She had been helpless, once. The memory burned. So helpless, she ran to the one person she was never supposed to see again. She wiped an angry tear from her eye. She wasn't really mad at Sho; she was mad at herself for being afraid, at Sho for noticing. But the anger-as-fear had braced her. She slowed, her borrowed shoes dragging in the grass, and stopped, head down, drawing slow breaths, calming her heart. She closed her eyes. Birdsong. The birds were the same.
She opened her eyes, hearing Sho come up behind her. "I'm sorry I stepped on your foot," she said sullenly.
"It's okay." He stepped past her, his sleeve skimming her elbow. "I'm so happy you're here, I can't feel any pain."
She looked at him, startled as always when he talked like that. He just smiled, hiding nothing. It wasn't the angelic look he used on adults to get his way. Her cheeks burned.
Furry warmth brushed her ankles. She caught her breath and looked down, thinking for an instant that a caterpillar had curled around her legs. It was Niya, fuzzy and white and blue. He butted her foot, scraped his body against her overall cuff, and turned around for another go.
"Niya!" She reached down and scooped him up, carefully, remembering how Sho had done it. His body was soft and liquidy, not like a rolly-polly's at all. "You remember me?"
"Like this." Sho moved her hand so her forearm supported Niya's belly and her palm was under his chest. "He likes that."
Niya agreed with a loud meow, then buried his face in Arrietty's underarm. She felt his throat vibrating.
"Is he okay?"
"He's purring." Sho slid his hand over her fingers, into Niya's thick throat fur. "It means he's happy."
"Oh." And Arrietty stood there, eyes wide, cradling a mammal for the first time. (The kitten had been so uncooperative that, she decided, it didn't count.) The birds called. A fleck of red drifted past her face, and she realized that it was a ladybug - but oh, so tiny, so tiny.
And like that, everything around her suddenly came into focus. She knew where she was. There was the garden; vast, exotic, distant, forbidden. The white picket fence, like the border of a country. The summerhouse; she knew that, if she went, she would find the remains of her family's camp behind the cracked foundation board. The stepping stones, which she had so often seen and so often avoided because they exposed her to ravens and to Niya, who hadn't been so friendly in the past. The rock where Sho liked to lie in the sun and read. The gazebo. And behind her...
She turned. There it was; her grate, her window to the outside world. And the others. They jumped out at her, enormous, and for an instant she was pressed between the bars, looking yearningly at the sky with the scent of old dirt and cold damp behind her.
The rest of the house fell in around the grates. There were the kitchen steps, grey and familiar. Ivy, shelter and color and umbrella on rainy days. The French doors; they were open to the day, the beautiful day. She saw the hall, and the closet - the closet, the one that had once sheltered her tiny world.
She looked up. There it was - that wide and terrible roof, a hot blue Sahara with ivy jungles. Sho's window with its bright new screen. The spare room with one broken and boarded windowpane. She had seen the insides of those rooms, in snatches. She'd seen the kitchen, the living room, the hallway between, for a few seconds at best.
The rest of the house was a mystery to her. It made no difference that she'd lived under it for fourteen years. She knew nothing about most of it.
It had been different at the farm. There, as far as her body knew, she'd simply wandered onto a Borrower-sized farm with miniature cows and cats (complete with miniature Borrowers ?la Spiller). She'd had nothing to compare it to. But here...
A harsh, grating sound broke her reverie. A crow. Niya meowed in complaint, and she realized that she was holding him too tightly. She eased her grip. "Sorry, Niya!"
Her eyes met Sho's, and she knew what he was thinking. Her eyes dropped to the palm of his hand.
"Sho!" Sadako's voice beckoned them. "Harriet? Where have you gone to?"
"It's 'Arrietty,'" Arrietty muttered. The spell was broken. She was still mad at Sho, or so she told herself.
Sho commandeered Niya for a cuddle, then set him in the grass and waved Arrietty toward the house. Niya trailed behind them, his short tail flicking back and forth. "She'll get it eventually. You have to admit, it's a harder name than Sho."