“In the past few years Mogi took Minxi and me around the celebration together, but this year Minxi is away at school, and Mogi has been invited by the Logos Institute to a banquet. It’s a good thing you two came,” Eve said, breaking off petals of the white-spider dandelion as she spoke.
“Come to think of it, I really don’t have many friends my own age here. Though that isn’t anyone else’s fault. I’m not much good at fitting in.”
“When we were in our teens it was about the same. There aren’t many girls in Luoqimi Town, and the boys our age are childish and mischievous. You can’t play with them at all,” Sheryl said.
“They’re always giving people in town nicknames, playing pranks, stealing fruit from other people’s trees, and even abusing cats and dogs. I hate them to death!” Yefei chimed in.
“It isn’t that bad here,” Eve said, surprised. “Don’t the people in their families do anything about it?”
“They can’t. A few of the bigger children from the welfare home are the ringleaders. Every time they cause trouble the director beats them one by one, but they do it again next time,” Sheryl answered.
“Beating won’t do. They ought to be guided,” Eve frowned.
“Right? That’s what my mother says too. She says they should be made to take a faith. With the constraints of doctrine they wouldn’t act so lawless,” Yefei said.
“Klijin’s law doesn’t allow that, and taking a faith would be a kind of step backward,” Sheryl said.
“That’s the contradiction of a small place,” Eve nodded.
“You can’t have them take a faith so they’ll keep quiet, and you can’t send them to school to break their ignorance either. The end result is that they make trouble everywhere.”
“But the welfare home teaches reading too,” Yefei said.
“The director just can’t keep them in hand. He has to worry about the home’s income and expenses, so he doesn’t put his heart into those children. On ordinary days he beats and scolds at the drop of a hat. I heard that years ago he even beat one child’s leg lame. That was someone of our mothers’ generation. The man held the grudge the whole time, and later he climbed into the welfare home in the middle of the night, beat the director, and fled somewhere else,” Sheryl said.
“I see… That really is a bit difficult.” Eve let out a breath.
“The director’s name is Melinsef. He’s actually a kind-hearted man. Everyone says so. When he was young he was a priest over in Mokoto. Later, from what I heard, he wrote some article he shouldn’t have written and was driven out of the country. After that he came here, took in a few wandering children along the way, and finally settled in Luo Town. The welfare home was built by him and those few wanderers once they grew up. He’s well regarded in our parts. A lot of rich men from the surrounding towns have donated to him,” Yefei said.
“He really is worth respecting. Very few people have that kind of drive. But on the other side, if the children taken in by a welfare home can’t get proper guidance, then once they’re grown, the good and harm they do to society…”
Eve only spoke halfway.
Her brows were locked tight; she had thought of something, though she did not say what.
“How did we get onto this kind of thing?” Sheryl changed the subject then.
“Let’s go look at the main street. We haven’t much time. Yefei, let’s bring Auntie Nanfen and the others a few small gifts…”
The three girls wove through the crowd.
In the distance the great clock pointed to 8:30, and fireworks began to bloom one after another in the sky.
On one of the outer city’s main streets they ran into Lug and his friends, and it was the other side who saw them first.
Eve was still holding that flower, but the flower was a circle smaller now, only about the size of a palm.
She held it out in front of Lug.
Lug wanted to refuse, but Eve insisted, so he had to break off a small piece and put it in his mouth under everyone’s curious eyes.
“The luggage has all been sent to the tailor’s shop,” Lug told her.
“Faen and Gokekai will go ahead to Qiyang Continent early next year to take a look. After the festival Lisk will stay at the manor for a while.”
As for why Lug was reporting these things to her, Eve more or less understood.
His relations with Mogi had not eased at once because of his decision, so he needed Eve to pass the word.
“All right. Are you going back now, or will you come to the tailor’s shop with us?” Eve asked him.
“I’ll go with you.”
After Lug took leave of his three companions, he fell in beside Eve.
With this young man joining them, Yefei and Sheryl seemed to grow a little constrained.
Eve still walked and stopped, and Lug kept watching her from behind.
He himself seemed to have no interest in what was sold at the celebration, until Eve picked up a skull of some unknown animal from a street stall, and only then did he take notice.
Eve slid her hand in from under the fanged skull, poked two fingers out through the pitch-black eye sockets, and crooked them at the others with a smile.
Yefei, seeing her actually playing with a bone, could not help sticking out her tongue at her.
“That’s a cat’s skull.”
Lug bent to look.
“From the teeth it should be a wildcat. As for the exact kind, I still can’t judge. From the size it ought to be a kind of mountain cat.”
“It’s a Nusi black mountain cat,” the stallholder said, in a thickly nasal foreign accent.
“Hunted by the local people during the Witch-Purging Festival, bleached with potion and lacquered. Very clean.”
“How much?” Eve asked him.
“One bean-coin.” The stallholder held up a finger.
What was called a bean-coin was a long oval gold piece the size of a fingernail, also called a small cowrie, worth one-fifth of a gold coin.
“What do you think?” Eve’s gaze turned to Lug.
“This thing isn’t worth much locally. If you want it, have him throw in a gift as well,” Lug said.
The stallholder smiled and agreed readily.
After money and goods had changed hands, Eve put the mountain-cat skull into her satchel, then took the gift bracelet in her hand and asked him, “And the string of fangs on this—what animal are they from?”
“A domestic pig’s teeth,” Lug glanced and said at once. “And they’re our local pigs, at that.”
“And here I thought they were some fierce beast’s fangs… A gift really is a gift.” Eve shook her head with a smile and stuffed the bracelet into Lug’s hand. “Since you earned the gift, it’s yours.”
Lug looked at Eve, then at the two girls beside him.
He held that string of pig teeth, his expression thoroughly conflicted.
He wanted to give the thing back, yet felt that such a move would look small.
He thought it over, and in the end he still tucked it into his coat pocket, deciding not to argue with her for now.
Only when Eve’s satchel would hold no more did they head for the East District, cutting through the crowd all the way to the tailor’s shop.
Nanfen was still talking with those sisters of hers at a roaring pace.
When she saw Eve and the others return, the talk naturally shifted onto the younger generation.
Eve noticed that a few more unfamiliar older women she had not seen before seemed to have been added to the tea room.
The moment Nanfen saw Eve back, she pulled her into a side room and had her change into a presentable gown.
“How many outfits have I changed today?” Eve sighed, and let her loosen her hair, comb it through, and pin it up at the back of her head with clips.
“You saw them too. Some of those people outside are my cousins, some friends I’ve known since I was little. They’re all interested in you.”
“That’s only because you go around praising me everywhere,” Eve said. “I feel Minxi has grown a good deal more distant from me these past two years, just because of this. If you’re going to praise me, you’d do better to praise her more.”
“Because of this?” Nanfen stopped what her hands were doing, lifted her head, and met Eve’s eyes in the mirror for a moment, then said with pretended gravity, “Then when she comes back, I’ll have a proper talk with her.”
“Don’t. She’s your own daughter.” Eve did not know whether to laugh or cry.
“A child from outside suddenly appears in the house and takes away more than half the parents’ care. Put yourself in her place. If I were her, I wouldn’t feel good either.”
“This has nothing to do with whether she’s blood or not.” Nanfen set both hands on her shoulders.
“You have to understand, what I can give you isn’t much. Minxi has no plans for her own future, so I have to be stricter with her. But you are different. You see things through. Any extra pointing from other people is drawing a snake and adding feet. What can I help you with? Only looking after your daily life a little more. But there is no higher or lower between the care I have for you and for Minxi.”
Eve was a little flushed by Nanfen’s words, and said nothing more.
She was still not quite used to Nanfen’s way of putting feeling so straight.
She had not lived here for a short time, yet she simply could not do that the way the local people could.
“Shy?” Nanfen smiled and patted her back shoulder.
“That’s the one thing wrong with you.”
In matters of feeling Eve always kept a subtle distance from the people around her.
In talk and manner she always seemed to leave room, so that it was a little hard to guess what she was thinking.
She had not even noticed that such conduct sometimes hurt Nanfen’s heart.
And the more she was like this, the more gently Nanfen treated her.
In her unspoken mind, Nanfen only wanted her to open her heart.
Festival nights always lasted a long time.
Eve was hemmed in by a crowd of elders and questioned for more than an hour as if she were a prisoner under interrogation, and only then did they let her go, satisfied.
There was not only tea in the tea room, but many pastries and fruits as well.
Eve found Yefei and Sheryl to play cards with her.
There were not enough people, so Eve wanted Lug to make up the number, but he actually said he did not know how to play.
With no other choice, she hauled Comino, who was drinking downstairs, out of the press of people and pulled him over to play cards together.
Sometime near dawn, everyone stopped their amusements and diversions and went out onto the street one after another.
Comino secretly brought Eve a ladder and set it against the eaves by the outer stairs, so the three girls could climb onto the roof.
He himself did not go up, saying he was too fat and was afraid of stepping through the tiles.
The gold moon and the purple moon hung in the air, and against the brilliant fireworks they even looked a little dull.
The three girls sat side by side on the ridge of the roof, waiting for the festival spectacle that was about to appear—Feimeng’s once-a-year magical fireworks display.
When the clock-tower hands pointed to 12:00, a deep, ringing blast of a horn carried from the direction of the Logos Institute through the whole city.
After that, the sound of instruments from every street in the city gathered into a single melody—Thorn Moon.
Though the idea of a “national anthem” was not current at this time, there were always one or two folk songs that held a special meaning for a country.
In the distance, on a high platform thrown up for the occasion above the inner city, a dozen or so people in white robes stood at the various edges of the platform.
Eve held a single-tube telescope in her hand and sighted that way.
There were men and women among them, almost all middle-aged.
Their faces were solemn; they stood there without moving.
Only when Thorn Moon played its last passage did they put their palms together in unison, their lips stirring.
When the music ended and the last drums sounded, they seemed to take it as a signal.
Together they raised their right arms and shouted, “VOOZ-DYAS!”
This was a framework phrase of magic.
Its general meaning was: create light.
Beams of every color shot into the high air and at last gathered into a somewhat unstable white light.
The white light would form a globe of light, floating over the city, then spread without a sound, creeping out level, like a balloon filled with smoke that suddenly burst.
The glowing mist covered the whole city like a mushroom cap, or like a jellyfish.
In the middle was a pale curtain of light, and around it a ring of white brightness.
The people in the city began to cheer then.
Sometimes it left visiting sightseers at a loss, but that confusion would not last long.
At once, points of light as dense as star-glints would condense on the light curtain and fall slowly and straight down like rain, covering the whole city.
“The range is even bigger than last year’s!” someone cried.
The first star-glint bloomed, burned, and vanished in midair.
Blue points of light drew trailing tracks in the night sky like weeping willow, and at last faded above the streets.
After that, more magical fireworks opened in the night, a riot of color that drunk the eye.
Unlike ordinary fireworks, magical fireworks made no bang-bang when they bloomed.
Instead they gave a crisp sound like glass or ice cracking, thoroughly dreamlike.
The fireworks lit the night sky.
Their number would reach its greatest in about ten minutes, then slowly fade over three hours, until the light curtain vanished altogether.
Eve watched, thoroughly absorbed.
Every year she was shaken by a scene like this, even to the point of awe.
In the end it was because she herself could not use magic, and rarely saw others use it.
Magic that could cover a whole city like tonight was something one could see only once a year.
Nanfen could use magic, and so could Mogi, and even Minxi could put out a flash or a spark.
But Eve seldom saw them use it, or at least use it in the open.
In her view, these uncommon abilities could play a great part in daily life, and could even change the world if taken as a foundation.
Yet no one used them.
There had only been a few times she had seen others use them.
Once a child had drowned; only after the adults on the bank had tried again and again to save him and failed did they use magic to pull the child ashore through the air.
Another time, at dusk, a young man with a basket on his back had released magic by the river to shock fish; when he saw Eve he fled in a panic.
And another time, while they were camping, no one had brought anything to start a fire.
Comino, under everyone’s eyes, rubbed out a flame.
She had been very surprised then; she had not thought even this fat man could use magic.
But because everyone at the time showed a strange silence, she had not dared speak.
Afterward Roz had brought the matter up, saying Comino really should not have done such a thing in front of Eve.
Only then did Eve at last have a thread of an idea.
Using magic in the open seemed to have become a moral problem, perhaps only a little less serious than taking off one’s trousers in public.
But how had this moral consensus taken shape?
People refused to use this powerful inborn ability—what good could that possibly bring them?
Eve had asked many people.
Faced with so sharp a question, some would not answer, some spoke vaguely, and some spoke with care.
Taken together, their accounts fell roughly into three kinds.
The first was explanation from religion, teaching, and tradition.
The general talk was nothing other than this: magic is an evil power the fallen use to tempt mortals; those who use magic wantonly cannot enter heaven after death; using magic draws on other people’s life force and is a way of harming others to benefit oneself; magic brings misfortune and ill fruit; and so on.
There were many such sayings.
The second concerned the link between the development of magic and the destruction of civilizations.
This was also a guess many people believed without doubt: that whenever a magical civilization reached a certain height, the world would, without warning, meet its end.
Based on the fact that relics of old civilizations covered the world, this saying spread widely and seemed reasonable and credible.
In a present that lacked rational and scientific thought, the doctrine of a magical doomsday had almost become a settled conclusion.
This also made many people harbor a latent fear of magic.
The third saying Eve had heard from an elderly friend named Kimilos.
At the time Kimilos had even warned her in all seriousness not to preach these things in front of others, unless she wanted a whipping or a prison meal.
This was what he said—magic is useful, and almost everyone uses it in private.
Releasing magic requires the chanting of spells.
These spells circulate in private, mostly among kin, friends, and children.
The final result of that state of affairs is that every year there are frequent cases of maiming and death from the abuse of magic or its deliberate use, open cases and unsolved ones alike, but people have long since ceased to find it strange.
The above is one example.
From it one can see that if the use of magic is not forbidden, what appears is a society in which anyone can kill anyone else with ease.
Magic kills without form and is hard to regulate.
In such conditions people cannot build trust and find it hard to form a stable society.
Therefore forbidding the use of magic becomes a premise for building a society, and even a nation.
And to forbid the people from using magic, the most effective method is not to make a law of it, but to frighten with lies, to constrain with religion, and to instill with morals.
Only thus can it last.
“The strict forbidding of magic” will in the end present itself in people’s moral awareness as a common consensus.
People obey blindly.
That is the price they pay in order to live together in peace.
Kimilos said this moral consensus might only be temporary, and applied only on the condition that the country had no outside enemy.
The hardship war brought would force people to use magic again and to use it with skill.
And in the end, the wheel of human fate would still roll forward in the ruts of the old civilizations.