「The Girl Who Became a Fish」

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At Honshu's nothern tip stands a string of rolling hills called the Bonju Range. Rising a little over a thousand feet at most, these hills are rarely marked on maps. It's said that long ago, when the whole region was underwater, Yoshitsune and his retainers crossed it by boat as they fled farther and farther north toward the distant land of Ezo. During their passage, the ship struck one of these hills, and the mark left by that impact remains visible to this day: a patch of red earth on the cliffs, midway up a hill near the center of the range.

That hill is known as Mahageyama―Horsebare Mountain. From the village that sits below it, they say, the mountain's outline resembles a horse in full gallop, but in reality it bears a stronger resemblance to the profile of a feeble old man.

Mahageyama is famous locally for its scenic beauty. The village at its foot is a desolate and impoverished place of no more than twenty or thirty homes, but if you follow the river that runs by it just a few miles upstream, you'll find a roaring white waterfall about a hundred feet tall. The foliage in late summer and fall is magnificent, and during those months, visitors from neighboring towns breathe some life into the place; there's even a modest tea stand set up below the falls.

Toward the end of summer this year, a boy fell to his death there. He didn't jump―it was simply an accident. He was a fair-skinned student from the city who had come to gather plants. There are quite a few rare ferns growing in the area, and they attract no small number of enthusiasts.

The plunge basin at the bottom of the falls is surrounded on three sides by high cliffs; to the west alone is a narrow gap where the water has eaten through the rock. The cliffs are always damp with spray, and ferns grow all along them, trembling constantly in the roar of the waterfall.

The boy who died had been climbing up the side of the basin. It was afernoon, and the early autumn sun was still shining brightly over the spray-spattered cliffs. When the boy was halfway up, the rock beneath his foot, which was about the size of a person's head, suddenly gave way. He fell without a sound, almost as if he'd been peeled away from the stone face of the cliff. On the way down, he was caught by the branch of an old tree growing amid the rocks, but it snapped. The boy struck the water below with a hideous splash.

A handful of people happened to witness the fall, but the one who saw the boy's last moments most clearly was the thirteen-year-old girl tending the tea stand.

She watched as the boy was pulled deep into the swirling abyss, only for his body to float back up to the surface again. His eyes were shut and his mouth was hanging open. The blue shirt he wore was torn in places, but his collection bag still hung from his shoulder.

A moment later, the boy's body was sucked down to the bottom of the pool once more.

On clear days beginning in late spring and continuing well into the fall, columns of white smoke rising of Mahageyama can be seen from miles away. The mountain trees are full of life at this time of year, and the local charcoal burners are busy making the most of it.

There are a dozen or so charcoal huts on Mahageyama. One of these was built near to the falls, at a considerable remove from the others, because the man who lived there was an outsider. The girl from the tea stand was his daughter, and her name was Suwa. Together they live in this hut all year round.

Her father had built the stand by the falls out of logs and reed screens when Suwa was eleven. He stocked it with rice crackers, bottles of lemon soda, and several kinds of cheap candy for his daughter to sell.

As the number of visitors increased with the approach of summer, Suwa's father would put these refreshments into a large backset and carry them to the falls. Suwa would trail after him, her bare feet slapping against the ground. Her father returned to the hut more or less fight away while Suwa stayed behind to watch the stand. At the first glimpse of a potential customer, she would cry in a loud voice, "Freshments!" just as her father had told her to, but Suwa's pretty voice was drowned out by the sound of the falls. She rarely got a visitor to turn their head and she never managed to make so much as fifty sen in a day.

Her father would return around dusk, covered head to toe in charcoal dust, and ask:

"How much did you make?"

"Nothing."

"Yeah, so it goes," her father would mutter with resignation, looking up at the falls. Then the two of them would load the items back into the basket and return to the hut.

This was how Suwa would spend her days up until the first frost came.

Suwa's father never worried about leaving his daughter at the stand alone. She was mountain-born; there was no danger of her slipping on the rocks or getting sucked into the plunge basin. On days when the weather was nice, Suwa would take off her clothes and swim right up beside the basin's wall. Even from the water, when she saw a potential customer, she would eagerly brush her short, sun-browned hair out of her eyes and yell, "Freshments!"

On rainy days, Suwa would crawl under a straw mat next to the stand and take a nap. The leafy limbs of the large evergreen oak extending over the stand would shelter the sleeping child from the rain.

Suwa was always gazing up at the thundering falls, certain that if she watched long enough, the water was bound to run out at some point. She often found herself wondering how it was that the water spilling into the pool looked exactly the same, day after day.

Recently, though, her thoughts had deepend.

Suwa discovered that the shape of the falling water really wasn't the same all the time: everything from the patterns of the spray to the breadth of the falls was constantly in flux. She came to the realization that the waterfall wasn't even water at all, but cloud―she could tell from the white mist that billowed up as it cascaded over the cliffs. After all, Suwa told herself, nothing so white could really be water.

One day Suwa was passing the time by the falls, lost in thought as usual. It was a gra day, and there was a bitter edge to the autumn wind that blew against her rosy cheeks.

She was thinking back to a story―one her father had told her a long time ago, holding her in his arms as he sat beside the charcoal pile. It was the story of two brothers, woodcutters named Saburo and Hachiro. One day, the younger brother, Hachiro, brought home some cherry trout he'd caught in the stream. Without waiting for Saburo to come down from the mountain, Hachiro grilled one of the fish and ate it. He found it so delicious that he had another, then another. He couldn't stop himself, and before long he had devoured the entire catch. Now he was thirsty―unbearably thirsty. Hachiro drank up all the water in the well, then ran to the riverbank at the edge of the village and drank even more. As he drank, scales began to sprout all over his body. By the time Saburo found his brother, Hachiro had transformed into a terrible serpent, swimming through the water. "Hachiro!" he called out, and from the river, the serpent wept as he called back, "Saburo!" The two brothers wept and wept, one on the bank, the other in the water, crying out, "Hachiro!" "Saburo!" But there was nothing they could do.

When Suwa heard this tale, she felt such pity for the brothers that she stuffed one of her father's coal-blackened fingers into her mouth and cried.

Waking from her reverie, Suwa blinked in disbelief. The falls were whispering. Hachiro... Saburo... Hachiro...

Her father appeared, brushing aside the red ivy hanging along the cliffs.

"Suwa, how much did you make?"

She didn't answer. As she rubbed the glistening spray from the tip of her nose with her knuckles, her father wordlessly gathered up the goods from the tea stand.

"That's it for the stand," Suwa's father said, soda bottles clinking as he shifted the basket from his right hand to the left. "Nobody else is coming up the mountain this year."

As the sun began to set, there was nothing but the sound of the wind. Now and then, dry leaves from the oaks and firs fell on the two of them like sleet.

"Dad," Suwa called to her father from behind. "What are you living for?"

He hunched his broad shoulders and turned, staring fixedly at the grave expression on his daughter's face. "How should I know?" he muttered.

"Then why bother living at all?" she asked, chewing up a stalk of silvergrass she'd plucked along the way.

Suwa's father raised his hand, ready to knock her down. But slowly, hesitantly, he let it drop. For some reason, he'd been aware of Suwa's growing moods. She was becoming a woman, he thought, so he decided to let it pass.

"Yeah, guess that's how it goes..."

Suwa was infuriated to no end by her father's bootless response. Bits of grass flying from her mouth, she cried:

"I hate you! I hate you!"

Obon was over and the stand had closed. Now came the time of year Suwa hated most of all.

Every five days or so, her father would take a load of charcoal down to the village. He could have paid somebody else to go in his place, but the fifteen or twenty sen they'd charge would have eaten up too much of his earnings. So he went himself, leaving Suwa on her own.

When the weather was nice, Suwa would go hunting for mushrooms. They were lucky if her father could get fix or six sen for each bag of charcoal, which didn't add up to nearly enough for the two of them to live on, so he had Suwa gather mushrooms for him to sell as well.

Butterscotch mushrooms―small, brown, and slippery―fetched a particularly high price. They could be found on rotten logs, growing in clusters among the ferns. Whenever Suwa saw those clumps of green, it reminded her of the only friend she'd every had. She would sprinkle bits of fern moss over her basketful of mushrooms before heading back to the hut, and this always made her smile.

Whenever her father got good money for the charcoal or mushrooms, he came back reeking of alcohol. Sometimes he'd bring Suwa a present, too―a paper purse with a little mirror on it or some other trinket.

One morning a stor, swept the mountain, rattling the mat hanging in the doorway of their hut. Suwa was the only one there; her father had left for the village at first light.

Stuck in the hut all day long, Suwa put up her hair for the first time in a long while. She tied it with a paper ribbon decorated with waves, another of her father's gifts. Then she stoked the fire high and waited for him to return. Time and time again, she could hear the cries of animals mingling with the sound of the wind in the trees.

The sun had begun to set, so Suwa ate her dinner alone: fried miso on a bed of barley.

When night fell, the wind died and a bitter cold set in. Strange things happen in the mountain on nights so quiet. Suwa could hear giant trees being toppled by tengu, and the sound of somebody washing adzuki beans just outside the hut, the laughter of mountain men echoing in the distance.

Tired of waiting for her father, Suwa eventually nestled into her straw bedding beside the hearth. As she dozed, she felt sure somebody was occasionally lifting a corner of the mat in the doorway and peering in. Thinking it had to be a mountain man, Suwa lay perfectly still, pretending to be fast asleep.

By the light of the dying embers, she could just make out bits of white fluttering in and landing on the dirt floor: the year's first snow! Even at the edge of a dream, the thought thrilled her.

Pain. A weight so heavy it made her whole body numb. Suwa could her that familiar, reeking breath.

"I hate you!" she screamed, running outside in a daze.

A blizzard! The fierce wind blew a flurry of snow into Suwa's face, bowling her over. In mere moments, her hair and clothes were covered in white.

Suwa pulled herself up, her shoulders heaving as she gasped for breath. She trudged onward, clothes whipping in the wind.

The sound of the falls was growing steadily louder now. She walked straight on, wiping her nose with her palm again and again. Soon she could hear the raging water almost directly beneath her.

From a narrow gap between the barren, wailing trees, Suwa breathed a single word:

"Dad!"

And then she lept.

When Suwa came to, only a dim light reached her eyes. She could sense the faint rumble of the waterfall coming from far overhead. The vibrations rocked her whole body; she was chilled to the bone.

Oh, I'm at the bottom of the river! With this realization, a wave of profound relief washed over Suwa. She felt renewed.

Kicking her feet, she darted through the water without a sound. As she sped forward, she nearly swam nose-first into the rocky bank.

A serpent!

I've turned into a serpent. I'm so happy! Now I can never go home, she said to herself with a flourish of her great whiskers.

But she was only a little carp, wiggling the wart at the tip of her nose as she opened and closed her mouth.

The carp swam in circles near the basin at the foot of the waterfall. Flapping her fins, she came within inches of the surface, then dove back down with a forceful flick of her tail. She chased after tiny shrimp, hid among the clumps fo reeds near the bank, and nibbled on the algae growing on the rocks.

Then, finally, she slid into motion, heading straight for the plunge basin. In an instant, it had her in its pull. She swirled around like a leaf and then vanished below.