026. the blue-green of a shallow sea

“Yes, you,” the old woman confirmed. “Come here.” 

Hua Ruizhi stepped up onto a short riser to lean over the counter displaying her bizarrely sorted collection of florals before she pointed at a stool. For all the strange objects stacked and clustered around the entrance of the shop, the interior smelled overwhelmingly of flowers rather than dust or must or any of the many aromas wafting from the overactive river just across the street and the local fishermen wading through their pebble-strewn waters at all hours of the day. The afternoon filtered in bright through a large window packed with shapes. It made a mouth on the floor out of shadow, jagged teeth stuck in an endless yawn.

“Sit, child.” Ruizhi was full of commands. “What is your favorite color?”

Ren Fei, that awkward boy, so uncomfortable at his gangly full height, strode with yearling care back toward the old woman. His footsteps were ginger as though he were crossing a freshly frozen lake on coltish limbs but the boy did as he was told because he was raised well and his brother was gone and what was he even doing here—

“Lao da niang,” Fei addressed Ruizhi a little too formally, a little too stiff, but he sat where he was directed anyways. “My favourite colour is the blue-green of a shallow sea.”

“If I am old then why do you look so scared? You are young and vibrant.” The elderly woman stepped down and went about her business, opening drawers to retrieve scissors whose ends were as narrow and pointed like needles, and a spool of wire. “Why do you like this color?”

“I like this color because…” Fei tucked his chin, mouth a hard line. Why did he like this particular shade of blue-green? He recalled it in the hue of the tassel hanging from Yuhui’s belt, in the robes Yu wore the first time the royal grew bored in the Tian family’s library and declared he and Fei should kiss instead. He eased into the thought with his gaze sidelong, unwilling to look at Ruizhi directly when he was thinking of that boy he loved like no other. “…I like it because it reminds me of the sound of the sea.” Looking back up, a furrow creased his forehead. “True strength lies in wisdom, lao da niang; even if I am vibrant, I am still a student—I am not strong without my elders.”

“You will not charm your way out of this with flattery, dear boy.” Ruizhi wasn’t paying much obvious attention to the boy but she, like most other grandmothers, knew when something was amiss, an extra sense honing in on the coy mannerisms of young things like Ren Fei. Moving to her wall of drawers, the woman retrieved a handful of dried cuttings, deep burgundy and violet dahlias, then returned to the counter. She picked three orange chrysanthemums from the haul Jin retrieved earlier from their basement and set them aside.

“The sound of the sea is a much stronger color than blue-green. Blue-green is body, not sound.” Ruizhi glanced up, eyes sharp even in the slack of age. “Are you lying to me?”

“My matters are trivial,” Fei once more deflected, laying his dark gaze on the countertop. “Surely there are matters more important that occupy your mind.”

“True strength lies in wisdom, xiaozi. You are not strong without your elders.” The elder was relentless, weaving wire like a loose basket between her fingers as she measured out length in her rhythmic unspooling. “I am trying to help you child. Your aura is poisoned. You are being drowned by that color you like so much.”

Fei let out a short sigh and looked straight ahead, cornered by the old woman’s smarts. He closed his fist on the countertop before his other hand came to calm the stress from his knuckles. “You are very perceptive, lao da ma. I love the sound of the sea but the color reminds me of someone I love much more.”

Ruizhi nodded slowly, as though she knew this already but was allowing the boy the luxury of taking his time to open up. She snipped the wire and re-gathered her flowers, looking down her short nose as she arranged them once then, unhappy with the first, twice. “Do you have confidence in yourself?”

“At times,” the young Ren boy mused, elbows resting on the old wood as he cradled his chin in his hand. “I am confident in my studies, in my calligraphy, in my painting—even challenging arena, I am new but confident in my ability to learn. But not with him. How can I be confident? I think he wants everyone but me.”

“Easy, boy. You live like that sound of the sea you like so much.” Ruizhi rearranged the flowers a third time before she seemed satisfied with their angles and auspices. She began to carefully weave the wire near their stems left long. “You should be loud and constant; you will shine in the light of the sun, sparkle in the glow of the moon. Roar and rollick and people will flock to your shores. They will test your waters and if they don’t like them, then simply pull them under until they lose all power over you, until they’re nothing: silent, still.”

“…Are you telling me to murder the boy I like?” Fei looked up. Surely he had misunderstood the old woman’s metaphor.

“Yes and no,” she replied. “I am saying that you are in control of yourself. You choose to have these feelings, you can choose to not have them too. If this boy likes everyone but you, then you will waste your life watching him frolic just out of reach. Get out there and grab him and if he still refuses you, then kill the memory and move on. Life is very short, child, but it will move painfully slow if you spend your time looking at all the things you are missing. You will have nothing good to look back on when you are my age. If you don’t have confidence in yourself then how is he supposed to have confidence in you? The sea is strong: learn from it.”

Fei was conflicted: how could he control the direction of his heart? It took a master of the fight to overcome the body, to slow the pulse till one could be perceived as dead, to temper the body’s heat to survive a winter without shelter. It took an even greater matter to suppress desire, to eliminate the keening of his squalid want.

“It’s good advice, lao-ma,” the boy replied with a somber tilt of his chin. “I will think of it often. I hope that someday I am strong enough to act upon it.”

“Good. If you don’t fight for yourself, the world will bury you.” The downtrodden message struck with a down-octave note, brought a gravely serious chill to the springtime of her air. Ruizhi settled into a brief silence, articulate fingers working through the rapid motions of her winding. When she was done she held a plush spray of a bouquet in her hands, vivid orange a bold glow atop a void of amethyst dark. She trimmed the stems, fetched the silver point of a long pin from an open tray and wrapped it around the arrangement’s main support.

“Those colors do not like you right now. Do not wear them.” The elderly woman sat her creation in front of the youngest Ren. “These colors are open to you, these blossoms like you very much.”

The boy picked up the blooms after a moment of thought, inspecting their petals. “These colors are beautiful; these blossoms, full and well cultivated. Your skills are unrivalled—even in my mother’s garden, the chrysanthemums don’t unfurl like this.” He smiled, wan despite the blush of day. “But I cannot wear these colors. My family’s colors are the colors of the sea and sky—like the Tian clan we live and die alongside.”

Ruizhi tilted her head, curious. “You are under observation at all hours of the day and night to be sure you are wearing the appropriate colors of your servitude?”

“Yes,” Fei responded with a small smile, eyes still tracing the lines of the woman’s expert arrangement. “Even in the middle of the night the great swordmaster Gao Erxun will sometimes drag Li and I from our beds to make sure we are always prepared to serve our princes.”

The old woman laughed. “Careful: one day it might not be so easy to talk with a mouth full of lies.” She returned to her work, sorting flowers for her upcoming appointment, strange movements contemplatively pausing over each blossom she picked up before placing it in one of four different groups.

“Do you have a lot of artifacts on you?”

“I have my sword, Ruyi.” Finally, the young courtier put the arrangement down, instead choosing to watch the woman’s work curiously. “And I have one long dead master’s artifact to modulate my ability: the Dragon King’s Tidestone. I guess it’s legendary—so it’s told, anyways. He was a friend of my mother’s I think—they fought alongside each other during the war. It’s only useful for me, so I don’t have to worry about defending it; that’s probably why my parents let me have it so young.”

“Are you the type of boy who wants to collect as many as possible?” She glanced up, then back down. “Your eyes are soft and kind like fighting is beneath you but your tongue is quick.”

“Seeking power for power’s sake is beneath me,” Fei corrected thoughtfully. “Fighting to uphold what is right and to defend those who can’t defend themselves is why we study swords; to enrich the world through good deeds; to cultivate our souls through selflessness.”

“What is so selfless about continuing the tradition of ancestral artifact hoarding, xiaozi?” Ruizhi dallied in whites and soft pinks now, creamy petals just starting to turn toward the warm autumn before their crisp winter; the new greens of emergent buds picked long before they were able to contemplate their popping.

“The collection of artifacts is not selfless. The collection of artifacts is in itself selfish because relics are a source of power; when one collects power for themselves, there can be necessity in the action, yes, but such collection is rife with greed, a thirst for greatness, and can lead us to seek reward with reputation or vice versa—and this can corrupt the soul till it falls completely away.” Fei’s eyes watched the old woman’s hands move deftly through the blooms. “What we choose to do with power is where our nature shows: we can be selfless with our gifts or we can be tyrants. Tyrants will always seek power—this is why heroes must do the same. Isn’t this the way the world has always been?”

Answerless, the old woman leveled her eyes on the boy, looking up as though she was appraising him; as though she possessed some grand ability to peer into the depths of that young thing’s soul and root through every trace of gallantry, separate it from the desires of every man, those that would try to undermine that light Fei held so carefully and deep within him. “Then this is what you are—a hero?”

“I don’t think that’s a thing you can call yourself—at least not with integrity. My father says the man who declares himself a hero stands furthest from the path.” Rising, that tall, deer limbed boy made his way around the countertop till he stood next to Ruizhi, then obediently knelt beside her—even though she hadn’t asked. “Our actions define us, not our words. I’m not boisterous, lao da ma; I am water like my mother.”

The woman moved her short stool over so the youth could sit upon it rather than kneel. She placed her hands on Fei’s shoulders for a brief moment, guiding him back with a gentle touch, light with the warmth of a grandmother’s affection. A moment later she turned and placed a golden band on his crown and began to weave again. Her fingers wrapped and wove like an architect; her structure was destined to reach skyward, shimmering and beautiful, an island built to move.

“It is good that you know the cost of actions. I hope it will help you with your confidence,” Ruizhi said. “If you continue to sit good, I will reward you with a special porridge that I make while you wait for your brother. Jin rarely gets customers. He’s probably going to keep him up there as long as possible to avoid going to the market and promoting himself.”

“Please don’t trouble yourself,” Fei replied, unbothered by his current status as a humble dressform. He sat still as the old woman wove around him. “I’m happy to help while my brother takes up your grandson’s attention; you don’t need to offer me a reward to spend this time with you.”

“It’s no trouble. It’s been waiting for you.” Her painted lips grinned. Her work was a back and forth effort; she crossed in front of Fei, then began fussing with the structure on his other side “Tell me about your paintings. What do you most like to paint?”

“Fish are my favourite. I like the way their fins flow like fabric in the water; how the carp in the river leap and twist in the waves.” Fei tilted his head slightly, as though he were trying to form a phrase he couldn’t place the words for—but not so much that he would disturb the woman’s work. That would just be rude. There was a hum in the air, imperceptible to an ungifted ear; imperceptible to Fei unless he made himself a borrower. Perhaps it was discourteous but the Ren boy couldn’t help himself: he was always curious about the way others functioned. One didn’t fault a mirror for wearing a reflection; how could one fault Fei for doing the same? “Lao da ma, what are you listening for when the flowers sing to you?”

“Aaah,” the woman sighed, picking up the stem of a heavy peony, fluffy petals tipped with pink, exterior playing at spherical perfection. “Well, I just listen for when they don’t sound right. Everything has its own sound, everything sings its own song. When the song of one does not match another, you can hear it in the space between—the disharmony, the antinomy. You focus on one thing and listen, then listen for the sound of another. If there is harmony then it will sound like a richer melody, if not, then it will sound off—broken.”

“So when you pick flowers for a person, you find the flowers that sing the harmony to their song?” Fei clasped his hands in front of him, arms stretched long over his bony knees fulcrum. “When two people are together, can you hear if the song they sing is the same?”

“It’s not impossible,” Ruizhi said on the edge of a thoughtful hum, peering down her nose at an uncooperative strand of golden thread forced into proper shape, “But it is a lot of noise. People are very complicated and always in flux. It is much easier to match the sound of a simple thing to the breadth of a more complicated creature than it is to match them together. I’ve never wanted to do it, although I’m sure it could be done with practice—”

The woman didn’t flinch as the sound of Fei’s older brother traveled down the stairs, a raw cry full of pain forced to fit the syllables of a curse. To her, this was the sound of accomplishment, this was the sound of money being made. She was, in an instant, so proud of her grandson. “I prefer simple things.”

Fei tilted his chin up, alarmed at the sound of his brother’s distress but seeing Ruizhi’s calm, the pride that brightened her time-worn features, the obedient boy remained, looking blankly ahead once more. “I, too, prefer simple things,” he replied. “Thank you for helping me see the value in that, lao da ma.”

“You are a good boy.” Ruizhi’s smile was still strong as she paused a hand to clasp the wealthy youth’s shoulder once more, fondness the softest harmony in a split-second moment of clarity between her and him and all things in that crowded shop front.