After both boys had regained their breath they made off towards the town again. Ren Yu shivered all the way; the cold air was freezing the water droplets on him but the weight of his catfish made a satisfying slap against his side as he walked. He bade farewell to Su Jun at the monastery path and began to run, the light was almost completely faded now and he stumbled down the slope, it was harder to avoid the hazardous clumps of grass. Ren Yu paused briefly to watch the last dregs of the sun get sucked behind the mountains. Suddenly, he heard a noise and turned quickly to his left, he could have sworn he had seen movement and a flash of pink colour out of the corner of his eye. 'Must have been a mountain hare,' he thought to himself, wondering if he should try and catch it for dinner. However, he remembered he was already late to help Ren Nuan and the tavern would be starting to get busy. He carried on down towards the lamp-lit town.
Ren Yu reached the tavern and the door slammed open nearly crushing him against the wall. Two short, stout men exited, it was Ding Chao, the carpenter and his friend Lu Yong. They stopped to look at the dripping bedraggled boy in front of them, then began laughing.
"What on earth happened to you?" exclaimed Lu Yong.
"Looks like you went swimming not fishing!" announced Ding Chao.
Ren Yu grinned, "Why would I have this fish then?" and he proudly revealed the giant catfish from his bag.
"Cor, that's a whopper!" the men agreed appreciatively. Ding Chao took another look at the puddle Ren Yu had now created around him and began to laugh again. Leaning against Lu Yong the two walked merrily away down the street in a lurching zigzag. Ren Yu shook his head after them and stowed his catfish away again, but before he could turn to go in two more men came out from the pub, they were wearing the finest clothes Ren Yu had ever seen. The first man was dressed in azure blue and he peered down at Ren Yu disdainfully from his great height. Ren Yu suddenly felt rather self-conscious, smelling of pondweed and dripping wet. The man hitched up his robes with a sniff and sidestepped out of the doorway. The man that followed had fur robes of the northern style and was shorter with a stockier build, but still taller than most Gowla inhabitants. He glanced at Ren Yu and then snarled something at his companion. Ren Yu did not catch what he said as the man's accent was too strong. His voice sounded almost twisted, like someone had taken good lumps of solid iron and tried to stretch and forge them into something else, something that wasn’t meant to be.
Ren Yu's observations were not wrong, as the men were conversing in High-Tongue, sometimes called 'Royal-Speak', a dialect developed to better serve the tongues of the inhabitants of the Royal provinces. The common man could understand it if he really concentrated, but it was generally assumed such conversations would be of court matters anyway, so why try?
Ren Yu slipped quietly through the door behind them and into the warmth and noise of the room. The tavern was rowdy as ever, obviously the foreigners, whoever they were, had not provoked too much of a stir. Gowla was well used to being a stop-over for travelers going from east to west but Ren Yu could not recall the last time he'd seen such extravagantly dressed ones.
"You're late." Ren Nuan announced as she bustled past with brimming ale jars.
"I caught a fish," Ren Yu replied meekly.
"I don't care if you caught a whale, I've had twice as many customers as usual what with the wind up everyone fancies a nice little tipple tonight. There's hot spirit on the pot, go fetch and get working," Ren Nuan ordered impatiently.
"Who were the foreigners?" Ren Yu asked, shouldering off his satchel.
"Oh you made it in time to see them did you?" Ren Nuan sucked her teeth, pausing, then went on, "Did not like the look of them one bit, not one bit, take the gentleman in blue for example, spent half an hour asking questions around the tavern then refused to order! Not a single cup! And the other one, well he possessed a very nasty look. Probably wouldn't have told them even if I had seen her, despite it being official business."
"Seen who?" Ren Yu interrupted.
"Oh some girl they're looking for, dressed in pink satin they said, won't look like the girls round here they said, as if a girl round here would be dressed in pink satin anyway!" Ren Nuan clunked the jars down on the bar and began dishing out bubbling rice wine into small stone cups. Ren Yu turned to go up the stairs, exhausted and wanting to go and change, but his mind was whirring, "Did they say what they wanted her for?"
"I told you - official business!" Ren Nuan snapped.
Later that night, after changing into new robes, Ren Yu found himself staring absent-mindedly at a carved stone above the inside of the tavern door. The symbol was a common one all over town, an X with dots in the four openings. He had asked everybody he could what it meant and each time he received different answers. Ding Chao the carpenter said it was a symbol of travel, as Gowla had always been the resting place for travelers, the four dots he explained, represented North, South, East and West and the lines of the X showed all roads leading to every direction from every direction. Ren Nuan, however, said it was to ward off illness, as the X was a well known ancient symbol of the human body with arms and legs as the four prongs. The dots she said represented a balance between these limbs. Su Jun, on the other hand, whose explanation Ren Yu favoured, said it symbolized the co-existence of mortals and immortals. The long strokes of the X showed continuous life whereas the short dots were signifiers of a mortal's time.
For as long as anyone knew the people and creatures of the land had been a mix of the two life-spans. Immortals were said to have been born before time, and therefore they needed not to adhere to such laws. These creatures had become known as Spirits. There were those that had used their lengthy time to unravel secrets and mysteries, amassing powers not possessed by mortal men. The men therefore began to pray to and rely upon the good Spirit powers to protect them, as others had chosen a more wicked path and now dwelled with the evil monsters and creatures the Earth occasionally spewed up.
Of course Ren Yu knew little of such histories, few people did anymore. No mortal man understood the secrets of the immortals and neither did he wish to. The world was a vast confusing place and it was preferable to live within walls carved with symbols.
‘As if patterns cut in stone could fathom it all more than a living man,’ mused Ren Yu bitterly. He had long learned that, beyond superstition, the inhabitants of Gowla cared little for comprehension and so he had kept his questions to himself. This was until Ren Nuan had sent him up to the monastery one day on an errand and he had found men offering answers. The only problem was, much to Ren Yu's consternation, they answered with their doctrine and ritual. Ren Yu could never understand their Almighty, but at least they humoured his inquisitiveness.
Especially Su Jun, Su Jun was always open to new ideas. Ren Yu smiled to himself, whatever reasoning you presented Su Jun with, he would thank you for it, then wrap it up in new scriptures and give it back calling it religion. For no particular reason there were very few boys in the town Ren Yu's age. Ren Nuan liked to tell him that when he was born he was such a horrible baby that it put everybody off having children for a few years. This meant that Ren Yu had been rather lonely until Su Jun had come along. Su Jun himself had been the only young novice at his old monastery of Machijoko. His transfer to Gowla he had termed 'a kind act of the Almighty.'
"Ren Yu? What are you staring at?" an elderly voice enquired, bringing Ren Yu’s mind back into focus. Standing in front of him was Tong Lei, the town clerk.
"Recorded your birth myself I did, but can't even get a refill of ale!" The man had a kind face and twinkling eyes.
"Sorry Tong Lei, I was lost in thought," Ren Yu replied, shaking his head.
"Take spare robes with you," Tong Lei smiled.
"Huh?" Ren Yu frowned.
"Spare robes, whenever I get lost in thought I find it can get a little cold and a bit muddy," Tong Lei explained.
Ren Yu laughed and poured an amber liquid from a stone beaker into Tong Lei's glass.
"Something funny going on tonight," the old man announced.
"What might that be Tong Lei?" Ren Yu asked. Tong Lei was prone to superstition when the wind was up; always an unfavourable plot was afoot as far as the clerk was concerned.
"Strangers on official business I don't like the sound of and a rush in the breeze this eve,” Tong Lei replied.
"Wind and court-folk, both full of hot air Tong Lei, I'm sure it's nothing," Ren Yu smiled, sliding the glass back across the wooden bar.
"Trust me Ren Yu, I've been recording words long enough to know those spoken in malice and recording events long enough to know when one's going to happen," Tong Lei nodded, tapping his nose in a knowing manner.
"Maybe old Wang Ping will finally drink himself to death?" Ren Yu suggested, pointing to a wizened man in a corner surrounded by fifteen empty pint mugs.
"Maybe...maybe..." muttered Tong Lei as he shuffled off.
Ren Nuan stayed open past the normal hours; everyone seemed keen for another ‘last round’.
"How many nights exactly are you all trying to cap?" she exclaimed as she jostled around the tavern collecting and dishing out cups. Ren Yu dodged and weaved between customers, splashing himself with hot wine and running to douse the burns with herb-water. When they eventually closed both aunt and nephew leant against the heavy door with a sigh of relief.
"Fancy cooking me a catfish?" Ren Yu asked hopefully, as Ren Nuan let out a squeal of disbelief and promptly batted him over the head.
Sleep should have been welcoming to Ren Yu that night but instead he lay awake staring at the moonlight coming through the porthole. When he eventually did fall asleep he dreamed that he was back in the stream again and the current was so strong that it pulled him under once more, he could feel the reeds grabbing at him in the rushing water…
"Water!"
The cry awoke Ren Yu with a start.
"Bring the buckets!"
There was a commotion outside and the glow from the moon had turned orange, 'Fire!' thought Ren Yu as he sprung up and sure enough as he pushed open the window, smoke came wafting in. He grabbed his tunic and ran out onto the landing, colliding with Ren Nuan who had just exited her own room in her sleeping robes. There was a banging at the door downstairs, "Ren Nuan! Ren Yu! Open up for pity's sake!" came a garbled voice.
They both tumbled down the stairs and threw open the door, it was the carpenter Ding Chao. He barged in and headed straight for the back room. "Where are the water barrels?" he yelled urgently back at them.
"Left, next to the rice bags," called Ren Yu, "Fire is it?"
"A massive one,” Ding Chao shouted back, “flames bigger than houses."
"Where is it?" asking Ren Nuan, trembling as Ding Chao re-emerged from the back room carrying a large wooden barrel.
"The monastery," Ding Chao replied grimly.
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