“What?” He lumbered around to stand before her. His arms dangled at his sides.
She met his stare full on. “I will not stay,” she told him. “You should leave with me.”
“Are you crazed?” Fear crossed the usually firm countenance. “Has a demon gotten into you?”
She shook her head. “Only an understanding, and it has been growing for months. This is simply no life for us.”
“It’s peaceful. It’s happy.”
“So you see it, because you’ve lain in it so long. I say it is stagnant and squalid.” She spoke calmly, the least bit sadly. “At first, yes, after my wanderings, I believed I had come to a sanctuary. Tu Shan,”—she would not give him his endearment name until he yielded, if ever he did—“I have learned what you should have seen an age ago. Earth holds no sanctuaries for anyone, anywhere.”
Amazement made his anger faint. “You want back to your palaces and monkey courtiers, eh?”
“No. That was another trap. I want … freedom … to be, to become whatever I am able to. Whatever we are able to.”
“They need me here!”
She must first put down scorn. If she showed hers for these half-animals, she could well lose him. And, true, in his liking for them, his concern and compassion, he was better than she was. Second she must muster all the will at her command. If she surrendered and abided, she would likewise slowly become one with the hillfolk. That might aid her toward selflessness, toward ultimate release from the Wheel; but she would give up every imaginable attainment that this life held. What escape, except through random violence, did she have from it?
“They lived much the same before you,” she said. “They will do so after you. And with or without you, it cannot be for always. The Han people press westward. I have seen them clearing forest and breaking earth. Someday they will take these lands.”
He fell into bewilderment. “Where can we go? Would you be a beggar again?”
“If need be, but then only for a short while. Tu Shan, a whole world lies beyond this horizon.”
“We kn-know nothing about it.”
“I know something.” Through the ice of her resolve shone a strengthening fire. “Foreign ships touch the shores of China. Barbarians thrust inward. I have heard about mighty stirrings to the south, on the far side of the mountains.”
“You told me … it’s forbidden to leave the Empire—”
“Ha, what does that mean to us? What watchmen stand on those paths we can find? I tell you, if we cannot seize the opportunities that beckon everywhere around, we do not deserve our lives.”
“If we become famous, they … would notice we don’t grow old—”
“We can cope with that. Change rushes through the world unbridled. The Empire can no more stay forever locked into itself than this village can. We’ll find advantages to take. Perhaps just setting money out at interest for a long time. We’ll see. My years have been harder than yours. I know how full of secret places chaos is. Yes, we may well go under, we may perish, but until then we will have been wholly alive!”
He stood dazed. She knew she would need months wherein to prevail, if indeed she could. Well, she had the patience of centuries to draw upon, when there was something for which to work.
Clouds thinned, light broke through, the rain in the doorway gleamed like flying arrows.
SPRINGTIME CAME back, and that year it was mild, overwhelmingly bright, full of fragrances and the cries of wildfowl returned. Gorged with snow melt, the stream sprang white amidst hillside leaves, brawled through the dell, plunged into the bamboo forest, bound for the great river and so at last the sea.
A man and a woman followed it on the road. They were clad for travel. Staves swung in their hands. On his back was a load of needful goods, on hers a swaddled baby boy who gurgled lustily and happily as he looked around him at wonders.
The people stood gathered together behind, where their homes came to an end, and wept.
XI The Kitten and the Cardinal