Only when a slender white form slipped out of the battered hull did she allow herself to breathe normally. Kaida saw the tension pour out of her shoulders, and she realized then that she couldn’t wish any of her stepsisters dead. Not really. She imagined her father with the same anxiety, and then with the same relief. He would have been a more attentive father if Kaida were a boy, and that was wrong of him. The death of a son would have hit him harder than the death of a daughter. But whatever his failings, a father should not have to bury his child, and the same was true of a mother like Cho. Kaida could wish her stepsisters would disappear, but she couldn’t wish them dead.
“Too deep,” Miyoko gasped when she surfaced. “It’s too—I can’t—”
“I can do it,” said Shioko, exactly in time with their mother’s saying, “It’s all right, sweetheart, they can send someone else.”
“Get back down there,” Genzai said, as deadly calm as ever.
“I can’t,” said Miyoko, still panting. “It’s too deep.”
“Not for me,” Kaida said. “Give me the mask, Genzai-sama. I’ve been down there. You know I can do this.”
For once Shioko ignored her. “Did you see the sword, Miyoko? I can do it. Just give me the mask.”
“No,” said Genzai. “This one goes next.” And he pointed his finger at Kiyoko.
Ever the follower, Kiyoko agreed. But she trembled as Miyoko removed the mask and actually broke down crying when she donned it herself. She did not shed tears so much as squirt them. Fear gripped her entire body; she looked as if she was about to faint.
“You don’t have to do this,” said Cho. “Please, Kiyoko-chan. . . .”
As it happened, Genzai and Cho both got their way. Kiyoko dived, but she only made it halfway down to the wreck before she lost her nerve and flailed for the surface.
“I can do it,” said Shioko. At last she had the chance to outdo both of her sisters. All she had to do was touch the hull and she’d have surpassed Kiyoko. Surpassing Miyoko had been her goal for as long as she’d been alive. Her whole life she’d been catching up. Now, at long last, she had her chance to excel. And Kaida wasn’t sure she’d survive the attempt.
“Shioko, this is foolish at best,” she said. “Suicide at worst. You’ve never been that deep. You only stand to get yourself hurt.”
“Shut your mouth!” Shioko said. “I’m a better swimmer than Kaida. Just look at her. Please, Genzai-sama, let me go next. I can do it.”
Genzai looked at Kaida, then at Cho. If there was even a trace of compassion in him, Kaida could not see it. “This one goes next,” he said, and he summoned Shioko into his boat to don the mask.
She rushed her first dive, paddling with her arms to hasten her descent; by the time she reached the wreck, she had to come right back up. With coaching from Miyoko she made the second dive in fine form. Kaida started counting when Shioko disappeared within the wreck, beating time with her thumb against the haft of her hidden knife, which she’d been concealing by crossing her arms and sitting hunched—no doubt seeming sullen to everyone else. Now she forgot herself, counting forty-nine raps of the thumb before Shioko emerged again. It was a good dive. At this depth Kaida herself didn’t always stay down that long.
Shioko came up gasping, swallowing as much air as she could. Cho’s relief was almost palpable; Kaida imagined waves of it rippling through the air. “Well?” said Miyoko.
“I saw it,” Shioko said when she could manage to speak. “With the mask I saw it. It’s just as you said, far forward, almost at the bow. It’s so dark in there. You can only see with the mask.”
Kaida couldn’t make sense of that. The mask had eyeholes, not eyes. But Miyoko and Cho nodded as if Shioko made sense, and in any case Kaida had other worries. As Shioko described it, the sword was in the deepest, darkest, narrowest part of the wreck. The mere thought of such a place made Kaida’s throat grow tight.
A sudden splash broke her out of her reverie. Miyoko was back in the water. She swam over to Shioko and gave her a hug. Then, softly enough that their mother couldn’t hear, she said, “You have to get it, Shioko-chan. She can go deeper than either of us. We can’t let her have it.”
“You’re a fool,” Kaida said. “Better to cut her throat than to kill her this way.”
Genzai shot her a sharp glare; he must have thought Kaida was talking to him, and clearly he wasn’t fond of peasant girls calling him names. Cho made a face at her too; she’d heard none of her daughter’s conversation and she must have thought Kaida was talking to ghosts.
“Cho-san,” Kaida said, “you must get your girls out of the water. Do it now, before—”
“Enough,” Genzai said, as angry as Kaida had ever heard him. “You, girl, get back in your boat. And you, the mask stays on, you stay in the water. You will dive. Now.”
“Shioko, you must,” Miyoko said. Then she did as she was told, returning to Sen’s rowboat.
Shioko dived again, and again Kaida beat time with her thumb as soon as her stepsister entered the broken hull.
She reached fifty-nine and there was still no sign of Shioko. Kaida told herself that was to be expected; she was going a little deeper this time. At seventy-nine Kaida feared the worst. At eighty-nine, everyone but Cho understood what had happened, and at a hundred there was open weeping in every boat but Genzai’s.
Tadaaki tugged at the thick, taut tether. When it suddenly gave way, it was obvious he’d snapped the mask from Shioko’s corpse. Nothing floated to the surface.
“You dive next,” Genzai told Kaida, before Tadaaki had even finished reeling in the mask.
48
“It’s
Kaida didn’t bother to defend herself. The truth was plain for anyone who wanted to see it: it was Miyoko who killed her sister. In fact, it had been a joint effort, Shioko’s sheer competitiveness weighed down by Miyoko’s prodding. Kaida had seen it coming before it happened. She’d warned them all. No one listened.
Cho sat dumbstruck in her boat, so stunned by her Shioko’s death that she couldn’t do anything but stare at the water. The tears ran down her face but she couldn’t even cry out loud. Kiyoko was at her side, hugging her close, Cho returning the embrace. But more importantly—to Kaida’s eye, at least—was that Cho made no effort to console her eldest daughter. Apart from Kaida, Cho might have been the only one who grasped the whole, horrifying truth.
Guilt and shame tugged at Kaida like sandbags, pulling her mind into deep, cold places. She should have said something more convincing. She should have argued more forcefully with Genzai. But her better judgment said none of that would have mattered. No one would have listened. No one ever listened.
But they were listening to Miyoko. “She killed my sister! Kaida killed my sister!” It was a litany, a mantra, maybe even a magical spell. If she said it often enough, perhaps she could beguile herself into forgetting her own part in her little sister’s suicide. A part of Kaida hoped it would actually work. Make yourself happy, Kaida thought, so long as I can get away from you first.
She swam to Genzai’s boat and clambered in. “Someone shut that girl up,” she heard Genzai say, “or I’ll send her down to join the other one.”
“Don’t,” Kaida said. “Her mother has lost enough.”
Genzai snorted. “So says the one who means to abandon her own father. Since when did you start listening to conscience, Kaida-san?”
“Shioko wasn’t the evil one. She was only trying to keep pace.”
“And you? How evil are you?”
Kaida didn’t know how to answer that. Not long ago she thought she wanted her stepsisters dead. Now she thought that was wrong. Not long ago she’d been certain she wanted to leave Ama-machi behind her. This morning, having seen her father take a stand for the whole village, she’d felt qualms about abandoning him. But Shioko’s death would drive Miyoko to new depths of cruelty. Leaving Ama-machi was no longer just a dream. She’d be killed if she stayed. And it would break her father’s heart if his stepdaughter murdered his only trueborn
