Chapter Text
Her daozhang has a text. This is new. Every night Xiao- daozhang checks his phone, routine and responsible the way he always is, and his phone tells him there are no messages. A-Qing pretends she doesn’t know how sad that makes him, because he only ever shows his sadness in a sad little frown, and a-Qing isn’t supposed to be able to see his face. It’s even more important now that Chengmei is with them, because Chengmei always looks at a-Qing like older boys in the street used to, like they were making fun of her and jealous of her at the same time, and she doesn’t want to know what he’ll do if he finds out she can see him.
A-Qing only realizes that Xiao- daozhang has a text because Chengmei notices it. A-Qing doesn’t look at Xiao- daozhang ’s phone, even when nobody else is home, because there’s never anything interesting there. But now the phone makes a little twinkling melody in the other room, and a-Qing hears Chengmei launch himself towards it, loud and clumsy and nothing like Xiao- daozhang , who is never impatient. Why is he in such a hurry? Xiao- daozhang is out at the market, and it’s not like a-Qing is going to pick up the phone. Carefully, she peers around the corner, ready to bluff and pull back if Chengmei is looking. He isn’t, so she keeps watching as he fiddles with the phone.
“Message from Song Zichen,” says the phone, out loud, making her and Chengmei both jump. “Xingchen. Can we talk,” the phone continues in a flat voice. A-Qing watches as a sharp grin spreads over Chengmei’s face. She doesn’t like that look at all.
“Xingchen, can we talk?” Chengmei mimics, mockingly. “I don’t think so, Zichen .” He’s still messing around with the phone, and the phone keeps starting to talk and then skipping around. “How do you stop this thing?” Chengmei mutters to himself. It doesn’t stop talking. “Shut up!” he shouts, and throws it at the wall.
The phone plays the twinkling melody again. “Message from Song Zichen.”
Chengmei sighs, dragging himself out of the chair dramatically and picking up the phone. A-Qing wonders who he’s putting on a show for. It’s not like he knows she’s watching.
“I understand if you don’t want to talk to me. I just want you to know I’m sorry.”
“I just want you to know I’m sorry,” mocks Chengmei, again. A-Qing wants to stab him. This must be who Xiao- daozhang was waiting for a message from every night! Chengmei can see. He must see how sad Xiao- daozhang is.
But of course Chengmei is being mean. He’s the worst. A-Qing already knew that, but she thought he did care about her daozhang . Apparently not.
“Whatever,” Chengmei finally mutters, “it’s almost dead, anyways. Silly Xiao Xingchen, your phone is going to die soon. Now you’ll never know!” The last bit is singsong and vicious. A-Qing hates him. But she’s smarter than him, even if he is bigger and stronger and has a sword. She’ll get back at him somehow, she just has to keep fooling him.
Chengmei goes digging through Xiao- daozhang ’s bag, which makes a-Qing furious, and comes out with a pair of earphones. He plugs them into the phone, and the noise of him scrolling through the phone disappears. Then he stuffs the phone into the pile of blankets that serves as his bed, stands up, and dusts off his hands dramatically.
A-Qing ducks back into the little kitchen before Chengmei can turn around and notice her. She sits back down against the wall, where she had left the sleeve of crackers she had been eating, and the toy Xiao- daozhang had bought her, the second day they met. She noisily crunches her cracker, running her fingers over the braille on the sides of the Rubik’s cube. Xiao- daozhang had said they were lucky to find something like this in an old second-hand toy store, and that they couldn’t not get it when it had been put into their path. A-Qing hasn’t solved it yet, but she loves it.
Chengmei creeps into the kitchen on silent feet, and a-Qing pretends she can’t see him from the corner of her eye. “Hey, blind kid,” he says, right next to her ear, and she jumps.
“What are you doing?” She yells, throwing a cracker in his vague direction and missing nearly. “Why are you creeping up on me like that? And don’t call me that! I have a name.”
Chengmei laughs. “Didn’t you hear anything?”
“I heard a song. What was it?”
“Xiao- daozhang ’s phone. It was his friend, but he was sending him cruel messages.”
A-Qing hides her anger inside. What a liar! “That’s not nice!” she says out loud. “I hope he doesn’t come here to be mean to my daozhang. You’re bad enough!”
This makes Chengmei laugh again. “I’m much nicer than this friend. Anyways, I hid the phone. It would only make Xiao- daozhang sad, to hear such mean things from someone he thought was his friend. He has us now, so he doesn’t need him. Don’t tell him, alright? To protect him.”
A-Qing lets some of her suspicion show on her face. “Are you sure? Maybe they’re mean to each other for a joke, like the people who own the nice fruit stall.”
“I’m sure,” says Chengmei, and there’s the undertone of threat she’s used to. “You better not say anything. It will make him cry.”
“Okay, I won’t!” A-Qing says, pouting a bit.
Chengmei seems to believe her. He pats her shoulder, which she hates, and leaves. “Good. I’m going out to make sure Xiao- daozhang is alright with the vegetables. See you, blind kid!”
He’s always making jokes like that. A-Qing ignores him and his manic giggle as he walks out the door. She doesn’t move from the kitchen until he and Xiao- daozhang come back. She’s waiting.
__________________________
Even as his heart is beating out of his chest, Xiao Xingchen reminds himself that he should know better. It’s ridiculous to be so attached to an object— a useless object, even. It’s not like his phone has been receiving any messages for the past three years.
Still, he has to check. “Hey,” he says, as casually as he can, “do either of you know where my phone is?”
There’s some shifting from the other makeshift bed, from the one sagging couch where a-Qing sleeps. “Not me, daozhang !” a-Qing chirps. He really didn’t expect the girl to be of any help. She’s as blind as him, and it’s not like there are games on his phone that she would be interested in even if she could see. She’s only nine, and there’s no internet in their ramshackle little house.
“I haven’t seen it since you checked it last night,” says Chengmei.
“I bet you stole it!” hisses a-Qing venomously. Xiao Xingchen really doesn’t understand why she hates the man so much. Xiao Xingchen has reassured her many times that he can have a friend and still be there for her, and Chengmei has never harmed them.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” says Chengmei dismissively, “if I was going to steal a phone, why would I steal Xiao- daozhang ’s? It’s old. I would get one that worked better.”
Xiao Xingchen can’t help but chuckle a bit at the way Chengmei brings himself to a-Qing’s level. Growing up on the street the way she has, relying on her wits, a-Qing hasn’t quite learned that she can’t simply take the things she wants. Xiao Xingchen would have tried to explain, as he already has many times, that he wouldn’t steal because stealing is wrong. Chengmei just circumvents that confusion by explaining that he doesn’t want the phone. He’s right, too. Xiao Xingchen’s phone is not a big target for thieves.
“Don’t worry about it, I was just checking,” he reassures them. “It isn’t important. What do I need a phone for? Who am I talking to besides the two of you?”
“Nobody!” announces a-Qing, and Xiao Xingchen hears the telltale signs of her movement just in time to brace himself as she flings her whole body towards his pile of blankets. He has to reach out to both sides and make himself a big target— a-Qing isn’t quite a close enough listener to always find him, and more than once they’ve both missed and a-Qing has gone careening into the wall. Thankfully, he catches her in the crook of one outstretched arm and pulls her into his chest, cradling her carefully. She giggles. “You’re my daozhang .” She cuddles closer to him.
Xiao Xingchen can’t help the way his heart melts at her possessiveness. He shouldn’t encourage her to treat people that way, but he loves her, in his heart of hearts thinks of her as his , too, somewhere between a baby sister and a daughter. So instead of reprimanding her, at least tonight, he folds his arms around her and rocks slowly until her breathing slows and he thinks she’s asleep. Then he tucks her back in among the blankets on the couch, carefully prying her fingers from his shirt. She sighs a bit as he backs away, but there’s no other sign that he’s woken her, so he lets himself move back to his blankets.
He starts to go through all his belongings one more time, just in case he missed the phone the last two times. It still isn’t there.
“Whoever you’re waiting to hear from, they never text you,” says Chengmei quietly, “why do you keep waiting on them?”
Xiao Xingchen tries not to let on how much it hurts to be reminded. “He was... an old friend,” he struggles, knowing it’s not enough to really explain, “and we fought. He said he never wanted to talk to me again. The fight was my fault, and he was right to be so angry. So I left. I’ve been foolish, holding out hope that he would call me. I wouldn’t call me.” Xiao Xingchen plucks at the fabric of his pants absentmindedly. “It’s probably a good thing that the phone is gone. It’s time to let go and move on.”
“You have us now,” Chengmei reminds him, and he feels a hand brush across his cheek and down his hair, coming to rest lightly on his shoulder blade. Xiao Xingchen smiles a little, to reassure him, and the hand leaves. “You should sleep,” Chengmei says firmly.
So Xiao Xingchen sinks down into his blankets and puts his back to Chengmei, listening to the last quiet rustlings of the evening as the household settles into sleep. When there’s nothing but deep breathing and the sound of the wind, he lets himself cry.
__________________________
Try as he might, Xiao Xingchen can’t let it go. He stops looking for the phone among his things after the second night, after Chengmei tells him that he checked every nook and cranny in their little house and it was nowhere to be found, but he can’t stop thinking about it.
Or rather, now that he’s lost his only way to talk to him again, he can’t stop thinking about Song Lan.
As he’s walking to the market, he gets distracted and takes a wrong turn, thinking about Zichen, his serious approach to fruit buying, how he would stock up in small towns and at markets so that he could avoid grocery stores in the cities at all costs. He thinks about the press of the crowd as he looks over a stall of desserts, about texting Zichen the options and then searching out his dark figure, standing across the street looking down at his phone, answering. He buys three sweet buns, an indulgence, because he can’t stop thinking about it.
He thinks about meeting for the fifth time, at a coffee shop in Chongqing, so ridiculously improbable even though they had travelled together for six months after the third meeting, three months after their fourth. He thinks about Zichen sitting down across from him and saying how ridiculous it was, saying “If this is how it’s going to be, I’m done waiting to run into you again. We may as well stop losing each other. Come on,” and dragging a confused Xiao Xingchen, still clutching his food, down the streets and onto buses and into a mall (a mall , Zichen, who hated even grocery stores, brought him to the mall ) to buy two cell phones. “Now if you get lost I can just find you,” Zichen had said, setting up his contact for him, looking so serious as he took a selfie for his contact picture that Xiao Xingchen had laughed out loud. His laughter had made Zichen smile his flicker of a smile, and that was what the phone had captured, a bit blurry but real. He couldn’t even see the picture, anymore, so it’s not like it matters if he’s lost it.
That’s what he keeps telling himself.
Xiao Xingchen’s life has been an exercise in letting go. He had loved his master and her small temple, but he had left his studies and the perfect peace of the mountain for the chaos of the world. In those early days, when people had asked him where he was from, he had always explained that he could never go back. Their grief for him always seemed greater than his own, his heart full of every new experience, of the noises and smells of farms and markets, and later the riotous cityscapes. He had been so young, barely sixteen, falling in love every day with a new place and a new friend, and always leaving them behind. This was the way of everything, to be caught and held for a moment, then let go. Xiao Xingchen had work to do in the world. He could not cling.
He had thought it would be the same with Zichen, even as they kept meeting and parting, until Zichen had taken their fate into his own hands. And then Zichen had been the one to let go, after Baixue Temple. Don’t stay in touch.
He kept the cell phone because even when Zichen wasn’t texting him, it felt like he was still there, like a physical line connecting them as they roamed, never meeting, like it kept them in each other’s orbit. But Zichen doesn’t want him there, anyways, and it was selfish of him to keep it so long. He should let go of his attachments. It’s a good thing the phone is gone; he can set Zichen free.
___________________________
It takes Chengmei five days to throw the phone away. A-Qing watches him as closely as she can, and it’s the Worst. She doesn’t like being around him, and now she can’t wander away. She has to sit in the living room with her Rubik’s cube, and follow him carefully when he leaves the house, and always be peeking around the corner. And he never uses the phone so that she can hear it— he always has the headphones in. He only takes it out twice more before it dies, but both times whatever he hears makes him smirk meanly and scoff, so probably Song Zichen has sent more texts. She wants to know what he’s saying. If he really hurt her daozhang , she needs to decide if he deserves to be forgiven.
But Chengmei keeps the phone for three whole days after it dies, just staring at it sometimes. This is especially dangerous, because now that he isn’t looking through the phone, he looks up more. He turns the phone over and over in his hands, and at any tiny noise his head shoots up and a-Qing has to be very fast to make sure she never gets caught actually looking at him. Sometimes, while she stares at the wall or down at her knees, fiddling with her toy, she feels him staring at her, like he knows that she’s watching.
Once, he goes through Xiao- daozhang ’s bag and pulls out his charger, and stares at both things for a minute before he throws the cord back on top and flops dramatically onto Xiao- daozhang ’s bed. A-Qing doesn’t say anything about that but she really wants to. Chengmei shouldn’t be in Xiao- daozhang ’s space like that. She really hopes that this Song Zichen is good, so that she can tell him to come make Chengmei go away, and then Xiao- daozhang will be happy and Chengmei won’t be around to be all creepy anymore, and things will be perfect instead of just better than they’ve ever been before.
Eventually, eventually , Chengmei stops staring at the phone, sighs, and gets up. He says “Hey, blind kid. I’m going out,” and leaves before she can even answer him. As quietly as she can, a-Qing stands up and follows him. Xiao- daozhang is working in the yard, in their tiny patch of herbs, and she has to stop and tell him that she’s going for a walk, and promise that she won’t heckle Chengmei while he’s running his errands. For once, it’s a promise she’s all too willing to keep.
Once he’s out of sight of the house, Chengmei skips down the street. He seems happy, and he’s talking to himself. “I knew you were right,” he says, in a funny voice, “ha!” He does a little spin in the street and a-Qing ducks behind an empty stall, heart pounding. He doesn’t seem to notice her, so she slowly creeps along again, trying to stay hidden. “I’m sorry, Xingchen. Ha!” Chengmei throws the phone into the air, spins again, and drops it in a public garbage can. Then he stops, holding very still, and stares at the garbage can for a couple minutes like the huge weirdo he is before leaving. A-Qing waits until she’s sure he’s gone, off to do whatever he does when he’s not bothering her and her daozhang , and then she braces herself and breaks into the garbage.
Fortunately, it doesn’t actually take very long to find the phone. It is disgusting, though, and a-Qing has to wipe it off carefully with her shirt, hiding the mess under her baggy hoodie. She’ll need to charge it somewhere that has electricity, not their little hut, before she can go any further in her plans. Luckily, Chengmei has thrown out the headphones along with the phone, so at least she doesn’t have to go scavenging for those.
She stuffs the phone and the headphones into her big pocket, and strikes back for the house. She has a lot of work to do.
__________________________
Her plotting takes patience. She has to wait for a time when neither Chengmei nor Xiao- daozhang will catch her trying to find the phone charger. This requires going through Xiao- daozhang ’s things, which she was very angry at Chengmei for doing, but she tells herself it isn’t the same. Chengmei was lying to Xiao- daozhang and letting him get hurt. She’s going to help him. Also herself, hopefully.
After she has the charger, she puts the next part of her plan into action. There’s only one cafe in Yi village, which is very small, but it does exist, and a-Qing has seen people with their phones plugged in through the window when she went out before. She has to go on a day when Xiao- daozhang goes to market, because otherwise he’ll want her to stay and start learning math and other boring things, and it has to be a time that he takes Chengmei with him, or Chengmei might follow her and catch her. Fortunately, Xiao- daozhang likes having company, and Chengmei likes going along, probably to make fun of the merchants and creep people out, so it doesn’t take too long. Two and a half weeks after the phone first went off, a-Qing walks into the cafe, orders a water, and plugs the cellphone in.
It takes a few minutes for it to even turn on, but eventually it wakes up and the mechanical voice starts coming through the headphones. The voice helps her find the messages, and she can listen to them as many times as she wants. There are two message threads on the phone. One is with Song Zichen, who has a picture of himself next to his name. She likes his face. It’s more serious than Xiao- daozhang ’s, but he doesn’t smirk meanly like Chengmei, so he’s already off to a good start.
The other message thread doesn’t have a name or a picture, and there are only two messages on it. The incoming text reads “hi this is wei wuxian now you have my number just in case!”, and the outgoing text says “thank you”.
Song Zichen’s thread is more complicated. What a-Qing really wants to do is go back and read all of the texts in the whole thread, but she doesn’t have time. She can do that later. Instead, she just scrolls up to the first text that she heard, and listens from there.
____________________________
Xingchen, can we talk?
I understand if you don’t want to talk to me. I just want you to know I’m sorry.
You didn’t deserve what I said.
When I got there and saw everyone dying my first thought was that if it were you, you would have been on time, you would have stopped it. You’re never too late.
Xue Yang wanted me to blame you. He told me, when he took my eyes, that it was because of you. I knew as soon as I said it that I had played into his trap. I’m sorry I listened to him.
You’re probably wondering why I texted you now, after years. I thought about it every day, from the moment I woke up. But you were gone, and I thought maybe you didn’t want to talk to me. And then I thought that if it was meant to be, I would find you again, and my apologies would seem more sincere in person. You deserved to hear it in person. And then, every day, I thought that I should just text you, and ask you to meet me, but it seemed like you were just too far away, wherever you were, like I should wait until I heard reports of you or something, like I needed an excuse to get in touch again. I texted you after all this time, though, because I just couldn’t not. I was thinking of you, like I do every day, and I couldn’t stand the thought of not texting you anymore.
You always were the better of the two of us. You were so dedicated to doing what was right, every time. You pushed me to be better. You made me want to follow you anywhere. It was you pushing us to help people. It was your idea to hunt down Xue Yang. But that doesn’t make it your fault. I wanted to do it, because I knew you were right.
I wish I knew where you were.
Xingchen, I understand if you don’t want me to talk to you anymore, but can you answer my texts, just once? I’m starting to worry you’re
You don’t owe me anything.
I’ll leave you alone. I’m sorry, Xingchen.
__________________________
A-Qing decides pretty quickly that Song Zichen needs to come and talk to her daozhang in person. It sounds like they fought, like Song Zichen said something mean, but the way Xiao- daozhang always checked his phone every night seemed like he still wanted to talk to Song Zichen.
A-Qing can’t write, so she can’t text back and explain what’s happened. She’s going to have to call. She can’t do that in the coffee shop. She’ll have to wait until the phone is a bit more charged.
While she waits, she scrolls back further in the phone to listen to the message thread from the beginning. It takes a long time to get to the top, and she doesn’t finish the thread before she decides that the phone is probably charged enough for her to call. She has the phone now, though, she reminds herself, so if she wants to listen to all of the texts she can do it later. But she needs to call Song Zichen before someone comes looking for her.
She unplugs and packs her cord away in her pockets, then makes her way to the edge of the village. She’s even more careful now, looking around to make sure nobody sees her sneaking away. She hides herself away in a clump of trees and bushes, then, heart pounding, makes her call. The phone rings exactly once.
“Xingchen?” says a voice in her ear. It makes her jump even though she’s expecting it.
“No it’s a-Qing,” says a-Qing.
There’s a pause, and then the voice says “Who is a-Qing?”
Oops. A-Qing forgot. “I live with Xiao- daozhang ! And Chengmei, but he’s mean and I don’t like him.”
“You... you live with Xiao Xingchen?”
“Yes! He looks after me.”
“Of course he does.” The voice sounds very fond. “I’m pleased to meet you, a-Qing. I’m Song Zichen.”
A-Qing rolls her eyes. “I know. The phone says so.”
“Ah, I see. Did you take the phone from Xiao- daozhang without permission, a-Qing?”
“No!” A-Qing is indignant. She would never do that to her daozhang ! “Chengmei threw it in the garbage. I just took it out!”
“Alright,” says Song Zichen. “Why are you calling me, then? Why didn’t you give it back to Xiao- daozhang ?”
“Because you sent him a lot of messages. Xiao- daozhang likes me, and sometimes Chengmei even makes him laugh, but he’s still sad on the inside. But he doesn’t know you sent him all these messages. I think the messages might make him happier, but I needed to make sure you were going to be nice to him first. You weren’t nice last time, right?”
“I was not,” sighs the voice, “I texted him to apologise.”
“He’ll forgive you, probably,” says a-Qing. Xiao-
daozhang
is so nice, after all. “That’s why I had to make sure, because he’s too nice.”
There’s a small chuckle. “He’s always been that way. It’s a good thing he’s got you looking out for him.”
“Exactly!” says a-Qing, triumphant. He understands. A thought occurs to her. “Song Zichen, are you a daozhang like my daozhang ?”
“I am. Not quite like Xiao- daozhang. We studied in different places. But I am also a daozhang, yes.”
“Song- daozhang !” a-Qing crows. “You have to come here and be with Xiao- daozhang . Then he’ll be happy! And you can make Chengmei go away.”
“I don’t think he’ll want to see me, a-Qing,” says Song- daozhang . This is clearly ridiculous. A-Qing has already explained this.
“He will! He listened for messages every day, and you’re the only person who sends him messages, so he was listening for you. Also, somebody has to make Chengmei go away. Xiao- daozhang won’t do it because Chengmei tricked him into thinking he’s nice, and I tried but I’m too little, so he won’t listen to me. He nearly made me walk into his sword once! He isn’t nice at all but I can’t make him leave.”
“A-Qing, did you tell Xiao- daozhang about the sword?”
“I can’t!” wailed A-Qing. It wasn’t Song- daozhang ’s fault that he didn’t understand, but this conversation was taking a long time and she wanted him to come and help her already. But she was tough, so she only sniffled a little bit.
“Why not, a-Qing?” Song- daozhang ’s voice was gentle. A-Qing sniffed again.
“Because— because— I’m not actually blind. Xiao- daozhang thinks I’m blind, that’s why he’s helping me, because we’re both blind. And if he found out he would leave me! If Chengmei found out I’m not blind he would stab me with his sword! He doesn’t believe me, he made me nearly walk into his sword as a test. If I told Xiao- daozhang , Chengmei would know and he would hurt me!”
“I see. A-Qing, if I know one thing about Xiao Xingchen it’s that he would protect you. You can tell him. He won’t leave you behind because you aren’t blind. If you tell him Chengmei tried to hurt you, he’ll help you.”
“But he says no lying!”
“He’ll forgive you. He’s always too nice, remember?”
“I can’t tell him! He would try to fight Chengmei but he’s blind for real. Chengmei would get him!”
“A-Qing,” says Song- daozhang , “is Chengmei’s sword a spiritual sword, like Xiao- daozhang ’s?”
“I think so.” A-Qing thinks about Chengmei’s sword. They’re kind of the same, she supposes. “But it makes me feel bad. Xiao- daozhang ’s sword shines all silvery and it protects me. Chengmei’s sword is black.”
“When Chengmei held it out to you, did it have a name?”
“There was writing on it,” says a-Qing, “but I don’t know what it said. I can’t read, I’m blind.”
“That’s alright, a-Qing. Chengmei never told you his family name?”
“No. It’s weird! He’s been with us for two years but he never said his name. He said it didn’t matter.”
“Hmm. Is there anything different about him? Not that he’s mean, but in the way he looks. Something that could help me figure out who he is?”
“He’s so mean it’s weird,” mutters a-Qing, rebelliously, feeling a bit like Song- daozhang isn’t understanding the scope of her problem. “Um, his face always looks like he’s making fun of you. And one of his pinkie fingers is fake! That’s different, right?”
“Yes. A-Qing, listen to me, you have to be very careful.” Song- daozhang sounds scared now. “Ignore what I said before. You can’t tell Xiao- daozhang about Chengmei yet, okay? You need to listen closely and do as I say.”
A-Qing feels sick in her belly, the way she felt walking towards a sword she was pretending not to see. “Okay,” she says.
“Chengmei is somebody that Xiao- daozhang and I knew before, and he’s very dangerous. He doesn’t like us because we arrested him. He’s killed a lot of people, and he’s not somebody you can mess around with, understand?”
“Okay.”
“Good. Now, where are you right now? I know you probably move around a lot with Xiao- daozhang , but if you know where you are I can find you more quickly.”
“We don’t move around a lot,” says a-Qing, frowning. “We just live in Yi village.”
There’s silence from the other end of the line.
“Lots of people here work with dead people. That’s why Xiao- daozhang said we can stay here, because they need help a lot.”
“Alright. This is going to be a bit complicated, but here’s what I need you to do.” Song- daozhang guides a-Qing carefully through navigating her phone so that he can track it and find them. Eventually he says, “I see you. A-Qing, I’m going to come as fast as I can, but it will probably take a week. In the meantime, I need you to be very careful. Don’t let Chengmei know that anything is wrong, and don’t try to warn Xiao- daozhang . You’re right, he will try to fight Chengmei and he will lose. Can you get away every day?
“No.”
“Ok. Then in five days do you think you can call me again?”
“Five or six, maybe,” says a-Qing, frowning again.
“Good. Call me when you can, alright? We’ll make better plans then, when I know how close I am. In the meantime, look after your Xiao- daozhang , and be careful.”
“I will,” sniffs a-Qing.
“Good work,” says Song- daozhang softly. “You’re very brave.”
“Okay,” says a-Qing. She wants to cry, but she won’t, because she’s very strong. She hangs up the call, and curls into a ball against the tree. Song- daozhang is coming. It won’t be long, just a week, and then he’ll be here and he’ll save them from Chengmei and Xiao -daozhang will be so happy. He’s coming, it won’t be long, she reminds herself, but she’s scared anyways. What if Chengmei finds out she talked to Song- daozhang and hurts them before he gets here? What if she accidentally says something? What if Xiao- daozhang is angry at her when he finds out and he leaves her behind?
You’re very brave , says Song- daozhang in her head. A-Qing sniffs one more time, then pulls herself together. She’s very brave.