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immediately follows remember how you found the key.
The spring that Kaifeng had found on his last visit did not technically sit within the bounds of his Wonder, or at least he was pretty sure it didn’t. Not unless the town nearby was also part of Kaifeng the Wonder, and based on the memories of Xingyi’s that Kaifeng had managed to dredge up so far, he rather doubted that. Granted, as Líanlí-Kaifeng and his little wispy friend traipsed across the fields of Wonder-Kaifeng, past the thickets of gnarled trees without venturing into them, he took a moment to remind himself that he hadn’t actually dug up too many of Xingyi’s memories, yet. Barely even enough to fill a few diary pages, never mind managing to explain the man’s entire life.
Hell, Líanlí-Kaifeng didn’t even know when or how Xingyi and Huanxi had gotten married. He didn’t know when or how they’d first met each other, only that they’d gotten entangled with each other, that they seemed Very Much In Love, and that Xingyi’s sharp-tongued cousin had referred to Xingyi as Huanxi’s “little wife.” None of Xingyi’s memories had been about his mother so far, even though she’d mattered to him so much that he’d used her portrait for the puzzle-lock on the room where he’d kept Yùchén. None of them had involved his father, except as a corpse buried beneath a pomegranate tree, someone whom Xingyi wanted to honor and do right by as much as possible. Although the memories that Líanlí-Kaifeng had managed to recover had had some varied contents, all of them had also involved Huanxi.
Coming up on the spring, Líanlí-Kaifeng sighed. More memories from Xingyi would come with time, he figured. For the moment, however, he needed to focus on the pond with something rapidly bubbling out in the center as groundwater continued shooting up, filling the lake and rushing out into a river that looked clear and beautiful.… Descending the black, stone steps that the people who’d once lived around here had built around the spring, Kaifeng reached into his subspace pocket. He produced his tools: four refillable plastic jugs, each capable of holding five gallons of fluid, and a reinforced metal stick that, with a few button-presses and twists of this and that, expanded into the shinier version of a staff that a stereotypical European milkmaid would have slung across the backs of her shoulders whilst toting buckets of, well, milk.
“Nothing to do for any of this but work,” Kaifeng said to his little wispy friend, pausing to unbutton his cuffs and roll back his sleeves.
As he finally rounded back to his Wonder—as he trudged toward the pomegranate tree and the irrigation device—Kaifeng couldn’t help but think that there had to be a better way of doing this. Xingyi, in the one memory that Líanlí had recovered before, had explained to Huanxi that he’d only ever used water from the river at Wonder-Kaifeng. Which meant there had to be something, somewhere on the grounds that could get the river flowing again……that could help Líanlí-Kaifeng get it cleaned up.
In order to keep himself from spiraling about that idea, though, Líanlí-Kaifeng decided to sing: “A fresh poison each week. We were born sick, you heard them say it.…” Yes, he had come back within earshot of Selenga and the drink he’d left with his cousin-in-law, now. Yes, he probably looked very much like a milkmaid, with his four five-gallon jugs dangling off the metal staff slung across his back until he set them down. Maybe several years ago, Ming-er would have mocked him for this, but Kaifeng rather doubted that Selenga would do the same anymore.
Either way, Líanlí-Kaifeng had work to do, so as he went about uncapping the first jug and emptying it into the tank, he went on, “Take me to church, I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies. I’ll tell you my sins so you can sharpen your knife.…”
genovianprince
