Maybe she had dreamed it all. For many years Chihiro was sure that was what had happened. She only looked back the one time, as she walked out of the broken ruins that connected the spirit world with her own. When she was ten years old she was still afraid, but she faced her new school and her new home and thought to herself that things could be worse.
When she was thirteen and in middle school she fantasized about Korean pop stars, boys with brown eyes, bronzed skin, and fanciful hair with blond or red highlights. She loved what she saw in glossy magazines and flashing videos. Only rarely did she dream of steam and spirits, of flowers on screens and bright vermillion trim. And on the nights when the dragon beneath her shattered into a shower of clattering scales she would awake with a start at the sensation of falling and think it a nightmare, not a memory.
When she was seventeen she fell in love with a real boy. His hair was black and his voice placid like the waters of a still lake. What she loved, though, were his grey eyes. Light grey like a worn blanket or shadows on a cloud. Whenever he walked her home they would take the long way so they could keep to the path by the river.
When Chihiro was twenty one she and Shinji had a daughter. Though he thought it strange, her husband agreed on the name "Lin." Cradling her baby girl for the first time, she couldn't remember having loved anyone or anything so absolutely. That night, when the dragon disintegrated there were hands to clasp and instead of falling they flew.
A few years later her little family moved from the small town in the mountains of Gunma-ken to Tokyo. She told her daughter that it was exciting, an adventure, and she believed her own words.
Sometimes, when she rode the Yamanote line at dusk, the reflections in the windows of the buildings would show her the sun setting over an endless sea. Everyone else on the train would fade to shadows and leave her at peace in the vision. She knew it was a memory and despite her being unable to place it, it never upset her. What bothered her were the nights when, with the warmth of her husband's body next to her under the covers, she would dream of someone else. His hair was black too, but fine and flowing. His eyes were grey as well, but the steel and green of an ocean on a cloudy day. He left her breathless.
When she was forty three her husband died of a heart attack and she moved back to the place where they had met, where she had unwillingly relocated to so many years before. Lin helped her settle into the house her parents had left to her, the same one she had resolutely walked into for the first time after her father's "shortcut" in the foothills. When her daughter left the visions returned, only there were tastes and smells now too—the vinegary tang of rice balls consumed in haste, a pungent whiff of herbs—and they had the grittiness of memories. She no longer daydreamed. She remembered.
She would often sit in her garden, waiting for the little frog that lived in her decorative pond to talk. Every time she walked by the river, she peered closely, hoping to see its gnarled and wizened face. She reached middle age in a forest of concrete and glass and she had accepted the feeling that she was being slowly smothered. But now she could feel the sparks of everything, even the grass between the cracks of the river's embankment, straining forth. People had paved over, polluted, and hemmed in, but life pushed back. Everything was growing and she waited. She only hoped the neighbors never noticed her habit of bowing to her radishes.
That fall he finally appeared before her again and she realized that he had always been bound to her.
"Chihiro."
Sitting on the edge of her wooden porch, she smiled fondly, thinking of his voice. It had been light but firm, always giving the impression that he knew exactly what she was thinking, how she felt.
"Chihiro?"
He sounded worried and suddenly she realized this was no memory come to haunt her. Turning, she saw a man standing at the end of the wooden walk and she knew him instantly, though he had changed as much as she.
When they first met his shape was that of a young boy, just as she was a girl, with nothing of a woman about her yet. Now he looked to be a man just entering middle age, with laugh lines around his gray-green eyes and a single streak of silver in his long black hair. She breathed his name, afraid he would disintegrate once again, as he always did in her dreams. He smiled, looking relieved, and she was up and running before she could think, not even registering the sudden protest of her knees. He caught her easily, flowing with their momentum and spinning her around to avoid crashing through the shoji.
"Where have you been?" she scolded, and he laughed.
"Where I needed to be."
She frowned. "Why are you here now, then?"
"Because you needed me. And because I belong here now." He set her down, but kept her in the circle of his arms.
"I don't understand." She reached up to touch the graying lock of his hair, brushing it behind his ear to join the rest of it tied at his nape. "You look different."
"I appear as you desire me to, as what you will accept." He tilted his head slightly, indicating his nondescript clothing, jeans and a dark sweater, with his gaze.
She huffed a little. "And here I thought I'd like a pretty young man to ease my loneliness. I guess my subconscious isn't as feisty as I thought."
He chuckled and tightened his grip on her waist.
"But seriously, why now? Why not before?"
"Because you had a human life to live, people to love, and I had a duty to fulfill."
"And now?"
He paused. "The river has run dry," he said with a shadow of sorrow in his voice.
"Tell me about it," she chuckled ruefully.
He laughed and for a split second reminded her of the boy she had first met. "No, I mean literally. The Kohaku River had flowed for lifetimes before I met you. But all things pass eventually. You know this now." He caressed her cheek with the back of his hand and the intensity of his gaze stopped all rational thought in her mind. She closed her eyes, unable to bear it any longer, and leaned into him as he threaded his fingers into her hair. His presence was finally beginning to sink in and she felt as if she'd burst with the joy and the pain of seeing him again. When he raised his other hand and gently guided her head to rest against his chest the tears finally began to flow. For a long time he simply held her to him as she wept.
When she recovered, Chihiro found she still had one question. She pulled back to look at him again, her brow furrowed in confusion.
"How are you still here?"
He smiled, at her concern and her inquisitiveness. "Spirits never die, even if their counterparts or charges in the physical world expire. How else do you think the bathhouse could turn such a profit?" She giggled at that, remembering the ridiculous riches of Yubaba's apartments. "I am free now."
She opened her mouth, but before she could ask another question, he was rushing forward and sealed her lips with his own. Something that had been sleeping for a long time inside her flared to life, and she was suddenly as greedy as that ten-year-old girl had been. He tasted like rain water and smelled faintly of grass and herbs and she was so thirsty.
When they finally pulled apart for air—did rivers need to breathe, she wondered to herself—he answered her.
"Because you loved me. I found you again because you never stopped loving."
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A/N: Yes, I know, they said the Kohaku River was dammed or paved over in the movie. Even if you do that, though, the river still technically exists, even if only underground (unless the actual source is filled in). What I refer to here is the event of the source running dry, or the water table shifting, or whatever else causes the natural death of a river.