Chapter Thirty-Five Otohime
In the palace beneath the sea, there was a princess, and a window, and a dream.
For years after Urashima Tarō left her, the princess Otohime sat in her palace alone, watching the seasons change beyond her
four windows. What more could she have given the human to make him stay? The man she had cared for was nothing but ashes.
Now, her endless life grew pale, for eternity held no value in the lightless depths of the ocean, where even the fish could
not survive.
Otohime watched the days pass on earth, counted them in autumn leaves cascading to the ground, in bones that returned to the
soil, in drops of rain that fed the sea.
Until one day, a woman gave her an offering.
On the shores of Satsuma, a mother placed her daughter in the sea and prayed for the life of her son. Otohime swam up to meet
the mother, accepting the girl as the waves breathed her in. She cradled the child in her arms and tasted her loneliness,
felt it like the peal of a bell in her soul. Though this was only a human girl, she shared Otohime’s gray heart.
Otohime knew such thoughts were dangerous.
The last time she had been so enchanted by a human’s heart, she was left alone.
So this time, she promised to watch over the human from afar, to protect her from her place in the sea.
Humans were delicate birds that longed for the sky, and she wished not to trap one again, or to make them yearn for home.
She breathed life into the child’s cold body and returned her to her bed, then watched from a distance.
She watched the girl grow tall and fierce and beautiful, but also lonely. When Otohime could bear it no longer, she came to
the girl’s family as a servant and loved her quietly in small, stolen moments.
But even in her human form, Otohime could see all the threads of time. That was how she saw the child’s life on earth swiftly
coming to an end. When her father went off to battle, the girl would chase after him, and he would slay her where she stood
in the road.
So Otohime broke the promise she had made to herself on the day Urashima Tarō turned to dust.
She built a new palace, somewhere between the earth and sea. She hid the home beneath the sword ferns and ginger, wrapped
it with flowers of all seasons, just like her home beneath the ocean. She told the girl’s mother of this safe place, and when
the girl’s end drew near, Otohime picked her up from the road and brought her close to home, where her brother found her.
The family moved to the palace of Otohime’s creation, and for a time, the girl had everything she had wished for: a father
who loved only her, a dream that had not yet been extinguished, a purpose ignited within her. Otohime folded up the walls
of time like a box around the house, and she locked the child inside. Unlike Urashima Tarō, the girl would not yearn for home,
for she would think she was already there.
Time went on. Days did not pass in a straight line for Oto hime but rather as a map of stars, everything spread out all at once, forever and never again at the same time.
Somewhere among the scattered sparks of the timeline, she met the boy.
Otohime had been lost at sea. She was choking on a length of rope and had washed ashore somewhere far away, a distant land,
a distant time. A woman brought her home, pulled the rope from her, and cared for her. The woman’s son stood behind her, his
dark eyes full of tempests, the same as the girl’s. Otohime swore that, to thank his mother, she would protect the boy.
But death came quickly for him as well.
On a day like any other, the boy would take one too many pills and fall down a stairwell and shatter. Precipitated by nothing
but the constant gray haze of his life, meaning nothing, changing nothing.
So, for a second time, Otohime broke her promise.
Before that day could come to pass, she went to the boy’s father, for his mother was long gone, and whispered in his ear as
he slept. Go to the house behind the sword ferns , she said.
She led the boy to the same house in a different time and gave him the things his heart had been afraid to ask for: a devoted
father who had loved his wife until the very end, a safe place to weather the tempests of the rest of the world, a family
that was whole and kind and safe. She came to him with another face, cooked for him, told him ghost stories, brought him sparkling
sea glass and sharp shells. She trapped the boy inside her palace by the sea, away from his own ending, the truth that he
could not bear.
She did not realize, at first, how unstable her palace was, how precariously it balanced between the earth and the sea.
Each morning and night, as the tide retreated and the ocean of Otohime’s birth drew far away, her powers waned. The walls of time and memory that she had built grew thin, the years began to bleed into each other, and the two children found each other across time.
Otohime tried with all her might to patch her crumbling palace, to keep the worlds separate, to protect her children from
their fates. She could never force them to stay, but she could do everything possible to make them choose her.
But when the two children found each other, they no longer wanted Otohime at all.
Just as before, humans sought out the love of other humans, and they left Otohime alone at the bottom of the sea.
They sent her away, and as the tide retreated, so did the careful walls she had built to keep them safe. They had never belonged
to her, and their lives poured through her fingers like ashes.
When it was all over, and both of them were gone, Otohime sat alone in her palace under the sea once more.
Was I so wrong to treasure humans? she wondered. Will they always leave me alone in the dark?
She swore to never care for humans again, to never lend them her heart, never try to save them from themselves. But still,
she tasted their tears like the salt of the sea, felt the ache of their pain deep in her bones, cried for them as she wished
someone would cry for her, even once. She did not know if she would ever find the love that humans held for only each other,
but she would continue searching until the end of time.