歲寒知松柏
Suì hán zhī sōng bǎi
Only when the year grows cold do we see the qualities of the pine and cypress.
Adversity reveals virtue.
*~*~*~*~*~*
We returned to the stable and I built a fire, ignoring the pain in my shoulder. Ignoring the pain in my hand and my heart.
I built it high, so the dark stables were merry with light. Then I helped Zakhar settle on the pile of hay, using the bedrolls and the bearskin I had carried north with me.
"Thank you, Ao," he said, as I tucked the blanket around him.
I smiled, but could not meet his eyes. They held so much warmth. I could not stand it.
I talked to Zakhar throughout the evening as I went about preparing a meal for us. Light things, happy things, to distract him. Stories of me and Ermi at the university, stories of Liang'yi and her antics when I had been at rabbit run. Stories of things Sanli or Kageyama had done I thought he might find funny.
I tried to get him to talk about himself too.
"Haha, I rather not," said Zakhar, carefully taking the bowl of gruel I held out to him. "Never much liked sad stories."
I bit my lip and looked away.
Zakhar ate a spoonful of the gruel and winced. I wasn't sure if it was because of the temperature or the taste.
He set his bowl beside him. "You still haven't told me your story yet, Ao."
I said nothing, just stared down at my own gruel. The mixture was a lumpy grey.
Zakhar lay back on the hay. "I saw you that day, you know. After we had left Mengxiang. You danced in the rain, like a mad person. Got soaked. We camped afterwards, in the cave, and the next morning you showed me that picture of the dragons and told the story about how Liu Zhua killed them all."
Zakhar reached out, trying to hide his wince at the pain from his injuries. His big, ink covered hand carefully tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, a gesture I had come to love as much as his kisses.
"I think, deep down I knew since then, who you were," Zakhar said, blue eyes bright in the firelight. "Though it took me a while to really believe it."
I held my breath in surprise. "All that time?"
"All that time."
You know the stories, I thought. But do you know me?
As if he could read my mind, Zakhar asked, "Ao, will you tell me your real story?"
I stared down at my gruel, pretending to consider Zakhar's request, though I already knew I could not deny him.
"Fine, but I'll have to start at the beginning, or else I sound like the villain."
"Aren't you?" He grinned.
I slapped his shoulder, gentler than usual. "I am, but just listen."
I set my gruel aside and settled on the bed of hay beside him, shoulder to shoulder. I pulled the furs over us both, careful of the Zakhar's injuries.
"The first thing I remember is the ocean..."
*~*~*~*~*~*
I told Zakhar everything of me. My past, my history, and more. Secrets and hopes that I had never told anyone before. Even Lu.
Zakhar took it all, my bad, my good, little surprising him, though I suspected that had to do with the end we both knew was drawing near.
When death looms, little about life surprises you.
Zakhar accepted all I told him with careful curiosity, handling the details of my life just as he handled me; reverently, gently. Like my story was something precious, something to be cherished.
Of everything I told him, He seemed most interested in that I had married, and asked questions about my husband, the fisherman.
"He was a big fellow, you say?"
"Yes."
"Like me?" He grinned, though his face was wan. I laughed and confirmed that yes, he had looked a bit like Zakhar.
Silence fell between us. There was so much to be said, and yet so little time to say it. So it seemed best to say nothing at all.
"Ao promise me, after I'm gone, you'll go back to Sanli," Zakhar's voice was serious, desperate. "He will take care of you."
"I do not need to be taken care of."
"Please. Promise. For me?"
I could not say no. I promised.
"And look after Dunya as well. She's a good girl. She deserves to be spoiled a bit." Zakhar nodded to his wooly horse, tethered in the stable across from us.
"You know I would even if you didn't ask."
The fire had burned low. Flakes of snow fell through the open trapdoor of the ceiling that we used as chimney.
I rose to add more wood to the fire.
"What do you plan to do with your immortal life, Ao?" Zakhar asked quietly. "What do you want to do?"
I placed one log on the fire. Then another, and another, stoking it higher.
I did not know what to say. I felt ashamed. An infinity of time before me. What I wouldn't do to give some of it to Zakhar.
"I don't know, Zakhar," I said. I forced myself to look at him.
Zakhar smiled then, and in that moment it seemed he, with his scarce three decades of life, was so much wiser than me, with all my centuries behind me.
"You'll figure it out. And if you don't, well, I've always thought you don't really need a reason to do something. So live well, yeah, Ao?"
Despite my sorrow, despite all the grief in my heart, I found myself smiling back. "I will, Zakhar."
Fire built back up, I returned to curl up beside him beneath the bearskin once more. Zakhar raised his uninjured arm and drew me to his side.
Then my smile faded. I had always known Zakhar was kind. But I had not realized he could anticipate my thoughts, my needs to this extent. Trying to comfort me. To make me see beyond my present reality, to something beyond, something to hope for.
Kind, stubborn, savage, thoughtful. There were so many parts to Zakhar. So many faces to him that I was just discovering.
Humans are such complicated creatures, so tied up in knots. I wish I had more time to unravel Zakhar's.
*~*~*~*~*~*
As the night drew on, the pain in Zakhar's leg and arm grew, until talking, even breathing pained him to the point of exhaustion. Helplessly, I tried to fill the ever growing pauses with my own useless chatter. I talked of anything, strange memories, remembered dreams, everything I could think of, knowing as I did I sounded false. Talking to pass the time was never something I'd been good at.
Zakhar eventually drifted off to an exhausted sleep. But I could not. I lay awake beside him, dreading what would happen come dawn.
That night seemed darker and colder than any before it. The wind started to howl like running wolves after prey, and snow fell, whipping around the stables until it sealed it in, creating a barrier between us and the outside world. Muffling the sound of the hunt.
Sometime just before dawn Zakhar stirred, after being silent for many hours.
"Ao?" The wind outside had stilled, the wolves having brought their prey to bay, and nothing filled the silence except the soft cracking of settling logs.
"Yes?"
"Are you there?" Considering I was lying directly beside him, limbs entangled with his own beneath the bearskin, I wondered why he was asking. Was he dreaming... or already too far gone to feel me?
"I am," I answered.
There was a pause, and then Zakhar spoke. Somehow, I knew what was coming. Perhaps I had always known.
"Just as the sun falls to the sea-" Zakhar began, with difficulty, "-just as the wind dies in the tree, this boat has reached its end."
I wanted to reach out. To cover his mouth, and stop the words of the familiar final prayer.
But I was afraid if I did I would not hear him speak again.
Zakhar drew in a thin breath, and I felt it shake in his chest. "Not much remains, but what there, what there..."
The words stopped, and Zakhar coughed, breathless. I thought he would not be able to finish. But he continued.
"-what there is, I offer to you."
I felt warmth on my cheeks. I bit the inside of my mouth hard to keep silent.
"All that I am... all that I have... everything of my heart is yours."
*~*~*~*~*~*
The next morning the snow had stopped and the sky was a brilliant blue above it. The sun was so bright, reflected by blinding white snow, that for a few seconds after I stepped out of the dark stable I couldn't see. Instead I just stood there, shading my eyes against the sky and waiting for them to adjust.
Once they had, I set about building a pyre.
I hadn't thought to ask Zakhar what he wanted me to do with his body, but I recalled the time in the caves near the Eastern Shore, when his voice had shook as he followed me through the dark. I had taken his hand, and he had grasped it with his giant paw and not let go, like a drowning man thrown a rope at sea.
Remembering that, I doubted burying him in the earth was what he would have wanted. So I resolved to burn him, as they did in the south.
I took all of the day to collect wood and build the pyre. The stacks of firewood that Zakhar had cut when we had stayed here over the winter had burned with the cabin, so I was forced to venture into the forest to search out fallen logs and branches. Then I used In'yii's strength to help me drag them back.
As the sun set it became bitterly cold. The sky was clear, the stars like silver pins polished by the cold to more vibrancy.
Even the magic keeping me alive could not keep me from feeling the pain as my limbs froze, and then nothing as they went numb.
I would not die though.
Finally, I used the horses to help me move Zakhar's body from the stables to where I had piled all of the branches and logs I had found. In'yii was too foolish, and spooked at the smell of death, so I had to use Dunya to help me.
Dunya stayed calm, and I managed to get Zakhar's body to the pyre outside.
I could not lift him onto the pyre, so I built it around him instead, carefully tucking branches around his big arms, bulkier now in his sheepskin jacket. When I had finished I looked down. My friend looked peaceful in death, and I realized in life he had held a tightness about his mouth and the corner of his eyes. Lines of fear and worry caused by his ever looming fate.
In death these lines released, and he looked so much younger. So much freer.
I had removed the bolts from his shoulder and leg, and cleaned his face. I combed back his hair with my fingers, and smoothed his beard straight. It did not really matter, I knew, and Zakhar would not care. But I did it anyway. I wanted to do it.
I briefly considered shaving Zakhar's beard. It was a practice that was common in many parts of the empire, so the dead would not be burdened with the task when they reached their next life. But I immediately changed my mind. Zakhar would not want to be without it. And I did not want to see him without it.
I lay my lips one last time to Zakhar's scarred cheek. I had not cried that morning, when Zakhar had taken his final breath in my arms. I had not cried while preparing the body, nor building the pyre. I had not cried as I folded his big, gentle hands over his chest where my ring still hung, with the faded ink lines still running across his knuckles.
But at the feel of Zakhar's skin, cold beneath my lips, when it had once been so warm, something finally gave inside me, and I could not stop the wet from rolling down my cheeks.
I bit my lip hard and stepped back. Then I lit the pyre.
As I watched the flames leap higher, I thought about burning what remained of the cabin and stables as well.
But I changed my mind. Perhaps another traveler would come this way and need shelter.
The flames leapt higher and higher, until I could see nothing inside them but burning white.
I stayed by the fire. My front was warm with the fire, but to my back was the cold night. I could feel my face burning, the skin growing taut and shiny, even as the cold behind me ate into my bones, leached away warmth like it was drawing away my endless life.
It hurt. But I did not move. I had done this before. I had felt this pain.
I'll heal. I always do.
But some wounds leave scars, that even after healing, stay with you all your days.
I stood there in the cold all night, watching the fire burn higher and higher, then down. I waited until the last of the flames had died to embers, and nothing was left of my friend but ash.
I gathered together our things and closed up the stables best I could. I saddled Dunya and tied In'yii and the other two horses behind us in a line.
I mounted Dunya, and threw the bearskin over my shoulders.
Then I made my way back down the mountain in the freezing dawn, just as pink seeped into the horizon.
*~*~*~*~*~*