Prologue
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Her mother dabbed at her eyes. "Take care," she said. Her father and two older brothers remained steadfastly silent. Her younger sister and brother wouldn't come out of the house. Standing at the door, Suzu could hear her grandmother comforting them.
"What's all this carrying on?" said the man next to her. His was the only cheerful voice. "Aoyagi-sama is a wealthy man. He'll dress you in fine clothes, teach you how to behave in civil society. When your apprenticeship is complete, you may well become the kind of proper young lady who can go wherever she pleases without the slightest reservation."
He laughed loudly. Turning her head to glance up at him, Suzu's eyes took in the broken-down shack before them. The posts leaned and the thatched roof sagged. The dirt floor was divided into a mere two rooms, and everything inside leaned or sagged as well.
Theirs was an impoverished life. They were tenant farmers who farmed rice, with most of the yearly yield going to pay the rent. On top of that, the previous year's harvest had proved meager, and when summer came again, ears did not appear on the stalks. As it was impossible to pay the rent, Suzu was indentured as a servant. Not her seventeen-year-old brother, or her eleven-year-old sister, or any of her other nine siblings. It was Suzu, fourteen years old according to the traditional lunar calender, but only twelve if you counted the years from her birth.
"Well, let's get going."
At the man's urging, Suzu bowed. She said no farewells. If she tried, she wouldn't be able to hold back the tears. She steeled her gaze and refused to blink. She looked at her home and memorized the faces she saw there.
"Take care," her mother said again and wiped her face with her sleeve.
With that, Suzu turned around. Her weeping mother, her stubbornly morose brothers, she understood now that none of them would be stepping forward to hold her back.
Suzu trudged silently after the man as they passed through the outskirts of the village. It was near noon and they had already reached the limits of the world that she knew. The trail cut up the slopes from the foot of the mountain. Suzu had never set foot beyond the remote mountain pass.
"You're a good kid. None of this weeping and wailing. That's what I like to see."
The man's cheerful attitude never flagged. He walked with long strides, saying whatever came to his mind. "Tokyo is a great city. You've probably never seen gaslight, huh? The estate you're going to, you'll be able to ride on a street car as well. Do you even know what a horse-draw trolley is?"
Suzu ignored him. To keep herself from looking back over her shoulder, she focused on the man's shadow and let his pace drag her along. When they drew apart, she would catch up in a flurry of tiny steps and then tread with satisfaction on the shape of the man's head.
Repeating this over and over, they crossed the mountain pass. Starting down the other side, the shadow of the man's head disappeared. He had stopped to look up at the sky.
Clouds raced across the sky from behind them. The shadow Suzu had been walking on grew faint.
"Looks like rain."
They glanced back at where they had come from. A shadow climbed the luxuriant, tree-covered slopes from the village. The shadow of the clouds stuck to their heels, almost as if the rain were pursuing. A warm breeze began to blow. Drops of rain drummed on the road.
"Well, this is unfortunate," the man said, and dashed to a giant camphor tree growing along the side of the road. Suzu hugged her furoshiki-wrapped bundle to her chest and followed after him. The big drops of rain thudded against her cheeks and shoulders. Almost as soon as she had reached the cover of the branches, the squall turned into a driving downpour.
Suzu scrunched up her neck and ran toward the base of the tree. The twisting trunk jutting out of the ground provided some cover as well. Probably because of the roots being worn smooth by any number of travelers stopping here to catch their breath, she lost her footing.
Oh, don't trip, she thought, and at the same time was sent sprawling. She pitched forward and with her next step caught her toes on another root. She started to fall. Her feet slipped out from under her. Suzu skittered up to the end of a precipice in a little dance.
"Hey, watch out!"
Halfway through the warning, the man's voice turned into a shout. Where the trunk of the huge camphor tree split apart was an embankment steep enough to be called a cliff. Suzu teetered there on the edge. She dropped everything and reached out for the man's hands, a nearby branch, a clump of bushes, anything, but could not grab hold. She was just about to tumble in when she was struck by a torrent of rain. It roared in her ears like standing underneath a waterfall.
Suzu's memory was intact up until the moment she thought she was going to fall. Then her head spun. She was thrown by the flood of water. She came to herself again. She seemed to be half-submerged in a river. But what river? It was so deep she couldn't feel the bottom. The water washing into her mouth was salty.
The dark water swallowed her up. She lost consciousness. When she next opened her eyes, she was resting on a gently swaying bed. A handful of men were staring down at her.
Suzu aroused herself with a start, blinked. The concerned looks on the faces of the men softened. They said something she didn't understand. She sat up and took in her surroundings. Her mouth dropped open in amazement. She was on a platform of old boards that barely jutted above the surface of the water. Raising her eyes, she saw that the black water went on forever, meeting the sky at the distant horizon in a straight line. It was the first time in her life that she had seen such a wide expanse of sea.
She searched for the big camphor tree she had fallen under. Behind her was a cliff so high she had to crane her neck to take it all in. The cliff was deeply rutted. Here and there white threads of water streamed down the face. The wide platform of boards had been built out from the foot of the cliff. Piers lined the outer edge of the deck. Three small boats were docked there.
Her only thought was that somehow she had been washed down the river and had ended up in the ocean. She'd heard that if you sailed all the way down a river, it would get bigger and bigger and eventually take you to the ocean.
The ocean.
The water was black as night. She placed her hands on the edge of the platform and stared down into the water. It was nothing like the lakes or river she knew. The water was amazingly clear, but she could not see the bottom. It continued on and on until it was swallowed up in a faraway blackness, where twinkling lights swam together in swarms.
Somebody called to her, gently jostled her shoulders. Suzu finally tore her gaze away from the ocean. The men looked at her with distressed expressions on their faces. One of them said something to her that she didn't understand.
Suzu replied with a blank look. "What? What are you saying?"
The men glanced at each other in noisy consternation. They all spoke at once, words flying back and forth, but Suzu didn't comprehend a thing.
"Hey, where am I? I've got to get back. What's the best way to get back to my village from here? The road to Tokyo would do as well, I guess. Do any of you know where Aoyagi-sama lives?"
This set off another flurry of chatter amongst the men. Confused expressions clouded their countenances.
The men huddled together in a conference. Suzu sat down on the deck and took a closer look around.
The cliffs rose straight up as if the edge of the land had been torn off. The inner face of the cliff was hollowed out. There was a waterfall deep within the mountains near where she lived, but the height of these cliffs far and away exceeded the slope of that waterfall. The cliffs stretched out to the right and left or her, almost seeming to enclose the floating platform.