Unsui believes in the sound of her own voice, how it carries across the wind and turns the heads of men she has never met. She believes in the tone and the melody, and the harmony she creates even though she has always been alone.

Her voice, like the rest of her, is larger than it seems. She carries it well. She has hips to bear children and breasts to feed their hungry mouths. She looks nothing like her Grandmother, a woman small and withered on the vine.

In the house Unsui has built, stronger than rice paper until the storms come, she boils water in a dented pot and watches as some escapes as steam. She drinks coffee from an old cup and leaves lip-gloss stains on its rim.

Staring, she wonders where the steam goes, the water that has escaped her cup. When she looks out the window, the sky is dark, the clouds heavy.

In the morning she stares out into her backyard, the once-white sheets tinted grey by a sky that cannot hold its own tears. She leaves the washing on the line another day and hopes for sun.

In the afternoon she notices the garden and the line of dirt that barely meets the grass. There are moats around her carrots and beans. She wonders what the water protects in the mystery of her vegetable garden.

The tomatoes hang limp on their vine. Tomorrow is Grandmother's birthday.

Unsui has baked teacakes with blue frosting. The festive swirls of sugary paste seem out of place on her kitchen table, piled high into a strange pyramid that she knows holds no secrets.

She wears a blouse the same shade of blue, a colour to fight the storm outside. Her Grandmother will tell her blue means success, and to wear it one must be going somewhere. Grandmother doesn't mean the short bus trip to her house on birthdays, but somewhere farther, a place where money streams through the sewers and Unsui can trade in her frumpy blue blouse for suits of red and black.

The cakes, piled precariously in a white box, shift as the bus turns and leave smudges of blue on the beige inside. Unsui watches them through the cellophane lid as if they are waves on the ocean, lapping the beach. Despite the weather, the bus is dry and smells like salt-fish. Unsui licks her lips.

Grandmother's house is wider than it is tall, grey as a winter day, dark as the storm that now seems to be passing. The front door is painted red and talks to Unsui in her dreams. It opens with the silver key Unsui has hidden in the palm of her hand like a secret.

"Obaasan?" Unsui says, and because she has not said a word aloud in days, her voice sounds foreign.

"Shh!" comes like a distant waterfall from the living room. "You much too loud."

Unsui sighs and makes her way to the kitchen. Pulling two plates from the cupboard requires work, for Unsui is shaped like Grandmother's house - wider than she is tall.

Her tiptoes waver and she shakes and fumbles, dropping a plate onto the old tile floor. The plate snaps and crumbles, shards of white china dent the soft linoleum and disappear beneath the edge of a small rug Grandmother uses to keep her feet warm while she washes dishes.

"Unsui!" Grandmother's voice is sharp, edged like the broken china. "You break, you buy!" Even her laugh is angled.

Unsui leaves her Grandmother laughing at her own joke.

As she puts teacakes on plates, she stares beyond the lemon-yellow drapes, past the streaks on the window and out. Beyond the grass trimmed short by a neighbor boy who charges far too much, past the dip in the landscape and into the stream that weaves through Grandmother's land. In another country and another time Grandmother worked beside streams like these, gathering rice in woven bamboo containers. The water in Grandmother's stream flows upward, and the fish circle where the water is most quiet. So like Unsui, who silently escapes from Grandmother's house through the back door and walks towards the water in her bare feet.

She looks back towards the house; sees her black slippers are tipped at strange angles like dark pebbles on a sandy bottom.

Unsui's toes warm the water and koi circle. They recognize the shift in place and time and remember warmer days beneath a bright red sun. They are brave, and to prove it they nudge Unsui with the tops of their heads.

Unsui watches the fish. She is quiet, her hands folded in her lap. She sits like a lotus, her legs are the roots, they ground her to the earth and through them she is nourished.

The koi caress the soles of her feet. Unsui watches them through the ripple blue water. They shift and turn, one motion. Within the water, they are as water, she watches them glide, feels their strangely soft scales against her skin, her own armour, and the stream is tinged red.

Pulling her feet from the stream, she holds a calf with both hands, turning her left foot just so. She tilts her head and stares at its sole.

Unsui stands and tucks her hair behind her ears. The walk to Grandmother's back door seems longer this time. Above her, the sky has darkened, and as Unsui makes her way back to the house that is wider than it is tall, the skies open.

Grandmother served sticky rice and barbequed pork. She proclaimed the teacakes as too sweet and didn't notice when Unsui ate three anyway.

"You will stay the night, and take me to Temple."

Unsui doesn't go to Temple anymore. She sees no future in the Prince who holds all the wisdom of the universe in his belly. Touching her own stomach, she wonders where her own wisdom is stored and realizes quickly she has never truly had any. Still, Grandmother has asked and Unsui has no reason to say no. Tomorrow, after all, is just another day.

At eleven, Unsui pads up the stairs to the guestroom in the corner. She opens the door, and is greeted by the smell of dust and memory. On the bed, Grandmother has placed starched pajamas, not new, but years older, her mother's perhaps. There are embroidered fish on the cuffs of the sleeves; Unsui runs a gentle finger across their form and her hand comes away wet. She stands and walks towards the window, pulling aside the curtain. In the dark the moon is bright and full and a strange glow comes from the stream behind Grandmother's house. The night is alive in hues of red and orange. The water is on fire.

Unsui fumbles at buttons and ties, her clothing falls to the floor and lands in a sad, unloved heap. She lifts the pajamas off the bed, shakes them out, softening the starch. The pants pull on, and she tugs at the top; her breasts pull at the thin cotton.

The door to the guestroom creaks open, but Grandmother is snoring loudly in the room down the hall. Unsui tiptoes anyway, just in case. She pads down to the kitchen and reaches for a teacake. The small dessert is gone in three bites; Unsui doesn't notice the dab of blue icing dotting her cheek like a birthmark. She pulls crumbs away from her teeth with her tongue and walks towards the backdoor.

Unsui shrugs to herself and steps out into the night air. The fire on the water is higher now; streams of crimson and gold light up the night. She wonders how Grandmother can sleep so soundly, with such magic in her midst.

Again the walk to the stream seams longer, as if it is kept in another world. Unsui kneels on the bank and cups her hands. Leaning forward, she scoops handfuls of water and watches as the liquid streams between her fingers. She marvels in its warmth, cradling the drops in her hands she stares closely, waiting for them to disappear.

Kicking her shoes off with her toes, she twists around, touching the surface of the water. The fire parts, dances, and licks at her skin. The flesh on her left foot pulses, blistering as if burned. Unsui stares at her foot as if it is no longer a part of her. She watches and her skin takes on the shade of flame, red-gold. Pulling her foot the water, she runs her fingers along the arch. Carefully, she brushes away flakes of burned flesh. The skin beneath, birthed of the flame, is deep orange. Beneath the orange screams a flash of crimson. Where Unsui's skin was once smooth, there are ridges and crests, scales.

In the morning, Unsui's hair has been washed by dew, the smell of flowers and fresh starts lingers in the strands pulled tight in her ponytail. She stretches, and something low in her spine responds appreciatively. She presses her hands to the wet grass, turns her palms over and buries her face in the newness of day. Above her head, sparrows make their way through a tangle of applewood branches. Their voices are loud and strong, and she can hear the truth of family in the words she cannot understand. In the bright of morning, she remembers she must take Grandma to temple.

Pushing herself up, she steadies herself on her left foot, a foot that touches the earth but cannot meet it. Her foot, perhaps surprised by the wet grass, slides out from under her, and she topples to the ground, her ponytail slaps her in the face, and she lays there, startled.

Unsui stares into the sun for a moment, then tilts forward and looks to the place where her foot should be. The flesh has turned the shade of an angry sun. Flashes of red and orange, slashes of a white so hot Unsui is afraid to touch it, run the length of her foot, and disappear beneath the cuff of her mother's pajamas. There is webbing where her toes once were, and a small flap of edged skin lies flat and strong near their tips. Unsui pulls herself closer to the water, twists her leg around and pushes her foot into its cold embrace. The edge of skin responds. Unsui watches as it becomes a great kite, undulating in a too-strong wind.

This time, Unsui rolls to her left side and stands with her right foot. It is the same as always with its crooked baby toe. She gazes at the koi in the stream, and they rise to the surface, poking their noses into the morning air.

They are laughing, and smiling.

Unsui wobbles towards the house, lost on her new sea-leg. Her arms out, her hands wide. In the air she feels the touch of rain. A touch of wetness. She glances back towards the stream and wonders if the water calls itself home.

The Temple guards are three golden Buddha's, their expressions stoic, their hands up, palms out. They are not afraid. Grandmother pays her respects, gassho. Unsui's bow is half-hearted. She looks up into the eyes of these three wise men. Grandmother would tell Unsui they are the path, the way, and the comfort. Buddha. Dharma. Sangha. But they are no more than gold leaf and wire, fashioned over a winter of Saturdays by five men who needed a way home.

The monk wears his shaved head like a badge of courage; it is his strength, and his weakness. It both binds and liberates. Unsui can see his fear in the cut of the lines in his face.

Unsui watches. Grandmother holds court. This is why the old woman is here - not for the man who could be king - but for the peasants, those who stare at her wrinkled-leather skin and think she too, must hold all the wisdom of the universe in her belly.

"This is why they all come."

The voice is strong, and strangely male. Unsui can only recall the tinker of her own words, the timber of Grandmother's laugh, the deep song of the sexless monks and their chanting.

"Is it?"

"The comfort. A sense of past and of place. We teach them when they are not looking."

Unsui smiles, "Grandmother comes for the coffee and cake."

The man laughs, his voice low. He looks at Unsui, and is silent. He stares at her as if he believes in the sound of her voice; how it carries itself across the wind and turns the heads of men she has never met.

"And why do you come here?" He finally asks.

"I come," Unsui says, tucking a stray hair behind her ear, "because today is just another day."

The man smiles, the beads on his wrist hang low. "I am Yukio and there are better places than here for coffee and cake."

Unsui nods and follows him from the room. Grandmother turns and Unsui waves halfheartedly. There is a smile on Grandmother's face Unsui doesn't recognize, but when she looks at Yukio, she finds he understands.

Yukio insists on sticky coconut buns and coffee in Styrofoam cups. So we can walk, he says.

Unsui smiles, but her left foot is sore inside her shoe, the strange skin fights the confine of leather and cloth.

"We should go to Grandmothers," she says, "and sit by the stream."

Yukio places his hand on the small of Unsui's back. He both steadies and propels her forward. They make small talk, Unsui laughs and Yukio seems pleased.

They sit beside the water. Yukio is straight, up and down. As strong as the applewood trees

"I dream of the koi," she says, in her daydream she sees Yukio's hands on her belly, his lips on her skin.

"One should not dream of things one can see," Yukio says, his voice strong and quiet, "one should touch and understand them."

She remembers teacakes, and a smudge of blue icing. Her eyes open wide; they are the colour of a burned field, the dark of the end of the universe.

Yukio smoothes the creases from his robe and sees only one moment. "My mother swam upstream in the Yellow river," he says, "she too, dreamt of the koi. And in dreams I remember her breath of smoke and fire, and how her eyes were golden, bright like the birth of the universe." He stands and bows to her. Gassho.

Unsui moves her lips to the sound of his name.

Unsui walks to the backdoor of Grandmother's house. Grandmother is cooking leftovers, celebratory remnants - sticky rice and pork. She smiles a gap-toothed smile and Unsui stutters. The words, useless, pour from her mouth like sewer-rain.

Grandmother laughs, hand across a belly that believes in the wisdom of the universe. "Yukio is good man, but he can never be your husband. His grandmother was a Dragon. Don't feed him your teacakes."

Unsui chews the edge of her thumbnail and mumbles something about going upstairs to change.

Grandmother watches TV in the front room. Unsui stares through the kitchen window into the darkening night. A crimson haze glistens across the water, like heat. Like steam. A mist that escapes to cloud, that reforms and falls again.

A figure walks through the rickety gate. A secret passage no one has used for years. Unsui turns off the kitchen light, watching with hungry eyes, her palms pressing into the countertop.

In the dark, in the haze of blood red, she sees Yukio. He raises his hands and opens his mouth as if to scream. Fog seeps from his body and from his belly flows the ocean.

My mother swam upstream in the Yellow River

White smoke swallows the red haze and darkens. Yukio disappears, obscured behind a veil of mist and vapor.

Unsui loosens her grip on the counter. She blinks, and feels a strange wetness at the heel of her foot. A puddle of water has formed on the white linoleum. Unsui bends, touching the wet with the tip of her finger. Raising it to her lips, she tastes salt-fish.

When she sleeps, her dreams come in the form of smoke and fire.

She wakes to the deep dark of late night. She sits up, stands and leaves the bed, its warmth and comfort. She watches the night through the window, stares at the stream that is strangely quiet.

The night is nothing but black. Dark, like the insides of storm clouds.

The gate is open, hanging on rusted hinges.

Unsui walks out into the black, slowly, hobbling on a foot that no longer responds to land and earth. She heads for the stream. In the soil there are footprints. Unsui bends, fitting her hands into the imprints in the earth. The marks are long and wide. Strong, like the feet of a man, tapered like the claws of a dragon.

My mother swam upstream in the Yellow River.

"Yukio," Unsui cries, "Yukio."

She watches the koi swim, pushing themselves upstream, away from Grandmother's house. She hears a great roar.

The sky rumbles.

In the morning of a night spent again on the bank of the water, Unsui wakes to the heavy weight of clouds that cannot hold their own tears.

She tries to stand, careful on the foot that dreams of the koi, and fumbles, falling. Her head drops into the dirt, and she screams into blackness.

In the dark she hears the sound of wings and feels the pull of air. She feels strange hands upon her body, yet the flesh smells familiar.

"Unsui." His voice is certain.

Slowly, Unsui opens one eye, and then the other. In his hand, Yukio holds her mother's pajamas and they are torn and dirty.

Unsui grabs the folds of Yukio's saffron robes. "The koi dream of me."

Yukio presses his hand to her skin; orange sparks jump from his fingertips. Unsui watches the flesh that shines, ripples. He opens his mouth, and his breath is warm, like fire.

"My mother swam upstream in the Yellow River. She too calls me home."

Unsui feels a drop of rain on her cheek and looks to the sky; it has turned dark, angry. Yukio opens his mouth and tastes the pain of a sky that cannot hold its own tears.

The heavens open, and rain fights its way through the sky, through the grass, to the stream.

"Unsui," he says, "cloud-water," his voice is clear and his eyes are golden, like the beginning of the universe. He wraps his arms around her and they disappear into the dream of the koi, the mouth of the dragon.

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