Kawa no Shojo (Girl of the River): Chapter 1

Chapter 11

Panting, I stumbled along the dark forest path, keeping a hand on Kasumi’s flank. My other hand I kept on my shoulder, clutching at the deep wound inflicted on it. Blood trickled down, staining my already dark cloak. The cold night air nipped at my bare shoulder, but I kept pushing forward.2

I heard Kasumi growl a little and felt her try to pull back slightly, hoping to slow down my pace so I would not hurt myself further. 3

“Ka…Kasumi…I appreciate…your…con-concern, but…we can’t…can’t be caught….” I let my hand slip off her side as I walked on at the same pace. She quickly trotted back up to my side again, admitting defeat. After awhile, we spotted a clearing up ahead. We walked up to it, me limping and Kasumi padding alongside me, and saw the place that we had been heading to. 4

A deep gorge stretched out before us, a mountain path winding along either side. We stood on the right side, the path only a few meters in front of where we stood. The left side was quite far from the right, leaving enough room for a large cruise ship to sail through, if there were sufficient water. Down at the bottom of the divide, far down below, a river flowed, heading out to the sea miles from here. The mountains oaths were scarce except for a few spots of brush and the occasional pile of rubble.5

Despite the pain I was in, I grinned. “Heh heh…we’re almost there, Kasumi…once we get to the ocean…we’ll be home free….”6

My feline friend assisted me as we left behind the forest that had covered us earlier, before the sun had set. Now under complete darkness, Kasumi and I started down the mountain path, heading towards the sea. My footsteps were awkward and clumsy, but I kept up a good pace. The bag on the strap of leather around my waist bounced on my hip as I stumbled along. The two of us walked in silence for a time, the only sound being our panting and the rustle of my cloak.7

Suddenly, Kasumi’s fur bristled. Crap. That wasn’t a good sign. Kasumi whipped her head up and growled at the air, the only warning before a burst of fiery colors lit up the sky. Sweat dripped down my forehead when I realized that it was an onslaught of burning arrows, heading down towards us, ready to kill. 8

I gave a small yelp as Kasumi leaped at me, pushing the both of us over the side of the gorge. Falling backwards, I watched as the arrows rained down upon the ground we had stood on barely a second before. Bits of rocks and burning wood fell down after us as we plunged to the gorge. The last thing I remember before blacking out feeling Kasumi’s warm fur around me and seeing the raging fire spread to the forest, burning it to the ground.9

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After awhile, I found that I was still existing. My first thought was that I was dead and my soul was now in the afterlife, but then I realized that I could still feel my hands and legs. Slowly, tiredly, I opened my eyes. I saw a white ceiling. Light was coming from the right, so I turned that way and saw two windows with their curtains pulled back. A dresser stood between them, a couple of bottles and glasses on top of it. Out the windows, I could see the ocean, gleaming brightly. I was in a bed that had soft, comfy blankets and big, puffy pillows. Apparently, I was in someone’s house.11

I was in someone’s house.12

Alarmed, I quickly sat up, only to feel a searing pain in my shoulder and backside. I tightly gripped the blanket to keep from yelling out.13

“Ah, you’re awake!” I looked up to see a smiling teenage girl in a nurse’s outfit. She had long, dark red hair and gentle, dark blue eyes. “That’s such a relief,” she said.14

“Eh? Mairi, who are you talking to?” I heard a male voice say right before a teenage boy about the same age as the girl poked his head in the door. He had a slightly annoyed look on his tan face. His longish, messy hair was a dark blue color, almost black, and his big brown goggles were pushed up above his forehead. He turned my and our eyes met. The slightly shocked look on his face probably matched the one on mine. “Oh, so the river girl’s awake?”15

The girl turned to the boy and nodded. “Yes, I just walked in to find her up.” She turned back to me. “Pardon me, I haven’t even introduced myself. I’m Mairi Rooning. I’m a nurse in-training. This is my friend, Tyler Fallington. He found you bleeding to death, unconscious in the river.”16

“Yeah, so you should thank me for saving your life,” Tyler added rudely, looking satisfied with himself.17

“Tyler!” Mairi chided, her pleasant smile turning into a disapproving frown. 18

I opened my mouth to ‘thank him’ in my own way, but my no words came out. I blinked as Mairi and Tyler looked over at me. I opened my mouth a second time, trying to make any sound at all, but yet again I failed.19

“Oh my, it appears that she’s lost her voice.” Mairi’s voice was full of concern. “I wonder why…we should tell Lara about this.”20

“Right,” Tyler agreed. “I’ll go get her.” He left the room, the end of his brown jacket the last thing I saw of him.21

Mairi turned back to me. “Well, I’m just glad you’re feeling better. Here, let’s see to that shoulder wound of yours. “She walked over to a tall chest on my left and started rummaging through the drawers, her back to me. I tried thinking back to what had happened earlier. Kasumi and I had been escaping across the mountain path, but what were we escaping from? For some reason, the rest of my memory had disappeared with my voice.22

Wait. Where was Kasumi?23

I attempted to climb out of bed, gritting my teeth as I tried to ignore the pain. “Oh, no!” I heard Mairi cry and felt her hands try to gently push me back into a lying position. You mustn’t get up yet, you’re injuries still need to heal more!” I shrugged her hands off, wincing at the burning pain. I swung my legs over the side of the bed as Mairi helplessly tried to stop me, noticing that my right foot was bound up in bandages.24

“Well, well, well, what do we have here? An uncooperative patient?” Mairi and I both looked up at the female voice. A smiling woman in a nurse’s outfit stood near the doorway, Tyler right behind her. Her brown hair was pinned up in a bun and her purple eyes took me in from behind a pair of glasses. 25

“L-Lara!” Mairi stood up as the senior nurse walked up to me. 26

I was in a white, sleeveless nightgown, so my bandaged left shoulder was displayed for anyone who wasn’t blind to see. “Hmmm, that’s a rather large shoulder wound,” she said, looking at it. “It must look quite nasty. You really should get some rest.”27

I glared defiantly up at her, challenging her to force me to stay in bed. No one could keep me anywhere without physical force, so there was absolutely no way she was going to stop me.28

“You don’t want to stay, huh?” A dangerous glint popped into her smiling eyes. “So be it.” And then she roughly slammed my shoulders down onto the bed, surprising not only me but the other two people in the room as well.29

“L-L-Lara!” Mairi exclaimed as I hugged my body in pain, gritting my teeth. “We’re trying to help the patients heal, not make their injuries worse!”30

Lara crossed her arms and grinned triumphantly. “Hah hah! Well, if they don’t want to heal, we just have to help them, don’t we?”31

“B-but…” Mairi looked to Tyler for help, but he just shrugged.32

“Hey, don’t look at me. I’m not gonna try and go against her. We both know that’s just the way she is.”33

“B-but…but….”34

Lara threw back her head and laughed. “Ha ha ha! Ah, Mairi, you’ll have to learn that sometimes things require force.” She looked down at me. “Right?”35

I glared back at her grinning face, knowing that she and I were not going to get along. “So, you’ve lost your voice according to these two. That’s a shame. Now we can’t find out about you or why you were hurt so badly. I’m very, very curious, you know.” We really, really were now going to get along. “Well, I guess we’ll find out in due time. For now, we should think of something to call you.”36

“I think we should call her River Girl,” Tyler piped up. I gave him a glare that made him quickly shut up.37

“We could call her Jun,” Lara suggested. “It means ‘obedience,’ which is what all should we expect out of her.38

Tyler snickered, and Mairi said, “That’s not exactly the nicest thing to do, Lara…maybe we could call her Umi.”39

“But Umi means ‘sea,’ and I found her in the river. I say we should call her Take, or Takeko. It means bamboo.”40

“Which symbolizes resistance and strength,” Mairi pointed out, starting to get annoyed. “Are you two even taking this seriously?”41

“Of course we are, Mairi,” Lara said. “Which is why I think we should name her Nari, since it means ‘a peal of thunder.’ Or we could call her Nariko. They both mean the same thing.”42

“Oooh, good one!” Tyler exclaimed. “Oh, how about Isamu? It means energetic!” 43

“Would you two stop joking around? Those meanings aren’t bad, so stop pretending like they are!” Mairi glared angrily at the two of them. “Why don’t we name her Sute? It’s pretty, don’t you think?”44

Tyler smiled. “But…doesn’t that mean ‘foundling?’”45

“Yes. So?” Tyler and Lara exchanged glances and immediately broke out in laughter.46

“Yeah, yeah, let’s name her that!” Tyler exclaimed.47

“I think it suits her perfectly,” Lara said.48

Mairi glared at the two of them and started telling them off for being rude. While all this was going on, I was sitting in my bed, not even being included in the temporary naming of myself. I couldn’t remember my real name, actually. All I remembered was Kasumi and her pushing me off the cliff to save both of us from being burned. Hard as I tried, nothing else was coming back.49

“So!” I looked up to see Tyler pointing at me. “It has been decided! Our mysterious new comrade shall from now on be dubbed Sute!” (sue-tay)50

Since I couldn’t say, “Why, thank you oh so much,” I merely gave him a glare of pure hatred.51

“Oooh, if looks could kill,” Lara commented.52

“B-but it’s still a pretty name, isn’t it?” Mairi quickly added, trying to be the peacemaker. 53

“Well, now that that’s all settled, let’s change your bandages, Sute.” For the next couple minutes, Lara and Mairi changed my wrappings and applied any kind of ointment that was needed. I didn’t know what Tyler was doing, for Lara had kicked him out of the room. “She needs her privacy,” was what Lara had said before she had slammed the door in his defiant face. The memory of it made me snicker in my mind. 54

As the two nurses tended to me, I was able to see the extent of my injuries. Besides the humongous slashings on my left shoulder and upper arm (“Those are going to leave some nasty scars,” Lara had commented), my right foot had been banged up a bit and my left leg had some rather bad looking cuts. My left arm had come out with only a few bruises and cuts, and my stomach had some slightly deep slashes on it. 55

“Wow, you must be really tough to have survived all this, Sute,” Lara said wide-eyed as she unwrapped me. “You must be a really fast healer, too. Look at this.”56

Mairi and I looked at my right leg, which was now unbandaged, and saw that cuts were already starting to fade. “B-but that’s impossible!” Mairi gaped, wide-eyed. “Just yesterday, when Tyler brought her in, they were much deeper than that!”57

“Hmmm…it seems that our new friend is quite mysterious indeed.” Lara looked up, catching my eyes. He look made me slightly uncomfortable, like she suspected me of holding some deep dark secret. Perhaps I did; I had no idea, of course, what with my memory gone and all.58

The two continued with their work. All was fine until Lara declared that it was time for me to take my medicine. “It’s just two spoonfuls of lilygrain juices, that’s all.” She pulled a tall, dull green bottle off the top of the drawer. She popped the cork out and, after grabbing a spoon out of one of the drawers, poured some of the clear, bluish liquid into the spoon.59

“Open wide,” Lara said, holding the spoon steadily in front of me. I glared warily at it for a moment, then grudgingly opened my mouth. I wish I hadn’t. The juice tasted like something that had been walked on, peed on, then thrown into the bottom of a swamp. I spit it out as soon as the taste registered on my taste buds. Lara leaped back out of the way to avoid getting hit. She glared at me. “Hey, don’t waste my lilygrain juice! It doesn’t even taste that bad!”60

I returned her glare. “Well, Lara,” Mairi piped up hesitantly, “Maybe she’s one of those people whose taste buds just don’t agree with lilygrain juice. We’ve met people like that before, you know. Remember that young sailor who got attacked by a giant squid?”61

“Yes, I remember him, all right. But he was rather timid, not like Sute here.” She continued to glare at me. “It’s annoying when people can’t stand lilygrain juice. Its medical properties are incredible. And with injuries like that, young lady, you’re taking your lilygrain juice whether you like it or not.”62

Of course, I didn’t like it, and it took the combined forces of Lara, Mairi, and Tyler (whom they had called back into the room after ten minutes of failure) to get me to swallow my daily serving of two spoonfuls. Yes, daily serving. That meant we were going to have to go through this EVERY. DAY. 63

“Sheesh, and I thought I was stubborn when it came to taking medicine!” Tyler collapsed in a chair, his hair even messier than before. Mairi picked up her nurse’s hat from off the floor and sloppily placed it back on her head before falling into the chair next to Tyler’s. 64

Lara’s bun was coming apart, but she didn’t seem to notice as while she was bent over double, panting, her hands on her knees. After a minute, she looked up at me, still breathing hard, and said, “Well, Sute…I can…honestly say one thing; you…are the most obstinate patient I…have ever had.”65

I was sitting back in my bed, feeling as sour as the look that was most definitely on my face. The aftertaste of the lilygrain juice was still in my mouth, making my taste buds feel like they had just died and gone to hell.66

“At least she’s an abnormally fast healer,” Mairi commented, smiling tiredly. Outside, the bell tower rung out six times, announcing to the town that it was now six o’clock.67

“Yeah, dinner time!” Tyler cheered and leapt up out of his chair. “Catch ya later!” 68

“Wait, Tyler!” Mairi called, but he was already gone. She sighed. “Sometimes he’s just way too hyper,” she mumbled to herself. Smiling, she turned to me. “Well, Sute, since you need to stay in bed, I’ll go get us some dinner, ‘kay?” She headed out the door and, with a little wave over her shoulder, was gone.69

Lara’s stomach growled. “Time for some grub!” she announced. “See you later, Sute! Be good!”70

I watched her back as she left the room. For the first time since I had woken up, I was all alone. I glanced at my surroundings. I thought the walls were white, but now that I had a chance to really look I could see that they were actually a very pale pink. Several paintings were hung up around the room. I examined all of them, taking in the details. There was a monkey in a rain forest. A ship docked in a port town. A beautiful garden filled with vibrantly colored flowers. My favorite, however, was not a painting at all, but actually an old stone tablet hung right above my bedpost. In my position, I could not examine as much as I wanted to, but I could see an ancient-looking symbol was etched into it. I craned my neck to try and get a better look.71

“I’m back!” I whipped my head back around in time to see a smiling Mairi enter my room, carrying a tray filled with enough delicious smelling food for three people. “Time to eat!” 72