During lessons in the daytime, He Ning's gaze would always drift toward the window. Even the white clouds floating across the blue sky could leave her propping her chin in her hand, lost in thought for ages.
Her master said that all things had spirits. What sort of world lay hidden in the shadowy woods, beyond the mountains?
Lately, she often went to wait outside the monastery gates.
She went in the morning and at dusk, and at night she would sit on the stone steps for a while with her arms around her knees. The wind came and went, the tree shadows swayed, yet nothing ever appeared.
Some things became harder to find the more deliberately one searched for them. Yet once one grew tired, settled one's thoughts, and returned to a state of peaceful ease, they would mysteriously appear nearby.
That afternoon, in the vegetable garden.
There was no escaping weeding in summer. After three or four days of painstaking work from one end to the other, a glance back showed it was time to start all over again.
He Ning changed into old clothes, pulled the brim of her straw hat low, and inched along the furrows. Some weeds came out with a gentle tug; others had deep, tough roots that demanded more strength. Whenever she accidentally pulled up a vegetable seedling, she quietly buried it in the soil and pretended nothing had happened.
Fortunately, the mountains received plenty of rain, keeping the garden moist and sparing her the hard labor of hauling water to irrigate it.
As she stood up and pounded her aching back, her gaze happened to sweep across a small cliff nearby.
There seemed to be something new on a rock at its edge.
A closer look revealed a length of snake tail,