A Great Escape

Chapter 10: More to learn

Shen didn't see Lanying again for several days, but he was more than occupied. He spent the majority of his time busily preparing detailed designs of the new cannons that were to be made. His companions couldn't count the number of times that they tried to get him to attend a meal, only for him to absently reply that he was busy as his wings moved in frenetic strokes over his drawing paper, creating elaborate plans with his ink and charcoal. After three days of this, Master Storming Ox finally announced, "Shen, I don't want to rush you, but we need to get a move on."

"Then start getting the factory ready," answered Shen. "And we're going to need metal…lots of it."

So he had to set his work aside for a few more days while preparations were made. Xun kept making quips about how he would lead a pack of bandits to get more metal if they needed him to, just for old times' sake. To be fair, it was actually pretty funny. Shen reflected on how odd it was that what had been serious business five years ago was now something that could be joked about.

During this stint of inactivity, Jie and Yue Xifeng showed up to triumphantly declare to the Masters Council that Xuilan had reportedly left the city, and they didn't need to worry about her anymore. They also made arrangements with Shen for another meeting with Lanying. As far as Shen was concerned, all he needed to do was see her one more time and explain his plan to her, and then take her back to the Valley of Peace with him so that they could keep up the pretense until she got a job or a printing prospect. There wasn't any reason for them to spend time together besides that; she wasn't particularly pleasant company, and despite their mutual panic attacks and less-than-desirable family situations, they didn't seem to have a lot in common. He didn't mention any of this to the Xifengs, but he was sure that he and Lanying wouldn't be faced with too many encounters anyway. After all, in many arranged marriages, the couple didn't meet until their wedding day.

He had more important things to deal with, anyway. As the fireworks factory was fired up, crew members were hired, and scrap metal was gathered, Shen was left to wander the grounds of the dormitory. He found that his eyes were always drawn to the dark building, especially as the smokestacks began to breathe again and he caught the occasional glimpse of glowing red from behind its walls. He couldn't believe that he was about to willingly go in there again – it seemed like he was just asking his insanity to rise up in full force and devour him.

He was constantly reminding himself of his nanny's words: "You need to stop thinking of your insanity as a disease…it's not a sickness…it's not coming back."

Still, when the big day finally arrived, and Shen and Xun had dressed in the most non-flammable clothing they could muster and followed Masters Storming Ox and Croc to the factory so that they could meet the rest of their crew…the moment that Shen walked through the ground-level door and felt the heat and scent of burning things waft over him, his knees nearly buckled from the force of the memories threatening to overtake him. Even in the harsh red light, it was obvious that he didn't look so good.

"Shen, are you okay?" asked Xun uncomfortably, his eye drifting over his uneasy friend.

Shen was unable to tear his eyes from the eerily familiar, crimson-bathed surroundings. This was where his obsession with fireworks had started, on a fateful day when he was a teenager and had snuck into the factory to watch his father working on a display for the winter feast. Lord Jin had been outraged, unceremoniously sending his son away with a declaration of, "This is no place for you, Sheng Li! With your weak lungs, you're not suited to making fireworks!" Which of course had driven Shen to want to prove him wrong…

"I-I'm all right," he managed.

"We have a full work force ready," Master Croc remarked in an attempt to change the subject back to the task at hand. "They're all willing to take your commands."

Shen massaged his temples in an attempt to draw his mind away from all of his unpleasant memories. "Are they volunteers?"

"Well, technically we're paying them," said Storming Ox. He flashed a slight smirk. "Don't worry, it's coming out of your paycheck."

"I didn't need that paycheck anyway," Shen sighed, tentatively stepping through the threshold of the factory. "I suppose we'd better get started – there's a lot of work to be done." He reached inside his robe and produced the design sheets that he'd brought with him. "How much time am I expected to spend in here each day?"

"Not long," replied Storming Ox. "Obviously, it's up to you to give the instructions on how to construct these cannons, but you're not expected to supervise the workers; we have people for that."

"I might be here for a while, then. This is a complicated process, especially since we're working with completely new parts…when was the factory last used?"

"It hasn't been touched since you left," said Croc.

Shen looked around even more uncomfortably. Sure enough, he could see that in certain areas, the building carried traces of having been abandoned for nearly five years. Much like his former sense of uneasiness about the Tower of the Sacred Flame, he wondered if the factory wanted to take its revenge on him because he had left it alone for so long. What if it still carried the shadow of his old ambition and was planning to take over him…?

But all he said was, "Then we have even more to do than I thought. We'd better get started."

…

The "volunteers" that would be staffing this project were mostly farmers who had already completed their harvests for the year, sellers of seasonal goods, or blacksmiths with extra time on their hands. They were a bit nervous around Shen, but not nervous enough to refrain from asking the former warlord dozens of questions, which he supposed was probably a good sign. He and Xun, being the only ones with experience in this field, would pretty much be in charge of the whole project.

That first day was spent mostly running checks on all the equipment and further preparing the fireworks factory for weapons-making once again. Shen explained to Xun that they would be equal leaders. "The only place I might have an advantage is in knowing about the designs of the new cannons, since I came up with them myself. But I think you know as much about the production process as I do."

Xun clapped his paws to his face in mock shock. "No – did Mr. Year of the Peacock just say he's going to treat me as equal? Somebody pinch me, I must be dreaming!"

"Gladly," snickered Shen, reaching over as if to fulfill the wolf's request for a pinch, but Xun gave him a shove before he was able to. The two might have broken out into a scuffle of roughhousing right then and there, but they were both perched on a catwalk overlooking the factory and only Shen could fly, so it didn't seem like the best idea.

Even if they weren't ready to start smelting metal for the cannons yet, it was still a fairly productive day. Among other things, Shen cleared out the "crow's nest" where he had once overseen the activity of the wolves as they slaved away from him, replacing the burned map of China with his designed sheets and straightening things up to make it look less, well, creepy. He grew calmer throughout the day, thinking that perhaps his new job had no say in his mindset at all. He'd whip this old factory and its subtle influences into submission; as the soothsayer had said, he was in control of his own mind.

He dismissed his new workers shortly before sunset, and he and Xun followed them out, walking together for their short journey back to the dormitory. They were both hot and slightly soot-stained, and Shen was rather tired, but Xun was still scampering along and trying to provoke the peacock into roughhousing, making jokes all the while. Shen had almost succumbed to his friend's cheerful mood when, out of the corner of his eye, he caught a flurry of rapid movement in the midst of the early evening crowds.

He snapped his head towards the commotion and saw that someone was shoving their way through the masses of citizens, seemingly running towards home. Someone whose multicolored feathers were visible even beneath their threadbare green cloak…

"Lanying?" Shen exclaimed, hurrying from Xun's side in order to get a better look. Yes, it was her, he was sure of it! The form he saw was that of a peahen, with no train, and it was too small to be Yue. And Lanying had been wearing that green cloak when he'd met her in the cemetery a few days ago. He could tell from the way that she was fiercely shouldering her way through the swarms of people, keeping her head down and her shoulders taut, that she was upset.

"Shen, where are you going?" called Xun as Shen darted away from their established path. He muttered apologies as the surprised residents of Gongmen City practically parted before him out of fear, finally dashing forward and reaching out to put a wing on Lanying's shoulder.

Lanying jerked beneath his hand, recoiling instantly; clearly she hadn't been expecting anyone to make physical contact with her in that way. She took a stumbling step back, spinning around in alarm, but her eyes narrowed when she saw who was there. "Oh, it's just you. What do you want?" she demanded, her voice strained and trembling slightly.

Shen frowned, noting her slightly dampened eyes and shaking hands. "I was on my way back from work and I saw that you looked upset…is something wrong?"

"What do you think?" she snapped, turning away and clutching her cloak tightly around herself.

"I think that something must be wrong if you snuck away from your parents again…especially after they just punished you for it a few days ago."

"I didn't sneak out! My parents know exactly where I am." She panted angrily. "And I'm sure that this is exactly what they wanted to happen."

For the first time, he spotted a crumpled scroll clutched in her wing. "What is that you're holding?"

Lanying unceremoniously shoved the paper at him, which he unfurled and scanned quickly. It was a short letter, and it seemed to be communicating something to the effect of, "Thank you for your submission, but based on the samples you provided, we've decided to pass on your offer at this time…"

"It's a rejection from a printer," explained Lanying curtly, her head hanging low, her partial crest completely flattened. "From a printer outside of Gongmen City. They were my last hope that I might…a few months ago my parents gave me permission to inquire if they would be interested in my work. They said that they were willing to consider me, but wanted some samples of my prose and art…I was so excited about it, and I sent the samples right away, and now I get…this…in return." She snatched the letter out of Shen's hands, crumpled it up, and flung it into the street, where it quickly mingled with the other pieces of useless garbage.

She seated herself heavily on the front steps of what Shen realized must have been her parents' house, resting her head in her hands. He frowned. "I understand that it's always hard to be rejected, but what makes this rejection so much different than all the others? Your parents mentioned that you've dealt with this sort of thing before."

She hissed. "You really don't get it! When I made my inquiries to the printers in Gongmen, I thought that they were turning me down because they knew who I was and knew about my condition…I thought that they simply weren't paying attention." She kicked at the crinkled rejection letter, a single pale-orange talon emerging from beneath her robes. "But this printer didn't know who I was. They didn't know that I had panic attacks. Do you know what that means? It means that my work really is trite. It means that no matter what, no one cares about what I'm trying to do. It means that I failed."

Lanying snorted bitterly. "And do you know what else? My parents will love this. They'll be delighted that I've had my spirit broken and been whacked into submission. They want me to give up completely and stop resisting the fact that I'll never amount to anything. I used to think that they'd be proud of me if I succeeded. But now I know that no matter what I do…"

"…you'll never be good enough," Shen completed.

She looked up at him, her eyes narrowed.

Shen lowered himself down beside her. "Look, Miss Xifeng…there's a lot you don't know about me, and I'm sure that I know just as little about you. But you have to trust me when I say that I've been through what's happening to you right now. Trying to carve your own path, and finding that no matter how hard you try, you always fail?" He smiled weakly. "That's essentially the story of my life."

She was silent. There were tears at the corners of her eyes, but she wasn't really crying, not audibly anyway.

"At first I thought that happiness must be manufactured," he continued. "You have to make it yourself, or you won't ever find it. But when I tried that time and again and it didn't work, I came up with a new philosophy. 'Happiness must be taken.' And it wasn't until much later that I reconsidered and thought…who exactly am I taking it from? And if I'm taking it, isn't that doing virtually the same thing that people always did to me, trading my well-being for their own ease of mind? And I realized that there's no one path to happiness, no one single way to obtain it." He reached over and placed his hand on hers, a bit awkwardly; he wasn't used to comforting people that he barely knew, and his feathers were a bit grimy, anyway. "What you really have to do is keep pressing ahead and not become a victim to your situation…and sometimes, happiness finds you."

Lanying looked away thoughtfully for a moment. She must not have noticed that their wings were touching, because she didn't flinch a bit.

"It's funny," she said at last. "When my parents told me that I was engaged to you, I thought that it was the worst insult they'd ever dealt me. I knew that you were rumored to be reformed, but I never in a million years thought that you'd be like this. It's like you really understand me. Out of everyone I've ever met…you're the one who I feel like is reading my mind."

"W-well…I…" Shen stammered, feeling his cheeks flush warmly. "I-I just want to help you, I hope you know that…"

"I'm so surprised by how sincere you are." Lanying looked up at him sheepishly, smiling a bit. "You know what, I…I think I'm glad that we're engaged. It might be a stupid fantasy, but I can't help but feel that this arrangement will work out. I think that if anyone can help me, you can."

"Lanying, I…don't know what to say," Shen managed, looking away, now very conscious of his fingers curling around hers.

She stood up slowly, breaking the contact without ever mentioning it, still with that small and slightly withdrawn smile on her face. "Well, have a good evening, Master Shen," she told him with a quick bow. "I'll see you soon."

Shen couldn't fathom a reply, and as she shut the door behind her, he found himself unable to budge from his seat. He'd just had the opportunity to tell her that he really wasn't going to marry her – and he hadn't taken it. Well, of course he hadn't. She was upset, and he'd only wanted to comfort her; it wasn't the time to discuss such matters. A little tiny truth like that could wait for just a while longer, couldn't it?

But at the bottom of his heart, he knew exactly what he had started by holding his tongue when he shouldn't have. He was digging himself a hole…and it was only going to get deeper from this point onward.

A/N - Eep, sorry for the delay! I got pretty stuck on this chapter for some reason, but here it is. Keep on reviewing, my wonderful fans!