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“Gi-yuu.”
The tap-tap-tap of claws against the hardwood hallway floors grows louder, closer, and a tired, warbling little voice repeats itself: “Giii-yuu.” That is when Takeshi stops (he has been until now en route to his bedroom) and turns around, because after two such summons, it would be very impolite not to assist.
Takeshi kneels first, because it is equally impolite to tower over one’s partner in conversation. Then, when he has shrunk himself, he reaches out his hand so that Kanzaburo can hop up onto his wrist.
“Not Giyuu,” he corrects him, scratching with one finger beneath the crow’s chin. “What’s wrong?”
“Giyuu,” Kanzaburo repeats.
“I’m Takeshi,” he says. “Not Giyuu.”
Kanzaburo simply looks up at him helplessly for this helpful correction. This, Takeshi concludes with a weary sigh, is simply to be expected.
His father has explained this to Takeshi at length. Kanzaburo is very old and not too sharp, and he lived a long and dangerous life. They all ought to be very gentle with him when he forgets or mistakes things; his tail feathers are not to be grabbed; he is to be fed at exactly the same times each day or he might start to forget to eat and that, Giyuu had not needed to tell his son, would be a disaster.
Poor Kanzaburo. It must be terrible to be so old that you can only remember one name.
“Do you want to find him?” Takeshi asks.
“Giyuu?”
“Yeah, Giyuu.” Takeshi corrects himself: “Father.”
Because his mother likes to tell everybody that there was a time when Takeshi was even littler than he is now that he would only call his father by his given name, because that was what their family’s crow did, and he doesn’t like it when she tells that story and everybody laughs, so he has to say it right or else she’ll keep on telling it.
Father is nice. Polite. He will not make any more embarrassing mistakes that his mother can tell people about, and nobody else has to know that Takeshi is eight whole years old and he still calls his father Papa like a baby when they’re alone.
But Kanzaburo doesn’t know Father, only Giyuu, so he simply warbles sadly at his human perch’s lack of comprehension. And this leaves Takeshi with the sole option of cradling Kanzaburo to his middle and taking him to the only person likely to understand what it is he needs.
Takeshi likes doing that, though he would never say so. Kanzaburo is warm and so shaggy with old age that his feathers are soft, and sometimes he rubs his head against Takeshi and croons when he feels most at ease in his arms. Probably, birds as a whole don’t like being held like babies. But this one is old and sad and loving and he probably likes feeling safe more than anything.
Takeshi gives Kanzaburo a gentle squeeze, because this is a sad thought, and Kanzaburo is a good bird, and even though his parents have told him ever so many times and as gently as possible that one day not too far from now he won’t wake up in the morning, Takeshi does not accept this fact.
Kanzaburo has always been around. He was already old by the time Takeshi was born. Surely that won’t ever change.
But his being old means that Takeshi must be specially careful, and that he can’t do much of anything for himself, so he continues down the hall towards the gardens where he knows he’s most likely to find his father, stroking Kanzaburo’s head with his thumb.
He passes the examination rooms where the Mansion’s attendants are preparing for the afternoon’s patients, the kitchen, the empty bedroom they keep for personal rather than professional visitors. The gardens are at the far end of the estate, and he must pass most of it by to find them. The creaking of each footstep is unmuffled in the empty halls, and he doesn’t pass a soul before he reaches the door. That’s good, though. It’s quiet. People won’t ask him questions. He steps out into the sunshine having entirely forgotten that it’s warm today and calls out, “Papa?”
He wishes he hadn’t, then, because he doesn’t know if his father is alone here. No point in trying to take it back, though, especially since no one seems to have heard. He slips on a pair of too-big sandals left at the doorstep for visitors to go look for him; probably, if he couldn’t hear Takeshi from the door, he’s probably feeding the koi.
“Papa,” he calls out again, in case his clattering sandals haven’t given him away. “Are you here?”
“Takkun?”
The answering voice is decidedly not his father’s. Takeshi reddens coming around the bend, and he considers turning back for a while, but no, he can’t do that. He’ll just have to be sure to be better about that.
“Mother,” he asks, announcing himself again, “is Father here?”
They’re both feeding the fish today. His mother must be feeling festive, because she’s wearing yellow instead of her usual mulberry-dark purple, and also leaning her head against his father’s shoulder. Something he’s saying is making her laugh behind her free hand.
Maybe that’s good. Maybe she didn’t notice. But she looks up when he comes into view, so she must have.
“I…Kanzaburo-san,” Takeshi stammers, holding him up a little, “um, he…wants Father.”
How silly that probably sounds. He is probably supposed to believe by now that crows are only creatures, and that creatures cannot want anything, and that Kanzaburo was merely confused and rambling and could not have been asking after his master on purpose. That is what his teacher would say, at least. He said as much when Takeshi went in at lunchtime to inform him that the other boys were kicking around a ball and hollering in such a way as to upset the swallows that roost in the eaves around the courtyard: that Takeshi would do well to remember the boys have as much a right to their schoolyard as the unfeeling swallows. He’s sure his mother would say the same.
Unscientific, his teacher would call it. He likes that word unscientific very much. No one can prove that swallows are distressed when little boys make a racket and disturb their nests, or that a tired old crow can long for the sight of his master’s face. And Mother is nothing if not scientific.
“I mean,” Takeshi says, “um, he’s getting confused.”
That’s better. That will make him sound vigilant but not emotional. Rational, even. Very-
“I bet you smell like him.”
When Takeshi manages to look up, Mother is kneeling there in front of him, scratching beneath Kanzaburo’s chin, and she does not, he must admit, look like she means anything especially scientific by that.
“…oh,” Takeshi says.
Shinobu takes Kanzaburo gently from his arms and lets him perch on her wrist, butt his head against her hand to be scratched. “Two names is just too many for an old man like you.”
Takeshi is starting to feel the strangest desire to cry, and of course to dispel this he shakes his head forcefully to loosen it. There is nothing whatsoever to cry about. Kanzaburo is all right, and his mother isn’t angry, and nobody seems to know that Takeshi is addressing his father like a baby again even though there are children his age who work in the fields and nobody his age has any business being childish. He ought to feel just fine.
But then Mother pats the stone bench beside the fish pond so he’ll sit between his parents and gives him the flakes to feed the fish with, and after a moment she asks, “darling?,” and then he wants to cry all over again.
“Yes?”
“You don’t have to be quite so grown-up.”
Takeshi, traitorously, sniffles. “I’m eight, Mother.”
“I’m well aware.” She stops before she speaks again to kiss the side of his head. “That’s still little, as far as I’m concerned.”
“I’m not little,” he protests. “Lots of kids my age have jobs already.”
“That doesn’t mean they should need to.”
“But-“
“Eight years is barely any.” Shinobu smooths down his hair, leans her cheek against it when she’s done. “You’ve got no business having to be so polite.”
“But it’s a good thing to be.”
“Hm, not when it’s your mama.”
Takeshi’s cheeks burn. It’s probably been a year now since he was willing to call her that.
“I’m n-not a baby anymore,” he manages to stammer.
“But I don’t have any other babies,” Shinobu says gently. “Once this one’s grown up, I’m all out.”
“Oh.”
“And I can’t have that,” Shinobu tells him. “Not yet.”
He looks up at him with entirely mortifying tears in his eyes.
“How can my Takkun be a grown-up yet?” she asks, lifting his chin so he’ll keep on looking at her. “I haven’t even shown him how to set a broken bone yet.”
“You’re gonna do that?”
“Hm, and he could use some work on his stitching…” Shinobu hums, thinking. “And you can’t be handing out medicines until you could make them in your sleep. And when would an eight-year-old have had time for all of that practice?”
Takeshi, who likes herbs and pastes and tinctures most of all the things his mother has showed him about her profession, takes offense at this. “I practice all the time.”
“That takes years, little one,” she says. Her other arm joins its mate around him and she lays her head to rest on his shoulder. “You can’t possibly learn all of that by the time you’re eight.”
“But I’m not a baby anymore.”
Well, maybe he is. Boys at school do not, he’s sure, have to exert such great effort not to call their parents Mama and Papa, or like learning the names of herbs and muscles and procedures with their mothers more than playing outside, or care about the swallows in the eaves, or feel sad so often over so many strange things. Boys at school do not have any trouble at all being scientific, and would do much more than stare if their fathers kept a katana on display in the front room, or want to be sick when one of the others starts poking at a beetle with a stick. But he isn’t supposed to be a baby. He has to at least attempt not to be.
He can’t say that, though, because his parents would be upset, and think he was being picked-on or something when really it’s just that everyone else is so much more grown-up, and he couldn’t stand that. So that is as far as Takeshi’s explanation goes.
But Giyuu hasn’t heard any of it, and when he settles back in beside Takeshi, he asks all over again what’s wrong, and Takeshi can’t think of a single permissible thing to say.
That it frightens him when Kanzaburo is confused, because deep down he knows his parents are right. That his parents don’t understand how urgently they need to stop giving him this permission to cling to them like a baby, because he won’t stop, doesn’t want to stop, but he must. That even his intelligent, thoughtful, capable parents don’t seem to know the difference between the filial piety the boys are lectured on in school and this sheltering affection that may taste sweet now but will, probably, keep him a child forever if he allows it to go on. Maybe all of that at once. But Takeshi couldn’t say that if he tried.
This, alas, doesn’t keep his chin from trembling and doesn’t make it any less a relief when there are arms around him on either side and soothing words in both his ears.
They’re not even asking him if he has a good reason for these tears. Takeshi is grateful – he doesn’t – but wary, too, wondering if this is even allowed. But nobody says anything about that, only, after a moment, “thank you for bringing him to me.”
Takeshi wipes at his eyes with the back of his hand so he will at least be a little bit presentable when he looks up at his father. “Huh…?”
“Kanzaburo,” Giyuu says. Then he stops to thumb a tear off of Takeshi’s cheek. “I think he got a little bit lost.”
“Oh.”
“I think that’s why he came to you,” Giyuu tells him.
“He was just confused.”
“Hm, no, I don’t think so.”
“He was looking for you.”
“You don’t know that.” Giyuu doesn’t properly smile, but a hint of one appears on his face. “I think he trusts you.”
“Kanzaburo trusts everyone,” Takeshi says dolefully. “He just thinks everyone is you.”
“Hm, that’s not very nice.”
“It’s true.”
“Kanzaburo is a good crow. Just old.”
“I know, but-“
“I’m sure he knows you.”
“He calls me Giyuu.”
“He’s not good with names.” Now there is just enough of a smile on Giyuu’s face to take note of before it disappears. “He can still know.”
“Hmph.”
“Crows are very loyal.” Giyuu ruffles Takeshi’s hair. “They know who their friends are.”
“Oh.”
“And crows make better friends than people.”
“Not always,” Shinobu cuts in. “You don’t have to be a hermit like your father-“
“I’m not a hermit.”
“I hate to say it, Giyuu, but I really think you are.”
Finally Giyuu decides it’s more productive to ignore this. “It’s good that you care about him.”
“Kanzaburo-san?”
The way his son address his crow always seems to make Giyuu smile, if only for an instant. “Yeah. I like knowing that.”
“Oh.”
“I’m glad.” Giyuu takes a moment to speak again. “That…that I have a kind son.”
Shinobu places her smaller hand on Takeshi’s other shoulder to agree. “We both are.”
“Thanks,” Takeshi says, but his voice is so weak it’s barely a whisper.
Shinobu moves in closer so both her arms will fit around him and gives him the best squeeze her small, frail frame can manage. “So don’t you go growing up and leaving too fast.”
“No, don’t,” Giyuu agrees.
Takeshi isn’t sure what he’s supposed to think of all of this, if his parents even realize that the cozy little corner of the world they’ve tried to create for him is nothing like the rest of it. If they know that he won’t make it out there being the kind of boy who clings to his father’s neck the way Takeshi is now. But it’s so tiring to pretend he doesn’t want to retreat into this little corner and let them hold and comfort and soothe him.
“Papa,” he asks, once, “is this okay?”
“Is what okay?” Giyuu replies, and then Takeshi decides to drop it.
The fact is that he likes it here in his parents’ arms, and he doesn’t want to say Father when what he means is Papa, and that it’s really very mean of him to think that his mother is too scientific to have a soft place in her heart for a crow that is not very objective. And Takeshi is so, so tired.
Maybe his teacher is just mean. Maybe Takeshi was born a little more tender than the other boys. Maybe it’s the rest of the world that’s wrong and not the one little corner of it here in his home that Takeshi has ever felt safe in. He’d like to believe that.
Giyuu bends to press his lips to the crown of Takeshi’s head, and he decides: yes, he’d like to believe that very much.