Young Writers Society

A/N: I reached the 10k words milestone, woot. Thanks for all the help I've received so far!

5

In the morning my body feels like a cluster of twisted muscles and throbbing nerves.

“You need to exercise more,” Father says, sipping jasmine tea from the edge of the hearth as I struggle to stand.

Conrad is dancing around me, swaying Miiko’s lantern high above his head like it’s some kind of sacred relic. An idea sparks. I snatch the lantern out of his grasp. He continues to twirl and spin, holding onto thin air as if nothing happened.

“Maybe I should stretch my legs,” I say on my way out.

I have a few plans taking shape in my mind, all of them missing vital components. Before anything else, I need to identify which farmers witnessed the incident in the forest. Mr Tanaka is an obvious suspect, given my previous encounter with him and his lack of surprise when he saw my symbols. But his muteness is a huge problem. I can’t construct a conversation with him where he lets slip information. Learning from him will require an over commitment on my part. Direct questions. Transparency. Too much of a gamble. Especially without knowing why he handed me the photo.

Miiko is the obvious starting point. The other farmers regard her as some kind of matriarch, and I can see why.

The lantern is my ticket in.

As I cross the bridge to her minka, a hushed commotion reaches my ears; an angry voice forced to a low volume.

I crouch behind the wooden railings and pretend to fix the lantern.

“This isn’t enough, Miiko!” a man hisses, words punctuated by crunching gravel.

Miiko’s voice is perfectly calm. “I’m giving you what was earned.”

“I sent you both of my children.” A tinkle of metal fills a short silence. “This is half of what they earned!”

“Your children arrived late and left early. Their payment reflects this.”

A short pause. I can almost hear the neurons firing in his brain.

“They’re afraid to come here. You know why that is.”

“I will not hear of this foolishness. Please be on your way.”

The conversation ends with a harsh scoff and heavy feet stomping over pebbles. I peer over the railings to see Miiko slide her door shut and the man trudge along the river bank, muttering to himself.

I take a moment to analyse their conversation and if it can enhance my plan. I already know Franko and his sister are reluctant to work on Shinpi Farm, and that their fear stems from the incident that took place thirty years ago. What peaks my interest is the way Miiko dismissed Franko’s father the second he mentioned it. She’s not a believer, then. And certainly not one of the farmers who witnessed the incident.

“Miiko” I shout, approaching her minka. She can’t have gone far inside.

Sure enough, the door slides open, revealing a crinkly face and white, scraggly hair.

“I’m returning your lantern,” I say, handing it to her, hoping the conversation doesn’t end as soon as it begins.

“You’re a day late,” she huffs. “But perhaps you can redeem yourself.”

She opens the door further, presenting a bench inside the entrance chamber. Perched atop is a stone statue; a weather-beaten house with a faded, red painted roof. A hollow interior is visible through a square opening at the base. For some reason I can imagine placing an ear to this gap and hearing something odd, like whispers in an empty room or trees creaking in the wind.

“Lift,” she says, pointing at the statue as she fetches a cup and glass bottle from a shelf.

The house is crumbling at the edges. I cradle it in my arms as if the slightest impact will cause it to explode.

Miiko slowly leads me outside to the edge of the rice paddies, where there’s a decrepit stone pedestal, not unlike the statue.

“Place the shrine.”

I lower the house onto the podium. Miiko pours a clear liquid into the cup and then carefully places it inside.

“We offer sake to the gods to show our gratitude for a rich harvest, and to plea for another to follow.” She shoots me a look of poorly veiled contempt. “Apologise to the gods for your wastage yesterday, or they will be vengeful.”

Wastage? Is she talking about the seedlings I accidentally tore in half? Whatever, I’ll play along if it makes her happy.

“I’m really sorry,” I say, trying to keep the cringe from manifesting on my face.

Miiko might act unappreciative of my help, but I know this isn’t true in the slightest. We barely finished seeding the fields yesterday, and that was with everyone working flat-out. She desperately needs our labour, especially since the villagers are withdrawing theirs. This is good; the easiest way to influence someone is to learn what they need, and right now she needs my family’s allegiance more than anything.

Miiko heads back to her minka as I call out. “You won’t have to worry about me messing stuff up around here. We won’t be staying long.”

It’s as if an Ox has been dropped on her. She stops dead in her tracks and regards me with a deep scowl.

“You have only just arrived.”

“Yeah, we’re not sure if this is the right place to settle down.”

“The life of a rice farmer is a difficult one,” she says. “Especially for those raised with the comforts of a city.”

“That’s not the problem,” I say, keeping my voice light. “The villagers really spooked my brother yesterday. They’re saying some crazy things about this place.”

“Your father was aware of our issues before he returned.”

So she figured out his identity. I guess he didn’t really disguise himself to begin with. Still, Miiko keeps her eyes and ears open. Maybe as much as I do.

“Father didn’t expect there to still be so much tension,” I say, maintaining the bluff. “He told me, with the way everyone is acting, it’s like he only left yesterday.”

The trap has been set. If she wants us to stay then she has to give us a good reason to. The only way to do that is to discredit the witness’s story and reveal more about them in the process. Your play, Miiko.

But she turns away and heads to her minka.

I start to second-guess my plan, until she replies, voice bitter, eyes locked ahead.

“The villagers still listen to the foolish words of a foolish woman. It seems you may tread a similar path.”

She slides her door shut behind her. A smile flickers at the corner of my mouth.

Miiko didn’t let slip the identity of a witness—what I hoped for—but she told me where I can find at least one of them.

The villagers regard Shinpi Farm with fear, even after thirty years, because one of the witnesses is still telling them her story, keeping it alive, ensuring what she saw isn’t forgotten. That means she doesn’t live in Shinpi anymore. The farmers rely on the villagers too much to keep them living in terror, and Miiko certainly wouldn’t allow that. I can only assume that this woman, whoever she is, moved to Hato village after the incident, where Miiko can’t do a thing about her.

The puzzle pieces are coming together.

6

The best way to get someone to agree to something is to plant an idea in their head and let them believe it’s theirs.

“Do we have any food in this place?” I say, projecting my voice as I rummage through the cupboards in our entrance chamber. Conrad appears from the living quarters and teeters on the step dividing the two rooms.

“We have lots and lots of rice!”

“Yeah, I don’t think we can live off that.”

Father arrives beside Conrad. “I’m going to catch fish for our dinner.”

“What about Conrad?” I ask, reminding him of my brother’s extreme aversion to eating any form of living creature.

“Hmm. Perhaps we should venture into Hato village and pick up a few supplies,” Father says.

I immediately dislike his use of the word ‘we’, but keep a straight face.

“Who will catch the fish when we’re gone?” I say. “I don’t mind going—I can do with the walk.”

Father studies me for a brief moment. “Sure, why not. You’re old enough to do that.”

He fetches me a bag of coins and then reels off a list of items to look out for, finishing off with directions.

I’m almost out the door when he calls out the two worst words he could possibly say.

“Take Conrad.”

Just like that, my idea of snooping around the village bursts into flames and disintegrates into dust. My brain races for a way to convince Father that Conrad shouldn’t come with me, but it’s no use. Father probably doesn’t want him around when he’s fishing, because he’ll be sure to make things difficult. Conrad is incapable of seeing an animal without naming it, befriending it and planning several adventures to take it on.

#

The riverbank leads us on a winding trip through the valley, all the way to the coast, where Hato village is strewn along a craggy beach. The dwellings vaguely resemble minka houses, except the walls are made of wood rather than rice-paper, and they’re raised off the ground on wooden posts, out of reach from the frothy waves crashing beneath. A web of piers and walkways interlock the village, every log lashed together with frayed rope.

Red sailing boats with straw canopies are scattered on the rocks leading to the village, some of them capsized, bellies split open, planks of wood ruptured inward.

As we step outside the protection of the hills, a salty breeze whispers over us, carrying the heady taste of lotus.

The journey took twice as long as it should have. Conrad kept pausing with excitement every time he spotted movement in the trees or a fish breaching the river. With the village in sight, my patience diminishes, and I wrench him away from the conversation he’s having with a frog perched on a water lily.

“Do you want to get home before dark?” I say, realising immediately that the idle threat of night would do nothing to disturb him.

“Shann is scared of the dark,” he says, skipping ahead. He then stops and whispers over his shoulder. “That’s when she sees it.”

I wonder who Shann is as I follow his lead. Probably a rabbit he named on the way over here. But a rousing suspicion eats away at me, and I have to bite.

“Who’s Shann?” I ask, grabbing the hood of his raincoat to stop him jumping into a muddy puddle.

“You know, Franko’s sister!” he says. “We cleaned all of those pipes together! There was loads of stuff stuck in them. I even found a—

“What did Shann tell you?”

I can’t believe I’m grilling an eight year old for information. Although, perhaps I did overlook the value of this situation. He spent an entire day with the girl, after all.

“That she’s scared,” he says, taking exaggerated footsteps around another puddle, this one with a single lotus flower floating in the middle.

“I noticed that,” I say, fighting the frustration out of my voice. “Did she tell you why?”

“Well,” he says, drawing the word out for as long as possible. “She sees something in the forest sometimes.”

“Like what?”

He shrugs and skips outside of my reach.

Could it be true? If the villagers are seeing some kind of apparition in the forest, then this would make the witness’s story all the more believable to them.

My instincts to dismiss anything remotely illogical start to surface. I have no idea what Shann sees—or thinks she sees. There’s no reason to assume it’s even related to the incident, or the symbols hidden under my sleeve, for that matter.

A pair of blue, almond-shaped eyes open in my mind, staring, reminding me that I’m the last person in the world who should define what’s logical or not.

“Conrad,” I call, stopping him in his tracks.

“Yes, Hen?”

“The thing that Shann sees . . . does it scare you?”

“Momma told me I shouldn’t be scared of something just because I don’t know what it is.”

I’m not sure I agree with that advice, but perhaps it’s useful for Conrad to believe it.

“Do you want to know what it is?”

He stops to consider this, blue eyes pointing up at his brain, as if the answer will be written there.

“Yes. I think it’s lonely. And it shouldn’t be lonely, should it, Hen?”

I let him skip ahead, unsure how to answer.