Three Loves Seven, Chapter 24, Part 3 - "The Questor Begins to Move"

Dear Gentle Readers,

We're not quite done with events on Seven-Seven. The after-party chatter continues.

I could tell you more, by why don't you just read what happened as recorded by the Guardian of History, Prophecy, and Lore ...

as the story continues ...

[Reporter’s note: This diary was collected from the Questor, Second Wood Princess after she related in meeting that she had had a recurring dream.]

From the Questor’s diary

U.S. Time:           Thursday, August 23 2012
Island Time:        Dragon, Month 7, Day 7, Xingqi 4, Seven-Seven Festival Day

Mother and I were making our way back home after the festival. In the past it had been such a happy time, but for some reason this year, even though it was made even more special by Dr. Wong’s participation, it made me feel overwhelming grief after it had ended.

Maybe I really coveted the Weaver’s role for my mother. I can imagine her almost running and dancing like nothing upon our upraised feet making the magpie bridge. She makes it into the Cowherd’s arms who lifts her high and twirls her about, showering her with kisses. Instead I had to endure Auntie Feng as such. Oh, she was beautiful and graceful, but still, she was not my choice.

Mother is highly sensitive to my moods. I must have seemed quite black to her because she was moved to question me.

     “What’s wrong dear? It was a lovely time, don’t you think?”

     “It just makes me sad this year. I don’t know why.”

     “I know why.”

     “Why?”

     “It’s disappointment. You wished something else would have happened.”

     “Maybe.”

     “Disappointment is something you need to accept as a life companion. It will never leave you.”

     “I really hate those kinds of answers.”

     “Of course you do.”

     “Mommy, I have been having a recurring dream. It is really bothering me. It keeps coming so that it makes me not want to go to sleep.”

     “You HAVE been tossing at night. What is it?”

     “I am chasing someone through the garden, through The Grove, into the caves, and eventually down into the sea, diving toward the bottom. The person is just in front of me. As they are about to turn around and face me I wake up. I have had this dream every night for two weeks.”

     “Is it a person or an animal?”

     “A person.”

     “Adult or child?”

     “Um … adult.”

     “Man or woman?”

     “Hard to say. I don’t know.”

     “I have two suggestions.”

     “What?”

     “We should change where you dream for a while. Maybe they will progress further. For the next few nights, I advise you sleep either in The Shrine at our altar or …”

    “Or?”

    “Do you think this may be arising from your call as the Questor?”

     “Oh, I hadn’t thought of that.”

     “Let us seek permission from the Sea Witch for you to sleep at the Empress Tree.”

     “I would have to sleep out of doors, in The Outside? Under the tree?”

     “Or better, in it. The boughs are very wide. It is almost like a room up there.”

     “That’s very scary to me.”

     “It’s not. It’s quite comforting. I have done it twice. When I had to make very significant choices. I will sit with you in either case if you wish. But it would be better if you did it alone. Do you think you can do it?”

     “I REALLY don’t want to do that. The forest at night is so, thick, and mysterious, and everything is hidden. And there are poison bugs.”

     “The Sea Witch will watch you if I am not there. She does not allow guests in her domain to be molested in any way. Shall we go The Shrine and summon her?”

I took a very deep breath and nodded.

     “Um … but before we do, you said you had TWO suggestions?”

     “Right. This one is not so scary. Maybe you’re just anxious about going away to school next year? Talk to Clete and ask him about what it’s like to go to college and live away from home. I’m sure that would set a lot of your worries to rest.”

     “OH! Why didn’t I think of that? I would MUCH rather talk to the Professor first. He’s always very interesting and cheerful.”

     “What makes dreaming at the Empress Tree the harder task? I’m a bit surprised and maybe a bit disappointed in you.”

     “The Professor taught us to apply Ockham’s Razor in our problem-solving thinking.”

     “And that is?”

     “Do not multiply entities unnecessarily. Seek out the simplest of competing theories. Or as he says it, if two roads get you to the same place, always take the easier one. Do you think he’ll be up for a while?”

     “That is a philosophy of laziness! I should hit that man for turning my most thorough, dutiful, and diligent daughter into a sluggard who seeks the easy way out!”

     “Mommy, it’s not like that at all. You should hear his lecture on analyzing efficiencies of motion. He uses the example of how you have engineered your medicinal herb garden in its tiered format to make use of as few motions as possible to achieve maximum production within the limitations of your stature and limb length and lift strength.”

     “Eh?”

     “Remember how he was taking videos of your garden and tool shed and you working in them? He said he was documenting your procedures to use as a fine example of physical efficiency in his courses.”

     “He thinks I’m efficient?”

     “Isn’t that a good thing?”

     “I suppose it isn’t the worst thing to be thought of. I’d prefer kind, thoughtful, graceful, artistic.”

     “To be called efficient by him is high praise Mother, trust me.  Shall I go talk to him now?”

     “He’s had a long day. He probably wants to rest. I am sure he is tired. I felt his right leg trembling when the sole of his foot was against mine. I put my hands on his ankle to steady him. His skin there is very rough textured, easy to grip. I made sure to touch his other leg later. Did you know that he …”

     “I think I’ll go now before it’s too late.”

     “Let it wait until tomorrow. Let him rest.”

     “But that dream. I don’t want to have it if I don’t have to.”

     “Troublesome girl. Go ahead and start the conversation. If he seems like the least bit like he is pushing you off, if his attention seems to flag for even a second, I want you to excuse yourself and leave immediately. Do you understand? I don’t want my daughter to be perceived as a pest.”

     “Hai. Yes, Ma.”

     “And put on more clothes.”

I looked down at myself. It was just my usual sheath that I wore at home; the same thing she had on.

     “More? It’s hot!  I can’t believe it’s YOU telling me to put more clothes on.”

     “Sigh. It embarrasses the Professor. He may or may not tell you that it does. It seems American women cover themselves a great deal. I think they dress like First and Second Branchers. You will have to deal with the issue of clothing when you go abroad. Get used to it now.”

     “Aw.”

     “If you feel very confined, just throw on your large white gauze tunic. And if you sit, do it Western style with your knees and ankles together as I have shown you.”

     “Ugh! So many instructions!”

As I approached his cottage I heard him playing the moon guitar. He had settled himself on Lee and Ling’s porch and was performing the tunes Auntie Feng had only recently taught him. Ling saw me and waved me over.

     “We wanted to hear what all of you were talking about, so I asked him to bring the yueqin with him and play us a couple of tunes,” said Ling.

     “You have a gift,” said Lee. “You have only been playing this for two weeks? It is amazing. I find it quite good.”

     “I am honored to get a compliment from you dear lady,” said Dr. Wong. “I don’t quite have the percussive slamming of the plectrum against the soundboard right. I need to hear a REAL player do it a lot of times.” He turned to me. “Xiao Mei, surely you didn’t come here to hear me play. Did you need to see one of us?”

     “I didn’t mean to intrude. Please continue.”

     “You can help out. Are you a good singer?”

     “I am not bad,” I said.

     “Xiao Mei has a beautiful singing voice,” said Lee.

     “I’d like all three of you to sing the music of the Seven-Seven dance, phrase by phrase, so I can play it back and get a sense of the accompaniment.” And so we sat there with Dr. Wong, singing the phrases while he mimicked us. We carried on like that until the stars began to appear.

     “You know,” I said. “We don’t see some of the stars that are talked about in the folk songs and legends since we are too far south. We have had to come up with some legends of our own.”

     “I’d like to hear them some day,” said Dr. Wong. “But not tonight. My heart is too full. Nothing else good can fit it. It has been a fine day.”

Auntie Lee looked at me and I felt I was being read like a book.

     “Xiao Mei has come here to talk to you Clete. Come Ling, we should move somewhere else.”

     “Girls, stay put,” said Dr. Wong. “Is it Xiao Mei or is it the Office of the Questor who has come? For some reason, I smell a business meeting. Shall we walk up to The Point and chat?”

     “Am I really so transparent?” I asked.

     “I know the look of a junior associate who has hit a wall all too well. It’s the shoulders. ’sgo.”

So we walked up to The Point and found a couple of comfortable enough outcroppings on which to sit. He simply waited for me to speak first, not giving me any prompt.

     “Mother said to talk to you about my anxiety about going away to college. I’ve been having bad dreams lately.”

     “Academically? You will run circles around everyone in your classes. Unless you get yourself into someplace where ALL the students are the crème de la crème and already trained to push hard in a fiercely competitive environment, like a Harvard, or MIT. I wouldn’t worry about that at all.”

     “Really?”

     “Where you will have difficulty is socializing. That’s what I think. Unless you go to an agricultural school, nobody will have your frame of reference and you will find it hard to relate to others and they to you. You’ve also got an extremely serious and hard-charging way about you and THAT will put a lot of your peers off, especially since they are ALL insecure themselves. I’ve seen it happen too often. The way you walk and sway will be different. On top of that, they watch movies, TV shows, YouTube, download music and video, engage each other in social media. You’ve been isolated from all that. That’s easily learned though. My fear for you would be that you would feel boxed in and become homesick and depressed.”

     “But if I know to expect that, I should be ready for it? Right?”

     “Yes. But it’s nothing like actually living through isolation. To be alone in a place where you are surrounded by people is even more depressing. You know what I wish?”

     “What?”

     “I wish I could take all you girls back to California with me, set us up in a nice big house, and you all just live with me for a year without going to school, or maybe take only one class, and just learn what it’s like to be a young person your age somewhere other than here. I’d even try to get a couple of girls your age to live with us sort of like live-in peer advisors.”

     “My! Would such a thing even be possible?”

     “Probably not. Your aunties would kill me for even suggesting it,” he laughed to himself. “But, the first thing you do to make something happen is to imagine what it looks like. Of course, things don’t turn out like you first imagine. I had a totally different view of what this vacation of mine was going to look like.”

     “What did you imagine?”

     “I thought I’d spend my days taking pictures and samples and my nights sitting outside of my pup tent counting stars. But I had NO idea I would be doing a magpie bridge dance and learning to play the yueqin. Some things turned out exactly as expected. The data report uploads however, are exactly as I imagined.”

     “How do I go about imagining being successful at school? Socially?”

     “You can’t get advice from me on that. You guys all think I’m the rudest man on the planet. I still haven’t figured out how to be in the presence of any of the Cousins for five minutes without insulting them.” I laughed at that thought. “For instance, you have this gesture for cutting off a conversation that I’ve only just figured out.”

     “Oh, what?”

     “You put your right ankle behind your left ankle.”

     I thought about that. “We do.”

     “Doesn’t seem to work for me.”

     “Oh. That’s because you’re male. You have to bend down and slap your ankles.”

     “Like this?” He tried the gesture. “It’s like bowing. In great deference.”

     “That’s very good,” I said. “When a man does that, it also means ‘farewell, see you later.’”

     “I’m going to try that on Lee. Anyway, we’re not done. The place to start is let’s find schools where the dean keeps a high touch on his or her international students. There are people at schools who are quite skilled at integrating foreigners into host cultures. One thing that happens a lot is that international students wind up becoming friends because of their shared experience of feeling outside. Let me help you at least that much in assessing a school’s culture that way and make use of some of my contacts and identify schools that don’t just set you adrift all on your own.”

     “Would you? I’d appreciate it!”

     “If I could convince your mother to send you to school in Southern California I could mentor you through the process and act as your pseudo-family support. You know I have the ulterior motive of trying to get all your cousins into California schools. You’d be my beachhead pupil. BUT I’m sure she’d be against it though.”

     “I don’t know about that now. If not, I’m sure I could convince her.”

     “Good luck with that, but social integration into a foreign culture is not a new or terribly difficult problem. You might actually have a leg up since you have to navigate two cultures here—your native Island and The Outside. And you already know four to five languages? Your adaptability has certainly been exercised. AND, you could always call or e-mail me no matter what school you went to and I could be your mentor and friend.”

     “Thank you Doctor. I already feel greatly relieved.”

     “Well, they DID choose you as their Questor right? The Cousins think you’re the most qualified to explore life in the outside world no? That has to give you some confidence.”

     “About that,” I said,  “that’s the other reason I came to talk to you? I am feel extremely overwhelmed by this task.”
     "What task?"
     "The Quest. The thing that I have been chosen to seek. Why I must leave."
     "Can't help you."
     "Why not?"
     "Sigh! You have to be willing to do something that nobody on this Island has been able to do.”

     “What’s that?”

     “Give the answer when I ask, 'What is the reason this island exists here? I am sure it relates to what you are going to ask me. It's why Lum, your Mom,  approached me to help you out in the first place, isn't it? Will you do that?”

     “No. I can't.”
     "I'm going to bed. So I slap my ankles then?"
     "No. Wait."

© Copyright 2012 by Vincent Way, all rights reserved.



I was going to load up the entire scene this week, but it's pretty long. Best for this much to sink in for the modern attention span...   VW

Next installment: How Quickly Clete Deflates a Mythic Quest to a Self-Indulgent Ego Trip ... (jerk)