All life means nothing

When I sit here all alone

Hearing the rain fall

~ Shouta, First Poet of Arata, Haiku #65

Wet summer heat pasted Tsukiko’s yukata uncomfortably against her skin as she worked in the garden. Flies buzzed about while she heaved the hoe over her head and brought it crashing down countless times, breaking up the sandy soil. Mother had asked her to prepare a small section of their garden for planting the summer cabbage. Granny hummed nearby where she sat in the dirt, picking weeds from unwanted places in their cucumber and radish beds. A cough from that direction startled Tsukiko and she stood up.

Looking back at Granny, she watched for any other signs of illness. When Granny didn’t cough again, Tsukiko wiped away the sweat that threatened to sting her eyes. Shielding her face, she glanced at the suns above.

The largest of the three was directly overhead; time to help Mother with the midday meal. Feeling thankful for the break, Tsukiko rested her hoe against the wooden fence they had constructed around their garden two springs previous. She’d draped a cloth over it earlier and retrieved it, mopping the moisture from her face.

“Granny?”

“Yes, Tsuki’chan?” The ancient woman looked up from her work, clearing her throat.

“It’s almost time for lunch. I’m going in to help Mother. Do you need help getting up?” Tsukiko bent down to rest a hand on Granny’s shoulder.

“No, I’ll be fine for a while longer. I want to listen to the warblers in the reeds a little more before I go in. You run along, now.” Granny went back to her humming and picking.

Tsukiko straightened and walked through the crude flap that separated the garden from the back storage room of their small house.

It was even hotter inside and Tsukiko groaned. She disliked the heat and lately, her body seemed to sweat at the slightest provocation. Embarrassment flooded her cheeks every time her yukata clung to her body, revealing her increasingly woman-like curves. The men in the village used to whistle at her on blistering days when she walked down the road to the market. Tsukiko hated drawing any sort of attention to herself. Thankfully, her mother had taken over the market runs a few months ago.

Tsukiko slipped her shoes off before stepping up onto the main floor. Kneeling, she slid open the door between the storage room and the rest of the house beyond. Mother had all the partitions open within so that each room in the house was revealed. All the window flaps were tied up so that air could circulate throughout the stifling hut. Her mother knelt by the depressed square hearth, poking at a smoldering fire. Mother was careful when reaching over the flames to stir the pot that hung from the carved carp hook attached to a woven bamboo rope suspended from one of the ceiling rafters.

“How can I help, Mother?” Tsukiko asked.

“Could you set the table?” Eri, her mother, looked over at her daughter and smiled.

Tsukiko nodded and went to their low table in the front room, assembling bowls, chopsticks, and cloth napkins.

She heard Granny enter the back room with another cough and even discerned the old woman’s weight shifting as she removed her shoes. Tsukiko frowned, troubled that her hearing had grown so sharp. Most people would be delighted to hear so well, Tsukiko knew, but it was one more odd thing to add to a growing list of oddities she had noticed about herself lately.

Without meaning to, she paid attention to the other sounds in the house while she prepared the table. She heard the blunt scraping of her mother’s bamboo spoon against the iron pot as though it were right next to her ear. Granny inhaled through her nose while she drank from the cup of tea she had just poured. Tsukiko could hear her grandmother’s throat gulping as it swallowed the liquid.

“Tsuki’chan?” Mother called from the hearth.

“Yes?” Tsukiko shook her head, startled from her thoughts.

“Could you go back out to the garden and pick some shiso leaves for our rice?”

Tsukiko made sure the table was ready for their lunch and returned to the garden.

The sounds of the house were distracting until she passed under the flap and walked into the shiso beds. The slight breeze was a welcome companion and she was able to focus on how it felt rather than the noise it made. Absent-mindedly she rubbed her right ear and was shocked that she had forgotten her kerchief. Over the last year, her ears had grown abnormally pointed. Before any of the village girls could tease her about it, she had taken to covering her head the same way her mother did. Thankfully, no one lived nearby. No one would see her as she picked the herbs.

The warblers Granny had mentioned were loud as they twittered in the reeds. But they did little to drown out Mother’s cough from inside the house. Tsukiko frowned. They’d both been coughing and sniffling lately. Strange to have a cold in the height of summer, but she supposed it was possible. It wouldn’t surprise her if she caught it next.

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She returned her thoughts to the task at hand and to listening to the warblers. Tsukiko’s family home was near a small tide pool that attracted many birds. It had always fascinated her to live so near the forest and so near the sea at the same time. In one day, she was likely to wander through groves of pine and bamboo and then dip her feet into the cool water of the ocean to gain a respite from the oppressive summer heat. Granny called their little homestead a small piece of paradise. Usually, Tsukiko agreed with her. Today, however, she was frustrated with the sweatiness and the noise and the thoughts that ambled through her mind.

Her sharp eyes spotted the best shiso leaves without trouble and she neatly clipped them with her shears, placing the severed greens into her basket. She wished the menial task would help her avoid what was troubling her, but it was an empty wish. Her mind soon settled on her awkwardness with her growing body and the strange things that seemed to be happening to it. It wasn’t just the heightened hearing and her unusually shaped ears. She had not slept in nearly three days but felt entirely awake and energized. Her eyesight had improved remarkably in previous months, even though Tsukiko had suffered from nearsightedness as a child. She wondered if, like her hearing, her vision would soon improve to the point that she would be able to see many things from miles away.

Even then, she could hear groups of people chatting in the village a mile away. Old Man Muko cursed under his breath as he sanded a table in his workshop. Mother’s friend Souta giggled with another village matron about a crude joke. Tsukiko’s cheeks colored. All the strangeness was too much for her mind to deal with; all the noise, the visual stimulation, the odors. That was another thing. Her sense of smell had nearly caused her to vomit several times in the last few weeks. Tsukiko could smell everything. She smelled the cooking fires of each house around them and the food in their pots. She knew there was a dog wandering on the beach by its scent and that it had recently eaten a persimmon. Waste from the privy mingled with the savory odor of the fish stew Mother was cooking. Nausea coiled in Tsukiko’s stomach and she pressed the shiso leaves to her nostrils, letting the clean minty scent fill them. It helped a little.

Inside, she carried bowls from the table to the hearth so that her mother could fill them with the rice and stew. After, they ate in a pleasant silence at the low table. Tsukiko never talked much. Her shyness was sometimes construed as rudeness, but Mother and Granny knew she was simply reserved.

“The stew is excellent, dearie,” Granny said to Mother.

Tsukiko’s mother shielded her mouth and coughed before redirecting the compliment back to the old woman, “It’s due to your excellent teaching.”

Tsukiko smiled at the comfort she derived from the two women. Even though she never confided her frustrations about herself with them, Tsukiko knew if she did, they would be there to offer advice and loving encouragement. Instead, she just rested in their presence and trusted that she would grow out of whatever awkward phase she seemed to be stuck in.

After dinner, Tsukiko wandered outside to rest by the ocean under the dying light of the suns, focusing on the sounds of nature rather than people. After only a quarter hour passed, her mother called to her from the hut.

“Tsukiko?”

“Yes, Mother?”

“Could you come back in, dear? I heard from Narita that there may be bandits north of us. I wouldn’t want you to be out and about if there may be danger.” Her mother’s voice carried like the sound of a bell through the rooms to her ears, though it wasn’t raised at all.

Though it pained her in an unexpected way, Tsukiko agreed to come back inside. It seemed like every day for a month, she had tried to head out towards the village or the beach and either Mother or Granny had stopped her or pulled her back sooner than she wished. Every time there was some logical reason presented, but Tsukiko had begun to wonder if they were trying to keep her from going beyond the house altogether. She felt guilty for suspecting them of some deceitful plot. Since she had not slept in so long, perhaps it was mental exhaustion that prompted her strong reaction. Maybe she would be able to sleep tonight.

Back in the hut, Tsukiko went into her small room and unrolled her futon and blankets. For a while, she just lay there, listening to the cicadas screeching outside in the woods and the ocean roaring its invasion onto the beach. Because there were so many sounds bombarding her sensitive ears at all times, it was difficult to filter out unimportant noises in favor of significant ones. However, when she caught the sound of her mother and grandmother talking later in the night, she was able to tune into their conversation and ignore the other sounds without even trying.

“Do you think she has any idea?” Eri whispered.

“How could she? We’ve been careful never to mention him or those sorts of things to her. Given her shyness, I doubt she’s heard tales from any of her friends in the village,” Granny replied, keeping her voice low.

“I don’t think she has many friends, poor thing,” Mother lamented.

A brief silence.

“Do you think we’re doing the right thing?” Mother asked. “Shouldn’t we just tell her? She’s had to have noticed the changes.”

“At some point soon, you’ll have to.”

“You’re right. She’s almost a woman. Before long, there will be no way to keep it a secret.” Mother’s words held no conviction. She sounded unsure.

“Why don’t you work with her in the garden tomorrow and I can do the household chores. She loves the garden and she’ll be comfortable there. If I were you, I’d tell her the entire story and avoid any confusion later. She deserves to know about him,” Granny advised.

“You’re right,” Mother murmured.

When they were finished talking, Tsukiko noted their distinct breathing patterns as they settled down to sleep. Mother’s chest had a slight rattling wheeze in the depths of sleep and they both coughed often in the night. While she lay awake, Tsukiko grew concerned for a moment. Their colds seemed to be worsening. Her concern ebbed when she contemplated the conversation she’d overheard. Tsukiko wished they had continued talking. What were they hiding from her? Did whatever it was concern the reasons behind her physiological changes? Tsukiko just felt so awkward all the time—far more so than just a girl on the cusp of womanhood. Something was wrong with her. She was… different.

They had also mentioned a him, though she had no idea who they could be talking about other than her absent father. Tsukiko had never met him and throughout her life, Mother and Granny had mentioned him rarely and only in whispers. The only token Tsukiko knew about related to her father was the small wooden flute Mother kept locked away in a polished black box. Was Tsukiko somehow like him? Feeling chills scramble up her back, she was bombarded by a strange sense of foreboding, as though the future conversation with her mother in the garden was going to change her life forever—and not for the better. Trying to push such thoughts from her mind, she spent the entire night willing herself to sleep and never succeeding.