Chapter 5: The Second Funeral

The second death was a child.

Fever again. The same fever that had taken Zhou, or perhaps a different fever with the same face. In villages like Gray Valley, death wore familiar clothes. It did not need to be creative.

The child's name was Mei. She was six years old. She had liked flowers, according to her mother, who delivered this information between sobs that came in waves, each one larger than the last, as if grief were a tide that had misjudged the shore.

Ti Mo wrote the name carefully.

Mei.

He did not draw a circle. He did not draw a spiral. He wrote the name with strokes that were plain, direct, unadorned. The brush moved across the paper with a lightness that suggested apology. The dead did not need apologies. The living did.

The mother stood in the doorway of the funeral house. She was young. Too young for a dead child. Her hands were red from washing, from wringing, from the physical effort of grief. She watched Ti Mo write with the desperate attention of someone who believed that if the record were beautiful enough, the name would become immortal.

Ti Mo understood this belief. He did not share it. In his experience, immortality was a burden. The dead were lucky to be forgotten. It meant they could rest.

But he wrote beautifully anyway.

The strokes settled into the paper deeper than ink should go. The name seemed to sink, to anchor, to claim its place on the page with a certainty that the living rarely possessed. When Ti Mo finished, the paper felt heavier. Not by much. Just enough to notice.

He handed the record to the mother.

She stopped sobbing.

Not because she was happy. Not because she was healed. But because the writing held her grief somehow. It did not take the grief away. It simply contained it. The name, the strokes, the weight of the paper, they created a vessel large enough to hold what she felt. She could look at the record and know that her daughter's death was real. That it had been witnessed. That someone had taken the time to write it down.

"Thank you," the mother whispered.

Ti Mo nodded. He did not say "you are welcome." He had not done this for her. He had done it for Mei, who was beyond thanks. He had done it for the name, which deserved to be written properly. He had done it because his hands moved without his permission and produced beauty he did not feel entitled to claim.

The mother left. She carried the record against her chest like a shield.

Ti Mo cleaned his brush. The ritual was longer now. He took his time. The water was cold. The bristles released their ink slowly, reluctantly, as if the brush did not want to forget the name it had just written.

"You are good at that."

The voice came from the doorway. Small. Direct. No tremor.

Ti Mo did not turn. He knew who it was. He had known since the third day, when he had felt her weight on the roof and had chosen to ignore her. He had known when he left the light on the windowsill. He had known when he covered her with his robe.

"I am competent," Ti Mo said. "Good is a judgment I do not make about myself."

"It was good," the voice repeated. "The mother stopped crying."

"She will start again. The record is not a cure. It is a temporary container."

"Still."

Ti Mo turned.

The girl stood in the doorway. She was small, underfed, with hair cut short by a knife and eyes that had seen too much to be surprised by anything. She wore his robe. The black fabric swallowed her. The silver embroidery at the collar caught the lamplight and made her look like a child dressed in a funeral.

She did not step inside. She stood at the threshold, one hand on the frame, ready to run. Ti Mo recognized this posture. It was the posture of someone who had learned that doorways were dangerous. That entering meant owing. That space was never given freely.

"You kept the robe," Ti Mo said.

"It is warm."

"It is too large for you."

"I am used to things that do not fit."

Ti Mo set down his brush. He looked at her. She looked back. Neither spoke. The silence was not uncomfortable. It was the silence of two people who understood that words were currency and neither of them was rich.

"What is your name?" Ti Mo asked.

"Bai Zhi."

"White paper."

She frowned. "You know the meaning?"

"I know words. It is my only skill."

Bai Zhi considered this. She stepped one foot inside the door. Just one. The other remained in the cemetery, in the open air, on the side of escape.

"I saw what you did," she said. "With the farmer. With the circles. With the tree."

"I know. You have been watching for six days."

Bai Zhi's hand tightened on the frame. "You knew?"

"You are not as quiet as you think. Your breathing is excellent. Steady. Controlled. But you breathe. Everything that breates can be heard by something that does not."

Ti Mo picked up his inkstone. He turned it over in his hands. It was warm. It was always warm.

"Why did you not send me away?" Bai Zhi asked.

"You were not in my way."

"I was on your roof."

"The roof is not mine. It belongs to the dead. You were not bothering them either."

Bai Zhi took another step inside. Both feet now. The door was behind her. She had crossed a line she could not see. Ti Mo watched her realize this. He saw the moment of panic, the flicker in her eyes, the tension in her shoulders. Then he saw her decide to stay anyway.

"Teach me," she said.

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because I do not know what I am doing. Teaching requires knowledge. I have none. I have habits. Instincts. A hand that moves without my permission. These are not things that can be taught."

"You taught the scholar."

Ti Mo paused. "You know about Wei Lin?"

"I know he follows you like a dog. I know he grinds ink badly. I know he draws lines that look like worms."

Ti Mo laughed. It was a short sound, surprised out of him. He had not expected to laugh today. The day of a child's funeral should not contain laughter. But Bai Zhi's assessment was accurate, and accuracy was the one quality Ti Mo rewarded regardless of circumstance.

"Wei Lin taught himself," Ti Mo said. "I simply did not stop him. There is a difference."

"Then do not stop me."

"You are a child."

"I am fourteen."

"You are small for fourteen."

"I am hungry for fourteen. Hunger makes people small."

Ti Mo looked at her. Really looked. The sharp cheekbones. The fingers that were permanently stained with dirt. The eyes that watched him with the patience of someone who had learned that waiting was the only weapon available to the weak.

He had seen that patience before. In the mirror, perhaps. In the wheat field at dawn.

"I am leaving Gray Valley," Ti Mo said.

Bai Zhi did not react. She simply waited.

"This village is too small. There are too few books. Too few deaths. Too few reasons to stay awake. I have learned what I can here. The rest requires a larger stage."

"Where will you go?"

"I do not know. Somewhere with a library. Somewhere with a roof that does not leak. Somewhere with worse tea, so that I can appreciate what I had."

"I will follow you," Bai Zhi said.

"No."

"You cannot stop me. You do not know where you are going. How will you know if I am behind you?"

Ti Mo set down the inkstone. He walked to the window. The cemetery was dark. The markers stood in their rows, patient and permanent. Zhou's marker was there. Mei's marker would join it tomorrow. The village would continue. The wheat would grow. The fever would return, as fevers always did.

He had written two names in this village. He had raised one corpse. He had drawn circles that warmed and numbed and grew trees out of season. He had acquired a disciple by accident and a watcher by choice and a robe that now belonged to a girl who refused to give it back.

He should leave alone. Clean. Unburdened.

He looked at Bai Zhi. She stood in his robe, in his doorway, in his space, and she demanded nothing except the right to watch. To learn. To exist near him without being asked to leave.

"You are annoying," Ti Mo said.

Bai Zhi did not flinch.

"You are persistent. I respect persistence. It is the only virtue I possess."

"Then teach me."

Ti Mo sighed. It was a theatrical sigh, larger than necessary, the sigh of a man who wanted to be seen as reluctant even as he made his decision.

"I am not teaching you. You are following me. There is a difference. If you happen to observe things while following me, that is your business. If you happen to grind ink while observing, I will not stop you. But I am not responsible for you. I am not your master. I am not your teacher. I am a man with a brush and no memory, and you are a girl with my robe and no sense."

Bai Zhi nodded. "Agreed."

"You agree too quickly. You should have negotiated."

"I do not know how to negotiate."

"Then learn. It is more useful than circles."

Ti Mo turned back to his packing. He had little. The brush. The inkstone. Three books he had borrowed from Elder Feng's private shelf without asking. A half-empty bag of rice. The robes on his back, minus one that now belonged to Bai Zhi.

He would need to steal more robes. Or buy them. Or learn to live with one set of clothes, which seemed impractical for a man who ground ink for a living.

"We leave at dawn," Ti Mo said.

"I will be ready."

"You are already ready. You have been ready since the day you were born. That is the problem with children like you. You never learned to wait for permission."

Bai Zhi smiled. It was a small smile, quickly hidden. Ti Mo pretended not to see it. He had a reputation for not noticing things, and he did not want to ruin it now.

She left. She did not say goodbye. She simply walked into the dark and was gone, silent as a brushstroke drying.

Ti Mo stood at the window until the last of her warmth left the room. Then he sat on his mat and looked at his hands. Ink-stained. Permanent. The marks of a scribe who wrote names for the dead and circles for the living and could not remember why either mattered.

He would travel tomorrow. He would find a new village, a new town, a new place to nap and draw and watch the world continue without him.

And behind him, at a distance he could not measure, a girl in a black robe would follow.

Ti Mo lay down. He placed the brush under his pillow. He closed his eyes.

For the first time since waking in the wheat field, he felt something close to anticipation.

It worried him.

He slept anyway.