six

Ma Lin had been a woman of substance once. She’d had a home, a reputation, a family. A husband and three daughters, all her own. No son yet, but he might yet come. It had been a good foundation, something to build a life upon.

Now her husband was dead, and she had trodden in his spilled body. One of her girls was gone: little Meuti, who had chosen not to live after she saw her father killed and her big sister ruined. She had stopped eating, and would not walk. They had carried her, turn and turn about, most of the miles from there to here, but she had grown lighter and easier day by day, and at last there had been nothing left to bear. So they buried her instead, and her absence had been a harder thing to carry and still was.

The home was lost and left behind, the reputation far forgotten. All Ma Lin had left was two daughters, and one of those was broken beyond measure.

Jin the eldest had always been most useful, but she was gone inside herself now, into bad country. Silent and unreachable, she needed telling when to eat and when to excrete. Some days, she needed washing.

Blessedly, Shola the other daughter—youngest now—could do all that and more. She had become her sister’s keeper, bossy and tender and determined; which left her mother free to worry for them all, as was proper.

MA LIN was a practical worrier, practical in everything. If anyone would be found sitting on the temple steps, looking out over the strait toward Taishu, empty-handed, that would be her daughters, not herself.

“Watch for the old fisherman,” she said. “He knows where we are. Perhaps he will come again.”

Or perhaps it would be the dragon who came again, let them watch a wonder. Or perhaps it would be soldiers bringing terror, but Ma Lin didn’t think so. She thought most of the soldiers had been on the boats, when the dragon broke them. The temple was a mile’s walk from the road, a good mile through trees and over broken ground; there was no path anymore, and the soldiers were strangers in this country. They wouldn’t know it was here; and if they knew, they wouldn’t care; and if they cared, the Li-goddess whose temple it was, she would protect a mother and her girls, refugees under her roof.

Wouldn’t she?

Ma Lin was no theologer. She waited warily for the goddess, worried about her children, even while she walked the mile or more to the road.

Went cautiously, never quite the same way twice, not to leave a track through the undergrowth; and lurked at a vantage-point still within the trees’ shadow, where she could see the traffic both west and east.

Mostly the traffic she saw was soldiers. These were the destroyers, the men who had rampaged through Santung and ruined everything good that was hers. They enraged her and terrified her both at once, and she trusted neither her rage nor her terror. She crouched in her shadows and watched them pass, and waited.

If the road was clear of soldiers and a farmer came with his mule-wagon or a peasant with his burden, she might slip from cover to beg mutely at the roadside. She was luckier with peasants than farmers; the poor beg best, most profitably from the poor.

When it was women on the road, she did not beg, but offered: her hands, her back, her wisdom or her skills, whatever might be useful to them.

Mostly, almost always she was turned away, but seldom without a blessing. Food was wealth and trade goods; everyone carried something in a bag or a pouch or a pocket. Ma Lin might come away with a handful of rice or a lump of sugar, dried mushrooms sewn into a scrap of silk, perhaps a pot of preserved vegetables. Really the offer to work was just another way to beg, and they all understood it.

When she had strained the day’s luck or the gods’ generosity as far as she dared, then she would pack up her worry and her goods and turn back into the forest.

And not go directly back to the temple and her daughters, no; but walk through the forest and bless all the gods for a peasant childhood, before her man Tojo found her and took her to Santung. She knew at least some of the leaves that could be eaten, some of the roots and mushrooms. She had found a whole grove of bamboo, where fresh shoots could be cut almost daily. They got by, her and her daughters.

Still, nothing stopped her worrying. She worried most about the hospitality of the goddess: sure the old fisherman had not meant for them to stay and stay. Every day, she thought she should speak to the women on the road, see if she could beg a roof in exchange for work. Shola could work too, carry water and scrub floors; even Jin could be induced to simple chores. The temple could not have been so clean for a generation.

Today, perhaps, she would find the courage to ask. Why was it so hard to ask for shelter, where it was so easy to ask for food?

Because food is a meal, her own sour voice replied to her, where shelter is a commitment. Giving out is easy; taking in is hard. Trusting is hard. Promising another meal tomorrow, that’s hard too, when you might need it for yourself.

Even so. It had to be done, she had to ask.

Maybe today, this time.

Here came a woman on her own, a rare sight on the road. Now would be the time. If the woman wasn’t too scared by the sudden eruption of a lean and desperate figure from the trees’ shadow, begging, clutching at her …

Not to beg, then, not to clutch.

Ma Lin had washed her dress last night, and bound up her hair in a cloth this morning. She looked as respectable as a woman could, who had only this to wear and only cold water to wash in.

She walked out of the forest as she might have walked from one stall to another in a street market at home, when she had a home, when there were markets in the street and a little money, time to spend and things to buy. Almost idly, more interested than purposeful, and not quite directly toward the woman as she came: just heading for that point where the two of them must meet if they both only kept going at the same pace.

The woman might have faltered, but only briefly. Ma Lin was deliberately not staring, barely looking at all, only from the corner of her eye. Also she was trying to look harmless but healthy, fit to work but not intimidating, which was a difficult trick to bring off.

They did arrive more or less at the same place, more or less at the same time. In fact the woman on the road was first and might have scuttled on if she were nervous, but chose not to, chose to wait.

And then was first to speak, made Ma Lin nervous; said, “I have been looking for you.”

Ma Lin might have run then. If it had been a man, certainly she would: hopelessly, pointlessly, but still she would have run. Like a desperate bird, away from the nest: down the road, perhaps, or across the road and over the ditch and into the abandoned paddy.

But this was a woman in her middle years, and they were neither of them built for wild chases. Ma Lin stood very still and said, “You do not know me.”

The woman didn’t blink. “I think you are the priestess at the temple.” And then, in the face of Ma Lin’s stupefied silence, “Did you think we don’t talk to each other, hereabouts? Or listen to our husbands either? A woman alone, always seen on this road, asking for alms … This is our country, we know who comes and goes. And why. We do not trouble you at the Lady Li’s house, we who left it neglected for so long; but you have come there with your children—we know!—and we are glad. Here, I brought you this.”

This was a basket of woven bamboo, heavy with fresh noodles, in a sacking bag that held a pair of cabbages and garlic too. Ma Lin said nothing. But she took the bag.

The woman said, “Come here in the mornings and there will always be one of us who comes to you with something. For you, and for the Lady.”

She meant a gift to you is a gift to the Li-goddess, which was an appalling suggestion, but Ma Lin’s tongue cleaved to the roof of her mouth; all she had was a vision of her hungry daughters, and a way to see them satisfied. If that meant an equal balance with terror, what an outraged goddess might choose to do—well, let it fall on her and her alone. She could pray for that, at least.

She could not speak but she nodded, and turned and walked away into the trees.

NO FORAGING today. She had food, unexpectedly; more, she had security, a promise she could believe in.

If there was a price to pay, she could confront that. When she must.

She wanted to be with her daughters.

Straight through the forest, then, with not a thought to confusing her trail. The women knew where she was. It was odd, perhaps, but that made her feel more protected than exposed.

Her shame was great, but she was trapped now, seized by generosity. She could see her daughters fed, and all she had to do was play the priestess. How could she walk away, how could she walk her daughters away from what they most needed?

The goddess would … simply have to endure it.

Ma Lin wanted to be with her daughters.

Urgently.

THROUGH THE forest and on, her thoughts as broken as the ground she scrambled over, her anxieties shifting like the thin stony soil beneath her feet, every step exposing another, deeper worry.

And so over the last rise and here was the headland, with the creek below and the strait beyond; and here was the temple, with its feet settled into a hollow and its roof standing proud and clear, the paintwork blistered and faded but the dragons at the sweeping upturned gables still glowering protectively over the building, while those on the ridge stared out to sea.

They had the best view, but the temple steps offered a good second best, and there she found her daughters, neither one of them empty-handed. Shola was talking cheerfully as usual as she washed seaweed in a bowl before laying it out to dry on a stone in the sun, and as usual she might as well have been talking to herself. Perhaps she was: she was a sensible girl, and had likely long since given up on any hope of an answer.

Jin was washing too. Perhaps she liked to ape her younger sister. She had another bowl of water, and a line of idols taken from the temple and set orderly along the topmost step. One by one, she was meticulously bathing them, as though she were a little, little girl and playing dolls.