The Girl from the Well

She rounds the corner and follows in my footsteps, and it is here that she sees Tarquin and the man. He is in his mid-sixties, with brown, doughy skin and eyes like a frightened weasel’s. He is darker than most Japanese, from days spent under the constant sun, and his knuckles are knobby, fingers pudgy. He is kneeling before several more stone statues in the area, this time eyeless figures draped in miscellaneous cloths of forbidding scarlet and black, and he is rocking slowly back and forth. To those who do not truly see, it looks as if he is kneeling before Tarquin and begging. The boy himself appears grave. He sees the dead children and knows what must happen.

Like him, Callie also sees them for the first time. Two young boys cling to the old man’s shoulders, and another lies chained at his feet. They are no more than eleven years of age, and their faces are as worn and as tired as the obese man’s, the imprint of their prison years stamped over their listless faces, their dull eyes.

It is here that I make her understand.

The old man shrinks back again when he sees me, but people like him are more accustomed to the ancient tales of old ghosts and older vengeance. He sees his fate standing before him, and he knows it is a price he must pay. While he was once wild and untamed in his younger years, when he killed these children for the thrill and the sport, in his old age he now wrestles with the horror and the guilt of what he has done, and the fear of what is to come. He comprehends that he has been living on borrowed time ever since, and when he turns to face me, the dread and the terror is on his face, but with it also a quiet relief, an acceptance.

As Callie watches, terrified, I

approach him. The man says nothing, but merely holds out his hands in supplication as he sinks to his knees before me. I reach out only

once,

and my form envelops his, my hair wrapping around his cringing face as I take him. It is in places like Osorezan where guilty men repenting of their old crimes come to wait for the end of their life or to wait for one to take it on their behalf.

Finally, the mangled, bloated body slips out of my grasp and sprawls at the foot of one of the figures. Callie cringes at the familiarity of his terrible, staring face. Tarquin says nothing, and his face shows little else but determination. He understands, quicker than his cousin, the sins the man has committed and the necessity of his punishment, however repugnant to human eyes.

But the children are free, and now they are gathering around me. Their faces are tired yet expectant, knowing their own peculiar form of purgatory has finally come to an end. Callie gasps when they begin to glow, and I gather them in my arms as best as I can, once more closing my eyes and surrendering briefly to that inner warmth.

When I open my eyes again, I am surrounded by glowing balls of light where the three children had once stood. There is fearful awe on Callie’s face.

Unafraid, Tarquin walks to where I stand, stepping into this circle of fireflies. He touches one, wonderingly, with a finger, but it immediately shies away, bashful even in this form. He turns his attention to me. As he has done before, he touches my cheek tentatively with his hand and looks directly into my face.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

I smile at him. Then I raise my hands,

and the balls of light respond, spinning slowly around my arms and the tips of my fingers until they are set adrift on their own, soaring lazily up into the blue autumn sky.

Together Callie and Tarquin watch them rise, higher than the farthest-flung kite, watching them become little specks of morning stars until the last of the clouds hide them from sight, leaving nothing else but the two of them, the now-desiccated body on the ground, and me. And when the last of them disappear, I turn away and vanish as well.

“Why did you say that?” Callie asks Tarquin, a little later. “Why did you apologize?”

“I don’t know. I think I’m just sorry she has to keep cleaning up after other people’s mistakes all the time.”

There is no one else in sight at the temple by the time they return. The old woman continues to putter about the place, every now and then resting a hand against another of the statues, greeting them like they are old friends. “I understand it now,” she repeats herself. “I do. I understand it now.”

I wonder what it is that she understands.