Holiday Magick (32 page)

I picked up a red-bean
zongzi
for dinner, and promised myself I'd have something healthy for breakfast. I went to bed early, looking forward to work the next day, which meant that life was finally headed in the right direction. A few months earlier, I'd started working at the Sydney Storybook Foundry, where a combination of staff and volunteers helped disadvantaged children write and illustrate their own books. For more serious-minded children who preferred penning non-fiction, I helped them take photos for their publications. I was also the official headshot photographer for the author profiles. The kids came up with some pretty crazy poses, but they sure had fun.

I woke sometime after midnight, and saw Joe sitting at the end of my bed, half-illuminated in the moonlight. He wore a white formal shirt, loose at the wrists, and a pair of black jeans with frayed cuffs. His feet were bare. The bedroom curtain was partially drawn, and Joe gazed out across the terracotta roofs and banana trees.

“You've been busy,” he said.

“I'm finding my way,” I said. “And you?”

“Redecorating.” Joe paused. “Since I've seen your home, would you like to visit mine?”

“You have a house?” I said. “Is there a whole suburb in heaven populated by the gods of yum cha dishes?”

“Shall I withdraw my invitation?”

I laughed, held out my hand, and he took it.

It was like waking into a dream. Never had I been more lucid, more aware of how transient and fragile the world was. I drifted in a sepia dawn, like a sea of someone else's memories. Seamless parchment flowed on all sides, enfolding me in an origami maze. Across the softly lit surfaces, watercolors streamed, formed, and faded.

Above me, brush paintings of mossy mountains rose and weathered. Beneath my feet, gigantic scarabs battled serpentine dragons. And far to my right, a small, forgotten kingdom held its breath.

Joe stood beside me, still holding my hand. In the living ink wash to my right, over and over the rivers filled with sacks of rice. Over and over, the shadows swelled toward the capital in an endless loop.

“I think it's stuck,” I said.

Joe tensed as I reached toward the inky image, but he did not stop me. The vision flinched and twisted, and finally wrenched into the image of a woman riding hard across the steppes. Her leather boots were scuffed thin, her cotton robe was a diligently sewn patchwork, and in her braided hair were wolfberry-red beads. The image spasmed—now a proud courtier, now a crashing gate, now a trail of dust.

“I demanded the life of the poet,” said Joe softly. “And as the invaders spilled through the kingdom, Winter Gale rode to the capital and asked Humble for the ring I had forged for him. She had long ago discovered his duplicity, perceived it perhaps before I had. Now, Winter Gale brought the ring to the sagging bridge above the river gorge, and for the first time, she summoned me.

“She entreated me to relent, to spare her people. The gifts I had bestowed upon Humble, he had bestowed in part on her, so she would bear Humble's sins in his stead, and the ring she returned to me, tossing it into the roiling waters.

“She stood at the cusp of the bridge, the clashing metal singing nearer, and she asked if still I demanded a life.”

In the flowing image, the woman stood alone on the wooden archway, her feet firmly planted, as though guarding the gates to the kingdom. To defend her home she would face down a god, and yet there was pity in her eyes. Below her, the dark waters of the river churned, and above her, the moon hung bright and cold. Joe's grip tightened.

The woman jumped.

I turned away, and it seemed a long time passed before Joe's fingers slowly loosened.

“I sealed the mountain passes,” said Joe. “I restored the rivers. And I left Humble to the villagers.”

The inky image melted, then resolved once more into a bedraggled Winter Gale limping from the river, cradling her arm and looking slightly puzzled.

“I have a soft spot for women on bridges,” said Joe.

“Did you and she ever…”

“I never returned.”

The living painting finally faded, and the page was blank. In the real world, this story had long been replaced by tales of other poets, other calamities, other legends that bled into one another to form the heart of the Dragon Boat Festival. But here, this first, lonely iteration was only now just fading.

“I'd been meaning to replace that for years,” murmured Joe. He exhaled slowly, as though he'd been waiting a long time to draw the next breath.

“You're welcome,” I said.

We reappeared on the roof of my apartment, the suburb below painted in starlight and shadows.

“Thank you,” I said. “For sharing your story.”

“Thank you, for sharing yours.”

It was true, stories never really begin, end, or finish running their course. They interconnect, diverge, change one another, and given time, turn into different stories.

“Oh, wait a minute,” I said, clambering down onto the balcony and grabbing my digital SLR from the study. “Say ‘
zongzi
.'”

Joe pulled me around beside him, and the camera flashed.

“That's not going on FrendzPlus is it?” said Joe, craning to look at the preview.

“Captioned ‘Me and the Glutinous Rice God?'”

A breeze swept across the rooftops, carrying the scent of camellias.

“So, was it worth your two dollars?” said Joe.

I shrugged.

“I could have gotten more value.”

Joe smiled to himself, hands in his pockets.

“Well, maybe I've got a few more stories.”

“You know where to find me,” I said.

An owl hooted indignantly in the predawn, and he was gone.

Some stories, like Humble's, become scars in need of forgiveness and release. Others, like Qu Yuan's, become legends, to be remembered and celebrated. But the best stories are the ones that become lessons—about hope, persistence, and unlikely friendships. These stories aren't always extraordinary, but they make the best memories, and they are the ones that shape a life worth living.

There's a handmade book on my desk, with thin cardboard covers and a spine lovingly bound with string. On the last page, a man with scruffy hair smiles out from a black and white photo, his arm around my shoulders. It's a story about a Winter Gale, an Autumn moon, and a god of endings lost and found.

Equinoxes occur when Earth's orientation is such that both day and night share the same amount of time. The word is derived from Latin—
aequus
meaning equal and
nox
meaning night. Most of the world's citizens recognize the equinoxes as (approximately) March 20th and September 22nd. These dates have been referred to as the first day of spring and the first day of autumn, respectively. In primitive times, people may have celebrated these special days with special food and drink that were available only during those particular times of year. But how did the ancient world's population know when the balanced days arrived? Did they have to guess, or was there a gentle nudge from some otherworldly source?

Zephyr kept her silence.

As always, her sisters were in an uproar over the coming winter. No one knew exactly when it would happen, but it
would
suddenly blow in.

The signals for the world's population to collect food and store it quickly were the changing colors she and her fairy sisters distributed. The scheduling had to be perfect. There was no room for error. If they didn't gather the proper plant matter from which to blend tones, things would go badly indeed. Woodland barks, berries, and bushes were used to mix all the hues. The villagers were dependent upon
them
to do their jobs correctly, but this became more and more difficult for Zephyr with every change of the seasons.

From summer, winter set in within a week, with all its blustery and billowing bursts of snow. Any food that they hadn't harvested would be lost in the sudden frost. At the end of winter, the bitter chill would suddenly stop. In a matter of days, the landscape turned to slush and every hut-dweller had to prepare seeds and rush into the sudden harsh heat to plant them before the melting snow evaporated and the ground hardened. And they knew when the sudden change was about to occur, and to leave their sheds, shacks, and shanties, because of the application of the varying colors.