Chapter 5 — The Bamboo Method
Eleven nights later, Lin Wei broke his promise.
He had not intended to break it. He had intended to keep it. He had spent eleven days keeping it with a discipline that had impressed even him, a boy not given to admiring himself: at first watch he opened the second pamphlet (eighteen pages, more complete), then the third (six pages, badly water-rotted, four characters legible per page), then the fourth (a single sheet, possibly the back of a discarded inventory but possibly not). He memorized. At seventh bell he recited. Master Yuan wrote, in the corrupted hand, on green lacquered cards. The drawer had eleven cards now where two weeks ago there had been two. Lin Wei had not bled. He had not cast. He had been shorter in the shoulders by exactly one finger from rice to bed every day. He had been, in the assessment of Old Pei (who had said it within earshot two mornings ago), settling.
Han Yi had not hit him in eleven days. This was the longest stretch in three years. Lin Wei filed it under anomalies and did not allow himself to enjoy it.
On the eleventh night, after the dusk bell, Mei Qi changed everything.
He had not noticed Mei Qi changing everything because Mei Qi had not changed anything. Mei Qi had simply walked past the alley behind the Copyhouse, on her way from the kitchen to the privy garden where she fed her fox, with two rice cakes hidden in her sleeve. She had walked past that alley every dusk for two years. Lin Wei knew this because the south wall of his cell faced the alley and he had heard her quiet steps every dusk for two years and had filed the kind one under people I cannot afford to know.
But tonight, as she passed, her fox made a noise.
Lin Wei was at the small high window of his cell, three steps up on his folded pallet so his head was at lattice level, breathing the cool grove air. He had been doing this for half a watch every evening because, eleven days into not casting, he had decided to study his condition by listening — listening at his lattice window for the bamboo's half-green hum, which had not stopped since the morning of Han Yi's demonstration. Three meters of grove, lattice, wood, mortar, and the small high window made a kind of acoustic chamber. He could hear the half-green pitch through it, clean and faint and continuous. He had spent eleven evenings hearing it. He had not, yet, told Master Yuan that the grove had not stopped humming.
He was telling himself, with the small clean self-discipline of a boy who has been ordered not to cast, that listening was not casting.
Mei Qi's fox made a noise.
It was a small chirruping noise — not a bark, not a yelp, not the rolling growl Lin Wei had heard from a sect dog through the wall once last winter. The chirrup of a fox. Two notes. Up, down. The first note was the half-green pitch.
Lin Wei froze with his ear against the lattice.
The second note was the half-blue pitch.
He had only learned the half-blue pitch existed three days ago, from the eighteen-page pamphlet (the second one, opened on day two of the new discipline). The chart at the back of the second pamphlet was the same chart as the first — 81 strong, 81 soft — but it was a wider chart, with the soft tones not just named but paired: the half-green was paired with the half-blue, the half-red with the half-yellow, the half-grey with the half-white, in a ring of eight pairings he did not understand but had memorized. The pairings were what Yuan had said his master once called answering tones. Tones that, when sounded together, made a chord that was steady. The kind of chord, Yuan had said, a fox's call sometimes had — though Yuan had said that the way a man says a thing he had read in a book and not heard for himself.
The fox in the alley had called in an answering pair. Half-green, half-blue.
Lin Wei did not move.
He waited.
The fox chirruped again. Same two notes. Up, down. Then a third sound, very soft — the sound of a girl saying shh, and the soft small whisper of a rice cake being unwrapped, and the small wet sound of a fox eating.
Lin Wei stood at his lattice in the dark. He held the splinter in his right hand. He pressed his right palm to the small of his back. His meridian, beneath the palm, twitched. He had felt it twitch ten times in eleven days, always at the half-green, always once, very small. He had filed the twitches under evidence and not pressed for more.
It twitched now. Twice. Down, up. Half-green, half-blue.
He pulled his hand away from his back. He looked at the splinter. He looked at the lattice.
He whispered, very softly, to himself: "You will not cast."
He had been ordered. He had agreed. He had been the boy who agreed, eleven days running.
The fox in the alley made another sound — a low purr that was, he realized, not on any pitch. Or rather, the purr was a rhythm, a slow under-beat that braced the two notes the fox had cried a moment ago. He had read about rhythm in the eighteen-page pamphlet, on page eleven, in a passage that Yuan had not made a card of yet because Yuan had said he wanted to think about it first. The passage was about carrying tones — the slow ground-pulse that allows a chord to be sustained without breath. Rhythm under, tones over. The breath of the grove, the passage had said, carries the tones for those who cannot yet carry them themselves.
He stood at his lattice in the dark.
He thought: the grove is humming the half-green at me. The fox is calling the half-green and the half-blue at me. The grove is carrying the rhythm. The pamphlet says the grove carries the rhythm for those who cannot yet carry it.
He thought: if I cast tonight, with the grove carrying me, I will not need to carry myself.
He thought: Master Yuan said two months. We are at eleven days.
He thought: Master Yuan said the fluted body that has been starved for fourteen years may flood and die.
He thought, then — very precisely, weighing it — Master Yuan also said his master died of being right. And Master Yuan said we are not building fast enough.
He had not, actually, said that last part. Lin Wei had thought it on his pallet on day three. It had been Lin Wei's thought, not Yuan's. Lin Wei filed misattribution to mentor under errors I should not make twice, and made himself acknowledge: this was his impatience, not Yuan's order, and he was about to weigh his impatience against the man whose life he had been ordered to value above his own.
He thought, then, the third thing.
The third thing was that the fox knew. The fox was three meters past the lattice and the fox was calling the answering pair and the fox was — somehow, in some way the pamphlet had hinted at and not explained — calling to him.
He had not allowed himself to think of this earlier. He thought of it now. Mei Qi's fox was a gray-tone fox. He had heard this from senior boys two years ago. Gray-tone in the standard chart meant a dead pitch, a discard pitch, one of the tones nobody trained because the gray tones were considered weak. He had filed gray fox under trivia and not thought of it.
The half-blue pitch in the new chart sat — he checked the chart in his head, the way he checked a column of arithmetic — sat between standard blue-two and standard blue-three. And the half-blue, in the chart's pairing, was the answering tone of the half-green.
In the standard chart, the dead gray-two pitch sat in roughly the same place. Adjacent. Off by perhaps a hair.
He did not yet know whether gray-two in the corrupted chart and half-blue in the original chart were the same tone given two different names. He suspected. He could not be sure. The pamphlet had not been clear and Yuan had not yet said.
But the fox was calling, and the meridian under his back was answering, and the grove three meters out was carrying the rhythm.
Lin Wei stood very still in his cell in the dark.
He thought of Master Yuan in his closet. He thought of the eleven green lacquered cards in the drawer. He thought of your life first. Mine second. He thought of the order in the order in the order.
He thought: I will not cast. I will only listen.
He thought: if I listen with my meridian instead of my ear, it is not casting.
He filed this rationalization immediately, in the part of his mind that filed rationalizations, with full honesty: Lin Wei. You are about to cast. Do not lie to yourself about it.
He acknowledged the lie. He made the choice clean.
He whispered again, into the lattice: "I will cast."
He thought, hard, of Master Yuan's face — the wet-lashed face, the young face, the face that had said I have been a coward in his name for forty years. He held the face in his mind. He said to it, silently: I will cast for one breath. One only. If it kills me, you will not be named, because I have burned the slivers and the ink-trace and the green card in your drawer reads as standard. If it does not kill me, I will tell you tomorrow, and you may strike me.
He turned from the lattice. He stepped down from the pallet. He went to the seed-oil candle and did not light it. The dark was better. He sat cross-legged on the floor. He laid the splinter on his left knee. He laid his right palm against the small of his back.
He filled his chest in four counts, from the soft of the belly. He settled the qi, three fingers below the navel. What qi, he thought, by now familiar with the doubt — whatever qi I have. He reached inward, with the will of the second mind, to the first meridian. He felt the meridian. It was awake. It had been awake for eleven days. Tonight it was awake and humming — faintly, of its own accord, with the bamboo three meters past the lattice.
He shaped, in his throat, the half-green pitch.
He did not push it. He let it sit in his throat. He waited.
The bamboo, in the grove, swelled.
It was so small a swell he might have imagined it. The half-green hum thickened. It was the way a single voice thickens when it joins a chorus that has been waiting for it. The grove had been waiting eleven days. Tonight, with his throat shaped to the pitch, the grove leaned toward him.
He let, very slowly, the half-green qi enter the first meridian.
He had read the line in the original pamphlet. Allow the half-green qi to enter the first meridian from the grove. Allow it to pass through the first meridian and out the right palm. Sustain.
He allowed.
The qi entered.
It entered like rain entering parched earth. The first meridian, beneath his right palm, bloomed. Not painfully — the doctors' word had been shear and there was no shear, there was opening. It opened to a width Lin Wei would have called impossible yesterday. The qi that entered was grey-green, the color, in his mind's eye, of moss on a winter stone. It moved up the meridian from the soft of the right foot — he felt it cross his ankle, calf, knee, hip, kidney, ribs, shoulder, throat — and arrived, four counts later, at the soft of his right ear.
His right ear opened.
He had not known a meridian terminated in an ear. He had transcribed the line a hundred times — from the sole of the right foot to the soft of the right ear — and not understood it. Now he understood. The ear was the output. The breath did not pass out the right palm — it passed out the right ear, into the world, as a sound.
He heard, very faintly — and it was him, it was coming out of him — the half-green pitch.
It was the same pitch the bamboo three meters past the lattice was holding. The same pitch the fox in the alley had called. The same pitch the splinter in his palm had hummed at on the night of Han Yi's demonstration. The same pitch — and this was the thing his mind locked onto, because his mind locked onto patterns — the same pitch the bamboo had been holding for him, in the quiet hum past the lattice, for eleven days.
His own throat. His own ear. His own meridian. The grove. The fox. All on one tone.
For one breath, Lin Wei was, with the grove, a single instrument.
It was a sensation he had no name for. He filed it under new categories required. The closest word he could find was home.
The breath ended.
He let it. He did not try to hold it. The pamphlet had said Sustain and Master Yuan had said two months. He had cast for one breath as he had promised himself and as he had not promised Master Yuan. The cast ended. The qi unspooled from his ear back down the meridian to the soft of the right foot, the way an exhale empties lungs. The first meridian remained open. It was, when the breath ended, the width of a thread of silk. It had been, eleven days ago, the width of nothing.
He sat very still.
His back, under his palm, was warm. Not hot — the doctors' word for meridian shear was hot, and this was warm. The warm of an old stove that had been cold for fourteen years and had been lit one match's worth.
He looked at the splinter on his left knee. The splinter was vibrating faintly. It had absorbed a thread of the qi he had cast. He picked it up. He held it to his right ear.
The splinter hummed. The same pitch. His pitch.
Lin Wei sat in the dark with the splinter at his ear and his right palm against his back and the grove three meters past the lattice humming with him, and he thought: I have circulated qi.
He had circulated qi.
He, the marginal, the cracked one, the boy who had not woken meaningfully since his twelfth year, had drawn qi from the grove and passed it through a meridian and released it as a sound he had heard with his own ear. The pamphlet's two-line procedure had worked, in his body, on the first true attempt.
He thought, with the part of his mind that filed measurements: body tempering layer zero, increased by some unknown fraction.
He thought, with the part of his mind that filed wonder: this is what they have. This is what Han Yi has had since he was eight.
He thought, with the part of his mind that filed grief: this is what I have not had for fourteen years.
He thought, with the part of his mind that filed discipline: Master Yuan will be furious.
He thought, finally, with the part of his mind that filed risk: the grove is humming louder than it was a minute ago. The fox has stopped chirruping. Someone in the alley is listening.
He went still.
He listened. The grove. The grove was louder. The half-green pitch past the lattice had thickened the way it had thickened in his throat. A few stalks — three? four? he could not count by ear — were holding the half-green pitch in a small chorus where there had been one stalk before.
The fox in the alley was silent.
He heard, very faintly, footsteps. Not the watchman. The watchman's footsteps were a heavy lantern-tread that hit the stone at known intervals. These were lighter. A girl's tread. Mei Qi.
Mei Qi was at the alley side of his lattice. She had stopped feeding her fox. She was listening.
Lin Wei did not move. He kept his palm on his back. He kept his breath slow. He let the meridian close, slowly, on its own, the way he had let it open. The bloom faded. The thread of silk narrowed. After perhaps ten breaths he could no longer feel the warmth beneath his palm. The grove past the lattice settled. The half-green pitch quieted. By the time he could no longer feel the meridian he could no longer hear the grove's chorus; the grove returned to its old single hum, the way it had been for eleven days.
He listened.
Mei Qi was still there.
He did not move. He sat on the floor with the splinter on his knee and waited.
After perhaps twenty heartbeats, very softly, in the cool grove dark on the other side of the lattice, Mei Qi spoke.
She said: "Your tone is gray-two. Same as Ash."
Lin Wei's stomach did a thing it had not done in his life.
He had practiced for three years not to let his face do anything. His face did nothing. His mouth, of itself, opened and closed.
Gray-two. The dead tone. The discard tone of the standard chart. The tone of her fox. The tone of —
He had been listening to himself for eleven days through the lattice. The grove had been humming at the half-green pitch in the original chart. The pamphlet had paired half-green with half-blue. The standard chart's gray-two — the dead tone, the discard tone — sat in roughly the position of either the half-green or the half-blue, depending on which axis you measured.
Mei Qi knew the standard chart. Mei Qi did not know the original chart. Mei Qi, hearing him from the alley, had used the only name she had for the tone she had heard, and the only name she had was gray-two.
His tone, in the language of the corrupted chart, was gray-two.
In the language of the original chart it was half-green — or some pair of half-green and half-blue, he could not tell which yet, perhaps both.
Mei Qi's fox was gray-two. Her fox had called the half-green and half-blue at him. Her fox shared his tone. Mei Qi, who had walked past the alley every dusk for two years with rice cakes for a gray-tone fox the sect had told her was a low-grade beast — Mei Qi knew about gray-two.
Mei Qi had been waiting too.
Lin Wei sat in the dark of his cell with the splinter in his palm and the lattice between him and a girl whose name he had filed three years ago under people I cannot afford to know.
He thought, very precisely: Master Yuan will be furious if I speak.
He thought, immediately after: Master Yuan will be furious that I cast at all.
He thought: Mei Qi has heard me cast. She has named my tone. She has said the name of her own fox's tone. She has just put her life in my hand, by speaking, as Master Yuan did eleven days ago.
He thought: if I do not speak now, I will lose a thing I do not know yet how to lose.
He stood. He stepped up onto the folded pallet. He put his mouth very close to the lattice. He whispered, so softly he could barely hear himself:
"You are wrong about the name. But you are right about the tone."
There was a long silence. He could hear her breathing.
She said, more softly than he had spoken: "I know I am wrong about the name. I have been waiting for someone who knew the right name."
He thought, with the small part of his mind that did mathematics: the count is now three. Yuan. Mei Qi. Me.
He thought, with the part of his mind that filed risk: and possibly the fox.
He thought, with the part of his mind that filed irrational warmth: the fox most of all.
He whispered: "Tomorrow. Behind the privy. At third-watch break."
She whispered: "Bring the splinter."
He went still.
He had not, in eleven days, told her about the splinter. He had not told anyone except Master Yuan.
"How do you —"
"Ash smelled it on you," Mei Qi whispered, "the day after the demonstration. I have been waiting eleven days for you to be ready to come out of your cell."
He could hear, very faintly, in the alley, the fox make a small sound — not a chirrup, a soft assent.
Mei Qi said, even more softly: "Don't tell Master Yuan you spoke to me tonight."
He thought: she knows Master Yuan is in it too.
He thought, after: of course she does. Master Yuan is the only elder in this sect who can be in it. She has put together as much as I have.
He thought, after that: we are not three. We have always been at least three. I am only now noticing.
He whispered: "I won't tell him tonight."
"That will do."
He heard her stand. He heard her take the rice cake wrapper from her sleeve. He heard, very faintly, the fox eat the second cake. He heard her footsteps go very softly down the alley toward the kitchen.
He stood at his lattice. He did not move for a long time. The grove past the lattice had returned to its single hum. The half-green pitch of one stalk — the same stalk, perhaps, that had hummed since Han Yi's demonstration — held steady in the night.
Three meters past the lattice and a half-pitch below the chart, a fox had eaten a rice cake.
In Lin Wei's back, beneath the right shoulder blade, the first meridian was the width of a thread of silk and was closing slowly to nothing as he listened. It would not be nothing tomorrow. It would be slightly less than a thread of silk. It would be more than the width of nothing.
He thought, with the small clean part of his mind that did measurements: body tempering layer zero, increased by a measurable fraction. Tonight: point three. Possibly point four. The fraction is not zero anymore.
He thought, with the part of his mind that knew what he had done: Master Yuan will be furious. Master Yuan will say it was reckless. Master Yuan will be correct.
He thought, with the part of his mind that did not yet have a name: Master Yuan was not in the alley tonight, and Master Yuan does not know what the grove sounds like through this lattice at dusk for eleven nights, and Master Yuan has never spoken to a fox.
He stepped down from the pallet. He sat on the floor. He laid the splinter on his knee.
He whispered, to the dark of his cell, and meant it:
"It works. It actually works."
He did not let his face do anything for very long. He had been practicing three years. He would not, on the eleventh night of his discipline, lose practice in a single breath.
But he sat with the splinter on his knee and his palm on his back and the meridian humming faint and clean beneath, and he allowed himself one small motion of the corners of his mouth — the bare half-curve, the kind of smile a man permits himself when he has lifted a stone he could not lift yesterday — and he held the smile for one count, two, three, and let it go.
He thought: tomorrow. Behind the privy.
He thought: the count is three.
He thought: Master Yuan will need to know by the day after tomorrow.
He thought: Han Yi must not notice my shoulders.
He folded the pallet flat. He lay down. He set the splinter under his cheek. He pressed his right palm to the small of his back, where the fluted first meridian was a thread of silk wider than it had been at dusk, and where the warmth of his single breath had not entirely left.
In the grove, past the lattice, the bamboo hummed his pitch. In the alley, Mei Qi's footsteps faded toward the kitchen. In the splinter, beneath his cheek, the small absorbed thread of his own qi hummed faintly back at him — and that was the new thing, the thing he could not yet measure, that he had spat a half-breath of his own tone into a piece of grove-bone and the grove-bone had kept the tone for him.
He filed tone storage under to investigate.
He slept, at last, for the first night in twelve.
He slept hard.
The dawn bell rang. He did not hear it. The second-watch bell rang. He stirred.
In his back, the first meridian — for the first time in his life — was already humming faintly before he woke.