The Lake of Dreams - Kim Edwards [7]
And now we were here, all these days and miles away, Yoshi’s voice, his laughter, drifting over the wall that divided the hot springs pool. I slid deeper into the water, resting my head on the damp rocks. My limbs floated, faintly luminous, and steam rose; the women across from me chatted softly. They were mother and daughter, I thought, or sisters born years apart, for their bodies were similar in shape, and their gestures mirrored each other’s. I thought again of my own mother, sitting alone in her house.
Lately you seem like a very sad and lonely person. The comment still smarted, but I had to wonder if it was true. I’d left for college just weeks after my father died, numb but determined to escape the silence that had descended on the house like a dark enchantment. Keegan Fall had tried again and again to break it, but I’d sent him away harshly, two times, three times, until he stopped calling. In the years since, I’d moved—from college to grad school, from good jobs to better ones and through a whole series of romances, leaving all that grief behind, never letting myself slow down. Until now, unemployed in Japan, I had paused.
One by one, the women stepped out of the pool, water dripping onto the stones, causing little waves. I remembered my dream, the faces just beneath the surface of the ice. My father used to tell me stories where I was always the heroine and the ending was always happy. Nothing had prepared me for the shock of his death. He had fallen, it was determined in the autopsy, and hit his head on the boat and slipped beneath the water, a freak accident that could not fully be explained, or ever undone. His fishing pole had been recovered days later, tangled in the reeds at the edge of the marsh.
I left the pool and dressed, but Yoshi wasn’t outside yet, so I started walking idly down a path of stones alone. It followed a narrow stream and opened into a pond, as round as a bowl and silvery with moonlight. I paused at the edge. In the darkness on the other side, something stirred.
Not for the first time that quake-riddled day, I held my breath. A great blue heron stood in the shadows, its long legs disappearing into the dark water, its wings folded closely against its body. Then the pond was still, gleaming like mica. Another, smaller heron stirred beside the first. I thought of the two women in the spring, as if they had stepped outside to the pond and been transformed into these silent, beautiful birds. Then Yoshi called my name, and both herons unfolded their wide wings and lifted off, slowly, gracefully, casting shadows on the water before they disappeared into the trees.
“Lucy,” Yoshi called again. “If we hurry, we can catch the next train.”
The heat closed in as we lost altitude, and the hydrangea blossoms against the windows grew older and more ragged, as if the slow, incremental season had been compressed into a single hour. By the time we reached our stop by the sea, the blossoms had disappeared completely, leaving only glossy foliage. We walked home along the narrow cobblestone lanes. Crickets hummed and the ground shook slightly with the surf. Twice, I paused.
“Is that the sea?” I asked.
“Maybe.”
“Not an earthquake?”
Yoshi sighed, a little wearily, I thought. “I don’t know. Maybe a very little one.”
A vase of flowers had tipped over on the table. Several books were scattered on the floor. I wiped up the water and gathered the petals. As I stood, there was a single quick, sharp jolt, so strong that even Yoshi reacted, pulling