Irresolution, Part 14.4

Down the mountain path, taking a hidden side-road away from Cloud Recesses, going farther and farther until they had wholly left the range where the disciples of Gusu Lan Clan usually moved about, Wei Wuxian suddenly said, 'Aiya, my stomach hurts.'

Lan Wangji halted at once. 'Rest. Change the dressing.'

'No need. I'll be fine once I'm up on the donkey.'

'Get on, then.'

Wei Wuxian pulled a long face. 'But mounting takes such a big movement — I'm afraid I'll pull at the wound.'

His wound had long since healed; the line was plainly a wheedling excuse. Lan Wangji stopped, turned, looked him over, then suddenly reached out — avoiding the injured place — circled an arm about his waist, lifted him lightly, and set him on Little Apple's back.

The two of them went on, one riding the donkey, the other walking beside the road. Wei Wuxian sat on Little Apple's back, his eyes curving with laughter. Lan Wangji said, 'What is it?'

'Nothing.'

Like one who had just done some small mischief, he felt a touch of private satisfaction.

Though much of his early childhood he could not remember, one scene had always remained, dim and blurred, imprinted in his mind.

A narrow path, a little flower-donkey, three people. A man in black lifting a woman in white lightly up, gathering her into his arms, setting her on the flower-donkey's back, then raising a small child high and hoisting him onto his own shoulder.

He was that child, too short to reach a grown man's leg. Set upon that man's shoulders, all at once he became very, very tall, awe-inspiring and proud; now grabbing at the man's hair, now rubbing his face, his two legs kicking without cease, his mouth babbling away. The woman in white sat swaying on the donkey's back, watching them, seeming to smile. The man, for his part, stayed silent throughout, no lover of talk, only hitching the child up so he sat higher and steadier, one hand taking up the flower-donkey's rope. The three of them, crowded together on one narrow path, walked slowly forward.

This was one of his few memories.

That had been his father and his mother.

Wei Wuxian said, 'Lan Zhan, lead the rope along for me, won't you.'

'Why?'

Little Apple was clever enough, and hardly incapable of following along behind a person. Wei Wuxian said, 'Do me the honor — take up the rope, won't you.'

Though he still did not understand why Wei Wuxian's smile was so radiant, Lan Wangji did as he was bid, taking up Little Apple's lead-rein and holding it in his hand.

Wei Wuxian murmured to himself, 'Mm. Just missing a little one.'

'What?'

Wei Wuxian, secretly delighted, said, 'Nothing. Lan Zhan, you really are a good man.'

This journey to Yiling — its road ahead was plainly uncertain, the ill omens outweighing the fair — and yet Wei Wuxian could not muster the least anxiety; riding a little flower-donkey, with Lan Wangji ahead leading the rope to show the way, his whole heart felt light as air, free as if he rode the clouds and mist, so that it seemed to him that even if a whole crowd of great and lesser clans were to come slaughtering out from the roadside this very moment, it would, apart from spoiling the scenery and ruining his mood, be nothing much at all. He even had the heart to admire the wild fields under the moonlight, and drew the bamboo flute from his waist; and, as naturally as breathing, he piped out a melody.

The flute-note rang clear and high; Lan Wangji's step faltered a little, while in Wei Wuxian's mind something suddenly lit.

He said, 'Lan Zhan! Let me ask you — that song you sang to me back then, at the bottom of the cavern in the Muxi Mountain Tortoise of Slaughter Incident — what was it called, in the end?'

Lan Wangji looked at him. 'Why think of asking this now.'

'Just tell me — what's it called? I think I've guessed how you recognized me.'

That night on Mount Dafan, the tune he had piped out as if by some prompting of ghosts and gods was the very melody Lan Wangji had hummed softly at his side, back when he lay feverish and dazed at the bottom of the cavern in the Muxi Mountain Tortoise of Slaughter Incident.

Lan Wangji kept his lips shut and said nothing. Wei Wuxian pressed him. 'Speak, then — what tune? Who composed it?'

'I did.'

'You composed it?!'

'Mm.'

Wei Wuxian had supposed the tune was some secret, never-transmitted melody of the Gusu Lan Clan; who would have thought it was this — and he was both startled and glad. What startled him needs no saying; what gladdened him, he could not quite put into words. He ventured, 'If that's truly how you recognized me, then — this tune, you've never let anyone else hear it?'

'Never.'

In his delight Wei Wuxian gave Little Apple a sudden hard kick. Little Apple brayed in fury, seeming to want to buck and throw him off; Lan Wangji, quick of eye and hand, hauled the rope tight. Wei Wuxian threw his arms around Little Apple's neck. 'It's fine, it's fine, that's just its temper, it can only do those two little kicks. Let's go on. So what's it called, in the end?'

'What do you think?'

'What do you mean, what do I think? Does it have a name or not?' He grumbled inwardly — surely Lan Zhan didn't name things in the same style as Jiang Cheng? Impossible! He said, 'Are you asking my opinion? I think we might as well call it...'

After more than eighty carefully chosen names had all been refused by Lan Wangji, Wei Wuxian's enthusiasm at last began to wane.

To avoid running into searching cultivators on the main roads, the two of them chose only the remote country lanes. After a day's travel, Wei Wuxian felt a touch of weariness and thirst, and just then spied a farmhouse by the road, so Lan Wangji reined Little Apple in.

Knocking brought no answer; a further push, and the door opened of its own accord. In the middle of the yard stood a handmade wooden table, and on it a basin of beans not yet finished shelling. Against the earthen wall a tall stack of straw was heaped, a rake stuck in it, and chicks all over the ground pecked at grain, cheeping, running this way and that.

Wei Wuxian, seeing several melons piled in a corner of the yard, walked over, gathered one up, and said with a perfectly straight face, 'The master's not in. Hanguang-jun, let's just help ourselves.'

Lan Wangji was just about to take out silver and lay it on the table when footsteps came from beyond the wall. Two of them, one behind the other — the masters of the house come home, no doubt. For some reason, the moment Wei Wuxian heard the footsteps, he at once shoved Lan Wangji in behind the straw stack.

It was thanks to Lan Wangji's habitual composure that this sudden shove drew no sound from him. But he plainly did not understand why they were hiding — and Wei Wuxian thought too: right, why are we hiding? These country villagers won't recognize us; we could just say plainly we've come to buy food, couldn't we? Maybe I've done this sort of thing too often. Force of habit.

But his shove had pressed Lan Wangji bodily down into the soft straw, and this half-forced posture stirred in him a strange, unaccountable thrill, so that he simply did not get up; affecting gravity, he raised a forefinger to signal Lan Wangji to keep silent, then, pretending this was all unavoidable, lay sprawled over him with an easy conscience and a heart full of unspeakable secret glee.

From the yard came the scrape of a wooden stool being dragged; the two farmer-masters seemed to have sat down at the little wooden table. A woman's voice said, 'Er-gege, let me hold him.'

At that 'er-gege', Lan Wangji gave a faint start.

Just then a man's voice said, 'You just shell the beans.' Then came the soft mumbling of a small child deep in sleep.

So this was a pair of young newlyweds. The wife was getting supper ready, the husband holding the sleeping child.

Wei Wuxian, beaming, winked his left eye at Lan Wangji and said in a low voice, 'What luck — one of the masters of this farmhouse turns out to be an er-gege too.'

His voice tilted up at the end, every drop of teasing laid bare. Lan Wangji swept him a heavy-lidded glance and turned his head away. Something in Wei Wuxian's heart went soft; he leaned to his ear and called softly, 'Lan-er-gege.'

Lan Wangji's breath seemed to catch for a beat, and the look he turned back carried, it seemed, a note of warning.

In the yard, the wife laughed. 'You don't even know how to hold him. If you wake him later, won't it be me who has to coax him down again.'

The husband said, 'He ran himself wild today, wore himself right out. He won't wake now.'

The wife, fingers nimbly snapping the beans, said, 'Er-gege, you really must take Abao in hand. He's only four and already like this — what'll become of him grown? The other children have been cried to anger over him several times now, saying they'll never play with him again.'

The husband said, 'And yet they pay him mind every time. They say they don't want to, but in their hearts they plainly do want to play with him.'

Wei Wuxian let out a snort. 'Lan-er-gege, what's your view on that line? Do you agree?'

'Stop talking.'

At a volume like theirs, an ordinary person could not have heard a thing. Over there the young couple rambled on about household matters; over here Wei Wuxian, already pressed close to Lan Wangji's ear, called out seven or eight soft, sweet 'Lan-er-gege's in a row, relentless. Lan Wangji seemed at last unable to bear it, and flipped over all at once.

His movement was quick and sure; the straw stack stood unmoved, but Wei Wuxian was already pinned beneath him.

Lan Wangji said in a low voice, 'Say it again, and I'll silence you.'

Wei Wuxian reached a hand toward his face; Lan Wangji caught his wrist in an instant. Wei Wuxian said gravely, 'Hanguang-jun, there's straw on your forehead-ribbon.'

At that, Lan Wangji slowly loosened his grip. Wei Wuxian plucked off the fine wisp of straw for him and held it up before his eyes, saying smugly, 'See, I wasn't fooling you.'

He had not been smug long before the young wife was heard again. 'But even so, you can't just let Abao bully people as he likes.'

Her husband said idly, 'Let him be. He's a little boy — don't they all bully the ones they like, just wanting that person to keep looking at them?'

At that, Wei Wuxian's smile froze.

Just then the little child seemed to wake, mumbling a few words in a milky baby-voice, and the couple hurried to soothe him together. After a while of coaxing the child slept again, and the young wife said, 'Er-gege, what I said to you just now, about taking Abao properly in hand — it isn't only for that reason, but because things are unsettled lately. You must keep him from roaming about, and have him home early each day.'

The husband said, 'I know. Is it that business of the old graves near the village all being dug up these past days?'

The wife said, 'I hear it isn't only near our village — quite a few households in town have had their ancestral graves disturbed too. It's too uncanny. Better for Abao to play at home more, and not always be going out.'

The husband said, 'Mm. If we ran into that what's-his-name, the Yiling Patriarch, that would be bad indeed.'

Wei Wuxian: '......'

The young wife said softly, 'I've heard tales of the Yiling Patriarch since I was small. I always thought “behave, or the Yiling Patriarch will come back for you and carry you off to feed the ghosts” was just something grown-ups said to frighten children for fun — who'd have known there really was such a person, and that he'd really come back.'

The husband said, 'Just so. The moment I heard about the graves, I thought of him. Sure enough — the whole town's abuzz with it.'

As for being bound up together with this 'grave-digging', Wei Wuxian, beyond helplessness, had no recourse at all. Truth be told, he really had done no small amount of this sort of thing before. The most famous instance was in the middle of the Sunshot Campaign, when he dug three feet down and turned the ancestral graves of the Qishan Wen clan's generations utterly upside down, working every last corpse into a fierce puppet; and every Wen cultivator he killed he likewise refined into a puppet, then set them to slaughtering their own living kin and friends. During the Sunshot Campaign these deeds, when recounted, were all heartening, sung with endless praise. Yet the longer the Sunshot Campaign receded into the past, the more, when others spoke of them, they shuddered and held them in contempt — and not others only, for even he himself, thinking it over afterward, felt he had gone too far. On top of that, his identity had only been exposed a few days before; small wonder, then, that the moment people heard of graves being dug up all over the place, they all took it for the work of the Yiling Patriarch.