He ran back to the road. Two crows had dropped from the telephone wire and were hopping around the heron, only a few inches from its head. Sedge waved the box to scare them off. Now that he was within a few meters of them, they flapped lackadaisically to their former perches.
The heron squawked as Sedge stood over it. It swung its head to stab at his shoes, and he stepped backward, wondering how he would transfer a bird its size into the box and carry it on his bicycle, all while keeping it from lashing out at him.
He removed the shoelace to one of his shoes. Circling slowly around the heron, thinking his pace would partly determine the bird’s panic level, he sought an angle from which he could safely lunge toward it, for the first thing he had to do was tie its beak shut. From directly above its head he reached for it. The bird’s beak opened in a deafening squawk, but as soon as it snapped shut he gripped it like he would a stick. He knotted the shoelace around it. Holding the beak with one hand again, he carefully slipped his hand beneath its body. Considering its size, and the deceptive power he knew it possessed, he was taken aback—as he had been in Kenrokuen—by the bird’s lightness. Using the underside of his arm like a stretcher, he lifted and slid the bird into the box. He wished he had something with which to cover its eyes, but this would have to do. The bird reserve was still far away, and even if he rode there he wasn’t sure they could help him.
The bird lay in the box, its injuries unclear to Sedge. Remembering that Mariko had experience helping injured herons, he decided to bring the bird to her house. He rode with it balanced atop the bicycle’s handlebars, steadying it with one hand. He went slowly, sweating more than he had all day, and hoped it wouldn’t start raining.
Sedge worried that the heron would try to escape, but he soon saw this was unwarranted. And luckily the raised sides of the box kept it from falling, even while it slid back and forth. He pedaled carefully so his unlaced shoe wouldn’t fall off. If it did, he would have to move the bird again to retrieve it, and he wanted to keep it where it was.
The rice fields brought him back through a succession of villages. As the houses and buildings increased, so did the people driving in cars, playing with their children in the shade of their houses, and gardening in their yards. Thankfully no one said anything to him, no one asked where he was carrying an injured heron with a shoelace tied around its beak, nor did he stop to ask them for help. He was afraid of becoming a spectacle, which would only frighten the bird more and result in losing time he might not have to lose. Now that he was more accustomed to balancing on his handlebars a large bird in a rotting cardboard box, he increased his speed until hitting another stretch of road.
Eventually he reached the outskirts of Yamanaka Onsen, where traffic was greater and the roads more often needed repair. Whenever possible, he veered onto side streets parallel to the main road he needed to follow, and in a few minutes he arrived in the middle of the town.
He had never considered Yamanaka Onsen a busy place, for compared to Kanazawa it was inaka—the countryside—but it was more crowded now than he could ever remember, and dangerous to ride a bicycle in. He finally came upon Yamanaka-za. Because tourists congested the sidewalks, he stayed in the road, forcing cars and tourist buses to drive around him.
A mile or so later, he turned left and had in his sights Takase Bridge as it crossed Kakusenkei gorge. Where the road curved right, at the bottom of the mountainside, he only had to climb uphill a little farther.
The heron was no longer struggling, and when its eyes blinked they stayed closed for longer. All he hoped now was that Mariko could help when he showed it to her.
Even before her house came into view, Riku cut into his line of vision, running back and forth in the street. He was chasing dragonflies, or simply following their flitting overhead.
“Rik-kun!” he cried out.
Riku stopped and turned to Sedge. His eyebrows lifted as he peered at whatever was lying in the box atop the handlebars.
“Get Mariko,” he said. As he slowed the bike down and put both feet on the ground, the boy stumbled toward the front door. Riku slid it open until it slammed against the wall. “Okaasan!” he shouted.
Mariko stepped outside. Riku ran past her into the street, eager to see the bird.
“The poor thing,” Mariko said. “Your bicycle couldn’t have done that to it. Did someone hit it with their car?”
“It could have been a dog,” Riku speculated.
“I don’t know what happened to it. I’m sorry, but I didn’t know where else to take it.” He explained how he’d found it and that he’d tried to call the bird reserve and then her.
Mariko patted her clothes and admitted that she must have left her phone upstairs. “I’m sorry. I never imagined . . .”
Sedge handed her his phone. “Do you mind calling the reserve and leaving a message?”
She took the phone from him. He watched her dial, and to his surprise someone picked up on the other end. It was clear from what Mariko said that the veterinarian wasn’t there and that nothing could be done for the bird right away. She thanked the person and hung up.
“The vet will be back tomorrow morning,” she said. “It’s just as well you didn’t go there.”
“Can we keep it here tonight?” Sedge said.
“Of course. We’ll watch over it until morning. And before I go to work I’ll drive it to the reserve. How far away did you find it?”
“Maybe forty minutes from here.”
“I’ll build it something,” Riku said. “I can make it a cage big enough to stand and spread its wings partway.”
This was more of a plan than Sedge had, and he let Riku lead them to the kura.
Carrying the box, he followed Riku behind the house and up the short steps to the kura, ducking beneath the row of hanging birdhouses to go inside. Despite visiting Mariko at her house half a dozen times, he’d never been inside the storage building. He had been led to believe it was Riku’s private space.
Riku obviously didn’t mind them entering to check for materials with which to make the bird a temporary shelter. Past the entryway was a flat stone step that led into the kura itself: two floors of storage space, the interior made of earthen walls, thick wooden pillars, and overhead beams. A single light bulb lit the first floor. The near corner had a workshop of sorts, along with scattered manga, school textbooks, magazines with bikini-clad women on the covers, and a box overflowing with paper cranes. In the opposite corner lay a narrow futon enclosed by mosquito netting.
Mariko brushed against Sedge in the cramped entryway, and he returned his attention to her and Riku. “The bird was lying on its back in the road,” he said, “so its injury is probably there. But it could be injured anywhere: its head, wings, even its legs.”
Riku stepped inside through the kura’s heavy sliding door. “Can you give me about an hour?”
Anticipating the noise Riku would make, Sedge and Mariko carried the heron back outside.
“It was good of you to help it,” Mariko said.
“Crows and hawks had gathered around it. They were waiting to finish it off.”
“I’m glad you didn’t let them,” she said, rubbing his sweaty arm. “You look a mess.”
He set the cardboard box on a wooden bench beside the house. “I’m afraid I can’t teach you tonight.”
She snuffled a laugh into the crook of his neck. “Go clean yourself up, will you? Tonight I’ll cook all of us dinner, and we’ll take turns looking after your heron.”
“You’re not upset I brought it here?”
“It’s the last thing I expected, but I’m happy you thought to do so. I told you before, I’ve tended injured birds several times. And for Riku, this may be a good distraction after his stint as a woodworker’s apprentice ended prematurely. He’s been difficult lately.”
Mariko went back inside to prepare Sedge’s bath and collect things for the heron: a towel for it to sit or lie on, a hot water bottle to warm it in case it was in shock, dried cat food softened in water, and an eye dropper to give it fluids. When she came back, he went to clean himself up. She had laid out for him a towel and what were apparently an extra pair of clothes belonging to her husband. He showered and rinsed off thoroughly before entering the hot bath; through the outside window as he soaked, he listened to Riku hammer wood and use an electric drill. In the moments when Riku fell silent, Mariko’s voice as she sang softly to the bird was as memorable to him as anything that had happened that day.
