To the Sky Kingdom

by Tang Qi

  I pulled out the night pearl to cast some light inside the dark hut. The glow of the pearl revealed that Zhe Yan was still meticulous about everything and that the bed in the little hut had been made up just how I liked it.

  There was a stone plow leaning against the wall next to the door, which I had used to dig holes and plant peach seedlings when I was younger. I laid my fingers on it again now, those two bottles of peach blossom wine not far from my mind.

  The moon in the Ninth Sky was unusually round, and under the light it spilled, it was easy to find the wild ginger tree that Zhe Yan had told me about.

  I used the stone plow to dig into the earth beneath the plant and found myself in luck. Straightaway I could see the aventurine wine pot shining through the loose yellow soil, its glittering green reflecting onto some of the wild ginger leaves. I gleefully pulled out the bottles and leaped up onto the roof of the hut with them in my arms. The hut shook a little before steadying again.

  The night wind felt cool up there on the roof, and it made me shiver. After a bit of fumbling with the tightly sealed bottle spout, the cork eventually shot out the top, and the aroma of Ten-Mile Peach Grove wine overwhelmed me. I closed my eyes and took in a deep lungful, ever admiring of Zhe Yan’s talent.

  I had not been given many opportunities for romance in this life, but I did have one great love, and that was wine.

  When drinking, it was important to complement the wine with the right blend of natural conditions, scenery, and company. This evening’s moon was full, and there were bright clusters of stars overhead. The Eastern Sea peach grove provided the scenery, and there were several crows perched on the roof of the hut beside me, giving certain company. I took a few slurps from the mouth of the bottle, smacking my lips and letting the wine wash over my tongue. I sensed something slightly different about the flavor of this bottle of peach blossom wine.

  I took swig after swig, and although I did not have any snacks to accompany it, looking out at the cold moon reflected onto the surface of the Jade Pool provided a nice diversion, and before long I had finished half a bottle.

  The wind was picking up, and tipsiness was starting to creep over me, blurring the edges of my mind. There seemed to be a flimsy pink curtain fluttering over the gleaming black night, while a fire began to swell inside my body. I tossed my head from side to side, and with shaking hands I tried to unfasten my lapel. Despite the cold breeze, I grew hotter, eventually my bones seemed to radiate, the marrow inside red with glowing embers. My head was foggy and my thoughts muddled, but I had the vague sense that this was not mere drunkenness. I could no longer deal with the heat, but I did not feel lucid enough to cast a spell to disperse it.

  I swayed about before I managed to get to my feet. I wanted to dive into the Jade Pool to cool myself off, but I stumbled and stepped into thin air before plummeting down from the hut roof.

  I braced myself for a painful fall, but strangely enough, there was no thud as my body hit the ground. Instead I felt myself being embraced by something very cold, a soothing balm that cooled my body.

  After some struggle, I managed to open my eyes, and made out a blurred figure in front of me, wearing a black cloak. Immediately I knew it was not Zhe Yan.

  I felt giddy as my head spun. The moon’s white light spread out over the entire peach grove, illuminating the flowers and the luxuriant leaves on the branches, making it look enchanted. The layer of mist hovering above the surface of the nearby Jade Pool suddenly transformed into a raging fire.

  I clenched my eyes shut, feeling so hot it hurt. I moved toward the source of this coolness, pressing myself urgently against the figure in front of me. I lifted my cheek to feel it against the bare skin of his jaw and neck, cold as a piece of jade. My hands seemed to have taken on lives of their own; trembling, they started to remove the strap from his waist. He reacted by pushing me away. I pressed up against him once more. “Please don’t be scared,” I said in an attempt to reassure him. “I’m just trying to cool my hands.” But he only pushed me away with more force.

  I had not used an enchantment spell on anyone in thousands of years, but tonight I did not have a choice. Trying to clear my foggy mind and focus my attention, I opened my eyes to look at him. I was still feeling unsettled: I had no idea how long it had been since I had used such a spell and whether it would still be effective. He seemed confused. His eyes looked dim and unsettled. But then slowly, deliberately, he reached out and clasped me to him.

  A pheasant crowed three times, and I gradually started to come to. I had the vague recollection of an interesting dream I had been having. A passionate dream, in which I had behaved with abandon with a young gentleman. My display of lust had been no more than a ploy to cling to him and cool myself against his body. There had definitely been something strange about those bottles of wine Zhe Yan had given me for Third Brother. I stroked my head and tried to remember what the young man had looked like, but all I could remember through the haze was his black cloak and the enchanted peach grove behind him. It felt like both a dream and not.

  Zhe Yan’s peach grove was not far from the Eastern Sea, and so I was in no great hurry. I went around to his wine cellar in the back mountain and took three earthen jars of wine. I placed these in my sleeve pockets along with the one full and one half-empty bottles from last night and went to bid farewell to Zhe Yan.

  He went on about how when I got back to Qingqiu, I was to ask Fourth Brother to come over and help him plow the two thin strips of land in front of the mountain.

  “That might not happen. His bird steed, Bi Fang, flew away, and Fourth Brother has been out looking for him,” I explained. “It has been a while since he’s been in the foxhole.”

  Zhe Yan looked serious for a moment, rare for him, before giving a long sigh. “I knew I shouldn’t have helped him to capture Bi Fang from the Western Mountains. Ah well, you live and learn.” I offered a few words of comfort, and he took a few fresh peaches from his sleeves and gave them to me as refreshment for the journey.

  Looking up ahead of me, I saw the surging blue waves of the Eastern Sea and puff after puff of lucky clouds in the sky. It was an auspicious day, and you could sense that all the immortals were gathering.

  I pulled a piece of white silk scarf four fingers wide from my sleeve and fastened it tightly around my eyes in preparation to enter the water. The Eastern Sea Water Crystal Palace was wonderful but extraordinarily bright, and for the last three hundred years, I had been suffering from an eye condition that made me sensitive to the bright lights.

  It was a congenital defect, according to Mother. Her pregnancy with me had coincided with a great flood evoked by the Sky Emperor to punish the inhabitants of the Four Seas and Eight Deserts. Mother had been suffering from morning sickness at the time, and all she could eat was the fruit from Hexu Mountain. The floods, however, rose so high that the waters reached Hexu Mountain, making the whole area barren and denying Mother her fruit. With nothing else she could eat, she became painfully weak, and when she gave birth to me, a scrawny little fox cub, I had this strange eye condition.

  The fault in my eyes remained dormant inside me for thousands of years, but three hundred years ago, following a bout of typhoid, it flared up. It was extremely tenacious, and no elixir made any difference. Wise Mother got Father to collect some mysterious light from beneath the Yellow Springs and use it to create a strip of white silk that would provide me with total blackout. Now, whenever I ventured into dazzlingly bright places, I wore it to shield myself from the light.

  I dipped my hand into the shallow water. The Eastern Sea water was cold, and a shiver ran up my arm. I summoned some immortal energy to protect myself from the chill. I was in the middle of casting this spell when I heard a girl behind me calling, “Big Sister? Big Sister?”

  Father and Mother had given birth to only my four older brothers and me; I was no one’s big sister, and certainly had no female siblings. Confused as to who might be calling me, I turned around where I came face-to-f
ace with a line of young girls in silk costumes, presumably family members of one of the banquet’s immortal guests.

  The girl in purple at the front of the line glared at me. “Why didn’t you answer our princess straightaway?”

  I looked blankly at the seven girls. The young girl in the middle was dressed in white and had the heaviest golden headpin and the biggest pearls on her embroidered shoes. I stooped and gave her a nod as I asked, “Why were you calling me?” The young girl in white had cheeks like white jade, which suddenly reddened.

  “My name is Green Sleeves. I saw that you were shrouded in immortal energy and thought you must be heading to the Eastern Sea banquet. I wanted to trouble you for directions. I didn’t notice your eyes . . .”

  White silk made from the mysterious light beneath the Yellow Springs was not the same as normal white silk, and covering your eyes with it did not stop you from seeing. As long as I had my Mystic Gorge tree twig, I would have no problem finding the palace. “You’re correct. I am heading to the banquet,” I told the girl with a nod. “And my eyes are fine. You can follow me.”

  The girl in purple who had spoken up before now revealed her true spirit. “Our princess speaks to you and you respond with that attitude! Do you not know who our princess . . .” The princess tugged at this girl’s sleeve to silence her.

  Young immortals these days were most intriguing, so much livelier and more willful than I was at their age. Striding along beneath the water could be quite dull, and soon Princess Green Sleeves’s serving girls were chattering to each other. They muttered all along the way, providing me with a source of light entertainment as I walked with them.

  “I think that Big Princess shook us off deliberately so that we wouldn’t get to the banquet and she could be the cream of the crop,” one girl said. “Well, what she doesn’t know is that we can find our own way there. We’ll have to give her a big dressing down in front of the Water Emperor when we get there. He’ll punish her by sending her off to the Southern Sea for a few hundred years. That will give her a chance to think carefully about what she’s done. We’ll see if she dares to behave so terribly again after that.”

  So they are family members of the Southern Sea Water Emperor.

  “Big Princess may be beautiful, but she’s not a drop in the ocean compared to our princess,” another said. “Don’t worry, Princess Green Sleeves. As long as you are at the banquet, Big Princess will not get a look in.”

  I was witnessing squabbling and rivalry between sisters, it would seem.

  “The Sky Empress may already have been named, but Prince Ye Hua is unlikely to have eyes for that old Qingqiu woman!” another said. “She’s one hundred forty thousand years old, several times older than our family’s prince even. I feel so sorry for Ye Hua. Our princess is such a rare beauty, with an appearance unmatched between sky and earth. She’s his perfect match. If she manages to get Ye Hua to fall in love with her during this banquet, it will be the first good thing to have happened since Pangu split the sky and earth.”

  I was stunned to realize that “that old Qingqiu woman” they were speaking of was me. I shook my head, thinking how fickle life was and how fleetingly time passed, not sure whether to laugh or cry.

  The more the serving girls talked, the lower the tone of their conversation, until Princess Green Sleeves piped up with an irritated, “Let’s please have a break from all your nonsense!”

  The more timid among them buttoned up, while the bolder girls stuck out their tongues. The bravest of the girls, the one in the purple dress, was determined to speak at whatever cost. “Rumor has it that Prince Ye Hua has taken his son on a trip to the Eastern Desert. Ye Hua really dotes on his little boy. I’ve heard that Big Princess has arranged an extremely generous and special gift she plans to give the little boy when they meet. Big Princess has wasted no effort on these measures. You won’t let her show you up, Princess Green Sleeves, will you?”

  It was obvious from the way she spoke that the girl in the purple dress was well educated and familiar with the sky classics. Princess Green Sleeves went red in the face. “Big Sister and I chose that gift together,” she explained. “Who knows if the little prince will like it or not, though . . .”

  The princess and her serving girl started to bicker. I walked ahead feeling slightly dismayed. I had not considered that Ye Hua, this bright and talented young man who had made his grandfather, the Sky Emperor, so proud might also be such a heartthrob. Before I had even met him, I had come across two girls nurturing tender peach blossom feelings for him. Adept at both military matters and affairs of the heart, this generation’s young gods really were something.

  We walked for over an hour before finally arriving at the Water Crystal Palace, located three thousand feet beneath the Eastern Sea.

  I was getting nervous that I might have chosen the wrong fork in the road, as the huge palace hall up ahead looked nothing like how I remembered. There was nothing whatsoever connecting it with its name, not a glimmer of sparkling water crystal.

  Princess Green Sleeves looked similarly taken aback. “What has this been covered with, water-lily grass?” she asked, pointing at the dark-green palace wall.

  “Yes, I suppose it must be,” I said, though I was quite unsure myself.

  I was wrong to have doubted Old Mystic Gorge’s twig, however; it turned out that this dark and gloomy palace was indeed the Eastern Sea Emperor’s Water Crystal Palace.

  The two court attendants standing at the palace gate were rendered speechless at the sight of Princess Green Sleeves. They hurriedly accepted her invitation and led the eight of us inside, parting the flowers and brushing aside the willows as we went.

  As I walked farther inside, I discovered that the formerly dazzling Water Crystal Palace was now even gloomier than Father and Mother’s foxhole. Fortunately the path had been hung with night pearls emitting a soft glow, which prevented me from stumbling and falling.

  It looked as if the banquet would not start for another few hours, even though there were plenty of immortals already in attendance. They had gathered in the great hall, huddled in groups of two or three. I thought back to Father’s birthday banquet some time ago, at which all the guests had shown up, but none of them on time. All the immortals, young and old, had shown equal enthusiasm by showing up early for the Eastern Sea Emperor’s son’s one-month banquet. The ways of the world had obviously changed, giving today’s immortals more time on their hands.

  Two palace attendants led Princess Green Sleeves over to the Eastern Sea Emperor, who I saw possessed an elegant charm reminiscent of his ancestors.

  I fell to the rear of the group and mixed into the crowd of immortals. I turned to look for a servant to take me to a room where I could have a short rest; it had been a long journey, and I was rather tired. But every being in the hall was staring in awe at Princess Green Sleeves, and there was no one to assist me.

  Objectively speaking, Princess Green Sleeves did not compare to the ancient ancestors in terms of appearance; my sisters-in-law were all far more attractive. But it would seem that this current generation of immortals was lacking many great beauties.

  The servants were dumbstruck by her loveliness. They wore intoxicated expressions on their faces as they gazed at the gorgeous girl. I felt bad about interrupting them and dragging them away, so instead I wandered up and down the hall for a while and found a quiet way to slip out. I considered if it would be better to take a nap now or to just wait until the banquet, give my gift, have some food, and take my leave early. I remembered that despondent look on Mystic Gorge’s face as he had seen me off. I had not asked him about it for fear I would be stuck listening to him go on, but now that I had a moment to reflect on it, I started to feel intrigued and was eager to go back and ask him what was wrong.

  I turned this way and that, but even in such a large palace, I was unable to find a suitable place to lie down. I was just about to head back into the great hall, but when I turned, I realized that I didn’t know th
e way. I poked around inside my sleeve, but my Mystic Gorge tree twig had disappeared. With my dismal sense of direction, I was going to have to pray if I wanted any hope of finding my way back to the banquet before it finished.

  As I stood there, unsure of which direction to walk, I remembered a philosophy that Fourth Brother had taught me, one that had stuck with me ever since: There were no paths or roads when the world began; it was only our random walking about that created them. Losing the Mystic Gorge twig at this moment gave me two options: either I could sit still and wait to be found or I could take my chances by picking a direction and wandering.

  The path I chose led me straight to the Eastern Sea Emperor’s back garden, which was decorated in luscious green, exactly like the rest of the palace. It had the feel of a maze, and I walked around for more than an hour without coming across a way out.

  After a few hours of drifting about in circles, I decided to ask fate for advice. As I approached a fork in the road, I bent down to pick up a branch. I held it in my palm, closed my eyes, and threw. The branch fell pointing toward the path on the left. I brushed the broken bits of leaf off my fingers and started walking toward the path on the right.

  Fate has always been a bit of a rascal, and whenever I was required to ask him for advice, I found it sage to act against what he said.

  I had been wandering around this back garden for such a long time and had not seen so much as a sea serpent, but only a hundred steps after dropping my branch and going against the advice of fate, I came across a boy who was so plump and pale he looked like a living, breathing sticky-rice dumpling.

  This white and tender little rice dumpling child had his hair coiled into two buns, one on each side of his head, and wore a dark-green embroidered gown. He was perched on top of a cluster of green coral, and if I was not looking carefully, I might have mistaken him for part of the coral and missed him completely.

  He looked like an immortal’s son.