Little Lily. Chapter 3. The Sunflower

The shadow moved.

It moved unlike shadows usually move: not smoothly, not gradually, not the way the reflection of a cloud crawls as it drifts across the sun. It moved with a jerk, a single, short, wet thrust—the way something that breathes and finally decides to show itself moves. The fern—broad, scaly, with edges fringed in almost black—swayed and opened up like green fingers that want to look but are afraid of being seen. In the resulting gap, against the backdrop of the chlorophyll gloom, a silhouette emerged.

Yuriko did not breathe. She didn’t close her eyes because she wanted to meet death face-to-face. The fingers of her left hand inside the empty pocket dug into the two mystical crescents so hard that blood was about to burst from under her nails. She waited for the strike: with her whole body, every nerve, every hair on her forearms. She waited for a rifle barrel—black, round, indifferent. A long bayonet, if it was a Japanese soldier, or the broad, bread-knife-like snout of a Thompson, if it was an American. She waited for a stranger’s voice, a stranger’s order in either of the two languages that now meant the same thing—the end.

But the barrel did not appear. Out of the green twilight, a tiny, bare foot stepped onto the soggy soil of the path. Then a second. A creature stepped onto the path. Small. Outside of time.

It was so caked in filth, so implausibly dirty, as if this very ancient, rotting forest had birthed it from the dusk, the moss, and the damp vapors. In height—barely above her waist. Wearing a torn cotton shirt with three buttons that had once been white, but was now the color of reddish ash, the color of everything this creature had crawled through over the past few days. Below the waist, he was naked. His thin legs, covered in scratches, with cracked soles, resembled the fragile stems of a stubbornly living plant.

The dirt on his face wasn’t just dirt. It was a crust, a second face grown over the first: layer upon layer—clay, soot, dried tears. And through this armor, only his eyes peeked out. Dark, round, wet eyes looked up from below. There was no fear in them, no tears—none of what should be in the eyes of a six-year-old boy in the middle of a war. There was a pure, absolute, non-human attention with which only a child or a forest spirit looks: without judgment, just a gaze, just “I see you.”

Yuriko exhaled. The air left her lungs slowly, and with it went the tension of the last few days—the anticipation of the bullet, the bayonet, the end. In their place flooded an unbearable, overflowing relief: they wouldn’t be killed.

Miko reacted first. Forgetting her weakness, she simply dropped to her knees right into the liquid mud before the boy. She lowered herself so quietly, as if afraid that at a loud sound this forest child would crumble into fern spores.

“Hello,” Miko said. Her voice had changed. Warm, soft—the way one speaks to a wounded bird or a thing that might shatter into pieces if you breathe too hard. “Hello, little one. We aren’t scary. Our names are Yuriko and Miko. We are from the school… we are coming from there.”

The boy didn’t blink. He examined their smeared blouses, scratched legs, wet hair. It wasn’t childish curiosity, but rather a test: are they real? Are they alive? Is it safe to approach?

Miko held out her hand. After a second of hesitation, a small palm, rough with dirt, settled into hers. He didn’t grip it tightly, but he didn’t pull back either. He just decided to stand—nearby.

Yuriko watched them, and something inside her clenched and unfurled at the same time. Miko, who bowed to no one, had dropped down before this dirty child. And there was tenderness in her voice. But Yuriko knew: Miko’s tenderness didn’t belong to anyone in particular. It was her property, just as bark is the property of a tree, or moss of a stone. This tenderness poured out onto the boy simply because Miko couldn’t do otherwise…

…The three of them walked, guided by the only unerring compass—the smell of smoke. It came unexpectedly: dry, domestic, smelling of firewood, and underneath it—something sweetish that scorched the nostrils. The smell of real food.

A hundred steps later, the jungle parted, exposing a scorched wound in the earth. The village was empty. Four or five peasant yards. All that remained of the houses were black, charred skeletons of beams sticking up into the sky like the ribs of a beached fish. The ground between them was covered in gray, damp ash. The war had passed through here like a blind giant, trampling everything, but leaving behind a glassy, absolute silence.

But in one of the yards, under a collapsed awning beam, a stone hearth had miraculously survived—a regular Okinawan kamado with three stones. The fire in it had died, but under a thick layer of whitish ash, like a fairy-tale creature burrowed into the earth, a thick, crimson heat still throbbed.

Yuriko dropped to her knees. She found a dry stick and began raking away the ash. The stick hit something hard. Out from under the gray flakes rolled rounded, flattened, black lumps.

Sweet potatoes. A whole dozen. Someone had put them in the ashes to bake but never had the time to eat them.

An intoxicating smell of caramelized sugar, honey, and hot earth wafted from them. Yuriko’s head spun from a pure, animal desire to eat. Forgetting caution, she snatched a hot tuber from the embers with her bare fingers. The skin on her fingertips burned instantly, but she felt no pain, tossing the black lump from palm to palm and blowing her breath on it.

They sat right on the ground around the hearth, forming their own secret circle. Yuriko pressed her thumbs into the charred crust. The potato split in half with a dry, brittle crunch. Thick steam billowed up.

Beneath the dead, burnt crust hid a blinding, moist, golden flesh. It was so bright it seemed all the sun their island had now lost was hidden inside this root. This was not food. This was communion.

They didn’t fall upon the potatoes with greed, even though their stomachs were cramping. Yuriko broke off a tiny piece—no bigger than a fingernail, so as not to harm the starving child—and brought it to the boy’s lips. He opened his mouth like a baby bird. He placed the piece on his tongue and froze. His eyes widened, his jaws began to move uncertainly, remembering how it was done. And his lips were smeared with gold.

And the boy smiled.

It was a true blossoming. The mask-like face suddenly came to life, his eyes narrowed, and between his dirtied lips milk teeth appeared—so implausibly white and clean amidst the ash, as if they glowed from within.

Yuriko broke open a second sweet potato and handed half to Miko. Their fingers touched for half a moment, and in that there was more than in all unspoken words: “take,” “eat,” “we are together.”

Miko took a bite. The hot, honeyed juice ran down her chin. Yuriko watched her chew with her eyes closed. On Miko’s chapped lips, the black ash mixed with the amber juice of the sweet potato. These two spots—gold and ash, sweetness and death, life and war—made Yuriko’s heart ache. In that moment, Miko’s face turned toward the warmth, as if she found herself in a place where there were no more caves and grenades.

Yuriko watched and couldn’t eat. Her throat caught from the impossible, silent contemplation: she was sitting in the middle of a ruined world, watching the one she loved eat. And this moment was the most honest in her entire life.

“Eat, Yuriko,” Miko said quietly, opening her eyes.

And Yuriko ate. The sweet potato burned her mouth, stuck to the roof of her palate, smelled of earth and smoke. It was the sweetness of what had survived when everything around had burned. The golden flesh fell into her empty stomach, her body shuddered, accepting the warmth, and from this painful, unbearable joy, Yuriko’s head spun.

When the potatoes were finished, the boy licked his fingers, looked at Miko, and suddenly spoke. His voice was thin, but flat, like paper from which pencil drawings had been erased.

“I am Hinata,” he said simply.

“What a good name,” Miko gently reached out and wiped a golden crumb from his chin. It left a clean spot, like a moon breaking through clouds. “A place in the sun. Like a flower. Like a sunflower… Tell us, Hinata, where is your mother?”

The boy frowned, piecing together the scattered pictures of his memory.

“We were walking on the road. It was dark. Mom was holding my hand tight-tight,” he clenched his little fist to show it. “And then it got very loud. Bang! And fire. The ground started jumping. Mom fell and let go of my hand. And everybody ran into the grass. I ran too. I ran, I ran… I lost my sandal in the mud. I looked for it, and then Mom was already gone.”

He spoke about it without tears, like a fact of the weather. His mind hadn’t yet found the words for the childish pain.

“And your dad?” Yuriko asked softly.

“Dad is far away. In the north. Mom said—in the north. I slept in the jungle under a big leaf. It was cold. And yesterday I saw you. You were walking ahead, and I was behind you. But I was afraid to come close. You were big. And I thought… you would scold me. I thought you would chase me away. I’m dirty. I lost my pants.”

Yuriko’s nose stung, and she turned away to the hearth. This child, who had lost everything in the fiery meat grinder, was most afraid that the older girls would scold him for being untidy.

At that moment, a drop fell on Yuriko’s cheek. Then a second. The air grew thicker, the sky descended, and a tropical downpour poured from everywhere at once. It fell in a solid sheer wall, washing away the scorch, pinning the foul smoke of burned villages to the ground, and cooling the red-hot island.

“Over there!” Yuriko jumped up, scooping Hinata into her arms. The boy turned out to be unexpectedly light, like a bird made of thin bones and feathers.

At the edge of the yard stood a half-ruined shed—a former goat pen. One of its walls had collapsed, but the sloping thatched roof was still holding. They flew under the overhang the second the downpour turned into a roaring waterfall. Inside, it smelled of musty straw, wool, and a rescuing, enveloping dryness. In the corner lay a pile of old mats. The girls pushed them together, building a warm semblance of a nest.

It went dark instantly, as if someone simply turned off the light in the world. But they weren’t afraid. The noise of the water on the roof cut them off from the rest of the earth, muffled the artillery cannonade from the coast, and locked them in an impenetrable, cozy cocoon.

Hinata fell asleep almost immediately. He curled up into a ball, tucking his knees to his chin—the way children accustomed to sleeping alone in the dark curl up. Even in his sleep, traces remained on his lips: gold and ash.

Yuriko lay on her back, listening to the water. The jungle around them was changing the mathematics of their existence.

When you are running ahead of fear, and there is no one behind you, the world is a tunnel, and you dash through it, expecting a bullet. But now a child was sleeping behind them, and Miko was beside her. Their world ceased to be a tunnel. Three points formed a triangle. Three legs make a stool that won’t fall. And in its center, a circle was formed. And in a circle, one can finally breathe.

In the dark, Yuriko carefully, blindly, reached out and found Miko’s fingers. Miko was not asleep. She squeezed her hand in return—tightly, interlacing their fingers.

Under the roof of the old shed, in the middle of a bleeding island, it was dark and damp. But for Yuriko, this place was now the brightest on earth. Her stomach no longer howled with hunger, filled with the warm sweetness of the sweet potato. There were three of them. They were full. And they were alive.

She looked at Hinata—sleeping, curled in a ball, with the golden spot on his lower lip—and thought that if the world were to end right now, right this second—if the rain flooded everything, and the jungle closed in, and the earth opened up—the last thing she would feel would be Miko’s hand and the boy’s breathing in the dark. And that would be enough.

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Chapter 4. The Anatomy of Pain →