Content: In which we fast-forward a few thousand years...
The Silk Road, Shule (c. 300 BCE)
"The souls come back together. Different, but always together." –The Field Where I Died, The X-Files
Shule was a dusty merchant town marked by a cluster of stone houses and tents that barely stood out against the dun-colored sands of the Taklamakan Desert. The denizens of the Silk Road outpost wore permanent frowns carved into faces that were weather-beaten by the sun and wind.
To Lihua, it looked like paradise.
The twelve-year-old girl had spent the better part of the past month on the back of an ill-tempered camel that was completely unresponsive to her impatient prods and nudges. She often found herself trailing far behind the rest of the caravan. Just as she would resign herself to being left behind and captured by interlopers, her father would trot up with an insufferable grin and give the camel a firm slap on the rear, sending her galloping to the front of the line.
A full month of being jostled, sunburnt, thirsty and tired was more than enough for Lihua. She had begged to come with her parents on this journey and had regretted it as soon as she saw her hometown disappear behind her in the distance. Not that she would ever admit it.
She stifled a groan as her father helped her off her mount.
"Papa," she complained. "I can do it myself!"
"I know," he replied. "Sometimes fathers like to feel useful though."
"Tian!" Came her mother's voice. "We still have four hours before sundown. If we unpack now, we can start selling before the market closes."
Tian raised his eyebrows at his daughter.
"You heard the lady," he said. "Help your mother out."
Lihua's face was the picture of disappointment. This was her first time seeing any village that wasn't her own. She wanted to explore!
"There will be time to look around later," Tian assured her, sensing her frustration. "We'll be here for at least a week."
Lihua unpacked the bundles of cargo and laid the items out on a rug under the shade of a linen sheet, following her mother's careful instructions.
"Fabrics go towards the back. Metals and jewelry go at the front," Mai-Lin dictated.
"Why?" Lihua asked.
"Because we can ask for more for the jewelry than the fabric," her mother replied. "And jewelry attracts customers."
"Why?"
"I don't know, Li," Mai-Lin said with a sigh. "People like shiny things."
Her mother kept talking, but something had caught Lihua's eye.
A boy with dark, messy hair, and the bluest eyes she had ever seen, was watching her from across the market thoroughfare. When he caught her looking at him, he scowled at her and ducked into the tent behind him.
"…just watch me the first time, and maybe later in the week we can—Li? Lihua! Are you listening?"
"Uh-huh," she replied. " 'Shiny.' I heard you, mama."
Mai-Lin rolled her eyes and rearranged a display of lamps that Lihua had knocked over.
Lihua watched with waning interest over the next few hours as her mother and father negotiated and argued with one customer after another, exchanging bolts of fabric and jewelry for coins, coffee, sacks of spices and even a couple of goats. The trick of selling, she learned, was to feign complete disinterest in whatever the customer was trying to barter, until they turned to walk away. Then to finally cave in to the deal amidst protests that the exchange was going to leave their family destitute.
Lihua burst out laughing the first time her father used that line. He was one of the wealthiest merchants in Jushi. Mai-Lin shot her a look that could have curdled milk, and Lihua resigned herself to being silent while customers were around.
There were plenty of other things to hold her attention.
Shule's market was smaller than the one at her hometown, but the goods were so much more exotic. The omnipresent enameled lacquer-ware, bronze and jade statuary of Junshi was replaced with sculptures in white marble and alabaster, gold and feathered jewelry, and fruits and nuts of every shape and size. Several traders had same broad-cheeked faces and almond-shaped eyes of her family, but the people of Shule were darker, with large noses and pale, wide eyes.
And then there was the boy.
She spotted him again, darting in-between the canvas stalls, talking and laughing with the vendors. He always seemed to be watching her out of the corner of his eye. Lihua began to feel as if it was all a performance for her benefit.
Hours passed and the sun hung low in the sky, casting shadows over the marketplace. The boy ambled back to the tent across from Lihua's rug. He seemed to hesitate at the entrance and chanced a glance in her direction.
"Well, I think that's going to be as much business as we can do for the day," Tian announced loudly.
The boy's shoulders slumped and he ducked inside of the tent.
Lihua spotted him again at the bonfire that night.
Several of the merchants gathered together at the edge of the oasis to eat and share stories of their travels. Lihua blushed at her father's loud laughter, fueled by one too many draughts of the strong liquor the men passed between them. Mai-Lin rolled her eyes and fought a smile when Tian kissed her firmly on the mouth in front of the crowd.
"Give me that," Mai-Lin demanded, grabbing the bottle from him.
To the mixed delight and horror of the on-lookers, she lifted the drink to her lips and swallowed the remainder of the contents in three gulps.
"If you're going to keep embarrassing me, I need to be good and drunk too," she declared.
The crowd applauded and hooted at the audacity of the tiny woman.
Lihua spied the boy a few seats away from her, watching her and her family with fascination. In the warm glow of the fire, he seemed less nervous than he had before. With a belly full of food and the long journey behind her, Lihua was happy and relaxed enough to risk a smile in his direction. After a long moment, he met her grin with his own.
Lihua leaned against her mother's knee and listened as a merchant with a dark face and shining, black eyes told a legend from his home-country.
"In the early days of man," he began. "Before the sands of the deserts blew across the jungles and plains, the gods came to earth. They flew in chariots made of metal that tore the sky apart with thunder and fire."
The crowd listened, captivated, but Lihua squirmed in her seat. Suddenly, the bonfire seemed too warm. She was starting to sweat.
"To the people of earth, the gods sent a legion of blue angels."
Not angels, Lihua thought. They weren't angels.
"The angels came among the people and to those they deemed worthy, they bequeathed a special gift. Those that were chosen were fashioned into stone, like the great gods of the West. If the chosen were pure of heart and steady in courage, they were given the power to break free of the stone, and obtained the powers of the gods…"
Lihua was frozen, unable to move or breathe.
Author's Note: "Shule" was the Indo European name for Kashgar, a trading hub on the Silk Road in modern-day western China. By the time the Han Chinese conquered it, it was pretty large. This takes place c. 300 BCE, so it would have been smaller and mostly occupied by the Indo European people who spoke Tocharian.
(History is kind of my thing so I have a compulsion to footnote these things.)