After the tea ceremony and dinner has been cleaned away, Fighter lays beside me.
"I saw you worked in the well," Fighter tells me in the flickering firelight, while massaging my hand. "Don't do it again. This type of hard work, you don't need to do. Swaying Blossoms told me that when we aren't around, you overwork yourself. Rest more while we are home. We will have to leave to go out and work again soon. I don't want you to fall ill again."
"As you wish," I reply. Next time, I won't dig in the well. Perhaps I will expand the garden instead.
"We met with Swaying Blossoms' scholar. He held a minor ministerial post as an administrator in a town that was destroyed during the war," Fighter tells me. "He returned to the village because while there is unrest in the country, he is unable to obtain a new post or earn any money. Due to the lack of funds, he returned to his home village. He didn't like his administerial post. He wants to be a teacher."
"A teacher is good," I reply. "Good teachers are like precious jewels. Teachers with a heart for their students are indispensable."
"Once he learned that we are building a house and digging a well up here, he offered to bring his relatives to help us. We can use the bigger money that we have to pay them for their silence and their assistance. It is too much for me to be able to build everything on my own before winter. There is too much to do. Gentle Whiskers is planning to go out to check on some of his patients again soon. He will be taking both Fluttering Bird and Keen Eyes."
"What about you?"
"We need to build the house. I will stay behind to get it done so that everyone can be more comfortable. Wen Ming, the scholar, is coming tomorrow with his relatives to have a look. I know you find it hard to have new people around and to have to meet them. You can just stay near the cave to rest. You don't have to come out if you don't want to. Please put up with it for a while and take care of yourself. It will be busy these few days."
"Make sure they don't trample our garden," I say, closing my eyes.
The villagers arrive early and Fighter hurries out to meet them. Gentle Whiskers and Keen Eyes also go to help. Some of the village women have joined them, bringing food. The women look strong and robust. I want to envy their strong muscles but dare not. Fluttering Bird and Swaying Blossom go with Baby Tofu to watch, eventually joining in. I hide near the back, keeping an eye on Baby Tofu, flinching at the loud noises.
Baby Tofu starts to make a fuss and it is only after Fighter straps him to his back that Baby Tofu settles down. While they work, I see the willowy scholar referencing a picture Fighter has drawn and explaining things to Baby Tofu while they work whenever Baby Tofu points. Eventually Baby Tofu falls asleep and is left in my lap, so that the men can get their work done properly. The village women try to talk to me, but seeing how I shrink from them and am silent, they soon leave me alone. Their eyes narrow at me with unhappiness. Keen Eyes says something to them quietly as he passes by and the women's eyes soon light up in understanding. After that, the women are more accepting and speak in softer tones when they are near me.
After lunch, Fluttering Bird helps me back to the caves, helping me to bed and one of the village women follows with curiosity. Baby Tofu complains at being brought back and Fluttering Bird takes him back to the building site so that he will not disturb me. The village woman stays.
She cleans and mends and gathers things, chattering all the while. She talks about the village and her family, her husband and her siblings. She chirps and then sings like a song thrush until I fall asleep. Even while I sleep, I can hear the sound of her keeping herself busy and singing folk songs while she works.
In my sleep, I thrash at a nightmare, waking with a near scream in my throat and cold sweat. Song Thrush is immediately by my side. Although I cannot understand everything she says because she speaks too quickly and with too strong an accent for me to follow, I appreciate that she has cleaned and organised our camp while I slept. She has finished mending all the clothes that had yet to be sewn and has helped the girls continue with continuing to make the shoes that had been set aside.
A cup of warm soup is placed in my hands, while my face and neck are dabbed dry with a warm, moist cloth. Her hand strokes my back when I choke because my throat is too tight to swallow properly. Out of my sweat soaked clothes, she helps wipe me down and put on warm, dry clothes. Tiredly, I lean against a wall, watching her sew with strong, nimble fingers. If only I were as strong and able.
A sleeping Baby Tofu is returned to my side and seeing my sweaty clothes to the side, Swaying Blossoms comes to check that I am all right. She takes my clothes to wash immediately. Meanwhile, I listen to Song Thrush sing and am lulled back to a dreamless although still unsettled sleep.
Everyone returns for an early evening meal and I am nudged awake by a hungry Baby Tofu who has smelled dinner. I don't know why I am so tired and nervous. Loud noises and rough laughter make me jump. Despite that, I observe that the scholar during dinner, cannot bring himself to stop teaching people.
The different names of a few common herbs contained in a poem. A classical poem about family. Teaching his relatives how to write their names using sticks in the dirt. Teaching Baby Tofu the names of things he points to. Explaining the meaning of a proverb and the story behind it. Expounding upon the morals of the proverb. Discussing the various uses of certain words, their common and literary uses.
He plays at riddles and helps different people to derive the answer without telling it to them directly. He plays at couplets and poem making with Fighter, Gentle Whiskers and Keen Eyes and explains them to those less learned. The scholar truly cannot stop himself from teaching. And he is talented in being able to teach without others feeling that he is looking down on them or that he is belittling their little knowledge. Instead, he encourages, facilitates and can teach without people realising what he is doing. He is not boastful or as proud as one would expect. When he is wrong, he accepts the correction gracefully.
Not bad. Not bad. His looks aren't bad either. No wonder he caught Swaying Blossoms' eye.
Before the light goes, the villagers hurry back down the mountain. I have not seen how he interacts with Swaying Blossoms much but I hope he doesn't spend all their time together trying to teach her. A man who feels he knows all and is constantly teaching and is unable to relax will not be able to care for his wife very well.
The next day, Song Thrush works with the others on the flat ground while I water the garden. I am amazed at how fast the progress is with so many people to help. Baby Tofu plays happily in a pile of mud to one side and I wince at the amount of washing he and his clothes will have to undergo later. In the meantime, he may as well enjoy himself.
The well has a continuous stream of people entering and leaving it with pots or baskets dripping with mud. Flat stones have already been laid onto the steps to hopefully make things less slippery. I hear the scholar revising his plans and strategies with his relatives and Fighter over and over again, attempting to find the quickest and most efficient way of doing things. His relatives all laugh at him and smear mud on him when his nagging gets too annoying. Realising this, the scholar stops talking and retaliates with a handful of mud. There is a mud fight that only ends when a stray mud ball lands on my face.
Multiple eyes glance at me in worry but cheer up the moment I start laughing. It feels like the sun has come out to bathe me in the warm rays of happiness. I wipe the mud off and flick bits of it at Baby Tofu who shrieks at the attack, joining in the fun and flinging mud everywhere. With everyone covered in mud, the workers continue their work while Baby Tofu and I are eventually marched to the stream by a frowning Fluttering Bird and laughing Song Thrush. Baby Tofu and I have a water fight and are soundly scolded by Swaying Blossoms when she arrives to see what is taking so long. Seeing she still has mud on her, she is dragged into the water with us too.
While we wash the clothes and a random stalk of grass is wrestled out of Baby Tofu's mouth, the sound of trickling water being squeezed out of the clothes triggers a memory. It is like the windows have been closed, leaving me in the dark.
There is the sound of the water falling onto the Stack, trickling through the bamboo slats of my dim box. I am trapped in the box, listening to the sound of the Strong Cooks gambling on which box will be the next to be dropped into the deep pool. My skin feels swollen, my eyes have long swelled shut. I can barely move and don't want to move. Moving elicits pain. I want to be good. So good that I will be permitted to rest forever underwater.
Screams and slapping hands pat my cheeks. They wake me up. Crying voices call me but I do not understand. What are they trying to say? I choke on water I have breathed in, coughing and vomiting it up. A baby wails and clings to me, refusing to let me go. I am confused. Where am I? Where am I? Who am I now? What is going on? How did I get here?
A fluttering girl leads a running man with a panic stricken face. A man my memory remembers as once being surrounded by yellow robes. He is dressed in coarse, muddy clothes now. After a cursory wash to get rid of most of the mud, he carries me back to the caves where an older man with a long grey beard is waiting. All our clothes are dripping. My blurry vision cannot see much. It hurts to breathe. It hurts to talk. Somehow I am warmed and dried and put to bed, together with a still crying baby that will not let me go. Whose baby is this? Where did it come from? Its howling pierces my ears.
I shrink from the man that was the Emperor. I am confused by the mix of feelings colliding in me when he holds my hand. I pull my hand from him. He is the enemy. He is one I can trust. He is the Emperor. He is not dressed like the Emperor anymore so he cannot be the Emperor. Perhaps I am dreaming but the dream is so real. I am afraid. A trap. It must be a trap.
"Tofu, talk to me."
Worried voices chatter and I don't understand what is going on. I want to know who this man is. I cannot work it out. My mind is too foggy. Can I trust him or not?
"Who are you?"