by Grace Lin
Minli stared at the vast length of the bridge, hanging in the sky like a delicate red spiderweb. “I don’t think you will be able to cross it,” Minli said.
Dragon, too, looked at the U-shaped bridge, with its fragile ropes. “I cannot fit on it,” he said, “and I doubt it will bear my weight.”
“Well,” Minli said, “maybe it is magic, like the thread. Try.”
Dragon put one foot onto the rope bridge. But as the rope felt his mass, it groaned and the bamboo stakes began to tear out of the ground. Hurriedly, Dragon stepped off.
“I think,” Dragon said slowly, “I am not destined to see the Old Man of the Moon.”
Minli looked at Dragon’s downcast eyes and read the years of sadness and frustration in his face. Tears burned in her eyes as she thought about their long travels that had led to this disappointment.
“I wish I could fly,” the dragon said simply.
“You will,” Minli said, blinking her tears away. “The bridge is big and strong enough for me. I’ll ask the Old Man of the Moon your question and return.”
Dragon brightened with hope. “You will?” he asked. “You will do that?”
Minli nodded. “I will wait for you here,” Dragon said. “I will not move until you return. When you tell me what he says, I will fly you back home to your family.”
“Then I better get going,” Minli said, but her smile faded as she looked at the bridge in front of her that seemed to loom into nothingness.
“I will wait for you here,” Dragon repeated.
Minli nodded and took a deep breath. Then, grasping the two side ropes for balance, she carefully stepped onto the rope bridge and began to walk.
CHAPTER
42
The sky around Minli was quiet as she walked on the red rope bridge. The only sounds she heard were those of her own breathing and the pounding of her heart in her chest. After the dragon and land had faded from view, Minli saw nothing except for the night around her. With such a limitless landscape, she could not tell how far she had walked or how much of the bridge she had left. It seemed never ending—she began to wonder if she had walked for hours or days.
But slowly, so slowly Minli almost didn’t notice it, the darkness of the night lessened. With each step she took, the world around her became brighter. And with this light, Minli saw that the sky below her had somehow become a vast lake of pure water and the night clouds were made of floating lilies. And stretched before her in the distance, like a faraway coast, she saw a high wall that seemed to glow. The wall was smooth and creamy white, as if made out of pearl. It too seemed to be endless; Minli could not see where it began or ended.
However, as Minli got closer, she saw a round opening in the wall just before her. And in that circular passageway, a white rabbit stood like a jade statue. It was only when Minli stepped off the bridge and the rabbit started toward her that Minli realized it was alive.
“Welcome,” the rabbit said. “You’re a little late. Did you have trouble with the monkeys?”
Minli was too astonished to speak. The rabbit looked extremely like the one painted on her blue rice bowl. She nodded with her mouth gaping.
“Well, let’s go,” the rabbit said. “You’re going to have to keep it short with the Old Man; he’s very busy and he hates unnecessary talk.”
Minli followed the rabbit through the round opening into a white courtyard and over a polished stone bridge that seemed to grow from the ground. As they passed over it, Minli saw the smooth water wave with gentle ripples and heard what sounded like faint drumming. To one side of her in the distance, standing out against the flat landscape, Minli saw the silhouette of a man cutting down a lone tree, his axe making a thumping rhythm. As he chopped, the branches of the tree shook; leaves, blossoms, and seeds flew through the air and dropped into the water like raindrops.
“Is that the Old Man of the Moon?” Minli asked.
“Him?” the rabbit said, following Minli’s gaze. “Oh, no. That’s Wu Kang.”
“Why is he cutting down the tree?” Minli asked. It seemed a shame to her that the only tree on Never-Ending Mountain was being cut down.
“Questions, questions,” the rabbit said. “I should make you wait to ask the Old Man, but if you must know, Wu Kang tries to cut down that tree every night.”
“Every night?” Minli couldn’t help asking.
“Yes,” the rabbit said.
THE STORY OF WU KANG
Most thought Wu Kang was very lucky. His wife was beautiful and his children were healthy and they all lived in a comfortable cottage on a farm in the country. His parents and elder brother lived with him, and his neighbors were faithful friends. But Wu Kang always wanted more. So when his crops thrived and flourished, he decided farming was not satisfying enough for him and the day he reaped his successful harvest, he told his friends that he was leaving the countryside to move to town.
“Why?” they asked him.
“I want more,” Wu Kang said.
“But we are so happy here all together,” they said.
“It is not enough,” Wu Kang said.
So he packed up his possessions, and sold his cottage, farm, and land. Then, with his wife, children, parents, and brother, he moved to town. It was crowded and inconvenient in the smaller house, but Wu Kang was able to apprentice himself to a furniture maker, and his family began to adapt to their cramped home. However, the day he was able to carve a chair from beechwood was the day he quit and decided to move to the city.
“Why?” his parents asked him.
“I want more,” Wu Kang said.
“But we are happy here together,” they said.
“It is not enough,” Wu Kang said.
So, with his wife and children walking behind him, Wu Kang left his parents and brother behind and moved to the city to search for something more. Their new home was a small hut of earth squeezed between other tumbledown houses on a filthy street, far away from the tight, cozy house in town or the comfortable cottage on the farm. Nonetheless, his wife and children adjusted to life in the city while Wu Kang looked for satisfaction. But still nothing was enough for him. After mastering the abacus, Wu Kang decided to quit the training to be a storekeeper. After learning how to hold a paintbrush, he stopped studying for a government position. Wu Kang always wanted more.
“Maybe you should try to become an Immortal,” his young son said to him. “You couldn’t want more than that.”
“I think,” Wu Kang said, “perhaps, you are right.”
So Wu Kang packed up a small bag and left his wife and children to find an Immortal to study under. His heartbroken wife pleaded with him as he stepped out the door.
“Don’t leave,” she said. “Here, we are together.”
“It is not enough,” Wu Kang said.
Wu Kang searched and traveled long and far and, one night, he found the Old Man of the Moon. “At last,” Wu Kang said, “an Immortal! Master, will you teach me?”
The Old Man of the Moon preferred to decline, but Wu Kang insisted and begged. So, with misgivings, the Old Man agreed and brought Wu Kang to Never-Ending Mountain.
So the Old Man began to teach Wu Kang lessons full of wonder, that common men would marvel at. However, Wu Kang, true to his nature, was unmoved and aspired for more. When the Old Man showed him how to obtain red threads from his granddaughter, the Goddess of Weaving, traveling across the sea of stars on a bridge of night birds, Wu Kang watched and followed but, after three days, was discontent. “Master,” Wu Kang said, “there must be something more you can teach me.”
So the Old Man taught Wu Kang how to tie the threads of destiny, sealing the knots with a shaft of light from the moon. Wu Kang studied and copied, but after two days he again grew restless. “Master,” Wu Kang said, “I know you can teach me more.”
Hence, the Old Man took out the sacred Book of Fortune and began to teach Wu Kang how to read its text. But after one day, Wu Kang exclaimed, “There must be more than this!”
And without a word, the Old Man led Wu Kang to a barren area of Never-Ending Mountain. The Old Man knocked the ground with his walking stick and from the rock a silver tree grew. As Wu Kang stared, the Old Man tied a string of destiny around him and the tree.
“The only things for me to teach you,” the Old Man said to Wu Kang as he handed him an axe, “are the lessons of contentment and patience. Only when you are able to cut this tree down will I know you have learned them.”
Wu Kang shrugged and began in earnest to chop down the tree. Little did he realize that with every cut the tree grew back, and every blow only scattered the seeds from the tree into the night sky lake.
So every night Wu Kang cuts the tree. Tied by the string of destiny, he cannot leave it and is fated to chop until he learns his lesson or until the end of time.
Minli walked silently after the rabbit finished the story, and for a while the only sounds were of the tree’s flying seeds falling into the water.
Those seeds, Minli said to herself, they are really falling through the sky to the earth. They are the seeds that fall onto Moon Rain Village! It’s Wu Kang’s chopping that makes the strange moon rain. The flowering trees grow from the seeds from the tree on Never-Ending Mountain…
But just then Minli’s thoughts were interrupted by the rabbit, which had stopped suddenly.
“In there,” the rabbit said, motioning toward a circular opening through a stone wall, “is the Old Man of the Moon.”
CHAPTER
43
Minli took one step into the walled courtyard and then stopped. Countless red threads covered the ground like intricate lace. Interwoven in the red strings were thousands and thousands of small clay figures, each no longer than her finger; like a spider, in the exact center, sat the Old Man of the Moon.
He sat cross-legged, with a giant book on his lap. His head was bowed over two clay figures in his hand, so that the most that Minli saw of him was the top of his head. But she could see his delicate, wrinkled hands, skillfully tying the figures in his lap together with a red thread. A blue silk bag full of red strings lay open beside him, and Minli felt a shock run through her as she saw it. She had seen that bag before! Deep blue silk, silver embroidery—it was the bag the buffalo boy’s friend had been carrying that starry night. She’s the Goddess of Weaving! Minli realized. She spins the red thread for the Old Man of the Moon. I knew there was something different about her. No wonder she knew how to find the king.
The Old Man reached beside him for his walking stick—a bent, twisted wood stick—and tapped it on the ground. Silently, the clay figures floated from his hand, drifted in the air, then settled to the ground at opposite ends of the courtyard. The Old Man’s thread still connected them and the red line wove itself among the other strands surrounding him.
As Minli stared, the Old Man looked at her. The silver hair of his beard seemed to flow like a glowing waterfall and disappear into the folds of his robes, and his dark eyes matched the blackness of the night sky.
“Ah,” the Old Man said, “it’s you.”
Minli nodded and bowed deeply. She would have kneeled on the ground, but she was afraid of disrupting the clay figures standing on the ground at her feet.
“Well, come here, then,” the Old Man said impatiently, and he tapped his stick on the ground again. And with a sound like a flapping of a bird’s wing, the clay figures moved—clearing a path for Minli.
“I know you have questions for me,” the Old Man said. “Every ninety-nine years, someone comes here with their questions. But I will answer only one. So choose your question carefully.”
One question! Minli almost stopped walking in shock. If she was only allowed to ask one question, she could not ask Dragon’s question for him! Unless… she did not ask her own.
Minli felt like a fish gasping for air. What was she going to do? The memories of the hard work in the rice fields, her father’s careworn hands, the plain rice in the dinner bowls, and Ma’s sighs washed upon her like the splashes of water from the lake. She had to change her fortune; she must ask how to do that.
But when Minli thought about Dragon, waiting for her patiently, it was as if she had been struck. And like seeds falling from Wu Kang’s tree, images of the Dragon rained upon her—their laughter as they passed the monkeys, his awkward struggles walking in the woods, his echoing roar as he flung the Green Tiger into the air, the kind hand he put on her shoulder when she cried, and the hopeful look in his eyes as she left. Dragon is my friend, Minli said to herself. What should I do?
Minli’s thoughts bubbled faster and faster like boiling rice; every step she took seemed to throb and Minli wasn’t sure if the pounding was her heart or Wu Kang’s axe in the distance. As she passed the clay statues, she thought she could see figures of the goldfish man, the buffalo boy, the king, and Da-A-Fu silently watching her. Minli’s feet seemed to ignore her pleas for slowness; like the kite being pulled in, she was being drawn toward the Old Man of the Moon without delay. Before she could decide whose question to ask, Minli found herself facing him.
The Old Man of the Moon looked at her expectantly, his black eyes as unreadable as the night sky. Minli looked down into the open book on his lap. She recognized the open page as the king’s borrowed line—the smoothed-out folds and the holes she had made in it when she had turned it into a kite were still there. Yet, now the paper was invisibly fastened in the book, with only a thin line, like a scar, showing that it had ever been removed.
And the words had changed again. There was a single line of words running down the entire page. As she looked, Minli realized for the first time, she could read the words—or really the word. For the line was only made of one word, written over and over again. And that word was Thankfulness.
And suddenly, like the light when the clouds move away from the moon, Minli knew clearly what question to ask.
“There is a dragon waiting at the bridge,” she said. “Why can he not fly?”
CHAPTER
44
Ma and Ba continued to wait for Minli, quietly and sadly. Even though they told themselves that they trusted Minli and believed she would return, Ma spent most of her time looking out the window, lost in thought, while Ba grew older and grayer every day. The only time they found comfort was in the evenings, when Ba would tell a story to make the time pass faster. In the escape of Ba’s tales, they could forget that Minli was not with them and imagine that she was there listening.
One evening, when the moon filled the sky, Ma spoke.
“Husband,” she said, “tonight, I would like to tell you a story.”
Ba was slightly surprised, but nodded.
THE STORY THAT MA TOLD
Once there was a woman who had a kind husband and a beautiful daughter. A great mountain shadowed their home, making the land that they lived on poor and their house small. But there was always enough to eat, and the water always flowed in hot months, while a fire always burned during the cold ones. Yet the woman was not content.
The woman begrudged the barren mountain and the meager land and swallowed her plain rice with bitterness. She frowned at the humble cotton of their clothes and sighed in resentment at the tight rooms of the house.
Day after day, the woman grumbled. When she heard stories of treasures of gold and jade, she was filled with envy. “Why do we have nothing?” She sulked in frustration. “We have no treasures, no fortune. Why are we so poor?”
Her husband and daughter worked harder every day, hoping to bring wealth to their house. But the unfeeling land did not cooperate, and the house remained cramped, the clothes stayed modest, and there was always only just enough rice for the three of them. The woman also remained unhappy; her displeasure grew like weeds—uncontrollable and tangling.
The woman was so caught up in her dissatisfaction, she did not realize that she was planting seeds of discontent in her daughter as we
ll. Until then, her daughter had been pleased with their life, but now she began to feel troubled. The rice that filled their bowls began to taste bland, the clothes she had liked for their colors now felt rough, and the house that she had run freely around in had become stifling.
Finally, unable to bear the growing frustration, the daughter stole away in the middle of the night—vowing not to return until she could bring a fortune back to her family.
And it was only then that the woman saw the stupidity of her behavior. For without her daughter, the house became too large and empty, and she was not hungry for the extra rice. As the days passed in loneliness, fear, and worry, the woman cursed herself for her selfishness and foolishness. How lucky she had been! She was at last able to see that her daughter’s laughter and love could not be improved by having the finest clothes or jewels, that joy had been in her home like a gift waiting to be opened. The woman wept tears for which there was no comfort. For all the time that she had been longing for treasures, she had already had the one most precious.
Now wiser, the woman could do nothing but go to her husband, beg forgiveness for her actions, and hope to someday do the same with her daughter. She did not know if she would receive compassion from either, but she vowed she would wait for it. If necessary she would wait like the mountain that shadowed them.
As Ma finished, she sat herself down at Ba’s feet and, like a child, she placed her head in his lap.
“Husband,” she said, “I’ve said it was your fault that Minli ran away and I was wrong. I am to blame. Minli knew I was discontent with our fortune; if I had not been, she would not have left. I am sorry.”
Ba could not speak. The moon outside was so full it looked as if it would burst, and moistness dampened his eyes. He placed his hand tenderly on Ma’s head.