Chapter Thirteen

Molly sat with a white anger in her chest, hard as the rock at her back. She wanted to shake Joss for leaving her here. What was she supposed to do, for God’s sake? Stuck here with no-one but Mark and the two villagers. She lifted her fist, clenched it as tightly as she could and flailed it against the ground beside her. She knocked over the bowl of that horrible, bland porridge that P’eng had timidly brought and laid down on the ground beside her. It oozed into the soft plush of the grass. She felt she’d like to squeeze something inexorably between her fingers until it got like the porridge.

Mark found her still sitting there some time later, her head against her knees. She looked up as he made his way across the garden to where she sat.

“They’ve gone?” she asked. He nodded. She put her head back on her knees.

Mark hesitated for a moment, then asked, “Would you ... like some help to get back into your wheelchair?”

“What’s the point” She spoke without lifting her head. “I can’t go anywhere in it.”

“I could take you back to the li. P’eng’s there.”

“No,” she said curtly. She couldn’t bear the thought of P’eng’s timid edging-around, as though she was afraid to look at Molly. As though she still saw her as a monster.

Mark hesitated again. “D’you want me to stay with you? I was going to help Li-Tsai dig the fields up for planting millet. They have to get that done soon or they won’t have anything to so them through next winter. But if you’d like me to stay here ...”

“No. Just go.” She didn’t look up as he retreated back across the garden. After he was gone, she dragged herself onto the rock and lay face down on its cold surface, cursing to herself.

Molly could nurse anger for a good long time. She hadn’t always been that way, although she had always had a quick temper. It seemed as though anger had gained strength in her as her body had weakened. It sometimes seemed like something necessary, something that goaded her into life, into not giving up.

But even she couldn’t stay angry forever. At last, she began to trail her hand in the water, feeling it soothe her burned palm again. Some of the heat went out of her temper at the same time. After a longer while, she began to feel hungry. This distracted her too, although she felt a little spurt of resentment flare up.

“Where has everyone gone?” she thought. “They’ve forgotten all about me.”

The brief flare of bitterness subsided again as she moved her hand back and forth in a figure-eight pattern through the water. With her fingertips, she explored the rock wall of the pool, touching the spongy-soft moss that clung to the rocks and feeling the cracks and bumps of stone underneath. After a while, it seemed as though her fingers had developed their own knowledge of the world, beyond what she could see.

Now, her hands found something new—a shallow niche in the rock directly below her, not much wider than her hand itself. She reached into it and touched something unexpectedly smooth. A tingle ran through her and she snatched her hands out of the water.

After a few moments, curiosity got the better of her and she reached down again. This time, her groping fingers closed on something the size of a small stone. Bringing it up, she found it to be a tiny frog, perfectly carved out of green stone. Its eyes were inlaid with gold, and the carving had been done to take advantage of the fact that parts of the stone were a lighter colour. In particular, the frog’s throat was puffed out in a bubble of pale, fragile green.

She pulled herself into a sitting position and turned it over in her fingers. Absorbed, she hardly noticed Mark coming across the garden with a bowl of food.

“P’eng asked me to bring this to you,” he said, sitting down on the rock beside her. “I think she’s a little afraid of you.”

“Because of how I look,” she said bitterly.

“No. I think she’s taken it into her head that you’re magic. And she thinks you’re mad at her.”

This made Molly laugh. “Magic!”

“Yeah, well—the tongue-on-the-forehead thing, you know. Anyway, I think she half expects you to turn her into a toad or something.”

“Oh,” she exclaimed, remembering what she held. “Look what I’ve found.”

He examined the little carving as closely as she had, then placed it on his left palm, admiring how life-like it was. The stone felt unusually heavy.

“It feels a lot like that stone weight on the stick,” Molly said as if guessing his thought. “Sort of heavy and cool. Only it’s a different colour. I wonder where it comes from. Who put it there.”

“Maybe the others would know. We could take it to the li and show them.”

She hesitated, feeling a strange reluctance that had nothing to do with seeing P’eng and Li-Tsai. “Do you think it’s okay to take it out of the garden?”

“We’d bring it right back.”

“Okay. Let me eat this mush first.”

Mark sat beside her while she spooned the porridge into her mouth. Hunger made it taste a lot less bland. She ate the whole bowlful thoughtfully, then put the bowl down beside her.

“I’m sorry I was so bitchy,” she said at last.

“No problem,” he said awkwardly. “I guess it must be tough being left behind.”

“Yeah.” There was a silence between them for a time, then she said, “I get angry .... just angry. People think I can’t do things.”

“But some things you can’t do, Molly,” he said reasonably.

“And there are more and more of them all the time,” she flashed. “You don’t know what it’s like getting weaker and weaker and knowing ...”

“Knowing?”

Her voice became very low. “Knowing you probably won’t live all that long. Might not even graduate from college, or ever get married, or do the things everyone else expects to do.”

Mark was startled. “You mean, this disease will kill you?” he said in disbelief. He had known about Molly’s illness for years, but it was just there. He had never been aware that it had this dimension.

“Not the disease, exactly. But it eats away my muscle tissue. That’s why I’m so thin. Eventually, if I get sick—like pneumonia or something—my lungs would just be too weak to breathe.”

He found this difficult. He didn’t know whether to avert his eyes in sympathy or look directly at her. With an effort, he did the latter. “And there’s nothing anyone can do?”

“No. Something just went wrong with my genes. It doesn’t happen like this very often to girls. Mostly to boys. I’m a one-in-a-million freak.”

He ignored the bitterness in her voice. “Does Joss know about this?” He felt almost angry at his twin for not telling him, for leaving it to Molly to have to squeeze this information out of herself.

“I don’t like to talk about it. I haven’t told anyone else. My parents and the doctors and people like that know, of course.”

An awkward silence fell. Molly broke it at last with a forced cheerfulness. “Look, I’m not gong to drop dead on the spot. Help me into the wheelchair and we’ll go show the frog to Li-Tsai.”

“Okay.” He tried to match her lighter tone. “But you’d better tell me if you ever feel a cold coming on.”

She laughed.

Li-Tsai and P’eng were eating their meal as Mark pushed the wheelchair into the li. P’eng jumped up nervously and put her hands together. “Are you all right?” she asked. “Would you like more to eat?”

“I’m fine,” Molly replied, making her voice as cheerful and friendly as she could. “Here, look what we’ve found. Hold out your hand.”

P’eng felt the weight of the little statue in the centre of her palm and sat down again beside the guardian to examine it. “It’s jade,” she said looking up in awe.

“You mean the stone?” Molly asked.

P’eng nodded, rubbing her thumb against the carving. “Jade is only used for very sacred things,” she said. “I wouldn’t even know what it felt like if it wasn’t for the instruction Chuan and I were give before we came here.”

Molly described where she had found it. “Why would it be there?” she asked. “Who could have put it there?”

Li-Tsai and P’eng had no idea. “What kind of creature is it,” P’eng asked the guardian. He shook his head, baffled.

“It’s a frog,” said Mark, slightly surprised that they wouldn’t recognize it. But the word clearly meant nothing to them. “It’s an animal you find in our world. It’s pretty much that same size and it lives in water.”

P’eng looked at him, puzzled. “There are only five animals,” she said. “The chicken, the duck, the horse, the pig and the sheep.”

“This is a wild animal.” He looked at Li-Tsai’s face. “You haven’t any wild animals here, do you?” he asked in wonderment. He looked at Molly. “Just think of it. There wasn’t even a worm when I was digging the field.”

She thought of the immense quiet of the prairie—not so much as a cricket whirr or a bird calling. “How could that be?” she asked Li-Tsai. “If you have people here, there must be other animals too. We all got here together—evolution and all that.”

The guardian looked faintly disturbed. “There are no other animals here.” He laid the very slightest stress on “are.” Mark jumped on it immediately.

“There are none. But there were some. Is that what you mean?”

Li-Tsai looked more uncomfortable than ever. “This is not something for me to speak of to you.”

“Well, who else should you speak to?” Molly said impatiently.

An expression of great sadness came over the old man’s face, and he shook his head gently. Mark thought he could see a brightness in his dark eyes almost as though there were tears there. Then Li-Tsai handed the carving back to Molly without saying anything, stood up and walked towards his hut.

“Wait,” called Molly. “What should we do with the frog?”

“It belongs in the garden,” he said. “Take it back, daughters.” Picking up the spade that leaned against the hut wall, he moved slowly towards the path to the millet fields.

“Wait,” she called again, but Mark touched her on the arm. “Let him go just now. I’ll go help him again and see if I can get him to talk. Will you be okay here?”

“Sure. P’eng can help me back to the garden later,” she replied. “Won’t you?” The other girl returned her smile cautiously and nodded.

Mark seized his own spade and went off after Li-Tsai. The guardian was already digging, his slight figure bending to lift spadeful after spadeful and turn it over. They worked silently together for a while. Mark struggled with the wooden spade, which had a handle that was too short for him and meant he had to stoop almost constantly. Within a few moments, his back felt like it was on fire. But he hung on grimly, digging his way to the end of the row where he was working, then pausing to straighten his back and look around. All the work that they’d done so far hardly made a dent in the field, which suddenly seemed enormous. To avoid the discouraging sight, he looked away to the slough gleaming dull silver below them and to the fine line of the path that the travellers had taken. Then he looked back at Li-Tsai, who seemed less tired than Mark felt. The guardian was digging slowly but steadily, his eyes on the ground but vague, as though he was lost in the much larger field of his own thoughts. Finally he threw down his spade.

“Time to rest,” he said, making his way to the grass at the edge of the field. Mark flopped beside him, panting. He felt as though his back might break and his eyeballs might burst.

“We’ll have to fix a longer handle to that spade for you,” the guardian said. “You have not been used to digging and planting,” he added with a twinkle.

“No,” Mark agreed fervently. “You sure are.”

“Yes,” he replied ruefully. “Although it was not what I was brought up to do at your age either.”

“What were you brought up to do?”

“I hoped and studied to be a scholar. That was one reason I was so happy to be appointed guardian. There were tales of the great store of learning and knowledge kept at the Lady’s Garden.” He lifted his hand and squinted off into the distance, sighing. “But when I got here, that’s what they turned out to be. Merely tales.”

“Couldn’t the guardian before you have told you that?”

“The guardian before me was a stupid sot, from all accounts,” Li-Tsai said contemptuously. “But I didn’t even speak to him. They had left it too late to appoint an apprentice before he died. Even then the guardianship had become a matter of little account in the capital, and things were done carelessly. They told me, ‘Don’t worry, there are scrolls of instruction at the garden.” I had to teach myself what I needed to know from what I could find here.”

“Scrolls?” Mark’s ears perked up. “D’you think . . .?”

“Three small scrolls only.” Li-Tsai anticipated him. “Mostly a list of administrative duties and rituals. I don’t believe there is anything to help you.”

“But you know more than administrative duties and rituals,” Mark said persuasively. “Where did you learn it, and why won’t you tell us?”

“There are secrets I was taught in preparation for becoming guardian,” he admitted. “These are things that should be passed only from guardian to guardian. Since my predecessor was already dead, I received them from one old scholar in the capital who still knew where such things were written.”

“The capital,” Mark murmured. “So perhaps the others are right to go there.” He said this with a certain longing in his voice, then thought for a few moments. “But you know it. They didn’t have to go there after all.”

“I know nothing to help you,” the guardian said firmly. “Believe me, I have thought about this deeply since you arrived.”

“Why won’t you tell us what you do know?”

“It should only be told to the apprentice who will succeed me. If such a person is ever sent . . .”

“Perhaps you should pass it on—just in case no-one arrives.” Mark made the suggestion cautiously, wondering if he might insult or hurt the old man.

“Pass it on to who? To a foreigner who will leave as soon as he can? You are the only other male that has been here in more than three passes of Yao-chi’s shuttle.”

“How about P’eng?”

“To a girl!” Li-Tsai sounded gently scandalized.

“Why not? She knows all the rituals. You can tell she likes this sort of stuff.”

“I could not. It is not for a female to know. And anyway, the daughters of the garden only serve here for a time, then return to the capital when they are of an age to marry. New ones will arrive.”

“Will they?”

Li-Tsai did not answer, and eventually Mark went on. “I don’t see why you shouldn’t tell her. If the choice is not having anyone else at all who knows these secrets and losing them altogether.” He saw that heavy sadness come into the guardian’s face again, and said hurriedly, “But maybe the others will remind the officials in the capital that an apprentice needs to be sent.”

“Perhaps.” Li-Tsai’s tone was bleak. He stood up and trudged over the field back to his work. A few minutes later, Mark followed and dug his spade into the soil again.

Meanwhile, the girls had returned to the garden. Molly put the little frog back in its niche under the rock, showing P’eng how to find it with her fingers. The older girl moved her fingers in the water dreamily and said, “How strange this is.”

“Strange?”

“Being in the garden like this. After all that time of coming no further than the gate. And now to be inside, as though it was ordinary.” She sighed, almost as though she almost didn’t want things to be ordinary. Then she told Molly about seeing the humped shape in the garden and hearing the soft whirr that told her everything was as it should be.

“And you never saw her up close?”

“No. But I miss her.”

They talked a while longer about who the lady might be, and how impossible it was that she could really be the Lady Lo-Tsu, wife of the Yellow Emperor, who had lived countless generations before. Finally, P’eng said she must go back to the chores of the li.

Left on her own, Molly felt almost tired—although not tired enough to sleep. Her shoulders ached, and so did the burn on her palm. She examined the crinkled, still-pink circle on her palm. It was healing rapidly, but was obviously going to scab and flake for a while yet. She dipped it in the pool again, thinking that the water seemed to have a remarkable ability to soothe the pain. As she did so, a flake of white in the grass at the edge caught her eye. Peering, she found a tiny, cup-like flower growing on low green leaves that trailed into the water. She touched it delicately. The flower has hardly the size of the nail on her little finger, but she imagined she caught a whiff of perfume.

Looking up again, she noticed almost for the first time that there was a small building in the far corner of the garden. It was such a soft brown and so heavily screened by branches that it was almost invisible. She stared at it for a while. Finally, a determined look settled on her face. Half-crawling, half-pulling herself with her thin arms, she began working her way around the marshy end of the pool. It took her a long time, with many stops to rest and catch her breath before she reached the spot where a short path opened between the bushes in front of the hut. Her arms shook with the effort, but she kept on until she found herself in a small clearing at the front of the building.

The roof was almost flat, angling down just a little at the back like a lean-to or a shed, and covered with moss that grew deep and thick. There was a single door in the wall that faced her, but no window. Molly stopped and listened carefully. Nothing moved, but the clearing had an air of waiting, as though something—someone—was expected.

She was tempted to try the door, but something held her back. Instead, she made her way around the little building. Beyond it, in an area just under the high walls of the garden was a plot of cleared land, carefully raked into rows, as though something was planted there. Here, too, was that sense of watchful waiting.

There were two low windows in the back wall of the building. Molly dragged herself to the nearest and peered in. The room inside was hardly bigger than a closet, only a little wider than the narrow bed beside the wall. The only other thing in the room was a length of cream-coloured cloth hanging beside the door. A cloak?

Clutching the wall for support, she made her way back around to the front. This time, she had no hesitation about trying the door. It opened directly into a second, larger room. From here, another door led into the tiny sleeping room on the left. This main chamber was also sparsely furnished. A rough table and chair stood against the far wall under the window, and a low stool in the centre of the room.

Around the silver-brown planks of the wall hung hanks of thread, glimmering in gentle colours from white to dull gold, from soft grey to deep brown. Around the walls stood baskets filled with what seemed to be unspun wool—fluffy piles that looked like cotton batting, but in the same soft colours as the skeins on the wall. Molly reached out to touch the nearest hank of thread. It didn’t feel like wool. It was silkier to the touch, although not perfectly smooth. Here and there it had small lumps and thicker spots.

She let herself slide down cautiously to sit on the doorstep, and pulled a small tuft of fibre from the basket nearest the door. Like the spun thread, it felt cool and silky. Absent-mindedly, she rolled it between thumb and forefinger, teasing it out into a strand about ten centimeters long.

The sense of quiet waiting gathered around her. Still absently, she wrapped the thread around her wrist and leaned back against the doorpost. She saw how the surface of the table by the window seemed to catch light into a small round pool in the centre. For this moment she felt as peaceful as she ever had in her life. Anger seemed a long way away.

“This feels like my place,” she said to herself and held out her arms as though she could gather the hut, the pool, the whole garden into them.

Later, after they had eaten the last meal of the pulse, Li-Tsai put down his bowl and stroked his long beard, as though he was firmly stroking down the last of his doubts.

“I have been thinking about what you said,” he told Mark. “And I think it is more important that even the little knowledge I have should not be lost, than that the strict rules of the past should be observed. I do not expect any apprentice scholar to arrive from the capital. And I do not know what knowledge is still there any more. Those who instructed me are long gone.”

He looked around at the expectant faces. “Don’t expect too much,” he warned them. “Secrets usually seem like small, bare things when they are finally revealed.”

He paused for a few moments. “I will tell you what I know on two conditions. First, that you will promise to learn and remember it faithfully, so that, when the time comes, you can pass it on undistorted. Second, that you will not reveal it until the right time comes.”

“When will that be?” asked P’eng.

Li-Tsai sighed. “I don’t know. I must leave that decision in your hands.” He looked at each of them searchingly, until they nodded and said, “I promise.” Finally, the guardian stroked his beard again, pressing down some last reluctance. “I will tell you the true story of Huang-ti, the Yellow Emperor, and how people arrived in this world.” Then he told the story, word for word, as it had been taught to him.

“There are two sides to the universe. One is the world of the Ten Thousand Things, the world of the round sun and the circling moon, of revolving light and darkness. The other is the string world, which stretches long and thin like a web or interlacing branches in a forest. The two worlds are intertwined but do not touch. They are the two halves that, together, make up all of space and time.

At one time, in one place, there was a window between the two halves of the world. The wise learned that it might be opened, but only with great care. If it was opened carelessly, so that the two worlds touched, it would destroy whole regions of the universe. If it was opened carefully, like a fine needle slipping through cloth, all would remain whole.

Huang-ti, the Yellow Lord, found ways to open the window, and came to the centre of the string world, bringing his wife, the Lady Lo-Tsu. He built a garden there. The creatures of this world welcomed them at first. Then Shen-ch’i, the Tiger, learned of Huang-ti’s power in the round world and grew jealous. He was the wildest creature in all the string world. His tongue lashed and his tail lashed the heavens. He swore he would rule the puny race of humans. He persuaded other creatures of this world to follow him, promising they would each rule over a wide country in the world of Ten Thousand Things.

But Huang-ti was warned of this plan. On the night that the Tiger came snarling through the window, the Yellow Lord was ready and caught him in a great net of spells. He bound all the creatures of this world with spells to ensure the peace of his land. He closed the window, and made it a mirror in which the creatures of the other world could only imitate, as if in a trance, the actions of men.

Before he closed the window, he brought some numbers of his people to dwell on this side of the world, forever. He also brought such animals and plants as would enable them to live here. He gave them the task of guarding Lo-Tsu’s garden and the other sacred places, and of watching the mirror. For some day, the spell will unravel and the mirror creatures will start to awaken. The first to do so will be the Fish. Deep in the mirror, there will appear a colour like no other colour and a line like no other line.”

The guardian finished speaking and opened his eyes. They were all gazing at him. “You must learn this word for word as I did.” He spoke more to P’eng than to the others, and she nodded her reply.

“So there were animals here,” Mark breathed.

“And still are. Somewhere,” said Molly.

“Oh,” P’eng whispered and looked back over her shoulder, as if she half-expected a tiger to come leaping out of the thorn trees.