Despite the closeness of the small village, the twins were not popular with the other kids. There were several reasons for this, as you’ll soon discover. Luckily, it never bothered Mei and Yun too much, because for them, having a twin was like having a best friend day and night. (It was also a little like having a shadow, in the times they annoyed each other.)
Madam Hu was on her porch, supervising the paper lantern distribution. Her lips were stained crimson above her sharp chin. Mei and Yun liked to joke that the color came from the blood of those who dared to cross her. Which was nearly everyone in the village, at some point or another.
“There you are,” she snapped at the approaching twins. “Hurry, hurry. We haven’t got all day. Grab a lantern, both of you, and start filling them. Candles are over there.”
Each paper lantern was the size of a winter squash. Madam Hu and the other women in the village had been working on them for two months, crafting them out of a bamboo frame and bright gauze dyed red for good luck. The insides had a hollow center for holding one small candle, which the twins helped fill. On the night of the festival, the lanterns would be released into the sky like floating pieces of sunlight.
While they worked, Madam Hu gossiped as per her usual habit. After a ten-minute tirade about her lazy neighbor, Madam Lee, who left laundry out to dry for days on end, she changed tacks to the subject of Grandpa. Was it true, she demanded of the twins, that the emperor’s son was coming all the way from the Imperial City, just for Grandpa’s special mooncakes? And wasn’t it an absolute disgrace that the officials had not heard of her renowned soup dumplings?
“Grandpa’s mooncakes will be the talk of the nation,” replied Mei proudly.
“Hmph,” snorted Madam Hu, pinching a lantern with her long fingers. “That old fool thinks too highly of himself. Your whole family did. Teaching you two to read, for instance, and so young. What nonsense.”
Even though their small village did not have a school, the twins’ parents had often stressed the importance of knowing how to read and write. After their parents’ disappearance, Grandpa taught the twins at home from scrolls and other materials belonging to their father. They also learned arithmetic and how to use an abacus (which, as far as the twins could tell, was only useful for keeping track of points for card games).
“What good are book smarts in a place out here?” Madam Hu continued. “You only need good looks if you’re a woman out to get a good husband, and strong muscles if you’re a man out to get a good wife. Anything else is ambition. Ambition only leads to downfall. Look at what happened to your—” She suddenly squawked like a surprised hen, and yelled at Yun for creasing one of the paper lanterns. The twins spent the rest of the afternoon being lectured on how to properly handle the gauze.
That night before bed, Mei chided Yun for creasing the lantern on purpose.
Yun didn’t say anything. A thought came to him. “If Grandpa does manage to gain favor with the emperor’s son,” he said, “do you think we could...?” But then he fell silent again and began brushing his fingers along the chipped windowsill.
“What?” asked Mei as she adjusted the bamboo pillow on her bed.
“Nothing. I’m just mad about what Madam Hu said earlier.” In response to Mei’s raised eyebrow, Yun sighed and lowered his voice. “I was thinking, the emperor has a lot of power and resources. Maybe the palace has an investigator who can find out what happened to...”
He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t need to.
“Why would anyone from the palace help us?” replied Mei, suddenly irritated. “We’re nobody. Besides, we don’t need their help. We know where Mama and Baba are.”
“Sure.” Now Yun sounded irritated, too. He was too tired to remind her that they only knew where Mama and Baba went.
“They’re fine,” Mei said, as if reading Yun’s mind. “We’ll find them on our own one day. Grandpa won’t be able to stop us forever.”
Both siblings lay on their beds without another word. They stared out the window. The moon hung in the evening sky. It was nearly a perfect circle, its surface a lovely blend of gold and white, the light pressing against the shadows. But the sight only made Mei and Yun feel worse.
Because there had been a full moon, just like this one, when their parents had disappeared six years ago.
CHAPTER THREE
三
The City of Blossoms
The City of Ashes had not always been called by such a dreary name. Once upon a time, it had been known as the City of Blossoms. In the springtime, beautiful trees bloomed pink along the city’s green pastures—cherry blossoms and peach blossoms, their millions of petals dancing in the sunlight. Artists and poets from all over the country traveled to the city in order to capture its splendor on paper.
One year, an exceptionally talented poet arrived from the Imperial City, seeking a change of scenery and new inspiration. People nicknamed the young woman Lotus because she was as lovely as the flower. She was witty and good-natured, and she had long, gleaming black hair, which she often twirled absentmindedly around her ink brush as she worked on her poems. As pleasant as Lotus was, her words were even more enchanting. She had an ingenious way of using descriptions and metaphors. She could make a tiny ant seem as if it were king of the animals. She could extinguish the sun’s brilliance and cloak it with the darkness of night.
As the months went by, the thriving city continued to grow and attract more people, including scholars, aristocrats, and the like. One particular nobleman arrived. He was called the Noble General.
Everyone in the city soon knew about the Noble General, though it quickly became clear that the title was used rather ironically by everyone but himself. He bragged constantly about his ties to the emperor. He liked to make fun of the artists’ paintings, though he himself could only draw stick figures. He scorned the writers who read from their works, though the only writing he excelled at was tax decrees. He trampled the flowers on his path with indifference.
As soon as he met Lotus, he was set on making her his wife.
“I’ve turned down many great women, but you seem worthy enough,” he told Lotus one morning.
“That is kind of you,” Lotus replied shortly.
“Then it’s settled. We’ll depart tomorrow for the Imperial City. I’ll ask the palace to host a grand feast this Friday for the wedding, where you will dress in your finest gown. Obviously, you’ll have to stop writing your silly poetry once we’re married. That’s no job for a proper woman. You will bear me ten sons, and—”
“Excuse me, but I never agreed to marry you,” said Lotus.
She had heard about the Noble General’s notorious behavior. Unbeknownst to him, she’d written several poems about him that made all the children in the city giggle, including one titled “He Walks and Talks Like a Baboon.”
“You—you won’t marry me?” the Noble General sputtered. “Why not?”
In fact, many men had asked Lotus for her hand in marriage, and she was used to politely turning them down. She explained calmly how she was already in love with someone else.
“Who?” the nobleman demanded.
“I’m in love with the man who plants and cares for the trees and flowers,” answered Lotus. “He makes miracles grow from the soil. He breathes life into everything he touches. My heart blooms in his hands.”
And indeed, while Lotus wrote about the blossoms, the city gardener planted them. Lotus and Gardener Wong were often seen talking and laughing together along the city’s paths. As the gardener tended the flowers and trees, Lotus would whisper to them—uplifting words like “grow,” “flourish,” and “shine.” Her words seemed to have an extraordinary effect on the plants, so that those she spoke to always seemed greener and larger, their petals glistening with more shades of pink than others. They caught your eye the same way the brightest stars in the sky do.
After a tender courtship, Lotus and the city gardener announced their marriage. The entire city celebrated with fir
eworks and helped plant new rows of bright, dazzling flowers along the city perimeter. A year later, the couple had a beautiful baby son.
But the Noble General never forgot his rejection. He couldn’t believe that he’d been passed over for a lowly, uneducated gardener.
“Nobody makes a fool of me,” he snarled. “They will pay. They will all pay. Mark my words.”
CHAPTER FOUR
四
A Notable Festival
When the twins awoke the next day, the weather had changed notably. A set of heavy, lifeless clouds blanketed the village. They loomed so close that grayish white wisps touched the rooftops. There was something particularly dismal about these clouds, so that everything underneath them felt extra cold and extra dreary.
Mei and Yun felt extra sullen from the sudden gloom. They argued over their bowls of porridge at breakfast. Yun accidentally stepped on Smelly Tail’s tail, causing the already cranky cat to scratch everything in its reach, which caused Mei to drop and break three plates.
After Mei had cleaned the mess and tended to her clawed ankles, the twins went outside. They realized quickly that no one else in the village was having a good day, either. People bickered left and right over the smallest things. Kai, the one child in the village who never made fun of the twins, refused to play with them. Around noon, Mao-Mao’s father, who normally was the calmest man in the village, nearly got in a fistfight with Farmer Jao. Miss Bing dropped a basket of sweet potatoes and caused a thirty-minute screaming session among five people claiming she was trying to trip them. In the afternoon, Doctor Po stormed out of his house, smashed an egg on his porch, and shouted, “I give up! Why prescribe medicine if no one listens?”
“Everyone’s acting as if they ate coals for breakfast,” observed Yun.
“It’s strange,” agreed Mei.
Grandpa also noted the villagers’ unusual behavior. “This whole affair with the emperor’s son must have brought on unexpected stress for the whole community,” he guessed. “People tend to lose their heads in the face of royalty.”
“Hopefully the moon is visible tomorrow evening,” said Mei. “In time for the festival.”
“Not to worry,” said Grandpa with a smile. “My mooncakes shall make everyone happy again, whether or not the sky cooperates.”
Grandpa was optimistic like that. In spite of life’s hardships, he rarely worried about things. When he’d broken his wrist a few years ago after climbing a tree to rescue Smelly Tail, all he did was smile and say, “Now I get to enjoy tea with Doctor Po.”
It was Grandpa who kept reassuring Mei and Yun that their parents were well, that they were simply busy learning all they could about the City of Ashes. Research was hard work, he’d told them. Don’t be angry with them for being gone.
Three months stretched to six, then twelve. But not to worry, their parents would return for the twins’ seventh birthday. Three missed birthdays later, when the twins finally began trying to sneak to the city themselves, Grandpa had stopped them and repeated gently but firmly, “Be patient. Sometimes life takes us in unexpected directions.”
The clouds did not disappear overnight. On the morning of the festival, they loomed even closer, a wall of gray. Around midday, they started rolling oddly, as if a breeze had sent them rippling across the sky, like when a stone is dropped in water.
Except there was no wind to move them. The villagers had never seen such a thing.
“It’s a bad omen,” Elder Liu warned the villagers. “These clouds are a sign of ancient magic.” Elder Liu tended to ramble about things like that, reading too much into tea leaves and discarded chicken bones.
Weird weather or none, the festivities had to go on.
Mei and Yun put an extra effort into their appearance. They washed their faces and braided their hair. Mei had dug out her mother’s special butterfly hairpin and placed it in her braid.
They ate their breakfast anxiously. Grandpa was the only one at the table who seemed untroubled. After breakfast, Grandpa began making spiced fish stew for the festival and sent Mei and Yun to help the other villagers with the final preparations.
Everyone had put on their best clothes and looked clean and polished. Even Dandan, a five-year-old who played in the mud as much as the pigs did, had been scrubbed clean by his mother from head to toe. (When Mei and Yun saw him, they thought he ironically resembled a pig even more, as his newly washed skin was raw pink.)
Spotless as the villagers looked, there was still no change in their attitudes. Nobody spoke to one another. Children sat off by themselves instead of playing together. Families glared at one another, as if daring the others to make the first wrong move. There were no greetings, no laughter or friendly smiles. Madam Hu, who wore an overly flowery robe, stood menacingly on her porch. She was in a fouler mood than the twins had ever seen her, ready to bark at anyone who passed. Mei and Yun decided it was best to lie low until the festivities started, rather than help with the final preparations and risk angering anyone further.
They retreated to a private spot near their favorite willow tree by the river. From the bank, they dangled branches and tried to make ripple patterns in the water, one of their favorite pastimes, but it turned out to be difficult that day. The normally calm river was as turbulent as the clouds above. So they gave up and instead sat back and watched the misty yellow-and-blue fog that had started rolling over the grass.
That was the main reason the twins were unpopular with the other children in the village. Mei and Yun often saw things that the others didn’t: soft mists hovering over the river of fish, or sunny wisps of smoke hanging above Smelly Tail’s ears as the cat slept. They knew their parents had seen them, too, or at least their mother did. Mama had often pointed out the colored clouds the way one might describe the weather, with casual remarks like, “The grasses are looking light blue today,” or, “Poor Farmer Jao always sleeps in a haze of purple.”
When the twins were younger, the appearance of such colors and vapors seemed perfectly ordinary. It was a part of their everyday lives; they did not fear it, nor did they question it, the same way you might not normally question why everyone needs sleep or why people laugh when they’re happy. But it quickly became apparent that this ability, whatever it was, was not normal. The other kids in the village simply did not see random, colorful clouds in a room, did not see little wafts of blue or yellow fog lingering above a toddler or a field of grasshoppers. Mei had once asked Grandpa about it, but he’d just said it was perfectly fine and not to worry—though that was easy for Grandpa to say because he wasn’t the one being called “fog-brained” by the other children in the village. Afterward, the twins began keeping their observations to themselves.
Madam Lilian and her husband, Mister Ahn, passed by on their daily walk.
Normally, Madam Lilian would affectionately pinch the twins’ cheeks and offer them candied fruits. But today, she shot them a frosty look and clucked, “Lazy, ungrateful orphans, whiling away the hours by the river while their grandfather is toiling in the kitchen. Children like that never show their appreciation for adults.”
“If anything, you should blame their parents,” her husband replied, in the way grown-ups sometimes talk as if children don’t have ears.
The story of the twins’ parents was no secret in the village. It wasn’t just Madam Hu who had an opinion of their parents’ ambitions and interests. Mei and Yun often overheard the other villagers’ whispers about their family behind their backs. How unfortunate it is for Old Wu, who must bear the burden of feeding two extra mouths after the parents disappeared, some said. Poor, foolish scholars, their parents had been called. Always had grand notions of gaining infinite knowledge about the outside world instead of tending the fields and family, murmur murmur. But the villagers didn’t actually know what had happened to Mei and Yun’s parents. Nobody did. All anyone knew was that they’d ventured into the City of Ashes six years ago for research purposes, promising to return within three months, and had never been
seen again.
Yun glared at the retreating backs of Madam Lilian and Mister Ahn, then turned to his sister. “I still think this is our chance,” he said in a low voice. “The emperor’s son coming to our village is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
“No, not this investigator stuff again,” groaned Mei.
“It doesn’t hurt to ask! If anything, we can just ask him if the rumors about the City of Ashes are true. The emperor’s son is bound to know what goes on across China. If the city is as strange and dangerous as people say, he can confirm”—Yun’s voice caught in the back of his throat—“confirm the questions we have,” he finished.
Mei threw a pebble into the water. Her brother could be quite stubborn, like a bruise that wouldn’t fade. “Don’t ask on the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival,” she said.
“Why not?” challenged Yun, who thought his sister was equally stubborn.
Mei shook out her hair to readjust the butterfly pin. She held the hairpin in her hands for a moment. Their mother once said it had been carved from a magical bamboo tree in the mountains. It was supposed to draw out the natural beauty in every girl who wore it. Mei had worn it the last few years for special occasions, and Madam Hu or another adult would chortle, Looks like the magic didn’t work this time. Perhaps you played in the dirt too much. It was likely they thought the hairpin’s purported magic was Mama’s way of encouraging Mei to be more like those good, graceful girls in the village—the kind of girls who didn’t climb trees or play in the dirt or do cartwheels. What they did not know was that Mama never minded those things, and she always told Mei she was lovely whether she wore the hairpin or not.
“Why not?” Yun said again, jarring Mei from her memory.
“Because the Mid-Autumn Festival is a time of happiness,” answered Mei, tracing the bronze butterfly with her finger. “Not a time of dwelling on the bad.”
The Dreamweavers Page 2
