Mariko stood just behind Sedge. She peered at Riku, where the light from outside was much brighter than where they stood.
“What should we do?” she asked Sedge. “Is he dangerous?”
“I would imagine so,” he said, knowing Riku could hear them. “He just asked what I want him to do about the heron over there.”
She turned to observe the bird, which was peering through the windows. “Are either of them injured?”
Sedge looked toward Riku for an answer.
“I’ve never felt better,” Riku said. “The heron is fine, too. Why wouldn’t it be? I was maybe a little rough when I caught it, and it banged into a lot of things when it started flying around the house, but it’s all right. If it’s hurt, it’s nowhere near as bad as the heron Sedge brought home.”
“Why did you do this?” Mariko said.
This time Riku told them what sounded like the truth. “I thought if I brought home another heron, I could stage my own release.”
“You’re lucky it didn’t hurt you,” Sedge said.
The bird had walked to the back window of the veranda, but it came back now and was staring at Riku, who sat perhaps two meters away.
“I would have hurt it worse. Because I’ve decided that nothing will ever hurt me again.”
“Riku . . .” Mariko said.
Riku slowly stood up and turned to the bird. The bird took a half-step toward him but stopped when Riku swiped at it like he might when playing with a dog or cat. The bird yanked its head back.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Sedge said.
“What’s he doing?” Mariko said. “Why did he get up?”
“I was tired of sitting,” Riku said. He took another playful swipe at the heron, and this time the bird jumped a few inches off the ground, lifting its wings threateningly.
“Don’t antagonize it, I’m telling you,” Sedge said, walking forward and leaving Mariko in the genkan.
Before he could pull Riku away, the boy reached forward once more and patted the heron on the beak. He reached for it again only to stop midway as he realized Sedge was coming toward him.
The heron struck so quickly Sedge mistook its movement at first for a flicker of light.
Riku never saw the bird lunge. He jerked his hand back, his face confused. A strange silence ensued and Riku held up his hand in the sharply angled sunlight. Blood started dripping from where two of his fingers used to be. The heron had severed Riku’s fourth and fifth fingers.
Sedge stared in shock at them lying on the floor. Behind him Mariko screamed.
Horrified, Sedge was unable to move to Riku, who had fallen to the floor, writhing on his side and clutching his bloody hand. He let out a choked yell. Outside the veranda window, where the neighborhood children had regathered, shrieks pierced the air.
Mariko ran to Riku and shook him, trying to make him reveal his hand. She pulled at him to stand up but he wouldn’t move from the floor. Sedge hurried over. He lifted Riku to his feet and Mariko swiped his severed fingers and stumbled outside with him tucked into her shoulder. As people on the street erupted in panicked noise, Sedge found himself inside with the heron.
There was a commotion around the carport. As Sedge rushed outside he saw a neighbor behind the steering wheel of Mariko’s car, while Mariko and Riku huddled together in the back seat. Just before the car drove off, Mariko glanced out the window at Sedge. In her eyes was a sadness so compacted within her embrace of Riku, that, like a dark room shutting out light, no one could possibly enter that feeling or see what it consisted of.
He stood numbly in front of Mariko’s house with the neighbors. They began to ask him questions—about what was wrong with the boy, about the father and husband convicted of murder, about the lives they lived under their roof and behind their walls.
The heron squawked, and everyone turned toward the front door. Perhaps it had seen the opening and remembered it had been rushed through it while struggling in the net Riku had carried it home in. It passed through the doorway, its head bobbing with each careful step. Raising its wings as it had before striking Riku’s hand, it squawked once more. Then it lowered its wings and moved its head with a smooth sort of jerkiness, looking past the people in the street. It took another step and, with its body bending forward, flapped its wings and flew up over the houses.
Sedge watched it rise into the sky and curl back in the direction of the rice fields it had come from. Where it would have descended to return to its feeding ground, it continued flying, heading toward the center of town. When it was barely more than a gray-white speck in the blue sky, it veered right again, over the forested hills of Kakusenkei gorge—the immortal valley of cranes—and disappeared.
26
Three days later, Mariko drove Riku from the hospital to Echizen, where his grandparents had readied a room for him at their home a week earlier than planned. They lived in a large farmhouse that also had a kura, but if Riku ever wanted to move into it he would have far more to repair than in the one at Mariko’s house.
Riku’s accident, and the way he precipitated it, was all the neighbors wanted to talk about when Sedge ran into them. They were afraid of the boy and, knowing he planned to move to Echizen, looked forward to the village becoming more peaceful. Most people expressed sympathy for Mariko, but some grumbled that she was to blame. “She tried hard to be a good stepmother, but with the boy corrupted by his father’s blood, she should have known something like this would happen one day.”
Yamanaka Onsen’s summer festival, Furusato, which drew several thousand spectators every year, was slated to start in two more days. With Riku’s hospitalization and impending move, and with the ryokan preparing to take part in the festivities, Mariko was busier than ever.
He blamed himself for Mariko’s sadness—hadn’t he forced her into a decision before she was ready? Perhaps this was why he didn’t oppose her letting Riku stay a final night at the house, to finish packing for Echizen and see the festival one last time.
Sedge didn’t visit Riku in the hospital. The boy only wanted to see Mariko, and when Mr. Inoue and his wife dropped by, Riku insisted that the nurses not let them in his room. When Mariko asked if he minded Sedge coming to see him, he shook his head, rejecting the idea. She took off from work all three days Riku was in the hospital, staying with him from morning until dinnertime, when she drove back home.
On Riku’s last night in the hospital, she told Sedge, “Sometimes I feel like a mother waiting for her son to go off to war. But tomorrow I hope he’ll go off and find peace.”
The doctors had been unable to reattach Riku’s fingers. Mariko said his hand remained heavily bandaged and he was on a heavy dosage of pain medication and antibiotics. Whenever the medical staff cleaned his wounds, she left the room. It was too gruesome and heart-wrenching for her to watch. Not once had he cried out in pain, however, she was told.
When she drove him to Echizen his grandparents were thrilled to see him. She could tell they would make a special effort to accommodate his needs, and the thick bandage around his hand made them even more solicitous toward him. Riku immediately asked them about his living arrangements, and also about his apprenticeship. When they told him it hadn’t been canceled, and that the sensei and his family hoped he would recover soon, he broke down in tears.
Mariko returned from Echizen and assured Sedge that everything would be fine when Riku visited. Sedge was inclined to believe this, if only because the boy’s injury would constrain him.
“Where do you plan for him to sleep?” he said.
She looked at him imploringly. “Downstairs, if you don’t mind. It’s only one night and he may need help with his hand.”
“I’ll choose a clean futon and sheets for him,” Sedge said, “and put them in the room beneath the stairs.”
