Casey felt something spill down her chin and she coughed, swallowing the water. She automatically wiped a hand across her damp chin and blinked. 

“Guniang!*” grunted a warm gravelly voice from somewhere above her head. 

Casey squinted her eyes and blinked into the face of a bearded man who was bending over her.  

The man looked to be about sixty with cheerful smiling eyes that twinkled brightly at her. His salt and pepper hair was pulled up into a top knot and very neatly secured with a single blue ribbon. 

Weird. What…?

“Guniang xing le?*” he smiled again, looking patient. He seemed pleased that she was awake.

She sat up, pulling the blanket around her, starring at him and the strange surroundings.

“Who are you!?” she asked, shrinking backwards a bit. 

He frowned and she repeated her question in slow awkward Mandarin: “Zhe wei xiansheng shi shei?[3]”

His face cleared and he smiled brilliantly. He said something very rapidly and smiled again looking even more pleased.

Casey shook her head. She had picked out some of what he had said to her, but she barely knew the language.

“Daifu…?*” she repeated two words that she had understood, pointing at him with a question in her voice. This was a very archaic way of saying ‘doctor’ in Chinese. 

He nodded.

“Guniang na? Ming zi?*” He pointed at her, asking for her name. He pointed at himself and said very slowly: “I am Yang Ming Xi.”

She thought for a moment, converting the words from Cantonese to Mandarin 

“Cui Xi,” she said. She took his hand, startling him, and wrote the words for ‘western emerald’ into his palm.

“A good name!!” he said. “Where did you come from? Your family…?”

He spoke very slowly to allow her to understand the words.

“Canada. Where is this?” she asked.

He shook his head at the unfamiliar word ‘Canada’.

“This is Tiansheng,*” he said.

Tiansheng? Where is that? she wondered in confusion.

Casey gathered that she must have floated down the river and ended up in some little town, but it just didn’t make any sense. Why was she in an old, strangely furnished wooden building rather than the hospital? If she had washed up in a remote village, there still should have been services? But perhaps this was the local doctor’s house? The boat had not gone too far, and she recalled seeing the lights of the city in the distance as they had floated down the river. Why wasn’t she at the hospital?

“Hospital?” she asked. She didn’t know the words for police station, so she figured if this man was a doctor, he would at least know where the nearest hospital was. But he was so strangely dressed…

He shook his head, not understanding her, but this only confused her more. Turning her mind to other matters, she decided to ask other things first.

“Slept…long?” she asked, struggling for the words.

“Three days,” he responded with a frown, peering into her eyes. He waved his finger in front of her up and down, tapping his wrist to get her attention and then after another wave or two he seemed satisfied that her vision was operating correctly.

Three days!

Suddenly her head stabbed with pain and she clutched at it.

“Pain?” he asked, frowning. He grabbed her palm and pressed in a particular spot. Surprisingly the pain began to diminish. “A little better, yes?”

She nodded, rubbing her temple. Her brain churned around trying to understand what was happening. Pushing back her hair, her hand stopped abruptly and then she slowly trailed her fingers through the long tresses. Pulling a strand in front of her face, she stared at it in shock. Her hair…her hair had grown extremely long…longer than it ever could have grown in three days. 

What the hell?

She also realized that she wasn’t dressed in her own clothes but a plain white shirt that folded over and tied over a pair of loose white trousers.

Kyaah! Did the old man take my clothes??

Seeming to read her expression, he waved his hands and shook his head laughing good naturedly.

“Ah! My daughter took your old clothes. A’Yu come in! She’s awake,” he got up and put his head into the corridor calling to someone.

Yang Ming Xi gestured to his daughter who immediately came in. He could see that his patient was flustered and A’Yu’s presence would be helpful 

“A’Yu…She can speak some words, but she doesn’t understand everything completely and some of the words she says are strange,” he explained his daughter. “We will have to teach her everything,” Yang Ming Xi said, quite undaunted.

Xiao Yu nodded, peering curiously at the girl.

“She’s still quite weak. She will have to stay until she is better,” he said.

A’Yu knelt down and put Casey’s hand in hers, patting it.

“Don’t be afraid,” she smiled kindly. “We will help you.”

Casey nodded blankly. For now, this was all that could be done. They didn’t seem like they meant to harm her. She recalled that some villages in China could be very primitive…most of the rural people lived in abject poverty, so the fact that there was even a doctor was a good thing for her. However, she would have to find a phone as she imagined the private tour guide would be looking for her if she had disappeared for three days. What the hell!

But then she started coughing and couldn’t stop. Casey coughed so hard that she teared up. Frowning, she put a hand to her chest, feeling the cough coming deep from inside.

Yang Ming Xi shook his head and A’Yu gently helped her lie down again.

“Rest,” she said. “Slowly…it will improve.”

Casey nodded, closing her eyes briefly. Had being ill always felt this exhausting?

Turning onto her side, she closed her eyes and carefully examined the jumble of memories she had from before waking. Starting from what she could remember, she recalled that she had been on the boat. They had been travelling downriver. She had packed her suitcase up and rolled it out onto the deck…why? She couldn’t remember now.

What she did remember was the moon. The moon had been so bright, so beautiful…She had been alone, overwhelmed by her terrible sadness…and then there was suddenly a rush of water, water filling her ears, her lungs, her mouth…water all around her…had she been swept overboard by a wave…?

No…it was like a giant column of water coming toward me…

Cui Xi shuddered. The last thing she remembered was the cold and dark of the river, swallowing her up.

Yang Ming Xi patted her shoulder comfortingly. Whatever had happened to her previously didn’t matter. She had appeared on the heels of fire and water and Yang Ming Xi strongly believed that it could only signify that she was a special person. Her coming meant a change for the kingdom.

“We will call you A’Xi,” the old man smiled kindly. “Come, come. Rest. A’Yu will get you some medicinal soup.”

And with that, Cui Xi abruptly became a person of Tiansheng.