by Alice Major
“Are there other plants around here we can eat?” asked Alasdair.
Chuan shrugged and shook her head.
“Hope we’ve got enough to make it to the capital then,” Joss muttered.
“That’s what I was thinking,” he replied in a low voice. “On the other hand, this pack feels heavy enough to take us anywhere.”
Chuan was already on her feet and moving down the path. At long last, she stopped them again—this time, near a thicket of four or five trees like the thorny ones that grew near the li. Alasdair had the impression they didn’t quite belong on the landscape. They had passed no other trees at all, and these had an air of having been deliberately planted. A little way from the grove, a circle of stones surrounded a patch of blackened ground. Even now, the grass had not grown over the ashes of long-ago fires.
They struggled gratefully out of their packs. Chuan laid handfuls of dried grass and twigs inside the fire circle, placed the ember from her box carefully in this nest, then watched patiently until it hatched out a small tongue of flame. The others scoured around the trees for some of the larger dead branches to feed the fire. Then they boiled up a potful of millet and dried turnips, using liquid from several of the bayonet plants that grew plentifully nearby. Each plant was surrounded by a ring of five roots, Chuan told them, warning them not to take more than two roots from any one plant.
“Two will grow back in the next summer. More than that, and the plant won’t survive until next summer,” she said.
Then they scrubbed out the clay cooking pot with ashes, tucked an ember from the fire back in the damp moss of Chuan’s box, and stretched out in the long grass around the fireplace. Ariel lay on her back, arms behind her head, and stared up at the light node.
“You know, I’m beginning to see what they mean by the ‘pulse,’“ she said at last. “It does seem to get dimmer and brighter.”
“Looks just the same to me,” Joss said, yawning. “It doesn’t matter—I won’t have any trouble sleeping.”
“Me neither,” said Alasdair. “I’ve never walked so far in my life. We’re a long way from anywhere.”
“Do you think we should have come?” Ariel asked softly, not wanting Joss to hear.
“I wanted to,” Alasdair said simply.
“Why?” She was surprised and curious. “Do you really think this will help us get back home?”
“I’m just as happy not to be home,” he said cryptically. “Don’t you feel this is an adventure? Something different?”
“This is too different. And I just keep thinking of everyone back home. They must be frantic about us.”
“Um,” he said non-commitally.
Meanwhile, Joss’s breathing had become deep and regular. Ariel lay awake a little longer. She was wondering if there really were some faint lines flickering from the light node, rather like crackles of the palest yellow lightning, when she too drifted off.
The following days were much like the first: walking through the silent prairie until another thicket of trees rose up to meet them, almost like a hotel. Alasdair became more and more convinced that they were not accidental—that they had been planted deliberately as stopping places.
Once or twice, they found the path descending into another shallow bowl like the one they had left behind, cupping a small slough and perhaps a grove of trees. They would stop gratefully and wash, then refill their water bottles. The water would taste salty after the liquid from the bayonet-plant.
“It tastes like there’s baking soda in it,” Joss commented. “But nice.” She let her feet soak, wiggling her toes gratefully. “Thank heavens we were all wearing runners when we arrived here.”
“Yeah. But I’ve worn a hole through my left sock,” Alasdair examined his heel ruefully.
Ariel was staring at the sky again. “It does crackle,” she said.
“Hunh?”
“The light node. It flickers around the edges.”
The others stared, until Alasdair said, “Yes. I see.”
The flickers of light seemed stronger now. In fact, they seemed less like lightning flashes and more like the slow sweep of northern lights, reaching along way out from the node. You had to look hard to see the filmy gold sheets against the pale sky.
Chuan came towards the from further down the slough. Ariel pointed out the light to her. “It wasn’t like that before. I’m sure it wasn’t.”
Chuan nodded agreement. “The rains will be coming,” she said briefly. I’d like to be across the river before then.”
“How long will that be?”
Chuan fingered a cord that looped around the waist of her tunic. At the end of each day’s journey, she had tied a knot in it.
“Perhaps two more pulses.” Her voice was hesitant. She bent down to take up her pack again.
“Oh no, not yet,” moaned Joss, hating the thought of pulling socks and running shoes over her throbbing feet. “Can’t we stop here? We wouldn’t have to dig up roots for water for once.”
The other two suddenly felt that they didn’t want to go tramping on, and nodded agreement. Chuan looked at them uncertainly.
“We should push on,” she said. “We have very little millet left.” But even she seemed tired and not unwilling to be convinced. “On the other hand ...”
“It’s my turn to get wood,” Joss said promptly. “You make a fire circle, Alasdair. There isn’t one here.” She hurried off to the grove of trees. Once Chuan had her fire started, she’d be sure not to change her mind about going further right now.
Chuan was coaxing the tiny flame into life when Joss came flying back. “A noise—something in the trees,” she panted. Ariel looked up from the cooking pot that she was unpacking.
“An animal?”
“Something that grunted.”
Ariel looked at Chuan. “What kind of animal could it be?”
The other girl looked baffled. “Animals? Pigs or chickens or donkeys? You don’t find them unless you have people.”
“What about wild animals?”
But Chuan clearly had no concept of a wild animal.
“Come on,” urged Joss.
They all hurried to the thicket, which grew right up against the slope that sheltered the slough. This valley was deeper and narrower than the others, and the sides sloped more steeply. Joss led them through the trees to a point close to the valley wall and stopped.
“It was right around here,” she muttered. Cautiously they moved forward trying to step softly on the carpet of dried leaves under their feet and trying not to get caught in the tangle of low branches.
“Sh,” breathed Joss. “There it is again.”
Quite distinctly, they heard a snorting sound. It seemed to come from quite close by, but strangely enough, almost from shoulder height. Alasdair tightened his grasp around a thick branch he had picked up, while Chuan reached for the knife at her belt. They crept further, until Joss grabbed Alasdair’s arm and pointed. A dark opening showed in the hillside just above their heads—a small cave, with grass growing all around its entrance, binding the sandy soil into place. Joss hadn’t even dropped her finger when they heard it again, two rapid snorts like a sleeper turning over.
“It came from in there.” Joss’s low statement was unnecessary. As if in answer to it, a human face looked out from the cave.
It was a young, round face, solemn and smooth and very like P’eng’s. He was blinking, first with sleep and then, as he saw them standing below, with confusion and fear. He gave a wide-mouthed cry that woke someone else. A second face, a man’s, looked out beside the first one.
The man gave a short, sharp command, and the two figures sprang out and scrambled up the steep hillside above the cave. The man had a limp, Joss noticed, and a ragged bandage wrapped around his calf.
“Hey, wait,” she called. “We won’t hurt you.” But the two fi
gures didn’t pause.
“Shouldn’t we follow?” Alasdair asked, starting forward up the slope a little way.
“What would we do if we caught them?” Chuan called after him. Then she frowned. “Who are they? Why would anyone be here, so far from the river?”
“That guy was scared.” Joss squinted up at the cave.
“Probably from seeing your face,” Chuan teased.
“What language were they speaking? I couldn’t understand anything they said,” Ariel asked.
“It sounded like the language of the White Ti,” answered Chuan.
“The White Ti?”
“The White Ti people. They live far to the north, towards the dragon lands. They are said to be a barbarous people who do not grow mulberry trees or know how to shape pottery.”
“Barbarians!” Ariel shivered. “Do you think they’ll come back?”
“They seemed more frightened of us than we were of them,” her sister said.
Alasdair, meanwhile, had climbed the slope and stuck his head into the cave. The opening was barely wide enough to let him through, although the space widened out into a small room beyond. The floor was sandy and the light was dim. He crawled further in—the ceiling wasn’t high enough to let him stand—and swivelled around on all fours to look around.
He heard Joss calling. “Anything in there?”
“No,” he called. “Just sand . . . No, wait a minute.” As he was crawling back towards the entrance, he put his hand on something small and hard wrapped in cloth. It was too hard to see what it was in the gloom, so he squeezed back through the opening and handed it down to Joss. She reached up to take it, leaving his hands free to climb back down.
She unwrapped the grubby strips of cloth. “What is it?” asked Alasdair, coming to stand at her shoulder.
It was a curious stone object, ochre in colour, about ten centimeters long. It was rectangular in shape, with a hole through the centre. Each end extended into a short tube, with smoothly curved shoulders rising to the rectangular middle section. Chuan drew in her breath and reached out to take it gently.
“Ts’ung.” Her voice had an unwilling kind of reverence.
“What is it?” Joss repeated the question.
“Ts’ung. One of the six ritual jades.” Chuan looked in the direction where they had seen the fugitives disappearing. “They must have been in the capital.”
“You’ve seen it before?”
Chuan shook her head impatiently. “I told you, it is one of the six ritual jades. P’eng and I held it during the ceremony where we were named the daughters of the garden. It is one of the great treasures of the capital.”
“How would they get it?” Joss jerked her head towards the prairie.
The older girl shook her head, clearly mystified. “I don’t know.” Impulsively, she handed the object back to Joss. “Here, you take it.” Then strode quickly away.
The others clustered around to touch the ts’ung. It had the same heavy coolness as the stone weight on the stick Mark had found—a sleek, almost waxy finish. Joss found herself thinking of Molly’s hair. There were streaks of clear yellow and light brown brushing through the stone. Carefully, she tucked it in her pocket and they made their way back to the fire with its thin smoke rising.
When it came time to sleep, they took turns watching in case the fugitives did come back to retrieve the jade. But nothing disturbed them. Ariel, who had the last watch, fell asleep again halfway through her turn. She woke to a slight breeze that was making the bone-dry reeds in the slough clack lightly together. She realized how strange the sense of moving air had become. They had hardly felt the lightest wind since arriving in the garden.
Chuan was more or less right about the time their journey would take. By the middle of the next pulse, they were standing on top of a ridge looking down into a wide valley. The land climbed down in a series of benches that looked like a series of steps. From this distance, the steps seemed to be carpeted in tawny corduroy, since the grass grew in parallel ridges. At the bottom of the valley, a brown ribbon of river wound in deep loops that, in places, almost doubled back on themselves.
The breeze had become stronger, and Joss held her arms wide to welcome it. It brought them new scents: a faint, mud-like smell from the river below and—when the wind strengthened—another fragrance like the scent of dusty spices. It reminded Joss of the bottle of bay leaves from their kitchen at home.
A steady stream of brightness was pulsing from the light node now, like a needle sweeping around a dial and trailing a film of gold with it. The light node also seemed closer overhead than it had when they started the journey. The silver strand of Yao-chi’s thread also seemed brighter, one end stretching back in the direction of the garden, the other pointing forward.
They began to pick their way along the trail that slanted sideways down the first bench. Although the river had seemed very close when they stood at the top of the valley, they had to stop again to eat and sleep before they got to the bottom. The benches of land were so wide that the river was often out of sight while they crossed one. At last, they found themselves standing on the river bank, staring across at the other side.
The water moved slowly—so slowly that twigs floating on its surface hardly seemed to move at all. There was a tumble-down hut nearby that might have housed a ferryman once. Now it wore a deserted look. Ariel voiced the question.
“How do we get across?”
“There should be boats,” Chuan said, and began searching in the brush that had grown up close to the hut. Soon they found a trio of small, round boats, each protected by a large piece of leather, under a low wooden platform. They dragged one out and turned it over.
“It looks more like a basket than a boat,” Ariel said doubtfully.
The frame was made of thick stalks like bamboo woven together. The frame could easily be seen on the inside, but the outside was covered with a thick plaster of clay and a skin of leather. They dragged it down to the water’s edge and slid it in.
“Will that really float?” Joss asked.
“We’ll soon find out,” Alasdair panted. To Joss’s surprise, the coracle bobbed lightly on the water. Chuan ordered them to get in.
The wind blowing down the river valley had started to turn gusty, and Ariel objected. “Isn’t there some other way?”
“No,” Chuan answered shortly. Ariel sighed and clambered awkwardly into the boat, which dipped alarmingly as she leaned on the edge. She sat beside Joss on one of the two short seats that crossed the circular frame. Alasdair got in last, dipping his left shoe in the water as he climbed aboard.
Chuan pulled a short, wide-bladed paddle out from under one of the seats, and with a strong shove sent them out away from the bank. But once they were away from the bank, her careless confidence seemed to desert her. She gave one tentative stroke with the paddle. The boat revolved sedately in the water but didn’t move any closer to the opposite bank. Finally, they found that by making one short paddle stroke on Chuan’s side and then another on Alasdair’s, they could make a slow, wobbly progress across the wide expanse of water.
“It’s like driving a turtle,” Joss said with a giggle. Ariel didn’t laugh with her. Instead, she watched the thick brown water nervously.
Fortunately, there was hardly any current to carry them off course. But the gusty wind did push them further downstream than they intended to go. They landed at a stretch of the far bank tangled with thick bushes, and struggled through them to find they were half a kilometer downstream from a hut that seemed to be a companion to the one on the other side.
By now, the wind was blowing steadily and the light node seemed hazier than ever, as though it was gleaming through a thick fog. Fine drops of water sprinkled their faces and Ariel shivered with sudden cold.
“Now what?” she asked.
“Into shelter,” answered Chuan. “T
he first rain is coming.” She set off towards the hut, whose small peaked roof was just visible over the bushes. The mist was driving at them harder by the time they struggled through the snarled branches to get there.
It was a comfortless shelter, although at least it was dry enough. The wet was already too heavy to light a fire outside, so they chewed at dried fruit and shivered. But gradually the warmth of their bodies filled the hut and made them drowsy. They fell asleep on the earth floor.
They woke to the same sound of the wind pouring down the river, and the added spatter of heavy rain. Alasdair poked his head out into the steady, drenching downpour.
“Don’t think we’ll be going anywhere in this,” he said, pulling his head back in.
They fixed a couple of places where water was seeping through between the base of the walls and the ground and settled down to wait out the rain. Chuan whiled away the time by telling them the legends and customs of her people. She told them of the Yellow Emperor, the great Huang-Ti, who brought the world into being and brought people into the world, teaching them to grow crops and harvest them. He gave people the skills of medicine and music, of reading and writing, of casting fortunes from the oracle bones.
Chuan went on to describe the temple ceremonies where she and P’eng had been initiated as daughters of the garden.
“We stayed right inside the palace.” She sounded a shade boastful. “And wore the robes of a princess. P’eng wore the Lady’s head-dress and I wore her crystal necklace.”
“Who is the Lady, anyway?” Ariel asked idly.
“Who was she,” Chuan corrected. “She was Lo-Tsu, the wife of the Yellow Emperor. She was as great and wise as Huang-Ti himself, and brought the arts of spinning and weaving and music to her people.”
“And she lived in the garden?”
“Yes.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Oh, many generations,” Chuan said vaguely. “If she lived at all.” Her voice took on a bitter edge. “Perhaps it was just a tale—like the tales they told us of the honour of being daughters of the garden. Perhaps she was just made up.” She stopped suddenly, a little aghast at her irreverence. “Enough stories,” she said and tugged her blanket around her.
