Starry River of the Sky (17 page)

“That’s not the end, is it?” Peiyi asked.

Rendi shrugged. Like the room, the sky was quiet and waiting. It was sunset, and even though the sun had gone down beyond the horizon, there was still light.

“What else happened?” Peiyi persisted. “What did the boy do?”

Rendi opened his mouth, but no words would form.

“He ran away, didn’t he?” Madame Chang said gently. “He ran away, unable to stay in a house where he was loved less than a piece of porcelain.”

Rendi could say nothing, and a myriad of pinks and oranges filled the sky.

“He probably went far with the money in his pockets,”
Madame Chang mused. “But eventually, his money would run out.”

Again, Rendi could make no sound. The pink sky was turning purple, and a rose-gold glow spilled into the room.

“Maybe he even sold his fine clothes and stowed away on carts and caravans, getting as far as he could, until he was poor and ragged and had nothing left,” Madame Chang said. “Except, perhaps, the good fortune to find someone willing to take him in as a chore boy.”

Tears welled in Rendi’s eyes, and finally a noise formed in his throat. But it was a sob, the same sound of sorrow he heard so often in the wind. His eyes blurred as the tears began to flow freely, so he did not see Peiyi, Master Chao, and the others draw near to comfort him.

But he felt them all.

That night, Rendi lay awake in his bed. He thought about Fang and Liu, the duke, and all that had happened. Was his father really looking for him? He was unsure how that made him feel. He stared out into the black sky while the wind moaned again.

The cries grew louder in Rendi’s ears. What was crying like that? And for the first time, Rendi wondered why. Was the person in pain? Why didn’t anyone help him?

But Madame Chang said she heard the cries only
faintly, and no one else seemed to hear them at all. Did Mr. Shan? Rendi remembered Mr. Shan’s back straightening stiffly when the groans blew in. Maybe Mr. Shan heard them too. But did no one hear them the way he did? The plaintive call, beckoning and begging?

He sat up. Whoever was crying had been doing so for weeks and weeks! Maybe no one had helped because Rendi was the only one who could really hear it. A sudden shame filled him. Ever since he started hearing the cries, all he had thought about was himself, never about who was suffering or how he could help.

Well, he would find out and help now, Rendi thought with determination. It was his turn to save someone. He stood up and took the plain cloth bag from his drawer, the same one he had packed so long ago. Now he emptied it of his belongings and started to repack. What did one bring for something like this? he thought. Extra clothes? Cloth for bandages? A knife? Maybe the person was crying out of hunger. Food, then, and a jug of wine.

Rendi tiptoed to the kitchen, filling his bag with anything he thought might be helpful, his bag a bit unwieldy
as he slung it over his shoulders. Then he took a lantern heavy with oil and crept out of the inn.

The dark night was full of sad groans, and for a moment, Rendi felt as if they were coming from the empty sky above. Slowly, he located the direction of the moans. Yet as he lit the lantern, he gulped.

The moans were coming from across the Stone Pancake! That rock that stretched for miles and miles. He would be lost in no time out there.

The groans came again, and Rendi took a deep breath. Maybe that was why the person was crying. Maybe someone was lost out there on the stone plain! Well, if he was going to save them, he had to go but not get lost himself. “I just have to mark my way,” he said, “so I can find my way back.”

He swung the lantern around the yard, trying to find something to help him. The light shone on a pile of empty snail shells—garbage from Master Chao’s new dishes. They were dry from being in the daytime sun, and there were a lot of them. “I’ll use those,” Rendi whispered, filling his pockets.

The breeze carried another sad whimper, and Rendi
stepped onto the flat stone. He raised the lantern and looked at the endless blackness in front of him. He dropped a snail shell, listened, and walked forward. He took one step after another, occasionally dropping a snail shell, until he was a small pinprick of light, like a bright star in the darkness.

Rendi felt as if he had been walking for miles. As his pockets began to lighten, he dropped snail shells less frequently, and he began to worry that he would not have enough. But just when he ran out, something other than flat stone and black sky formed in the landscape. A large, tall shadow of a tree reached into the Starry River like an arm beckoning. As Rendi walked closer, he was also able to see a stone bridge that extended over a lake, both almost invisible in the darkness.

The lantern created a circle of light around Rendi as he walked over the bridge. When he saw his reflection in the still water, he felt as if he were walking over the night sky, for there seemed no difference between the two. The moans grew stronger and stronger with each step he took, so he knew he was going in the right direction.

He stepped off the bridge onto grassy ground. The weeds, getting their water from the lake, were soft under his feet, so different from the dried, scorched plants in the village. With his lantern held high, Rendi saw a low hilly area before him.

The groans grew even louder, and Rendi frowned. It seemed as if the cries were coming from inside one of the hills!

Stretching the light out in front of him, Rendi peered into the darkness. One of the hills appeared to have a large black opening. Was there a cave in that hill? He walked closer, and words came back to his ears. “
An ancient dark hole in one of the hills
,” Madame Chang had said in her stories. “
A dark hole, like a cave.
”

Rendi swung around, the lantern swaying. It was just like the place Madame Chang had described. A lake. A tall tree. An ancient cave. All that was missing was the mountain. As Rendi stood in front of the opening, he gulped. Did this mean the White Tiger lived in there? But the White Tiger was gone now. Was it a different vicious tiger that had been moaning all this time?

Another groan resonated from the darkness in front of him. The groan was sad and mournful, like a temple bell at a funeral. But there was also something else in the sound. There was yearning, a longing in it that was an echo of something deep inside Rendi’s own chest and what made him finally enter.

“Hello?” Rendi called. His voice was thin, and it faded into the endless blackness. In the cave, the air was cool, and the earth was soft on his feet. “Hello?”

Another moan blew at him, and Rendi raised his lantern even higher. There was something in front of him. Something very large. He could make out a huge form—bigger than a horse but, strangely, shapeless. It was glowing with an eerie, soft, faint green light. What was it?
Rendi took slow, careful steps forward, the light shaking from the trembling lantern.

Suddenly, from the strange mass, two enormous eyes blinked open. Like two round melons, they bulged and stared right at Rendi. They were the eyes of a monstrous toad!

Rendi shrieked and ran back the way he had come, his heart thundering louder than his feet on the ground. His fear overwhelmed any thoughts. Was it the real Noxious Toad? Would it breathe on him with its poisonous vapor? Rendi burst out of the hill, gasping and panting.

The cool breeze from the lake blew over him, calming him like a gentle touch. The light from his lantern flickered over the water, making twinkling stars in the rippling waves. The tranquil scene soothed him, and as he caught his breath, another moan came from the hill. It
did not seem malicious. It seemed sad. And then Rendi remembered the eyes—those eyes of the monstrous toad were full of pain and sorrow. They were, in fact, much like the eyes of Mr. Shan’s toad when it became three-legged, Rendi thought with a pang.

What if that giant toad wasn’t the Noxious Toad? Rendi thought, his mind racing. What if… what if it was WangYi’s wife? What if Madame Chang was wrong and WangYi’s wife had never turned back into a woman? What if she had stayed a toad? And with the moon missing, she was stuck here on earth, hiding in this hill?

A dim light began to spill out of the hill. The toad had followed him! But it was moving so slowly, Rendi could easily run and disappear from sight by the time the toad exited. Rendi looked at the bridge but stood still and waited.

The toad finally emerged, its greenish glow lighting the surroundings as if it were a giant, misshapen lantern. The toad was so large that Rendi’s head just reached the top of its bulbous leg, and its warty skin was like weathered, rotting leather. Rendi quaked again at its monstrous ugliness, but the toad gave another pathetic moan of pain, and Rendi’s pity drove away his fear.

The toad did not look well. The odd green glow was coming from its bloated belly and made it look wan and sickly. No wonder the toad had moved so slowly. It continued to hold its stomach with both of its front legs and moaned.

Rendi wondered if it had swallowed fireflies like Mr. Shan’s toad had. It must have had to swallow a lot, Rendi thought, surveying the size of the toad’s swollen belly. But that would explain why it had a stomachache, at least.

Rendi felt the weight of the bag on his shoulders. Would the wine make the toad feel better? He took out the jug.

“Maybe this will help your stomach,” Rendi said, holding out the wine. His words felt clumsy and out of place in the still night. “Do you want to try it?”

The toad’s eyelids lifted halfway, and its eyes, as black as watermelon seeds, looked at the jug.

“It’s Son Wine,” Rendi said. “It’s good. I should know. My father invented it.”

The toad made a questioning noise, and Rendi, to fill the silence and perhaps out of habit, began to tell the story.