The Woman in the Grove

By Theresa Karatza

Namika’s tenth winter was bitter. January’s harsh winds blew into April, and she had a sickness that made her mother frown and the doctor whisper. When the first sakura buds appeared in her family’s grove, Namika stared longingly from the window. Usually she would be helping her family prepare for hanami, the flower viewing, but her mother scolded her when she tried to venture out.

That night a cough shook Namika’s body and made her throat scratchy and dry. Rather than wake her parents, Namika decided to get water from the pump outside. She crawled from her bed—the night’s chill settling over her like a blanket—bundled up, and slipped outside.

There in the grove wandered a woman in flowing white robes, her fingers trailing across the branches. Anger bloomed in Namika’s chest. How dare a stranger trespass and damage their delicate buds! She should rouse her father. But she was ten years old, practically an adult. She could handle a trespasser.

Namika stomped into the trees, her hands fisted in her robe to keep them from shaking. “What are you doing here?” A thrill went down Namika’s spine. She’d never spoken to an adult this way.

Despite Namika’s informal speech, the woman’s eyes glittered with humor. “I wanted to see how the buds fared.” The woman’s voice was warm and sweet, like the dango her mother bought at festivals.

“You can come during the day to see them.” Namika tried to sound stern, but her self-righteous anger waned. “And don’t touch them. Please.”

“Of course, little one. I would never hurt such beautiful trees.”

Pride swelled in Namika’s chest as she scanned the grove. In her opinion, it was the most beautiful in all of Japan. She turned to the woman to say as much, only to find herself alone.

That week, Namika described the woman to her neighbors. To the people in the village. To strangers passing by. But no one knew the woman. It was the last thing Namika thought about before sleep and her first thought upon waking. She had to know who the woman in the grove was.

One night, Namika dreamt of the woman stroking her hair and singing. She awoke, the longing notes ringing in her ears, and rushed to the window. There, between the moonlit trees, moved a figure in white. She barely slipped her shoes on before running across the grass. “You’re back!”

The woman smiled as Namika bowed. “The sakura will be in bloom next week.”

“You’ll come see them?”

The woman nodded, her eyes drifting upward to the buds.

“Do you live nearby?”

“I live on Mount Fuji.”

Namika frowned. She didn’t think anyone could live on Mount Fuji. Was she a celebrity? Related to the Emperor?

“Why do sakura fade so quickly?” The woman sighed.

Namika struggled to form her thoughts into words. “My cousin in Noboribetsu teases me for getting so excited about the ocean, but he gets to ride on Oji’s boat all the time, and I only get to sometimes. I think it’s like that. If they were here forever, they wouldn’t be special.”

A sudden bout of coughs wracked Namika’s body.

The woman placed a hand on the girl’s back. “Rest,” she said gently.

Namika murmured goodbye, her body heavy with exhaustion, and trudged toward the house. The woman was gone before she reached the door.

Over the next week, Namika’s health worsened, forcing her to stay inside. Lying in bed, she kept her mind busy with the mystery of the woman in the grove.

She must be famous.

Namika kept the radio on, listening for the woman’s voice. She requested a newspaper, spreading the pages across the floor and studying them.

But when the sakura finally bloomed, she had learned much about a distant war and nothing about the woman.

At night, Namika snuck to the window. The woman would come. She knew it.

When the woman appeared on the third night, Namika shuffled from the house as quickly as possible.

“They are the most beautiful yet.” The woman’s finger gently traced one of the pink blossoms. She dropped her hand, brow furrowing. “Is it fair that humans are like sakura?”

Namika knew the myth. It was her grandmother’s favorite. When the god Ninigi wed the goddess Sakuya-hime—whose symbol is the sakura—it caused human lives to be as fleeting as the cherry blossoms. Her grandmother thought it was romantic. Namika thought it was unfair.

“Some are.” She tried to remember her grandmother’s words. “Others are like the tree itself. They put their roots deep. And even after the worst winters, they bloom.”

The woman nodded slowly, as if she’d decided something. She knelt and placed her hand on the grass. “A new tree will grow here.” She turned so she was eye to eye with Namika. “Like you, its life will be long and full of the beauty it brings into the world.”

Before Namika’s eyes, the woman disappeared in a shower of sakura.

Namika spent many nights staring into the grove, hoping for the mysterious woman’s return. Her parents said it was a dream brought on by her sickness. Eventually she stopped bringing it up. Then she stopped waiting by the window.

Namika’s eighty-ninth winter was mild. The day the sakura bloomed, she rocked her great-granddaughter on her lap, her heart full as she caressed the baby’s pink cheeks.

“You are the most beautiful blossom yet,” she murmured.

That night, Namika ambled through the grove. When she sat next to the tree that had grown in her youth, a gentle hand touched her shoulder.

The woman hadn’t aged a day since Namika last saw her.

“I hoped to find you again,” Namika croaked. “Sakuya-hime.”

Sakuya-hime only smiled and caressed Namika’s gray hair, humming a song from a distant dream as Namika’s eyes slid shut.

The morning sun found Namika beneath her favorite tree, a blanket of sakura covering her body and a smile on her lips.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Theresa Karatza discovered the magic of books at a young age and has spent her life finding new fictional worlds to escape into. She has a bachelor’s degree in English, but mostly uses it to beat her husband in Jeopardy. When she isn’t trying to wrangle her characters into submission, she enjoys hiking near her home in the Pacific Northwest or looking for bugs with her toddler and cat.