by Grace Lin
His soldiers come to the villages late at night, taking away all the men, the villagers had said. Were the soldiers here for Amah? Why? She wasn’t a young man!
“Shall we go, then?” Amah said, as if asking Pinmei to gather firewood. Amah’s silhouette was still and calm against the flickering light of the flames. The ocean of shadows swayed in a mad dance around her.
In response, the soldiers growled in unison, the sound swelling into a snarl.
And then, in a swift, brutal motion, like a monstrous snake swallowing its prey, the men swept Amah into the blackness of the night.
CHAPTER
5
Pinmei could do nothing. As she stared, her arms, her legs, her body froze into the cold stone of the gang. She could not even whisper the desperate, wailing cry that throbbed in her chest.
Soldiers began to bang into the hut. They lit the lanterns, and Pinmei could see everything as if it were a stage. Once, when she was younger, Amah had taken her down to the village to see some traveling entertainers, and Pinmei felt as if she were watching a performance again. But this show was a nightmare. The soldiers overturned the tables and chairs, and Amah’s carefully organized box of threads and sewing tools were strewn on the floor, red silk lying on the ground like a pool of blood.
“There’s not enough room in this hovel for more than two of us!” said one man, his elaborate armor and demeanor marking him as the commander. “You, stay,” he barked, motioning to a soldier in green. “Everyone else, out!”
When all the others had left, the commander turned to the remaining soldier with a transformed manner.
“Your Exalted Majesty,” the commander said, bowing his head. “We have the Storyteller. Was there another purpose for your honorable presence on this excursion?”
The soldier took off his helmet, and Pinmei could see he was much older than the commander. His pointed beard was veined with white, as were his eyebrows, arched like poisonous centipedes. She also saw that his uniform was slightly ill fitting, his girth stretching the scales of his armor. He must be a king or some other royalty in disguise.
“The old woman gave up too easily,” he said, his voice low and harsh. “She’s trying to hide something.”
He scanned the walls and shelves and floors, stepping deliberately. As he kicked aside a small bamboo container, needles spilled out. Their sharp points glittered in the lamplight, and the king (or whoever he was) pulled at the scarf around his neck and clutched at his collar. He crossed into the storage room, the other man following.
Their steps came closer and closer to Pinmei, each thud of their boots echoing the pounding of her heart. The smell of cold and horse and oiled leather filled her nose, and she could see the lacings of each small plate of their armor.
“What is that?” The king breathed sharply and stopped directly in front of the gang. Pinmei’s breath left her, yet she couldn’t look away or even close her eyes. The king bent over, and if he had been looking at the gang, he could have seen Pinmei through the crack, her eyes fixed upon him like those of a trapped mouse.
But the king was not looking at the gang; he was looking over it. And he was staring with such intensity the air around him seemed to crackle. With a sudden forceful movement, he reached out his arm, his collar falling open so Pinmei could see a silver pin sticking out from the imperial gold silk of his hidden robe. Imperial gold silk? That meant this pretend soldier was not just a king—he was the king of all the kings! He was the emperor!
“This is mine!” the emperor said with an anger that would have surprised Pinmei had she been capable of feeling any more shock. He was holding the blue rice bowl with the white rabbit painted on it.
CHAPTER
6
“Yes, Your Exalted Majesty,” the commander said as the emperor handed the bowl to him. He held it as if it were made of eggshells, and Pinmei could see it took great effort for the commander not to prostrate himself on the floor. “Was there anything else?”
The emperor looked around the hut as if it smelled of rotten fish. “No,” he said in disgust. “Take the old woman, and join the other troops at the bottom of this accursed mountain.”
At that moment, a loud clamor sounded outside the hut. The emperor replaced his helmet as the commander strode to the doorway.
“What’s the problem?” the commander snapped.
There was a brief sound of a struggle, and a soldier entered. “Just this boy,” he said, shoving a small figure forward so he fell into the room. Yishan!
It looked as if the entire cavalry had trampled on him, for his filthy shirt was the color of soot. His hat was gone—but his head, also grime spattered, was raised high. The commander waved the soldier away with his hand.
“Do not take her!” Yishan said angrily, as if continuing a conversation.
The emperor and the commander laughed. “Here is a small pup pretending to be a dog,” the emperor mocked.
Yishan’s face flushed, but he still did not bow his head. “At least it’s more honorable than a tiger pretending to be a man,” he said, his eyes flashing.
The laughter stopped. Even under the soldier’s helmet, Pinmei could see the emperor’s eyes narrow. In two ferocious strides, the emperor seized and lifted the boy as if he were an animal the emperor planned to slaughter. The emperor’s eyes scanned Yishan intently, from his muck-covered robes to his grubby face and matted hair. A faint, foul smell of horse dung drifted from the boy. The emperor snorted in disgust.
“You’re just another dirty turtle egg, like all the others,” he growled. “You want the old woman? Bring the emperor a Luminous Stone That Lights the Night, and you can have her.”
And, as if Yishan were no more than a sack of rice, he tossed the boy to the floor. He retucked his scarf around his neck, and he spat out his next words like venom.
“Burn the place,” he said.
CHAPTER
7
Pinmei felt like the walls of the gang were pressing into her, forcing the air from her lungs. Burn the place? Burn the hut? Her home? As the men left the hut and the night filled with noises of bellowed orders, horses, and stomping boots, Pinmei squeezed her head into her knees, the blackness creeping over her as she trembled.
“Pinmei! Pinmei!” Yishan was whispering desperately. “Where are you?”
Her throat refused to make a noise, but Pinmei’s quaking hand reached upward. The tray Amah had placed over the gang’s opening clattered to the floor, and in seconds Yishan was dragging Pinmei out of the gang.
“Pinmei!” Yishan said, shaking her. “We have to get out of here! Do you hear me?”
Pinmei nodded. The icy thatched roof made a sizzling sound, and she realized it was already beginning to flame. “They’re burning the hut,” Pinmei whispered.
“This hut is made of mountain stone,” Yishan told her. “It won’t burn fast, but we still have to leave.”
Pinmei looked at the door and windows and could see only the lit torches, balls of fire rolling and spinning madly around the house like toy yo-yos.
“How?” she asked helplessly.
Yishan, standing on a storage box, was already sweeping the bowls and cups off the shelves above the gang, letting them smash to pieces on the floor. Fiercely, he ripped the shelves off the wall, revealing a window closed in with ancient shutters and dirt. He grabbed a plank to cover the opening of the gang, pulled himself up to sit on it, and began to kick at the window with such force the dirt flew over Pinmei like rain.
Torches flew into the front room, crashing against the walls. As one rolled into the pile of fallen silk, Pinmei stared as the fabric smoldered and curled, the flames sputtering as if gasping.
Just as the burning smell began to choke her, a cold, clean wind blew. Yishan had succeeded. A square of night sky, the same deep blue of the stolen rabbit rice bowl, was framed on the storage room wall.
“Come!” Yishan said, thrusting his hand at her almost violently.
Pinmei
took another look at her home, but only a sea of flames, crackling orange and red, met her eyes.
“Pinmei!” Yishan said again.
She turned toward him, and he grabbed her hands.
CHAPTER
8
In the morning, the angry wind returned with the sun. Even inside the thick walls of Yishan’s hut, Pinmei could hear its constant roaring, like the crashing waves of a sea storm. She sat silently, listening to it.
“You should eat something,” Yishan said, handing her a small bowl of rice.
Pinmei remembered the clutching hands around Amah’s prized bowl. This is mine, he had said.
“He was the emperor,” Pinmei said, closing her eyes as the violence of the evening washed over her.
“Who was the emperor?” Yishan said.
Pinmei opened her eyes. The white steam from her rice gently reached toward her, its heat warming her hands.
“That soldier in green,” she said.
“The one who threw me as if I were an empty gourd?” Yishan asked. “What about him?”
Stuttering, Pinmei told Yishan what she had seen.
“But why did he take Amah?” Yishan said after Pinmei had finished. “He wouldn’t take her to work on the wall. What does he want?”
“He wants a Luminous Stone That Lights the Night,” Pinmei said slowly, remembering the glint in Amah’s eyes. “Maybe he thinks she can get it for him.”
“Yes, a Luminous Stone…” Yishan said, his voice trailing. His clothes, still slightly damp from their recent washing, had returned to their usual cinnabar color. “I wish I could remember.”
“Remember what?” Pinmei asked.
“If only I could remember…” Yishan started and stopped to look at Pinmei. “I feel like I should know what a Luminous Stone is. There must be a way we could find out.”
Pinmei shrugged. “It’s not as if we have the Paper of Answers, like in Amah’s story,” she said.
“I don’t remember that either,” Yishan said. “What’s the Paper of Answers?”
Long ago, when the City of Bright Moonlight was called the City of Far Remote, the new king arrived. He was about to marry one of the emperor’s granddaughters, and with the marriage he would be given rule of the city.
It did not seem much of a gift. The bordering Jade River constantly flooded, sweeping away the strongest of walls as if flicking a lock of hair. Those who survived the floods lived in poverty and despair.
When the new king first surveyed the land that was soon to be his, he must have felt resentment to be ruler of such a place. However, when his men accidentally knocked over an old bent man carrying buckets of water, the king insisted on stopping. To everyone’s great surprise, the king gave the man his arm and picked up the fallen buckets.
“Let me help you with these,” the new king said. “Do you fill these at that well over there?”
“You are very kind,” the old man said. Even though most nobles were not known for their strength, the king lifted the heavy buckets of water with ease. “Carrying water is not easy work.”
“I’ve done this before,” the king told him, “and you remind me of an old friend.”
“Do I, now?” the old man said to him. The king bowed goodbye and returned to his sedan chair. Just as the chair began to move away, the old man caught the king’s sleeve.
“If I were an old friend of yours,” the old man whispered, “I would tell you that when your father offers you a wedding gift, say you want the paper inside the mouth of his tiger statue.”
The new king stared openmouthed, but the sedan chair was already moving at a gallop. And when the king turned back to look, the old man was gone.
So that evening, when his father offered a wedding gift, the young king asked for the paper inside the mouth of the tiger statue. His father was taken aback, for not only had he forgotten about the paper, but he also considered it completely worthless. But the new king insisted he wanted only the paper and nothing else, so it became his gift.
At first, the king’s father seemed to be right about the paper. As the king sat at his desk by the window, trying to smooth its many creases ( his father had crumpled it into a ball before shoving it into the mouth of the stone tiger ), he did not see anything unusual about it.
The king sighed and pushed away the paper. He had larger troubles to think about. The prior king had left many problems. His walls had been the strongest walls ever built, but they, too, had been easily destroyed by the Jade River. And the old king, afraid the desperation would lead the people into disorder, had imposed strict laws with harsh punishments. As a result, the full prisons were threatening to overwhelm the guards, and there were also whispers of revolt. Was all lost before he had even begun? The new king placed his head in his hands to think, and when the sun fell, he still had not moved.
It was in the light of the moon that the king finally stirred. As he lifted his head, he glanced at the paper. Then he stared. The paper had changed.
On the paper was a line of words in a language the king did not know. As he puzzled over the words, a cloud covered the moon and they disappeared from the page. Just as the king began to curse himself, the cloud drifted and the words reappeared. The words only appear in the bright moonlight, the king realized.
After much effort, the king finally deciphered the words: You are a leader only to those who choose to follow.
What did that mean? Days passed but the king refused to believe it was nonsense. So when he watched his men begin to build another wall to try to hold back the Jade River, the solution came to him. The old king had tried to control the water and the people with force, a method that was eventually doomed to fail. The new king realized he could not fight the water. He had to lead the water to where he wished it to go and let the water follow.
Immediately, the new king ordered the men to stop building the wall. Instead, he began plans for ditches and outlets for the river. The water became irrigation for farmland around the city.
The floods subsided. The king made a series of proclamations encouraging building, trade, and virtue. Prosperity and peace came to the city, and slowly it became one of the most magnificent cities of the land, perhaps even outshining the emperor’s Capital City. The king often consulted the paper and quickly became famous for his wisdom. He renamed the city the City of Bright Moonlight, in honor of the light that revealed the words of the Paper of Answers.
“So the great City of Bright Moonlight was built because of a paper,” Yishan said after Pinmei ended the story.
“Well, it was a magic paper,” Pinmei said, but most of the despair had left her. Perhaps telling Amah’s story was magic as well, for Pinmei felt strengthened.
“And is the Paper still there?” Yishan asked.
“No, Amah said the Paper was given away and…” Pinmei sat up. “Yishan,” Pinmei continued slowly, “there’s no Paper in the City of Bright Moonlight, but there is a dragon’s pearl. Amah told me one of the kings of Bright Moonlight gave away the Paper of Answers and received a dragon’s pearl in return!”
Pinmei’s rice spilled onto her lap, but neither she nor Yishan noticed.
“A dragon’s pearl?” Yishan said. “Dragon’s pearls glow! A dragon’s pearl—”
“Could be a Luminous Stone That Lights the Night!” Pinmei finished.
“Then let’s go to the City of Bright Moonlight,” Yishan said, “and get that dragon’s pearl!”
“But it might not be!” Pinmei protested. “I just said a dragon’s pearl could be a Luminous Stone!”
“Well, we should go to the city and see,” Yishan said. “It’s our best chance of saving Amah!”
“But—but—” stuttered Pinmei. A hundred thoughts flew into her mind like a flock of upset crows. Go to the city? Save Amah? We couldn’t. I couldn’t.
“Pinmei!” Yishan said in frustration. “You think and think and watch and watch. When are you going to stop watching? It’s time to do something!”
; When it is time for you to do something, you will do it, Amah had said. Pinmei closed her eyes, imagining Amah’s face gazing at her, as steady and gentle as the moon. When Pinmei looked up, Yishan’s eyes were piercing hers, daring and encouraging at the same time.
“All right,” Pinmei said. “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER
9
“Do you even know how to get to the City of Bright Moonlight?” Pinmei asked. The snow fell upon them softly, like sifted salt, and their footsteps quietly thumped as they walked.
“Of course,” Yishan said. “You don’t?”
Pinmei shook her head. “I don’t remember,” she said. She could count the number of times she had been down the mountain on her hand. “Whose boots are these? They seem a hundred years old!”
Before they had left his hut, Yishan had tossed some robes and boots at her from a chest that looked as ancient as the gang Pinmei had hidden in. It had been almost comical how fast Yishan had moved once Pinmei had agreed to go. He had jumped up as if he were a lit firecracker, running into the other room, collecting food and clothes. I guess he’s afraid I’ll change my mind, Pinmei had thought with a wry smile.
“They’re Meiya’s, from when she was a girl,” Yishan said, his voice muffled as he pushed ahead of her to lead.
Auntie Meiya. Pinmei felt as if the water she had sipped was freezing in her stomach. Amah is alive, Pinmei told herself fiercely. Yishan could not say the same about Auntie Meiya. Before Pinmei could say anything aloud, Yishan called out, “There’s your hut! Maybe you can get some of your own stuff there.”
As they got closer, they both saw how unlikely that was. The stones of the hut walls were charred, while the remains of the burned chairs and tables lay strewn on the floor. A dark, brittle ash flew in the air like dying moths.