IT TAKES TIME TO GROW
T.C. McCarthy
“In waking a tiger, use a long stick.”
—Mao Zedong
We do not speak of the great cold anymore because the story is old, and its words have worn thin, cracking in places and too delicate to unwrap or its edges could crumble. I don’t need to remember our history; neebs know it all. The old women do as well, using it on misbehaving children: do not speak to an elder like that or they will send you to the great cold.
We learn as children that this was once a real punishment, and also a test given to us by our forefathers because to travel north and return from the ice proved you were a warrior. But nobody travels there now. The ice has retreated a distance so great that none in my generation or my father’s have seen it; to travel that far means going into areas that are jars recently uncovered, their contents a new poison to the Earth. My father says that in a time almost as old as the beginnings, there were many more laws and rules, ones that kept anyone from travelling north into ice-lands or east, where the lowland jungles gave birth to wicked flesh-eating tribes. We are lucky, he says, that there is a new test.
Neebs are the wisest in our tribe. They know the ancient words and writings, and when my father once returned from the hunt with a book of words, the neebs took it to one of their huts. For three days they studied. But when they emerged and the people expected them to explain what my father had found, one of the wise ones said this knowledge is meant for neebs. But everyone knew the book had filled the old women with dread since several of them emerged from the hut with tears.
Neebs teach us that to point at the moon will get our ears sliced and that when we travel from the village we must call out to our spirit so it doesn’t remain behind, lost in the pines and tea plants. Once a bird flew into our dwelling. My father called a neeb who chased after it, explaining that bad luck would come if she didn’t kill it. As the tribe’s leader, my father’s sons had to know all the laws and all the spirits’ names, and the oldest neeb made sure we could recite everything in our sleep. My mother was a neeb but I don’t remember her. She was, others tell me, the most beautiful woman in the village.
My mother died in the last tribal war but my father is a Kaitong, the one who leads our warriors, and he brings me on hunts—customary for Hmong boys who reach the age. I once killed a rock ape in the mountains near the old city where they have a warren of tunnels, endless mazes of dirt and rock where the creatures hide from sunlight. That was a year ago. My father still tells the story around the fire and since then the men let me take from the servings meant for those who have proved themselves in war. It is a high honor. Rock apes are magical creatures that steal the tribes’ babies to drink their blood, and whose long fangs can bite through a tree trunk. It has been over a hundred years since any tribe has killed one, and after my arrows skewered an ape to a tree, none of the monsters have been seen near the village.
Because of this I have my own bow and knife and am permitted to travel short distances into the western and southern jungles, and sometimes I go as far as the dead city near the Eastern Salt Sea. My father learned of this. He was furious that I had broken the law but also proud that his child had the courage to go alone. Everyone saw it in his eyes while one of his warriors whipped my bare back. My father tells me that I am different from my brothers. He says my soul is from the time before, a world destroyer’s; it has spent many lives on the Earth and returned from ancient days when men with skin the color of clouds flew in great birds to drop curses from the air. That is why I do not fear the cities, he says: my spirit remembers destroying them.
When my time came, I knew where I would go. Questions he had raised about the men in birds were slivers of fire in my chest and head, with one way to extinguish them. On that day I said to my father, “I’m ready; I must go.”
“I wondered when you would come to me.”
“And I invoke lo lus uas peb.”
Father stared for a moment, thinking, before he placed a hand on my shoulder. “Please do not do this. I suspect where you would go, and there is only death in these places.”
“I have learned our laws,” I said.
“It is your right to choose. But nobody ever does because of the danger, and I am the Kaitong, and it is my right to choose whether you take the test alone. If you invoke lo lus uas peb, I will send you out with Lig—one of the apprentice neebs.”
“A girl?” I asked. “You would insult your own son?”
The words had come out before I had a chance to think, but my father did not get angry. “Not a girl—a wise one. Where you are going, a neeb will prove useful, and it will help her learn about the days from before. You have a strong spirit, and it does not surprise me that you would choose your own path; the elders will also not be surprised.”
“I will take Lig.” I turned before he could see the rage in my eyes, which grew from knowing what others would say when they learned I would not be going alone, and worse: with a girl.
That night the older neebs locked the two of us, me and Lig, in the house of spirits and performed the rites all night long, their voices lifted in song and in chants. This was my first cleansing. I ignored Lig, who sobbed beside me and who had dressed in her ritual clothes, their reds and yellows so bright they were visible even by candle. She was still a child, at least a year beneath me, and part of me felt guilty for having forced my father to send her into the wilds. The old neebs’ prayers should have calmed Lig, but they appeared to have no effect, which did not surprise me; the prayers did nothing to calm my excitement either.
The next morning a thick fog lay within the mountains’ low meadows, far beneath us while my father and the hunters prepared me for the journey. The neebs attended to Lig, and I could not hear their words.
“This is your grandfather’s crossbow,” my father said. He slung it over my shoulder along with a hollow bamboo quiver of bolts. Then one of the hunters wrapped a leather belt around my bare stomach. “And this is his sword.”
“I did not know grandfather’s sword survived the war with the lowlanders.”
“It did. And this is his spear. He used it to kill the chieftain, and we have never cleaned the blood from it. Blood is strong magic. The metal is reclaimed from ancient days.”
The spear’s dark shaft ended with a long steel tip, triangular, razor sharp, and stained with brown-red spots.
“It is weighted well.”
Father nodded. “He knew before I did that his grandson would be a great warrior; my father’s last command was to keep them safe for you. Only ancient steel can be sharpened to that fine of an edge. Be careful.”
When the last warrior finished with my belt, they all left. To say goodbye brought evil spirits and bad luck, so they remained silent, and I watched my father’s back to look for signs of sadness but there was nothing. Someone tugged at my shoulder. Lig was there, still dressed in her ritual garment and still crying, so out of sympathy I kept to myself the fact that her clothes and sandals would not hold up in the wilds.
I started down the path most people avoided—the one leading northward—and Lig tugged my shoulder again. “They said you are mad, that you would take us toward the cold.”
“We make for the Nam Thi. Then north into the old lands.”
“You are insane!”
“This is my test,” I said, continuing down the path even though she had stopped to stamp a foot. “Stay behind if you wish; tell the elders and the neebs that you refused their direction.”
Lig said nothing. She pouted when after a while I stopped to sit cross-legged beneath the shade of a large tea plant, its broad leaves second only to the lotus as the most sacred to our tribe, and we waited. Soon the mountainside became still. Lig once opened her mouth as if to speak but then said nothing, instead sitting next to me. Even though I knew which direction to go, this was the most important step of our journey, and she knew not to interrupt because to do so would insult the mountains. Mountain spirits were not to be ignored, and to venture on a journey without their blessing would have brought evil.
The sun rose to its highest point before a muntjac emerged from the trees alongside the path ahead of us, a long distance away, where it stopped to turn its head. Its stare bored into my chest. The size of this beast would have made it a prized kill for the hunt, and muntjac never came this close to the village, so this was a powerful sign; wherever the thing led we would be obligated to follow. It turned north, headed along the path we had already started down, and then disappeared around a curve with a leap.
“That is the sign,” I said.
“The sign that we will die.”
“Save your breath, neeb. This will be a long test.”
The journey northward took more moons and suns than I could count, and before long I had to cut Lig’s ceremonial clothing so she could move more easily, throwing her sandals into the thick bushes that flanked the path. Before long we ran out of dried meat and had to hunt. The spirits provided, and it was another powerful sign: muntjacs appeared along our trail when needed, and we used small cooking fires to avoid attracting predators. Even Lig began to smile. It was as if the way had been prepared long ago, the trees and grassland hills scrubbed clean of dangers from the time before.
After what felt like an entire moon cycle, our path took us lower and out of the mountains where the jungle claimed its rights to the earth and rose up in a wall of green as if a line had been drawn in the clay.
“To the east,” I whispered, “and the south and west, the jungles do not appear like this. Here, the trees appear suddenly as if God ordered the jungle to stop in a line.”
“Ice,” Lig said.
“What?”
“You warriors know nothing. It is because of the great cold. That line is as far as the ice came, before it began the retreat. It means that to our north, there will be newly exposed dwellings of the old ones, the places we have been warned about.”
“Do you believe that?” I asked. “It is said that the ice scraped the earth clean wherever it touched, and that even rock could not withstand it. How could the old ones’ dwellings survive?”
“You are a fool.”
I hadn’t been mad at Lig since we first left, but now my chest tightened. “I am a prince, son of the Kaitong and one who has killed a rock ape. You’re just a girl.”
“And you are too stupid to realize that you should be terrified!” Lig started into the jungle. She knew it would be an insult to me, since this was my journey and not hers. “I read the writings your father brought back. Did you?”
I pushed in front of her, looking for an animal trail to make the way easier. “A warrior is not to read the old languages.”
“I know. We would never allow warriors to have that knowledge. The papers spoke of a great heat that resulted from the weapons used in the ancient war, a heat worse than any cooking fire. This fire lasts forever.”
“So?”
“So, son of a Kaitong, heat melts ice. The old dwellings were never covered, were never scraped from the earth because the ice never took hold within them as a result of the eternal fires of destruction. Who knows what evils have grown there over all these generations?”
Her words passed through me, cold; where once had been confidence now lay questions and doubt, and I glanced around, whispering for my spirit to draw close and stay with me. No test is without a trial. These words rose to the top of my thoughts having been spoken by my father to me and my brothers, and from his father to him. This was the test. The harder the trial, the greater the glory, and the greatest glory always came to those ready to lead the tribe and navigate the dangers of jungle and forest, mountain and lowland. Always.
“I dreamed,” I said. “After I spoke of my dream the mother neeb and my father told me that I am returned from the old ones, a warrior. These places will not kill me.”
“Death is not always the worst outcome.”
The deeper we moved into the jungle, the darker it became. Soon even the insects stopped their droning, and massive trees submerged us within their ocean of greens and blacks, the air still, heavy and warm—so thick it became difficult to breathe. A search for muntjac tracks along the trail we’d found yielded nothing, and soon it was clear that no animals had traveled here in the last few weeks. This was a place of ill magic. Lig’s muttered prayers broke the silence, and I joined her, my lips moving without sound at the same time I dropped my spear to draw my crossbow and load it with a bolt. She saw me, and her mouth opened to speak. But Lig stopped when I raised my crossbow, pointing it at a wall of low bushes that had managed to grow within a small patch of sunlight, one that wormed its way through the high canopy.
You could sense it. Whatever force or spirit had quieted the jungle dwelled within the bushes ahead of us, and it occurred to me with a deep sense of dread: a warrior would know what to do, would protect his neeb. I moved forward. A few steps brought me closer to the foliage, and I dropped the crossbow, drawing grandfather’s sword in one fluid movement.
Without warning, a storm of vines erupted from the bushes and shot toward me like thousands of green tentacles, their intelligent hunger making my head pound with a pulsing rhythm. My sword moved without thought. Years of training took the place of conscious decision making, a force of will from within my spirit guiding the blade to slice through the vegetation, sending lopped-off sections of intelligent vines to writhe on the jungle floor.
“Strangle vines!” I screamed. “Grab my crossbow and spear.”
Lig snatched up my weapons and we ran, sprinting along the first path we could find and without thinking of other dangers that may lie ahead. But we were lucky. Soon the jungle sounds returned, and we hid at the base of a seraya tree, its trunk towering overhead and massive roots forming a pocket that hid us from view. My hands trembled in the wake of having almost killed us both. There was no excuse—having spent so much time in the wilds—for missing the signs of strangle vines, and a deep sense of shame began to replace fear and the exhilaration of escaping death. I was about to apologize when I heard water.
I grabbed Lig’s hand and pulled her up so our heads poked over the roots, where the sound was clearer. She heard it too. Ahead of us to the north the jungle grew on a downward slope, and we crept forward, pushing through the brush and tangles until I found a game trail, which we followed until the jungle broke into a shower of sunlight and heat. This was a riverbank. A few meters beneath us the Red River flowed, its water dark with sediment and swirling in eddies so gentle they whispered promises of safety.
“Beyond this river is the ancient world, a place once called China,” Lig said.
“And the city I saw in my dreams.”
“The city you saw is called Kunming. It was a center of horror and death, where ancient priests created monsters of war that they unleashed upon the earth. Upon our people.”
“You have seen these places?” I asked. “How?”
“It is in the old writings. Books and maps. Mother neeb made me study them when she learned of your intentions. We knew you’d come here. On the map there was an ancient road”—Lig paused to stare at the far bank and the hills beyond it, before she pointed—“and if it is still passable, it leads through a valley that should be somewhere in that direction. We are a day from the old city.”
“Good. We will refill our water skins and continue. By tomorrow, we will enter this place—Kunming—and you will see I was right to come here.”
“And the sixth angel poured out its bowl on the great river.” Lig had mumbled the words, but they sounded strange and powerful, resonating with my spirit.
“Is that a prayer?” I asked.
“It is a warning—from a long time ago, for people like you. It came from the men with pink skin, who harbored us in their lands until we could return to our mountain.”
“It is late,” I said. “We will sleep by the river and make for the city at first light.”
No sleep came to me that night, and prayers did nothing to calm my nerves, which refused to relax or ignore the sense of anticipation. I had been to old places before. The cold had not ever reached our village, and so ruins of their small towns in the lowlands rose out of the earth, half covered in dirt. These had been picked clean—the leftovers of life in empty crusts, which animals and man had scavenged again and again. Kunming would be different. Even from this distance you sensed the energy because it flowed like the Red River did, between the steep mountains and hills, seeping between trees and tea plants until it filled the hollow we’d used as our camp.
I did not remember much of the next day. We broke camp and found a shallow place to cross, my spear gripped in both hands in case a massive khej or some other monster had claimed this section of the waters for itself. But we passed with no incident. Then the hills of China enveloped us, their slopes covered with younger trees than the ones we had just left, and Lig said something about a new jungle being born from the ice but the words barely registered; everything had gone quiet again. We had entered a new world after the crossing, a place avoided by muntjac, and the farther we traveled the more my excitement grew: What would I find as a prize? To return to the village with a tool or ancient weapon would be seen as a great sign. Lost in those thoughts, my surroundings disappeared, and it surprised me when the hills gave way to another mountain range where we found one of the old paths. It must have been tremendous when new; Lig and I marveled at the width and materials used for its construction, huge blocks of pale rock through which plants now grew to reduce sections of the road to sand. I asked Lig how many people lived here in order to justify such a large path but she didn’t answer.
Just before sunset we crested a pass in the mountains where we stopped. I felt my heart beat against my chest, its muscles pumping blood as if readying me for battle. Beneath us in a valley stretched out a massive dwelling of the old ones, its size nothing like I’d seen before and even stories of the old capital near our village made it clear this place was once greater—perhaps the greatest dwelling place that had ever been built. And now that we’d arrived my excitement shifted to fear, a sensation that something was wrong with the silence, which festered in this desolation. I almost didn’t feel Lig when she grabbed my hand.
“Listen to me,” she said.
“What?”
“We must stay to the edges of the city. You can see where the old weapons were used, in the areas where nothing grows and the tall homes were flattened.”
“Those are homes?” I asked. The things rose into the sky for miles, their sides covered in green vines. “How many families lived in them? Wouldn’t birds run into their sides, and how did one get all the way to the top? How brave these men must have been, to live next to the cloud spirits.”
I had many questions and was about to ask them all but Lig waved me quiet. “Listen. There is a dangerous heat here, even at the edges. You will get your prize, and then we must leave.”
“Do you hear that, Lig? No animals or even bugs, just plants.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise. This is why they sent you, because I am a warrior and you are a neeb. It is right that I listen to your council. Besides, something is off with this place, and the sooner we cross back over the Red River, the better. We have an hour or two of sunlight; let’s move.”
Ice had scavenged the outer edges of the city so that a tall berm of sand and rock, punctuated by massive boulders, encircled like a wall. Lig stumbled but we made it over. Beyond the berm we moved into shadows. The homes stretched so high above us they blocked the sun and the warmth, making me shiver at the same time thousands of rectangular openings stared down with black eyelike voids. Something rustled in one closest to us. I spun toward a door, its wood long since rotted away, and lowered my spear at the same time I crept toward it.
“It was just a breeze,” Lig whispered.
“Maybe. What does that writing say, over the door?”
Lig looked away, embarrassed, so I repeated the question.
“It says Yuxi Adult Store and Entertainment,” she muttered.
“Adult store?”
“They used to sell things in places called stores; they were like inside markets. This one sold . . . items.”
You could see that her face was still red, but I decided not to press the question further.
My eyes adjusted to the dimness inside and marveled; this was once the market of a wealthy old one, its walls still gleaming with gold and silver despite the place’s age. Much of its contents had turned to dust. I asked my spirit to announce my entry, to alert any others that we had come in peace and would not disturb the sleep of those still here. It was a wise thing to do, I thought, for whoever once dwelled here must have been a powerful man and commanded great respect. The rustling sound came again and I relaxed. Lig had been correct; a breeze moved what little remained of old fabric that hung from a nearby window.
“What is that?” I asked, pointing. A long rectangular table stood against a wall near the doorway we had entered, much of it consisting of shattered glass that hung within a metal frame. A dull metal object inside the frame looked different.
“That is a weapon. They called it a pistol. It is like a crossbow but instead of a bowstring it used a small explosion to send metal into an enemy.” I grabbed at it and Lig hissed. “Be careful! It could still function, even after all these years.”
“I am a warrior, and this is my test,” I said, tucking the pistol into my sword belt. “This is my prize. Now we can go.”
Lig and I both heard the noise—someone’s voice, singing—and we hurried outside where we stopped, our mouths open in amazement.
A figure moved toward us, still distant enough that you could not see details but her long dark hair flowed in the breeze, and she wore a gown made from metallic fabric, its weave shimmering whenever she passed through a shaft of sunlight. It looked almost like the woman floated. There was no sense of leg movement, and when she got closer I realized why: the vines, which covered the tall homes around us, also coated parts of the roads where they sent out carpets of small tendrils that lifted the woman off the ground and carried her forward.
“What is she saying?” I asked.
“That is the old tongue, Chinese. She is asking us to stay with her.”
“What? Is she an old one? How could any have survived the war and the heat?”
“There is something wrong with her,” Lig said.
Another rustling sound caught my ear, this time from nearby in the shadows; the vines there had begun sprouting. Smaller vines and tendrils like the ones carrying the woman crept toward us. Not strangle vines—these were something different, and as I watched, one of them grew a small flower that puffed and blew fine white dust into the air, forming a cloud around us.
“She has no eyes,” Lig muttered. “Only holes, like the empty windows of these homes. I’m so tired. Maybe I will stay.”
“Run!” I screamed.
You could feel it; the dust got everywhere and without warning a sense of fatigue hit, almost forcing me to my knees and blurring my vision. The woman continued forward. Now she was close enough that her dark eyes became visible, their empty sockets dripping black liquid that slid down both cheeks and onto the road.
I grabbed Lig but it was too late; the vines had taken hold of her and wrapped both legs in their thick fibers, sending small tendrils to pierce the skin of her calves, and when I tugged at her she screamed.
“I want to stay,” Lig said. “The woman needs us. You can stay too; there is knowledge here, and I can see her thoughts as she sees mine. Through the vines.”
“I am not staying. Come, I can save you but it will hurt.”
“Leave that one alone,” the woman said. Now she spoke in our language, but her booming voice was not that of a human, but of something else. This was a danger I’d never faced. The enormity of it overpowered me with realizations that Lig was becoming more entangled by the second and that at any moment the dust could render me unconscious.
And the woman was almost upon us.
“She is ours.”
A vine came closer, forcing me to jump away from Lig where I landed in a patch empty of vegetation, and the movement out of the dust cloud allowed me to shake off some of the strange effects. Part of me wanted to stay; how could I return to the village, even with my prize, and explain that I had abandoned one of our neebs to a monster? That was not the action of a warrior or Kaitong’s son. But there was no saving Lig; after retreating a distance, careful to avoid any vines, I watched as the woman reached Lig’s side. The vines had grabbed hold of every one of Lig’s limbs, and at first I thought the woman bent down to kiss her victim, but instead she ripped Lig’s arms off in a single motion.
I ran. The last sounds I heard were Lig’s screams and a faint voice that came not from the woman, but from the air itself.
“We will come visit you soon,” it said. “This one had much knowledge, and now we know the path. You will see us again in a while. It takes time to grow.”