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It was, without a doubt, the ugliest creature Remus had ever seen.
The kappa gripped the wooden bars and swayed back and forth, rocking the cage slowly. The cage was too small; crouched low, the kappa could barely keep its head and shoulders upright, and one leg was bent at an odd angle. Its pale gaze, the colour of damp lichen, darted about quickly, flicking systematically from one person to the next, never resting for more than a second. The sun was low and the shadows from the mountains were long; the creature's scales were dry and dull and rasped gently with every motion.
Remus had learned long ago to distrust Mr. Scamander's expertise, but the kappa looked even less like a monkey than he had expected. Its limbs were little more than twigs, long and loose, as if they had been plucked from a much larger animal. Every inch of it was covered with uneven grey scales that curled in ragged bunches around the joints, and its head was entirely too big for such a skinny, awkward body. The indentation atop its skull was asymmetrical and lumpy, the water tinged with moss and grime. With each strained breath, the kappa's chest caved and swelled like a bullfrog's throat.
The men had captured it that morning, in a steep, nameless valley high above the village. Remus and Kasumi arrived from Tokyo to find their work already done. For two months the kappa had been lurking in rivers and hot springs, stalking the farmers and, on a few occasions, actually attacking. One small boy had lost two fingers to the creature.
"Now they will wait." Kasumi motioned for Remus to follow her away from the crowd. In his shabby western clothes, Remus drew curious but polite looks from the villagers; he felt tall, gangly, clumsy, a conspicuous outsider. Kasumi in her smart city suit and sensible shoes was little better. Quietly, she explained, "They believe it is bad luck to kill the demon, so they keep it in a cage, away from water, until it dies."
The villagers gathered around the cage were strangely quiet. In clusters of two and three on the open grassy area near the edge of the village, they talked in low voices a safe distance from the creature. But there was no excitement, no celebration for having brought the menace to heel. A few younger men began to toss stones and sticks at the cage, but they were quickly scolded away by an older man.
"Many of these people are Muggles, aren't they?" Remus asked. "Have they seen a kappa before?"
Kasumi nodded. "Yes, the old people certainly have. There are stories in the mountains--" She stopped abruptly, her face shifting into its friendly, professional mask as one of the village elders approached.
The old man bowed and spoke rapidly, gesturing toward one of the peculiar wooden houses that made up the village. Kasumi thanked him and said to Remus, "He invites us to stay in his home tonight." She frowned, looking toward the shadowed peaks surrounding the village. "Tomorrow, we can go into the mountains and see if there are others."
The villagers dispersed as the sun went down. Remus and Kasumi followed the old man and his wife toward their home. Remus glanced back just before stepping inside. In the cage, the kappa was no more than a spindly silhouette, swaying rhythmically against the bars.
-
They ate supper seated on mats around the fire pit. Remus accepted, with some trepidation, the tiny cup of doburoku the old man poured for him. Kasumi's eyes glinted mischievously when she explained that it was a "local specialty". Remus managed to drink it without making any faces, and the old man grinned and offered to tell the story of the water demons.
"It is an old story," Kasumi began, translating the man's rapid words. "His grandfather's grandfather told it to warn the people who came to this valley. He watched them build their homes and plow the land without knowing about the demons in the river and the springs, and so he told them the about what had happened in the mountains when he was a boy.
"He told of a man, a ronin who fled the coast because his master had fallen into disgrace. The laws of the shogun forbade him from seeking another master, so he came to the mountains as a wanderer. In the autumn he worked the harvest with a man who had lost his wife and three sons to sickness. He stayed with the farmer through the winter, and in the spring the ronin and the farmer's daughter were married.
"The ronin and his young wife made their new home close to her father's, and the two men worked in the fields together. One day, in the midsummer, the man returned to his home to find his wife weeping. She was so distraught it was several minutes before he could understand her words. She told him that during the day, while she was doing the washing at the river, she felt for a long time that someone was watching her. But when she looked up, peering into the trees and shrubs around the river, she saw nothing. She finished the washing and rose to leave. That was when she saw the child."
Kasumi's quiet voice, with its musical rise and fall and its perfect Oxford English, danced with the old man's rougher tone, softly flowing away from the warm circle of fire to fill the room. Remus leaned back on his hands as he listened, looking from the old man's weather-worn face to Kasumi's porcelain one. The deep orange and gold firelight lit their dark eyes and cast a glow on the sturdy timbers. The old man's wife was seated away from the hearth, smiling absently and humming to herself as she mended a shirt.
"A small boy, very young and very dirty, was crouched on the other side of the river. He wore no clothes and looked as though he had been living in the forest. He had cuts and bruises all over his skin, and his body little more than skin and bones and big scared eyes. He knew no words, but he made strange, wild noises when the woman spoke to him, crying out imploringly as she fretted and searched for a way to cross the river. She finally found a place where she could cross, but it was too late. The boy had vanished into the forest. She searched for him for hours, calling and running through the trees until she was exhausted. She returned home, heartbroken, thinking only of the little boy lost in the forest. The ronin tried to comfort his wife, but she was inconsolable. He promised he would speak to the other farmers in the morning, to tell them about the boy in the forest.
"The first person he told was his wife's father. They walked into the fields before the sun rose, and the old farmer was quiet for a long time, listening to the young man's words. Finally, he held up a hand to stop the young man. His voice heavy with great sadness, the farmer explained that there was a custom among the people in the mountains, a custom older than the fields and villages and farms. The people who had first made their home in the mountains valued their children greatly, and cared for them well, but they believed that a child who was born in shame was not the same as other children. Babies born to unwed mothers or unfaithful women, they were not whole, they grew into cruel and fierce creatures who could barely be called men, barbaric animals who knew nothing of honour or kindness.
"Steadfast in their beliefs, though it ailed their hearts, the people of the mountains carried these infants into the high, cold valleys and left them to die.
"The farmer told this to the young ronin, then said that there were still some people who adhered to the old beliefs and traditions. It was no spoken of in the villages, but there were still those who believed that a child of shame was not human. And there were stories, whispered around hearths in the darkest nights of the winter, of cast-off children who survived."
The old man cleared his throat and sipped his tea; his face was shadowed and grim. Remus sat forward and edged closer to the fire. Kasumi glanced at him as the man began to speak again.
"The farmer refused to say any more about it. He begged his son-in-law to keep his daughter away from the child in the forest, and the young man agreed. But when he returned home again that evening, he found his wife once again weeping. Her clothes were torn, her hair tangled, and she admitted that she had been searching for the child. She could not bear to think of him alone, hungry and cold in the wilderness, while they had a home and food and a warm hearth, but no child. He assured her that they would have a child, a child of their own, and he begged her to stay away from the forest. She promised and said she would not look for the child again.
"After a few days the man knew she was lying. He often came home to find the house empty, and he realised that his wife was bringing food and blankets into the forest. When he confronted her and forbade her from taking anything else, she promised again, but again she lied. She no longer cared for their home and she rarely spoke. She seemed to care for nothing at all except finding the child in the forest.
"One night his wife did not return at all, and the man took a torch into the mountains to find her. He called her name, running along the river, growing more and more worried as the night grew darker. He began to find the places where she had left food for the child, food from their home, now spoiled and untouched. When he found the blankets and clothing he had forbidden her from bringing into the forest, the man grew angry. He renewed his search furiously, determined to find his wife and drag her back to their home, no matter how she begged and pleaded.
"But he did not find her. His torched burned out and he continued to search by the starlight. He crossed through the woods so many times he lost his way, but he did not stop. As dawn was nearing, he stumbled again onto the familiar path by the river. In resignation he turned toward his farm, scarcely able to see the trees and the morning mist for the fury that clouded his eyes.
"Then he saw the child."
The old man stopped abruptly, staring into the fire. He was silent for so long Remus looked at Kasumi curiously; she shrugged and raised one delicate eyebrow. She turned to the old man and opened her mouth, but he began again before she could speak. She translated quickly.
"The child began to babble at the man, making no words, crying out, begging with strange, wild noises. The man was overcome by rage. He saw at once the filthy, pathetic, miserable creature his wife so coveted, and he despised it. He hated its nonsensical cries and the way it cowered before him. Knowing only his sudden, blinding anger, the man lunged at the child. It darted away, splashing into the river quickly, but the man was faster and he caught the child easily. The child fought like a wild animal, but the man was strong. He held the child under the swift-flowing water until it stopped struggling. Then he stepped back and scrambled onto the shore. The current carried the small, limp body away.
"The man returned to his home and found his wife asleep in their bed. He did not lie down beside her. He sat by the cold hearth until the sun rose, smelling the fresh, mossy scent of the river on his clothes, feeling small limbs and slick, cold skin under his fingers. When his wife woke, he said nothing to her.
"Throughout the summer, she continued to search through the forest, but when the weather turned cold she finally stopped. The other farmers in the valley began to tell stories. They spoke of seeing grey, grasping hands reach out from rivers when they ventured too close. They spoke of large, unblinking eyes that looked out from the hot springs. One man claimed that a demon had attacked him when he stopped to drink from a stream.
"The man listened to the stories and said nothing. In midwinter, his wife announced joyfully that she was with child. He listened to her plans for their son, and he said nothing.
"When the snow melted and the spring came, the ronin left his wife with her father and became a wanderer again. He never returned to the mountains.
"But the demon he created -- the demon never left."
The old man fell silent. He nodded silently to himself, not looking away from the fire.
A hand brushed Remus' shoulder. He started and turned quickly. The old man's wife smiled at him, motioning toward the staircase with her gnarled hand.
-
After two hours of tossing and turning, Remus gave up on sleep. The house was warm and quiet, the bed comfortable, the blankets soft, but every time he closed his eyes he saw the pale, alien gaze of the kappa, swaying rhythmically behind the wooden bars of the cage. He kicked the blankets back, dressed quickly, and hurried out of the silent house.
The night was clear and cold. Remus wrapped his arms around himself as he walked through the village. The wooden houses were dark, angular shadows against the mountains, the thatched roofs steepled like hands folded in prayer. When he reached the grassy area at the end of the village, he saw that the kappa was dead.
It was slumped in the cage, one unmoving, stick-like limb reaching through the bars. Its head lolled to the side; all of the water had drained away. Remus approached slowly, swallowing around the tightness in his throat. He crouched beside the cage. There was no moon, but the starlight was bright enough for him to see the kappa's lifeless gaze, its dry scales and hollow chest that no longer rose and fell with strangled breaths. The huge eyes, the sickly grey scales, the limbs that were too long and joints that were too loose, everything about the creature belonged to dark, damp places, places without noise, without sunlight, without warmth.
Remus stared at the dead kappa for a long time. When his legs began to protest, he finally stood and walked away, looking back only once. Even as no more than a limp, indistinct shape in the cage, there was nothing recognizably human about the creature.
Remus tried not to think about why that did not reassure him. He walked back through the village, inhaling the cold, night air, looking up at the stars and wondering.