New Decameron Ninety-Six: Caroline M. Yoachim (Patreon)

Dreams as Fragile as Glass

by Caroline M. Yoachim

Masumi walked barefoot on the beach with her daughter, Hikaru, scanning the sand for pretty shells or a glint of sunlight on glass. A flash of green caught Masumi's eye. She brushed the wet sand off a piece of sea glass. "Here, for your collection."

"I don't need any more green, Mom," Hikaru said.

Masumi slipped the smooth glass into her pocket. Her daughter was twelve and increasingly wanted to spend all her time with her school friends. Masumi's closest friends all lived in Tomonoura, and Japan was an expensive eight hour flight away. It was hard not to feel lonely, especially now that her husband, Tsutomu, had been promoted and was constantly swamped with work.

Hikaru stopped and looked out at the crashing waves. Masumi followed her gaze. It was a warm afternoon, and surfers paddled out past the point where the waves broke. A cluster of them bobbed in the ocean swells, waiting for the right moment to catch a wave to ride back to shore.

"I talked to Dad about maybe doing surfing lessons with my friends," Hikaru said.

"You don't swim well enough yet," Masumi said, her gaze fixed on the waves--walls of water that usually pushed the surfers forward, but sometimes crashed over them and pushed them down. Hikaru had always loved watching the surfers, and this wasn't the first time she'd asked about lessons, but her daughter was thin and uncoordinated, barely able to keep her head above water in the local pool.

"We don't start here," Hikaru said, rolling her eyes like she was already a teenager. Masumi would perhaps lose her daughter's company even sooner than she thought. "The lessons are over at Launiupoko, where the waves are tiny and the water is shallow. I'm more likely to cut my feet on the rocks at the bottom than I am to drown."

Masumi shook her head. Tsutomu had clearly already given his permission, and he was probably right. "That does sound safer," she admitted. In the corner of her eye, she saw a glint of reflected sunlight, and she reached down to pick up the glass. Her hand hit her daughter's ankle.

"Ow! What are you doing?" Hikaru demanded.

A vein of crimson glass extended up the back of Hikaru's ankle, paralleling her Achilles tendon, shining brilliant in the sun. The glass was embedded in her skin, part of her. It was like Tsutomu's sister, Yoko, all over again. A horrible image came unbidden to Masumi's mind: Yoko, transformed entirely into glass, her chest too rigid and heavy to breathe.

"It wasn't there this morning," Hikaru whispered.

"It's only a tiny sliver. . ." Masumi began, trying to sound more confident than she felt. Now every moment would be a step towards an inevitable end. 

"I still want to surf," Hikaru insisted, her voice strong but her face trembling with the effort of holding back tears.

Masumi embraced her daughter and held her close. "Then you will surf."

#

Masumi and Tsutomu sat together on the futon in the living room, her head on his shoulder. His hands were shaking, and she covered them with her own. She tried to hold herself together, to be his strength. "It is only a tiny streak. We still have time."

"Time for what? To watch her slowly stiffen and crystalize? To break off her fingers with a wrong move, or shatter her leg bumping into a corner? Yoko could barely move for weeks before she died." He stared at the television, even though it was off. "Yoko was twenty when she got her first streak of glass. The disease is worse when it starts young. Faster."

Masumi ran her fingers along the contours of her husband's hands, tracing the lines of his veins. The veins looked blue, but the blood flowing in them was the same deep red as the streak of glass in Hikaru's ankle. Crimson was the rarest colour for sea glass--Masumi remembered her grandfather's collection of fishing floats, mostly the green glass of recycled sake bottles, shades from deep evergreen to a mint so pale it was nearly translucent. He'd had blue spheres and yellows and browns, but even in his vast collection he hadn't had a red one. "She still wants to surf."

"I encouraged her to sign up for lessons," Tsutomu said bitterly, "but that was before we knew that she. . . It runs in families. I should have--"

"This isn't your fault," Masumi reassured him, but the words were empty, hollow. Maybe they'd been wrong to have a child at all. The odds hadn't seemed so bad when they talked to the geneticist. One chance in thirty. She couldn't bring herself to second guess their decision. The idea of never having Hikaru at all was worse than the thought of losing her. "Maybe her progression will be slow. Maybe it won't be as bad as it was for Yoko."

Tsutomu shook his head, then stood from the futon and went to his office. Masumi had offered him what little comfort she could, but now she needed someone to listen, and he was gone. Evening here was the middle of the day in Japan, so her friends would be at work. She wasn't sure which of them she could call anyway, not for something like this. They'd drifted apart in the decade since she'd moved away. Tsutomu was usually her sounding board, her comfort, her ship in a sea of turmoil.

Hikaru came in, homework finished, to watch one of those inane reality TV shows she liked. 

Masumi couldn't burden Hikaru with her worries. She had to give strength to her child, not draw it away. She buried her own feelings deep and put her hand on her daughter's shoulder. "How are you feeling?"

Hikaru chewed on her lower lip. "I kind of want to forget the whole thing and watch TV."

"Okay." Masumi pulled her hand away. There was a line of glass, pale blue and wire thin, barely an inch long, at the base of Hikaru's neck. It disappeared under the strap of her daughter's tank top.

#

Masumi bought her daughter a surf board, a ridiculous frivolous expense given that rental boards were included in the surfing lessons.

"She doesn't need her own board," Tsutomu said. "She won't be able to do this for long. She's sprouting new glass every day. We shouldn't let her take lessons at all. It'll only get her hopes up for something she can't do, dreams she'll never attain."

"That's like saying she shouldn't live because she's going to die," Masumi answered, trying to keep her voice even, calm. Failing. The cracks in her world crept into her voice, settled into her vocal chords until she could barely speak. "We're all going to die. If we take away her hope, what will she have left?"

"If you build up her hope, how will she feel when the world comes crashing down around her?" Tsutomu demanded. "You're giving her the illusion of a normal life, of a future that she doesn't get to live."

"She knows how little time she has. This is her choice. She wants to surf," Masumi said. "Her illness might crush her dreams. Life might crush her dreams. But I will not be the one to crush her dreams."

Tsutomu stared at the surf board, red with a white hibiscus design. "If she hits a rock, she'll shatter. Not yet, because she only has a few streaks, but soon. This is too dangerous."

"She'll just have to learn fast enough to be in deep water before rocks become a problem," Masumi said. She forced herself to believe it. So many things she did by sheer force of will now, because there was no other way. It had become her single-minded purpose. Hikaru wanted to surf, so she would surf.

Hikaru came home from school, and when she saw the board, her face lit up. "This is. . .it's perfect. Thank you."

"You're welcome." Masumi tried to focus on her daughter's smile, on how happy she was in that one moment. She turned to Tsutomu to share this triumph, however fleeting, but he had already retreated into his office.

#

Masumi sat alone on the sand, well away from the other parents with their prying questions and unbearable pity. It was easy to spot Hikaru among the other surfers sharing her lesson; the sunlight caught the glass of her arms and face, and she sparkled when she moved. There was so much glass, already--even though it had only been a month--but Masumi tried not to think about that. She watched her daughter paddle out beyond the breakers with the others, her body mostly protected by her wetsuit, her joints still flexible enough for her to move freely. Her glass lesions were hollow, so they actually increased her buoyancy. She was becoming a fishing float, like the ones Masumi's grandfather once collected, but in a rainbow of colours. It was beautiful, except that it was killing her.

The class floated in the distance, the instructor talking to the group. Then, in ones and twos, the students tried to apply whatever wisdom had been imparted. Hikaru went first, eager and impatient, determined to show her mastery so she could move to the next level, to bigger waves and deeper water.

She rose gracefully to her feet, her movements slow and deliberate. Her balance was good, but the wave was small, not powerful enough to generate the speed she needed to keep the board stable. It wobbled, and she toppled off the side. Masumi held her breath, as she always did when Hikaru fell, but her daughter's head quickly reemerged from the water. It was shallow here, and Hikaru stood chest deep in the waves.

Masumi smiled and waved, trying to look supportive and encouraging. Everyone fell sometimes, and it had seemed more the wave's fault than her daughter's. Hikaru stood without moving, staring down at her hand. She began to scream, a high keening wail.

Masumi ran to her daughter, charging in against the current, heedless of the rocks that slashed at her feet.

Hikaru's hand--her right hand--had struck the rocks, or the surfboard, or hit the water too hard at the wrong angle. Two of her fingers had shattered, leaving nothing but jagged edges near the palm of her hand. The waves were dark with churning sand, and there was no sign of her daughter's shattered fingers.

There was a void in Masumi's memory after that moment. She remembered standing with Hikaru in the water, then nothing more until they were sitting together on the beach, the surfing instructor bandaging a cut on Masumi's foot.

They all stared at Hikaru's hand.

"It doesn't hurt," she said. "I lost feeling in the fingers last week. It doesn't hurt. It doesn't. Hurt."

Hikaru repeated the words over and over again, as if they were a spell that would grow her fingers back. Masumi knew that she should say something comforting, but her mind was blank. Her soul was blank. She was empty. Her daughter needed her, she could see that her daughter needed her, but there was nothing she could give. She couldn't. It was too much.

Hikaru was talking to her instructor but their words passed in and out of Masumi's head, meaningless. She put her head on her knees and closed her eyes. Eventually a hand pressed against her shoulder.

She looked up. "Tsutomu. I'm sorry. I couldn't--"

"It's okay. They called me to come and get you." He knelt in the sand beside her. "I've left so much of this to you--you seemed so strong, and I can't seem to see anything but Yoko's last days."

"Where's Hikaru?" Masumi asked, scanning the beach. "Is she okay?"

"She's saying goodbye to some of her school friends," he pointed down the beach to where Hikaru was standing with a cluster of other kids. "She's shaken, but taking it pretty well, really. It helps that there isn't any pain. We wrapped up her hand, and now that she can't see it, she can pretend that nothing is wrong, at least for a little while."

She nodded. Hikaru was okay. There wasn't any pain.

Tsutomu paused. "She still wants to surf."

"Then she will surf."

#

Masumi held Tsutomu's hand, and they stood on the beach and watched as Hikaru paddled her board out into the deep water. The bigger waves were more dangerous, but the deeper water was safer. Regardless, even this wouldn't be possible much longer. Hikaru's legs were more glass than flesh, and the disease was spreading everywhere. Her spine was locked into an unnatural curve as the glass filled in, uneven. Her balance was starting to go, and she had lost so much muscle to glass that it was increasingly difficult for her to move.

"Focus on today," Tsutomu whispered, as though reading her thoughts. They were his thoughts too, she supposed, which made them easier to guess. "Smell the salt on the breeze, feel the sand beneath our feet. Look at our daughter, gliding over the turquoise water with such incredible grace."

"You're right." She squeezed his hand. "We can't control what the future holds, but we can find joy in the little moments. In this moment, when you and I can watch together from the beach while our daughter chases her dreams."

Hikaru rode in on a wall of water, a wide smile on her glass-streaked face.

**********************************************

"Oh," Maya says.

"It can hurt," he says.

"Yes," she says. "That was so beautiful and so real and so awful. But the mother --" she pauses and stares off at the bookshelves, not seeing them. "I will not be the one to crush her dreams."

"But life might do it anyway," he says.

Maya nods. "I understand."

"Then I think this comes next. Judith Tarr."

"Then I bet it has horses in," Maya says.

"You're pretty sure to win that bet," he says, and passes her a book.

"Beyond the Wide World's End," she reads. "Great title." And they read.