The Jade Spindle

by Alice Major

  Eventually the wind stopped, but the rain still poured down. They chewed more dried fruit—there was very little left—and stopped up the leaks again. They slept some more. This time, they woke to a calm sky with the light node trailing its filmy glory again. There was freshness in the air and Chuan was quite cheerful as she pulled on her pack.

  “Home soon,” she said.

  Enthusiasm was dampened a bit, even for her, by the long slow haul back up out of the river valley. Their packs were lighter and their muscles stronger than when they had started out, but it was still tiring to plod on mile after mile.

  When they finally reached the lip of the valley, they paused gratefully. The countryside that opened out in front of them looked much the same as the prairie they had left behind, but it had an indefinably settled look—the look of country more acquainted with human beings. Off in the distance stretched what seemed to be fields and the groves of trees were more frequent and larger.

  As they walked during the next two pulses, the trail become more and more marked. They began passing small villages, not unlike the li they left behind. Each was a square of nine huts surrounding a central open area with the fireplace. They were empty, but did not seem abandoned.

  “The people will be out in the fields planting,” Chuan told them.

  At one village, two small children playing near the road hurried over to look at the approaching strangers. They took a solemn, wide-eyed look at Ariel and Joss, then ran back to the huts shouting for their mothers.

  The villages become more frequent, and finally they started to pass villagers working close to the trail, who looked up as they passed. Sometimes they would simply stare hard and make a sign with their hands. Once or twice they would crowd closer and follow the travellers a little way along the trail, muttering among themselves. Chuan would turn and make a fierce sign with her own hand, and none of the peasants followed them very far.

  They no longer slept beside thickets of thorn trees. The rains came and went too frequently to make this possible. Once they halted in a deserted cabin. Another time they approached one of the villages. Chuan spoke briefly and proudly to the villagers, who looked sideways at Joss and Ariel and examined Alasdair’s strange clothes before agreeing to give them shelter and a meal.

  The children always stared frankly at them. Now and then, Joss would hear them whispering “monsters.”

  “I’m getting tired of feeling like a side show,” she grumbled. “You’d think we had three heads.”

  Chuan laughed. “Three noses like that! Save me.”

  As they got closer to the capital, Chuan laughed more and more. She seemed buoyant and yet nervous: sometimes striding down the trail in a great hurry ahead of them; sometimes dawdling for no apparent reason when it came time to buckle on her pack and set out again.

  Once, when they had halted at the side of the trail, Joss asked abruptly, “So what will we do exactly when we get there?”

  “Find the Count of Religious Affairs,” Chuan said promptly, but with a tinge of doubt in her voice.

  “They won’t ... punish you, or anything?” Ariel asked. “For coming away.”

  The answer was a shrug. “I think you will be my passport,” she said frankly. “And I don’t care. I’m glad to get away. Whatever.” She tossed back her thick braid.

  There was more and more traffic on the road. Two boys driving a herd of stubborn, squealing pigs that sounded like so many rusty door hinges. Then a party of peasants with large pails hung from long poles carried on their shoulders. A procession of meek, straw-hatted girls led by an old woman with a fierce, gap-toothed grin. Old men with packs, young men tugging donkeys, women with malcontented chickens in wicker baskets. A whole busy population on the move, like themselves, towards the capital.

  Chuan bargained some of their dried fruit for a couple of wide straw hats. With their faces shaded and hair covered, Joss and Ariel didn’t attract quite so much attention, although passers-by still looked curiously at their clothes. Alasdair marched along quite happily, smiling into faces that passed. Some, surprised, would smile back.

  Finally, the plain opened again onto another broad valley with a ribbon of brown water below, not as large as the river they had already crossed but still impressive. And on a broad, flat expanse in a loop of the river . . .

  “Ta-Yi. The Great City,” Chuan announced.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Molly sat with a white anger in her chest, hard as the rock at her back. She wanted to shake Joss for leaving her here. What was she supposed to do, for God’s sake? Stuck here with no-one but Mark and the two villagers. She lifted her fist, clenched it as tightly as she could and flailed it against the ground beside her. She knocked over the bowl of that horrible, bland porridge that P’eng had timidly brought and laid down on the ground beside her. It oozed into the soft plush of the grass. She felt she’d like to squeeze something inexorably between her fingers until it got like the porridge.

  Mark found her still sitting there some time later, her head against her knees. She looked up as he made his way across the garden to where she sat.

  “They’ve gone?” she asked. He nodded. She put her head back on her knees.

  Mark hesitated for a moment, then asked, “Would you ... like some help to get back into your wheelchair?”

  “What’s the point” She spoke without lifting her head. “I can’t go anywhere in it.”

  “I could take you back to the li. P’eng’s there.”

  “No,” she said curtly. She couldn’t bear the thought of P’eng’s timid edging-around, as though she was afraid to look at Molly. As though she still saw her as a monster.

  Mark hesitated again. “D’you want me to stay with you? I was going to help Li-Tsai dig the fields up for planting millet. They have to get that done soon or they won’t have anything to so them through next winter. But if you’d like me to stay here ...”

  “No. Just go.” She didn’t look up as he retreated back across the garden. After he was gone, she dragged herself onto the rock and lay face down on its cold surface, cursing to herself.

  Molly could nurse anger for a good long time. She hadn’t always been that way, although she had always had a quick temper. It seemed as though anger had gained strength in her as her body had weakened. It sometimes seemed like something necessary, something that goaded her into life, into not giving up.

  But even she couldn’t stay angry forever. At last, she began to trail her hand in the water, feeling it soothe her burned palm again. Some of the heat went out of her temper at the same time. After a longer while, she began to feel hungry. This distracted her too, although she felt a little spurt of resentment flare up.

  “Where has everyone gone?” she thought. “They’ve forgotten all about me.”

  The brief flare of bitterness subsided again as she moved her hand back and forth in a figure-eight pattern through the water. With her fingertips, she explored the rock wall of the pool, touching the spongy-soft moss that clung to the rocks and feeling the cracks and bumps of stone underneath. After a while, it seemed as though her fingers had developed their own knowledge of the world, beyond what she could see.

  Now, her hands found something new—a shallow niche in the rock directly below her, not much wider than her hand itself. She reached into it and touched something unexpectedly smooth. A tingle ran through her and she snatched her hands out of the water.

  After a few moments, curiosity got the better of her and she reached down again. This time, her groping fingers closed on something the size of a small stone. Bringing it up, she found it to be a tiny frog, perfectly carved out of green stone. Its eyes were inlaid with gold, and the carving had been done to take advantage of the fact that parts of the stone were a lighter colour. In particular, the frog’s throat was puffed out in a bubble of pale, fragile green.

  She pulled herself into a sitting positi
on and turned it over in her fingers. Absorbed, she hardly noticed Mark coming across the garden with a bowl of food.

  “P’eng asked me to bring this to you,” he said, sitting down on the rock beside her. “I think she’s a little afraid of you.”

  “Because of how I look,” she said bitterly.

  “No. I think she’s taken it into her head that you’re magic. And she thinks you’re mad at her.”

  This made Molly laugh. “Magic!”

  “Yeah, well—the tongue-on-the-forehead thing, you know. Anyway, I think she half expects you to turn her into a toad or something.”

  “Oh,” she exclaimed, remembering what she held. “Look what I’ve found.”

  He examined the little carving as closely as she had, then placed it on his left palm, admiring how life-like it was. The stone felt unusually heavy.

  “It feels a lot like that stone weight on the stick,” Molly said as if guessing his thought. “Sort of heavy and cool. Only it’s a different colour. I wonder where it comes from. Who put it there.”

  “Maybe the others would know. We could take it to the li and show them.”

  She hesitated, feeling a strange reluctance that had nothing to do with seeing P’eng and Li-Tsai. “Do you think it’s okay to take it out of the garden?”

  “We’d bring it right back.”

  “Okay. Let me eat this mush first.”

  Mark sat beside her while she spooned the porridge into her mouth. Hunger made it taste a lot less bland. She ate the whole bowlful thoughtfully, then put the bowl down beside her.

  “I’m sorry I was so bitchy,” she said at last.

  “No problem,” he said awkwardly. “I guess it must be tough being left behind.”

  “Yeah.” There was a silence between them for a time, then she said, “I get angry .... just angry. People think I can’t do things.”

  “But some things you can’t do, Molly,” he said reasonably.

  “And there are more and more of them all the time,” she flashed. “You don’t know what it’s like getting weaker and weaker and knowing ...”

  “Knowing?”

  Her voice became very low. “Knowing you probably won’t live all that long. Might not even graduate from college, or ever get married, or do the things everyone else expects to do.”

  Mark was startled. “You mean, this disease will kill you?” he said in disbelief. He had known about Molly’s illness for years, but it was just there. He had never been aware that it had this dimension.

  “Not the disease, exactly. But it eats away my muscle tissue. That’s why I’m so thin. Eventually, if I get sick—like pneumonia or something—my lungs would just be too weak to breathe.”

  He found this difficult. He didn’t know whether to avert his eyes in sympathy or look directly at her. With an effort, he did the latter. “And there’s nothing anyone can do?”

  “No. Something just went wrong with my genes. It doesn’t happen like this very often to girls. Mostly to boys. I’m a one-in-a-million freak.”

  He ignored the bitterness in her voice. “Does Joss know about this?” He felt almost angry at his twin for not telling him, for leaving it to Molly to have to squeeze this information out of herself.

  “I don’t like to talk about it. I haven’t told anyone else. My parents and the doctors and people like that know, of course.”

  An awkward silence fell. Molly broke it at last with a forced cheerfulness. “Look, I’m not gong to drop dead on the spot. Help me into the wheelchair and we’ll go show the frog to Li-Tsai.”

  “Okay.” He tried to match her lighter tone. “But you’d better tell me if you ever feel a cold coming on.”

  She laughed.

  Li-Tsai and P’eng were eating their meal as Mark pushed the wheelchair into the li. P’eng jumped up nervously and put her hands together. “Are you all right?” she asked. “Would you like more to eat?”

  “I’m fine,” Molly replied, making her voice as cheerful and friendly as she could. “Here, look what we’ve found. Hold out your hand.”

  P’eng felt the weight of the little statue in the centre of her palm and sat down again beside the guardian to examine it. “It’s jade,” she said looking up in awe.

  “You mean the stone?” Molly asked.

  P’eng nodded, rubbing her thumb against the carving. “Jade is only used for very sacred things,” she said. “I wouldn’t even know what it felt like if it wasn’t for the instruction Chuan and I were give before we came here.”

  Molly described where she had found it. “Why would it be there?” she asked. “Who could have put it there?”

  Li-Tsai and P’eng had no idea. “What kind of creature is it,” P’eng asked the guardian. He shook his head, baffled.

  “It’s a frog,” said Mark, slightly surprised that they wouldn’t recognize it. But the word clearly meant nothing to them. “It’s an animal you find in our world. It’s pretty much that same size and it lives in water.”

  P’eng looked at him, puzzled. “There are only five animals,” she said. “The chicken, the duck, the horse, the pig and the sheep.”

  “This is a wild animal.” He looked at Li-Tsai’s face. “You haven’t any wild animals here, do you?” he asked in wonderment. He looked at Molly. “Just think of it. There wasn’t even a worm when I was digging the field.”

  She thought of the immense quiet of the prairie—not so much as a cricket whirr or a bird calling. “How could that be?” she asked Li-Tsai. “If you have people here, there must be other animals too. We all got here together—evolution and all that.”

  The guardian looked faintly disturbed. “There are no other animals here.” He laid the very slightest stress on “are.” Mark jumped on it immediately.

  “There are none. But there were some. Is that what you mean?”

  Li-Tsai looked more uncomfortable than ever. “This is not something for me to speak of to you.”

  “Well, who else should you speak to?” Molly said impatiently.

  An expression of great sadness came over the old man’s face, and he shook his head gently. Mark thought he could see a brightness in his dark eyes almost as though there were tears there. Then Li-Tsai handed the carving back to Molly without saying anything, stood up and walked towards his hut.

  “Wait,” called Molly. “What should we do with the frog?”

  “It belongs in the garden,” he said. “Take it back, daughters.” Picking up the spade that leaned against the hut wall, he moved slowly towards the path to the millet fields.

  “Wait,” she called again, but Mark touched her on the arm. “Let him go just now. I’ll go help him again and see if I can get him to talk. Will you be okay here?”

  “Sure. P’eng can help me back to the garden later,” she replied. “Won’t you?” The other girl returned her smile cautiously and nodded.

  Mark seized his own spade and went off after Li-Tsai. The guardian was already digging, his slight figure bending to lift spadeful after spadeful and turn it over. They worked silently together for a while. Mark struggled with the wooden spade, which had a handle that was too short for him and meant he had to stoop almost constantly. Within a few moments, his back felt like it was on fire. But he hung on grimly, digging his way to the end of the row where he was working, then pausing to straighten his back and look around. All the work that they’d done so far hardly made a dent in the field, which suddenly seemed enormous. To avoid the discouraging sight, he looked away to the slough gleaming dull silver below them and to the fine line of the path that the travellers had taken. Then he looked back at Li-Tsai, who seemed less tired than Mark felt. The guardian was digging slowly but steadily, his eyes on the ground but vague, as though he was lost in the much larger field of his own thoughts. Finally he threw down his spade.

  “Time to rest,” he said, making his way to the gr
ass at the edge of the field. Mark flopped beside him, panting. He felt as though his back might break and his eyeballs might burst.

  “We’ll have to fix a longer handle to that spade for you,” the guardian said. “You have not been used to digging and planting,” he added with a twinkle.

  “No,” Mark agreed fervently. “You sure are.”

  “Yes,” he replied ruefully. “Although it was not what I was brought up to do at your age either.”

  “What were you brought up to do?”

  “I hoped and studied to be a scholar. That was one reason I was so happy to be appointed guardian. There were tales of the great store of learning and knowledge kept at the Lady’s Garden.” He lifted his hand and squinted off into the distance, sighing. “But when I got here, that’s what they turned out to be. Merely tales.”

  “Couldn’t the guardian before you have told you that?”

  “The guardian before me was a stupid sot, from all accounts,” Li-Tsai said contemptuously. “But I didn’t even speak to him. They had left it too late to appoint an apprentice before he died. Even then the guardianship had become a matter of little account in the capital, and things were done carelessly. They told me, ‘Don’t worry, there are scrolls of instruction at the garden.” I had to teach myself what I needed to know from what I could find here.”

  “Scrolls?” Mark’s ears perked up. “D’you think . . .?”

  “Three small scrolls only.” Li-Tsai anticipated him. “Mostly a list of administrative duties and rituals. I don’t believe there is anything to help you.”

  “But you know more than administrative duties and rituals,” Mark said persuasively. “Where did you learn it, and why won’t you tell us?”

  “There are secrets I was taught in preparation for becoming guardian,” he admitted. “These are things that should be passed only from guardian to guardian. Since my predecessor was already dead, I received them from one old scholar in the capital who still knew where such things were written.”