Read Fiction River: Unnatural Worlds for Free Online

lonely.
Everything was very expensive. It might have been better if she
spoke the language. It might even have been better if she looked
like she shouldn’t really be able to speak the language. Everyone
was so nice to regular foreigners, she thought, but she looked just
like everyone else until she opened her mouth. Then people seemed
shocked, although they were masterful in hiding it, as if she had
just lifted her skirt to show them the ugly scar on her upper left
thigh from falling out of a tree when she was twelve. Gramps had
been so angry at the backyard for letting her fall, and the
backyard had been so contrite and crushed with guilt that they had
had super strawberries, some as big as baseballs, long after the
season was over.
    Japanese might be the language of her dead
mother, but she didn’t think she would ever learn it. She tried to
memorize a new word every day, but then when she tried to use such
a word, she found that it changed when you put it in a sentence in
ways she just couldn’t seem to get. Oh, and the “wa” and the “ga”
were driving her nuts.
    Her grandfather had been right, even if he
hadn’t insisted on it—coming to Japan when all she knew about the
country and the language was what she had learned from anime might
be a big mistake. There weren’t many ninjas about, for example. And
no one seemed to really care about your blood type. Japanese men
were either a million polite miles away, or they were pinching and
groping her on the trains.
    She might have listened to her grandfather’s
gentle suggestions, but she had gone out to the backyard while he
cooked dinner, and his crows had come to her and told her yes, she
should go to Japan, told her they could take her right now if she
wanted. All she had to do was become in tune with the crow culture
of the place she wanted to go, and presto change-o whoosh! Away
she’d go. But what did she know about Japanese crows? Nothing
really. Didn’t they all have three legs? The Yatagarasu? Did they
play soccer? Ha ha! You silly girl! The crows made such a racket of
cawing and flapping and laughing at her that Gramps ran out still
holding his tongs to see what the matter was.
    In the end she flew to Tokyo by jet instead
of crows and made her way to the Ueno neighborhood where she would
be teaching English at an orphanage run by Catholic nuns. Actually,
someone else, a trained teacher would be providing the instruction.
All Kameko had to do was talk to the students in English. The
simplicity of her duties made her feel even more isolated and set
apart from the other teachers, the real teachers. She had a very
small apartment with tatami mats and cushions and a low table and a
futon. It was perfect. She would never have been able to afford
such a place in Tokyo without help from her grandfather. The
neighborhood had plenty of crows, and they were very different from
the crows at home. These were big and aggressive. Don’t even think
about messing with us or we’ll rough you up! They were all the time
dive-bombing people they didn’t like. The city put blue netting
over the garbage cans on collection days to keep them out of it.
That didn’t really work. The crows were smart and worked together
to get under the netting.
    “Okay,” Kameko said. “Today we will be
talking about pizza.”
    Peas Sue!
    Peas Saw!
    Just as she turned to write the topic on the
board, the floor moved. Kameko knew it was an earthquake
immediately. She had mistaken the only other earthquake she had
ever experienced in Oregon as a big truck passing by on the street
outside. This one was unmistakable. This one was the real
thing.
    Time slowed.
    A voice came on the intercom, and the
students all got up, so slowly, and crouched down under their
desks. Kameko was not sure what she should do. The room was
shaking. The windows were rattling. Stuff was dancing off the big
teacher’s desk and falling onto the floor. There was a roar in the
air but she couldn’t be sure it