Chapter 33

That night her grandmother lost her temper completely.

Ning Shu had never seen her in a rage like it. Out in the dark yard Gouwa and Ning Shu lay in the rocking chairs to get cool, and from inside the house came Ye Furong and her grandmother going at each other and her uncle trying to settle them.

"She's my daughter. Is it so much to ask her to help me? That client is the bridge Hengtao's whole business runs over. If we can bring him round, the company gets through this, and I'd have a voice in the Ning house at last."

Her grandmother was past it with her. "What do you take your own daughter for? You didn't want her, and I raised her with my own hands and a great deal of trouble, and not so that the pack of you could use her. I won't have it. Whatever you say."

Ye Furong said, "How am I using her? I'm asking for one tear."

"One tear. Do you know what you're talking about? The blood of a qilin and the tears of a phoenix are not ordinary things. That is a wicked art and there's no conscience anywhere in it. I will never let Ningning near it and have her pull fire down on herself."

Gouwa asked Ning Shu, not following, "What's qilin blood and phoenix tears?"

"I don't know either." Ning Shu shook her head. She felt as though she had heard the two of them somewhere, and she could not get at where.

"By the sound of what my aunt's saying, the phoenix tears are your tears."

"So I'm a phoenix now." Ning Shu laughed. "How interesting."

Then Ye Furong again. "Mum, do you have any idea how rich the Lus are? Ten Ning families aren't worth one Lu family. If Ningning would help them and save their young master, think what we'd be owed. Ningning's whole future in the city would be secured."

"She doesn't need it." Her grandmother swept her hand through the air. "Our Ningning is going to be a great master and there's no limit on what she'll come to. What does she want with leaning on people like that?"

"Mum, are you really going to put Ningning into your own line of work? Look at your life. You've spent the whole of it stuck in a poor corner of nowhere. If you ask me, the best thing for Ningning is to get in with the Lus, and then have the Lus make her a good match. That's the proper road."

"Oh God. Mum, what's the matter?"

"Mum, take it slowly. Don't make yourself ill."

Ning Shu was out of the rocking chair at once and running for the inner room. Ye Furong had driven her grandmother's blood pressure up, and her uncle was already getting her tablets into her.

"Get out." Her grandmother shouted at Ye Furong. "Get out. You're not welcome in this house."

Ye Furong looked at her own mother half fainting with temper and finally went, sheepish about it. "I'll go, then. Everything I do is for your future and somehow it's all my fault."

Her grandmother was breathing hard. She caught up a bag of tonics off the table and threw it after her. "Take your things with you. And don't come back."

Ye Furong went that night and did not come back. Later Ning Shu and Gouwa crept to the door of her grandmother's room and put their heads round it, and her aunt, who had just settled her down, made a sign at them to be quiet.

"How is she?"

Her aunt said, "How do you think, after your mother? Her health hasn't been good since the start of the year."

"Can I go in and see her?"

"Go on. Your grandmother may have things she wants to tell you."

Ning Shu went in, and Gouwa came at her heels and got taken by the collar. "You can stay out of it."

The room smelled of herbs. Her grandmother was sitting half up in bed, grey at the temples, with very little life in her.

Since coming back from Jiangcheng three years ago her health had been nothing like what it was, and this business with Ye Furong had aged her further.

"Grandma, don't be angry. We'll take no notice of her."

Her grandmother held Ning Shu's hand. "Ningning, you must remember what I say. When you go to the city for school, whatever you do, don't listen to your mother."

"Grandma, what are qilin blood and phoenix tears? I feel as though I've heard of them and I can't think where."

Her grandmother sighed. "The blood of a qilin and the tears of a phoenix aren't really a qilin's blood and a phoenix's tears. They mean people born with the gift. The qilin is a man and the phoenix is a woman, and there isn't one of either in a million. Think how hard they are to find."

"Grandma, Mum wants my tears. So I'm the phoenix?"

It sounded very odd to Ning Shu's own ears.

"Ningning, you are the phoenix that will go up into the ninth heaven. Your blood and your tears alike are treasures that money can't buy, and you must never give them away lightly."

"But Grandma, never mind whatever Mum's got planned. If my tears really can save somebody, then save them. That's a good deed to lay up."

Her grandmother sighed. "If all it took were a cry to save a life, would I stand in your way?"

Ning Shu did not follow. "Then."

"Ningning, leave aside that taking qilin blood and phoenix tears is a crooked business in itself. These tears of a phoenix are not ordinary tears."

Ning Shu frowned. "What sort of tears are they?"

Her grandmother did not answer, and asked her instead, "When does a person cry?"

Ning Shu said, "When they're sad, of course."

"And when does a phoenix cry?"

Ning Shu laughed. "A phoenix is king of the birds. Does a phoenix cry at all?"

Her grandmother stroked her head. "A phoenix weeps blood. So the tears have to come out of love run as deep as it goes, and a pain that opens the heart. Not from tripping over, or from rubbing an onion in your eye."

Only then did Ning Shu understand why her grandmother did not want her saving anybody.

"The Heavenly Master said it. You're iron-hearted, no feeling and no loyalty."

Her grandmother poked Ning Shu's forehead. "And I'd rather you had no feeling and no loyalty than see you in a cage. Of all the bitter seas in this world, the sea of feeling is the widest."

Ning Shu took her grandmother's wrinkled fingers. "Don't you worry, Grandma. I've no intention of liking anybody as long as I live, and I'm certainly not drowning in any sea of feeling. I'm going to be a great master. And I remember you telling me that a great master can't have anything behind her to worry about."

"Ever since that demon-subduing staff owned you for its master, I haven't been easy about it."

"Grandma, what has the staff got to do with it?" Ning Shu did not follow.

"Do you know what the four faces on the head of it are?"

Ning Shu answered, "Joy, anger, grief and delight."

"They see the whole of what a life tastes like. The master that staff chooses is always someone who feels everything to the bottom."

"But Grandma, didn't the Heavenly Master say I had no feeling and no loyalty? How am I now someone who feels everything?" Ning Shu could make nothing of it.

Her grandmother shook her head. "There's no reading heaven. Even with the heavenly eye open there's a great deal in this world we can't see clearly and can't hold. Ningning, remember what I'm telling you. Never take the crooked road. Don't set your own will against everything. And don't sink into the sea of feeling and be unable to get out of it. You could reach the Way and take your place among the immortals, and when you looked back at the world from there you'd find everything you'd held on to was very small."

"I understand, Grandma."

---

The start of term came closer, and Ye Furong had not given up. She had enrolled Gouwa at Jiangcheng Number One and paid over twenty thousand in fees, and although her aunt kept trying to give the money back, Ye Furong would not take it. She said, "Gouwa is my own nephew. You're treating me like an outsider. Even if Ningning won't do what I asked, getting Gouwa into the best high school in Jiangcheng is something I'm glad to do as his aunt."

The nearer the term came, the less Ning Shu could bear to leave her grandmother.

They were shelling peanuts in the back yard with her aunt, and Ning Shu said, "If Grandma can't bear to let me go, I'll do my high school in the town and keep her company another three years."

Her grandmother gave her nothing. "Bear to let you go? Once you're gone I'll have some peace and quiet."

"Then come to the city with us. I've got enough saved now for the deposit on a big flat in Jiangcheng, and my uncle and aunt as well. We'd all live together."

"Spare me. I couldn't stand the city." Her grandmother waved it off. "I'd no wish to go off and make my way there when I was young, and I've less now I'm old. What I'm counting on is that once you're gone I can sit quietly on my bit of land and see my old age out in peace."

Ning Shu knew her grandmother disliked the noise and glitter of cities, so she let it go.

Her aunt would go to the city to work and look after Gouwa and Ning Shu, while her uncle stayed in the village with her grandmother and grandfather.

What her grandmother wanted was for her uncle to go too, since splitting a husband and wife up was no good to anybody. After a great deal of back and forth, her uncle agreed to go as well.

Gouwa had grown up. He had shot up to one metre eighty, a young man entirely, and he had gone quiet with the family, not the boy who used to be into everything.

With Ning Shu he still talked plenty, telling her who in his class liked him and every other trivial thing that happened. He had turned out well-looking, and the two of them standing anywhere together got noticed.

In the back half of August her uncle and aunt took Ning Shu and Gouwa into the city. Her grandmother stood on the hill to see them off, and Ning Shu sat in the car watching that bent figure get smaller, and her eyes went red.

"Sis, don't cry," Gouwa said beside her. "Grandma says those tears of yours are precious. Every one of them's a mountain of gold. Shame to waste them."

That made Ning Shu laugh, and when she looked back her grandmother was out of sight.

Partings cannot be helped. Ning Shu had come back and got to live this long with her grandmother and grandfather, and she was satisfied with that. This time she would not go round the same road again. She meant to hold her own fate in her own hands.

Ye Furong and Ning Hengtao made a point of driving to the airport to meet them.

In the car Ning Hengtao said, "You won't have found anywhere to live yet. Stay at ours for now. It's a big house and there are rooms enough."

Her uncle said, "There's no need. We'll stay at a hotel."

"Brother, finding somewhere to rent can't be rushed. Are you going to live in a hotel every day?" Ye Furong said warmly. "Stay at ours, and look for a place in your own time. And even once you've rented somewhere you'll have to furnish it. None of that can be hurried."

Her uncle looked round at Ning Shu, and Ning Hengtao, afraid she would have objections, said at once, "Ningning, don't worry. Your grandmother has learned her lesson over the years and she's changed a great deal. She means it this time, and she'd be glad to have you."

Ning Shu said, "You decide, Uncle. It makes no difference to me. A hotel is fine too."

She had money, after all, and could stay as long as she liked. Three years of streaming had earned her a good deal.

Her uncle and aunt could not really stand the idea of a hotel every night and what it would burn through, so they agreed to stay at the Ning house for the time being, and to move out the moment they had somewhere of their own.