A DAY WITH GODORI

He did not bring a sword. He did not bring questions. He brought a pot of tea.
It was a small, fat, chipped brown teapot, borrowed from the kitchen, with two clay cups wedged into the crook of his elbow and a plate of rice cakes balanced on his wrist. He stood in front of the storeroom door at dawn with his chin tucked in and his scarf wound up to his ears, and tried, with the one free finger he had left, to lift the bar.
It would not lift.
He tried again. The pot slid. A cup slid. A rice cake leaped off the plate and bounced twice on the flagstones, and he lunged after it, and the whole cargo went sideways, and he caught the pot by the spout at the last possible instant, with a hiss of scalded fingers.
"Ow," he said, softly.
The bar lifted from the other side.
It was Irel. She stood in the corridor in her plain grey tunic, with her hair tied back and her face as composed as a sheet of paper, and one eyebrow raised a bare eighth of an inch.
"I had it," said Godori.
"Of course."
"I was *about* to..."
"Of course you were." She took the plate out of his hand, and the cup from the crook of his elbow, and balanced them neatly on her own forearm. Then, with the other hand, she opened the door. "Go on."
"Are you coming?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because she will not speak in front of me." The ghost of a smile touched her mouth. "I frighten her."
"You frighten *everyone.*"
"I know," said Irel. "It's very convenient."
She handed him the tray. He took it. She did not let go at once, and for a moment they stood there, both holding the same wooden edge, a hand's breadth apart.
"Goro," she said.
"Yes?"
"Don't try to win."
"I'm not."
"I mean it. Don't try to make her say it." She was looking at him very steadily. "Just sit with her. The way you sat with the girl in the ravine. The rest will come."
"What if it doesn't?"
"Then you will have had tea with someone who needed it." She let go. "Go on."
He went in.
---
Sae was awake.
She sat exactly as she had the night before, on the folded blanket, with her back against the rice sacks and her hands in her lap. Her pale hair was flattened on one side. There were violet shadows under her eyes. But her back was very straight, and when he came through the door she turned her head and looked at him, quite calmly, as one looks at a clock.
"You are the soft one," she said.
"Hello," said Godori.
"I thought you would come."
"I brought tea."
"I see that." Her eyes went to the pot. They went, very quickly, to the rice cakes, and slid away again. "It is a very small pot."
"It's all they had."
"It is the *kitchen* pot. The one with the chip." She frowned, faintly. "Master Toku says it is bad luck to use it."
"Then I'll bring good luck to it."
"That is not how luck works."
"Isn't it?"
"No. It is not a thing you can *bring.*" She looked at him, steadily, with her head a little on one side. "You are very strange."
"I know."
"I think it is on purpose."
"It's really not."
He sat down. He did it awkwardly, cross-legged on the earth floor, with the tray balanced on his knees, and poured a cup of tea with enormous concentration. A drop landed on his sleeve. He ignored it. He held the cup out, with both hands, in the correct polite fashion.
"Left over right," said Sae.
"What?"
"Your hands. You have them backwards." She had not moved. "It is a guest's gift. It must be left over right."
He looked down. He had.
"Oh," he said.
"It is a very small thing."
"I'm so *bad* at this."
"Yes." She almost smiled. "You are."
He turned the cup round, very carefully, left over right, and held it out again.
She took it.
---
They did not talk about anything.
That was how Godori would remember it afterward, in the long quiet hours when he lay in the dark and tried to work out how it had happened. They sat in a small dim storeroom among the rice sacks, with a pot of cooling tea between them, and for most of the morning neither of them said a thing of the slightest importance.
He asked whether the tea was too strong. She said it was a little. He said it was the only kind the kitchen had. She said it was the only kind that anyone had, in the south quarter, and that the north quarter drank something called *white jasmine,* which tasted like a flower, and that she had had it once, at a festival, and been sick.
"On what?" he said.
"On a boy."
"What?"
"A very tall boy. He was holding my cup. It was very surprising for both of us." She stirred her tea with her finger. "He was not angry."
"That's good."
"He gave me his handkerchief."
"That's *very* good."
"It had a picture of a duck."
"A *duck?*"
"A small blue one. It was a very good duck." She frowned. "I kept it for six years. And then I lost it."
"I'm sorry."
"It does not matter." She looked at her hands. "I think a good many things get lost."
He did not say anything. He only nodded, slowly, and ate a rice cake, and after a while she took one too, and bit it, and chewed with a thoughtful expression, like a person trying a thing she had been told was dangerous.
"It is sweet," she said.
"It's bean paste."
"I have never had it."
"Never?"
"We did not have sweet things. In the, in the place I come from." She swallowed. "My master said they were a distraction."
"That's *sad.*"
"I do not know. I have nothing to compare it with."
"You have *now,*" said Godori, and pushed the plate across the floor.
She looked at it.
Then, very slowly, and without a word, she took a second one.
---
He told her about the road.
He had not meant to. He had only been trying to fill a silence, and the words had slipped out, small and clumsy, the way they always did. He said that they had come a very long way, and that the forest had been dark, and that the mud on the third day had been the worst he had ever seen.
"It rained for three days," he said. "And on the first night nobody could get a fire lit. It was really cold. And one of us, he was a boy named Dan, he stood up, and held out his hands, and made a wall of wind. A whole circle. So the rain slid off it."
Sae had gone still.
"He said it was because of the smoke," said Godori. "That it was in his face. That he didn't care about anyone else. But he held it all night. We all sat there, warm, and he sat up straight, in the wet, with his arms out, and didn't say a word." He turned the cup in his hands. "I didn't thank him. I didn't know how."
"He is the one who died," said Sae, very quietly.
"Yes."
"The one the broad-faced master killed."
"Yes."
"I saw." Her voice was low and even. "I was there. I watched. I did not..." She stopped. She pressed her lips together. "I thought it was a very brave thing to do."
"It was."
"I did not understand it."
"Neither did I."
"It was not *clever.* It did not save him. He was only a boy with wind." Her grey eyes were fixed on a point somewhere beyond the sacks. "I kept asking myself why he did it. When you cannot win. When you know that you will die. Why would anyone *choose* it?"
"Because somebody had to hold the wind," said Godori.
She looked at him.
"That's what he said," he added. "More or less. He said he liked it. Being the one who held the wind. He said nobody had ever needed him to before."
For a very long time, Sae did not say anything.
Outside the high window, a sparrow was quarrelling with another sparrow. Somewhere in the courtyard, a broom swept the earth in long, soft, steady strokes. The tea had gone cold in the pot. She sat with her hands round her cup and her head bowed, and a single drop fell, quite silently, into the tea.
"I would have liked to know him," she said.
"Me too."
"Tell me about the others."
---
He told her about Zetsu.
It was the hardest, and the easiest. He told her about the boy who had caught his hand in the doorway of a classroom and said *Come in,* and grinned as if he had known him all his life. He told her about the puns. He told her about the worst one, the one about the trolls, and the one about the gnomes, and the one he had made, dying, with a sword in his stomach.
"*Wind*-ing down," said Sae, flatly.
"Yes."
"That is not a joke."
"It's the worst joke in the world."
"It is not even a *good* one."
"It's *terrible,*" said Godori, and he began, helplessly, to laugh. "It's the worst thing I've ever heard. He said it with a sword in him. I wanted to *strangle* him."
"Why?"
"Because it was so *stupid!*"
"But he was *dying.*"
"I know!"
"And that was his *last thing.*"
"I *know!*"
A strange sound came out of Sae. It was high and thin and choked, and for a moment Godori thought she was crying. Then he saw her hand fly to her mouth, and her whole thin body shake, and realised, with astonishment, that she was laughing.
It was a very small, very ugly, very involuntary laugh. It came out of her in hiccups. She bent over her knees with her hands pressed to her face, shaking, and said, in a muffled voice, "That is *awful.* That is the most *awful* thing I have ever heard."
"I *know.*"
"He *planned* it."
"He did! He told us! He said he'd been practising!"
"On *Dan?*"
"Every day!"
"Oh, *no,*" said Sae, and collapsed.
She lay on her side on the blanket with her knees drawn up and her face in her arms, laughing until the tears ran down her cheeks. It was a strange, high, helpless laughter, and it went on and on. Godori sat very still with his cup in his hands and did not interrupt. He had a feeling that if he spoke, it would stop.
At last it died away.
She lay quite still, with her face turned to the wall. Her shoulders were trembling. The sleeve of her grey tunic was dark and wet.
"I am sorry," she said, in a very small voice.
"It's okay."
"I should not... I should not have laughed."
"Why not?"
"Because he was *dead.*"
"I laughed," said Godori. "When I heard it. At the time. Everyone did. We were all crying, and we all laughed. It was what he wanted." He smiled, a little crookedly. "I think it was the best thing he ever did."
Sae said nothing.
"I think he'd have liked you," said Godori.
She turned her head.
Her face was blotchy and tear-streaked, and her eyes were enormous. For a moment she stared at him, quite blank, as if he had said something in a language she did not know.
"Why?" she said.
"Because you got it."
"Got what?"
"The joke."
"It was not a *good* one."
"No," said Godori. "But you got it."
---
They went out into the courtyard at noon.
It was Toku who allowed it. He had come to the door of the storeroom with his broom over his shoulder and peered in, very quietly, at the two of them sitting among the rice sacks, and a small, pleased, crumpled smile had crept across his face. "The girl may walk," he said. "In the yard. With the boy. For an hour."
"Is that safe?" said Haruka, from behind him.
"No," said Toku, cheerfully. "But it is *kind.*"
So Sae stepped out into the winter sunshine, blinking, with her hands pressed to her eyes, and stood in the middle of the swept yard in her thin grey tunic like a person who has been under the sea. She looked at the sky. She looked at the old pine in the corner, and the high grey wall, and the stone lantern burning in the hall. She looked at everything as though she had never seen it before.
"It is very bright," she said.
"It's midday."
"I know. It is only that..." She stopped. "I have not been outside in the day for a long time."
"How long?"
"Four years."
Godori's stomach turned over.
"We worked at night," said Sae. "Always at night. It is the rule. The master says that the dark is a friend." She turned her face up to the sun. "I think he did not know what he was saying."
"What do you mean?"
"The dark is *lonely.*"
She said it very softly. She stood in the middle of the yard with her pale face tilted up and her eyes closed, and a faint, shy, wondering smile on her lips, and the light lay on her cheeks like honey.
He could not speak.
*Four years,* he thought. *Four years of nothing but night.*
*And I called her cold.*
"Come on," he said, roughly. "There's a leaf."
---
It was the oldest game in the House of the Last Lantern. It was Toku's favourite lesson. There was a leaf, and a sword, and a very patient old man, and the object was to cut it before it fell.
Godori had tried it every morning for nine days.
He had never succeeded.
He stood in the middle of the courtyard, with a wooden sword in his hands and a yellow leaf drifting down from the old pine, and he breathed, and watched, and swung, and missed. The leaf wobbled. It spun. It settled on the ground with the smug air of a creature that has been spared.
"You are doing it wrong," said Sae.
She was sitting on the edge of the well, with her feet tucked under her and her chin on her knees. Toku sat beside her, with his wooden leg propped on a barrel and his broom across his lap. Neither of them had said a word for ten minutes. Both were watching with the grave, intent expressions of people at a play.
"I'm *trying,*" said Godori.
"You are trying too *much.*"
"That's what Toku says."
"He is correct." She slid off the well. "You are looking at the leaf."
"That's the *point.*"
"No." She crossed the yard. She stopped beside him, quite close, with her hands behind her back, and peered up at the pine. "You look at the leaf. You wait for it to fall. You try to cut where it is." She tilted her head. "But the leaf is not *there.* It is only *going.*"
"What?"
"The leaf is always somewhere else. By the time you have seen it, it has moved." She picked a leaf off the ground, and held it up between two fingers. "You must not look at where it *is.* You must look at where it *wants* to be."
"Where it *wants?*"
"A leaf wants to fall," said Sae. "It is the only thing it wants. So you let it. You watch it want. And when it has finished wanting, you are already there."
Godori stared at her.
"That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard," he said.
"Yes."
"It makes no sense at all."
"No."
"How do you *do* it?"
"I don't know," said Sae, and looked, suddenly, very young. "It is only how I see. The one with the scar says it is a gift. I think it is only that I have always had a lot of time to watch."
She let the leaf go.
It turned in the sunlight, slowly, gold and brown. It drifted sideways. It dipped. Godori felt something shift in the back of his mind, a small quiet click, like a key turning in a lock. He stopped looking at the leaf. He looked at the *air.* He looked at the long slow curve of its want, and the place, a hand's breadth above the ground, where the want would end.
He lifted the sword.
He did not swing it. He only *let* it. The wooden blade moved through the air with no more effort than a breath, a short, quick, quiet stroke, and met the leaf at the exact moment that the leaf arrived.
It fell in two halves.
They drifted down, one after the other, and landed side by side on the swept earth.
Nobody spoke.
"Ha!" said Toku.
It was a loud, cracked, delighted crow. He flung up both hands, and his broom clattered to the ground, and he began, with immense dignity, to dance. It was a stumping, hopping, one-legged dance, with a great deal of elbow in it. "*Ha!* Nine days! Nine days of misery! And she does it in *one!*"
"*I* did it," said Godori.
"*She* did it!"
"I swung the sword!"
"And she told you how!" The old man seized Sae by both shoulders and shook her, laughing. "You see? You see? That is the first rule! *Look first at what is whole!* And she looked at the whole *air!*"
"It was only..." said Sae, bewildered.
"It was *wonderful.*"
"I did not do anything."
"You did *everything,*" said Toku, and he flung his arms round her, broom and all, and hugged her with a wild, wheezing, tearful joy, while she stood quite stiff, with her arms hanging at her sides and her eyes wide, as if she had been struck by a falling roof.
Godori laughed. He could not help it. He stood in the middle of the courtyard with a wooden sword in his hand and two halves of a leaf at his feet, and he laughed until his sides hurt.
And Sae, stiff and astonished in the old man's arms, turned her head, and looked at him.
She was crying.
She did not seem to know it. She only stood there, quite still, with tears running down her face, and a very small, bewildered, helpless smile.
---
The day went by like that.
It went by so quickly that Godori could never quite remember where the afternoon had gone. They sat on the edge of the well and ate bean cakes. They walked round the courtyard, slowly, side by side, and Sae named each of the bricks in the wall, one by one, as if she were greeting old acquaintances. They sat under the pine tree and watched the shadows lengthen. At one point she asked him what the sea was like, and he said he did not know, he had never seen it, and she said that she had, once, from a great height, and that it had been a very large piece of grey cloth.
"It is the biggest thing in the world," she said. "And it does not do anything."
"That sounds peaceful."
"It is the loneliest thing there is."
"I thought that was the dark."
"They are the same," said Sae. "Only bigger."
Irel came out once, at midafternoon, with a dish of roasted chestnuts, and set it down on the edge of the well without a word. She did not stay. But she looked at Godori for a long moment, and then at Sae, and then, to his surprise, she smiled, a small, warm, private smile that lit her whole face.
"Thank you," said Sae, in her small formal voice.
"You are welcome," said Irel.
"They are good."
"They are Toku's. He roasts them over the lantern." The smile grew a little. "It is not allowed. It is the best thing in the house."
Sae looked at the dish.
"May I have another?" she said.
"As many as you like."
"I will not tell you anything."
"I know," said Irel, gently. "Have two."
---
The sun went down, slowly, in a long orange blaze behind the south wall.
They sat on the step of the hall, shoulder to shoulder, in the last of the light. The courtyard had gone blue. A single star had appeared over the pine. Somewhere in the kitchen, a pot clattered, and a smell of onions drifted out, thin and warm and rich.
Sae had stopped talking.
She sat with her knees drawn up and her arms round them, looking at nothing, her small face pale and set in the dusk. She had not spoken for ten minutes. The ribbon at her wrist lay in her lap, a thin black thread, and her fingers turned it over and over, like a rosary.
"I can't stay," she said.
Godori said nothing.
"I want to. I would like it more than anything. I would like to sit here, on this step, and eat a chestnut, and listen to an old man tell me I am wonderful." Her voice was very low. "But I cannot."
"Why not?"
"Because they will find me."
"They know where you are."
"They know. And they are *waiting.* That is what frightens me." She looked down at the ribbon. "They do not need to come for me. They only need to wait until I am ready."
"Ready for what?"
"To go back."
"You don't have to."
"I do."
"*Why?*"
"Because I have nowhere else," said Sae.
She said it quite simply. There was no self-pity in it. It was a plain, flat, matter-of-fact statement, like a person saying that it was cold. She sat with the ribbon in her lap and her pale hair falling across her cheek, and looked at the darkening sky.
"It is all I know," she said. "It is all I have ever known. I do not remember anything before. They found me when I was six, in a snowdrift, with a fever. They took me in. They fed me. They taught me. I was *grateful.*" Her mouth twisted. "I was so grateful. For years. I would have done anything."
"What did they teach you?"
"To be quiet."
"What else?"
"To cut." Her voice shook. "To cut things. Leaves, and ropes, and... and *people.* It does not take long to learn. You find the seam. You pull. It does not even hurt, if you do it properly." She swallowed. "I was very good. I was the best of my year."
Godori's heart ached.
"And then I met you," she said.
"Sae..."
"No. Let me." She turned. She