The Crane Wife (30 page)

‘I know,’ George said, nodding, still holding the crane, so small, so perfect. It was cut from a wordless page, the stretch of it pure and white.

A wordless page
, George thought.

‘We were right to give it to you, yes?’ Mehmet said, coming over. ‘We found it, and I know that since you lost pretty much everything in the fire . . .’

This was only inaccurate in that
pretty much
didn’t quite cover it. He hadn’t even had any clothes left, having escaped not wearing a single stitch. Worse was that he’d lost his old phone, too, which contained every picture he had of her. And there was nothing left in
her
flat because she had only, that very day, moved the last of her belongings into his house.

There had been nothing but her body, which they had buried, a practice the undertaker had gently tried to dissuade him as American and impractical, but having found no family of Kumiko’s to contradict him, he’d bought her a new dress, a new overcoat and the closest thing he could find to the suitcase she always carried to bury alongside her, though her burns were so bad he hadn’t been allowed to see her body. He had no idea if the clothes were even used.

He hadn’t even been able to kiss her goodbye.

Except, of course, he had.

‘I’ll say it again, George,’ Mehmet said, as George continued to quietly cry. ‘Take more time off. We can run this place while your feet heal properly and you look for a new house and you know, whatever,
grieve
.’

George considered this for a moment. There was wisdom in it. Clare and Hank had, with unhesitating kindness, picked him up from the hospital and deposited him immediately into a far-too-swanky room in Hank’s hotel. Though George had an embarrassing pot of money in the bank from all the tile sales, they had refused to entertain a penny of it, seeming genuine when they told him to stay as long as he needed. He assumed they wanted to keep an eye on him, and for once he found he didn’t really mind that they did.

The nights had been hard, of course, but the days even harder until he started coming back to the shop, limping in on his crutches, much to Mehmet’s scandalised surprise. Mehmet, despite his moaning, had done extremely well on his own, and George had no doubt he could keep it up until things became easier, particularly as Mehmet didn’t actually seem in that much of a hurry to leave.

But no.

‘No,’ George said now, wiping his eyes. ‘I need to do something. I can’t just sit around all day. I need to keep busy.’

The bell on the door chimed and a customer came in.

‘Go help him,’ George said. ‘I’ll be fine.’

Mehmet and Nadine watched him a moment more, then left to deal with what looked like another order for stag-night t-shirts. George could already hear Mehmet setting a terrible customer-service example for Nadine, but he let it slide.

Because he was staring at the crane again.

It was impossible. He had never cut this. Had he? No. It was too
skilled
, for one thing. Too sharp, too tight, too much of a crane. It was impossible that it was his. It was impossible that it was
here
.

But a live crane in his back garden with an arrow through its wing was also impossible. So, too, was the almost accidental creation of the tiles and their inexplicable success. In fact, Kumiko in her every particular was frankly impossible.

Did he really believe she was the crane? Did he really believe she had come to him and brought him happiness until he grew too greedy to know more of her? Did he really believe what happened in the garden after the fire? That
that
was the way their story ended?

If any story even had an ending. If every ending wasn’t just someone else’s beginning.

But no, of course, he didn’t believe it.

And yes, beyond anything he’d ever felt, he knew it to be true.

A crane, made of paper. Made of
blank
paper.

If this was a message, he thought he knew what that message might be.

He placed the crane down carefully, making sure not to crimp it. He’d put it under glass later, protect it with the utmost care, but for now an urgency had taken over. He would no longer make cuttings, no, that was clear, but this crane, however it had arrived, had been cut from a page without words. A page without a story on it.

A page waiting to be filled.

He grabbed the first pad of paper to hand. It was a freebie from a supplier and had their name and details across the top of each leaf. He threw it out. He kept looking, opening drawers, rolling his chair to the supply cupboards. There was an unimaginable stock of paper in this shop, from ultra-cheap scrap to stuff you could probably sleep on, but to his increasing disbelief, no proper notebooks, not even lined ones like students used in class. Actually, he thought, did they even still do that or did they just take in laptops or smartphones and record everything?

‘Mehmet!’ he barked, surprising them and the customer. ‘Where the hell are all the notebooks?’

‘I have one,’ Nadine said. She pulled her rucksack from a cupboard under the counter, took out a green notebook and handed it to him. ‘I was going to use it for class.’

‘A-ha!’ George said, triumphantly. ‘You
do
still do that!’

‘What are you going on about?’ Mehmet said, a little alarmed, as if he’d been waiting for George to crack and was less prepared than he’d hoped to be now that the moment had finally arrived.

‘Nothing, nothing,’ George said, opening to the fresh front page. Nadine hadn’t even started using it yet. No matter, he’d buy her a new one. ‘Thank you,’ he said to her and ‘Sorry’ to the customer and used his body language to indicate he was to be left alone now.

He took out a pen, held his hand over the page and hesitated a moment.

He wrote,
In her dreams, she flies
.

He felt his heart surge, as if a golden light was flowing from it.

There was a distant sound from somewhere, and a less occupied part of his mind told him a phone was ringing. He ignored it.

Because this was it. Yes. He knew it somehow, knew it as he’d known every right thing about her.
This
is where he would remember her.
This
is where she would live. He would tell her story. Not her whole story, of course, but the story of him and her, the story
he
knew, which were the only stories anyone could ever really tell. It would be only a glimpse, from one set of eyes.

But that would be why it was right, too.

In her dreams, she flies
, he read again.

And he smiled. Yes, that was the beginning.
A
beginning, rather, but one that would do just fine.

He brought down his pen to write some more.

‘George,
seriously
,’ Mehmet said, holding out the loudly ringing phone to him.

George blinked uncomprehendingly for a moment. But of course the phone was
his
. The new one from the phone company after the fire. No frills, a ringtone he didn’t recognise, and carrying all of three contacts. His daughter, his ex-wife and his shop’s main assistant.

Amanda
, the small screen read.

‘Thank you,’ he said, taking it.

His daughter was calling him, as she had at least twice a day since the fire. But yes, this was right, too. He was eager to talk to her. More than eager,
excited,
excited to speak again of Kumiko, excited to talk about the book he had realised, just this moment, he was going to write.

More than anything, he was excited to speak of the time that had just passed. The time of his life he would look back at with pain, yes, but also with amazement. Amanda was the only one who would understand, and though he could never tell her the whole truth, maybe he could write it in a book.

And maybe that way the Kumiko he knew would live on and on and on.

Yes, he thought, tears in his eyes again.

Yes
.

He answered the phone to his daughter with a broken but joyous heart, ready to speak with her of astonishment and wonder.

The original story of the crane wife – which is not at all, by the way, the story Kumiko tells with her 32 tiles – is a Japanese folk tale I’ve known my whole life, having first heard it as a wee blond five-year-old from my kindergarten teacher in Hawaii. She was called Mrs Nishimoto, and I loved her with the deranged abandon that only a five-year-old can achieve. A wonderful person and teacher, she told stories in a way that lingered, like the one of a certain crane rescued from injury.

I’m not the only one who’s been inspired by it. The greatest band in the world, The Decemberists, use it on a brilliant album also called
The Crane Wife
. The epigraph to this novel is taken from the song ‘The Crane Wife 1&2’, written by Colin Meloy. If you haven’t yet bought music by The Decemberists, I worry for you.

Shortly after giving George his pastime of cutting shapes from books, I was directed (by a perfectly innocent party) to the extraordinary work of Su Blackwell (www.sublackwell.co.uk). To compare what George does to what Su does is to compare fingerpaints to Kandinsky. No overlap is intended, but seriously, check her out.

My thanks to Francis Bickmore, Jamie Byng and all the rather excellent folk at Canongate. Thanks to my agent, Michelle Kass, who doesn’t blink no matter what left-field project I turn in. Also to Andrew Mills, Alex Holley and Denise Johnstone-Burt.

Also by Patrick Ness

A Monster Calls

Monsters of Men

The Ask and the Answer

The Knife of Never Letting Go

Topics About Which I Know Nothing

The Crash of Hennington