Starry River of the Sky (5 page)

In return, Mr. Shan had stared at her vaguely as if seeing
her in a fog. Then he shook his head, sat down at his table, where his food was waiting, and immediately began chewing with an absentminded air. Rendi was surprised how graciously Madame Chang treated such a snub. Her smile waned, but instead of being insulted, her eyes softened, and she sat down next to him, pouring his tea. She had been kind and gentle to Mr. Shan, insisting on sitting with him at lunch, and now dinner, as if he were a beloved grandfather. Rendi couldn’t understand it.

“Story?” Peiyi asked as she brought the teapot to the table. “Like this morning’s story about the suns?”

“Yes,” Madame Chang said to her, but she was looking quietly again at Mr. Shan. “Have the old stories been forgotten already?”

Mr. Shan stared back again in his confused way and said senselessly, “I lost the book.”

Rendi swallowed an annoyed sigh. Mr. Shan was getting more witless every day.

“I want to hear it,” Peiyi said. Rendi was eager as well, for there had been few tales told in the dull Inn of Clear Sky, but he flushed when he saw Madame Chang looking directly at him.

“Would you like to hear it?” she asked.

Rendi tried to shrug indifferently. “I guess so,” he said.

T
HE
S
TORY OF THE
R
OOSTER’S
S
ONG

A
fter WangYi shot down five of the six suns, the last sun fled from the sky. In fear, it hid inside a tall mountain.

Now, instead of boiling and burning, the people had another problem. The moon still floated in the sky, and its light made it possible for the villagers to see dimly, but it was not enough to warm the earth. The villagers huddled together as the plants and trees began to freeze.

“The sun must come out!” WangYi said.

Everyone agreed, but what could they do? They went to the mountain where the sun was hiding and threatened and pleaded and bribed to no avail. The sun refused to come out. But just as they began to
despair, the wind murmured a message. “A friendly call will bring out the sun,” the Spirit of the Mountain whispered. “A friendly call.”

What did the Spirit of the Mountain mean? A friendly call? The villagers had tried sweet words and pleasant voices already, and the sun had not budged. It was WangYi’s wife who understood.

“The sun does not consider us friends. It will not answer our call,” she said. “We must find something that the sun thinks sounds friendly.”

First they brought out the cricket, which had a pleasant chirp. But its sound was faint, and the sun could not hear it through the stone of the mountain.

So then they brought out the tiger, whose loud, angry roars echoed across the land. But the sound enraged the sun, and it spit fire in annoyance.

They decided, then, to bring out the cow. Its relaxed lows were sure to be calming to the sun. And they were. The sun, inside the mountain, was lulled by the cow’s sound and almost went to sleep.

The villagers began to panic. “What sound will call
out the sun?” they asked themselves. “What will sound friendly to it?”

“Let us try the rooster,” WangYi’s wife said.

“The rooster?” the others said, dubious. Most found the rooster’s voice to be grating and strident.

“It is loud enough to be heard through the stone,” she said. “And its voice is not full of anger or leisure. Let us try the rooster.”

So they brought out the rooster, which gave its loud, triumphant crow. The sun listened carefully.
What a nice noise
, it thought, and it peeked out of the mountain to see who was calling.

The sun’s first rays reached out and touched the rooster. In its light, the rooster turned a radiant golden color with a comb as bright and as red as a burning flame. When the villagers saw this, they realized the sun was coming out, and they cheered as if it was a grand celebration. The sun, now hearing so many friendly sounds, was pleased, and it came all the way out of the mountain.

That is how the sun returned to the sky.

“But the rooster, the one that turned gold—was it special, then?” Peiyi asked.

“Yes,” Madame Chang said, nodding. “It became the Celestial Rooster, and it is the sun’s friendly companion to this day.”

“And is this why the roosters crow in the morning?” Rendi couldn’t help asking. He was thinking about Widow Yan’s rooster, which woke him up every morning just as the night stopped its moaning and he was able to fall asleep. He disliked that rooster very much.

“Yes,” Madame Chang said, giving him a pleased smile. “The roosters are calling out the sun, just like the Celestial Rooster did a long time ago.”

“A long time ago,” Mr. Shan echoed unexpectedly. For a moment, Rendi saw a flicker in his eyes, a sharp brightness he had never seen before. But then it disappeared, and Mr. Shan slurped from his bowl, dribbles of soup falling into his beard.

At night, the sky remained moonless, and the mournful sounds, as much as he tried to ignore them, kept Rendi awake in his bed. He gritted his teeth in frustration. How many nights had the sky wailed? How long had he been in this village? Would a new guest ever come?

But a new guest had come. For a moment, Rendi stopped his usual glowering and started to think about Madame Chang. She had brought no cart for him to hide in, but she had brought stories. And when she told them, Rendi had felt transported—away from the village and
inn he despised and from unwanted memories. He remembered Madame Chang looking at him with that pleased, almost tender smile. It had been a smile that a mother would give her child, and it filled Rendi with a longing that made him turn and sigh in his bed almost as much as the groaning sky.

“
Ooooooo-oooooohhh
.” A muffled whine blended into the howls of the sky. But this moan had no eerie echo and came from right outside Rendi’s room. He rose from his bed and opened the door to see Peiyi huddled in the doorway of her room across the way with a lantern.

“It’s so dark,” Peiyi said. “The stars don’t really shine, and the moon is gone.”

Did she hear the wails? Was it not just in his head? Rendi began to ask but then looked at Peiyi’s small, upturned face. As her frightened eyes met his, he saw the start of tears forming. A wavering softness seemed to curl inside Rendi, like smoke from incense. Peiyi reminded him so much of… the memory stung him with a slapping pain. Rendi scowled.

“You probably just scared it away with your drippy pig nose,” he said.

Fear disappeared from Peiyi’s face as anger replaced it. “Horrible! You don’t care about anything!” she said, her white cheeks turning red with rage. “Everyone else leaves. Why won’t you?”

“Peiyi, why aren’t you sleeping?” Master Chao’s voice called from the stairs. As he came into view, Rendi felt himself flush. “And you too, Rendi?”

“We were just…” Rendi began, but Master Chao cut him short.

“Go to bed,” Master Chao said. “Both of you.”

They nodded, and Rendi silently retreated to his room. However, inside he was seething and wanted to scream with the sky. “Everyone else leaves. Why won’t you?” Peiyi had said. He would leave if he could! If only a guest with a carriage or cart would come. It wouldn’t matter where it was headed. Any place would be better than here! Any place but here, Rendi thought, or home.

But it was here he was stuck. The next morning brought the rooster’s crow, the hot sun, and a new chore, but no new guests. Rendi sagged at the table at breakfast.

“That old well in the back dried up for good last week,” Master Chao said. “And now it’s falling apart. I don’t want
a guest taking a night stroll to fall into it. Rendi, you’d better fill it up this morning.”

“Fill it?” Rendi asked.

“I guess it’s the first well in the village to go dry,” Master Chao said. “If something doesn’t change, there’ll be more. Pretty soon, all the villagers will have to get their water from the Half-Moon Well like we do. Peiyi will show you where the shovel is.”

Moments later, with the shovel on his shoulder, Rendi followed Peiyi as she crossed the yard with skipping leaps. The sun seemed to be rising up into the sky by jumps and leaps as well because the top of Rendi’s head felt as if it were smoldering. Full of resentment, he thought of shaded pavilions and cool, iced plum juice brought by bowing servants.

What am I doing here?
Rendi glared in disgust as he slowly began to dig the crumbly earth. The ground was surprisingly soft and light and without any heavy rocks or stones.
More like dust than dirt
, Rendi thought. He looked across to the barren plain of stone left by the missing mountain. “I guess all the stone is there.”

As Rendi dropped a shovelful of dirt into the well, it
seemed to scatter down like drops of water being shaken from a tree after the rain. But as the earth fell, a strange, deep sound began to echo. “
EERRR-rripp! EERRR-rripp!
” groaned the well.

“Rendi!” Peiyi said as she threw herself on the ground and peered into the deep hole. “There’s something in there!”

Rendi kneeled and looked into the hole. Peiyi was right. There was something there. In the blackness at the bottom, two beady eyes looked at him.