by Grace Lin
The boy looked up and saw the blue-and-white rice bowl, sitting silently on the gold stand. His fingers could only barely touch the bottom of the stand. He scaled the shelves, mounting the ledge above the gang. Could he reach the bowl? Yes!
“What are you doing?” a voice said behind him.
The boy spun around in surprise to see his sister staring at him, openmouthed. But before he could say a word, the precious rice bowl fell from his fingers. He frantically grabbed at it, leaning and tilting, his feet slipping and… splash! He fell right into the gang!
Cold, shocking water slapped him and filled his mouth and eyes. His elbows and hands banged against the slippery walls of the gang, but he couldn’t find the edge. There was not enough room to swim, and when the bottom of the gang seemed to have vanished, he began to panic. He felt as if invisible arms had seized him. He writhed and struggled, but the heavy water pressed into him, holding him. His lungs began to burn, a hot, dry, suffocating burn. He dimly heard his sister’s scream. Her small hands could not reach him, and her efforts to push the heavy gang over were futile. She would have to get help, he thought as blackness began to overtake him. But it would be too late. He was drowning, drowning…
Crack! Suddenly, water rushed away from his face, and he was on the floor, coughing and choking. His sister was by his side, lifting his head as he wheezed and panted for air. Sweet, delicious air! The darkness in his eyes began to fade, and he saw what had happened.
Unable to reach him, unable to overturn the gang, and afraid to run for help, his sister had grabbed an inkstone from the table and had smashed it into the gang. The delicate porcelain had cracked like an eggshell, and she’d broken a hole in it to free him. She was so smart! He looked at her with gratitude.
“What has happened?!” a roar echoed through the room, and both children gasped. Their father!
Magistrate Tiger’s sharp eyes scanned everything—the bedraggled boy coughing on the floor, the white-faced girl, and the fallen rice bowl next to the boy. He saw the pool of water, the dying fish, and then the broken shards of his precious, prized gang.
“MY… GANG… MY…” he stuttered, and his roars slowly turned to a thunderous wail as he rushed to the broken gang, grabbing pieces of it in disbelief. “Broken!”
“I did it,” the girl said, her voice quavering.
“To save me!” the boy said quickly. “I was drowning…”
“I DON’T CARE!” Magistrate Tiger shouted, his bellows a mixture of anguish and anger. “MY GANG! GIVEN BY THE EMPEROR…!”
“We’re sorry!” the girl whispered, beginning to sob.
“SORRY? ONLY SORRY? YOU USELESS WORMS!” Magistrate Tiger’s fury began to explode like a thousand bursting firecrackers as he clutched at the shards of the broken gang. “THESE PIECES ARE WORTH MORE THAN YOU!”
The girl trembled like a kite caught in a typhoon, but the boy was strangely still, his eyes darkening. It was as if a smoldering red coal had finally burst into flames inside him. His father had seen him half drowned on the floor, yet he had run first to the broken gang. Black bitterness gripped the boy, and a rage that matched his father’s filled him. His mother had lied! His sister had lied! Everyone had lied! His father did not roar and lie and cheat for him. His father did not care about him! In fact, he cared more about the shattered gang. Suddenly, he hated all of them. He hated everything. He hated his mother, his sister, his father, his home. He wished everything would disappear. He wished he could disappear.
And with that thought, the boy scooped up the wet but unharmed rice bowl and stood. Without another word, he walked out of the room, leaving the roars and sobs behind.
“That’s not the end, is it?” Peiyi asked.
Rendi shrugged. Like the room, the sky was quiet and waiting. It was sunset, and even though the sun had gone down beyond the horizon, there was still light.
“What else happened?” Peiyi persisted. “What did the boy do?”
Rendi opened his mouth, but no words would form.
“He ran away, didn’t he?” Madame Chang said gently. “He ran away, unable to stay in a house where he was loved less than a piece of porcelain.”
Rendi could say nothing, and a myriad of pinks and oranges filled the sky.
“He probably went far with the money in his pockets,” Madame Chang mused. “But eventually, his money would run out.”
Again, Rendi could make no sound. The pink sky was turning purple, and a rose-gold glow spilled into the room.
“Maybe he even sold his fine clothes and stowed away on carts and caravans, getting as far as he could, until he was poor and ragged and had nothing left,” Madame Chang said. “Except, perhaps, the good fortune to find someone willing to take him in as a chore boy.”
Tears welled in Rendi’s eyes, and finally a noise formed in his throat. But it was a sob, the same sound of sorrow he heard so often in the wind. His eyes blurred as the tears began to flow freely, so he did not see Peiyi, Master Chao, and the others draw near to comfort him.
But he felt them all.
CHAPTER
31
That night, Rendi lay awake in his bed. He thought about Fang and Liu, the duke, and all that had happened. Was his father really looking for him? He was unsure how that made him feel. He stared out into the black sky while the wind moaned again.
The cries grew louder in Rendi’s ears. What was crying like that? And for the first time, Rendi wondered why. Was the person in pain? Why didn’t anyone help him?
But Madame Chang said she heard the cries only faintly, and no one else seemed to hear them at all. Did Mr. Shan? Rendi remembered Mr. Shan’s back straightening stiffly when the groans blew in. Maybe Mr. Shan heard them too. But did no one hear them the way he did? The plaintive call, beckoning and begging?
He sat up. Whoever was crying had been doing so for weeks and weeks! Maybe no one had helped because Rendi was the only one who could really hear it. A sudden shame filled him. Ever since he started hearing the cries, all he had thought about was himself, never about who was suffering or how he could help.
Well, he would find out and help now, Rendi thought with determination. It was his turn to save someone. He stood up and took the plain cloth bag from his drawer, the same one he had packed so long ago. Now he emptied it of his belongings and started to repack. What did one bring for something like this? he thought. Extra clothes? Cloth for bandages? A knife? Maybe the person was crying out of hunger. Food, then, and a jug of wine.
Rendi tiptoed to the kitchen, filling his bag with anything he thought might be helpful, his bag a bit unwieldy as he slung it over his shoulders. Then he took a lantern heavy with oil and crept out of the inn.
The dark night was full of sad groans, and for a moment, Rendi felt as if they were coming from the empty sky above. Slowly, he located the direction of the moans. Yet as he lit the lantern, he gulped.
The moans were coming from across the Stone Pancake! That rock that stretched for miles and miles. He would be lost in no time out there.
The groans came again, and Rendi took a deep breath. Maybe that was why the person was crying. Maybe someone was lost out there on the stone plain! Well, if he was going to save them, he had to go but not get lost himself. “I just have to mark my way,” he said, “so I can find my way back.”
He swung the lantern around the yard, trying to find something to help him. The light shone on a pile of empty snail shells—garbage from Master Chao’s new dishes. They were dry from being in the daytime sun, and there were a lot of them. “I’ll use those,” Rendi whispered, filling his pockets.
The breeze carried another sad whimper, and Rendi stepped onto the flat stone. He raised the lantern and looked at the endless blackness in front of him. He dropped a snail shell, listened, and walked forward. He took one step after another, occasionally dropping a snail shell, until he was a small pinprick of light, like a bright star in the darkness.
CHAPTER
32
Rendi felt
as if he had been walking for miles. As his pockets began to lighten, he dropped snail shells less frequently, and he began to worry that he would not have enough. But just when he ran out, something other than flat stone and black sky formed in the landscape. A large, tall shadow of a tree reached into the Starry River like an arm beckoning. As Rendi walked closer, he was also able to see a stone bridge that extended over a lake, both almost invisible in the darkness.
The lantern created a circle of light around Rendi as he walked over the bridge. When he saw his reflection in the still water, he felt as if he were walking over the night sky, for there seemed no difference between the two. The moans grew stronger and stronger with each step he took, so he knew he was going in the right direction.
He stepped off the bridge onto grassy ground. The weeds, getting their water from the lake, were soft under his feet, so different from the dried, scorched plants in the village. With his lantern held high, Rendi saw a low hilly area before him.
The groans grew even louder, and Rendi frowned. It seemed as if the cries were coming from inside one of the hills!
Stretching the light out in front of him, Rendi peered into the darkness. One of the hills appeared to have a large black opening. Was there a cave in that hill? He walked closer, and words came back to his ears. “An ancient dark hole in one of the hills,” Madame Chang had said in her stories. “A dark hole, like a cave.”
Rendi swung around, the lantern swaying. It was just like the place Madame Chang had described. A lake. A tall tree. An ancient cave. All that was missing was the mountain. As Rendi stood in front of the opening, he gulped. Did this mean the White Tiger lived in there? But the White Tiger was gone now. Was it a different vicious tiger that had been moaning all this time?
Another groan resonated from the darkness in front of him. The groan was sad and mournful, like a temple bell at a funeral. But there was also something else in the sound. There was yearning, a longing in it that was an echo of something deep inside Rendi’s own chest and what made him finally enter.
“Hello?” Rendi called. His voice was thin, and it faded into the endless blackness. In the cave, the air was cool, and the earth was soft on his feet. “Hello?”
Another moan blew at him, and Rendi raised his lantern even higher. There was something in front of him. Something very large. He could make out a huge form—bigger than a horse but, strangely, shapeless. It was glowing with an eerie, soft, faint green light. What was it? Rendi took slow, careful steps forward, the light shaking from the trembling lantern.
Suddenly, from the strange mass, two enormous eyes blinked open. Like two round melons, they bulged and stared right at Rendi. They were the eyes of a monstrous toad!
CHAPTER
33
Rendi shrieked and ran back the way he had come, his heart thundering louder than his feet on the ground. His fear overwhelmed any thoughts. Was it the real Noxious Toad? Would it breathe on him with its poisonous vapor? Rendi burst out of the hill, gasping and panting.
The cool breeze from the lake blew over him, calming him like a gentle touch. The light from his lantern flickered over the water, making twinkling stars in the rippling waves. The tranquil scene soothed him, and as he caught his breath, another moan came from the hill. It did not seem malicious. It seemed sad. And then Rendi remembered the eyes—those eyes of the monstrous toad were full of pain and sorrow. They were, in fact, much like the eyes of Mr. Shan’s toad when it became three-legged, Rendi thought with a pang.
What if that giant toad wasn’t the Noxious Toad? Rendi thought, his mind racing. What if… what if it was WangYi’s wife? What if Madame Chang was wrong and WangYi’s wife had never turned back into a woman? What if she had stayed a toad? And with the moon missing, she was stuck here on earth, hiding in this hill?
A dim light began to spill out of the hill. The toad had followed him! But it was moving so slowly, Rendi could easily run and disappear from sight by the time the toad exited. Rendi looked at the bridge but stood still and waited.
The toad finally emerged, its greenish glow lighting the surroundings as if it were a giant, misshapen lantern. The toad was so large that Rendi’s head just reached the top of its bulbous leg, and its warty skin was like weathered, rotting leather. Rendi quaked again at its monstrous ugliness, but the toad gave another pathetic moan of pain, and Rendi’s pity drove away his fear.
The toad did not look well. The odd green glow was coming from its bloated belly and made it look wan and sickly. No wonder the toad had moved so slowly. It continued to hold its stomach with both of its front legs and moaned.
Rendi wondered if it had swallowed fireflies like Mr. Shan’s toad had. It must have had to swallow a lot, Rendi thought, surveying the size of the toad’s swollen belly. But that would explain why it had a stomachache, at least.
Rendi felt the weight of the bag on his shoulders. Would the wine make the toad feel better? He took out the jug.
“Maybe this will help your stomach,” Rendi said, holding out the wine. His words felt clumsy and out of place in the still night. “Do you want to try it?”
The toad’s eyelids lifted halfway, and its eyes, as black as watermelon seeds, looked at the jug.
“It’s Son Wine,” Rendi said. “It’s good. I should know. My father invented it.”
The toad made a questioning noise, and Rendi, to fill the silence and perhaps out of habit, began to tell the story.
THE STORY OF SON WINE
When my mother was with child for the first time, my father, the magistrate, was overjoyed. “The blood of the greatest ruler and hero will be passed on,” he declared triumphantly. “My blood will continue in my son.”
Accordingly, he planned a grand feast for when the baby was to be born. He told his servants to fatten a pig, to make eighty-eight jars of the finest rice wine, and to prepare for the greatest festivities the township had ever seen. He laughed and joked boisterously, accepting congratulations as if his wife had already given birth. My mother worried, but in my father’s mind, a son already existed. His imagination had lost all boundaries, and my father pictured a son gifted with as much strength, bravery, and cleverness as an immortal. My son will become king, he thought with grand contentment, and then his son will become emperor, and we will rule again!
So when a daughter was born, my father was devastated. When the midwives told him that my mother had given birth to a girl, his face blackened like burned wood, and he stormed out of the room without even glancing at the baby. “A daughter!” he said bitterly.
My father was angry at the baby girl, as if she had somehow stolen the son he was expecting. In a rage, he turned all the guests from his door and ordered the banquet feast to be thrown to the pigs and the jars of wine buried. If anyone offered him a word of congratulations, he scowled and ordered them from his sight.
For the next year, my mother and the servants kept the baby out of his way as much as possible. My father’s anger slowly lessened, but the resentment remained. When my mother told him they were expecting another child, he only replied, “Will it be another girl, like the last one?”
This time, my father did not prepare a banquet or brew wine or boast. He felt humiliated from before, and he did not even dare to dream about a son this time.
But when the baby was born, it was me, a boy! My father’s wish for a son was fulfilled!
My father was overwhelmed with joy and pride. He strutted and trumpeted like a rooster, inviting all the officials and people of his township to what he promised would be a splendid celebration.
However, since my father had made no preparations ahead of time, there was now a great rush. Servants ran from peddler to grocer all over the city; the pig—which was now extremely fat—was quickly butchered; and his chefs worked without sleeping. Throughout the night, they were coloring red eggs until their hands and arms were dyed as well, and when the rooster crowed in the morning, the chefs were stewing, roasting, and boiling so quickly that the steam became as thick
as smoke. They fried golden sesame balls as round as plums and cut ginger into delicate, paper-thin slices so that it looked like flower petals on a plate. Platters of dark honey-colored pork were garnished with jade-green lettuce, and white dumplings floated in bowls of sweet soup like clouds. The servants proudly placed the food on the table.
“But where is the wine?” my father demanded. “I cannot hold a celebration without wine! Get the wine!”
The servants retreated and looked at one another blankly. They could not make wine in such a short amount of time. What could they do?
Finally, a servant remembered something. “There are the eighty-eight jars of wine that we buried when the magistrate’s daughter was born,” he said. “We can dig them up!”
So they did. When my father readied to open the doors of his home, it was a glorious feast. It was his proudest moment. When I, his son, was revealed, my father’s delight seemed to transform him. In his happiness, kind words and compliments flowed from him like a spring river. He himself brought my mother the bowl of strengthening ginger soup and even gently patted my sister’s head. The birth of a son had, at least for the day, turned the old bitterness sweet.
Which was much like the wine that was served. After being buried in the ground so long, the wine had a different scent and taste. It was fragrant and pure, and all the guests agreed it was delicious.
“What kind of wine is this?” an official asked my father. “I’ve never tasted wine quite like this before. How did you brew it?”
“It is Son Wine,” my father said after a pause, “to celebrate my son! The servants can tell you how it was made.”
“And so Son Wine, this wine, was created,” Rendi said. “I was the son the wine honored, but I always thought it should be called Daughter Wine because it was made when my sister was born. I always felt it wasn’t fair that my father didn’t celebrate her. She’s smarter than me, and braver too.”