Epilogue
Against the dark morning, the Caspian tiger glowed, flames lifting up and down his back, quiet as he finished his ascent into the Tian Shan mountains. Like mist rising from the ground, he felt the people who had come this way before, each one leaving their scent in the air, in the earth. He knew them all. Centuries and millennia of humans leaving their mark, their bones filling the caverns and spaces within the mountain. Death making way for life, and life for death. Layer upon layer.
Always burning and never burned, Kunmi was the god of Ili, that hidden valley in the north. The story written so long ago, his story, now turned its page to these mountains in the Tian Shan.
For three days and nights, Kunmi traveled from Ili to this place, christened by its residents “the Heavenly Mountains” not for its snowy peaks lifting above the rest of the world, or its singing sands that haunted the plains below, but for the treasure hidden within the palace walls.
Kunmi’s breath steamed the air and his paws fell heavy on the frosty ground as he climbed, following the mountain across its highest path, his eye fixed on the shadowed temple below.
Finding his place under an ancient elm, the great tiger lay down, leaves sliding away as his warmth melted the frost. A magpie woke the morning, singing its seven-note trill over the peaks.
The tiger’s tail swayed as he watched morning lamps light in the kingdom below, little stars coming to life, like a secret whispered through the sleeping streets. The lamps wound first around the temple court, then down the hill towards the palace, the hidden city stirring awake on this long foretold day.
A flame in the temple court split in two, and the newborn light bounced across the courtyard, a nameless shaman carrying a torch toward the great altar. As the young priest walked, his path illuminated, Kunmi saw the altar, crafted of solid jade, carved with a face like his. The Great Tiger’s teeth were bared. On either side of the stone tiger’s face, razored claws lifted, ready to devour the sacrifice on the pyre above.
The shaman’s torch glimmered against golden columns lining the temple courtyard and his jade tigertooth necklace tinkled, that unmistakable music of the priests of the Heavenly Mountains.
Kunmi watched as the young man stopped in front of the altar, placing the torch in its mount, where it would burn until the whole kingdom gathered for the ceremony.
Enraged at the day, at the wayward hearts of men and their gods, Kunmi rose up in his place under the elm. The flames that burned peacefully along his back burst into a raging blaze, lighting up the forest around him.
As the stars faded and the sun rose behind the great altar, Kunmi let out a deep roar across the kingdom below, and turning, the lone shaman looked up, high into the mountaintops, and fell to his knees before the god of Ili.
Chapter 1
Janu’s hair flowed down her back in icy rivulets. Tightening the wool around her shoulders, she perched on a boulder to let her feet dry before sliding on her sheepskin boots. Already halfway across the sand, sufficiently and ceremoniously cleansed for the Feast of Peaches, chattering and gossiping as if the cold didn’t exist, the rest of the girls headed for the mountain trail that snaked up to their kingdom.
It didn’t fit that, compared to every other sacrificial day, this morning would feel so mortal. There should have been a celestial pool sent down, carried on the wings of eagles and filled with water dipped from the Yellow River in the sky.
She’d been the first out of the water and somehow the last to leave. Relishing the solitude, Janu watched her breath rise to the lightening sky, mirroring the morning fog lifting from the lake.
Over the water, in the fading stars still clinging to the night, hung Lie Hu Zuo.
“Orion,” Janu said aloud. She liked how her tongue rolled across the Greek word, like popping a whole grape in her mouth.
Lie Hu Zuo’s surety sparkled like the hunter king he was, like the intrepid ancient western king Nimrod, who was claimed to possess Lie Hu Zuo. He took up as much of the heavens as one god might dare, his left foot crushing the head of his enemy, sword hung upon his belt, its three unmissable stars dubbed ‘the Three Kings’.
Of all the ancestor gods, Janu favored Lie Hu Zuo, whose name meant ‘he who comes forth as light, the Brilliant, the Swift’, not just for his audacity, but because when she was a little girl, he was the easiest to pinpoint. When all the other constellations muddled together, Lie Hu Zuo’s three belt stars always jumped out, centering her on the earth and time of year.
She smiled at the old hero.
Soon she would secure her place in the heavens, just like him, like the kings and queens before her. She too would come forth as light. She too would be brilliant.
It was no matter that she wouldn’t actually be queen. A royal bloodline was enough, along with the two feats she’d have under her own belt by the end of the day. Her plan was threefold, and by tomorrow, Princess Janu would secure her place in the stars for all time. Upon her death, she herself would transfigure into one of the shining ancestors in the sky.
First walking the Lo Shu in tonight’s ceremony, Janu would climb to an ascension normally reserved for only the shaman priesthood. Once they realized her capability, invoking the seventy two rulers of creation, no one could deny her divine connection. Easy. Even better, elevating the position of High Priest into the royal family, and further empowering the position by bestowing it upon a woman - inspired, if she did say so.
Janu breathed a full cloud of contentment into the mist.
Royal bloodline, done. Ascension in the Lo Shu was step two. Third was Amah’s Peaches of Immortality, which would be simple, considering the entire kingdom and dignitaries from the homeland, including Emperor Wu, would partake in the peaches together tonight.
Amah’s tree was special - and essential to Janu’s quest - bestowing a once in six thousand years gift: unhindered access to the afterlife. Partaking in the Peaches of Immortality meant one’s Hun soul was safe. No curses, distractions, miscalculations or follies, past or present, could impede the journey across the bridge from earth to the afterlife, not with Amah’s peaches.
Watching the fruit plump and blush her entire childhood, Janu had always imagined the peaches like a bubble in water, enveloping and carrying her over the starry bridge unscathed.
She should go; the rest of the girls would be halfway up the mountain by now.
The sun breaking through the pines at her back, the gentle “tuks” of the white birds waking along the beach, the constant chirps of tree sparrows, all testified to her ultimate quest - peace and solitude for eternity. No expectations, no harping voices, no requirements.
Just floating.
Janu dug her toes into the sand. A royal seed of the Queen Mother and Jade King, soon ensconced in her Peach of Immortality, and an ascended master of the Lo Shu, she’d live out her short days on earth in the comfort and prestige of High Priestess of the Heavenly Mountains.
The Jade King and Queen Xiwangmu’s daughters were expected to carve a path of notoriety for themselves. Janu’s older sister Zhilan would naturally assume the throne of the Heavenly Mountains, with or without a king, returning their little kingdom to the days of Huaxu and her matriarchal society.
Janu’s options for prominence included some kind of sub-queen position, embracing the rulership of her family, yet in reality being not much more than another member of her sister’s court, or arranging some kind of strategic marriage to a prince in the homeland. And “prince” was a generous word for the old dignitaries, though some did possess large regions of the Middle Kingdom. She could reign over far more, less valuable, territory than Zhilan.
But, Janu prided herself, she set her sights higher, to the heavens. And they’d never see it coming.
The Peaches of Immortality were for all who partook, but the Lo Shu map of the heavens was set aside for the elites of their old religion. These days the homeland was overrun with the new Confucians, fixated on their rules of society, but in the Heavenly Mountains, the ancestors still reigned.
Fuxi and Nuwa, the married son and daughter of the virgin goddess Huaxu, not only adorned the palace walls and sacrificial vessels with their intertwining serpent bodies, but the priests of the Heavenly Mountains still communed with them. While many of the Han dignitaries looked down on the old shamanistic ways, Janu thought, they didn’t hesitate to travel halfway across the Middle Kingdom to eat their peaches.
Within the Lo Shu, the priests invoked the seventy two rulers, Fuxi and Nuwa included, and if they were lucky, the Great Tiger, accessing the knowledge - the intelligence - to harness and control the flow of energy through the universe. The Lo Shu map provided not just the information of nature, like the He Tu map did, but the power to create change.
Within the Lo Shu, mortals played at divinity.
Being High Priestess would satisfy all the status her family required, yet present none of the responsibilities Zhilan would shoulder as queen. Janu’s task - and remaining earthly life - would be easy; the lower priesthood did most of the work, while the High Priest simply recited some chants and mixed libations to summon ascension.
And anyway, being around holy people would surely shore up her own holiness, a toppled tower Janu had been rebuilding these past two years. In her new life, the shaman priests would provide all the structural support, like clay and stone, needed to sustain Janu’s goodness. Though it was the palace that looked more like a fortress, the temple would be Janu’s fortification. Enfolded in the stony tunnels of the Jade Mountain, she couldn’t be farther from the beekeepers’ camp, physically and spiritually.
Amah would be delighted by Janu’s revisions to the traditionally patriarchal position, Zhilan impressed by her ambition, and Abbah was just always impressed. If there were any reticence from Xientu, the current High Priest, her family’s influence would overcome it.
Stories of the princess’ follies would fade from behind the same painted fans they were first whispered. Janu rolled her eyes. The fools.
Tonight, after the priests’ - and Janu’s - exit from the Lo Shu, they would then, along with the rest of the kingdom, Emperor Wu and the dignitaries from the homeland, indulge in Janu’s grandmother and mother’s legacy, the Peaches of Immortality, and at last become xian, the immortals.
The highest ceremony the world didn’t know existed.
And one day, upon her bodily death, Janu would cross the bridge into the afterlife venerated as a visionary on earth. Generations would gaze upon her glory in the heavens.
“Earth is this king’s detestation; this king is bound for the sky,” she said, quoting the ancient text.
Unlike Lie Hu Zuo, Janu didn’t need a third of an entire celestial mansion. It was enough to be a single star, fixed in eternity, viewed in all her stature, grandeur and virtue, blessed and bright and solid from afar, with eons of silent space around her. She ached for the unthreatened quiet, the peace of arriving. There she could rest at last.
“Grant that I may seize the sky and take possession of the horizon,” she finished the prayer to the Great Tiger, creator of the heavenly bodies.
Standing from her perch on the boulder, Janu forced herself to catch up to the rest of the court, their servants, and Zhilan, the future Queen Mother of the Heavenly Mountains. She could no longer see the girls through the trees; they must be almost to the top.
As she crossed the sand, past flocks of white waterbirds primping and honking in the rising sunlight, again last night’s dream flashed in her mind. All morning it broke through reality, even more tangible than the lake she bathed in. The haunting darkness, followed by unspeakable peace.
Janu shivered, then smiled. All would be well. She would make it so.
Up the stone stairs carved into the alpine forest, the young princess scurried, the tree line that towered above her dwarfed by the rocky peak of Khan Tengri, the Jade Mountain. And nestled into that great capstone of the Tian Shan range, in the Kunlun mountains, carved into its western face, watching over the Peaches of Immortality, hung the entrance to the temple of the Great Tiger, her bridge to the stars.
Chapter 2
Reaching the top of the stairs, Janu was blinded by the rising sun. Shading her eyes, she saw Aya waiting. Too chilled to unwrap herself, Janu bumped Aya’s shoulder thanks as they paused to soak in the warmth. Janu’s latest and last friend.
Through the gate, the girls heard the bustling sounds of the village. What had been tucked in sleepy rooms early this morning as the courtiers tiptoed past to the Jade Pond now spilled into the streets with the sun, each household busy, preparing their own feasts before the ceremony tonight.
Aya closed her eyes and inhaled into the bright morning sky. “Not a cloud, from the steppe to the wall,” she said.
Janu laughed at Aya’s nod to the children’s song. The steppe lay to the north and west, flat and grassy, speckled with nomadic barbarian tribes and their herds, flocks and camps. To the east, beyond the Great Wall, lay the homeland, the Middle Kingdom, or Zhongguo.
Though their little kingdom in the Heavenly Mountains primarily kept to themselves, most citizens traveled at least once through the steppe to Almatau. And Janu had been to the homeland and seen the wall, the border villages, the canals and roads built long ago by the First Emperor of Qin, now ruled by the more diplomatic and Confucian Han culture of Emperor Wu.
After that journey, even with all the cushions, the bruises on Janu’s seat had lasted for months.
No doubt Amah was already praising the Great Tiger for saving them the inconveniences of rain.
“Oh yes. The clearest sight of the stars,” she said, quoting the people’s prayer for today, spoken since the little kingdom’s founding. She followed with a few steps of a priestly shamanic dance down the stone street.
“Janu!” Aya scolded the irreverence, checking to see if the princess had been seen, but covered her laugh.
The girls made their way through the residential area, skirting scampering children and their mothers shouting tasks behind them. If any of the women eyed Aya and Janu, damp and wrapped in blankets, late to the palace, Janu defied their looks, raising her chin high, as she often caught herself doing, betraying a potentially damning inner pride. Royalty was supposed to be demure, humble and benevolent.
She did quicken her pace, however, realizing how the sun lifted. A lecture from Amah was surely forthcoming.
“At last I can tell you about Sai Li last night,” Aya said as they hurried through the streets.
“Did you talk to him?!” Janu exclaimed, gaping at her friend.
Aya had loved Sai Li for years, and while they rarely spoke, Janu suspected Sai Li loved Aya, too. She’d observed him closely, and if she watched with a particular slant, she saw him tracking Aya’s every movement.
And Aya tracked him. Somehow she always knew his plans and progress in the priesthood.
And yet, loving Sai Li was hopeless. Marriage for priests was forbidden, and if anyone were to discover that Aya had feelings for a member of the priesthood, she would be sent to live in Almatau.
As they made their way to the courtyard of shops, the girls were suddenly crushed together by the crowds, carts, and booths that had been set up especially for the day. Old instincts still in tact, Janu divined the location of the beekeepers, selling their honey. Freeing up her hands, she slung her blanket across her elbows like a scarf, grabbed Aya’s arm and steered her down the opposite side of the market.
Aya didn’t even notice.
“No, I didn’t,” she said sighing. The din of the market erased any threat that Aya might be overheard.
“I saw him, across the court,” she said, stepping around a cage full of chickens, “but it was after the dinner, on our walk home, that Inja told me the news.”
Aya had many sisters, and the oldest, Inja, was betrothed to the army captain’s right hand man. She got more information from Chen on the kingdom’s happenings than even Janu did.
“Chen told Inja that Xientu’s health is declining rapidly,” Aya said.
Breath caught in Janu’s throat; the High Priest was old, but he’d been old her entire life. She hadn’t noticed it before, but as she reflected through the past months, Xientu was not quite the peacock he’d always been.
“They believe he may be holding onto life long enough to get through the Feast of Peaches,” Aya continued, “and once he’s ensured immortality today, he could cross the heavenly bridge at any time.”
“Tā mā de…” Janu swore, her mind paralyzed. How could she have missed this? Well, she’d only recently concocted her High Priestess plan, not as if she needed to be invested in Xientu until now. But her quest to fully possess the priesthood, to show Abbah and Amah her zeal and enlightenment, suddenly galloped towards her like the heartbeat pounding in her ears.
In Janu’s silence, Aya kept talking.
“Inja said they want Sai Li to be the next High Priest.”
