He still held theClassic of Gods and Demons,the book’s presence like an inevitability that they were putting off for the moment. And that was exactly what this was: a small pocket of borrowed time.
She lay down next to him, feeling the sand sift against her hair and tickle her neck. They were close but not touching, and out of the corner of her eyes, she could see the rise and fall of his chest. When he spoke, his voice seemed to thrum from the ground and wrap wholly around her. He pointed out stars that told stories—the Orphan and the Bear, the Golden Arrow, the Hunter and the Stallion—and Lan realized these were unique to the Mansorian clan. It did not escape her that Zen was the only one in this world left who could tell such stories.
“Mama told me that the stars held the light of souls from our reincarnated lives,” Lan said.
Zen was silent for a moment. “I’d like to believe that,” he replied at last.
“Me, too.” There was an ache in her heart, so she pushed on: “What do you think we would be doing in our other lives?” The stars winked above them, innumerable and filled with infinite possibilities.
“Hmm. You would still be smashing teacups into my face—”
“That was in self-defense!” she exclaimed.
“—and bathing in fountains of holy waters from the moon—”
She turned to give him a playful shove. “How was I supposed to know? It isn’t as if they put up a sign that said ‘Holy water from the tears of the moon here. Do not drink or bathe.’ ”
“—and stealing pork buns from the kitchens,” he continued, relentless, a gleam to his eyes and a rising laugh to his voice. “Dancing in the snow and making fun of my singing,telling me that I’m always too serious and need to smile more….” He trailed off and turned his head to her so that they were facing each other.
They were so close that she could count each of his lashes, see the individual specks of sand that had blown into his hair and clung there like pearl dust. And suddenly, looking into his eyes, Lan had the feeling that she was falling, that the world had reversed and they plunged together into the sky and the stars rose to catch them.
She dared herself not to look away.
He didn’t, either.
“If we had another life,” Zen said softly, “what would you wish for?”
The words were somehow intimate and sent a shiver through her. She knew the answer as deep as her bones, as surely as an arrow’s path. Lan closed her eyes. “I would want my father to have remained with me and Mama instead of going into hiding,” she murmured. “I would want my family to be happy together, eating mooncakes each autumn’s solstice and celebrating the turn of each cycle with red lanterns. I would want a world without war.”And I would want to love you, without being forced to choose a different path.But of course, she couldn’t say that, so she finished, “What about you?” and opened her eyes again.
He was still looking straight at her. She could see herself reflected in the black of his irises, a girl in white illuminated by the moon. And in there, she thought she might have understood some of his answer.
Zen exhaled. “I would want the same.”
Her heart was beating so fast, at any moment now, it would burst from her chest. “It’s late,” Lan whispered, “and we have an ancient tome to read.”
“It feels almost as though we are back at the School of theWhite Pines, rushing your reading last-minute,” Zen said with a wistful smile. She did not miss the undercurrent of grief and longing to his words.
They sat up, shaking the sand from their hair. The night had fully fallen now, and the paper windows of Shaklahira had gone completely dark.
Zen set theClassic of Gods and Demonsbetween them. It lay innocuously in the sand, its title seeming to gleam. He pressed his hand to the cover and looked at Lan. “Together?” he asked.
She leaned forward and placed her hand against his. “Together.”
—
The tome had changed. Zen stared down at the opening page, certain his eyes played tricks on him. Instead of the dissertations on power and the Mansorian Seals of demonic practitioning he had painstakingly transcribed, the first page now held a title and a portrait, as though he had picked up a storybook.
Zen flipped back to the cover and let out a breath. He had opened it on the white side, to the half that Hóng’yì had stolen.
He was about to turn the book over when Lan stopped him. “Wait,” she said. Her fingers were light and cool on his wrist, and he let her draw his hand back to reopen the book’s pages.
Upon a closer look, he realized that beside each column of Mansorian script was fresher Hin text. Hóng’yì—or the member of the imperial family who had first stolen this book—had translated the Mansorian language into Hin.
Why would the imperial family waste their time translating a story?he wondered.
But Lan was staring at the words wide-eyed. “The Beginning and the Ending,” she read aloud. Her hair fell over her face as she leaned forward to look at the picture, and Zen suddenlyhad the impression they sat together in a schoolhouse at Skies’ End, studying. He hurriedly pulled his gaze down.
The first ink drawing was of a shaman in a páo, standing on a hill looking into the night sky. The pane was split into four parts, representing the four seasons: spring blooms and summer grasses yielding to autumn leaves, then winter white. All the while, the shaman stood in the center, watching the lands change and the currents of the world ebb and flow.
