Chapter 156: The Ones Who Know

Su Yue was burning something over a fire that was way too hot when I finally found them.

’It’s a pancake,’ they said, before I could even get the question out.

’It’s on fire.’

’It’s a pancake that’s on fire — I’m learning, okay? Tao Tao says you learn by doing it wrong, and I’ve been doing it very wrong for eleven weeks.’ They scraped the charcoal off and stared at it. ’What’s with your face?’

I told them everything about Min.

Su Yue listened the whole time without saying a word; then they set the pan in the grass and sat, just watching the flames for a long minute.

’Nine hundred years,’ they said.

’About that.’

’Mine was a thousand.’ They pulled their knees up to their chest. ’I’ve been waiting for someone to ask me about this, but nobody has. Everyone just asks how it feels to be home. Nobody ever asks what I actually came home to.’

’I’m asking.’

’Everyone I ever knew is dead,’ Su Yue said. ’Not erased. Just dead, the way it’s supposed to work. My mother. My brother. The girl who taught me how to swim in a river that doesn’t even exist anymore.’ They poked the burnt pancake with a stick. ’The First Author is the only person alive who knew me before, and she’s the one who erased me — which is a really complicated kind of friendship. The Scroll knew me. That’s two. I have two.’

’I didn’t know that.’

’Why would you? You’ve all been so happy for me.’ They didn’t have any bite in their voice when they said it. ’I’m happy too, I want to be clear about that. But I just got here and found out that everything I was homesick for has been gone for ten centuries, and the only reason nobody noticed is because I’m the most famous person alive and everyone just assumes famous people are doing fine.’

’So, what did you do?’

’I cried on a bucket at your wedding and ate two bowls of terrible soup,’ Su Yue said. ’That’s pretty much the whole story.’

— • —

We went to see Min the next morning. I only went because they asked, and I stood outside the tent because they asked me to do that, too.

I heard most of it, but I’m just going to write down the part that really matters.

’They told me you’d come,’ Min said.

’They tell that to everyone. It’s super annoying.’ There was a pause, then the sound of Su Yue sitting down on something that creaked. ’Nine and six?’

’...Yes.’

’Names?’

’Ai and Ru-lan.’

’Say them again.’

Min said them again.

’Right,’ Su Yue said. ’Now, listen — I’m not here to talk you out of anything. If you still want to go back when we’re done here, I’ll walk you down there myself, hold your hand while it happens, and I’ll mean it. Nobody in this camp is going to stop us.’

’...All right.’

’I want to ask you one thing first, and it’s a practical question, not some clever riddle.’ A shift in the tent. ’What have you actually done since you came up? With your days. Real, living days. Not just how you felt.’

’Nothing. I walked here.’

’Before that.’

’I sat in a barn they gave me. People brought me food, and they were kind, and they kept asking me what it was like.’ Min’s voice went thin, like paper. ’I didn’t know what to tell them. They’re all just so pleased with themselves.’

’Yeah. They are. They’ve earned it, and it’s unbearable.’ Su Yue let out a laugh that didn’t sound happy, but it sounded real. ’Do you know what nobody has said to you in two months? I know. Every person you’ve met has been sorry for you. Not one of them has actually known what it’s like.’

Min didn’t say anything.

’I know,’ Su Yue said. ’That’s all I came to tell you. I’m not going to lie and say it gets better — I’ve been here eleven weeks and I’d be lying if I said that. But I am going to tell you there are about eight million of us, and every single one is sitting in a barn somewhere thinking they’re the only one, and that is just the stupidest way for this to go.’

— • —

Min stayed.

It wasn’t because Su Yue fixed her. She stayed because of what happened on the second day, and I was there for that part too.

Su Yue walked her two valleys over to a resettlement camp and stopped in front of a tent.

’There’s a man in there who hasn’t eaten in six days,’ they said. ’He’s from your century. Worked leather. Three different healers have tried, but he won’t even look at them.’

’Then why would he look at me?’

’He probably won’t look at you either. Go in anyway.’

Min stood there for a second. Then she went inside, didn’t sit down, and said — I heard it through the canvas — ’I’m Min. I came up in the second month. My husband died nine hundred years ago, I wasn’t there, and I’ve been trying to figure out how to be alive about it for two months and I haven’t managed it yet.’

Nothing for a long time.

Then a voice, sounding really rough: ’...Mine was called Shu-fen.’

’Say it again,’ Min said.

He said it again. Then he talked for a long time about a lot of things, most of which I didn’t hear and none of which is mine to tell. Min came out an hour and a half later, holding an empty bowl, looking furious in a way I couldn’t understand at all.

’He ate,’ she said.

’Good,’ Su Yue said.

’Don’t look so pleased with yourself.’

’I’m not,’ Su Yue replied. ’There are four hundred and nine more.’

Min stared at the bowl in her hands. ’...Two valleys back the other way,’ she said, ’there was a woman in the barn next to mine who wouldn’t come out. They said she was from the coast.’

’Do you want the cart?’

’I’ll walk,’ Min said.

— • —

Su Yue found the First Author about a week later, which I only know because she told me, years after that, and made me promise not to turn it into a story.

I’ll write down the one sentence she let me keep.

"They asked me what their mother was like," she told me. "Nobody has asked me that in a thousand years. I just had to sit down."

She has been doing it ever since. She’s real good at it, and she’s blunt, and she has told me to my face more than once that she hasn’t forgiven the world for the math of it all, and I told her she doesn’t have to.

Su Yue built the rest of it out fast, which didn’t surprise anyone except Tao Tao.

"They’re the Lantern of the Nine Skies," Tao Tao said, all bright. "You guys keep expecting them to sit on some cushion. They gave their whole light away to a bunch of nobodies. What did you think they were going to do with a second go at it?"

What they did was simple enough that Xue Ningzhi got it running in a season: every returned soul, when they come up, gets met by another returned soul. Not a healer, not a Rememberer, not some person being nice. Just somebody with the same specific hole in them.

They don’t call themselves anything. Ji Lan tried three names on them and they shot all three down, which I think is the best thing about them.

The honest part, which I am writing down because the songs will leave it out: it didn’t work for everybody.

Sixty-one people have gone back. Freely, in the light, asked three times, with someone holding their hand. Mu Chen keeps their names and reads them out once a year, and Su Yue has been at every single one, and she has never once tried to stop anybody.

Sixty-one out of four hundred and ten who asked. The other three hundred and forty-nine are still here, and most of them are sitting with somebody right now.

— • —

The warm — late.

I made the soup. Su Yue made the pancakes, which were only slightly on fire, which we all decided was progress.

"They’re better," Yun Shu said.

"They’re edible," said Su Yue, with way too much satisfaction. "Eleven weeks."

"Thirteen," corrected Tao Tao.

"Eleven weeks of trying. The first two I was mostly just crying."

The Scroll had been weirdly quiet all night. It came off my shoulder about halfway through, which it still only does for one person, and hung there near Su Yue like it wanted to ask a question but didn’t know the form.

"May I put it in the record," it said finally. "What you have built. I haven’t written anything about you since you came down, and I’ve been waiting for something worth writing."

"It’s not a legend," Su Yue said. "It’s eight million people sitting in barns with each other."

"Yes," the Scroll said. "That is what I would like to write down."

Su Yue thought about it, turning a pancake over.

"Put Min in it," they said. "Not me. Put Min in it, and her girls’ names, and the man who ate. Say who they were. That’s the whole thing, isn’t it — just say who they were."

DING. Reach: growing. Belief: quiet. Recorded: Ai. Ru-lan. Aged nine and six, of the eastern terraces, who grew up and got old and died a long time ago in the ordinary way, and whose mother came back nine hundred years late and could not reach them. She is still here. She is two valleys over tonight, sitting with somebody who is not eating. Talent — I have spent my existence publishing enormous things. This is the smallest thing I have ever filed, and I would like it noted that I am filing it on purpose.

Yun Shu handed me the coat. She had mended the elbow, pretty badly, with the wrong color thread.

"It’s green," I said.

"It’s what I had."

"My whole elbow is green."

"Then people will look at your elbow and know somebody mends your clothes," Yun Shu said. "Eat your soup, Lin Bo."

I ate my soup.