A Mother's Journey
Copyright© 2026 by Megumi Kashuahara
Chapter 3: What the Morning Asks
~ Emmie ~
She woke to the smell of cold ash and a crick in her neck that ran from her left ear to the middle of her shoulder blade, and for one long, swimming moment she did not know where she was.
Then the weight against her side shifted, and she remembered.
She looked down. He was already awake — had perhaps been awake for some time, she couldn’t tell — lying perfectly still against her ribs with his eyes open and fixed on the dead fire with the patient, contained attention of a child who has learned that stillness is sometimes the safest available option. He was still wrapped in her mother’s quilt. His hand was still closed around the fabric of her dress.
When he felt her move he tipped his head back and looked up at her.
She looked down at him.
Good morning, she thought, and then felt the absurdity of it — good morning, as though this were an ordinary thing, as though she woke every day with a Cayuse toddler tucked against her side in the Blue Mountains with no food and no father and winter somewhere above them, sharpening itself on the high peaks, getting ready.
“Good morning,” she said aloud anyway, because silence felt wrong and it was the only thing she had.
He said something back. One word, soft and certain. She didn’t know what it meant. She filed it away.
The morning was the color of pewter, the sky through the pine canopy a flat, pale gray that gave nothing away about the hour. Her fire was ash and cold char. She needed to rebuild it, needed to boil water from the creek, needed to think clearly about the day ahead, and to think clearly she needed to move, and to move she needed to disentangle herself from the quilt and from the boy, who showed no particular inclination to release his grip on her dress.
“I have to get up,” she told him.
He looked at her with those level dark eyes and did not let go.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “I’m just going to build the fire back up. You can watch.”
Whether it was the tone or the gesture she made toward the fire ring, he released the dress. Slowly, with the deliberateness of a concession rather than a surrender. She stood, worked the crick in her neck with her knuckles, and began laying the fire.
He sat in the quilt and watched her the entire time.
By the time the flames were going again the light had strengthened to a thin, watery gold, and she could see the creek and the tree line and the broken wagon slumped in the dry bed behind her, and she could see him clearly — could see the berry stains still on his face, darker now in the daylight, and the tangled state of his hair, and that his tunic had a tear at the shoulder she hadn’t noticed the night before. Small damages. Things that needed tending.
She needed to wash his face. The thought arrived with a quiet authority that surprised her — not I should wash his face or perhaps I ought to, but I need to, immediate and certain, the way you knew you needed to bank a fire or check a wound. She needed to wash his face and comb his hair and look at that tear in his tunic and determine whether she could mend it.
She filed that away too, behind the more pressing question.
She sat back down across the fire from him and looked at him directly, the way she would look at a problem she intended to solve. He met her gaze without flinching. She had noticed this about him — he did not look away when she looked at him, did not drop his eyes or shift uneasily. He simply looked back, calm and complete, as though being looked at was no particular thing.
“I have to take you home,” she said.
He tilted his head slightly. The shells clicked.
“I don’t know where that is,” she continued. “I don’t know where your people went or how far, or what direction. But I am going to find out, and I am going to take you back to them. That is the right thing to do and I intend to do it.”
She said it clearly and with conviction, the way her father used to say things he needed to believe as much as announce. The boy regarded her with the same solemn attention he gave everything.
Then he reached out toward the tin that sat between them.
“Yes,” she said, and opened it. “Breakfast first.”
She gave him two of the remaining apple rounds and took two for herself and put the rest away with the careful hands of someone who understands that what remains must last. He ate his with the same focused seriousness as the night before, and when he was done he licked the clove sugar from his fingers one by one, and she watched him do it and felt something tighten in her throat that she did not examine.
After breakfast she heated water in the small tin pot her father had left in the wagon and dampened a corner of cloth and crouched before the boy and washed his face.
He submitted to this with enormous dignity.
His face, cleaned, was a fine-featured, serious face — high cheekbones and a strong jaw already evident even at four, the kind of face that would become handsome in the way of things built for endurance rather than decoration. She wiped the last of the berry stain from below his ear and sat back on her heels and looked at him, and he looked back at her, and for a moment the world was very quiet.
“Kanti,” he said suddenly, touching his own chest.
She understood immediately. “Kanti,” she repeated.
Something shifted in his expression — the smallest easing, a fraction of warmth entering those level eyes. He had been heard. His name existed again in the world because someone else had said it.
She touched her own chest. “Emmie,” she said. “Emmie Lou.”
He tried it. What came out was something softer, the consonants gentled by a tongue accustomed to different shapes. But it was her name, unmistakably, in his mouth, and hearing it did something to her she was entirely unprepared for.
“Close enough,” she said, when she could speak again. “Close enough, Kanti.”
She combed his hair with her own comb, working out the tangles with the patience her mother had taught her, and he sat very still for it, and she threaded her fingers through the dark, fine strands when she was done and felt them lie smooth and clean against her palm, and then she tucked the comb back in her pocket and stood up and looked at the mountains.
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