Six Records of Agarwood · Side Story 5 · Grain Rain

Six Records of Agarwood · Side Story 5 · Grain Rain

Grain Rain: rain births a hundred grains, and also a hundred doubts.

At the Liu family's agarwood and sandalwood shop west of Bianliang city, the door panels were half removed, and rain slanted in, leaving dark water stains on the blue brick floor. Liu Zhijiang crouched behind the counter, stacking the last piece of incense charcoal into a bronze censer. Wang Guanshu stood on a ladder, taking down an oil-paper package from the beam; the paper was brownish-yellow, and the knot was still in the Northern Song style. Wen Ye reached out to catch it, weighed it in his hand, and frowned: "Just this much?"

"One thread of each of the five incenses, less than three mace in total," Wang Guanshu said, jumping down from the ladder, her sleeve stirring up a flurry of raindrops. "Jiuju hid them for eight hundred years and only managed to save this much."

Qu Huaisha sat by the window, a reproduction scroll spread before him—a detail of the small shop at the end of the Palace Museum's copy of Along the River During the Qingming Festival. He pointed at the blurred figure behind the counter in the painting: "Look, this person's left hand rests lightly, the right holds incense, and six censers are arranged in a half-arc on the table. People used to think it was lighting incense, but actually it's dividing incense." He looked up at Yanagiu Shizuma. "Mr. Yanagiu, in that page of the Incense Principles left by your father, is this also depicted?"

Yanagiu Shizuma knelt on a cushion, a lacquer box laid across his knees. He opened the lid; inside were five small porcelain bottles, each marked with a dot of white, green, purple, black, or yellow glaze. "When my father retrieved my sister's belongings in Kosovo, this page was pressed at the bottom of the box." He took out a thin, yellowed sheet of paper with six censers outlined in ink and a small annotation beside them: "Union is not gathering, but simultaneous division."

"So the seventh incense..." Wen Ye began, then stopped himself.

Liu Zhijiang stood up and fished an incense seal from his robe—half of the character "shou" (guard), its edges worn smooth. "The seventh incense is not an incense." He placed the seal on the table, fitting it perfectly with Wang Guanshu's half bearing the character "ji" (record). "It is this ritual itself. Ranjatai is the mother incense, verifying the other five; but the six incenses are never to appear together in the world, unless—burned simultaneously, scattered simultaneously."

"What about the fingerprints at Shosoin?" Wen Ye pressed.

Qu Huaisha unfolded another photograph, a cross-section of the Ranjatai held at Nara's Shosoin, with three faint fingerprints among the wood grain. "I compared them with the signatures on the surviving pages of the Six Incenses Manual. One is the Liu family's 'shou' seal, one is the 'wen' signature of Wenji Incense and Medicine Shop, and another..." He paused. "Is Huang Tingjian's private seal."

"Huang Tingjian?" Wang Guanshu was startled. "When did he go to Japan?"

"He never did," Liu Zhijiang cut in. "But during the Yuanyou era of the Northern Song, a group of incense envoys sailed east with merchant ships to deliver the Liu family's divided portion of Ranjatai to Shosoin for verification. The leader was surnamed Liu, the deputy surnamed Wen, and the incense recorder was a disciple of Huang Tingjian. The fingerprints were pressed then, meaning: this incense has been divided, this vow has been kept."

Yanagiu Shizuma looked down at the five-colored porcelain bottles in the lacquer box and suddenly gave a soft laugh. "My sister always said Datong should not be scattered among the mediocre. But she never understood—it is not the incense that scatters, but the people." He looked up, rain light in his eyes. "Incense gathered in one place can burn only once; people scattered in four directions can guard for a lifetime."

The rain suddenly grew denser. Liu Zhijiang arranged the six bronze censers in a half-arc on the table and placed into them, one by one, fragments of the five incenses and a pinch of Ranjatai shavings—minute samples that Wang Guanshu's father, Wang Shouzhuo, had scraped from a Shosoin reproduction during his lifetime, kept sealed in a wax pill. The six censers were lit simultaneously; flames of white, green, purple, black, yellow, and the white of Ranjatai rose, intertwined briefly in the damp air, then separated and burned steadily.

"Union is ritual, not possession," Qu Huaisha murmured to the flames. "The people of Chu honored the orchid and worshipped the gods through division. Division is not disorder, but each guarding its place."

Yanagiu Shizuma took a brocade pouch from his robe, poured out the last few fragments of incense hidden by Jiuju, and placed them in the yellow censer. The flame leaped, then calmed. He pressed his palms together in a bow, stepped back, and yielded his place to Wen Ye. Wen Ye stepped forward and threw into the censer the preface to the Six Incenses Manual transcribed from the public security cultural relics file; paper ash flew up, mingling with incense smoke and spiraling upward.

Wang Guanshu came last, placing into the white censer the half writing brush her father had left when restoring Along the River During the Qingming Festival. The shaft caught fire with a faint crackle, much like rain striking window paper.

The incense in the six censers burned out, the ashes still warm. Liu Zhijiang used a bronze spoon to scoop the ashes from each censer into six plain paper packets, one for each person. When Yanagiu Shizuma received the ashes from the yellow censer, his fingers trembled slightly, but he said nothing, only bowed deeply and turned into the rain.

Wen Ye tucked his packet into the inner pocket of his police uniform and patted Liu Zhijiang on the shoulder. "If Jiuju comes again, I'll tell them—the incense is gone, but the people remain."

Qu Huaisha rolled up the reproduction and smiled. "I must go back to the museum and revise my paper. Those five words, 'guard the division, not the hoard,' are enough for thirty thousand characters."

Everyone dispersed. Liu Zhijiang and Wang Guanshu were the last to lock up. The rain had lightened; water dripped from the eaves onto the stone steps, one long, one short. Wang Guanshu suddenly said, "Smell." Liu Zhijiang tilted his head; there was no incense in the air, only the scent of rain and earth. But he knew what she meant—eight hundred years ago, Su Dongpo had smelled the same Grain Rain in this shop; when Zhang Zeduan painted the small shop at the end of the scroll, such rain was also falling outside the window.

"Guard the division, not the hoard." Liu Zhijiang separated the two incense seals again, tucked one back into his robe, and handed the other to Wang Guanshu. "Scatter."

Wang Guanshu took the seal, turned toward the alley entrance, then after a few steps looked back and waved the plain paper packet at him. "Next Grain Rain, remember to come to Wenji for new tea."

Liu Zhijiang waved back and closed the shop door. Before the panels met, he took one last look at Bianliang in the rain—modern high-rises blurred into Northern Song flying eaves, and the small shop at the end of Along the River During the Qingming Festival was lit by an unextinguished lamp.

The incense has scattered. Those who discern incense are scattered throughout the world, each guarding their own domain—this is true guardianship.

*—The complete text of Six Records of Agarwood · Side Stories ends here.*

[Series structure note] This piece concludes the Bianliang storyline of Six Records of Agarwood · Side Stories. Side Story 6, Frost's Descent, and Side Story 7, Start of Winter, have already begun the new Quanzhou storyline; the story is unfinished, please continue reading. The main text Part One comprises Volumes 1 to 6, Part Two comprises Volumes 8 and 9; each chapter can be read independently, but reading them together reveals the full picture.