The Jade Spindle

by Alice Major

  “There is no sign of their bindings.” Joss felt a relief. That was one detail they’d overlooked in their plan. Cut thongs left behind would have been strong evidence that the prisoners had been helped by someone with a knife.

  Ssu-ma also looked narrowly at her, then bent suddenly and lifted her sandalled foot to look at the clean, dry surface of the sole.

  “Nonsense,” said the king. “She’s been here the whole time since the prisoners were taken back to their tents.

  “That’s right,” Joss said with convincing indignation. She glared at each of the two dukes in turn, disliking both of them equally at that moment.

  Ssu-ma straightened and nodded as if satisfied. Alasdair was glad the Director of Horses did not turn his penetrating gaze on him. He couldn’t act as well as Joss.

  “It must have been their White Ti countrymen,” said the king.

  “Perhaps. Or simply poorly tied knots.” Ssu-ma strode out of the tent, shouting orders into the blanket of fog. “Someone will answer for this.”

  Alasdair and Joss were careful not to look at each other.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Molly pressed her fingertips to her eyes, and then looked back at the little frog, expecting that it would have disappeared. But it sat there, still.

  “Did ... did you really say that?” she asked at last.

  The frog sat silent for a moment, the pale green bubble of its throat pulsing gently. At last, it said, “Yes.”

  “And your name is Loh-ti?”

  Another silence. “Yes.”

  “But what ... who ... are you?”

  But before the frog could answer, the sound of running feet came from the gate. P’eng was hurrying into the garden; she didn’t slow down to her usually respectful pace, but raced across to the pool. Molly looked around; when she looked back, the frog had disappeared.

  “They’re back. They’re coming back,” P’eng said breathlessly. “Li-Tsai spotted them at the top of the ridge.”

  She almost pushed Molly into her wheelchair without giving her a chance to tell about Loh-ti, then rolled the chair along the path so rapidly Molly felt her teeth might fall out from the jolting. As they got to the li, Mark was running in too, from the path that led from the fields.

  Ariel was already standing in the centre square, tugging at the straps of her pack, while two unfamiliar young men stood respectfully a little way off. At the sight of her brother, she gave a shout of pleasure and hugged him. “Thank heavens you’re okay,” she said.

  “But where are the others?”

  Her face fell. “By now—who knows? It’s a long story.”

  Li-Tsai and P’eng crowded close to hear it too. Mark and Molly were dismayed to hear about the campaign and the departure of Alasdair and Joss for unknown territories.

  “That’s Joss all over,” Mark exploded. “How much of an idiot can she be?”

  “Alasdair went too,” his sister said wearily.

  “Yeah ...” He stuck his hands into his fraying pockets.

  Li-Tsai and P’eng accepted the decision of the missing travellers placidly. “They could not do otherwise than the king ordered,” said the guardian. “And these companions—have they really come to stay?” As if in answer to him, the donkey they had tethered to a nearby tree brayed loudly. P’eng began to bustle around preparing food for the travellers.

  Ariel collapsed gratefully to the ground and looked gratefully at Mark. “You don’t know how glad I am to see you,” she said. “I was having nightmares all the way back, thinking I’d get here and find out that you’d taken off somewhere too.” Then she looked more intensely at Molly. “Good grief, Molly—your hair.”

  Molly put her hand to her head. “What’s the matter with it?”

  “Look how much it’s grown.”

  Molly pulled at the ends of her hair. In this place of no mirrors, she had not noticed any particular change in her appearance. “It always grows fast,” she said doubtfully. “Is it that different?”

  Mark looked at her, considering. “She’s right. When we first got here, it was a lot shorter.”

  “And now it’s half-way down your back,” said Ariel. She looked Mark over narrowly. “You look a bit different too,” she said. And indeed, his lanky body had filled out at the shoulders from all the digging and dragging in the fields. For no reason she could understand, she felt tears prickle at the back of her eyes.

  “Well, it’s a good thing your hair has grown too,” Mark joked.

  She blinked back the tears and laughed. “You should have seen how they stared at me in the capital,” she said, tugging at the ends. “The Lady Shen had it trimmed for me before I left.”

  “Who’s Lady Shen?”

  There was so much to tell as they ate soup and drank some of the precious tea that the travellers had brought back from the capital. Li-Tsai sipped it with his eyes closed, as if it took him to some far-off, exquisite place. Then Ariel unwrapped the ritual jade. They handed it carefully one to the other.

  “It’s exactly the same colour as the spindle,” Molly said, examining it carefully. “It could be cut from the same block of stone. Oh!” she said, remembering she hadn’t had a chance to tell anyone about Loh-ti. “Listen to this ...”

  “This is P’eng and Li-Tsai. They are the guardians of the garden.”

  Loh-ti looked around and blinked slowly. “The garden. The Lady Lo-tsu’s garden. I am awake again.” Gratitude welled up in the clear little voice, and Molly felt a light, scrabbling sensation in the palm of her hand as the frog moved to scan the scene around her.

  Li-Tsai was leaning on his staff, peering closely. “Where does this creature come from?”

  “She is one of the original inhabitants of your world,” Molly answered. “She is one of the creatures bound in that spell by the Yellow Emperor.”

  The old man studied the frog in fascination, then put out his hand in silent invitation. Molly held her palm close, and Loh-ti hopped across. A strange expression deepened the creases on Li-Tsai’s face when he felt the tiny feet tickle his palm. He and Loh-ti gazed at each other for a while. The silence was broken at last by Li-Tsai’s voice, quavering more than usual.

  “Tell us ...,” he said. “Will you tell us about the Yellow Emperor?”

  Molly was surprised at the question for a moment, then felt she understood. This was like being able to talk to someone who had known King Arthur or some other legendary figure from hundreds—thousands—of years ago.

  Loh-ti puffed out her throat and sang a few simple, high-pitched notes before answering.

  “Huang-ti first appeared to us in the middle of the long summer, the year after a hard winter. With him came others—his wife Lady Lo-Tsu, the wise man Ta Nao, and other people.”

  “Many others?” asked Mark.

  “Few at first. Then more, until there were very many. As many as the rushes on the slough. He chose the creatures he would talk with and he taught them the arts of power. He bestowed the brocade ball on the lion and the pearl on the dragon. To Shen-chi, the tiger, he gave the polished jade axe and named him ruler of the creatures of this world, subject only to Huang-ti himself.”

  They listened, spellbound, as the frog’s light voice went on. She told them how, through many shuttles of the light node, the Yellow Emperor had come and gone between this world and his own; how he and his wife became more and more attached to the string world; how they built the walls of the garden and how Lo-Tsu had invited the frog to live there and talk with her.

  She told how the emperor had also built a resting place with pleasure gardens in the hills far to the north and, in the far south, a tower for Ta Nao, housing a great library. But at last, his wise men—including Ta Nao—had begged him to return home where the people of the bear were threatening his lands and kingdom. When the emperor left, the tiger Shen-chi rose up, seeking power and
calling himself overlord and emperor.

  Shen-chi even threatened to invade Huang-ti’s own kingdom, taking the idea from the people of the bear. He was on fire with the idea of his rebellion and would not believe it would put the structure of the whole world in danger. So the Yellow Emperor caught him in a great spell, but had to bind all the other creatures at the same time. He left some of his people as guardians of the three sacred places and promised to come back and give them freedom.

  “But the years passed. Huang-ti did not return,” Loh-ti concluded her story.

  “Perhaps he died before he could come back.” Mark was thinking aloud.

  “What about his wife?” Molly asked, looking around at the garden. This had been Lo-Tsu’s place first of all.

  “She did not return either. I believe she would have returned if death did not stop her. She was weeping very bitterly when she left.”

  “You spoke with them. You spoke with Huang-ti himself.” Li-Tsai was filled with wonder as he gazed into the frog’s gold eyes. Gently, he lowered his hand to let the creature hop back onto the rock, then he put his palms together and bowed very low.

  As if by one accord, the rest of them sat down on the grass so that they would be almost at eye level with Loh-ti. Mark dropped one of the tiny cup-like flowers on the water and watched it float. “I don’t understand,” he said at last.

  “Understand what?”

  “All that business about the tiger not being able to come into our world without destroying everything. But it sounds like the emperor could go back and forward whenever he wanted. And we came here.”

  “I am only telling you what the Lady said.”

  “There is so much we don’t understand.” Li-Tsai’s face was creased in new lines of puzzlement. “So many of the old legends do not match what you say.”

  “Such as?” Mark asked.

  “There is no mention of a tower or a resting place in the north...”

  “Yes,” Mark interrupted. “Did you say something about a library in this tower?”

  “I did not see it, of course,” said the little frog. “But I was told there were many hundreds of scrolls. All the wisdom of Huang-ti was housed there.”

  Li-Tsai’s had bent forward to hear the fluting voice, and a gleam crossed his face. “This tower is where?”

  “In the south, following Yao-chi’s thread.”

  “How far?” Mark was also leaning forward, as though the same idea had occurred to him.

  “A journey of many pulses.”

  “How many?’

  Ariel looked at her brother in dismay, as she realized what was in his mind. “Mark, you can’t go.”

  “Why not? You already went to the capital.”

  “But at least we knew the capital was there,” P’eng said. “No one has gone south in living memory. No one has even heard of the this tower.”

  He ignored both girls and repeated, “How many pulses?”

  “I do not know. It was a journey made by very few.”

  “Mark, don’t be crazy. You can’t go off into nowhere.” Ariel heard the old, protective tone in her voice and forced herself to stop.

  “Why not?” he said fiercely. “Why shouldn’t I go?”

  There was an awkward silence, before Loh-ti spoke up, sounding puzzled. “Why would you need to go so far? What about the scrolls here? Ta-Nao’s tower was not the only place for learning.”

  “We’ve been through them—all three of them, word for word,” Mark said gloomily.

  “Three? But there were many, many of them in the scroll room. Are they all gone?”

  “Scroll room?” Li-Tsai’s voice was alert and his eyes were bright.

  “The scroll chamber under the garden walls.”

  “Where?”

  Molly was watching the guardian’s face. “Don’t you know?” she asked.

  “I received no more than three scrolls, locked in one small chest,” he replied. “Where is this chamber?”

  “As I told you. Under the walls.”

  “But where?” His voice was almost anguished.

  “Somewhere on the west wall. I do not know exactly. It was opened so rarely and I was never present.”

  Mark looked along the great stretch of wall, deeply screened with leaves and branches. “It’s going to take some finding.”

  “And if we find them, will they be any use to us? Will they help us get back home?” Ariel sounded doubtful.

  “I heard it said that Huang-ti made a scroll with his own hands, describing the ways of moving back and forth between the two halves of the universe,” said Loh-ti.

  “Ways? You mean there’s more than one?” Mark asked.

  “Oh, yes. There was Huang-ti’s way, the way of numbers,” the frog replied. “The number patterns made a bridge to a place that lay between the two worlds. Then there was the jade path. But then, the Lady Lo-Tsu told me, there was another way, an even older way. There were others from your world that found the path back and forth along a silver thread. The Lady Lo-Tsu had even seen one of them and talked with her.”

  “Her?”

  “An old woman, old as a pine root, who came and went. I have glimpsed her now and again from where I sat in the net of spells, waiting for freedom.” Her throat swelled again with relief and rapture. Then she noticed a glint of gold over the pool—two of the tiny flies darting—and leaped suddenly into the water. The others watched silently for a few moments as a circle of ripples opened like a flower on the pool. Finally, Molly spoke thoughtfully, still watching the water.

  “The woman old as a pine root. Could that be the woman we saw in the ravine.”

  “How could she still be alive?” Ariel asked doubtfully. “It’s thousands of years since the Yellow Emperor—and she was old then.”

  “Whoever she is, I hope she is still alive,” Molly said somberly. They were silent again, thinking of the tiny, desperate figure on the grass.

  They started looking for the scroll chamber right away. Even Li-Tsai seemed to forget his reverence for the garden and pushed branches aside vigorously, probing the clay wall. No matter how they probed and tapped and thumped at the ground, the walls were solid and gave away no secrets.

  On the following pulse, they extended their search to the other walls. Mark cross-examined Loh-ti to see if she could drag up any other memory to help them. Finally, he and Li-Tsai were left searching alone. It was time to begin harvesting the millet, and P’eng took the others off to work in the fields again. Molly stayed in the li, tending the fire.

  At last, Mark flopped on the turf at the centre of the garden and surveyed the towering walls. “I swear we’ve looked at every centimetre of every side,” he murmured. Li-Tsai, sitting nearby, seemed too weary even to agree.

  “But Li-toh still sticks by her story.” He groaned and looked up at the pewter sky. “I want to find the chamber even if there isn’t anything left in it,” he added. He let his gaze wander up the trunks of the pine trees in the far corner of the garden. They twisted off into branches that hung out over the top of the walls. His eyes focussed.

  “We didn’t look on the outside.” He leaped to his feet and ran outside to the west wall—an area visited so seldom that there wasn’t even a pathway. The grass grew right up to the foot of the wall, but at least it was easier to push aside than the heavy branches that grew on the inside.

  Li-Tsai, following slowly a little while later, found him squatting on his heels to examine something on the ground.

  “Look at this.”

  It was a row of flat stones, level with the ground, that curved in a semi-circle out from the wall. Many of the stones were covered entirely with soil, but enough remained to show the half-circle quite clearly. The ground in the middle was slightly sunken.

  “What do you think it is?”

  “I have no idea.” Li-T
sai sounded genuinely puzzled. “I have never noticed this before—but then, I have come here no more than two or three times in all my years as guardian.”

  Mark kicked at the stones, but they were fixed firmly in place. “Wait,” he said and raced off in the direction of the li. He was soon back, breathless, with a shovel.

  At first, the ground was stubborn and hard to break, twisted through with grass roots. But once he had broken the top few inches, the soil was remarkably fine and light, more like dust. In a short time, he had cleared enough away to see that the line of stones was the top of a flight of steps leading towards the wall. He could also see there was still a lot of soil to clear before they got to the bottom.

  Li-Tsai, his eyes alert with interest, hurried back to call the others from the fields with their shovels. They took turns helping to dig out the fine soil. It seemed that the stairwell had simply filled up with dust over long years of being abandoned. When they began clearing the area right next to the wall, they found another row of stones not far below the level of the soil—the top of an arch. The shovels flew faster. Li-Tsai, suddenly tireless, helped haul bucket after bucket of slippery dust out of the stairwell. At last, P’eng’s shovel struck something new. It sounded like a wooden door.

  “We’re getting there,” Ariel said, panting after her brother as she hauled another bucket up the steps. He simply nodded.

  At last, the door stood almost entirely clear of dust. The wood was dark, almost black. Around a huge keyhole was a carving of a grinning dragon’s face. Mark looked at it with a sinking feeling.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve got a key for this,” he said.

  Li-Tsai shook his head and reached out to grasp the wooden tongue that stuck out from the dragon’s mouth. He pushed. Nothing happened.

  “Let me try,” said Mark. Instead of pushing, he tried tugging the dragon tongue towards him. Wonder of wonders, the door swung open with a sigh and a creak. A little pile of dust slithered in from the side, and light from the outside fell across the threshold for the first time in who knows how many centuries. Mark started to step inside, then stopped.