Starry River of the Sky (15 page)

Rendi stared. A pale rectangle of light streamed from the hallway onto the wreckage of broken dishware and splattered wine. But the room was empty. Fang and Liu had left. Without him. Rendi was filled with shocked disbelief.

Then, like an exploding firecracker, the room burst with light and lanterns and people and sound.

“Rendi! Rendi! Are you all right?” Peiyi said. Noises and words mixed together, and the bright lights blinded him. When he was finally able to see, a crowd of faces was looking down at him. They were the faces of Peiyi,
Master Chao, Madame Chang, Mr. Shan, and even Widow Yan and MeiLan. He blinked at them, feeling as if he had just awakened from a nightmare.

“I’ll get that,” Master Chao said, cutting the bonds on Rendi’s arms. Widow Yan untied his feet, and Madame Chang removed the gag. Peiyi kept talking, her jumbled words like a rushing river.

“We saw them grab you—me and Madame Chang saw it from her window,” Peiyi said. “And I didn’t know what to do, but Madame Chang told me to get Mr. Shan, and then he told us to get Widow Yan’s fermented tofu and have the toad swallow some fireflies and paint the
wang
symbol on my forehead, and we could fake the Noxious Toad…”

“What?” Rendi said in bewilderment, his mind still dazed. They had faked the Noxious Toad? The revolting smell of the noxious vapor was Widow Yan’s tofu? The eerie, glowing toad was Mr. Shan’s toad with a firefly dinner? Rendi was too bewildered to laugh.

“We knew the men were superstitious, so Mr. Shan said scaring them away would be the best way to save you,” Peiyi continued. “I was so scared! Why did they
take you, Rendi? What did they want you for? My father melted his cinnabar belt decoration to make the blood—did I tell you that part?”

“What?” Rendi said again. Peiyi was asking questions faster than he could answer, but Rendi was glad. He wasn’t sure he knew how to answer them.

“Peiyi,” MeiLan said, “you can tell Rendi the details later.”

“Yes,” Master Chao said, helping Rendi stagger onto his feet. Rendi’s legs felt stiff and sore, as if he hadn’t moved in days. “Let’s go downstairs.”

As Rendi stood in a room full of golden light and people, a room that had just moments before been nothing but darkness, he suddenly understood what had happened. Peiyi, Madame Chang, Master Chao—all these people had plotted and acted to save him. Him, Rendi, who had sneered and scoffed, been rude and unfriendly, and who had tried so hard not to care about anyone or anything in this small, poor village. The night made a sobbing sound, and Rendi opened his mouth to speak, but the words he wished to say dried up as his eyes filled with tears. He blinked and swallowed, and finally said instead, “Where’s the toad?”

Mr. Shan was kneeling forlornly over the pile of shattered dishes. His head was bowed as if in mourning, and Rendi felt as if he had swallowed a cold stone.

“Is… is the toad… is it all right?” Rendi choked out.

Mr. Shan looked over at Rendi, his eyes sorrowful like those of a hurt child. “No,” he said.

“Eerrr—ripp.”
The toad gave a pitiful moan in Mr. Shan’s hands.

Its belly still flashed green from the fireflies, but it was less noticeable in the brightly lit dining room. Rendi and his rescuers were sitting at a table, and all of them looked down sadly at the toad. The tea Rendi was drinking moistened his mouth, but his throat still felt tight and dry. The night murmured grief-filled noises. Rendi had never imagined a toad could mean so much to him.

Fang and Liu had not been careful during their terrified
flight out of the inn. The toad had tried to find refuge as the violent storm of plates and wine fell around it, but it could not escape Fang’s and Liu’s stomping, clumsy feet. Its back leg was a flattened, misshapen appendage.

“Can’t we fix it?” MeiLan said softly.

Master Chao shook his head. “We’ll have to cut the leg off,” he said.

“Cut it off?” Peiyi said, horrified. “You can’t cut it off!”

“We have to,” Widow Yan told them. “It will be better for the toad.”

“No!” Rendi said, shaking with a sudden fury. “You can’t!”

Peiyi and Rendi stood side by side, as if soldiers preparing for battle. Rendi clenched his teeth, and his hands had formed into fists. Madame Chang led them away from the table.

“Sometimes the best decision is a painful one,” she said to them. Peiyi looked back at the table and turned white. Rendi followed her gaze and saw Master Chao taking out his sharpest knife.

“
No!
” Rendi shouted, but Madame Chang stopped him before he could move. He tried to beat his fists at her, but she easily caught his hands and held them still. Her
fingers, firm but gentle, were like cool water on a burn. The sky gave a sorrowful sigh.

“Rendi,” Madame Chang said, her calm eyes bringing him to stillness, “sometimes the best decision is a painful one, but it is never one made out of anger.”

Madame Chang sat him and Peiyi down, facing the windows. “Remember the story I told you of WangYi and his wife, the Moon Lady? How she took his pill of immortality and ended up on the moon? He only began to make good decisions when his anger left.”

“Did he?” Peiyi said, but she was obviously still thinking about the toad.

“Yes,” Madame Chang said.

T
HE
S
TORY OF
W
ANGYI’S
D
REAM

W
hen WangYi’s wife jumped to the moon and out of reach, WangYi was very angry. In his anger, he destroyed her
possessions and married new wives and forbade anyone, even his children, to mention her. But his anger did not lessen, and he could not forget her. So he had pictures painted of her as a toad and told mocking stories of her being a grotesque creature that swallowed the moon. But his laughter held no joy, and every evening he cursed the moon.

His malice at the moon seemed only to fall back upon him, for it was his nights that became cursed. When he lay down to sleep at night, he felt as if his bed were made of hot coals. He could not rest. When he did sleep, he was plagued by nightmares. He was tormented with images of screaming people, dead animals, and bloody claws. Soon, his days and nights were filled with misery.

Finally, one night, during a fitful slumber, WangYi had a different dream. In his dream, an old man sat cross-legged in front of him, as if waiting. As WangYi approached, the old man stood up and began to walk away, gesturing WangYi to follow.

The old man guided WangYi across a flat stone land, completely empty except for two palaces side by
side. The palaces were splendid and magnificent, with blue tiles that shone like the sunlit sky and walls as smooth as polished jade. Both palaces were exactly the same, except for the gold signs above the doorway. One sign said
MISERY
and the other said
JOY
.

The old man led WangYi into the palace marked
MISERY
. When they entered, they found themselves in a grand dining room where a lavish banquet was served. A rich, savory aroma filled the air from platters spilling over with food. The long table was hidden by all the delicious delicacies—bamboo shoots finely cut like plucked chrysanthemum petals, slices of duck with crisp amber skin, golden soup, and pieces of deep red pork shining as if lacquered—and the abundance was overwhelming.

However, the room was filled with shrieks of frustration and fury, and all the guests were gaunt and thin. They all had five-foot-long chopsticks, and because the chopsticks were so long, it was impossible for the food to reach their mouths. When they tried to eat using something other than the long chopsticks, the food disappeared—it was obvious that the food
could be eaten only with the chopsticks. So the guests stretched and bent, trying to maneuver food from the long sticks but always failing. They screamed and raged, whimpered and wailed, all of them starving and taunted by the plentiful feast before them.

As WangYi watched with horror, the old man beckoned him out of the palace. Without a word, the old man led WangYi into the palace marked
JOY
. There, they again entered a grand dining room with the same abundant feast on the table. But instead of angry wails, the room was filled with laughter. The guests here also had five-foot-long chopsticks, but they were plump and healthy, joking and smiling. WangYi was puzzled. How could they eat with those long chopsticks? Then he noticed the difference.

The guests in this palace were feeding one another!

Before WangYi could shake his head in amazement, the old man beckoned to him again. WangYi followed the old man back out to the barren plain. In front of the palaces, the old man presented to him a pair of five-foot-long chopsticks. WangYi reached for the chopsticks, but they fell from his hand. He tried to pick
them up from the ground, only to realize he had no fingers—only evil claws! They were the claws of a tiger!

WangYi awoke from his dream in a panic. As he sat in the darkness, he realized he was truly alone. His subjects despised him, his family feared him, and the only one who had loved him had left him. In the palace of joy, no one would feed him. And it looked as if he was destined to be unable to feed others as well. For the first time in a long time, WangYi began to weep.

But in the morning, WangYi was a changed man. He stopped roaring and yelling. He stopped his cruel and irrational actions and began to rule with justice and mercy. And he removed all the pictures of his wife as a toad.

With each good deed he did, with each wise decision he made, he felt as if the moon shone upon him, and he used his memory of his wife as his guide. He slowly regained his people’s trust, but when they called him “WangYi the Great,” he would only look wistfully up at the moon. As he grew older, the yearning to see
his wife on the moon grew even stronger. He wished to see her once more before he died. So, one night, with hair more gray than black, WangYi climbed the tallest mountain.

When he reached the top, the moon was before him, large and glowing. He saw the figure of his wife. Just as had been rumored, she was no longer a toad but was now the pale, dark-eyed Moon Lady, more beautiful than he even remembered. She stared at him, but before he could say a word, she turned in fear and began to run.

“Don’t go!” WangYi cried. “I’ve changed! I forgive you! Don’t go!”

But she was gone, and WangYi fell onto his knees, heartbroken. He knew then how much he loved her. For the first time, he was glad that he had never taken the pill of immortality, for an eternal life of missing her was more than he could bear.

“Do you truly forgive her?” a voice said.

WangYi looked up and saw an old man sitting in front of him cross-legged, a book in his lap. The old man from his dream!