The next evening, a light burned in the outer room of the little house at the edge of the village.
The four of them returned from tree-climbing practice covered in bits of grass, with dirt from the foot of the slope still clinging to their shoes.
Dinner was laid out on the table, but they had barely touched it. Medicine came first.
Tsunami treated Naruto's injuries.
After an afternoon of falling out of trees, he had scraped both palms in several places. The worst scrape had drawn blood.
When the medicated cotton pressed against it, Naruto hissed, then swallowed the rest of the sound.
"Inari..."
He stared at his hand as she wrapped it in gauze. The words reached his lips, then died there.
"He wasn't like this when his adoptive father was still around."
Tsunami's hands kept working, her voice level.
"Kaiza was good at riding the waves. He'd take a boat straight into the breakers. He was the one who found Inari and brought him home. He taught him to row, and he taught him something else: when you have something you want to protect, you can become strong."
She spoke very slowly about what happened afterward.
"The people who took over the bridge came ashore. In front of the whole village, they broke both his arms and strung him up at the bridgehead for everyone to see."
"Since then, this village hasn't held its head up."
She paused there and screwed the cap back onto the medicine bottle, very gently.
The water on the stove boiled, bubbling twice. No one attended to it.
Finishing the bandaging, she turned Naruto's hand over and examined his palm, then added another strip of tape to secure the end of the gauze before letting go.
Kiyoshi sat on the bench by