The River Kami Asked Before Taking My Hand novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Two Cups of Barley Tea
Akari arrives at her late aunt's house in the rain, and the river kami on the veranda asks if she will sit.
The bus left Akari Shirakawa at the end of the road in the rain.
She stood under the stop's tin roof with one suitcase and one backpack.
The village of Kawanobe was a shop, a shrine on a hill, and a lot of wet cedar trees.
Her aunt's house was the last one before the river.
She had the key in her pocket, and the lawyer's letter in her hoodie.
The letter said her aunt Tomoe had died in April and left her the house.
It said nothing about anything else.
Akari walked the last ten minutes with her glasses fogged and her sneakers soaked through.
The stone gate was open.
The persimmon tree dripped orange fruit onto the path.
Past it she saw a long wooden veranda that faced the water.
Someone was sitting on it.
She was a tall woman in a white linen robe tied with a blue cord, and her feet were bare on the wet boards.
Her hair was the grey of river stones and fell all the way to the floor.
She had set two cups on the boards beside her, and steam rose from both.
Akari stopped at the foot of the veranda steps.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I think I have the wrong house."
"You have the right one."
The woman's voice was low and calm.
"You are Akari, Tomoe's niece."
"Yes."
"I am Nagi."
She did not stand up.
She did not come down the steps either, and Akari noticed that.
"I made barley tea," Nagi said. "There is no sake in it. I know you are nineteen."
"How do you know that?"
"Tomoe told me every time she talked about you."
Akari put her suitcase down.
It was a strange thing to hear from a stranger on a porch.
It was also the first time anyone had said her aunt's name to her without a sad face.
"Would you sit with me?" Nagi asked.
She pointed one pale hand at the empty cup.
"You may say no. I would only like to know."
Akari looked at the cup.
Then she looked at the river behind the house.
It was wide and brown and loud with the rain, and it bent around the garden.
"Are you a neighbour?" she asked.
"I am the river."
Nagi said it the way someone says they are the cook.
"The one at the bend. Tomoe called me Nagi. It means calm after wind."
"Right," Akari said. "Okay."
She had read stories like this.
She had also been awake since four, and she had a train ticket in her bag that would not get her anywhere tonight.
She sat on the edge of the veranda, as far from Nagi as the boards allowed, and took the cup.
It was warm.
It was exactly as warm as it needed to be, and not one degree hotter.
"I have to tell you something," Nagi said.
"Please don't."
"It is the village's custom, not mine."
Akari held the cup in both hands and waited.
"When a keeper of this house dies," Nagi said, "the next keeper becomes my wife."
Tea went down the wrong way.
Akari coughed for a while, and Nagi did not touch her back, though her hand lifted an inch and stopped.
"May I?" Nagi said instead.
"No!" Akari said. "No. Sorry. I meant, no to the wife."
"Yes."
"I came here to study."
"Yes."
"I'm nineteen. I have lectures on Monday. I'm not marrying anyone, and I'm not marrying a river."
"I understand," Nagi said.
She said it so simply that Akari kept arguing for a moment with nothing left to argue against.
"That's it?" Akari said. "You understand?"
"A river takes only what is given to it," Nagi said. "It is the oldest rule I have. You have not given. So I will not take."
Her grey eyes did not leave Akari's face.
"I would still like to sit with you," she said. "May I?"
"You're already sitting."
"I am asking if I may keep sitting."
Akari looked at her for a long moment.
Nobody had ever asked her that before.
People came into her room, took the chair next to hers on the train, and sat down in her life without a word.
"You can keep sitting," she said.
Something in Nagi's shoulders let go.
It was a small change, and Akari saw all of it.
They drank the tea while the rain slid off the roof in a line.
Akari looked for something to say and found it by accident.
"My aunt never told me she lived with someone."
"She did not say it to many people."
"Was she, um." Akari stopped. "Was she happy here?"
Nagi turned her head toward the river.
"Yes," she said. "I think so. I asked her once every spring, and every spring she said yes."
Akari nodded and looked at her cup.
Behind the house, the river had been roaring for an hour.
It went quiet all at once.
The rain kept falling, but the water itself made no sound.
Akari raised her head.
Nagi was not looking at the river anymore.
She was looking at Akari, and her hand had gone very still on the boards.
"The water is listening," Nagi said softly. "It wants to know whether you will stay the night."
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