Let it be said up front: my office is an unlicensed one.
What a proper river lord looks like, the old books state plainly: commissioned by the celestial court, entered in the registry of river gods, honored at the spring and autumn rites, keeper of one region's floods and droughts. This river had a licensed lord once. The year the river died, he vanished along with the Dragon Palace's decrees — his name still on the roll, his person gone from the water, three hundred years now.
And me? I am that drowned ghost who refused to take a substitute. And when the count of those I had lifted ashore reached one hundred and seven, a strange thing happened.
That Qingming, the people I had lifted — the living, and the children of the living — someone among them took the lead, and they raised a small shrine at the crossing. Pitifully small: the height of one man. And what stood on its altar was not a god's statue but an oar — carved after the one I used in life, down to the old cloth strips wound about the grip.
When the first stick of incense went in, I shuddered at the bottom of the river.
Incense — as a water-ghost I had only ever smelled it from far off. It belongs to gods and buddhas; a membrane lies between it and things like us, and none of its warmth comes through. But this stick was different. This stick was addressed — by name: "For the one in the Flowing Sands who lifts people out." The smoke touched the water and went straight into my chest, like a padded coat warmed at a stove.
One stick. Two. A year. Ten. The shrine has been rebuilt three times; the oar is cast bronze now. And the incense never stops: the lifted come, the sand-sea travellers come, and in time even strangers with no debt to me — the sand-sea is cruel, people need something to bow to, and of all this river once held, only I remain to receive a bow.
And under all that bowing, I changed.
The drowned man's grey-white faded; the robes of a river lord grew over me — conferred by no one, woven by the incense itself. I could hear every puddle stir within a hundred li. I could shield a caravan through a sandstorm. I could lead the dying-of-thirst to the springs that still live. When old Bone-Spirit saw me, all nine skulls nodded together: boy, this is enthronement by the ten thousand households.
Enthronement by the people. It sounds fine. But I know precisely how soft this seal is.
A heaven-conferred seal is a written commission with celestial law standing behind it. Behind my wild seal stands one small shrine and the remembrance of a hundred and seven families. Let the remembrance scatter, and I scatter. That is why I long for the human world's peace more than anyone — not high-mindedness. My existence is moored to their ordinary days.
The thing at the bottom that administers the Water Precedent has changed its manner with me.
It no longer urges substitutes — I have moved beyond the reach of its precedent. Now it delivers messages. Courteous as ever; the same account-clerk's cadence. It says: a wild seal has no writ; the ones above do not recognize it. It says: the register of precedents is soon to be revised; the prudent course is to surrender your incense early in exchange for proper standing. And the last time — its voice pressed very low — it said:
"On the day the black moon's account is full, every god without a register entry is entered into the Depletion."
The black moon's account. Gods without registry. The Depletion.
I am a wild river lord; clerk-talk like that is beyond me. But my memory is good. I kept every word, letter-perfect — kept it waiting for someone who could understand.
The day the medicine-basket boy came to burn incense at the crossing, I showed myself — the first daylight manifestation in three hundred years — and repeated those words exactly. The Taibai-sending at his side was silent for a long, long time, and then said:
"So even that thing now speaks of the Depletion."
Even it. Which means the ancient word old Yinglong speaks of is known to the clerk at the bottom of my river as well.
The boy asked if I would come along. I looked at my little shrine, and at the safe-passage charms of a hundred and seven households hung before it.
I said: I'll come. It is precisely because I cannot bear to lose these that I must come.
A wild-sealed god has no celestial law for armor. He has exactly one protection — guard the people's ordinary days well, and the people's incense becomes his law.
And now something is moving against the account of the people themselves.
For that, this river lord will be swinging the oar.