The Jade Spindle

by Alice Major

  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.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Early on the next pulse, Joss followed P’eng and the Lady Shen to the garden as they carried the ritual bowl of food. “The rituals are still important,” said Shen. “Even if we have to change them to suit changing times.” They found Ssu-ma already there, sitting with his back to the stone wall.

  “This is a good place to think,” he murmured.

  “Think about what?” asked Joss.

  “About my return to the Middle Kingdom ... mostly.”

  “Do you really have to go back?”

  “I must go back. I have a duty to my soldiers to carry back the detailed story. I need to make sure the news does not cause panic, that the next Director of Horses has all the information about the White Ti that has cost us so much to learn.”

  “But not to die,” said Joss, in real distress.

  Ssu-m looked straight ahead for a long moment, then turned his head and smiled at them. “No, perhaps not to die.”

  After a few more moments’ silence, he went on. “My world has changed,” he said, speaking more to metal oval on the opposite side of the garden than to any of them. “For time out of mind, the Middle Kingdom has not changed. I have lived my life in respect for the ancestors and my king. But the White Ti have changed. They forget the ancestors. Their commander is the grandson of a peasant. They have learned the art of metal and make knives for even the common soldiers to carry . . . And then there is this.” He gestured to the rock where Loh-ti sat, and beyond her to the garden where the wild woman hummed and wandered.

  “I am the only man of my kingdom who realizes all these changes. So I am coming to think my death is not the most useful thing for the Middle Kingdom.” He looked up at his sister, who nodded ever so slightly.

  “What will you do?”

  “Oh, once the affairs of state are settled, I will slip out of the capital and make my way home to consider what needs to be done next.” He smiled his grave smile. “And this time I will visit my grandmother. You will come too?” he asked the Lady Shen.

  Once again, she nodded. “It has been a very long time since we played in the orchards of Ch’i, brother.”

  Molly was sitting b
y the window in the hut. She had taken a basket of wool onto her lap and was stroking its softness while the wild woman pattered around the room.

  “We’re going to try going back today,” she said. She often found herself talking to the mysterious old creature like this, even though the wild woman never answered back directly.

  “It will be strange to leave here,” Molly went on. “I suppose I’m jealous of you.” She surprised herself by saying this, but knew it was true. “For a little while, this was my place.”

  The wild woman looked keenly into her face and nodded. She came to stand beside Molly and unhooked the spindle from her belt. She laid the whorl in Molly’s palm, then took each of the girl’s fingers in turn and folded it around the spindle. Then she took Molly’s face in her hands and bent down to place the tip of her tongue on her forehead. The slight tingle shaped words in Molly’s mind.

  “Yours. Yours.”

  Her fingers tightened around the blue jade and she smiled up. The Lady touched her own braided belt in a gesture of companionship.

  Mark and Alasdair were shaping five long, pointed stakes from the thorn trees behind the li.

  “Do you want to go home?” Alasdair asked suddenly.

  Mark looked at him, surprised. “I guess so, yes. Why? Don’t you?”

  His friend shrugged. “It’s been good for me here. Ssu-ma says I’d make a good commander.”

  “Is that what you want? To go around killing people?” Mark was baffled. Alasdair seemed so different from the smallish boy who had gone away to the capital.

  “Not the killing, of course not. But figuring things out and strategy—it’s interesting.” He peeled bark from the pole he was working on, smoothing it. “I suppose I don’t want to go back to being a kid in the middle of my parents fighting.”

  “Maybe you can figure out some strategy for there.” Mark was half joking.

  Alasdair shrugged, his face still serious. “Maybe.”

  “I know what you mean though.” Mark laid his piece of wood down. “We’ve been—well, free, I guess. It will be strange to have people telling you when to do your homework.”

  Ariel was coming down the path to find them and heard her brother’s words. “You won’t hear it from me,” she said. “Promise.”

  The stakes had been driven into the ground, in a line that ran at right angles to the centre of the mirror. They were linked with a rope twisted from the copper-coloured wool that Molly had used to link them to the mirror in the far north. At each stake, the rope was twisted in a peculiar knot. On the stake nearest the mirror, the knot held the blue pi disk. On the furthest, the yellow tsung was fastened. Joss stood beside it, her hand on the cool, heavy stone.

  Ariel stood beside the stake at the front of the line, her hand on the blue disc; Molly and Alasdair were also each in place beside a stake.

  “Come on, Mark,” Ariel called.

  He was standing beside Li-Tsai. At Ariel’s words, he turned to bow to the guardian as P’eng had taught him—palms together and held close to his chest. “Thank you,” he said. “You have taught me so much.”

  Li-Tsai bowed back. “True scholars are rare,” he said. “Your coming opened the chamber of scrolls to these old eyes. I am most grateful.”

  Mark took his position by the stake in the middle of the line. “All right, Li-toh,” he called.

  The frog’s throat swelled and she sang five clear notes. Sang them again ... again ... They all kept their eyes on the burnished surface of the mirror. Molly felt the weight of the spindle in her hand, as though it was becoming heavier as the air in the garden seemed to become stiller and stiller, as though the only sound in the whole world was that clear cascade.

  Ariel, too, felt the smooth jade under her fingertips. “Nothing’s happening,” she thought in a panic, then forced herself to let the thought float away.

  Slowly the surface of the bronze mirror clouded, then cleared again as though a door was swinging open. Ariel lifted her hand from the jade and took a step forward, leading them home.

  Chapter Thirty

  The passage between the two worlds was not nearly so hard a journey, although it still left Mark feeling slightly sick and as though he had been turned inside out. He swallowed hard and looked around.

  They were all there on the triangle of lawn. Alasdair and Joss wearing the tawny, quilted jerkins of the army. Molly, looking more frail and exotic than ever in a soft blue-grey tunic, holding the spindle to her heart. Ariel in a similar tunic, her straight dark brows lifted in an expression of immense gratitude as she realized they were all there, safely.

  He looked around at the bright summer foliage and blue sky. Sunshine, he thought. Sunshine! The colours of his own world were like strong drink and he wanted to swallow them somehow with his eyes. Molly’s mother and Trudy were running across the lawn.

  “Where have you been? Where have you been!” Her mother folded Molly in a hysterical embrace. “Gone for nearly four weeks . . . We’ve been frantic . . . There looking all across the country for you.”

  “Four weeks?” Molly looked over her mother’s shoulder at Joss, who shrugged. “I don’t understand.”

  Her mother had started to take in their strange clothes, their long hair, Alasdair’s new height. “Four weeks . . .” she faltered. “Where have you been.”

  Molly looked around at all the others, ending with Mark. “Where we have been,” she said. “This is going to be some story.”

  He grinned at her and nodded.

  Epilogue

  P’eng carried the bowl of gruel, holding the familiar polished wood carefully in front of her. She stopped at the altar of the God of the Soil to chant a brief phrase at every corner, raising the bowl to her forehead each time. Then she walked along the worn path to the garden.

  So little had changed.

  Tiny flies danced above the waist-high grass on either side of the path. She missed Molly and Mark and Ariel—such funny faces, but you got used to them. Chuan had never returned. But there were the new families in the li. And frequent visits from the Lady Shen. So much had changed.

  As she rounded the corner of the garden, she heard the low whirring sound she had heard so many times during her service as daughter of the garden. She paused, looking out over the wide stretch of prairie with its timeless, tawny grass. So little ever changed.

  She walked into the garden itself, but did not leave the bowl on the offering stone. Instead, she carried it across the turf, past Li-Tsai at his table with its ink-bowl and scrolls, past the pool where tiny frogs swam and into the hut. She placed it with all her old reverence on the table by the window and looked out at the small, bent figure of the Lady in the garden beyond.

  So much had changed.

  About the Author

  Alice Major published the award-winning fantasy, The Chinese Mirror, many years ago. Since then, she has published many books of poetry and non-fiction, but other worlds have called her back to write The Jade Spindle.