The Crane Wife by Patrick Ness Page A

understand. I wouldn’t part with it either.’ His hand idly patted the pile of training folders on the counter, a motion that contained so much disappointment, so much recognition that he’d bumped up against one of life’s worst limits, George found himself standing. To do what, he didn’t know. To offer the man comfort? To apologise? To simply recognise the importance of the moment?
    He would never find out, because the shop door opened and Kumiko came in, smiling up at George in greeting.
    ‘I hope you do not mind,’ she said, setting her suitcase on the counter beside the man’s folders, seemingly oblivious to his presence. She took out another black tile, hiding its contents from George for the moment. ‘I have taken your lion,’ she said. ‘And I have used it.’
    She flipped the tile over with a silently delighted
ta-da
.
    The lion now prowled the watermill. A conjunction even more jarring than the dragon and the crane, but one that somehow, against all possibilities, worked just as well. The trueness of the watermill, which carried history in every glistening feather filament, was now imbued with a warning.
Lions alone welcome here
, it seemed to say.
Lions made only of words.
But perhaps
this
lion, this one here, who had clearly prowled the watermill for so long that it and the watermill were one home, one history, perhaps it might make an exception for you, the viewer. It might still eat you, but then again, it might not. Like the dragon and the crane, the risk would be yours. Would you take it?
    ‘It’s . . .’ George said.
    ‘Holy . . .’ Mehmet said.
    ‘That’s . . .’ the man in the suit said.
    And then he named an even more extravagant sum.
    ‘
Goodness
,’ Kumiko said, as if seeing the man for the first time. She glanced at George, astonished. ‘Is he offering to buy it?’
    The man didn’t wait for George to answer and increased his extravagant sum by another extravagant amount.
    Kumiko giggled, actually giggled, looking at George as if they’d somehow stepped into the middle of an unexpected comedy sketch. ‘What on earth shall we do?’ she said.
    George felt unwilling, almost savagely so, to let the lion and the watermill out of his sight, even after this single glimpse of the way it lived there on the tile.
    The man doubled his second extravagant sum.
    ‘Sold!’ Mehmet cried.
    ‘George?’ Kumiko asked again. ‘The money would be useful to me. For supplies.’
    George tried to speak, but it came out in a croak. He tried again. ‘Anything,’ he stumbled. ‘Anything you say.’
    Kumiko watched him for a moment. ‘I will not hold you to that,’ she said. Then she turned to the man. ‘All right. A deal.’
    As George, in a daze, wrapped the lion and the watermill in tissue paper the man in the suit began to cry, unembarrassed. ‘Thank you,’ he kept saying, as Mehmet ordered up a dummy invoice the man could charge his credit card against. ‘Just, thank you.’
    ‘
How
much?’ Amanda said, the next time she dropped JP off at his house.
    ‘I know,’ George said. He hoisted JP up to eye level, bouncing him in his arms. ‘You thought your
grand-père
was crazy, huh? Cutting up books like that?’
    ‘
Désolé
,’ JP said.
    ‘No, seriously, Dad,
how
much?’
    ‘She gave me half. I said no. I
insisted
no, but she said we’d made it together, that it was nothing without my contribution – though that’s patently a lie, Amanda, my contribution is tiny, a tenth, a thousandth of hers.’
    ‘But she still gave you half.’
    ‘Said it would turn the art into a lie if I didn’t accept it.’
    ‘When the hell am I going to meet this woman?’ Amanda demanded.
    George was confused for a moment, but then he realised that Kumiko and Amanda still hadn’t actually met. Somehow it had always worked out that they were never there at the same time. Strange. Though, to be honest, when he was with Kumiko, George tended to forget about the existence of anyone else on the planet,