The human world calls me the Wind Matron. My proper commission: Dispatcher of Winds under the Bureau of Rain — the one who walks at the head of the rain-column, opening the road.
Rain is a full procession; you may not know. The Bureau of Thunder sounds the call; the Cloud Office lays the clouds; I dispatch the winds to open the way — winds to scatter the parched air, to push the clouds into position, to lead the rain's feet to the fields appointed — and at the last, the Rain Master releases the water. Every good rain, the wind walks first. I held that posting for one thousand eight hundred years.
My master-craft is knowing the wind-roads. Between heaven and earth, wind does not blow at random; it keeps roads. Great roads to the Ninth Heaven; middle roads to the four quarters; lanes into the villages — which road runs where, which closes by season, which has fallen into disrepair: all of it lives in my Register of Wind-Roads.
Three hundred years ago, the Bureau's work stopped.
Not disbanded — the above simply went silent: no call from Thunder, no clouds laid, and my dispatch-orders never came again. I waited three months, could wait no longer, and climbed the heaven-roads myself —
and found them barred, one after another.
The great road to the Ninth Heaven is sealed by the thing the Gale-Splitting Falcon calls the canopy. I flew its underside for a full year, testing all one hundred and eight heaven-roads in my Register, road by road: one hundred and seven, bolted fast.
The last lies in a forgotten corner — a bypass I cut privately in my youth: racing a life-saving rain to a mountain village with no time for the official route, I opened a hairline seam along the mountain's grain. Too narrow, too irregular, never entered in the official register.
And precisely because it was never registered, whoever barred the roads missed it.
How narrow is that seam? Wind cannot pass. Cloud cannot pass. Not a feather squeezes through. Only one thing goes up it —
a whisper. One thread of wind twisted fine as silk, wrapped around a single sentence — barely — fits.
From that year I set myself a rule: on the first of every month, push one sentence up.
Which sentence? In the early years, official: "Wind Dispatcher of the Bureau of Rain, at her post, awaiting orders." Later, as the human world grew heavier, I changed the rule: send up the heaviest sentence of the month. How do I choose? At each month's end I go down and sit a day at the village well-head, listening. Whichever sentence lands heaviest, that one rides the wind.
"Drought again this year. Pa says he won't last it." Up it went.
"The Bureau took the Zhangs' eldest daughter. She is a good person." Up it went.
"Mother — I passed the examinations. Can you see it from up there?" Up it went.
Three hundred years. More than three thousand six hundred sentences. From above: never one word back.
Why keep pushing? The same reason Tiger Power keeps kneeling at his altar: whether the above listens is the above's affair. Whether the below keeps sending is the state of our own hearts. So long as one wind-road remains unbroken, the words of the human world go up, day upon day.
Then — the first of last month.
I pushed up the month's sentence as always — a child's, from Scorched-Earth Keep: "Papa died fighting the fire. He promised to bring me sugar." The words went up; I turned to leave — and from the seam, a wind came down.
A thread as fine as my own. Wrapped around a sentence.
I pressed my ear to the crack and listened three times over before I dared believe it.
The sentence was: "All received. Not one lost."
All received. Not one lost.
Three hundred years. Three thousand six hundred sentences. He received every one. Someone above has kept the far end of that seam — catching sentence after sentence for three hundred years, exactly as long as I have been pushing them.
Who is he? An old colleague of the Rain Bureau? A keeper of the canopy? Or — someone I dare not guess? Why did he only receive, and never reply? And why, last month of all months, did the replies begin?
Has something changed up there? A loosening? Or something worse?
I told all this to the medicine-basket boy. He asked: Grandmother — the far mouth of the seam. By your reckoning, where in heaven does it open?
I spread the Register of Wind-Roads and set my finger on the old chart. The bypass's upper mouth, by the ancient maps —
opens behind Vulture Peak.
The young ones are bound west. These old bones have dispatched winds for one thousand eight hundred years and never once dispatched a road for themselves.
This time, I have. I know the wind-roads. Every wind on the way answers to me.
West, then. To the country behind Vulture Peak.
To see who keeps the far end of the seam —
and, while I am there, to collect, face to face, three hundred years and three thousand six hundred sentences' worth of replies.