Ride the Moon: An Anthology (15 page)

Grief welled anew. She shoved it down deep and focused on the crest. As she turned it over, Orba's light took hold of it, giving it a sheen her mother would have envied. Mother had worked tirelessly to prepare the crest for her daughter's wedding, cleaning and polishing and—

The crest stopped moving in her hands. She stared at it, concentrating, until the rest of what Ketern had said to her on their wedding night crawled up from memory.

Orba, in her infinite wisdom from her place high in the sky apart from all our thoughts, feelings, and struggles, has chosen us to be together. Or perhaps I simply polished my crest more. Either way, we are married. We had no say in that, but we have say in other things.

Holding the crest in a white-knuckled grip, Shara smiled as her thoughts drifted through her life since that night. Had he burnished his crest more painstakingly than her other suitors? She thought it likely. He was as fastidious an Orbian as she'd ever met, even drawing nods of approval from Mother at the way he helped her keep their bungalow despite her comments regarding his small stature.

More importantly, Ketern, she had learned, was not one to leave anything to fate. She believed he had chosen to set his crest apart from the others; just as they had chosen, together, to grow as friends; just as she had chosen to give herself to him completely; just as she had chosen to support his dream to become an observer; and just as he had summoned the courage to follow that dream.

But perhaps their fates had been predetermined. Perhaps Orba had maneuvered them to the marriage stone according to some grand plan. If that were true, Shara counted it a blessing—but a blessing that didn't change what had happened thereafter. They, not Orba, nor her mother, nor his father, nor anyone else, had made their choices, and they were the ones who bore their consequences for better or worse.

Kneeling in Orba's light, Shara let the grief bubble up and over her. When it passed, she entered the forest, found the prints made by her people as they slinked into the unknown, and went in the opposite direction, making her own path.

On the pond the full moon's reflection wrinkled each time fish lips disturbed the surface. Sister Four, watching the moon and the fish, sat still as a statue. Her small feet in embroidered, satin shoes were tucked beneath an over-sized, bamboo chair that could have held two of her. Sister Four's face was tranquil, but Small Seven, standing just inside the moon gate, noticed that her sister's hands were clasped tightly in her lap. Sister Four was afraid.

Small Seven wanted the bamboo chair replaced after Sister One died in it during Master Wu's first moon experiment. Her father, Lord Zhang, had agreed, but Master Wu argued the chair was not at fault. He said Sister One had not practiced her rituals properly; she refused to call down sufficient Moon Power. She had been disobedient. The chair stayed.

Sisters Two and Three also died as a result of Master Wu's moon experiments, but their deaths were not as mercifully sudden. Sister Two endured exceptional agony for a week before she crawled out one night into the east courtyard and with her poor little hands, dug up enough Woman's Bane root to poison the whole household. In her weakened condition, a few bites from one root were enough to release her from suffering.

Before Sister Two was buried, all the offending plants were removed and burned, in order to deflect bad luck that might otherwise settle upon the great trading House of Zhang.

Sister Three did not become ill until she had endured several weeks of Master Wu's moon experiments. Master Wu insisted she would have survived her illness had she not, in a fit of unreasonable hysteria, sliced herself open with a broken tea cup and bled to death under his favourite peach tree.

Before Sister Three was buried, a rumour emerged within merchant circles that the unfortunate girl had fallen victim to Gudu sorcery. The reason: jealousy from an unnamed rival who resented favours bestowed upon the House of Zhang from within the Forbidden City. Because no merchant wanted his name connected to accusations of sorcery, great gifts of sympathy and condolence poured into the House of Zhang from every quarter of the city.

Master Wu assured Lord Zhang that Sister Four was not in danger. Had he not proven that Moon Power, bestowed by Heaven upon the unworthy daughters born to the House of Zhang, became naturally more concentrated as it passed from one sister to the next? He reminded Lord Zhang that he had three robust sons that would carry on his name and his business. These were gifts from Heaven that not all his rivals enjoyed. After that, Lord Zhang did not need to be reminded that it would be impractical not to use, for the benefit of his business, daughters of which he had plenty to spare. Lord Zhang finally commanded Sister Four to contribute her moon skill to Master Wu's science.

In a stone vault, two levels below the courtyard, Master Wu's steam engine gathered power. The rhythmic ticking of a large, foreign clock at the far end of the courtyard beat like demon heart into the quiet night. Small Seven held an ebony box against her chest. She had copied and miniaturized the precise, mechanical movements of the ungainly time piece in order to operate the delicate systems embedded in each of the tiny, ceramic heads nestled in the silk lining of her box.

Master Wu called her creations sing-songs, and when he noticed her, which wasn't often, he patted her head indulgently as she sat quietly in the corners of his workshops fiddling with discarded gears, chains and springs.

When Small Seven was still an infant, Sister One carried her in a basket into the maze of Master Wu's workshops. There Small Seven learned to walk, tottering among the mechanical wonders created therein, and because she was a quiet child, she became invisible to all who hunched over their workbenches, soldering and brazing with their air-hydrogen blowpipes. There she learned to read and to write among the long, dusty columns of shelves that held Master Wu's library. There she learned to use files, punches and mainspring winders, but most of all, it was there she learned how to think.

Since the moment she opened her tiny fist to the first full moon of her first lunar year, Small Seven was in full possession of her Moon Power. No one noticed it then, and no one noticed it now as she strode across the courtyard to stand beside her sister and to set her box on a wooden table, gleaming dark with Ningpo varnish.

All the daughters of the House of Zhang were moon-touched, but, because of the last great famine, there had been no other moon-touched left to train them. Only Small Seven learned to train herself, but because she was the last born, no one valued what she said.

So she stood beside her sisters as they bowed to the will of Master Wu. She watched and she listened and she learned how to command and increase her Moon Power with the help of her sing-songs. Each experiment added to her knowledge and she kept each sister alive longer. But it had not been enough. Three sisters had died.

This time Small Seven had a different plan, a bolder plan. This time Small Seven would intervene before Sister Four sacrificed her life's essence. If she succeeded, she would then reach beyond the walls of her small city and into the Forbidden City itself. She would fly on the wings of Master Wu's small idea and release a bigger idea.

Before sun-down Master Wu instructed Sister Four. He told her precisely what he believed she must do this night. As she listened, she kept her head bowed as was proper, and when he finished, she covered her face with her hands to subdue her fear.

To Master Wu, she said, as Small Seven had bid her to say, “I am not afraid.” Thankfully the tremble in her voice was not enough to alarm Master Wu.

Far away in the Imperial City, the woman in command of the Dragon Throne also sat beside a pool, watching the moon's reflection. No sound marred the stillness of the night, save the ticking from the large foreign clock Master Wu had sent last week. It sat at the far end of the courtyard, a giant, metal-clad toad. Not a pretty thing. She'd ordered it draped with fabric so it would not offend the eye with its brash ugliness. She was not surprised at the gasps of horror from attendants uncovering it just before sundown this evening. The homely lump made disruptive sounds, but she would endure them, because of what Master Wu promised.

While she waited, she thought of her exquisite water clocks, the elegant way they divided each day into suitable parts. She especially loved Su-Sung's ancient clock tower with its five doors, each opening to reveal a figure that rang a gong and held a tablet that described a special time of day. There was no question in her mind which civilization was more advanced. She felt immediate pity for her western sister who sat on a barbarian throne ruling the ungainly and remarkably uncivilized British Empire.

According to Master Wu, the foreign clock did more than click and whirr. What it did worried her advisers and they cautioned against listening to a man who had spent so many years living with foreign devils. She allowed herself a slight smile at their plight, shut away from her tonight and ordered, on pain of death, not to come to her until she summoned them.

Foreign devils had their uses and she would not let revulsion for their cultural crudeness prevent her from enjoying the entertainment of their good science. Tonight, with assistance from foreign science, the Dowager Empress would exchange pleasantries with the faraway Empress of India, monarch to monarch.

Her interest in communicating with the distant Empress was not born of an urge to forgive foreign devils for the war and strife they had brought to the Middle Kingdom. She would never do that. She merely wanted to take the measure of a foreign female, who, like she, commanded a sprawling empire with admirable success.

The Empress Dowager knew there was nothing significant to be gained from this exercise. She was curious, that's all, and it amused her to observe Master Wu's workers scurrying like rats in the dungeons beneath the Forbidden City constructing his monstrous devices. Only eunuchs and women, of course, were allowed to work within the great city walls, so it also amused her to watch Master Wu stretching his spleen to train those unaccustomed to handling delicate mechanisms.

He knew the honour he gained from her favour was better than gold. She knew he would not fail. It was his head on a pike tomorrow if he did not make good his claim. He insisted that by means of his hot engines, his annoying mechanical devices and the cold power of Lady Moon she would see the face of and exchange words with her sister ruler even though separated from her by a continent of deserts and mountains.

In Balmoral Castle, dwarfed by the mechanical apparatus that surrounded her, Queen Victoria sat next to a copper tub filled with enough water to bathe an elephant. She had sent her attendants away, even her loyal daughter, Princess Beatrice, who had persuaded the others that no harm would come to their monarch from her toying with Chinese superstition and magic.

The Queen liked Master Wu. For an Oriental he was surprisingly advanced in both education and civilized rhetoric. She admitted that his communication device sounded far-fetched and his science, mixed with liberal doses of moon myth, sounded silly, but she was an old woman, wearied by relentless responsibilities of state. Should she not be allowed some simple amusement?

Small Seven did not concern herself with either old lady. They were women near the end of their lives, therefore vulnerable to the deeper workings of the moon. Master Wu with his Teslascope, his steam engine and other apparatus, would unwittingly open the way for her to enter the minds of two aging monarchs. Perhaps the barbarian mind of an Empress who commanded a sprawling empire of foreign devils would be of little use to her. That was irrelevant. It was in bending the will of the Dowager Empress that she had a chance to save herself and her remaining sisters from the exploitations of Master Wu.

Sister Four was a dutiful daughter. In spite of her fear she was willing to sacrifice herself for the good of the House of Zhang. Small Seven was also a dutiful daughter, but she had come to believe it was not necessary to sacrifice lives to advance the House of Zhang.

As vibrations far below increased and the smooth grey tiles in the courtyard trembled under her feet, Small Seven smiled. It was time.

She whispered to her sister in her smallest voice. “Are you ready?”

As she had been instructed, Sister Four turned her palm up in agreement. Small Seven could feel her sister's fear. Before she could make a movement to sooth her, their father passed through the courtyard on his way to his apartments.

“Are you wearied, Small Seven?” Concern wrinkled deep into his forehead.

“I am refreshed, thank you, Father. I rested earlier.”

“Is it truly necessary that two daughters expose themselves to the night air for this thing to happen?”

Sister Four grabbed for Small Seven's hand. “She calms me, Father.” The alarm in her voice unmistakable.

Had this experiment the same purpose as the others, her father would have disallowed it, his trading company already expanded beyond his most ambitious hope. But this time, Master Wu's science would be executed at the command of the Dowager Empress. No man would dare refuse the whim of the woman who ruled the Middle Kingdom.

He nodded and Small Seven watched his back disappear through the round moon gate. He did not have the courage to observe the exertions that, in spite of what Master Wu had promised, might kill Sister Four.

As the power built beneath her feet Small Seven was relieved to be rid of distraction. Corresponding energy rose within her as Lady Moon inched ever nearer, cooling the hot rays from the sun that beat upon her pale, pock-marked surface; condensing them for harvest by the moon-touched below.

The steady thrum of the steam engine pressed against the soles of Small Seven's feet, pushing energy up through her body. The foreign clock, calibrated to the interval she required, ticked strongly. She heard Master Wu enter the courtyard.