The boy slammed his fist into the well-worn leather of his mitt. The smell that wafted up reminded him of all the hours of practice, all the afternoons spent with the team on the field, all the games leading up to this one. All of it wasted. They’d lost.

As soon as his parents had brought him home, he’d pelted off into the woods near his house, running from the looks of sympathy and the kind words. All of that only served to tighten the knot in his throat and deepen the pit in the bottom of his stomach.

When he’d run long enough and hard enough that most of the anger had evaporated, he’d thrown himself to the ground under the shade of a cherry tree. With his eyes closed, the sound of the wind through the leaves was like silk rustling against silk.

The boy leaned back against the trunk of the tree and let hot tears spill down his cheeks.

“Why are you crying?”

The boy’s eyes sprang open to find the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen looking down at him. He scrambled to his feet and her eyes followed his movement with a twinkle of amusement. Her hair was jet black and hung straight down her back to her waist. She wore a pale green kimono that darkened at the edges to the color of new leaves in the shade. The boy was surprised to find that he was taller than she was. He scrubbed his hand over his face and frowned down at her.

“I wasn’t crying,” he said.

She tilted her head, birdlike, and smiled.

“You’re lucky, you know.” She nodded toward his mitt. “I’d love to be able to do what you do.”

“Yeah, well. It’s no fun when you lose.”

The girl’s smile broadened.

“It might seem that way now,” she said, “but all the pain you’re feeling… it’s precious. It shows how much you care, how much of yourself you put into what you do. That’s not a bad thing.”

They were the same sorts of words everyone else had said to him, but somehow, here in the whispering woods, they sounded better. Maybe it was the girl’s voice, gentle as moonlight and warm as the summer sun. It turned the hot sharp pain of loss inside of him into something duller, something that felt like it might one day heal.

“Will you tell me about it?” asked the girl.

And to his own surprise, the boy did. He told her everything, about the practices and the games, the triumphs and failures. She was the perfect listener, sitting perched atop a fallen log. She nodded and smiled in all the right places. She looked sympathetic when he needed her to and she clapped her hands together with excitement when he told a particularly good part.

The more he talked, the lighter he felt. It wasn’t until the sun had fallen low and he’d said goodbye that he realized he hadn’t found out the girl’s name.

The summer passed quickly, and the boy went into the woods nearly every day to talk to the girl and tell her about everything he’d done. He found himself deliberately doing interesting things so that he’d have more to tell her about.

After school started again, he couldn’t see her as often, but she always greeted him with a smile when he did.

Weeks passed that way, and then months. And then one day he had to go there to tell her that he’d be moving away. His father had gotten transferred. He turned to look back as he walked away and saw her wave at him in the deepening twilight, the sleeves of her pale pink kimono fluttering like petals in a breeze. When the moving van pulled away from the house, he turned toward the woods, watching the trees disappear into the distance, and he realized he still didn’t know the girl’s name.

The boy transferred to a new school in the big city. There weren’t any woods near his new house, but there was a baseball team.

Seasons passed, day by day, and the boy grew into a young man. The young man fell in love and the joys and sorrows of it made him wish he could run through the woods of his childhood to his old friend, but when things were worst he remembered that whatever pain he might feel was just a sign of how much he cared, and he found the strength to push forward.

The young man grew older and wiser. He married and had children, and his children had children.

Spring turned to summer, then to fall, then to winter. And one cold day, the old man found himself alone. His wife had left him to journey into whatever adventure lies beyond this life. She went peacefully, in her sleep, and there had been a smile on her face. That was no bad thing.

Alone, the old man found himself seized with nostalgia. As he had nothing to keep him in the city with his wife gone and his children grown and moved away with children of their own, he bought a train ticket and travelled back to the tiny town where he’d been a little boy who loved baseball.

The woods were still there, though many other things had changed, and the path through the trees was more difficult than he’d remembered. Finally, he looked up to find the cherry tree rising up in front of him. It had grown older too. The bark was weathered and twisted, gnarled like the joints of his hands. He pressed his palm to the trunk of the tree and gazed upward into the leaves. When he closed his eyes, their rustling sounded like silk against silk.

The old man smiled and tears slipped down his cheeks.

“Why are you crying?”

The old man turned to find the girl looking up at him. She looked exactly the same, small and perfect, her hair still black as jet, her skin smooth as pearl, her kimono the color of summer leaves and sunlight. He smiled down at her.

“How lucky you are,” she said, reaching up to touch his cheek. “Look how much you’ve smiled since we last met.”

“It hasn’t all been smiles,” he said.

She tilted her head, birdlike.

“Will you tell me?” she asked.

The old man nodded and sat beside her on the fallen log. He told her everything, all his triumphs and failures, all the heartbreak and joys. She nodded in all the right places, looked sympathetic when he needed her to, and clapped her hands with excitement at the best parts. The more the old man spoke the lighter he felt.

Time passed in the blink of an eye, and for a little while the old man felt like the young boy again.

Twilight fell and the weight of his years returned, but his heart still soared like a bird. As he rose to leave, he remembered to ask the question he had never asked before. The girl looked from the old man to the tree where they had first met. She turned back to him, and a strange wind sprang up, circling the pair and scattering fallen leaves into the air. Her sleeves rustled like the canopy above and her hair lifted around her to drift like petals in a breeze. A smile set her eyes twinkling. Then, just as suddenly as it had started, the wind died. The girl was the same girl she had always been, and the old man realized he had always known her name.

He smiled and bowed. As he walked away, he turned, just once, to look back. She stood there, small and strong in the gathering darkness, and waved to him.

The old man waved back and walked slowly out of the woods and back to the world he’d left behind with all of its sorrows and joys, all of the things he could experience and she never would. And for the first time in a long time, he felt lucky.