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One summer night during Arrietty’s sixteenth year, she woke up in a cold sweat, crying out loud enough that Homily and Pod rush to her bedroom in alarm. Everything blurred together in confusion and panic as Arrietty grew aware of a great pain spreading through her body like a wildfire; the center of it was a white-hot ember that sat right at Arrietty’s heart. Homily clutched her daughter’s hand as Arrietty doubled over, consumed with fear.
In another minute, the pain waned into a steady, pulsating heat at the base of Arrietty’s chest. There was wetness on her cheeks—she hadn’t realized that she had been crying—and she sucked in the cool night air, breath ragged.
“It’s Sho,” Arrietty gasped, eyes wide and glassy with tears. “Something has happened to Sho.”
Homily and Pod exchanged a look.
“Now, Arrietty,” Pod said shakily, “It was just a nightmare. Take a few minutes to calm down.”
Arrietty stared at Pod, heart pounding. Her father had gone grey with concern, and the candlelight threw his features into greater relief. The last two years had not been easy on their family—the move from their last home had not been a simple one, and though they had settled in a hollow tree far larger than their old residence, it had not been easy to transition from the domestic life.
“It wasn’t a nightmare,” Arrietty said when her breathing calmed down. “I know it wasn’t. I have to see if he’s okay.”
It was the truth. Every fiber of Arrietty’s body screamed for action, and it was as though her senses had been tuned to their maximum. She could hear every blade of grass shift restlessly outside, could feel the heat of the candle’s flame from the other side of the room. She had never been more certain of anything in her life. When Arrietty got up from her bed and began to cram her belongings into her knapsack, she moved automatically, as though she were in a dream. She methodically packed her water canteen, her fishing hook, her spare roll of tape…
“Arrietty,” Homily interrupted, voice high and reedy. “Stop this nonsense. You just had a bad dream. Your Bean is probably fine—”
“Mother, you’re wrong,” Arrietty interjected heatedly. “It was real, it’s happening now, Sho needs—”
“Enough,” Pod said, and Arrietty froze in her tracks. Homily fell silent as well, and for a moment the only sound was the chirping of the crickets from outside. “Arrietty, you will stop this nonsense. It is the middle of the night. You will return to bed, and we will speak about this in the morning.”
When Arrietty opened her mouth to protest, Pod gave her a long look that allowed no room for dissent.
“Yes, Father,” she said finally, jaw jutting with mutiny.
Arrietty flung herself back into bed, obstinately facing the wall of the tree. The heat in her chest was already subsiding into the cool, pale blue of night. Still, it took her hours to finally drift off into dreamless sleep.
In the morning, Arrietty woke to the muffled sound of conversation drifting from the sitting room. It was her mother and father, and Arrietty tiptoed to the door to listen.
“—and you saw how she pined after the Bean when we first left; she was so miserable she didn’t eat for days! It was months before she stopped asking if we could visit the home again. I wish the Bean had never gotten his great paws into our lives—”
“Now, Homily, we owe a great deal to Arrietty’s Bean,” came Pod’s stern rebuke. “It does not do well to speak ill of him.”
“Oh, I know,” murmured Homily, and Arrietty could hear the sorrow in her voice. “You’re right, of course… but it still feels as though Arrietty is slipping from us. She is yet a child!”
“Arrietty is sixteen,” Pod said. “She has been sixteen for many months now. She is an adult, and if it is her wish to seek her Bean, we must support her.”
Arrietty’s heart soared. That’s right, she said to herself, stubbornly. I am sixteen.
In the world of the Borrowers, turning sixteen was the rite of passage into adulthood. Most Borrowers left their families at that age to go find a new home and start a new family, but Arrietty had stayed with her parents to help around the cottage. Spiller had asked for her hand in marriage on the eve of her sixteenth birthday, but Arrietty had turned him down, face scarlet. She wasn’t ready for marriage—she was too young, and besides, there was too much of the world still left to see! Pod had approved heartily of her decision.
“But we don’t know where the Bean lives,” Homily continued, helplessly. “How will Arrietty fare?”
“Arrietty is one of the finest Borrowers I have ever seen,” Pod said, voice round and gruff with pride. “More courageous and quicker than I. If she just manages to keep her head straight, she will be fine. The girl had always had some measure of foresight—maybe she is coming into her gift as a Seer. My family has a history of Seers, you know… And if we’re wrong, what’s the worst that could happen? Arrietty will return home if the boy is fine, as you say.”
Homily explodes, then. “What’s the worst that could happen? Arrietty could get lost and starve without food or water, or she could get eaten, or even worse—she could be discovered by Beans! Not all Beans are as merciful as hers, if you have not forgotten—”
“I will never forget,” Pod says with an awful note of finality, and Arrietty slipped back into bed then, trembling. She remembered seeing her father’s scar for the first time when she was little, a brutal line that stretched from his shoulder to his hip from a chance encounter with a young, curious Bean.
The conversation stopped, and when Arrietty got up hours later, her mother and father were waiting for her in the kitchen with a travel bag packed and a hot meal. Arrietty lowered her eyes and tried not to look at her mother’s red-rimmed eyes and trembling lip. Her father’s jaw was set in a straight line, and she fidgeted under their gaze.
“I think I am not wrong,” Arrietty said quietly. “Please trust me.”
“Oh, Arrietty,” said her mother, voice cracking with the weight of sorrow. “We do.”
/
The parting was quiet and solemn.
After breakfast, Arrietty shouldered her pack and promised her parents that she would be back soon if she was mistaken, and if not she would send word once she reached Sho’s home. Despite herself, tears slid down her face and she wiped them away savagely. It was true that Arrietty was an adult now, but it was still her first time leaving home for so long.
Homily held Arrietty tight for several long, silent minutes, crying silently and trying unsuccessfully to hide it. She packed enough dried meat to last a few days at least into a sling and tied it around her daughter’s waist, mustering up a watery smile as she kissed Arrietty’s forehead goodbye.
Before she left, Pod pressed his own compass into the palm of her hand, ignoring her stutters of protest. “The boy’s home is north of us,” he said, looking straight into Arrietty’s eyes. “Be well, Arrietty.”
After one last embrace, Arrietty left the tree cottage, not looking back for fear that her will would crumble away. As she walked on, her tree became obscured from sight by the underbrush and her throat closed with the pressure of holding back her tears. She hoped her mother would understand one day, and knew that she had much to be thankful for.
By lunchtime, Arrietty had made good progress. She stopped under the shade of a chrysanthemum’s leaf and ate one of the meat pies her mother had packed her, stretching her legs out in the long grass. As she rested, she checked the compass and saw that she was going in the right direction. There were still miles and miles of forest before her, but Arrietty knew that she had a long way to go. The journey to her new home had taken many moons, after all.
When she had rested enough, Arrietty rose and continued her trek onward, eyes gleaming with purpose. The urge to find Sho had developed into a rushing that drowned out all other sound, and it pushed her on with great speed. The thought occurred to her that Sho might have died, but she pushed it from her mind with a forced ferocity and moved forward even more urgently. Her father had taught her well to stay out of sight, and she darted from underbrush to underbrush, avoiding open air and the predators that inhabited it.
At nightfall, Arrietty chose a log that was obscured on either side by stones and slept deeply and soundly, waking with the sun’s first rays of the sun. She drank from the dew that painted the grass underfoot and began her journey again, blinking the weariness away and following the quivering arrow of her father’s compass that pointed ever north. Every meal was quick and well-planned—seeking to ration out her mother’s meats, Arrietty picked berries whenever she could, avoiding the ones she knew to be poisonous. It was summer, and the fruit was rich and sweet with sugar; every time Arrietty bit into one, the sweet, syrupy flesh inside filled her mouth with the taste of the sun.
In this way, Arrietty travelled doggedly for three days and two nights, and when she reached the edge of the forest at last, she collapsed in her exhaustion and slept for a day straight. When she woke, she was sticky with sweat. Arrietty knew that there was a river at the edge of the forest that she had taken when she left Sho’s home almost two years ago. It had taken her family almost four hours to sail down the river in their teapot, but the river flowed downstream and she had no idea how long it would take to walk up the great distance.
Her canteen was almost empty, so Arrietty drank sparingly from it before she wiped her mouth and began the long walk up. It was much more difficult than she expected to journey uphill, and Arrietty had to stop often and rest. Around midday, Arrietty found the riverbank and drank from it freely, cupping her hands into the current again and again. She dipped her ankles into the river and sat there while she ate half of another meat pie. She had two left, and they would not last for long…she wondered if she would run into some more berry bushes uphill.
It was harder to find cover close to the riverbank, so Arrietty filled her canteen and darted back into the protection of the bushes. It was slow going work—every two hours or so, Arrietty would run out of water and be forced to trek back to the river for more. By sunset, her knees were trembling and Arrietty knew that she had reached her limits. She slept badly; the earth here was rocky and uncomfortable, not like the comfortable padding of the grass fields that she had covered prior.
Soon, Arrietty entered a dull repetition that began at the start of every day—an endless cycle of walking and taking breaks for food of water, interrupted only when Arrietty snatched a few hours of sleep in between the trek. Arrietty grew thin and tired, and wondered when her will would snap completely. Several times she caught herself contemplating whether or not she should turn back for home, but every time she wavered she made herself think of Sho and steadied her resolve.
She had missed her Bean these last few years more than she had realized. Though they had only known each other for a few weeks, his kindness had struck a chord deep within her. She knew her parents had been right to move, but she felt the loss of Sho’s friendship more keenly than even the loss of her childhood home. At night, she remembered the soft tilt of his smile, the scent of his clothes and was lulled to sleep by the knowledge that she would see him again, soon.
On the eighth day, Arrietty was startled awake in the middle of a nap by a series of mewls, loud and insistent. When she sat up, she saw instantly a pair of green eyes, larger than her head and gleaming with pleasure. Before Arrietty could scream, a rough tongue flicked out and surrounded Arrietty. Suddenly, her world went dark and Arrietty thought that it was the end. She was too stunned and too tired even to cry out—she discovered, horrified, that a small part of her even welcomed the rest—but then the moment passed and the tongue released Arrietty. The creature mewled again, and suddenly Arrietty recognized the sound and her heart jumped into her throat.
“Niya,” she said, and the cat gave a rumbling purr of affection. “Oh, Niya,” Arrietty said, and when she started to cry, Niya’s whiskers quivered and she lowered her great head onto her paws.
It took Arrietty several long minutes to regain control of herself, and when she did at all she wiped her eyes on her dress and readjusted her pack. “Let’s go, Niya,” she said, climbing onto the cat’s back. “Let’s go to Sho.”
At the sound of Sho’s name, Niya got to her paws and with a great bound, began to run home. Arrietty gripped Niya’s fur in a way that she hoped wasn’t painful and anchored herself on the nape of Niya’s neck. It was a bumpy ride, and very fast—the hot summer air blew her hair across Arrietty’s face, and Arrietty wished belatedly that she had thought to bring a hair tie. The colors blurred around her as Niya bounded home, fading into a mix of blues and greens that made Arrietty dizzy. The sun was setting, and after a while Arrietty closed her eyes and buried her face into Niya’s fur, warm and soft. She was so very tired, and wished Niya would take a break so they could rest… Arrietty kept catching herself nodding off, and once almost lost her balance. She managed to keep herself from toppling off Niya’s back by a miracle of strength, and from then on she was careful not to give in to the cloying edge of sleep.
Then, sooner than Arrietty had expected, Niya slowed to a trot and Arrietty raised her head. It was nighttime now, and the moon was high in the sky. She drew her breath in sharply as she looked around the garden, for nothing had changed in her absence. The herb garden was flourishing, and the grassy meadow was green and soft. The birdhouses were in the same nooks and crannies, and she wondered absently if her old home was still untouched. Niya sat down at the entrance, and when Arrietty lifted her gaze, the familiar sight of Sho’s home filled her sight and she was deeply, dangerously happy.
Arrietty slid off of Niya and kissed her nose. “Thank you, Niya,” she said, voice muffled. “You always know just when to show up.”
Niya yawned in response, turning around and padding away before Arrietty could say anything else. Smiling to herself, Arrietty reached into her pack and cut off pieces of tape for her hands and feet. Then, she began to scale the wall of the house, heading for the second floor window she knew to be Sho’s. Her weariness melted away at the prospect of finally meeting the end of her long journey, and Arrietty’s strength was renewed as she climbed the wooden shingles.
It seemed as though an eternity had passed before she at last hauled herself up onto the windowsill, and Arrietty pressed herself against the glass in a great rush of energy. Ignoring her body’s crying out for rest, she peered inside the room and felt her heart leap with happiness when her eyes landed on a lump on the bed. There was a familiar shock of black hair splayed across the pillow, and though he was facing the wall away from Arrietty, she knew it was Sho. The relief of seeing him alive washed over Arrietty like a crashing wave and she felt her knees buckle beneath her. The windowsill was cool and welcoming, and Arrietty knew there was not sufficient coverage from the open air but she was too tired to care. She felt her weariness overcome her in the darkness of the night and she let herself rest, at last secure in the knowledge that her Bean was safe.
The next thing she knew, Arrietty was being nudged awake by her mother’s hand. It was early—too early, her body and mind protested—and Arrietty knew she could not have had more than a few hours of sleep.
“No,” she protested, and tried to make herself smaller by curling up. “No…”
“Arrietty,” came a soft, low voice, and Arrietty was suddenly wide awake. She whipped her head around to see that it was not her mother’s hand that was shaking her but a gentle finger, and that gentle finger belonged to a gentle hand that belonged to her gentle Sho. Arrietty scrambled to her knees, scraping her palms in her rush.
“Arrietty,” Sho said again, eyes wide and happy with surprise.
Despite herself, Arrietty’s eyes smarted with tears and she felt suddenly as though she might cry and cry until she was emptied of tears. She was tired, and her muscles hurt, but here she was with Sho again, who was alive and whole and smiling that soft smile of his.
Arrietty sat perched on her knees, staring at Sho with wide eyes. She found that she could not speak for several moments, but when the moment passed, she put both of her hands on Sho’s finger and lowered her head. “Sho,” she said, voice trembling. “It’s been a long time.”
“It is good to see you, Arrietty,” Sho said, smiling. “Will you come inside with me?”
“Yes,” Arrietty said, and allowed Sho to carry her inside. The warmth of his palm was comforting, and she recognized dimly that he was taking great care not to jostle her as he walked. To her immense relief, Sho carried her to his bed and let her down on his pillow, which was as soft as a robin’s nest and as comfortable. Now, Arrietty was feeling the waves of exhaustion wash over her and she lay down at once, watching Sho with lidded eyes as he walked over to the window and closed it with a quiet click. She thought Sho looked tired too.
When Sho came back to bed, he lay on his elbows under the covers until he was looking at Arrietty eye to eye.
“It’s still early,” he said, and she noticed for the first time that his voice was still husky with sleep. “I’m sorry I woke you.”
“It’s okay,” Arrietty said immediately. “I’m happy that it was you who found me, and not that old maid.”
Sho smiled. “Haru? She left two years ago, around the time you did. I think you might have scared her off.”
“Good,” Arrietty said, and at her expression Sho began to laugh. The sound made Arrietty tingle with pleasure, and she burrowed into the pillow more deeply.
“What were you doing up so early?” Arrietty asked, voice muffled. The sun hadn’t begun to rise yet, and it was still dark outside.
“I haven’t been able to sleep well lately,” Sho said. “I wake up a few times a night and go back to sleep after, but today I looked over at the window and saw you. I thought I might have been dreaming…”
Arrietty noted the deep valleys beneath Sho’s eyes, and decided that he looked very tired indeed. Then, before she could help herself, she yawned all over, hands fluttering to her mouth.
“I’m sorry,” she said immediately. “I’m just so sleepy… Will you wake me in the morning?”
“I will,” Sho said. “My aunt won’t come in to wake us—she likes to let me sleep in.”
“That’s good,” Arrietty mumbled, and felt her eyes start to close. “Sho,” she sighed into the folds of the pillow, and then the blanket of sleep was thrown around her and she dreamed.
Arrietty didn’t know how long she had slept, but when she stirred she at last felt no trace of the exhaustion that had weighed her down for the past few days. The pillow was gloriously warm, and she hugged it against her and blearily wondered what had woken her.
Then, an unfamiliar sound drifted to the edges of her hearing and she turned her head to see, blinking the sleep from her eyes. On the edge of the bed was Sho, who was sitting up with his back to Arrietty. He was coughing, but the sound was muffled. Arrietty rubbed her eyes and sat up, watching in concern as Sho’s shoulders drew together. Soon, it was quiet again and Arrietty closed her eyes, listening to the unsteady push and pull of Sho’s breathing as he struggled to catch his breath. Sho reached for a glass of water that was on his nightstand and drank from it, sighing when he placed it back down. As he sat back on his bed, he began to absently rub his chest and glanced at Arrietty, giving a small start when he saw that she was awake.
“Arrietty,” he said, eyes dark and apologetic. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
Arrietty shook her head. “I was already awake,” she said. “I feel much better now.”
“I should say so,” Sho said, laughing quietly. “You’ve been sleeping for most of the day.”
Arrietty looked at the clock in the room and did a double-take—it was three in the afternoon, if the clock was correct. As her mind began to clear, she noticed that Sho had changed out of his pajamas and into his day clothes.
In the light of the day, Arrietty saw that Sho had changed. He looked an entire head taller than he had been two summers ago, and he had lost the roundness of youth. He was as lean and pale as he had always been, but now his features had the newfound grace of young adulthood. His voice was the most startling change of all—now, it was low and smooth, though it was still as soft as she had remembered. The only thing that had remained the same were his eyes, still wide and brown and quick to smile.
“Arrietty?” Sho asked, and his voice snapped Arrietty out of her thoughts.
Arrietty went warm. “Ah, sorry,” she said. “I guess I’m still a little tired after all…”
Sho smiled. “Fair enough,” he said. “We have a lot to talk about, but how about some food first? You must be hungry.”
Arrietty was hungry, though she hadn’t known it until this moment. Sho left the room to get some food and Arrietty brushed through her hair with her fingers, wondering if she had changed too. Her dress was still red, and she still used the same travelling pack… She wore her hair longer now, but she didn’t think that she was any different than she was back when she had first met Sho. Had her voice deepened too? She wasn’t sure.
When Sho returned, he had a small plate of crackers and a wedge of cheese. Arrietty straightened with happiness and ran to meet him at the edge of his covers, eyes round with hunger. As she ate, Sho watched her without saying a word, mouth twitching when her face became covered with crumbs. When Arrietty gave him a questioning look, Sho smiled and shook his head.
“It’s just,” he said slowly, “I thought I would never see you again… and now you’re here. How did you find your way back?”
Arrietty put down the piece of cheese she was gnawing on and wiped her face, expression thoughtful.
“To be honest, I’m still a little confused about what brought me here,” she said slowly. “But first, how did the operation go after I left? Are you all right now? You look a little tired…” She trailed off, looking down at her hands.
“The operation went well,” he said slowly. “My heart got better, and it was easier to get around once recovery was over. I moved back to the city for a year and attended school while living with my parents.”
He paused, taking a breath. “Then, there was a relapse,” he continued, expression unreadable. “A little over a week ago. Aunt Sadako wanted me back in the countryside, so I moved back.”
Sho explained in more detail, but there were many words that Arrietty didn’t understand—Sho spoke of MRIs and echo grams and palpitations, and Arrietty grew more and more confused. Her small brow knitted in confusion and when Sho was finished speaking, she had to gather her thoughts.
“Are you better, now?” she asked finally, eyes round.
Sho offered a half-smile, half-grimace. “In a sense,” he said.
“Then are you worse?”
“In a sense,” Sho said again, and then Arrietty was filled with a deep sadness.
“Oh, Sho,” she said, and took Sho’s hand in both of hers as best she could. “I am very sorry.”
Sho shook his head and shrugged a little. “It is what it is,” he said. “We knew that there could be complications to the surgery, so I was prepared for this. There are good days and bad days, and I knew it could be worse, so we are all grateful.”
But Arrietty could read the disappointment in his eyes, and so she curled her fingers around Sho’s and waited for him to continue speaking.
“Enough about me,” Sho said eventually. “Tell me about where you’ve been. And tell me about how you came back.”
So Arrietty sat down on the comforter and looked up at Sho, and for a long time she spoke. She told him about how her family had moved to the woods and become friends with the Borrowers who dwelled there. It had been hard to find the right place for a home, but she loved the tree that they had chosen and told Sho about how her family had decorated it. He asked questions and laughed at all the right places, and poked fun at Arrietty when she grudgingly told Sho about Spiller’s proposal, bright red.
When Arrietty explained the dream she had had about Sho, he was quiet for a long time. She told him about the week-long journey to his home, and how Niya had picked her up when she thought she was done for (“That cat!” Sho had exclaimed, eyes twinkling with laughter). When she had at last finished speaking. Sho looked thoughtful.
“I’m not sure what this means,” he said finally. “How did you know that something had happened to me?”
“I don’t know,” Arrietty said. “It was just something I felt, and I knew it was real. There was a great pain, and I thought—I worried that you might have died…”
There was a beat of silence, and at Arrietty’s stricken expression Sho said gently, “But I haven’t, see?”
“No,” Arrietty agreed, and looked straight up into Sho’s face. “I am very happy that you are still here.”
“What will you do now?”
“What do you mean?”
“Will you go back home, now that you’ve seen me?”
Arrietty’s stomach flipped. “Oh no, please don’t make me,” she said earnestly. “I wanted to see you for so long, and it was such a long journey, and, and—”
“Stop, Arrietty,” Sho interrupted, laughing. “I didn’t mean that I wanted you to leave. Of course you’re welcome to stay for as long as you want.”
“Oh,” Arrietty said, feeling her cheeks go warm. “I’d like that very much.”
“I’ve missed you,” Sho said, and sighed. “I wished every day that I hadn’t forced your family to move.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Arrietty said. “It is the way of the Borrowers.”
“Yes,” Sho said, a little ruefully. “But still…”
Arrietty stamped her foot, grinning. “Stop feeling bad about it,” she said. “My parents are much happier in the forest—promise.”
“Well,” Sho said, and mirrored back Arrietty’s smile. “When you put it like that.”
/
Arrietty stayed at Sho’s house every day after that, and there were good days and bad days, just as he had said.
During the first week, Sho helped Arrietty write a letter to her parents and tied it onto Niya’s collar.
“Go, Niya,” Sho said gently, stroking his cat. “Go to Arrietty’s family.”
There was no way to tell if the letter had been successfully delivered, but when Niya came back that afternoon there was no letter attached to Niya’s collar and Arrietty assumed that her parents had received it. Arrietty told Sho later that she trusted Niya because she was unusually smart, for a beast. Sho agreed.
On the good days, Sho tucked Arrietty into his shirt pocket and they took long walks around the park or went cloud-gazing on the hill behind his home. Arrietty was amazed by everything around her, to Sho’s great amusement. The first time he took her to the playground in the park, she made him go on the slide over and over again until he finally told her that he was getting dizzy. After that, she made him sit on the swings for hours, going higher and higher.
“How wonderful!” She exclaimed, eyes watering from the wind. “This must be what birds feel every day!”
Arrietty knew the names of all of the plants and taught them to Sho—this family of jasmines, she would point out, only bloomed if they were touched by moonlight. And the thimbleberry and the moonseed berry looked identical, but only the thimbleberry was edible! And on and on, Arrietty’s knowledge of flowers and berries was unparalleled and Sho was happy to listen to her for hours at a time, closing his eyes.
The longer they were together, the closer friends they became, and before long they had learned each other’s fears and hopes like they were their own.
Once, when Sho was feeling adventurous, he took Arrietty into town on a train. For the entire ride, Arrietty remained pressed up against the glass, staring at the pastures flick by before her eyes. When they arrived, he bought a large ice cream and let Arrietty have the first bite. Her reaction was comical—she keened in delight and asked for more and more until her face and palms were smeared with chocolate and he had to ask for napkins. Sho let Arrietty ride in his shirt pocket as they strolled past the department stores and fountains in the heat of the slowly baking sun, and Arrietty’s eyes were as round as saucers for the entire day.
“You Beans are amazing,” Arrietty had sighed on the way home, staring out the train window again with a sleepy smile on her face.
There were bad days as well, when the nights took away Sho’s breath and he woke in the middle of the night, choking for air. Arrietty always sprang awake at the sound of Sho coughing into the crook of his elbow and hovered uncertainly, wringing her hands with worry. Aunt Sadako would come bustling into the room with medicine and tea, and Arrietty would have to hide in the folds of the pillows. She would lie there, trembling with fear and listening to Sho’s pained coughs until he regained his breath, grasping for air. Sometimes, she would have to dive for cover into Sho’s shirt pocket and was alarmed by how deep his coughing sounded in his chest, how harsh.
After particularly bad nights, Sho would breathe heavily for days and sit in his chair to read, eyes hazy. Fevers came and went, and Sho was always tired after he was ill. Arrietty would perch near his ear during times like this and tell him stories that her mother used to tell her whenever she got sick, and Sho’s weary smile never once wavered. Still, Arrietty never grew completely used to seeing Sho look so wan, and hated to see him this way.
Arrietty learned to listen for the catches in Sho’s breath and brace herself for the coughing; Sho knew it scared her, and tried to leave the room so she wouldn’t have to hear. Arrietty thought this was almost worse—the sound was never truly muffled, and she didn’t want Sho to push himself any more than he already was. In the time that passed, she learned how to take care of Sho. Her eyes grew more attuned to the little things; she caught the winces that sometimes marred Sho’s calm face, or the way he would sometimes put a hand to his chest if he had walked a little too fast or a little too long.
“Go rest, Sho,” she would say, hands on her hips. “Go now.”
And smiling, he would. Arrietty thought that Sho was a remarkably obedient little Bean, and when she told him so, he laughed so hard his cheeks flushed red.
/
“Arrietty,” Sho said one night, putting down the book he was reading. “I learned something interesting today.”
“Mmm,” Arrietty said, admiring the new slingshot she had just fastened out of a rubber band and a paperclip.
“There’s something called the red string of fate,” Sho said. “Have you heard of it?”
Arrietty turned to look at Sho. “No,” she said. “What is it?”
“It’s a legend of two people connected by a long piece of invisible thread,” Sho said, smiling and resting his eyes. “They say that the thread can be tangled many times, but it will never break.”
Arrietty smiled too, then. “That story is talking about you and me,” she said confidently. “You’re thinking that that’s how I knew I had to come here to you.”
“Yes,” Sho said, and opened his eyes to grin at Arrietty. “That was what I was thinking.”
“I like it,” Arrietty said.
“I like it too,” Sho said, and that night when he turned out the lights, they slept deeply and dreamlessly.
/
Arrietty stayed with Sho for sixty moons before she told him that she wanted to go home to her parents. Sho understood; he had noticed a dimming in her spirit for weeks, and knew it was time to let her go—it had always been implicit in their friendship that Arrietty was a Borrower first, and a friend to him second.
“Be careful when I’m gone,” she said sternly, placing both hands on Sho’s chin. “Do you hear me?”
Sho laughed softly. “I will,” he said, and met Arrietty’s eyes.
Then, he got up and Arrietty’s eyes followed him as he went to open a small chest on his desk. She could not see what he was getting, but when he came back to join her, he held out his open hand to her and she laughed in surprise when she saw that it was her old clothespin.
“For luck,” he said, and Arrietty used it to clip her hair back at once and smiled, eyes bright.
“Ne, Sho,” she said. “I’ll be back.”
“I know,” Sho said.
He whistled for Niya then, and when she came, Arrietty clambered onto her back and looked at Sho, tilting her head. The moonlight pooled where Arrietty sat, and when Arrietty gestured for Sho to come closer, he did without preamble. Arrietty took Sho’s forehead in her two hands and kissed him, gently. Sho was not surprised to see that Arrietty’s eyes were wet—for all her strength and courage, she was still sixteen, after all.
“Be safe, friend,” she said.
“Be safe, Arrietty,” murmured Sho, and when Niya began to pad out of the room, Arrietty turned and grinned at Sho, eyes bright and smile brighter still.
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Comments and crit are greatly appreciated!