I open my eyes to water hanging above me.
An entire sea, barely twenty centimetres from my nose. Coloured pebbles and flower petals drift through it, along with several pieces of fruit that look as though they've escaped from somebody's offering table. Everything is perfectly still.
I hold my breath.
The peach above me holds its breath too.
It takes me several seconds to realise I'm lying on silver-white sand. My clothes aren't wet. My hair isn't dripping. Even my bruised knee has stopped hurting. My pig rucksack is trapped beneath me, one strap wound around my arm. The old book lies nearby with grains of luminous sand stuck to its cover.
‘Jun Hao?’
No answer.
I scramble upright. The sea retreats with me—not upwards. The moment I stand, it is suddenly as far away as the sky.
Silver sand rises beneath my feet and becomes an island. There's no sun, no moon and no land beyond it, only a jade-green sea disappearing into mist. The surface has no waves, but nebulae bloom one after another beneath the water. I stare down for too long and light appears beneath my feet as well, as though I'm standing in the middle of the sky.
‘Mum… Mum!’
My voice travels out. Nothing comes back.
A small pavilion stands in the distance.
An old man is inside, carrying a watering pot between rows of what look like tiny bonsai. I walk towards him. After a few steps, warm air drifts off the sea, smelling faintly of fruit and flowers. A few more, and a clear birdcall rings through the mist. A bell beneath the pavilion roof gives one soft chime.
Creatures that are half fish and half bird sweep out of the water. Their wings and tails scatter into petals as they circle me, then they swim soundlessly into the air. A veil of water brushes my cheek without making it cold or wet. I take a breath. Somehow, my chest loosens a little.
The pavilion was a speck a moment ago. I look up and find myself standing in front of it. White-jade pillars. Golden light along the eaves. I've never seen a pavilion this fancy. Even a five-star hotel would be showing off.
The old man keeps watering. The stream from his pot breaks into silver light before it reaches the soil. The almost-grass, almost-trees in the little pots begin to unfold. Some carry fruit I've never seen. Others hide tiny buds between their leaves.
At last he puts down the pot and turns. His white hair is neatly combed. A blue-and-white robe falls to his feet, its sleeves reflecting the waterlight.
‘Peach, you have travelled far. It has been a tiring road.’ His voice is warm and unhurried. ‘I am the Moon Primordial. If that title sits poorly on your tongue, many also call me Grandfather Moon.’
‘Where am I?’ I step onto the pavilion stairs. ‘Am I dead?’
‘Don't be afraid. You are quite well.’ He speaks as though he doesn't wish to disturb the new shoots. ‘This is the Kongzang Sea. It envelops worlds beyond number. Through it, they may be entered or left, and the courses of time opened or closed.’
I saw this face two days ago. The voice is nearly the same too: a faint Beijing accent, never hurrying the end of a word. He's obviously the owner of the Thousand Worlds Bookshop, only without the part where he talks circles around my refund.
I look him up and down.
‘Business that bad? You've started doing cosplay on the side? The costume's really good. Can't be cheap to hire.’
The shopkeeper neither checks his clothes nor asks what cosplay means.
‘Your family remain in their own world,’ he says. ‘Its fengshui has not yet settled.’
The joke drops dead between us.
‘What about my brother? I pushed him across! Did Mum catch him? Did he fall?’
‘You cannot see the answer from here.’
‘Then send me back so I can!’
He says nothing. He turns and sweeps one hand towards the garden behind him. Warm wind draws the nebulae apart, revealing flowers, trees and more ponds than I can count. Petals float in the air and shine again in the water below.
The water in one violet pond parts. First I see one galaxy. Then hundreds. Rivers of light stream past like the most crowded lane in a night market. I've just recognised one familiar spiral when the whole galaxy contracts into a spark and settles in the old man's palm.
Inside the spark is a grain of sand.
He holds it out. One sweep of his sleeve, and more glowing grains rise around us. Light turns inside each one. Some burn red. Some are filled with threads like roots. Some hold nothing but a rim so thin it is almost gone.
‘What are these…? I've never seen…’
‘A single grain may contain an entire world.’
He raises his other hand. The sand doesn't fall. It drifts towards us.
‘Why are they coming this way…?’
‘And within one grain, there may yet be heaven and earth.’
The nearest slides in front of my face. Stars turn inside it. Light. An aurora too vast to have an edge. I stare, and it opens towards me.
The jade floor vanishes.
Water holds me from every direction.
I grab my rucksack strap.
Jun Hao is somewhere outside this grain of sand. I don't even know how many worlds away.
I clamp my mouth shut, but my face stays dry and I can still breathe. There's no sky here and no seabed, only endless blue. Transparent creatures no bigger than mushrooms swim past in shoals, pinpricks of light glowing inside their bellies. Far away, something rolls over. A silver back without any visible end passes through the water with a low call, and the current rocks several stars beside it.
‘Is that a dragon?’
‘It is one of this world's living beings.’
‘It's bigger than the galaxy we just saw.’
‘Large and small are divisions made by the mind.’
The old man walks forwards and the water opens for him. I follow, still gripping the strap. A violet-and-gold cloud closes around us; when it clears, the endless blue has become a speck inside a grain of sand.
I turn to find it. Which blue speck was it? No clue.
‘Whoa—how many layers does the Kongzang Sea have? How big is it?’
‘To ask the size of all worlds is to ask the length of one's pillow in a dream.’ The old man smiles gently.
I understand half of that. Everything ahead goes dark.
I look up. Palaces float among a sky full of stars.
Far below, land hangs beneath a sea of clouds. We have stopped between the palaces and the world, as though we are standing in a crack between heaven and earth. Enormous boulders turn through the storm around us. Some are as large as mountains. Others still have broken eaves and flights of stone steps. Whenever two collide, the thunder of it hurts my ears.
‘This world is called Shen,’ the old man says.
The old book stopped at A hundred years later—.
So this is what was waiting after all those blank pages.
‘Those boulders…’ A shattered stone eave rolls past us. ‘Are they pieces of the Celestial Pagoda?’
He doesn't answer. He looks down.
Clouds split beneath our feet. The space around us fractures into countless planes of light, each holding a different part of Shen close enough to touch.
Every five-coloured rainbow is broken. Seas and rivers hang in the sky. Towns and fields sink layer by layer into bottomless fissures. Trees, rooftops, even whole forests float in mid-air, bleaching white from their edges.
No cries can reach us at this height. I can only see the crowds scattering below.
I wrench my rucksack round, pull out the old book and find A hundred years later—.
The next page isn't blank.
It's packed with words.
The earth falls out of order. The islands of the Northern Ocean sink one by one—
I turn the page.
The imperial capital of the Heartland collapses into the depths—
Another page.
The four kingdoms of the Far East and the Great Eastern Forest are reduced to ash—
The next one too.
More words.
Paper rattles through my fingers. Before, every page I turned was blank. Now every one is crammed with an ending I don't dare read.
I only want to find two words.
‘The Princesses?’ I have to drag in several breaths. ‘What happened to the Celestial Princesses?’
‘They did not return,’ the old man says.
My eyes burn. I bite my lip.
He lifts one hand and turns it in a gentle circle.
The seas fall. Broken tiles fly back to their roofs. The two sides of the cracked earth close together. White drains out of the branches; snapped trees rise straight again. Inch by inch, the broken rainbows knit themselves together. Fleeing crowds walk backwards along the streets until they reach the moment before fear. The boulders around us stop colliding and retreat piece by piece into the clouds. The planes of light showing Shen close and disappear.
The whole world is restored.
I look down.
Warm wind passes over my fingers. The pages turn backwards. The ink retreats with them: a full page, half a page, a few lines, until only one remains.
A hundred years later—
I turn the page.
Blank.
I stare at him.
‘You… you can turn back time?’
‘I can.’
‘Then you can do it to Earth!’ I seize his sleeve. ‘Turn it back to before the sea rose and the ground split. Jun Hao won't fall. I can go back to Mum and—’
The old man lowers his eyes to my hand. He doesn't pull away.
The glowing grain of sand rises above his open palm.
‘Time may return a wound to the moment before it opened, but it cannot draw out the thorn on behalf of the living.’ His voice is soft. Each word lands firmly. ‘A world is wounded by its living beings. They must be the ones to raise it again.’
‘But you just—’
‘I cannot choose in place of the living. So long as even one person refuses to let a world sink, I will uphold the step they take.’
He says nothing more. The restored world drifts away and settles among the countless lights of sand.
I slowly release his sleeve.
Three roads appear.
The first shines inside the grain: the mountain of the memorial tower, torn rainbows and a sea curling into the sky. The second returns to the Kongzang Sea, where the silver sand is smooth, the water still and the garden peaceful. The third has no visible end. It's only moonlight laid across the ground, passing through the boundary between worlds and disappearing into mist.
‘Earth. Kongzang. Shen.’ The old man looks to each in turn. ‘One road returns to a world whose fengshui is in chaos. One remains where time does not move. The third goes to Shen.’
The road to Earth lights first. I'm already running.
Wind punches me in the face. The rain is sideways. A split mountainside drops away beneath my feet, and the sea is climbing into the sky. I catch the edge of the doorway and search the waves for one small hand.
‘Jun Hao!’
The wave swallows his name. It nearly takes me with it.
I step back.
One step. That's all.
‘Maaaybe I'll wait until the rain stops.’
The old man doesn't laugh. He doesn't rescue the joke, either. He stands on the dry side of the threshold with both hands tucked into his sleeves, keeping one little patch of no rain behind me.
The second road waits in perfect silence. If I go that way, the rain can't hit me. The ground can't split. Nothing can hurt.
Tomorrow will never come here.
I could stay for ever.
I could stay for ever without knowing whether Mum caught Jun Hao.
I press my wet hand against the old book.
‘If I go to Shen, can I save Earth?’
‘All things are entwined, however immeasurable the distance between them. Between Earth and Shen, the affinity runs deep: when one rises or falls, the other feels its wake. If you find the Celestial Princesses, both worlds may yet have a way forward.’
‘What if I die there?’
‘You will meet hardship. You will be afraid.’ His voice remains gentle. ‘But your life will not end in Shen.’
I stand a little straighter.
The moonlight stops at my sneakers. It doesn't pull me. It waits.
I clutch the book to my chest and look back at Earth. I can't see anything through the rain. Mum's hand. Jun Hao's sleeve. Both are still somewhere behind the water.
If I stay here, that's where they'll remain.
I sniff, then step onto the moonlight.
‘Grandfather Moon—who do I find first?’
‘Zuobituo.’
‘Who?’
‘One who has guarded the Celestial Princesses through generation after generation. Find her, and you will know where your next step leads.’
‘Where is she?’
Grandfather Moon turns towards the moonlight. A road with no gate brightens beneath us, crossing the silver sand and reaching into a world that has not yet taken shape.
‘Peach, walk on.’
I look back. Grandfather Moon still stands behind me, all the lights of all the worlds caught in his sleeves.
The old book grows heavy in my arms.
I open it.
A hundred years later—the girl from another world chooses the road of moonlight and sets out for Shen in search of Zuobituo.
Ink rises stroke by stroke across the page that used to be blank.
My thumb stops beside the new words. I don't touch them.
Zuobituo.
Who on earth is that?