My name is Little Ye — Ye as in yaksha.
It's not a pretty word on shore. In the human operas, a yaksha is either a soul-snatcher or a man-eater, painted green-faced with tusks. As a cub I studied my own reflection in the ravine for a long while and asked my mother: do we really eat people? She fished me out, gave me a smack, and said: this family eats army rations.
For generations beyond counting, my family has served as sea-patrol soldiers of the Dragon Palace.
Father was one of the senior sea-patrol yakshas — his trident work drew nods from the Crab Marshal himself. Mother served too, and retired when I was born. When I was three, the sea postings turned dangerous, and my parents talked through one whole night; the next day they asked Elder Wave-Crown to send mother and me up the Old Road into Flower-Fruit Mountain. The mountain was peaceful: shallow water, gentle yao — and the monkeys, seeing my little tusks, weren't frightened at all. They said I looked splendid.
Father stayed in the sea, on duty. He said: our family has held the sea patrol for eighteen generations. It will not break in my hands.
Every month he sent a bubble-letter home by seahorse courier. From the time I could understand speech, I waited for that bubble every month. Father's voice is rough and hoarse, and he only ever told small things: which reef the patrol swept today, the mess hall's kelp soup came out salty, the new recruit wields his trident like a fire-poker. And after the small things, always the same last line: Little Ye, eat well. My trident will be yours one day.
The bubbles came on time for eleven years.
Three years ago, one came six days late. And it was terrifyingly short. Five characters:
"Transferred. Gate-bottom duty."
No kelp soup. No recruit jokes. No eat well.
It was the last one.
Mother listened to that bubble and did not speak all night. At dawn she took father's old trident down from the wall, honed it, oiled it, hung it back, and said one thing that still runs cold through me:
"Gate-bottom duty only ever rotates in. It does not rotate out."
I pressed her. She would say no more. I asked the water-folk elders in the mountain; every one of them shook their heads and slipped away. Only Elder Wave-Crown, after I had worn at him for half a year, let one sentence fall: the gate-bottom shift is not there to guard the gate.
Not to guard it? Then to do what?
The Elder looked at me for a long, long time and said: to keep something company.
To keep who company? Keep what company? And why does a companionship posting take only the hardest veterans — and take them one way?
No one will tell me.
So I train. Up before light with the trident, still at it after the monkeys sleep. Father said his trident would be mine — then I must grow worthy of it. When my wrists are hard enough and my water-sense deep enough, I will swim the Old Road back to the East Sea and ask my way down, question by question, to the gate's foot.
The herb-boy is walking west, and the road passes the East Sea. I was the first to fasten myself to him. He asked me: what will you do there?
I said: rotate the watch.
Eighteen generations of duty do not break. Whoever my father is keeping company at the bottom of that gate, I am going down to relieve him —
and take his place.