The Girl from the Well

And so does Callie. She stumbles forward, the stone knife in her hands, but she only takes a few more steps before her strength finally gives out. She drops down, the blade skittering to rest by my feet.


I

pick

it up.

There is regret in Chiyo Takeda’s face, grief at her failure, yet hopefulness for a last chance at redemption. I carry out her last request and plunge the stone knife into the dead miko’s heart.

“Ten,” I hear Callie whisper.

And all around me the air



explodes



into

little

fireflies.





CHAPTER TWENTY–TWO


    Appeasement


“Am I dead?” she asks me. I do not answer.

There is a funeral in the distance. There are twenty-seven men, twenty-six women, and three children. There are four pallbearers and one priest. The sun is shining, but the grass smells like rain. They are lowering a simple silver coffin into the ground, and everyone watches. No one is smiling, and a few people cry.

“Is that me?” she asks again. “Am I dead?” Still I do not respond.

Unexpectedly, there is laughter from across the field. She turns her head and sees children. They are dressed in white, and they are running, laughing. There could be sixty of them or two hundred or a thousand. They are too innumerable to count. They are humming something, a soft, familiar lullaby.

She tries to join them, but she cannot. She is wearing too much red. A scarlet stain blossoms along her waist, spreading like watercolors across a linen canvas. She is wearing far too much red.

There is a hot spring at the end of the field. Without knowing why, she finds herself stumbling toward it, knowing instinctively that this is where she must go. There are no changing rooms here, and to step into the onsen, she must undress.

There is nothing to be ashamed of. She removes her clothes. There is a terrible wound on her hip, a slight pain when her hands wander into the area. But the pain feels muted somehow, like hurt is of no consequence here. Slowly she steps into the water. It feels hot and cold and good against her skin, and the small throbbing leaches out of her, the waters tinged now with pink.

She looks up and sees me, fully clothed, in the water before her. Neither I nor my clothes are wet, and she knows there is something wrong with this, though it is getting very hard to think.

“Am I dead?” she asks again.

I do not speak, but I dip my hands into the water, cupping and pouring the clear liquid over her head. As if on her own accord, Callie sinks under the bubbling surface, immersing herself in the comforting warmth.

When she resurfaces, the meadow and the children are gone, though the lullaby continues. She is floating in a river surrounded by darkness as far as the eye can see. There is nobody else around, and fear grips her.

“Hello?” she calls out, and the sound only echoes, her voice bouncing off unseen barriers.

It is then that she sees the fireflies.

They appear in twos and threes, winking back at her over the dark waters, and then in half dozens and dozens, and then in droves, until all around her a million fireflies blink in and out over the night sky, like paper lanterns that bob up and down in the air.

From within their glow she could see tiny snatches of life. Children’s laughter rings out, small happy faces drifting in and out of the fireflies’ light. There are faces of redheads and blondes and brunettes, of Japanese and American and French, African and Indian and Greek. There are eight-year-olds and four-year-olds and eleven-year-olds and fifteen-year-olds. There are shy smiles and gap-toothed grins.

They gather around her, tiny balls of fire fluttering close to her head, soft wings light and feathery, brushing against her cheek.