Starry River of the Sky (18 page)

T
HE
S
TORY OF
S
ON
W
INE

W
hen my mother was with child for the first time, my father, the magistrate, was overjoyed. “The blood of the greatest ruler and hero will be passed on,” he declared triumphantly. “My blood will continue in my son.”

Accordingly, he planned a grand feast for when the baby was to be born. He told his servants to fatten a pig, to make eighty-eight jars of the finest rice wine, and to prepare for the greatest festivities the township had ever seen. He laughed and joked boisterously, accepting congratulations as if his wife had already given birth. My mother worried, but in my father’s mind, a son already existed. His imagination had lost all boundaries, and my father pictured a son gifted with as much strength, bravery, and cleverness as an immortal.
My son will become king
, he thought with grand contentment,
and then his son will become emperor, and we will rule again!

So when a daughter was born, my father was
devastated. When the midwives told him that my mother had given birth to a girl, his face blackened like burned wood, and he stormed out of the room without even glancing at the baby. “A daughter!” he said bitterly.

My father was angry at the baby girl, as if she had somehow stolen the son he was expecting. In a rage, he turned all the guests from his door and ordered the banquet feast to be thrown to the pigs and the jars of wine buried. If anyone offered him a word of congratulations, he scowled and ordered them from his sight.

For the next year, my mother and the servants kept the baby out of his way as much as possible. My father’s anger slowly lessened, but the resentment remained. When my mother told him they were expecting another child, he only replied, “Will it be another girl, like the last one?”

This time, my father did not prepare a banquet or brew wine or boast. He felt humiliated from before, and he did not even dare to dream about a son this time.

But when the baby was born, it was me, a boy! My father’s wish for a son was fulfilled!

My father was overwhelmed with joy and pride. He strutted and trumpeted like a rooster, inviting all the officials and people of his township to what he promised would be a splendid celebration.

However, since my father had made no preparations ahead of time, there was now a great rush. Servants ran from peddler to grocer all over the city; the pig—which was now extremely fat—was quickly butchered; and his chefs worked without sleeping. Throughout the night, they were coloring red eggs until their hands and arms were dyed as well, and when the rooster crowed in the morning, the chefs were stewing, roasting, and boiling so quickly that the steam became as thick as smoke. They fried golden sesame balls as round as plums and cut ginger into delicate, paper-thin slices so that it looked like flower petals on a plate. Platters of dark honey-colored pork were garnished with jade-green lettuce, and white dumplings floated in bowls of sweet soup like clouds. The servants proudly placed the food on the table.

“But where is the wine?” my father demanded. “I cannot hold a celebration without wine! Get the wine!”

The servants retreated and looked at one another blankly. They could not make wine in such a short amount of time. What could they do?

Finally, a servant remembered something. “There are the eighty-eight jars of wine that we buried when the magistrate’s daughter was born,” he said. “We can dig them up!”

So they did. When my father readied to open the doors of his home, it was a glorious feast. It was his proudest moment. When I, his son, was revealed, my father’s delight seemed to transform him. In his happiness, kind words and compliments flowed from him like a spring river. He himself brought my mother the bowl of strengthening ginger soup and even gently patted my sister’s head. The birth of a son had, at least for the day, turned the old bitterness sweet.

Which was much like the wine that was served. After being buried in the ground so long, the wine had a different scent and taste. It was fragrant and pure, and all the guests agreed it was delicious.

“What kind of wine is this?” an official asked my
father. “I’ve never tasted wine quite like this before. How did you brew it?”

“It is Son Wine,” my father said after a pause, “to celebrate my son! The servants can tell you how it was made.”

“And so Son Wine, this wine, was created,” Rendi said. “I was the son the wine honored, but I always thought it should be called Daughter Wine because it was made when my sister was born. I always felt it wasn’t fair that my father didn’t celebrate her. She’s smarter than me, and braver too.”

Rendi looked off into the far distance, past where the light of his lantern shone. The giant toad made no sound.

“When I said that to my mother and sister,” Rendi continued, “they told me it didn’t matter. They said because I was born, our father stopped hating my sister for not being a boy and resenting my mother for not having a son. My sister even said that when I was born it made everything right and happy, so I deserved the celebration because everyone loved me so…”

Rendi’s voice broke off. He stopped speaking and shook his head, trying to forget his own words. But then he looked up at the toad, and their eyes met.

And suddenly, in that moment, Rendi’s secret wish was revealed, a wish he didn’t even know he had. Because when Rendi looked into the toad’s eyes, he knew why the toad cried.
The toad wished to go home.
And Rendi could hear those cries because he did too.

All this time he had tried to forget his past, hating when he remembered. He had told himself he never wanted to go back, but one look into the eyes of this toad, and he knew that was not the truth. He missed his sister and he missed his mother and he even missed his father. He missed his home.

His eyes mirrored the toad’s, and all filled with tears. They were both missing their homes, just as WangYi was missing his wife and like the sky was missing the moon.

For a long moment, the toad and the boy stared at each other with silent understanding. Then the toad gave a painful groan and clutched at its bulging belly once again. The strange green glow grew brighter. Rendi looked at it with pity, all fear and disgust gone.

“Try the wine,” Rendi urged, holding the jug with both hands. “It can’t hurt.”

The toad hesitated but finally took the wine, its large hands almost covering the jar entirely. With a swift motion, the toad raised and turned the jug upside down
above its head. The jug emptied quickly, the wine pouring like a waterfall into the waiting black half circle of the toad’s open mouth. The toad’s eyes closed, looking like two enormous loganberries slit with black lines, as it swallowed with a satisfied gulp.

The toad dropped the jug to the ground with a soft thud.

“Do you feel better?” Rendi asked.

The toad’s eyes reopened and looked at Rendi as if dazed. The light from the toad’s belly dimmed slightly as it gurgled a churning noise, much like the bubbling of soup.

“Are… are you all right?” Rendi asked, alarmed.

The wine seemed to be having an unusual effect on the toad. It was swaying slightly from side to side, its arms no longer clutching its stomach but hanging limply. Its eyes bulged as if they were going to explode.

Then, as Rendi stared in horror, the toad’s mouth expanded like the opening of a tunnel. The toad drew in a deep breath, and Rendi could feel the air around him being sucked away as…

“BURPPPPPP!!!!!!”

The toad gave a belch that echoed across the hills, blowing Rendi’s hair and making a cresting wave in the
water. Rendi staggered as the air, smelling of wine and wetness, pushed him backward. But, turning his head, he saw that it was not just air that the toad expelled. Its enormous mouth widened, and something round and shining fell to the earth.

The glimmering ball rolled past Rendi’s feet, and he could not look away from it. Was it a dragon’s pearl? It was so white and perfectly round, revolving on the ground like a bamboo yo-yo on a string.

But with every turn, it grew larger and larger, bigger than any dragon’s pearl Rendi had ever heard of. It also grew brighter as the soft grass rubbed off any slime from the toad, and it began to gleam as if it were lit from within. When the ball finally stopped rolling, it was taller than Master Chao and the most beautiful thing Rendi had ever seen. Smoother than the finest jade, more luminous than the finest pearl, it was radiant. It shone with a pure light that illuminated everything with a silver shimmering frost. Rendi could scarcely breathe.

“The moon!” he whispered. It could not be anything else.
The toad has burped up the moon
, Rendi thought in a daze. He turned to look at the toad.

It was gone.

Where the toad had been, a person was stretched on the ground. But it was not a woman, not the Moon Lady, but a man. He was a young man and completely naked, the tall grass bending over him like a sheltering caress.

“Hello?” Rendi said, just as he had when he entered the cave.

The man turned his head and looked at Rendi. As if weighed down by air, he slowly sat up and rubbed his face with his hands. Then he stared at his hands as if mesmerized. The light of the moon made his face clearly visible,
and it was strangely familiar. Where had Rendi seen those eyes before? That mouth? That forehead?