People say you can see a child's future at three, but from the moment Zhang Ankang was born, Liu Yueying began…
People say you can see a child's future at three, but from the moment Zhang Ankang was born, Liu Yueying began to fret. Her boy was louder and wilder than other children, and the livelier they are, the harder it is to get them to stay put. Sooner or later, they're bound to leave. But what could Liu Yueying do? She had never been one to wander. She knew the world was vast, and she knew none of that vastness belonged to her.
The pastry shops lining the streets in Kaifeng City, the lanterns that burned day and night, the high officials and nobles people whispered about in hushed tones, the splendid courtyards mentioned in teahouse gossip, rumors of gold, jewels, and exotic beasts sent from afar... But those were just dreams spun from words. What did that Kaifeng City have to do with her?
There were two Kaifeng Cities in this world: one for those who stood high above, and another for the common folk.
She lived in the latter. To her, this city held only one house, one shop, and now, this child.
Softening her voice, she soothed the wailing infant. Outside, the summer sun cast dappled shadows through the trees. Wind rustled the leaves, slipping through their small window, brushing against their faces. The unknowing child reached up, grasping at the dancing shadows and then she heard it: laughter so pure it drowned out every worry in her heart.
In the years that followed, she would shake a woven grass leaf before the child's eyes, teasing out those same gurgling giggles.
"No more tears? You laugh at the wind in the leaves and stop crying at the sight of them. You're destined for the trees, my love. How about the nickname Shusheng?"
"Our Shusheng... May all the trees in the world watch over you... Keep you safe..."
People said children changed when they grew up. Neighbors and relatives would reassure her: Don't fret if he's small now, he'll grow. Don't worry if he's timid, he'll brave the world in time.
But what kind of man would her child become?
She would never see it. The boy who once laughed at the whisper of wind through leaves grew into a man who wept at the sight of trees.
When the breeze stirred the leaves outside, Zhang Ankang ached with longing and yet feared that sound.
No one can command the wind. It does not rise for nostalgia, nor still for fear. "The tree may crave calm, but the wind will not cease", as the saying goes.
He tried not to think of it, yet could not stop.
In another wind, one he could never reach, across an endless field of wheat in Plainfield, where the gale rippled the stalks like waves, did that sound even momentarily deceive a dying mother into believing she had returned to that summer afternoon? To the dappled shadows, the child's laughter at the door?
And so she mistook it for home.
She was home. Back to when—
The bell of Hopewell Academy still rang. A bowl of locust leaf noodles simmered on the stove. The Immortal Tree was just an ordinary old locust tree. And the legend of the Gold Leaf Warrior did not yet exist.