She rehearsed what she would say: Oh, great masters! Please hear my plea! My village and valley are beset by demons and without your aid all will die!
No, that wasn’t good enough, she thought to herself, absently wiping a bead of sweat from her brow. The air was thick with steam, but at least it was not the freezing hail that had battered the valley’s crops and driven the bravest men to cry at the torture inflicted by the demons. Of course, the demons liked to hear such things; it encouraged them.
Lau De had warned the others not to moan so, but they had paid no attention to her. When the hail beat her down and they found her body in a ditch, they had said, “See! The witch is dead! She was no match for the demons!” Why they hadn’t said, “Oh, we are such fools! Here was a wise woman and we did not heed her!” Jing-Wei didn’t know, except perhaps that they were such fools.
And so, the last witch in the village had perished along with their crops. As if in celebration, the freezing hail had stopped and the harsh heat had begun. The village went from sopping, icy wetness to hot, crackling dryness.
The villagers were starving; the valley was dying. The demons were winning. And soon they would feast on the corpses of those too weak to move.
Unless Jing-Wei could get help. She tried to get others to come with her; she begged her best friend, Mei-Xing, whose name meant “beautiful star,” but she was too afraid. “My parents say I can’t play with you,” Mei-Xing had told her in a small voice, her eyes cast to the ground.
“I don’t want to play!” Jing-Wei had snapped back. “I want you to come with me, so we can free the village of demons!”
“If I can’t play, what makes you think I can come with you?” Mei-Xing asked crossly. “My parents say there are no demons. It is just the weather. They are going to pray to the god of spring for aid and we will be saved.”
“I saw the demons, Mei-Xing!” Jing-Wei told her. “I saw them just like Lau De herself!”
“My parents say Lau De was moon-touched,” Mei-Xing said with a frown. “They say that she was touched by all the moons in the sky and that was why she was blinded at night and fell into the ditch, hit her head, and drowned.”
“There was a hailstone the size of her fist right where they found her!” Jing-Wei exclaimed, unable to believe that her friend hadn’t understood the import of that. “It was the hailstone that killed her. The hailstone sent by the demons because she knew them for what they were.”
Mei-Xing absorbed this silently. Finally, she repeated, “My parents say I can’t play with you.”
Jing-Wei had even less luck with the boys, but she only asked them because everyone said a little girl was not supposed to travel alone.
“You are a silly girl, go away!” Zhang Chen told her, grabbing a clump of cold, wet dirt from the drying river and throwing it at her. Jing-Wei was small, but she was fast, and dodged the clumsy boy’s clod easily.
“I must help my parents in the field,” Yang Dingbang apologized.
“Your name means ‘protect the country’ and yet you won’t help?” Jing-Wei asked in astonishment.
“It’s just a name,” he said, with a melancholy shrug. He made a shooing gesture at her and smiled, saying, “Fly away, little bird!”
“Small bird!” Jing-Wei corrected. “Get it right, you oaf!”
Yang Dingbang’s smile remain fixed. “Fly away!”
In the end, Jing-Wei had not flown, although she could easily imagine how her arms would have complained if they were wings: I have to lift all of you up into the sky and you won’t even feed me? How horrible is that?
Fortunately, Jing-Wei had only arms, and they weren’t complaining . . . much.
Her arms started to complain not long after because the climb had become so steep that she had to use them to haul herself up the densely wooded hillside.
I will not cry! I will not break! she told herself forcefully, as her legs tried to stop moving, and her chest couldn’t stop heaving with the effort, and her stomach was an empty hole inside her.
Another step. Another foot.
The air was wispy with fog as she climbed higher. She shivered, realizing that she had left the dense, humid jungle beneath her, leaving the sweat to chill on her skin. There were fewer and fewer trees and no undergrowth to slow her down. Now all she had were rocks and a steady drizzle of cold rain falling over her through the breaks in the treetops.
But there! Just above her she could see the pass, flanked by two mountains. Soon she would see what was on the other side. And she knew, just knew that this time she would find what she was looking for.
Oh, great masters! Please hear my plea! My village and valley are beset by demons and without your aid all will die!
She reached the crest of the hill, crawled through the saddle between the mountaintops, and stopped, looking down at the expanse spread before her.
It was beautiful: the valley unfolding below her. Beautiful with verdant grasses and tall trees.
Jing-Wei’s heart fell—it was just like the last three valleys she had seen. She would have to go through it and climb the mountains beyond. Her lips trembled at the thought. Wasn’t there a limit to how far she could go?
She forced her legs to carry her forward, looking for any signs of something she might put in her mouth to silence her stomach.
As she reached the end of the saddle and prepared to descend into the valley below, a shape moved in front of her. It was a lion, and it looked just big enough to eat a small bird like herself.
It sat on its haunches and regarded her silently. It was a girl lion. Jing-Wei knew that the males had manes—“Just like peacocks, always strutting!” Lau De had told her when she had spoken of far-off places and strange creatures.
At least it isn’t an elephant, Jing-Wei thought. As if to torment her, behind the lion a large shape loomed up. She saw the large ears, heard the slow lumbering thud of its movement, and her eyes grew wide. “Lions will eat an elephant if they can,” Lau De had told her once on a dark night when they were guarding the village. “But sometimes they become friends.”
Friends. The word echoed in her head. She started moving forward, her hands open but by her side. She looked up at the elephant and back to the lion.
“It’s only me,” Jing-Wei said. “I’m a little girl from a village beset by demons, and I need to ask for help in the cave of miracles.”
The lion took two steps toward her. The elephant thumped up a moment later.
“I heard a song about you,” Jing-Wei offered, telling her heart to stop racing, her lungs to stop pulling in air so fast. “Would you like to hear it?”
The lion took two more steps forward.
Jing-Wie licked her lips.
“Lion, lion, eyes so bright
What do you see in the night?
Elephant, elephant far away
Do you hear what we all say?”
They looked unimpressed.
“Okay,” Jing-Wei said, “I made that up just now.” She looked at the lion. “Did you like it?”
The lion took two more steps forward.
“My surname is Li and my personal name is Jing-Wei and I am far from home, looking to help my village as it is beset by demons,” Jing-Wei told them, her lips trembling with sorrow. She looked at the lion. “I am only little and I haven’t eaten in three days, so I would make a very poor meal, if that’s what you are thinking.” She looked at the elephant. “I don’t know how you got so high but you walk farther with each step than I can run, and I envy you that.” She glanced down at her legs and gestured toward them. “I have only these little sticks of legs and they are very, very tired from all the walking.” She looked up at them again, and tired as she was, her eyes filled with tears. “But can’t you see my village needs help? I am the only one who can still see the demons. The others are all lost, praying to the wrong gods, or they’ve just given up and are preparing to die.” She took a ragged breath. “Please, won’t you let me pass? Please let me find the cave of miracles?”