“Apologies that I was gone for so long,” Zen said, stopping several feet from her. “I’ve brought sustenance.”
Indeed, he’d strung two fish and a slew of berries across his belt. He handed her the drinking gourd, filled with fresh spring water. She guzzled it as he settled across from her and pulled out a strip of corn-yellow paper inscribed with red sigils. With a tap of his finger, the paper burst into flame.
“What was that?” Lan asked as the fire spread into a ring on the ground that was too neat and even to be natural.
Zen glanced up at her as he speared the two fish on sticks. “Fú. A written Seal,” he replied. Holding the two fish with one hand, he reached for something at his waist. It was a black silk pouch, slightly old and faded with time, but sewn with a crest of crimson flames. Lan had seen enough fine things at the Teahouse to know the look of expensive silk and sophisticated stitching techniques.
From within this pouch, the practitioner drew another slip of yellow paper. “There are several ways for practitioners to channel qì, the most basic of which is through written Seals,” he said, handing the strip to her. She moved her thumb across it, noting from the texture that the paper was made of bamboo. He continued: “This is when practitioners write Seals with certain functions on fú paper, to be activated with a touch during battle. It’s quick and convenient.”
“But during battle,” Lan said, recalling the sweeping strokes he’d painted across the air, “you…” She wriggled her fingers in a few circular strokes in the air, attempting to mimic his movements.
His lip twitched, the expression caught somewhere between indignation and amusement. “IperformedSeals,” he supplied. “The functions I needed were not in any of my pre-written Seals.”
“Then why not write them all?”
“There are thousands, if not tens of thousands, of Seals—andthose are only the ones that have been created by masters of Seal art. Even a single stroke in a slightly different direction might result in a completely different Seal. It would be impossible to write them all down.” He turned the fish roasting on the fire. “Practitioners typically use fú to carry the most basic of Seals, such as the one I used to light this fire. The advantage of fú is their speed and accessibility; the disadvantage is the limit to their functions. Performing Seals takes more time, but the possibilities are almost endless.”
The innocuous-seeming fú in her hand suddenly felt more dangerous. “What’s this one for?” Lan asked carefully.
“If you worry that you’ll activate it by accident, don’t,” Zen replied, and shifted closer to her. “I inscribe all my fú in my blood, meaning it carries my qì within and will respond only to me for activation.”
“How morbid.”
He ignored her as he shed his black glove, and she was again startled by the appearance of his flesh: pale skin marred by dozens of tiny, eerily uniform scars that shone white in the moonlight. She’d seen it the night before, back in Haak’gong, for a brief few moments.
Lan focused on the fú instead.
“This stroke,” Zen said, pointing, “calls upon wood, then twists it through all these characters for metal and earth into a solid grid structure. And here, the strokes for defense arching over the grid structure…this is a Seal for a protective shield. One of many.”
“Can you write me some?” she asked.
He cast her a shrewd look. “Perhaps I will, after you are adept enough at focusing on the flow of qì as we worked on in our exercises this afternoon.” He took the fú back from her, swapping it for a stick of fish. “Here, eat.”
As she tore into the roasted fish, Zen sat by her side, all the fú from his black silk pouch laid out neatly on the ground. With infinite patience, he broke down all the intertwined Seal strokes and characters on each fú, then summarized their functionality. For the first time in her life, Lan barely noticed her food. The fire was warm, chasing away the chill she had felt around her and in her soul; light lanced across Zen’s features, limning his face and hair in red like the caress of a fine horsetail brush. Her entire life, she had had to barter and trade and sometimes even beg for scraps of information, from the newsboys and innkeepers in Haak’gong or even from Old Wei. To sit beside a boy whose status and education were to Lan’s as Heaven was to earth and have him teach her without a flicker of intolerance or judgment was a new feeling.
It was a good feeling.
“Hand me the gourd,” Zen said once they had finished eating. From a pocket in his pants, he fished out a handful of red fruits and dropped them into the gourd. Then, without a word, he quickly traced several strokes in the air and encircled them into a Seal. When he handed the gourd back to her, it was warm.
A familiar scent wafted from it. “Jujubes!” Lan exclaimed. “We used to steal—I mean, hoard—them from our kitchens. They were expensive, and the Madam was stingy.”
Something softened in Zen’s face. “Drink it,” he said. “Our Master of Medicine advises boiled jujubes for…for girls…at certain…certain times.” In the firelight, his cheeks had reddened, and he averted his gaze from hers, suddenly busying himself with gathering the fú and tucking them back into his silk pouch.
Lan smothered a smile. She hadn’t known enough boys to understand their embarrassment over the female body, but shefound Zen’s reaction hilarious, even endearing. “Thank you,” she said sweetly, lifting the gourd to her lips. The hot drink filled her with warmth from the tips of her toes to her nose.
“We will resume meditation,” the practitioner said.“Propermeditation.”
Whatever gratitude Lan had felt toward him dissipated. She was full and warm and beginning to grow drowsy, and the last thing she wanted to do was to focus on nothingness. “I don’t know if I can,” she said quickly. “My moon’s blood—”
“You were the epitome of alertness just moments ago when I explained all the fú to you,” Zen retorted without pause. “Would you like me to write you some or not?”
At this, Lan straightened and brushed the dirt from her sleeves, then crafted her face into what she hoped was the expression of a pliant student.
The fire from the fú had extinguished, leaving them in a faint dusting of light from the crescent moon. Zen sat cross-legged opposite her, perfectly still without effort. Lan did her best to mirror his pose.
“Qì, remember, is the flow of energy around us and within us,” Zen began. “It comprises all the natural elements of this world—threads of energy that form the basis of practitioning and of life. These different forms of energy are then bifurcated into two halves that make a whole: yin and yáng. They are constantly shifting, constantly changing, and one cannot exist without the other. Take water, for example: the crest of a wave is made of yáng energy, the trough of yin energy. A pounding waterfall is yáng, whereas a still pond is yin.” His voice was pleasant, velvet as the darkness around them, blending into the gentle whisper of wind and chorus of cicadas that had begun to arise in the forest night. “Close your eyes and tune in to the harmony of qì around you and inside you.”
Lan did as she was bid, concentrating on the elementsaround her: the wetness of the grass, the snaps of wood and other forest sounds, the remnants of warmth from Zen’s fire wafting toward her. It was pleasant, and dark, and she was exhausted…the susurrus of bamboo leaves and the chatter of bugs began to shift into some semblance of a distant melody…Was that the melody she had tried to chase in her dream? She imagined her mother’s woodlute, her fingers strumming the notes. The melody twisted ahead of her, a ghostly brush of silver as she chased it, trying to catch its song…
