The town of Qingxi was nestled in between some low hills and weary fields, where the soil was very thin and the wind had more dust than promise. In early morning the mist was coming by the irrigation ditches like a reluctant thought, and in the evening the smoke of the cooking fires was lying down, not wanting to go up to any great height into the apathetic atmosphere. This was not where miracles hung about. Under that sky, Xiao Lin had lived sixteen years. Sixteen springs of seeding, sixteen autumns of reaping grain of too pale a hue. His existence was of hoe and basket, of dubbous hands and silent supper. He was little and his shoulders were straight, his legs were thin as scrapers made of wood that had been foundling. Other boys were wrestling by the riverbank, and he was watching. When they talked of power, he paid attention. His parents never rebuked him on the same. His mother had always had hands which were rough and warm, and his father always had a back bent. It was early taught them that certain seedlings were slow germinators, and that by forcibly forcing them they simply severed the stem. Xiao Lin himself never paid much attention to it. He got up when he was told, toiled when he had work, slept when he was allowed. He took hunger patiently when it came. When the cold crept into his bones he took it meekly. His mind roamed around, but not so far, as to enquire why the clouds wandered as they did, or why the sound of footsteps died so soon at sundown. He was not unhappy. The disaster came in unceremoniously. It happened one of the evenings when he was coming back to the fields, when the sun was setting very low. His steps faltered. The basket fell off his shoulder and emptied its pitiful contents into the dirt. He did not notice. The world was tilted and the colors were like wet ink. When his father got to him, the skin of Xiao Lin was scalded under the calloused hand. On this night the fever came full. Initially, they believed that it was a temporary disease. Fever was common. A child was sweating, shivering, slept a day or two and got up weaker but alive. his mother would boil bitter and dark herbs, and give him spoonfuls of them. His father brought his knelt next to the bed, and listened to his breathing. But the heat did not fade. On the 3 rd day, Xiao Lin did not wake. His lips cracked. His breathing was shallow and uneven, as though he did not know whether to keep on or not. His skin was too hot that his mother would recoil in tears running down her cheeks as she cleaned him. The village whispered. Others claimed it must have been the dampness of the fields. Others whimpered with the ancestral dissatisfaction, about a misstep made by his ancestors. Some old woman grumbled that his shadow had been thiner of late, as the flame of a candle about to go out. A week passed. Then two. The fever did not break. Xiao Lin lay motionless, and the world outside his eyelids was burning and melting away. Time lost its shape. Night melted into days without disparagement. Sometimes he dreamed--when it was possible to dream. It was hot, endless and devouring, though in it, as though in a dream, there were moments of surreal clarity. The voices were like those that were underwater. He was almost being submerged, not against the grain but vertically against it. Sometimes he imagined he could hear voices. Not the voices of the living. They were remote, overlapped, with the feeling of a great number of people talking at once, but none loud enough to hear. Sometimes a word would emerge, incomplete, fragmented, and slip into the murmur. He could not grasp them. He was not able even to understand himself. His body was heavy and light at the same time, as he was being squeezed into the ground and was at the same time being smoked into smoke. His chest burned. His thoughts were roving through nameless places. His mother had her breaths of the night. His father ceased to go out to fields. On the fifteenth day the village head appeared to stand at the door without uttering a word. He left a pack of incense, and said nothing. Smoke twisted upwards, thin and helpless. After the twentieth day the old woman came back and shook her head. Between, he is between, she said to herself. "Not here. Not gone." Whispers were exhausted even by the thirtieth day. Xiao Lin should have died. This was what all minds were thinking, and heavy resigned. His body never belonged to a strong body. His breath was faint. His heat unrelenting. No kid passed through such a month and came back to life. And yet, on the morning of the thirty first day, the fever had disappeared. It did not fade gradually. It vanished. His mother observed this the first time, when she touched his forehead and did not burn herself. She stood still, hardly venturing to breathe. Then she raised her palm again there, more firmly, in case heat accepted examination. It did not. The breathing of Xiao Lin became deeper. His brow smoothed. Color, which was not much, though undeniable, came back to his cheeks. By noon, his eyes opened. They were initially out of focus and the pupils were wandering aimlessly as though in search of something just beyond their vision. He looked up at the beams of the ceiling, which are old and cracked, and followed their lines with a stare which was altogether too purposeful to be roused. His mother sobbed openly. "Lin'er," she whispered. "Can you hear me?" His lips moved. No sound came out. Water was brought. He swallowed gradually and clumsily, like remembering. His throat moved and he finally spoke. There is not enough room in the room, he hoarsely replied. His father stiffened.
It is just as usual, mamma, I wept, and the tears still came. "You are home."
Confusedly Xiao Lin frowns. He raised his hand, and looked at it, as though it were not his.
The room... it was larger, I said to myself.
That is all they said the same day. He fell asleep, this time of his own accord. Once he got up he ordered rice, and he stared at the bowl, and then ate.
Recovery was slow.
His body was thin as kindling. He stood with trembling legs. There was something different about him though it was hard to say what.
He said very little, and what he said had a wandering way.
After three days of waking he was assisted by his father in coming out to sit in the sun. Xiao Lin looked at the sky with a wrinkle in his eyes and shut the eyes.
It is a loud light to-day, he said.
His father hesitated. "Does it hurt your eyes?"
No, Xiao Lin answered after some delay. "It just speaks too much."
His father laughed not knowing whether the fever had not yet completely quenched him.
But Xiao Lin was still saying such things.
He would stop halfway through his meal and look at his chopsticks and say, "When I hold him too tight it does not want to remain.
As his mother was asking him to explain, he shook his head.
"I do not know," he said. "It just feels so."
At his walk he proceeded with caution as though he knew each stone underfoot. He paused frequently, and looked at weeds sprouting out of cracks in the road, and ants at work on crumbs bigger than themselves.
On one occasion, when he was watching them, he said, They are in a hurry. But they come whether they come rapidly or not.
One of the neighbors had overheard and could say nothing.
Word was spread--not with a clatter, not with enthusiasm, but with some gravity.
Xiao Lin was... different.
Here came an aged man, leaning on a well-polished cane. He made himself opposite Xiao Lin and looked at him a long time.
Then the elder said, "You were sick.
"Yes," Xiao Lin replied.
"What did you see?"
Xiao Lin blinked. "The inside of my eyes."
The elder frowned.
"And beyond?"
Xiao Lin thought. Truly thought. His forehead wrinkled and his eyes fell.
There was a burning, he said slowly. "But it did not want to harm me. It wanted me to notice it."
The older one tightened his hold on a cane.
"Notice what?"
Xiao Lin shook his head again. "I did not understand."
The older drove away without a word.
It was only a matter of time before people had the reasons to get close to Xiao Lin. They listened when he spoke. His silences they spent more attention to than his words.
The farmer lamented because of bad harvest, and swore in his heart that he was cursed by the heavens. Xiao Lin, who was seated nearby, replied, without raising his eyes, that the earth was weary and shouting would not wake it up.
The farmer went pale.
When, after weeks of drought, came the rain, somebody recalled that sentence.
None of it was noticed by Xiao Lin himself. Such was not frequently the case, as he was confused more often than not. His mind seemed unclouded, more precise in its focus, but even greasier. He would grasp something profoundly some moment, and afterward would not be able to describe it.
It frustrated him.
One afternoon two of the travellers reached Qingxi.
They had plain robes, dust-streaked though in good condition, swords strapped on their backs. They were not elders of the sect--that too lowly--but they were not common people either. Their entrance changed the atmosphere of the village imperceptibly, as the falling of a stone into calm water.
They paused to take a rest, taking tea with the village head.
Their gazes drifted.
They saw Xiao Lin sitting under a tree, and falling leaves one after another.
One of them frowned.
The other turned his eyes and stood up.
They whispered to each other.
After a time, one approached.
Boy, he said, calm but determined. "What are you watching?"
Xiao Lin looked up, startled. He wavered, and then replied very frankly.
They fall, said he, differently. "Each leaf chooses its own way."
The eyes of the cultivator contracted.
And what, do you suppose, becomes of it as soon as it falls on the ground?
Xiao Lin looked up at the ground, which was sprayed with yellow and brown.
"It stops moving," he said. Next, in a pause, "But it is not over.
The grower sucked in a breath.
his companion came into the foreground. Cycles, you say, he said cautiously.
Xiao Lin looked bewildered. "Do I?"
The two exchanged a look.
It has been a great ordeal, you have undergone, the first said slowly. Did you learn anything out of it?
Xiao Lin lowered his gaze. His fingers dug into the dirt.
I just wanted it to cease burning, I said. It was when it did that it all seemed louder.
Silence fell.
The cultivators bowed--to him.
Xiao Lin had panicked, and he almost collapsed in trying to rise.
No--need--no--need--no--need, I stutter, said he.
The village stood in suspense.
One of the growers was very mumbled and pious. Sometimes understanding is sought in the most unlikely ones.
Xiao Lin was at a loss what to say.
That very night, lying awake and gazing at the dark ceiling, he talked to himself, at a loss and in a frightened way.
"I only wanted to live."
And deeper in, beyond the hills and the weary fields, was something old--not with a cry of triumph, but with quiet listening--as though it had overheard its name spoken by accident.
And down in Qingxi village, under the same sky, destiny stepped forward and made no announcement.