Threads 287-Depths 3

“You can leave if you like, Lao Keung. Thank you for your assistance.”

“What assistance is that? A few words on waterborne toxins? Hmph, I feel as if this expedition was only an excuse to interrogate me.”

“You were helpful. I am not the best at tracking.”

He narrowed his eyes.

“Despite my brash words, I did not want to disturb the lake spirit without cause. I had hoped for more preparation in setting the tone for my relationship with such an important spirit. Thank you for helping me confirm the issue.”

“What is your plan for that?” Lao Keung walked out beside her. He traced a hand through the water, liquid coiling around his fingers, bubbling and frothing. “You do not have a village for a festival or procession. It has known only the passing of barbarians.”

“It’s not so different,” Ling Qi said. “I can hear the echoes of gifts dropped from the sky and the sacrifice of food and crafts. Human effort and work and hope becomes food for the spirits. It needs to know that we will always be here though. That changes the relationship.”

“That is not an answer.”

Ling Qi supposed it wasn’t. She was not one for serenity. The importance of the pause and coda was obvious, but she was at heart a creature of motion. Even her conception of Endings was not stillness.

Despite that, want, art, and desire all had to begin somewhere. The void of wanting was the blank canvas, the stillness that came before the storm.

There would be adjustments. There would be negotiations. There would be ceremonies. A hundred, hundred little choices would follow this one in establishing a rapport with the spirit of what they now called Snowblossom Lake.

Convincing it that it was Snowblossom Lake would be an issue in and of itself. Because naming a thing had power, but only if that name was accepted.

However, Ling Qi was confident. This as of yet nameless spirit yearned to have a name in the same way the hungry yearned for food. The calm surface, the fathomless depth, the emptiness that took in light and projected splendid reflections upon the surface, all of it spoke to that want. That was the point of commonality she had with Lake Qi. She came by it differently, but it was not so unfamiliar.

“What sort of ceremonies do you perform for the spirits of your lakes?” Ling Qi tapped her fingers against her thigh, testing out the beginnings of a tune.

“Others have the role of intermediaries, but rites develop regardless of what anyone wants.” Lao Keung considered the empty expanse of water. “The lakes are hungry. They are generous. They desire deeply. Do not give from the catch, for it was theirs to begin with. Give of labor. Give of life.”

“Funerary offerings?” Ling Qi wondered.

“It is different for us. Bottomless Lake Hei birthed Grandmother Serpent and the other lakes of the land. To return to the waters in the end is only right. Even we and the lowest of the gray are not denied this. Our lives are our final offering to the Queen of Still Waters.”

For the first time in conversation with him, Ling Qi detected a hint of real respect and reverence. So he did believe in something.

She supposed she’d already known that though.

“This custom is unfamiliar to me. Here, bodies are given to the earth to revitalize the land, or they are burned for the dishonorable dead.”

“Ask your Meng how unusual it is. It is folly to give your ancestors to the creeper roots of the Red Garden. I suppose it would be different here where you all are the children of the Bountiful Earth.”

“Planting trees over graves or burial among the roots is common, if one can afford the space,” Ling Qi said. Even Tonghou had a few sickly little grave groves, and presumably better ones further in for those who could afford it.

“And I have heard that among the cloud tribes, the tradition is to place the body as high in the sky as they are able, or in stronger tribes, to fling them beyond the grasp of the earth to feed the stars. We all choose ways of returning to our ancestors. Even the Imperial City carves their necropoli into the dragon-forged mountains they crawled from.”

A life well lived was probably the most potent sacrifice, short of a life cut short, Ling Qi thought. It would not be appropriate to sacrifice their dead to the lake because they belonged to the earth of the Emerald Seas, but she could make a different promise to the lake.

To take the cold waters unto themselves was a binding of its own. That was what lake, or rather, void, meant to her. Want and desire was born from emptiness, that place where all things met, because it was their origin.

And this wanting would be her promise to the lake spirit. She would promise people, dedication, and sacrifice, the offering of lives lived and fulfilled on the shores of Snowblossom Lake.

Maybe it wasn’t so far from what the Bai who had created the art had in mind after all.

“Tell me, what allowed you to create the relationship that exists between yourself and Bai Meizhen?” Lao Keung asked, breaking the silence.

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Ling Qi glanced over, smiling. “The same thing that let me make contact with a strange foreigner at the caldera. My ignorance.”

Lao Keung snorted, generating a wobbling stream of bubbles.

“Not knowing any better is a wonderful excuse, no?”

“You make yourself sound like a child.”

“People often underestimate children,” Ling Qi said, thinking back to days of hunger and desperation. “Even when they really shouldn’t.”

He shook his head, turning away.

“But it’s not childishness,” Ling Qi said to his back. “Once, our ancestors had no solutions nor traditions to fall back upon. They sought them, made them, and founded them. How can we do any less?”

Life was a battle against privation. Hunger was the privation of the body, ignorance, the privation of the mind, and isolation, the privation of the heart. Curiosity, the seeking of answers, was the root of all possible solutions. This was the core lesson of the Hidden Moon.

“Xia Lin is ready,” Sixiang murmured.

“Let’s begin then,” Ling Qi said. Stepping forward right to the edge of the spiritually enclosed space, she reached out and pressed her hand to its surface, wetting her palm on the dense lake qi that hid whatever lay beyond.