Lei sat in the stone window of the dormitory facing the northern horizon where a star shower fanned across the black like the mane of a great fiery horse. The stars had been streaking northward for more than an hour. At first, Lei had tensed with each star fall for a distant boom, but the silent grandeur of the spectacle soon consumed him. He now sat still, the dim light of the crescent moon touching his hair.
Lei heard his younger brother sit up on his futon and plunk down onto the tiles of the stone floor. He did not turn to see that it was his brother. He did not need to. His brother alone of all the students at Shukinjen Orphanage made such noise. Although Shen was still but a child of four years, there were many younger boys in the orphanage and any of them would have crossed the floor with no more sound than that of late autumn frost settling upon the grass. Little Shen was the exception, and despite the fact that they were the only family for each other in this world, Lei felt shame smolder as he listened to his brother toddling across the room. Lei felt the swell of impatience, a weakness that grew with each new season, a weakness his brother did not have. The monks of the temple advised Lei to be grateful for this weakness because of the humility it could instill.
Shen came to his brother’s side and looked out across the lands. From the second story window of the orphanage they could see across the Fe Lung River, glittering with torchlight from the village on the far bank, to the wild country sky beyond the nearest hills.
“Stars hum when they fall,” said Shen.
“You’re hearing cicadas,” said Lei.
Shen moved closer to his older brother. His mouth widened. Wonder filled his eyes. Lei could see the reflection of star tails in his little brother’s irises. He turned back to the window and the two watched the shower wordlessly for many moments.
Shen asked, “Will the sky run out of stars?”
Lei did not answer immediately. “They aren’t stars,” he said finally. “They’re small rocks.”
Shen turned his head to look at Lei, searching for the same sincerity in his brother’s expression that he heard in his voice. “Brother Tai says they are lost stars.”
“He doesn’t know,” said Lei.
Shen spoke with the unpracticed doubt of a child. “How do you know?”
“Our father told me,” said Lei.
“We don’t have a father,” said Shen, who was no longer paying attention to the starscape.
Lei still faced the sky, but his eyes were misted with memories. “We used to once when you were very, very young. A mother too.” Lei’s voice dropped until Shen could barely hear. “We lived in a house in the country. Our father was a great warrior. Our mother was....” Lei looked down into his little brother’s face. “She could read the stars. And she could see things in the future. They traveled together up into the night, into the void beyond the sky, in a countless armada of wooden ships without sails.”
Shen giggled. His eyes wandered back to the cascade of shooting stars in the north, but his older brother continued.
“They rose into the skies on the dragon-necked prow of a mighty ship after the Emperor made war and sent them to take the stars. We watched that night. All of us. I cradled you in my arms when the ships began to fall, burning, one by one. They went down into the sea. There,” Lei pointed. “They were falling like slow-moving comets - globes of fire soft and round. At dawn hundreds of columns of smoke could be seen rising out of the ocean up into the sky and out of sight, like a bamboo forest with no top. The next day the monks came to take us away.”
Shen’s eyes were heavy with confusion and sleep, and Lei led him back to the empty wooden bed. Shen clambered up onto the wooden frame and lay back on his futon, the air between them filled with the scent of stale wool. Shen rested his neck on the leather padded wooden crossbeam and met his brother’s eyes, searching for reality, unsure of the images of falling ships that now haunted his imagination.
Lei sat on the edge of the bed and took his brother’s hand. In soft words he spoke. “Our father was a captain, a hero of the Xiang Empire. Our mother was…powerful…a sort of priest. They rode into the stars to war on the ones that live above the sky. It was a secret they were forbidden to speak of.
“But Father told me several times of the barrier above the sky. He told me of flying up, up into the high air, up higher until the lands below stretch out so far that you can see a hundred thousand leagues in every direction. Even further. He had seen all the way across the ocean to the shores on the other side. He said that the Sheong Forest in the north appears only as a tiny patch on the ground and you can look past the Fangs of Yeuw to the barbarian lands beyond. And the Tar Sea, Father told me that it glitters beyond the T’Gun Mountains like a shard of polished jet.
“Father told me how it was to rise above all the lands until the air was so thin that no bird could fly and that a great barrier stretched above the sky, flat and clear like the surface of a never-ending mirror. He told me that when ships pass through the barrier it ripples like the surface of a lake and then flattens again until it is as smooth as glass. Beyond the barrier there is no day, only night, and some of the stars burn as bright as the sun, and there are more moons and comets and stars than can be counted, and there are ships crewed by strange types of men from distant lands, and if you set off from the barrier, you will be lost and might never find your way back,” Lei hesitated, “might never want to.
“Father said that the land stretches out forever in every direction and that from outside the barrier you can look back and see when the sun disappears at night past the end of the world and you can watch it appear again in the morning when it rises from the misty seas in the East. He said that there are ports and kingdoms in the void beyond the sky, and markets and wars and races of misshapen men and beasts, and vessels as large as cities…all out there.”
Lei’s eyes returned to the darkness of the dormitory room. The cold of night was in the air. Shen’s breathing indicated deep sleep. His eyes were closed and his face was at peace. Lei stood and crossed the floor noiselessly back to the window. The stars were still streaking into the horizon. Never since that night long ago had he been able to watch a meteor shoot across the sky without expecting a far-off boom, without seeing the falling ships in his mind, or without hearing the urgency and wonder that had filled his father’s voice as he related the forbidden lore of worlds above the world. Lei had shared that wonder. Lei had understood. Lei had wanted to go see the void beyond the barrier with his father. Even now he yearned to rise from the earth and go straight into the sky. But instead, just as he had done each year as the annual star shower passed, he went to the cedar box that his mother had left for him, opened the lid, and removed a tiny cotton scroll.
“Dear Son,” it read. “How often I have seen you with your father. He loves the stars and I know that someday he wishes to share that joy with you. I know as well that you burn with desire to see them with him. But listen to me, my son. You were born under the aspect of the snake. You are of the earth and your destiny is bound to it. You are strong with its power. But just as I know that I shall never see your face after this night, so too I know that your feet shall never leave the paths of the earth.
“Please do not be angry. This is simply your karma. Your brother is weak of body but strong of spirit. He was born under the sign of the dragon and he is attuned to the stars. They will speak to him, just as they speak to me. Guard him well, my son, and teach him what you have learned from your father. Teach him that above the moons is the realm of the gods and that no one, not even the Emperor Himself, can conquer what lies beyond. Teach your brother well, for one day he shall walk among the stars.”
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