The prevailing view of scholars was that only if it could be shown that events emerged from the same impulses, or if a significant figure came to know what had happened elsewhere, and when, did it become important to record such links in the record of the past.
There were some who suggested otherwise. Theirs was a view that held the past to be a scroll wherein the wise, unrolling it, could read how time and fate and the gods showed intricate patterns unfolding, and patterns could repeat.
Still, it is likely that even those of this opinion would have agreed that Shen Tai—that son of General Shen Gao, returning home—was not important enough in those early days of the An Li Rebellion for his movements to be part of any pattern that signified.
Only a tale-spinner, not a true scholar—someone shaping a story for palace or marketplace—would note these conjunctions and judge them worth the telling, and storytellers were not important, either. On this, the historian-mandarins could agree.
Shen Tai hadn't even passed the examinations at that point! He had no formal status, in fact, though any fair-minded chronicler had to give him credit for courage at Kuala Nor, and the role his Sardian horses eventually played.
His mother and Second Mother were in Hangdu, the prefecture town. They had taken a cart to buy supplies, Tai was informed by the household steward. The steward kept bowing and smiling as he spoke. You could say that he was beaming, Tai thought.
Yes, the steward said, Youngest Son Chao had escorted them, with several of the bigger servants carrying heavy staves.
No, trouble had not yet reached their market town in any serious way, but it was always best to be careful, Master, was it not?
It was, Tai agreed.
The steward, and the household servants piling up behind him in the soon-crowded courtyard, were clearly moved by the return of Second Son. Tai felt the same way himself. The creak of the gate was a sound that might make him weep if he wasn't careful.
The paulownias shading the walkway still had all their leaves. Autumn was not yet fully upon them. The peaches and plums had all been picked, he was informed. The family was being diligent about that this year. The Lady and Second Lady were supervising the preservation of the orchard's fruit against winter and a possible shortage of food.
Tai reminded himself that he needed to get to Hangdu as well. A man named Pang, one-legged. Owed money for supervising a hidden supply of grain. Liu had told him that.
Liu would be buried here by now.
He went through the compound and into the garden, carrying wine in an agate cup. He went past the pond where he'd spent so much time with his father, watching Shen Gao toss bread for the goldfish. The fish were large and slow. The stone bench was still here. Of course it was. Why should such things change because a man had been away? Were two years any time at all?
For human beings they were. Two years could change the world. For stones, for trees growing leaves in spring, dropping them in autumn, two years were inconsequential. A stone in a pond makes ripples, the ripples are gone, nothing remains.
When those one has loved are gone, memories remain.
Tai walked through the orchard and he came to the elevated ground where the graves were, not far from where their stream flowed south to meet the Wai and be lost.
There was a new mound for Liu. No marker above it yet, no inscription considered and incised on stone. That would come after a year had passed. No time at all for trees or stone or the circling sun, a single year. But who knew what it would bring to men and women under heaven?
Not Tai. He had no gift of sight. He was not, he thought suddenly, a shaman. He flinched, wondered why that image had come to him.
He stood before his father's grave. It was peaceful here. The ripple of the stream, some birds singing, wind in leaves. Trees shaded the place where his family lay and would lie, where he would one day rest.
He set down his cup and knelt. He bowed his head to touch the green grass by the grave. He did this three times. He stood, reclaiming the cup, and he poured the libation on the ground, for his father.
Only then did he read the words his mothers (or perhaps his brother Chao, not so young now) had put there.
It was not, it really was not so great a coincidence that they'd have selected lines by Sima Zian. The Banished Immortal was the pre-eminent poet of their age. Of course they'd have considered his words in choosing an inscription. But even so...
Tai read:
Sometimes, Tai thought, there were too many things within you at once. You couldn't even begin to sort through them, do more than feel the fullness in your heart.
"It is well chosen, isn't it?" someone behind him said.
The fullness in your heart.
He turned.
"It was Chao who decided on the inscription. I'm proud of him," said his sister.
Fullness could overflow, like a river in springtime. Seeing her, hearing the remembered voice, Tai began to weep.
Li-Mei stepped forward. "Brother, do not, or I will, too!"
She already was, he saw. Speechless, he drew her into his arms. She was clad in Kanlin robes, which he could not understand, any more than he could grasp that she was here to be enfolded.
His sister laid her head against his chest and her arms came around him, and they stood like that together by their father's grave and stone.
She was wearing Kanlin black for safety. She had travelled that way. It was too soon to make her presence more widely known. The family knew her and the household servants, but the village understood only that some Kanlins had come from the east to the Shen estate, and then others had arrived bearing the body of Eldest Son for burial, and one of the Warriors, a woman, had remained behind as a guard.
There were three more Kanlins now, they had come with Tai from the border.
"You saved my life," Li-Mei said.
First words, when they moved to the stone bench by the stream (Shen Gao's favourite place on earth) and sat together.
She told him the tale, and the wonder of how the world was devised felt overwhelming to Tai, listening.
"He had me place my handprint on a horse painted on the wall in a cave," she said.
And, "Tai, I killed a man there."
And, "Meshag is half a wolf, but he did what he did because of you."
(As of earlier that same morning, he was no longer half a wolf.)
And then, towards the end, "I wanted to stay on Stone Drum Mountain, but they refused me, for the same reason they said they rejected you."
"I wasn't rejected, I left!"
She laughed aloud. The sound of her laughter, here at home, healed a wound in the world.
He said, "Li-Mei, I have chosen a woman. A wife."
"What? What? Where is she?"
"Taking my horses to the emperor."
"I don't—"
"She's a Kanlin. She's taking them north with sixty other guards."
"North? Through this? And you let her do that?"
Tai shook his head ruefully. "That isn't the right way to describe it. When you meet her you'll understand. Li-Mei, she is... she may even be a match for you."
His sister sniffed dismissively, in a way he knew very well. Then she smiled. "Is she a match for you?"
"She is," he said. "Listen, I will tell you a story now."
He started at Kuala Nor. While he was talking, the sun crossed the sky, passing behind and emerging from white clouds. A servant came, unable to stop smiling, to say that his two mothers and his brother were back from Hangdu, and Tai stood up and went to them in the principal courtyard and knelt, and stood, and was welcomed home.