Chapter Twenty-eight

They came at last to a long slope. At a distance, they could see the main road lying across the landscape like a dull brown ribbon in the greening landscape. Their guide pointed to it and turned his horse’s head towards home, barely saying any other good-bye. When they got to the road, the signs of the army’s churning passage north were still plain. At this reminder of the bitter past, Ssu-ma grew somber and silent again. Alasdair was glad when at last they crossed a river and began following a new road that veered off to the west.

They did not pass the important towns that they had visited on the procession north. But soon they did begin passing villages and villagers. Joss drew her cap down to avoid notice, but the people of this western part of the Middle Kingdom seemed unsurprised by three riders and hardly paid much attention. Finally, they were standing at the lip of a broad valley with a river below them—the same river that, further east, flowed past the capital. Ssu-ma swung himself down off his horse and looked down into the valley with a milder expression. “We are near my home,” he said.

“I thought your home was in the capital,” said Alasdair, surprised.

“I grew up in this western province of Ch’i and my estates are still here.” He smiled nostalgically. “And I, too, have a grandmother who looks forward to my visits.”

“Will we visit her now?” asked Joss practically.

He shook his head ruefully. “We couldn’t get away again quickly and quietly. The whole countryside would know I was here. But we will stop with one faithful tenant on my land so that I can arrange supplies for the rest of our journey.”

After several hot meals with meat and spicy sauces, which Alasdair devoured as if he had never tasted protein before—and after a long sleep on a comfortable bed that Joss thought she might never want to get out of—they were back on their way. A ferry took them across the river, where they picked up a faint trail that led off across the empty prairie.

The grass had lost its spring green and turned light gold by the time they were looking down on the slough that lay near the Lady’s garden. The garden walls made a distant, well-defined square against the horizon. The water was as quietly silver as ever, but the millet fields that sloped above it seemed larger. Surprisingly, there were eight or ten people working there—distant figures bent over their tools. Joss squinted to see if she could recognize anyone.

“Who are they all?” she asked. As she shaded her eyes and stared, one of the figures straightened up, waved and shouted. The other workers laid down their tools and headed back towards the li. Obviously, the returning travellers had been seen. Ssu-ma shook the reins to send his horse pacing along the path.

When they got to the centre of the li, they found the tumble-down huts had been repaired and were obviously inhabited. The field workers were hurrying along the path through the trees, and a huddle of dark-eyed children stopped playing to look at the newcomers. Joss looked around at the strangers for a familiar face, wondering for one crazy moment whether they were really back in the same village, or whether they’d arrived somewhere else by mistake. With relief she saw P’eng standing beside the fire, and slid off her pony with a whoop.

“We’re back,” she said. “Where is everyone? And who is everyone” She waved her hand at the villagers clustered around, who were eyeing her foreign face. Some were looking past her at Ssu-ma; someone had obviously recognized him and a whisper was going around the group behind hands raised to mouths.

P’eng held out her hands in welcome. “Your friends are at the garden,” she said. “And all these people ...” she waved her arm “... The Lady Shen brought them.” Joss realized for the first time that the tall woman was standing behind P’eng was the Count’s wife.

“The Count isn’t here too,” she said in dismay.

A quiver—either amusement or irritation—passed over Lady Shen’s face. She shook her head, but her first words were for Ssu-ma. “Welcome, brother,” she said. “Your task has not gone well?”

Sadness, affection, resignation—somehow, Ssu-ma’s impassive face expressed all these emotions as he bowed to her. “It is good to see you here, sister. I did not know that I would ever see you again.”

Then Mark was hurrying up the path from the garden with Ariel, pushing a wheelchair in which Molly was hanging on to the arms for dear life. And for a while, everything was exclamations and hugs while Shen and Ssu-ma looked on in amusement at these wild foreign ways.

Later, they made their way to the garden. Joss pushed Molly’s chair, Mark, Ariel and Alasdair followed behind. Lady Shen and Ssu-ma walked more slowly still, absorbed in their conversation. The group paused at the arched entrance to the garden, looking past the offering stone with its empty bowl and the green plush of the grass. In the distance, near the almost invisible hut, a small bent figure moved among the bushes. The wild woman had bound another circlet of deer horn around her head and stitched bunches of brown feathers to her robe. She paid no attention to the group by the entrance—just kept examining the leaves and touching the ripening berries, while a gentle whirring sound seemed to come from around her.

“She is back” said Alasdair. Molly nodded.

“Who is this?” asked Ssu-ma.

“The Lady of the Garden,” Molly answered. They told him the story of how they had seen her in their own world, and how they had brought her back to this one.

“So she can help us get back, I guess,” said Alasdair.

“Well . . .” Ariel said doubtfully. The wild woman hardly spoke to them, although clearly she understood what was said. Her language wasn’t at all like the speech of the Middle Kingdom, nor were her features like those of its people. She made herself understood through odd gestures and guttural sounds that were strangely expressive.

“We haven’t learned anything much from her,” said Mark. “We think we know how to go home, but we had to figure out ourselves from the scrolls. And a little bit from Loh-ti.”

“Oh, yes,” said Joss. “This talking frog . . .” Her voice was disbelieving.

“Come and meet her,” said Mark.

They walked to the pool, where he knelt and whistled coaxingly. They looked expectantly at the flat brown surface of the water. Nothing appeared.

“Sometimes she comes, sometimes she doesn’t,” Molly said. “We’ll just wait a while.”

“Um...” said Joss, unconvinced. But she sat down on the grass to wait, anyway. The peace of the garden dropped like a soft curtain around them, a curtain that swayed silently with the pine branches. The travellers realized suddenly how tired they were, how far they had come, how much they had been through.

“If I had just stayed here ...” Joss thought. There was no more journeying to keep her mind from the ‘If . . . if . . . if.” The sad faces of the defeated soldiers swam into her memory again. So did Ssu-ma’s somber expression and the white robe. She put her head back against the rock and sighed deeply.

“What troubles you so much?” A clear treble voice spoke at her ear. Joss started, and turned her head to see the small green frog with its gold eyes blinking at her.

“Oh . . .” she breathed.

She wasn’t alone in her astonishment. Ssu-ma was bending over her, staring at Loh-ti as well. He glanced up at his sister.

“Yes, she is one of the creatures of this world,” said Lady Shen.

“What troubles you?” the frog repeated.

Joss felt her eyes fill with tears. Haltingly, she told them how the pictures haunted her, how she felt it was all her fault.

“We should have stayed here like Ariel wanted us to. Then none of the other things would have happened. We wouldn’t have set the commander of the enemy free. The army might not have been defeated.”

“That is not necessarily true.” The frog swelled its throat and sent out a brief bubble of song. “Would you really have done any differently if you had known it was the enemy? There was still the child to consider.”

Joss stopped short. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m glad I didn’t know.”

“We never know all the consequences of our actions,” said the frog in the same calm, sweet voice. “I remember well how the Lady Lo-Tsu would say this to the Yellow Emperor himself when he doubted his path.”

Alasdair saw the look of wonder on Ssu-ma’s face. “Lo-Tsu?” he murmured.

“Yes,” said the Lady Shen. “This little creature truly spoke with the Yellow Emperor.”

The frog went on speaking to Joss. “Lo-Tsu would tell him—good actions can have evil consequences. Evil actions can have good results. You cannot control them all, any more than you can control the path of a stone rolling down a mountain. You can only know your own heart when you set it loose and hope for the best.”

A little of the burden Joss had been carrying around for so long began to slide from her shoulders, but she kept clinging to it a little longer. “Maybe you just shouldn’t do anything,” she said. “Don’t set stones rolling.”

“That is foolish,” said Loh-ti, almost severely. “All actions have consequences. So does inaction. The campaign was ill-judged—but who knows what good results may lie at the bottom of the mountain.”

Joss took a long shivery breath as though something tight was being loosened from around her chest, and smiled. “What else did Lo-Tsu say?”

The frog let out another silver bubble of sound, almost like laughter. “She would tell the great Huang-ti not to think his actions were too important. No-one carries all the responsibility for the universe.”

Joss chuckled. “And what did he say to that?”

“He would snort and go hunting.”

There was a small rustle of amusement from everyone. For the first time, Joss became aware of Ssu-ma kneeling beside her. Then the Director of Horses sat on the grass, looking thoughtfully at the frog, almost as though some burden had lightened for him too.