Seasons Between Us Page 3

  Jin shook his head. “The rain let up. Shizue insisted and I . . . I agreed.”

  Hiroshi sniggered. Of course, he would. Hiroshi strained to shovel more sand into a bag.

  “But I could talk to her. Change her mind.” Jin gazed at what remained to be built of the flood wall. “Let me help.”

  “No.” Hiroshi slammed the shovel into the mound of wet sand and tied the sandbag closed. He lifted and carried the thirteen kilo sack to the burlap wall.

  Jin’s shoulders slumped. “Would you accept assistance from Mrs. Galang? From Shizue?”

  This was intolerable, being interrogated by a toaster. Hiroshi slammed the sack onto the wall. “I just don’t want your help.”

  “Because I’m an android?”

  Dizziness began to overtake Hiroshi. He was sinking into a quagmire. Was Jin judging him? Yes, in the mathematical way only androids were capable.

  “We are no longer merely mechanical constructs with silicon brains. We—I am a biohybrid, a synthesis of artificial and organic.”

  “Yeah. Self-lubricating. I got that.”

  “More. We truly are living beings. Shizue knows this and has embraced it.”

  You mean, embraced him. Intimately. Hiroshi could feel the heat burning on the back of his neck. He’d heard enough. This disgusting thing was trying to tell him how to think, how to feel. How could Shizue? The little girl who danced.

  He—it—was an affront. The sooner she got rid of it, the better.

  “We are completely committed to each other,” said Jin.

  Hiroshi thrust the spade into the sand and squared himself before the android. “She hasn’t committed to you. She pities you. Right now, you’re just her latest stray. In a few months, she’ll realize her mistake and throw you out with the trash. It doesn’t matter that you’re sleeping with her. All you are to her is a—a—”

  “Sex doll?”

  Hiroshi turned. Shizue stood on the lawn just a few feet away from them.

  “That’s what you were going to say? Huh?”

  Each word was a spike driven into him. It didn’t matter that she was right. No amount of cleansing could strip the stain of impurity from her.

  Shizue gazed up at the sky and let out an exasperated grunt. “This is bullshit.”

  “No, I—”

  She turned and glared at Hiroshi, her cheeks shining in the light of the lantern. “And just so you know, I’m pregnant.”

  The world spun around Hiroshi like a whirlpool, threatening to pull him under. Pregnant? That was impossible. With a machine? That was her real surprise. That was the news she came to tell him, the news she’d avoided.

  Shizue marched toward the swollen, sandbagged river, grabbed the spade and strode to the shrine. She paused, hefted the spade above her head and struck the hologram projector. Her mother’s image flickered.

  “Shizue.”

  The river crested the burlap wall and poured across the lawn.

  Shizue hit the shrine, hit it, splintering wood, hit it, knocking the coppery plates and bowls to the ground.

  Water gushed against the shrine.

  “Shizue!” No!

  She turned and yelped. Water cascaded into her, covering her feet, and almost knocking her over. She dropped the spade and grabbed the shrine wall. It creaked at the strain of the pouring water.

  The makeshift berm had collapsed, and water rushed in waves, thigh deep.

  “Hang on!” said Jin. He started for Shizue.

  Hiroshi wasn’t about to let the android help his daughter. He grabbed Jin’s arm. Jin turned to face him.

  “Stay here,” said Hiroshi.

  Jin opened his mouth as if to protest, gazed into Hiroshi’s eyes, and relaxed his arm. “Go,” he said.

  Hiroshi turned and ran, sloshing through water. The muddy ground sank beneath him, sucking at each step.“Shizue, come here!”

  She looked up at his outstretched hand and let go of the shrine. For an instant, she reached for him. Then she sank in the rising flood.

  Hiroshi strained to move toward her as Shizue pushed herself up, coughing and spitting up water. He got his hands under her armpits.

  “Sorry, Papa-san.” Her chest heaved as she tried to speak. “Mama. It’s always been—”

  “Shizue.” Jin stood on dry ground only a few metres away, arms outstretched.

  Shizue slipped away from Hiroshi and stumbled up the slope toward Jin, collapsing into his arms. Jin’s arms.

  Too much time had passed, too much water had flowed down that stream. A different Shizue. A different world passed by his home, and he had failed to take notice of the difference.

  Wood creaked and splintered behind him. Hiroshi turned, bracing himself against the current. The shrine buckled and fell over under the weight of the rushing water.

  Hiroshi lunged forward, grasping for one of the legs of the shrine before it floated away. His fingers closed about the leg as he fell headlong into the muddy water.

  He floundered to find his feet, the shrine tugging relentlessly into the darkness, dragging him down with it.

  “Papa-san!”

  Shizue buttressed herself, arm outstretched, reaching out toward him. Jin held her other arm, a human chain. “Grab hold. You can’t save it.”

  Hiroshi gazed back at the shrine, a bobbing gleam yearning for the river. His arm, shoulder strained against the weight of the rushing current. The flood was going to take it. He would be pulled into the river to crash on the rocks below the surface, the ones he couldn’t see.

  But did that even matter anymore? Nothing of his wife survived. Just the shrine. Nothing of his old life. Nothing of who he was and where he came from. Shizue didn’t remember. She wanted nothing of it. She said so herself. And now she was pregnant with an android’s child. He was going to be a grandfather to what? A cyborg? A thing? An abomination? Why bother living when everything of value was dead?

  “Papa-san.”

  Hiroshi turned toward Shizue; she was still inching toward him.

  Shizue. The river had taken her too. Long ago. She followed it to the city, to a new life, to new friends. None of them were here. His home was here. Japan was here, but she was not. Yet wasn’t the reason they came here . . . to give their daughter a new life?

  She had that life. It just wasn’t the life he imagined for her. It was her own life.

  “Papa-san. Please . . .”

  Hiroshi released the shrine. He reached out and grabbed Shizue’s hand. With a massive effort, they scrambled to safety. The shrine crashed against the rocks and splintered.

  His wife’s hologram flickered out.

  “Abe-san,” shouted Mrs. Galang across the yard.

  Hiroshi looked up toward the house. Mrs. Galang waved at him. “She’s here.”

  Damn. She was early.

  Hiroshi put down the hammer and looked at his handiwork. The shrine was almost ready. Over the years, he’d managed to recover a few ornaments from the old shrine that washed ashore a few kilometres downstream: a small inari statue, an incense bowl, a copper plate. But there were still pieces missing. He took off the heavy apron and grabbed his cane before hobbling down the levee. He beamed when he saw the young girl dressed in a flower-patterned kimono.

  “Grandpa,” the girl shouted. In her hands was a cardboard cylinder almost as long as she was tall, but that didn’t stop her from running across the grass toward him as fast as her bare feet could take her. She barrelled into him like a wave, almost knocking him off his feet. He dropped his cane and lifted her up as she smothered him in hugs.

  Hiroshi put her down, knelt beside her, and gazed into her silvery eyes.

  She handed him the cylinder.

  “Thank you, Kaiya. What is this?”

  “It’s a surpris
e,” she said, giggling.

  Hiroshi popped the lid open and tilted the cylinder. A long paper slid out. He unrolled it. It was an ofuda, a Shinto charm. The calligraphy was immaculate, and it looked as if it would fit right where he wanted it in the shrine.

  “Very nice. Where did you get it?”

  Kaiya gazed toward the house.

  “I made it, Papa-san.”

  Hiroshi looked up. Shizue walked toward them. “All those calligraphy lessons you gave me as a child finally paid off.”

  “Is that the shrine?” asked Kaiya.

  Hiroshi nodded. “Go have a look.”

  “It’s beautiful.” Kaiya ran toward the shrine.

  Hiroshi grabbed his cane and pushed himself up. By the time he got to his feet, Kaiya had already finished the ritual purification.

  “Amazing,” he said.

  “Yes, she is.”

  Shizue put her arm around her father, and they walked up the levee.

  “Jin?”

  “He’s unpacking.”

  Hiroshi gave her an incredulous look. “Oh?”

  He had only seen Jin a handful of times since they first met more than five years ago: once at Kaiya’s birth, another at her christening, and still another at her first birthday. All those times, Hiroshi had to make the journey. Jin never came here.

  “What made him finally decide to visit?”

  Shizue gazed at the river flowing past the shrine and sighed. “Just time, Papa-san.”

  They walked along the levee, hand-in-hand. Hiroshi glanced at the river as it streamed by. The runoff had been lower than usual this year, and there was no danger in flooding. But the current was fast, and these eddies would never come again.

  Author’s Notes to My Younger Self: Follow your dreams. Don’t let anyone dissuade you from them. Don’t let the voices within and without tell you that you cannot make it as an artist. You will, despite the odds. Be confident that you have what it takes. Move ahead. Work hard. And don’t look back.

  Groven

  Heather Osborne

  1.

  “What hopes, then, for a daughter reaching womanhood?”

  Firya ducked under the caustic coo of her mother’s voice. She sat hunched on a stool Lerene had rapped down on the frost-hardened mud in front of their small cot. The ritual was often a shared celebration, and never hidden. For her mother’s pride, it would be performed practically in the street, where all Iden town would have the pleasure of gawking. Lerene must prove she honoured the dryads.

  A few desultory watchers gathered in the narrow street. Dannah, the laundress, and her friend Hezal, the brewer, were the nearest. Firya glared at them. They were both smiling behind their hands to see their scrubwoman’s daughter spinning fancies.

  “Well?” Lerene asked. Her fingers lay sharp as magpie’s talons on Firya’s shoulders. She saw the laundress too, and her hands trembled. “What daughter-dreams have you wrought?”

  Firya lifted the scissors in front of her and stared at the open jaws. If she finished the ceremony quickly, she could get back inside to stoke the fire. “Travel,” she muttered.

  “Travel, Firya?” Dannah called from across the mud-rutted street. “And where might you be going?”

  The destination didn’t matter. Firya wouldn’t name it if she knew. Iden town loved its gossip, and Dannah’s tongue was rarely idle. She was the one who said the dryads must find Lerene lacking. When Firya’s father lay abed with the pox, Lerene’s sacrifices hadn’t brought him back—if she’d even wished for his health, Dannah hinted. Firya had raged with tears at her father’s burning. The pox hadn’t spread, but Dannah’s whispers did.

  Firya scowled. “Travel,” she repeated, sitting up straighter. Herrow, with its great bronze gates. A ship, skimming across the straits to another world. Escape was a daughter-dream hot enough to burn even this snow-laden air. She thrust the scissors into her mother’s hands.

  Lerene tugged her hair, pulling Firya’s head back. The blade of the scissors pressed against the base of her skull. Firya held back shivers.

  “So high?” Dannah called. “Lerene, she’ll drift away when the wind blows.”

  Too low and Firya would be weighted like an anchor. Better to be shorn like a sheep and be stolen by dryads, than to live in Iden town.

  “What young man will want to marry a flighty woman?” Dannah prodded.

  Slowly, Lerene moved the back of the blade down Firya’s neck. She’d been a small-holder once, when Firya’s father lived. Now she bent her back to scrubbing for the laundress’s few coins. “Too high and you’ll fly away,” she sing-songed brightly.

  Firya’s shoulders knotted. Lerene would trap her if she cut so low. “Mother, please—”

  The scissors closed with a shhk Firya could hear in her bones. Hair fell loose around her ears. Firya tucked it back, but it fell forward again, tangling in her eyelashes.

  Lerene circled Firya and studied the ragged fringe her scissors had left. “Low enough for Iden town,” she muttered. The lilt had disappeared from her voice. She dropped the frayed braid in Firya’s lap.

  Her first sacrifice. Lerene claimed magic should only be called on with the strength of desperate intention. If that were so, then Firya now had the power to stop Dannah’s tongue with a wish.

  Lerene took her chin in a bruising grasp. “Some women imagine dryads in the herb pots on their windowsills,” she said. “Prove yourself better.”

  Her mother had woken her at daybreak and led Firya across the snowy fields to the stream and broken through the rime. She’d scrubbed Firya’s waist-length hair with her own cold-reddened fingers. She’d often called Firya an untimely daughter, with her temerity to be born before the thaw. But even cowed by Dannah, she’d given Firya the gift of her womanhood braid.

  Firya’s wishes would be her own.

  Skiffs of snow gathered between the field-furrows. Firya chopped at the ground with a hooked hoe, digging frozen swedes for the pigs and milch-goats. No young men were beating a path to the scrubwoman’s cot for Firya’s sake. Like as not, she’d end up a scrubwoman herself, or spend her life at a spinning wheel. Unless she could escape.

  She’d endured a cold month at her first woman’s work. When the small-holder’s wife came out to offer hot broth, the other women laid off and stood in a huddle. Firya refused the rest. She would earn double: half to her mother for her keep, and half tucked away for her journey to Herrow.

  Her heart quickened as she reached the end of her row, leaving the others behind. She’d had no excuse yet to slip away and offer her sacrifice. Some girls went no farther than the willow-hedges shading the cart paths. But true power came from seeking the dryads hidden in the wild lands.

  Beyond the split-rail fence, black spruce loomed above the pitted field. The trees marked an outcropping of rock too flinty for swedes. Firya reached through a slit in her skirt into the pocket underneath. The soft mass of her womanhood braid, wrapped in a linen rag, reassured her searching fingers.

  Once she was behind the rocks, the wind dropped to a low moan. The snow was deeper in the shadows. Firya pushed past the naked thorns of wild roses. Threads from her wool skirts caught on the briar. A path to guide her back.

  After a time, she found there was a woman walking at her side. Firya couldn’t see her face, but she wore a loose cloak of downy grey.

  “Such a prize would soften all the tongues in Iden,” the woman said.

  Firya caught herself on a rough-barked spruce. Beneath her wool wrappings, sweat chilled to ice. The voice was her mother’s, at once querulous and sarcastic. “What prize?” she asked.

  “You brought an offering.”

  Firya’s first wish would not be for spite’s sake. With an effort, she formed a word and the wind wrenched it from her lungs. “No.”

  �
�Then what would you have?”

  Travel, Firya thought, focussing her intent on imagined Herrow, on ships that sailed through dreams. She was strong enough to demand, not beg. “Freedom,” she said.

  It was not the word she’d intended to speak.

  “A wide wish.” The woman stopped in thought. “Will you pay my price?”

  Firya lifted the fraying braid from her pocket. The coarse brown hair had once writhed around her face, always tangling. If she went back on her word, the woman might lash out at her weakness like a weasel scenting blood. And freedom could take her further than Herrow’s gates. “Willingly given,” she insisted.

  The dryad laughed. Her breath made no mist in the air.

  Firya stood alone, enclosed by drooping branches. Her braid was gone; her wish granted.

  Wind whipped through Firya’s heavy skirts when she escaped the forest’s eaves. Fog had fallen, erasing the field’s fences.

  A dark form loomed out of the mist in front of her. Firya’s heart stuttered—the dryad had left no footprints. But the bulky figure was only Jonnah, the small-holder’s son, dressed in leathers and furs. “There you are,” he said, catching her arm.

  Firya tried to shrug him off, but his grip tightened when she stumbled on the broken earth.

  Jonnah tilted his head at her—a sheepdog’s big, gangling whelp. “The others left at payout time,” he said. “They said you were— Well.” He stopped himself with a frown. “They said you were grubbing more than your share, if you weren’t witching.”

  Witching indeed. And some women left their wages in the fields and needed someone to blame.

  Firya leaned closer to Jonnah. His wide shoulders walled off the wind. Why would a small-holder’s son come out to find her? He could be huddling by his mother’s hearth.

  Jonnah lifted a broad hand, and hesitated. Firya swallowed a sharp breath as he tucked her tattered hair behind her ear with one gloved finger. “Were you?”

  Her bones felt brittle with cold. “My wishes are my own,” she said. Her mother had fallen into drudgery. When Firya was flying on a tall ship, salt on her lips, she would know herself the stronger.