You have read the little sister's account — the fall, and "the medicine must not stop." I will tell the part of what came after that no one in the clan will speak of.
I was the master mortar's second pestle that night — Mother's assistant. After Mother clapped the little one into a mortar and pushed her down, she turned back toward the main hall. I chased her to its door.
At the door she pushed me out and said: Second Pestle — you go too.
I said: while the master mortar works, the assistant does not leave the pestle. That is the rule you taught.
Mother still held the master pestle then, the Clear-Radiance in the mortar half-ground. Beyond the walls, the black cover had closed until only a thread of sky remained overhead. She looked at me a long moment, then suddenly smiled, and said the sentence I have turned over every night for three hundred years:
"Just as well. Remember this — listen for the pestle. While the medicine lives, the pestle lives; while the pestle lives, so do we."
And she threw me down through that last thread of light.
When I landed, my first act was not weeping. It was raising my ears. Listening.
In the final instant before the cover sealed, what came out of the Moon Palace was not screaming, not collapse — it was the pestle. Mother's master pestle: doom, doom, doom, unhurried, in the old pounding measure, not one stroke astray.
The cover closed. The sound cut off.
The clan said: it is over; the palace is finished. I alone said: it is not. You did not understand that last stretch of pestle-work — no despairing hand pounds in a measure that steady. That steadiness was Mother telling the outside:
the palace passes into long night. The watch continues as normal.
So these three hundred years, the clan pounds nightly in obedience to her order. I pound nightly as her opposite shift.
I set my stone mortar on the highest crag below Vulture Peak, square to the black moon, and every night I strike the pestle-beat toward it. On ordinary nights, the sound goes out and sinks without trace.
But eclipse nights are different.
The eclipse is the black moon's blackest hour — and the cover's thinnest. Three hundred years of crag-keeping taught me this: the cover breathes, and at eclipse it stretches tautest; and taut means thin.
The first eclipse that answered, I remember exactly: the seventh year after the fall. I pounded as usual, the beat went out — and from deep inside the black moon, immensely far, immensely muffled, as through a thousand layers of wadding:
doom. Doom. Doom.
The master pestle's measure. Mother's hand.
I dropped to my knees on the crag and howled — and when the howling was done, I kept pounding. No faltering allowed: if my beat had wavered, and she heard it on her side, she would have worried.
Three hundred years now, on every eclipse night, mother and daughter pound facing each other through a single cover — one in heaven, one on earth. Neither can hear the other's words. Only pestle answering pestle.
And in her beat I can read her condition. The first century: a measure deep and vigorous — the master mortar unchanged, her strength in its prime. The second century: the beat lighter, as if the mortar had been exchanged for a smaller — the master mortar must have failed. And these recent decades —
these decades, her beat has slowed. The rests between strokes have grown long.
Mother is aging. Inside that cover, in a place without radiance and without osmanthus dew, she keeps a palace of whoever now remains — and grows old, one pestle-stroke at a time.
When the little sister asked to march, I forbade it at first — her hands are the steadiest we have, and the clan's pounding cannot spare her. Then I thought it through, and not only released her: I came myself.
Because the arithmetic is plain: on mortal herbs, our Clear-Radiance will never pass a tenth of its true potency; and Mother's beat slows year upon year. Waiting will produce nothing.
Someone must go and tear the cover down.
I have heard the company's errands: one seeks a master; one, a brother; one, a bell; one, a drum.
Mine is the simplest. I seek my mother.
If an eclipse falls while we travel, bear with me — I will stop, set the mortar, and pound.
It is the shift she and I keep together. Three hundred years, and not one night missed.
And until the day the cover comes down — not one night will be.