The River Kami Asked Before Taking My Hand novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: Over the Threshold

Nagi stood on the gravel outside the gate and did not breathe.

Akari came down the path in her quilt, barefoot, and stopped one step behind her.

"Are you hurt?" she asked.

"No."

"Does it feel strange?"

"It feels like a floor," Nagi said.

She sounded offended by how ordinary it was.

Then she laughed, one short startled sound, and covered her mouth with both hands.

"Akari. I am standing on a road."

"I see that."

"Sixty years, and it is gravel."

"It's pretty good gravel," Akari said.

Nagi turned around to look at her, and her grey eyes were wet and wide.

Her hair had come loose down her back, and the early sun made it nearly silver.

"May I go further?" she said.

"You're asking me?"

"The river asks the one who gave. I think that is you."

Akari's throat went tight.

"Yes," she said. "Go as far as you like. I'll walk next to you."

"May I take your hand while we do?"

"Please."

Nagi's palm was warm.

It was not the careful warmth of a cup of tea.

It was the warmth of someone's skin after the sun has been on it all morning.

They walked up the village road together, a tall woman in a white robe and a small one in a quilt.

Dew soaked the hem of the quilt.

A crow watched them from a wire and said nothing.

Nagi counted her steps aloud.

At twenty she stopped talking and only breathed.

At fifty she began to smile in a way that made her look like someone else, someone young and.

At ninety she slowed.

At a hundred paces, by the old milestone with its cap of moss, she felt the pull.

"Here," she said.

She did not let go of Akari's hand.

"It is like a cord tied behind my ribs. It is not tight, but it does not give."

"Is it going to pull you back?"

"No. It only says no further." Nagi studied the road beyond the stone. "It said no further at the gate for sixty years. Now it says it here."

"So it moved a hundred metres."

"It moved because you opened the gate for me last night."

Akari went pink to her hairline.

"I didn't do anything with a gate."

"You gave me a thing freely. A whole night. The river takes only what is given, and it counted that." Nagi looked at her. "I think it will count the next one too."

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