To her surprise, Willow flushed deeply and turned away. Lest Silver Snow embarrass the maid further, she cast about for some diversion. “I have embroidered until I have pads on my fingertips! And it does not seem as if I shall write any further today to my honored father. How can I? Even assuming that some worthy man would have the charity to deliver the messages of a maid as out of favor as myself, my father would see my distress in the clumsiness of my brushstrokes. But it seems to me that if I do not speak to someone other than you, I shall be distracted.”
“Perhaps, mistress, if you turned your sorrow into poetry, it might be sorrow no longer. Write down your thoughts, mistress, and let the winds carry your words to those who have hearts and minds to hear them,” suggested Willow.
“Excellent idea!” cried Silver Snow. “But what shall I write upon?” The small store of writing silk that she had must be hoarded for letters to her father, and she could hardly expect thin wooden strips to be carried away by the winds or, as Willow probably and more prosaically intended, to bob from some tree in another court.
“One moment, Elder Sister ... ah, I have it!” Willow leapt up with a grace belying her crippled leg and darted out into the court where she seized up a leaf that had blown across the wall from some rare tree or other. “Write on this leaf, then set it free.”
To her own astonishment, Silver Snow found that she was smiling. It had been months since she had even attempted verse. She settled herself more comfortably on her frayed mat and took up a fresh brush. A poem flickered into her consciousness, and she dipped her brush in the ink that glimmered on her inkstone.
How fast this water flows away! she wrote, looking at the clouded little stream that flowed past the windows of her octagonal pavilion.
She read the verse to Willow, who clapped her hands.
“Now,” she commanded, “take this leaf and set it free to find the person of whom I wrote.”
“And if no one replies, Elder Sister?” asked Willow, her head cocked to one side, her eyes inquisitive.
“Why then, tomorrow, you shall hunt me out another leaf, and I shall write another poem.” She found herself smiling, anti the very unexpectedness of that made her dare a little laugh. Hearing it, Willow brightened.
No, thought Silver Snow. She loves me, and I have not been a kind mistress to her.
Silver Snow rose and watched Willow limp down the steps, dulled by neglect, of the Cold Palace. Like a beast toying with its prey, she batted the leaf up into the air. A stray gust took it, and tossed it over the crumbling wall.
The next day, Silver Snow wrote out another verse: the day after, another; and the day after that, yet another.
“If I continue writing on leaves,” she told Willow, “I may just pluck the trees bare.”
The maid eyed her narrowly and laughed only when she did. As the days went by, however, Silver Snow admitted how keen her disappointment was. Tossing leaves that bore messages over a broken wall—that was a child’s game. It was ridiculous of her to have placed any hope at all upon it. And yet. . . and yet. . . tears stung her eyes, and she could not see clearly enough to make the next careful, exquisite brushstroke. She blinked fiercely.
Surely, on the steppes, her father must have had his lonely days when his exile galled him worse than the pain of any wound. Yet he had persevered and survived. All that was good in her, she thought, came from him; she must not disgrace his teaching by even a moment’s weakness. She drew a deep, consciously steady breath and bent to draw the next character on the fresh green leaf that lay upon the crazed lacquer table before which she knelt.
“Lady, oh lady!”
So steady was her hand that she completed the stroke flawlessly before she looked up. Never before had Willow’s voice lilted in precisely that way; in fact, she had always taken care to keep it low as befitted a humble maid, especially now that they were in disgrace. She heard the familiar step I drag — first of Willow’s strong leg, then of her lame one—up the hollowed stairs to the pavilion.
But what were those other, heavier and more measured footsteps that followed the maid’s?
The smile on Willow’s face as she entered the pavilion that, even in summer, retained some chill from its very isolation was as bright as sunlight flashing from the mirror that the maid used to foretell. Just as quickly as a maid blows out a lamp, however, Willow shuttered her smile, hooded her eyes, and bowed slowly, painfully, and ceremonially to the floor in appropriate homage to the visitor who followed her into the pavilion.
It was the eunuch Li Ling who had spoken bravely to the Emperor of the Hsiung-nu before the entire court. In his hand, he held, as another might carry a spray of lilacs or a fan, a number of drying leaves, each of which bore the verses of lament and loneliness that she had composed and so painstakingly inscribed.
She bowed herself before him, shaking with a return of the old, childish hope. Surely he would speak first. If he did not, then she might venture a word, assuming she could find the power of speech at all.
“Seeing you, lady,” said Li Ling, “this one feels as if he has asked for melons and been given fine jade.”
Wondering, Silver Snow looked up. Li Ling stepped forward, his hand going out so that the leaves brushed her chin. Then, quickly, he recollected himself and drew it back.
“Those are the features of the ill-favored lady of Mao Yen-shou’s portrait,” mused the eunuch-scholar, “and yet, how different! Your complexion is like almonds, not like mud; and your brow and chin do not protrude like a soldier’s. As for the mole—surely that was our worthy Administrator’s invention.”
Aware that her cheeks were flushing so that her skin resembled not an almond but a peony, Silver Snow looked down.
“Yes, yes, I am well aware that my behavior is unpardonable, but I pray that you will pardon it for the sake of my old friend, your most estimable father. I had heard that his last child had come to court, and it grieved me to know that you were unhappy and alone.”
Silver Snow felt the corners of her mouth ache from the unfamiliar wideness of her smile. She cocked her head to one side, looking at the leaves that Li Ling held.
“Is this writing yours? The brushstrokes are very fine.” She shook her head and gestured as if to decry her own ability.
“And the verses too? I have never seen them before. You composed them upon the leaves, then simply blew them into the air, to fly where they would? Is that it, lady?”
Silver Snow nodded, then realized that a nod was hardly sufficient courtesy to a friend of her father, an advisor to the Son of Heaven, and the only person, save Willow, to come to her in her exile with no thought but to cheer her. She rose, ceremoniously begged that he seat himself, and ordered Willow to heat the last of the rice wine that she had brought with her from the North.
“Willow threw the leaves over the wall,” said Silver Snow.
“And that is Willow?” asked the eunuch-scholar. He stared at her with the same keen interest that he had taken in Silver Snow’s own appearance and her writing: glanced at her hair, which gleamed with russet highlights in the summer sunshine, then dropped his speculative, narrow-eyed gaze to Willow’s hands and the curious way in which the middle three fingers of each hand were of equal length.