Chapter 227 — Kin
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 1 of 8
How long that sleep lasted, he could not tell. He only knew that in the depths of it he was surrounded by familiar scents, and that he had not felt such peace in a very long time.
So he sank deep into dream, as though unwilling to wake—yet somewhere far within the dream there was always a stabbing ache, coiling round and round and refusing to disperse, pricking at his heart again and again.
Drawing a long breath, Ming Li slowly came awake. The room before his eyes seemed like something dreamed; he gazed at it in silence. He had lived here as a boy, and grown up here. The tables and chairs, the bed, the door, the window—every one of them was all but carved into his heart.
On the wall against which the bed stood, that great character "Dao" still hung, though its color and its strokes had somewhat faded; yet each line and each dot still looked as vigorous and forceful as when he had first seen it.
The wooden frame of the window gave a soft creak and opened a crack, and Little Grey, the grey-furred monkey, leaped in from outside. At a glance he saw that Ming Li was awake and half sitting up in the bed, and he was so delighted that his mouth split in a grin, and in a few bounds he was on the bed.
Ming Li's heart gave a leap. This scene was just as it had been years ago. Had it not been for the change in his wounds and his features, and for the spirit-eye opened on Little Grey's brow, he might truly have believed himself to be waking from a fond, empty dream.
But that, after all, was impossible.
Little Grey chattered at Ming Li—"chee chee chee chee"—and Ming Li looked down. The monkey's hands were clutching a number of wild fruits, plucked outside, no doubt, and now to be shared with his master. Ming Li shook his head to show he did not want any. Little Grey did not press him; he turned with a swish and sprang to the table in the middle of the room, squatted there, and began to stuff himself, mouth wide.
Ming Li looked silently on everything in the room; at last his gaze fell on the gap of the window through which Little Grey had come, and a sliver of light shone in from outside. He could not see clearly what lay beyond, but he knew without looking: outside that window was a little courtyard, and in it an old green pine, a lawn of green grass, and a path paved with pebbles; and to one side of the yard, a semicircular archway. Every blade of grass and every tree here had long since been engraved in the depths of his memory, never to be effaced.
The air was fresh, almost faintly sweet, and even from the little courtyard beyond the room there seemed to drift the fragrance of green grass.
In his trance he had the sense of coming home—but a moment later a stab of pain beneath his heart woke him.
Outside the door, footsteps came.
Ming Li turned his eyes to that door. The footsteps soon reached it, but before the half-closed door the person outside seemed to hesitate, and did not push it open at once.
Ming Li watched that door.
After a moment, the door was pushed open at last.
A tall, steady figure stood in the doorway, and almost at the same instant that man caught sight of Ming Li, awake. Their eyes met in midair, and neither spoke at once. In their gaze there were for a time too many tangled feelings—perhaps for that reason all the thousand words they might have spoken came to nothing but silence.
The monkey Little Grey sat on the table, spat a fruit pit from his mouth, glanced toward the doorway, gave two chirps of "chee chee," and bent his head to his fruit again.
The man at the door sighed, and the corner of his mouth seemed to show a faint bitter smile. He shook his head, came in, looked long and deeply at Ming Li, and said: "So many years without seeing you—should I call you Old Seven, or Little Junior Brother?"
Ming Li's lips moved. At last, gazing at the man before him, he said low: "Eldest Senior Brother…"