The Girl from the Well

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I have always striven for detachment, a disinterest in the living. Their preoccupation with each breath of air, the brevity of their lifetimes, and their numerous flaws do not inspire sympathy in me. I can plumb their minds and wander the places they frequent, but they hold little significance.

I do not care to remember names. I do not care to recognize faces.

But this one is called Tarquin Halloway.

He has a cousin named Callie Starr.

His eyes are very bright blue.

He is lonely.

It is not in my nature to be interested in the living.

But there are many things, I have found, that defy nature.





CHAPTER ELEVEN


    A Funeral


Funerals are strange things.

Perhaps it is because I have not had one of my own that their importance eludes me. Ashes fall to ashes, and dust falls to dust whether bodies are buried with full honors underneath the earth or thrown onto the wayside and left to rot. Funerals seem less about comforting the souls of these dearly departed than about comforting the people they leave behind.

Yoko Taneda’s funeral does not bring much comfort to the Halloways. The rites are finally concluded on a rainy Sunday morning. The coffin bearing the woman’s body is placed inside a large incinerator, and the fires underneath are lit. The emotions on the older man’s face are easy to decipher: bewilderment and shock and grief. Tarquin is harder to read. His face is gaunt from exhaustion and trauma that should not have endured in so young a face. His eyes are unusually blank, deep pools of black that stare at the burning coffin and yet also at nothing.

Few people attend the cremation services. Few people in this part of the world knew the woman, and few are willing to look into those flames and be reminded of their own fragility. But the teacher’s assistant

no, not the teacher’s assistant—

Callie; her name is Callie—

is among those who have come to mourn. She stands apart from the unfortunate family, biding her time to approach. She glances up sharply, sensing she is being watched, and sees me. I am standing several yards away at the other end of the room, the skirts of my dress fluttering in a faint breeze that comes from no clear source. My head hangs low. I do nothing but watch the boy as the coffin continues to burn, and she senses in an obscure way that I, too, have come to pay my respects. A man in front of her takes a step to one side and blocks her view, but once he moves away again, I am no longer there.

When the ritual concludes, people file past the bereaved family to offer small words of comfort. After several minutes of this, the boy becomes discomfited by all the sympathy and finally wanders off, away from the dank soot of the crematorium and out into the foggy day. The girl waits until the crowd around her uncle has thinned, before approaching him.

“I am so sorry, Uncle Doug. How are you two holding up?”

The man accepts her embrace. “Thanks, Callie,” he says and tries to smile, though it comes out as a grimace. “Tark’s okay—surprisingly, after everything he’s been through these last few weeks. The therapist says he’s taking things a lot better than…”

He pauses and takes a deep breath. “We’re going to take her ashes back to Japan. She grew up in Aomori. Her will asks that Tark and I take her ashes to a small shrine there.” His brow creases, and Callie understands his confusion over this unusual request.

“Will Tark be going?”

“We both will be. I’m going to take him out of school for a while. This year’s been disruptive enough as it is. We both need a little time to heal. I think that, at this point, it’s for the best.”