Hana Mori

A letter from Isao Mori, fisherman of the north canals, to Old Mother Sabe of East Landing, written in the year of the 312th Low Tide. It is kept in the East Landing book of apprentices, with the reply written on the back.

The letter

Mother Sabe,

You don't know me. I am Hana's father. I am writing because she has been at your landing every morning for most of a month, mending your nets, and her mother says that someone in this family ought to explain her to you, and it seems that someone is me. I am better with nets than letters. Please forgive the hand.

She tells me you told her to come back in a year. She has decided that you meant it kindly and that a year is a very long time. I have tried to tell her that this is not how a guild works. She asked me how I knew, since I am not in one. I didn't have an answer, and you will find, if you have not already, that this is how most conversations with Hana end.

So that you know who is sitting on your landing:

She was born in the 298th Low Tide, in the house on the third bridge of the north canals with the blue door, which the whole canal will tell you she painted herself when she was seven, without asking. She is fourteen. She is the middle of three. Her brothers are older and fish with me. She could fish with me too, and better than either of them, but she would rather not, and I have stopped pretending I don't know why.

She has watched every Low Tide from the sea wall since she was four years old. The first year, I carried her up there on my shoulders. Every year since, she has got there before me. She stands on the same stone, to the left of the gate, and she counts the lanterns as they go out at the Markers. She keeps the numbers in a notebook. She has ten years of them. I have never asked her why. I don't think she knows.

She asks questions. You will have noticed. She asks the ones everyone asks, and then she asks the ones after those, and she keeps going until the person she is asking runs out of answers, and then she thanks them very politely and goes to ask someone else. When she was nine she wrote to the Harbour Office to ask why the old lighthouse was on their list as unlit. They wrote back. She wrote back to them. They stopped writing.

She asked me once what happens to a lantern that doesn't go out. I said I didn't know. I don't. She has been asking other people ever since.

She is stubborn, which she gets from her mother, and earnest, which she gets from nobody I know of. When she decides a thing is right, she does it with her whole self, and she does not know how to do it any other way. It has got her into trouble and it will again. I am not asking you to fix that. I am only telling you, so you are not surprised.

She rows better than she thinks. She took our skiff out alone at six and would not come in until she could turn it in its own length, which took her until dark, and her mother has never quite forgiven either of us. She still thinks she is not good enough. I have watched her on the water for eight years. She is.

The red cord she ties her hair with was her grandmother's net cord. She ties her sleeves back with the other half of it. If she loses it she will tell you it does not matter, and then she will go and look for it until she finds it.

I am not writing to ask you to make an exception for her. I suppose I am, but I would rather you made it because of the nets than because of me. She tells me she has mended forty-one so far. She tells me you checked every one.

If you send her home, she will go. She will be back in the morning. I don't say that to trouble you. I say it so you can plan.

With respect, and with apologies for the blue door, which is a separate matter,

Isao Mori

The reply

Written on the back, in a small, upright hand.

Mr Mori.

She mends a net properly, which is more than most of my oars can say. She may start on the first day of the next spring. Tell her to bring her own tea.

Tell her the questions can wait until her stroke is right. They will not, but tell her.

S.