a gentle shade of pink, and Shigeru blurted, “Yoko, I want you to be my wife!” He was embarrassed. He hadn’t meant to ask so abruptly, but Yoko only laughed.
They were married the next week at the tiny village temple, in wedding clothes borrowed from Shigeru’s brother and sister-in-law. Yoko blushed again when he kissed her for the first time, and shyly kissed him back. She smiled, and Shigeru made a vow that he would never cause his wife to weep, only keep her smiling for the rest of his life.
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