Agarwood Chronicles · Side Story 7 · Winter Solstice

Agarwood Chronicles · Side Story 7 · Winter Solstice

I. Counting the Nines

On Winter Solstice, the first snow of the season fell on Bianliang.

Liu Zhiqiang took down the door panels early and first checked the upper shelf: six packets of censer ash wrapped in plain paper, an old camphor chest, seven items—just as they had been placed on the day of Frost's Descent, not one missing. The ash was loose, the box sealed. Sealed for two months, he had not touched it.

The snow lay thick on the street, footprints shallow. Footsteps stopped at the shop door, heavy, as if the bearer carried something.

The newcomer was a young man, snow on his brows, a camphor chest in his arms—its corners bound in copper sheeting, the copper dark green, identical to the one on Frost's Descent.

"Master Liu." The young man set the chest on the counter and drew a letter from his bosom. "The Lin family of Quanzhou, Lin Wandu. My grandfather Lin Peiguan passed last month. Before he went, he instructed: deliver the chest into the hands of the Liu family of Bianliang, personally."

Liu Zhiqiang took the letter. The envelope was in running script, the strokes urgent, the same hand as the ledger. Inside, two lines:

Sent by Wen Ji to the Lin family of Quanzhou, to be opened on Winter Solstice. The matter is unfinished; return to the Liu family.

"Old Chen, who delivered the chest last time, said when he got back that Master Liu had seen a picture in the accounts—three sticks of incense, one long and two short, not burned at the same time," Lin Wandu said. "My grandfather said: You see, the two chests are also not opened at the same time. The first on Frost's Descent, this one on Winter Solstice, a month and a season apart—Mr. Wen would not let them be opened together. Grandfather guarded this chest his whole life, letting no one touch it. This Winter Solstice, the whole family opened it according to the words on the lid, and inside was only this letter."

"Mr. Wen divided the two chests between two solar terms," Liu Zhiqiang set down the letter. "One opened in autumn, one in winter."

"My grandfather also said, the matter is not finished, so the chest could not rot away in Quanzhou."

II. The Second Chest

Wang Guanshu arrived faster than the snow. When she came in, a layer of white lay on her felt boots, even on her lashes.

"Both halves of the seal have found a home." She took off her coat and shook off the snow. "The old site of Wen Ji's incense and medicine workshop was restored two years ago as a community incense culture hall. I asked the hall to make a brocade box, the two halves placed left and right—not joined into a whole seal, just set together. Guarding the division: divided they are, but they must be placed together."

The second chest was also unlocked, a bamboo slip tucked in. Pulled open: oil paper, five letters, a small porcelain box.

No seal in the box. The bottom was lined with dried orchid leaves, pressed with dried jasmine petals—a fragrant flower from the South Seas that took root in Quanzhou in the Song and Yuan, still holding a trace of sweetness when dried. Amid the petals lay a small porcelain censer, fit in one palm, single-holed, a band of lotus-petal pattern around its body. Beneath the censer lay a stack of letters, five in all, all in one hand:

Letters to Sister Wen. In the hand of Wen An.

III. Wen An's Letters

Liu Zhiqiang read a page, Wang Guanshu copied a page.

The first letter: "Sister, as we meet: the orchid incense has reached Quanzhou, the Lin family's boat, not a fraction lost. I did not open the seal for three nights. The incense in the box, the man outside the box, neither disturbing the other."

The second letter: "I divided the orchid incense into three strands. One strand to the warehouse clerk of the Maritime Trade Office, one to the lamp-tending master of Kaiyuan Temple, one I kept. Not that I could not bear to part—there is more than one ruler. The mother incense in the Shosoin is a ruler, the loose incense of Bianliang is a ruler, Quanzhou should have its own ruler too. Three rulers measuring the same thing: it does not matter whose hand the incense is in; what matters is who is willing to share."

The third letter was the shortest: "I shall not return north. The southern boats carry incense, not returning men. Sister guards Wen Ji, I guard the southern strand, each at peace in his or her place, do not think of me."

The fourth letter was for the Liu family: "To the worthy friend of the Liu family of Bianliang: I was entrusted to divide the orchid, and now the matter is done. The strand I kept I have had carved into a small censer to carry with me; when it is exhausted, I stop. One ledger, with the coffin. Nothing else, only the three words 'division brings peace,' sent to those who come after."

The fifth letter had no words, only a picture: a censer, three sticks of incense, one long and two short.

The ink of all five letters had faded, but the urgency in the strokes remained. As if the writer had been racing time—racing to say all that needed saying before the incense burned out.

"Three sticks of incense," Wang Guanshu said softly. "The long one is the mother, the short ones are the divided guards. The long one is Ranjatai, in the Shosoin; one short stick in Bianliang, exhausted on the night of the loose-incense rite—these six packets of ash; and one more stick, in Quanzhou, divided into three strands."

"All become ash."

"All become ash," she said. "But the three sticks, not burned at the same time, have all burned. This entry, recorded from Frost's Descent to Winter Solstice, is only now complete."

IV. Winter Solstice Night

The snow stopped at dusk.

Liu Zhiqiang brought the small porcelain censer out of the box and set it on the counter beside the wooden box. At the corner of the box was still a piece of incense cake: orchid incense dust mixed with Quanzhou's local jiangzhen incense, pressed into a cake, stamped with the character "an" (peace), half missing.

"Jiangzhen incense was among the fragrant medicines that came ashore at Quanzhou port in the Song and Yuan," Wang Guanshu said. "Wen An blended local incense with orchid dust—when in Rome, and also each guarding its place: Bianliang's ruler measures Bianliang, Quanzhou's ruler measures Quanzhou."

He did not light the cake. Orchid may not be gathered, nor lightly burned. The southern ruler had not yet come home; the cake was offered first.

Six packets of ash, a wooden box, a small censer, a cake. He counted twice: nine items.

"Nine chrysanthemums gathered for eight hundred years, gathered only an emptiness," Wang Guanshu said.

"The emptiness of the nine chrysanthemums is 'gone,'" Liu Zhiqiang said. "The emptiness of my nine items is 'divided.'"

Winter Solstice night is the longest of the year. Wang Guanshu griddled cakes, Liu Zhiqiang boiled dumplings, and the two sat facing each other until midnight. She would not stay the night; before leaving she dipped a finger in the warm tea in her cup—not the rainwater of Frost's Descent night—and wrote three lines on the door panel:

Frost's Descent divides the orchid,
Winter Solstice opens the chest,
Grain Rain drinks the tea.

"Last year's Grain Rain line, I made that appointment with you," she said, turning back in the snow. "Next Grain Rain will be exactly one year. Divided it is, but the appointment must be kept."

"The appointment must be kept."

She left. Two lines of footprints in the snow, one heading east, one west, merging at the lane's mouth, then parting again.

Liu Zhiqiang closed the shop door and turned to look at the upper shelf. In the dimness that small patch: six packets of ash, a wooden box, a small censer, a cake. Nine items, quiet and still.

He remembered the line at the end of Wen An's fourth letter: each at peace in his or her place, do not think of me.

Do not think of me. He had thought.

—To be continued · Side Story 8 (Grain Rain · New Tea)

> This is an original serialized novel of Agarwood Chronicles; the characters and plot are fictional. The agarwood and incense-medicine knowledge herein is compiled from public sources and does not constitute investment or medical advice.