A day later, Rabbit came and laid a single vivid green leaf in Chih’s hand. For a moment, Chih was startled to see a green leaf so far out of season, but then they saw that it had been dipped in wax, preserved for a season, a year, fifty years, or more with its bright color.
“Grandmother, what is this?”
“She asked me to get it for her as she lay on the palanquin that carried her west, which her people and ours have always said was the direction of death and endings. She’d listened to my stories, and she asked me if I would go with her into exile. As she said, at least someone would be able to go home again.”
Rabbit paused.
“Of course because she was who she is, because she said that, I never wanted to go home at all. They were the people who gave me away to make up for the lack of five caskets of orange dye. I came to Thriving Fortune with her.”
“Do you remember much of that journey, grandmother?”
“She was weak. So weak after what the doctors had done to her to prevent there ever being another heir to contest the rule of the first. But when she could, she rode with the curtains of her palanquin open, her face turned not west towards death or east towards civilization, but instead to the north.”
“To home.”
“Perhaps.”