'Flame of the Ocean' - Chapter VI
There was no water in the room of ever autumn. When the salmon pulled the screen door away, the water simply stopped, as if a plane of glass or clear ice blocked the way. But when Satoshi stepped through the doorway, nothing barred his way, and he emerged dry into the room.
It was a long path through a tall wood, the room of ever autumn. The leaves were all in shades of bright red, sunny yellow, dull gold, and earthy brown. The path could barely be seen under the blanket of fallen leaves, and the trees stretched as high as the limitless sky ceiling until they disappeared into blue nothing. The path, and the wood, continued out to the faded purple horizon, many leagues away.
Satoshi was surprised that he was surprised. If he had thought about it before, it should have been obvious that rooms in a dragon’s underwater palace that each held a season would have a magic to them. But Satoshi never thought ahead. It was one of those things everyone told him about himself that he knew was true, not that he would admit it. If I had thought ahead, I could have asked for a map, or a clue, or the size of the pearls. I could have made Kasumi tell me what the prize at the end of the challenge is. But he was himself, and a cold blind dive into a new challenge was always a thrill.
Satoshi did have to admit that the task seemed impossible, now that he was here. If the room went on forever, and the forest with it, there was no end to the hiding places for the pearl. There was no way to check everywhere before morning came to the surface.
It was hard to know where to start, so Satoshi walked along the path in big kick-steps, with his arms pulled inside the body of his yukata. He wasn’t sure what to look for, but he could guess what not to look for: the pearls wouldn’t still be in their oyster shells, or set in a ring, or anything clear and comfortable like that. He said they were special pearls, thought Satoshi. Maybe they look special? They could be a different color – black, or blue, or maybe –
He walked into something. A something that was nothing, for he felt no stone wall or silk screen or wooden bolt, not even the gentle force of water while submerged. But Satoshi couldn’t walk any further along the path. He turned to the left, with one shoulder pressed against the nothing that blocked the way, until he found more of the nothing keeping him from going in the new direction.
It is a real room, and there are walls. That must have been part of the magic too. Satoshi let out the breath he hadn’t realized he was keeping and enjoyed watching it smoke in the crisp air. If the room wasn’t endless, then the task could be done well in time. He bent down low to the ground and started to search.
He walked the length of the room up and down, left and right.
He pulled himself up the trees and slid down them again, after he had peeked in all the knots and found the nothing ceiling in the sky.
He got down to his hands and knees to crawl through the leaves on the floor.
The search yielded a pretty black rock with a scarlet stripe, three spangled birds’ eggs almost perfectly intact, some berries Denko would like, and the den of a sleeping badger, but there was no sign of the pearl.
A scratching sound came from back by the doorway. Satoshi could see something pressing against the replaced screen. Is my time up already? He hadn’t been at the search for that long. Satoshi ran back over to the doorway and pushed the screen aside. In the wall of water on the other side, trapped in a bubble, was little Denko.
“Where have you been?” Satoshi reached his hands through the water, closed them around Denko, and pulled him into the room, where the bubble instantly popped. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry I left you behind. I was just so excited. But you’ve come at a bad time for excitement, because I don’t know where else to look.”
Denko scurried up Satoshi’s arm and sniffed affectionately into his ear. He inched out to the end of Satoshi’s shoulder and started sniffing at the air. Satoshi took in a sniff himself. All the smells of autumn were there: settling earth, rotting leaves, the crispness of the cold air. The smells of a forest too, of moss and dew and dung. But masking over them all was the smell of brine and salt that clung to Satoshi, even though the room dried him and Denko. We both stink of the sea.
Which is where pearls come from.
“Denko!” Satoshi said. “Can you see if anything in here smells like us?” He took Denko onto his finger and set him down onto the floor. The dormouse hopped, squeaked, and wormed his way through and under the leaves until he came to a fallen cherry tree near the far corner of the room. He hopped and squeaked again and pointed with his nose and tittering whiskers to a rotted knot in the trunk, so low to the ground it was almost rolled over it.
Satoshi ran over to the fallen tree and reached his hand inside the knot. He felt pulp, and mud, and something that might have been a slug’s trail. But there was also something smooth and round and cold. His fingers closed around it, he leaned back on his haunches, and out came a shining white pearl the size of a pear.
“Thank you, Denko,” said Satoshi. He gave him the berries he had found earlier. Denko snatched each one up greedily. When he had finished, Satoshi set him back inside his hair, tucked the pearl into his sleeve, and went back out into the undersea palace. His salmon guide was gone, but Kasumi was there waiting for him.
“Weren’t you watching?” Satoshi asked. Her father had said their whole family would, and he wanted Kasumi to see him fetch the pearls.
“I had a few things to take care of.” Kasumi’s smile was sly and guarded. Satoshi knew from looking at it that she would say no more. He smiled back and showed her the pearl. “I didn’t take too long, did I?” he asked.
“You were faster than I thought you’d be, actually.” Kasumi tweaked his nose. “But that’s no excuse for wasting time talking.” She took him by the hand and let him back to her father’s throne.
There were no smiles to be found in the throne room. Kasumi’s sisters were in a closed huddle, whispering and murmuring to each other with such pique that Satoshi guessed they were having an argument. Their mother looked coolly down at him from the back of the throne. And the dragon king’s claws clicked and clacked against the hard black stone.
“I found it,” said Satoshi. “The first one.” He held up the pearl. Even under the blue light of the squid, it kept its silvery sheen, reflecting back all the colors of a rainbow.
“Did you find it?” Kasumi once said that her mother had a lovely voice, and its pitch was sweet, but each word snapped like breaking sea ice. “It was a dormouse I saw.”
“The task was for you to find the pearl,” said the dragon king, “not some vermin you brought with you from the surface.” Satoshi felt Denko stir within his hair. “How can you claim to have found it?” the dragon king asked.
Satoshi scratched at his nose. He hadn’t thought of that. I suppose it was Denko who found it. I can’t say he didn’t. But Denko only looked for the pearl because he was asked. Surely that mattered. Satoshi opened his mouth to say so, but Kasumi swam between him and her father.
“That dormouse is his pet,” she said, “one he’s raised and trained better than most dogs. You saw how he used that training to set Denko to the task, and he puzzled out the way to find the pearl himself.” That’s true, thought Satoshi. I did manage that, didn’t I? He wasn’t the quickest thinker, he knew that, but it felt good to manage a riddle like this out on his own.
Kasumi went on: “You never forbade him from using his pet, and it was Satoshi’s own hand that drew the pearl from the wood.”
The dragon king snapped and snarled. He twisted until his back was turned to Kasumi and Satoshi. He conferred with his wife in low growls, and when he turned back around, his lips curled up to show his teeth. “The first pearl is fairly found,” the dragon king said, each word sour and grudging. “But you shall not use your mouse to find any of the others.”
“Denko can’t come with me?” said Satoshi. He put his hand on top of his head, over Denko’s quivering body.
“I’ll watch him,” Kasumi said softly. She stuck her hands into Satoshi’s hair, pulled out Denko, and placed him into her own. “Try the room of ever summer next,” she told Satoshi. “And mind your language when you get inside. We’ll be watching you from here.”
“What do you mean?” Satoshi asked. But before he could get an answer, the dragon king clapped. A yellowtail appeared in the doorway. It beckoned Satoshi with its tailfin, and Satoshi had no choice but to hurry after.