The moon and the stars were all out, and the night was getting on. There was no sign of Emil returning from the waves, so Wilhelmina, a princess of far, far away Chang’an, hugged her knees to herself, and thought of what to do.
She could go into the waters after him, but though she was a strong swimmer, the meer-maids were monstrously fearsome and the memory of them pulling her by the hair to the seafloor held her firmly back.
It had been a long, long way to get here, to Prometheus’s Rock, Aslan’s Table, that place of dreadful sacrifice, where the meer-maids sing, each to each. She and Huohu the firefox, they had come through the desert places, they had crossed the Roman Empires, they had stopped at Rom itself to search for Li Bai, and not finding him there had pressed on. Huohu and Wilhelmina had crossed the Alps and traversed the Bavarian forests. They had passed over the Limes and rowed across the Mecklenburgish lakes. All for a chance, to come here to the edge of the world, for a cure.
She thought of her mother’s rhododendrons at home, and of her father’s peonies as well. She thought of the banana leaves and bamboo that belonged to her great-great-grandmother Dowager Li in her Jiangnan garden of surpassing beauty.
There was a light, a soft glow from under the waters. Out of it, still glowing the soft fluorescence of green and blue, rose just above the waves the head and bust of a woman. There were lines on her beautiful, proud face, and the sea-green of her hair was a little faded to grey. From her coral crown to the shells decorating her tail, a soft eerie blue light came from within. But where it glowed brightest was in her hand: a stone, large and iridescent like a perfectly formed pearl, but red and orange in colour like the smoldered fire of an extinguished star. So it was, the Edelstone was a long faded sun, captured in resin, the amber of all ambers.
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On the other side of the globe, Tang Lili worried over her daughter. Was she well? How was she getting on all alone in the dangerous world, a world whose dangers Tang Lili had known well.
It’s a terrible thing, knowing you’re going to die, knowing you will leave your child behind. Your child, whom you love more than anything, more than any of the dreams you had when young, or even when they seemed to fill your mind just half a year ago, when the pain started, and would not go away.
You thought it was nothing, or rather, despite always fearing the worst, you convinced yourself it was unimportant, because you didn’t want to alarm. You went on with your life until it could not be concealed, delayed, or denied. You wonder how your child will fare without you. You wonder if she will have children of her own. You hope she will marry a good, kind man. You wish you could be there to listen to her and hold her when she, inevitably, cries, over one heartbreak or another.
Yunbao, the clouded leopard who is no longer a cub, but a mother herself, puts her wet nose into your hand, and licks your palm with her sandpapery tongue. You stroke the smooth short fur above her eyes and between them.
And you think of making one, final trip.