Bingshen

He was only ten when he was brought back to Dragonbend Academy, an age when boys were meant to be out raising hell, not shut up in a place like this. The more he thought about it, the more he blamed those other children for being so slow. He had worked hard to lure that kidnapper surnamed Ma away and get them out. If they had just followed the river and kept moving, they could have made it somewhere safe in less than three days. To keep them from crying the whole way, he had talked himself hoarse telling jokes. And what happened in the end? Crane cut in halfway and insisted on bringing them all to this so-called better place. Dragonbend Academy really was nice. The food was good, the beds were good, and it was boring to death. So he had to find a way out for himself. When the teacher was lecturing, he kept his head down and sketched instead. Before long, the whole academy had taken shape on the page, and he was already figuring out where he could slip out. When his senior sister practiced swordsmanship, he climbed up on the roof and counted clouds and ridgelines instead. He needed to know which way to go once he got out. Crane always said he had a sharp backside and could never stay seated. He only thought Crane was the one wasting his life in one place while the world stretched wide in every direction. That winter, he found his chance. He stole one of the academy horses and made it over a hundred li on his own. But on the way, he passed through a plague-stricken village and could not just leave it be. Maybe he knew too well how maddening it was to be trapped where you were. In the end, he turned back and went to Dragonbend Academy for help. When he came back, the horse was leaner and so was he. He had already braced himself for punishment. Instead, Crane handed him a letter of introduction and said he had found him another road to take. At parting, Crane said to him, "Go on. You ought to see this world for yourself, the clear parts and the foul alike." He was in high spirits then and walked away fast, tossing back only one bright, easy line: "Goodbye forever!" That was how he joined the Wayfarers. At last, he could measure the world with his own two feet, and before long people started calling him Bingshen. But the good days did not last. Before he had even made his way across much of the world, the organization sent him to Toilgrain Barn to wait for someone. He waited so long that noise seemed to pack itself into his ears without end: merchants calling out their sums, women crying for their children, hoofbeats pressing down from the north. He was anxious to the point of madness, but all he could do was sit there. So he started drawing everything he heard. Which roads could still be used to fall back. Which passes could still be held. Which unit would arrive too late. The more he drew, the whiter his hair grew. In the end, what he got from paper was never enough. He had to get to the banks of the Hutuo River himself. Maybe it was because his heart was already in turmoil, but when the person he had been waiting for finally arrived, the noise in his ears went quiet for once. Fine, he thought. Take the map. Let this be the end of it. Better never to meet again. But on the road, there were always people who did not know where else to run, grabbing at him and begging him to show them a way to live. Every time he pointed out one road, new faces gathered around him, old people, women, children, all of them with nowhere left to go. He kept saying he had to leave. But every time he had gone only a few steps, someone else's sobbing would catch him by the ankle. If he walked away, they really would have nothing left but death. Just a little farther, he kept thinking. I will take them a little farther hurry back. I am fast. I can still make it. So he kept moving. By the time the last group had been settled, it was already too late. Zhongdu Bridge was lost. The academy was gone. Even Crane, who always seemed to know a way through, was dead. He stood in the ruins and, all at once, had nowhere left to go. What clear and foul was left to speak of anymore? Everything before him was only gray. He went back to Moonveil Knoll alone. That was where he had left Dragonbend Academy all those years ago. If he had not left then, would things have ended differently now? Rain poured down from the sky. He shut his ears, shut his mouth, and stopped walking. If he could not find an answer, then he would go nowhere at all. The rain kept falling, until one day someone else came. He did not look up, but for some reason, in front of this person, even the pounding rain seemed to go still. Then his long hair was cut away, and at last he saw the other's face clearly. The road to Zhongdu Bridge that he had failed to take, someone else had walked in his place. And when that person left, they too told him to go back out into the world, just as his old master once had. That farewell he had regretted for so long had, by some turn of fate, led him to meet another traveler here on the road of heroes. After the rain stopped, the wind at Moonveil Knoll rose behind him, as if gently urging him onward. Why could a person not become the wind? The wind has no center of its own, yet it still lets every traveler who passes know which way to go. He would walk into the wind and, just as that person had said, carve out another road that might lead this world somewhere better. And this time, he said only one quiet word in his heart: "See you again."