Day One
Many generations ago, a renowned scholar of the Black Doe Promontory Academy decided to forgo the joys of rearing children, educating disciples, and the intellectual companionship of learned peers, and retired instead to a solitary life in a medlar grove by a fast-flowing river on a lushly wooded island to the northeast of the Grand Central Continent called Bertaèyn. As a result, the animals of the grove gained the faculty of speech, creating an island of civilization in a sea of largely unlettered trees.
One morning, as the dawn sunlight filtered through the leaves, a turtledove and a cicada were holding a conversation. They were great friends, and considered by the inhabitants of the grove to be amongst the wisest. The turtledove had perched on a fallen log by the river, and the cicada popped its head out of the little cavity where it made its home.
“Maybe there really is a world beyond the North Sea after all,” said the turtledove after their morning greetings. It was a long-niggling doubt. “Dry land like this. With people who can walk and talk like us.”
The North Sea to which she referred was not, of course, the real North Sea, which encompassed the island of Bertaèyn. It was, instead, the fast-flowing river which bordered the grove.
“What, that old superstition again?” snapped back the cicada. “The unlearned are ever inventing new locations for far-off fantasy worlds – the more unverifiable, the better. Hear here: do you not recall we put this theory to the test when we attempted to fly between this fallen log and yonder tree? Huff and puff as we might, we never made it past the pebble foothills.”
“Perhaps… But what of the birds we see flying overhead? If only we could speak to them, perhaps they could tell us if there is a further shore.”
Weighed down by its heavy shell, the turtledove was always gazing in awe at the birds who soared above the highest branches of the canopy.
“If we could speak, if we could see, if, if, if. I tell you – you must keep your thinking down to earth, or else you’re never going to get anywhere at all.”
The sun which shone brightly on the grove was obscured for a few moments by a passing cloud. Or so, at least, they assumed. In fact, far above them at that very moment – 90,000 miles up in the sky, beyond even the loftiest sea of clouds – a great P’eng was making its 60-year migration down to the southern seas on the other side of the central continent, where it would live out the rest of its days in the range of mountain-islands of Ku’yi.
But though they felt its effect in the dimming of the light and the added coolness to the late Spring breeze, the turtledove and the cicada did not notice the great P’eng circling on a great updraft. For one thing, it was simply too high up for their meagre senses. But more immediately, their attention was captured by the figure who just then flashed in front of them.
It appeared from upriver, took one step on the flowing waters, and disappeared downriver the next. The only thing they had time to take in was that it was a human male dressed in navy blues, with a long, cobalt bandana streaming along behind him and a wide, white smile across his swarthy face.
“Did that human just–”
“It was a trick of the light, surely,” grumbled the cicada. “Besides, it wasn’t flying. It had to step on the water halfway through – it would never make it across the river in one bound.”
“But that’s not what we were debat–”
The turtledove was interrupted by a second figure flashing by. This one belonged to a human woman, head shaved down to the thinnest stubble, white robes flapping behind her in the wind, and all the intent fury of a stormcloud on her face. She left a wake upon the water, which lapped up over the riverbank and onto the log the two animals sat on.
“That one was definitely flying,” declared the turtledove.
“How can we know it did not hop off the water just before, and back onto it once out of sight again?”
“Even so, that has nothing to do wi–”
The turtledove was once again interrupted by a middle-aged man in identical white robes, whose long hair was tied in a top-knot. The look on his face was not angry, but concerned – almost caring. As he swept past them, the arc of his flight trended upwards – so that when he too sped out of sight, he was well above the tree-tops.
“Alright. Yes. That one was flying. But the true nature of things is now becoming clear. These apparitions are spirits,” declared the cicada. “And have you not heard the words of the Ancient Master?
‘To devote oneself to the affairs of hive and nest, and while venerating and respecting ghosts and spirits, to keep one’s distance from them – it is this that is called wisdom.’
“Where there is fire, water is not,” he continued. “Where there is water, fire is not. Between fire and water, what relations can there be? By this it is meant that the inhabitants of one world should keep to their own lives, and not lose themselves in daydreams of realms and beings with which they could have no congress.”
As the cicada warmed to his subject and readied to finish his sermon, he was interrupted by a fourth figure.
This one, though dressed in the same white robes as the previous two, was clearly much younger than they. Her hair spread long and unbound behind her, and as she passed by their log, she seemed to notice them. Pulling herself upright, she slowed almost to a stop and narrowed her eyes. A joyful smile spread across her face, like the sun which now came out upon the sky from behind the tip of the P’eng’s wing as it turned south. She waved at them, flailing her whole arm about, even though she was close enough that she could almost lean over and touch them.
Remembering she was supposed to be in a rush, she made an apologetic gesture, winked, and sped off downstream.
The turtledove and the cicada sat in silence for some time.
“Well. Lots of business to be getting on with,” piped up the cicada eventually. “The year has just started – and the mantis catches the idle cicada, as they say. Do pop by again soon!”
And with that, he disappeared into his log.
When he was gone, the turtledove sat in silence for quite a while longer. Eventually, she unfurled one wing from her shell and waved downriver, in the direction the beautiful spirit had vanished.
“Yue. There is a worldly village up ahead.”
Fu’sieh – middle-aged and of solicitous mien – caught up to the shaved-headed woman ahead of him.
“Full of wealthy old merchants, with houses of moss-stone and servants of brass!” the long-haired young woman chimed in, having caught up too. “I passed through it on the way to the School as a young girl! Do you suppose we could–?”
“I did not address you, Xian’ling. There could be repercussions back at the School, Yue, if we–”
Instead of replying, the woman raised her head and let out an ululation towards the heavens.
Golden bands of light spread upwards in expanding, concentric rings, forming a cone within which flecks of light swirled skyward like snow caught in an updraft. The flecks turned into scales and coalesced into the form of three fishes.
The river bent into an oxbow, and they rounded a sharp corner, following the trail of altered wind the fleeing man had left behind. With each footfall, he threatened to disappear – but up until now, these had all been feints.
Xian’ling noticed her master’s eye twitch. An eyelash fell from it and, undulating up and down with the breeze, slowly thickened and elongated into a semi-transparent, greyish eel which slipped, otherwise unwitnessed, into the brown water of the river.
The swordsman Mikka laughed as he leapt from a muddy swell to the trunk of a tree which had fallen over the river and, spying a fresh and springy spruce by the bank, bounded off a branch which propelled him, twirling, above the canopy of trees.
At the height of his arc, he looked back to see two golden fish racing towards him. His eyes widened – his pupils pinpricks in broad irises of glowing turquoise – before they softly narrowed into a warm smile, as if recognising old friends.
His hand moved down to the hilt of his sword, fingers wrapping around the familiar beaten leather. His eyes closed and he stopped spinning, steadily facing his pursuers as he fell backwards towards the river. His feet made contact with the water, but he was not submerged. Instead, he cut two divots in the river as he slid along its surface, sending great walls of water cascading to either side. The two fish swooped down and entered the tunnel between the upsurging walls of water. Behind them, Senior Master Yue’mu rounded the corner of the bend, her two companions following closely behind.
In a flash, the swordsman unsheathed his blade.
Fu’sieh – though he was bringing up the rear, a full four-hundred paces from the swordsman – was the first to notice. Mikka was still riding the momentum of his leap, racing backwards on the river’s surface, his feet still sending up two foaming walls. But the tip of his sword rested gently on the water without raising a ripple, like a lily pad ready to bloom.
Fu’sieh rolled to one side, grabbed Xian’ling by the collar, and dragged her away. “Yue!” he shouted.
Down on the surface, the two fishes had finally caught up with the swordsman. One leapt straight at him, its maw opening to reveal three layers of needle-like teeth, while the second dove under the water, aiming to tear off a leg or two.
Mikka’s eyes shot open. With a twist of his wrist, his sword extended under the water, skewering the swimming fish from mouth to tail. He wrenched his back and shoulders and let out a shout which, though mighty, still carried a hint of mirth. Swinging his sword upwards, he cut an arc through the air and bisected the fish pouncing down on him.
There was the briefest pause, in which the two fishes’ four halves had just enough time to start sliding apart. Then the river erupted. A blade of water, a thousand paces in length, sliced up toward the heavens, leaving the riverbed bare but for the spray it left behind.
Xian’ling hung limply above the forest. Fu’sieh held her aloft by the belt like a dog carrying a puppy, jaw clamped on the scruff of its neck. Her tantrum was held in check by her shock and admiration at the swordplay on display. To her, it looked like a gigantic serpent had reared its head and bore its fangs to strike at her master.
Yue’mu stopped short, hovering in mid-air.
She snatched a fish-hook from her sleeve and snapped it in two. The third of the summoned fish, which had been threading through the trees at the riverbank to set up an ambush, was abruptly yanked back, turning into a line of light and reassuming its shape directly in front of Yue’mu. She put her palm to it and infused it with her intent. It swelled, scales trembling, until, as the river-blade finally made contact, it exploded in a burst of incandescent heat. Where the water touched it, it too burst apart, covering the entire area in a scalding mist.
“Ah – let go, let go! Master Fu! The steam’ll ruin my dress, the steam’ll–!”
He ignored her and they were both engulfed. When it cleared, he was still dry, but the young woman was drenched like an alley cat who walked under a window when the mopping water was tossed out, her expression fully on the sullen side of outrage.
There was a roar as the water fell back down, flooding the surrounding trees. With a whooshing rush, it finally settled, and the river resumed its natural course, leaving only the distant, echoing shouts of the villagers sending their clanking servants out to investigate the disturbance. The swordsman, however, was nowhere to be seen.
Senior Master Fu’sieh let go of Xian’ling, who dropped down a few unexpected feet at first and stuck her tongue out at him when he flew over to the upright figure of Yue’mu. He found her floating in the air with her hands behind her back and her toes dangling downwards, looking downriver with an unreadable expression.
“What happened, Yue? Who was that man?”
“An intruder. He snuck unnoticed into the Sect and made off with an… item of value from my chambers.”
“That’s impossible! It’s unheard of! How could he have…? We must pursue him further!”
Yue’mu’s word was as cold and emotionless as the unmoving air of a crypt.
“Wait.”
Fu’sieh paused in mid-flight and studied his sister, the concern on his face growing deeper with each passing moment.
“His trail grows cold! If we do not follow it now–”
“We will return to the Sect,” she announced in a clipped and conclusive tone. “And you will say nothing of the theft. To anyone, Fu. If this vagrant made off with nothing else, there is no need to involve the other Masters.”
“Yue, nothing remotely like this has happened since the School’s foundation. This isn’t just another demon rampage frightening the junior disciples. Even if I say nothing, the other Senior Masters will not ignore a full breach of the School’s def–”
The look she turned on him stopped his words halfway up his chest.
“I will handle the matter myself. If Rostnen wishes to stick his nose in it, he can take it up with me. If you stick your nose in it, you’ll end up pig-faced.”
And with that, she evaporated, bypassing the wind and soil entirely and sinking into the tunnels beneath the sea.
Fu’sieh remained there a minute longer, wracked with questions. His thoughts turned from the scarcely believable trespass and even unlikelier theft to the sharp and hardened edge of his younger sister’s usual coolness, then meandered to her dubious custody of Xian’ling. He brooded on Rostnen’s increasingly open scorn, Mo’ti’s long-running absence, Wen’tun’s precipitous and unnecessary death, and the Founder’s indifference. How many centuries had it been since they had all shared a pavilion and a bowl of tea by moonlight? Could they no longer be called a family in any sense at all? Had the School’s foundations rotted long before their walls were breached?
So preoccupied was he that he failed to notice Xian’ling creeping away, drifting with the downdraft like a leaf. But when a waft of stale and salty air surrounded her, her shoulders rounded and off she slunk reluctantly back to the School.
David Leon 