Under Heaven

Those stationed in the garrisons past the Wall must hate it like death, she thinks.

Squinting towards the orange sunset, Li-Mei finds herself devising ways in which she might have killed her brother Liu before any of this happened, sent him over to the night.

The visions are briefly satisfying.

She’s angry at Tai, as well, she’s decided. She doesn’t have to be fair to anyone in this wind. He had no business leaving them for two years, not with a father and husband buried. He was needed, if only as a counterweight to Liu. He ought to have known that, foreseen it.

She lets the curtain drop, leans back against pillows, thinking about the two of them, sliding towards memory.

Not necessarily a good thing. It means remembering about home again, but is she really going to be able to keep from doing that? It is, if nothing else, a way of not dwelling upon what is waiting for her when this journey from the bright world ends, wherever it does, in this emptiness.

SECOND MOTHER, their father’s only concubine, was childless. A tragedy for her, cause of nighttime sorrows and sleeplessness, but—in the difficult way of truth sometimes—an advantage for the four Shen children, because she diverted all of her considerable affection to them, and the general’s two women did not have competing children as a source of conflict.

Li-Mei was six years old, which means Liu was nineteen, preparing for the first round of examinations in their prefecture. Tai was two years younger than him, training in military arts, already bigger than his older brother. Chao, the baby, was toddling about the yard, falling happily into piled leaves that autumn. She remembers that.

Their father was home, end of a campaign season (another reason she knew it was autumn, that and the paulownia leaves). Li-Mei, who had been diligently studying dance all summer with a teacher arranged by her mothers, was to offer a performance for the family one bright, windy festival-day morning with everyone home.

She remembers the wind. To this day, she believes it was the wind that caused her problem. Were her life not shattered and lost right now she could manage to be amused that she still clings to this explanation for falling.

She had fallen. The only time she’d done that after at least a dozen rehearsals in the days before, for her teacher and her mother. But with both mothers, and father, and her older brothers watching, and the drummer hired to accompany her, she had spun too far halfway through her first dance, lost her balance, tried to regain it, wobbled the other way, and tumbled—ignominiously—into leaves at the edge of the courtyard, as if she were no older than the baby playing in them.

No one laughed. She remembers that.

Liu might have done so in a certain mood, but he didn’t. Li-Mei sat up, covered in leaves, shocked, white- faced, and saw her father’s immediate, gentle concern, and then his almost-masked amusement at his short- legged little girl-child.

And that made her scramble to her feet and run from the courtyard, weeping uncontrollably. She had wanted to show him—show them all—how she was growing up, that she wasn’t an infant any more. And what she’d done was entirely the opposite. The humiliation welling within her was beyond enduring.

Liu found her first, in the orchard under her favourite peach tree at the farthest end of a row, by the stone wall. She was sprawled on the ground, ruining her dance costume, her face buried in her arms. She had cried herself out by then, but refused to look up when she heard him coming.

She’d expected Second Mother, or perhaps (less likely) her own mother. Hearing Eldest Brother’s crisp voice speaking her name had startled her. Looking back, she has long since realized that Liu would have told the two women to leave her to him. By then they’d have listened to his instructions.

“Sit up!” he said. She heard him grunt, crouching beside her. He was already plump, it wasn’t an effortless position for him.

It was simply not done, to ignore a direct instruction from a first brother. You could be whipped or starved in some other families for that.

Li-Mei sat up, faced him, remembered to bow her head respectfully, hands together, though she did not stand up to do it.

He let that pass. Perhaps her mud-stained face, the tracks of her tears caused him to be indulgent. You could never tell with Liu, even back then.

He said, “Here is what you will learn from this.” His voice was controlled, precise—not the tone with which one addressed a child. She remembered that, after. He was quiet, but he made her pay attention.

He said, “We train to avoid mistakes, and we do not go before others unless we believe we have trained enough. That is the first thing. Do you understand?”

Li-Mei nodded, eyes wide on her oldest brother’s round face. He had the beginnings of a moustache and beard that year.

He said, “Nonetheless, because we are not gods, or of the imperial family, we cannot ever be certain of being flawless. It is not given to ordinary men, and especially not women. Therefore, this is the second thing you will remember: if we are in public and we err, if we fall in the leaves, or stumble in a speech, or bow too many times or too few … we continue as if we had not done so. Do you understand?”

She nodded again, her head bobbing.

Liu said, “If we stop, if we apologize, show dismay, run from a courtyard or a chamber, we force our audience to register our error and see that it has shamed us. If we carry on, we treat it as something that falls to the lot of men and women, and show that it has not mastered us. That it does not signify. And, sister, you will always remember that you represent this family, not only yourself, in everything you do. Do you understand?”

And a third time Li-Mei nodded her head.

“Say it,” her brother commanded.

“I understand,” she said, as clearly as she could manage. Six years old, mud and overripe fallen fruit on her face and hands and clothing. Representing her family in all she did.

He stared at her a moment, then rose with another grunt and walked from the orchard down the long row. He wore black, she remembers now. Unusual for a nineteen-year-old, bordering on presumption (no red belt, mind you), but Shen Liu was always going to pass the exams, all three levels, and become a mandarin in the palace in Xinan. Always.

Tai came into the orchard a little later.

It was a certainty that he’d waited for Liu to come and go, as a second brother should. The images of that day are piercingly sharp, a wound: she is equally certain, thinking back, that Tai knew pretty much exactly what Liu had said to her.

She was sitting up still, so this time she saw her brother’s approach. He smiled when he drew near, she’d known he would smile at her. What she hadn’t expected was that he’d be carrying a basin of water and a towel. He’d guessed she’d have been lying on muddy ground.

He sat down next to her, cross-legged, careless of his own clothing and slippers, and placed the bowl between them, draping the towel elaborately over a forearm, like a servant. She thought he’d make a funny face to try to make her laugh, and she was determined not to laugh (she almost always did), but he didn’t do that, he just waited. After a moment, Li-Mei dipped her cupped hands and washed her face and hands and arms. There was nothing she could do about her specially made dance costume.

Tai handed her the towel and she dried herself. He took the towel back and set it aside, tossing the water from the basin and putting that beside him, as well.

“Better,” he said, looking at her.

“Thank you,” she said.

She remembers a small silence, but an easy one. Tai was easy to be with. She’d worshipped both her older brothers, she recalls, but Tai she’d loved.

“I fell,” she said.

He didn’t smile. “I know. It must have felt awful. You would have looked forward so much to dancing.”