Rain
"I haven't seen rain like this for years."
Ba Jiao's voice was perfectly audible over the sound of the rain on the roof, but to Lei Li it seemed as though it came from far away. The rain did that to him, no matter what the season. The rain made him sink into himself, made him deaf to the outside world.
Lei Li frowned; not at his wife, but at something beyond their little house; something that stood outside in the rain. He stared through the open doorway at the silver streams of water that arced from the roof and turned the earth to red puddles of churned mud.
It reminded him too much of the day he'd sought vengeance. The sky had rained silver and the earth had wept red. Steel and blood, swords and flesh. His sense of honour had dazzled him like sunlight reflected on a blade. His anger had been red, all sound muffled by the pounding of blood in his ears. It had only been afterwards, after the killing, after he'd defeated Lung Yi Chih and heaved him from the bridge, that he'd realised how painful it was to hear that thrumming in his ears.
It had reminded him of rain.
He hadn't been able to hear Ba Jiao's words when she'd ran across the bridge, heedless of the piled corpses, to embrace him. He couldn't hear her now, either: not properly, only imperfectly.
Lei Li looked towards her. "What did you say?"
Ba Jiao gave him a tentative smile, although her eyes were sad. "I said, I haven't seen rain like this for years."
Lei Li nodded. He returned his gaze to the doorway. "The last time we had rain like this, it was four years ago," he said; and then he paused, feeling the chill of the rain slide into his body like a knife between the ribs.
"Four years! How can it be…? So long and yet… not long at all."
Agitated now, Lei Li got to his feet and went to the door. He stood on the threshold for a moment, and then stepped onto the porch.
He walked across the wooden planks, feeling them sink a little beneath his weight. They smelled damp: a gentle, homely odour against the starkness of the rain and the mud. By the steps he hesitated, looking down at the long, deep puddles that had formed where their footprints had lain only yesterday. The earth was drowned, and he drowned with it.
He remembered that Junjie had spoken of retiring from the life of a swordsman as soon as he had discovered the truth about Tiger Fort. Junjie said he would become a farmer.
"A quiet existence for a knight," Lei Li had said, jokingly.
"So is yours," Junjie had said with a grin, gesturing at the old restaurant where Lei Li cooked and waited at tables.
"I have one arm," Lei Li said. "I am not much good for anything else."
Junjie had regarded him with a glow of amusement and with an expression of infinite patience. "Are you not?"
After Junjie's death, Lei Li had become a farmer. It seemed the right thing to do. The earth hereabouts was good for growing rice. The deep red clay retained the water to keep the rice plants wet. There were pockets of soil where wheat could be grown, and enough space for a fruit tree. Lei Li had planted a peach, the first year he and Ba Jiao had come here. He had told her that it was to symbolise their marriage. In truth he had planted it in memory of Feng Junjie.
The peach tree was small, cut back each year to encourage new growth. He found it disturbing to sever each black limb from the tree. The branches seemed so twisted and tortured. He could not look at the sap that wept from the cuts. It always made the stump of his right arm ache; but whether it was in protest or memory, Lei Li did not know and did not want to know.
Every year he would take a few white petals from the tree and carry them out to the grave by Tiger Fort. It seemed such a small offering for such a great sacrifice. Lei Li always fretted that the tiny, insubstantial petals would blow away in the sea breeze, and then Junjie would never know that he had been there.
He remembered sitting with Junjie in the garden of the restaurant, listening to the scream of the swallows as they flew overhead. He had said: "You will be bored as a farmer."
Junjie's amusement had grown into a smile. "I do not think so."
Lei Li could imagine that Junjie's sunny disposition would enable him to find pleasure and contentment in almost anything to which he set his hand. But still he repeated himself: "You will be bored."
"Are you bored, here?" Junjie asked.
Lei Li had thought a while before answering. "No," he said at length. "There are some days when I think that I am, when I long for the times when I could ride and fight like other men. When I had both my arms. But… I have paid the price for my pride. I can never be a swordsman again."
"You could, you know."
At the time, it had seemed impossible. An impossible dream; an impossible fate. Lei Li cursed the destiny that had robbed him of the truest friend a man could hope for: the destiny that had forced him to take up the blade again.
There was a footstep behind him on the porch. Ba Jiao came towards him, her expression greyed by the half-light of the pouring rain. She held out the woven hat hung about with fine netting that he wore in the fields to keep off the insects and to keep out the splashes of rain.
Lei Li took it, curling his fingers around the brim. The netting, white and ghost-like, fluttered across his hand in helpless entanglement.
The sunlit garden of four years' ago was far away now, but he could still hear, above the pulse of the rain, their fading conversation: "The masters say that swordsmanship is like playing chess," Junjie had said. "Farming is like chess, too: you should choose your moves carefully, plant each crop just so, at the right place and in the right time. You must be patient. You must be strong. You must endure."
Lei Li had smiled at the comparison. "If you are right, then you are saying that farming is like swordsmanship, too."
"Yes," Junjie had said reflectively. "Except farming is an act of creation, not destruction." He had been silent for a moment, and then said, "But both are beautiful, in their own way. It's just what calls to us at different times of our life, Lei Li. Don't you agree?"
Lei Li, who had always been so sure of his calling, had nodded uncertainly: because he was no longer sure of anything now that Feng Junjie was in his life.
But now, Feng Junjie was gone. The sunlight was gone, and it rained and rained until he thought he would run mad.
Lei Li cast aside the hat and walked down the steps. His feet sank into the puddle. The mud sucked at him as if it would drag him under into red darkness. He felt the stream of water from the roof pour down over his shoulders, soaking his right side. His sleeve dangled uselessly.
He moved forwards, out into a world blurred with rain.
"Lei Li, where are you going?" Ba Jiao cried. "Lei Li! You will get wet!"
He did not hear her. The drumming of the rain against the roof, against the ground, was so loud that it drowned out every other sound. The rain buffeted his body like a hundred tiny strikes, each one an attack, a memory. It was colder than any sword he had handled; sharper than any cut he had received. It struck at his face and numbed his cheeks, until he could feel nothing at all.
He stood before the peach tree and never even realised he was weeping.
end