1. Chapter 4

Safron was born in the winter. She was a tiny little thing, Tan thought when he first saw her. He was a little upset that he had missed the entire thing; his mother had sent him into the village with a slip of paper to show the herbalist, and then the herbalist had sent him on another errand, and then the old woman that the herbalist had sent him to had sent him on another errand and it seemed like all day long everyone had something that only he could possibly do.

To be fair, a certain number of those tasks involved flying, which among everyone in the village was something that only he could do.

But after six hours, Pao had shown up and told everyone that it was over and that the baby was a healthy girl. There was a lot of cheering in the village, and it was only then that Tan realized that everyone had been keeping him distracted so that he wouldn’t be around when his sister was born. He was understandably a bit upset about this turn of events, but Pao had tried to cheer him.

“It’s a really gross and messy thing. You’re lucky you didn’t have to see it,” he confided to the younger boy. “I didn’t either, really. Tren did everything that needed to be done that your mother couldn’t do for herself. I only heard the screaming and they called me when it was over to come get you.”

“There was screaming?”

“Yeah. There’s always screaming when a woman gives birth, I think. We’re really lucky we’re boys, so we don’t have to go through that,” Pao confided.

Tan pouted, but raced Pao back home to see his sister. He won, of course. He was much faster than Pao.

Pao was stronger than him, of course. Tren said that was the nature of things. Wind was swift and Earth was strong. Even though Zephyr was stronger than Pao’s nameless earth spirit, that fact remained immutable. At least at the boys’ current level of cultivation.

Tan got home to Wensho nursing the babe. Tan stood in the doorway a moment, staring in wonder at his younger sister.

“When she finishes eating you can hold her,” Wensho promised him.

“Really?” he asked.

“Yes. Just be very careful. She’s very frail, and you’re stronger than you realize. In more ways than one. If you’re ever angry or upset while she’s little like this, please go out somewhere until you’re feeling more cheerful for me, okay? I think she’s going to be every bit as sensitive as you were.”

“Okay,” Tan said, and he watched closely as the babe fed. And then he held her gently.

And he felt Zephyr embrace the babe as well.

“This is your family,” the spirit whispered to him.

“I already love her,” Tan announced.

“Stop that,” Wensho said suddenly. Tan looked up, surprised. “She’s too young for that, Tan. Maybe when she binds a spirit of her own you can help her cultivate, but she needs to grow naturally for her first five years.”

Tan blushed. He realized what he’d been doing. He’d been drawing the power in the air around him and trying to feed it to the infant, much like the child had been nursing moments ago.

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“Could I have hurt her like that?” he asked nervously.

“Not with me here watching!” Wensho said jokingly. “No. You wouldn’t have done her any harm, but we don’t know what element we’ll be aligning her to yet. Feeding her air Qi at this stage would have predisposed her to binding an air spirit, which isn’t a good thing because we don’t know what sort of elemental spirit your father will be able to catch for her.”

“Won’t one of the stones in the shed work for her?” Tan asked.

“It would, but it would be limiting her potential,” Wensho said. “She could nurture the lesser spirits in those stones into a greater one like your Zephyr, my Rudeus, or your father’s Gaia, but it would set her back decades to do so. It would be best to keep her compatible with all of the elements until your father has come back from the journey he’ll set out on to capture her spirit.”

“Oh,” Tan said. “What about you? You’re a water cultivator, doesn’t that mean your babies are esposed to water Qi?”

“Yes, very smart,” Wensho praised. “But that’s different. The womb is a natural buffer to cultivation and it purifies the elemental nature of the energies that we channel. Even so I’ve been very careful since I learned that I was pregnant not to channel too much energy. Many women cultivators choose not to have children for the very reason that they tend to be Qi hogs while they’re in the belly, and those who don’t often have children who match their own affinities despite whatever they try to do. But you and Safron were both as pure as can be.”

Wensho sounded very proud of this, as though it were a significant personal accomplishment.

“So what can I do to help her?” Tan asked. “She’s my sister and I want to help.”

“I’m sure you’ll be a great big brother, Tan,” Wensho promised. “In fact, it’s convenient timing for you to have said that, since it’s time to change her diaper!”

It turns out that being a big brother wasn’t always as glorious as Tan thought it was.

Still, he was a big brother, and although he was only seldom called upon to change a diaper – he was only five years old himself at this point, after all – he was very good at getting the cloth ready and recognizing when the babe needed it done by one of the older and more responsible members of the household.

The babe was amazingly healthy and slept through the night after her first week. Much to Tan’s relief, as he did not like getting woken in the middle of the night. One of Tan’s new tasks was to watch his sister, a task he shared with everyone else in the family so that someone was always with the infant.

But otherwise, life went on. Even in the coldest days of winter, Tan and Pao continued to go out and climb their hill and cultivate. Often together, sometimes alone. Surprisingly to them, but not to Tan’s parents, the most progressive sessions they had were the ones where they went up on the hill at the same time. It took them several months to realize this after Safron was born, in the early days of spring, just before Tan’s sixth birthday.

When they had asked Tren about it, the man had simply grinned.

“We have only two of the four elements, but the Elemental Gathering Focus is most potent when more than one allied cultivator works in unison,” he explained. “Tan pulling in air Qi pulls in Qi from the earth, and Pao pulling in earth Qi pulls in Qi from the air. Nature hates a vacuum, but that’s what we cultivators are. Voracious vacuums that suck in the energy of the world as rapidly as the world can replace it. We are fortunate that the world is so vast and bountiful that there seems to be no limit to the energy we take from it.”

He paused, then amended “Almost no limit. Not one that the two of you need to worry about. Even when someone gets too greedy and a Qi desert forms, there are ways of nature sorting those things out.” He was quiet, then he said under his breath “And unfortunately, its those like your mother and I who end up having to do most of the sorting. You too perhaps someday, Tan, when you’re older.”

“What will I need to do?” Tan asked.

“Hopefully nothing. If it ever becomes something that you do have to do, that me and your mother can’t handle for you, then we’ll guide you through it, just as we’ve been guiding your path so far.”

“What about me? Can I help?” Pao asked.

“Yes. But all of this is a very long ways away. You’re both barely into the initiate’s realm. It will be fifty years before anyone would even dream of calling on one of you to balance the world’s Qi, and when that happens Wensho and I will make certain that you’re ready for it,” Tren promised. “Now come on, it’s been a long day and it’s time for food, and then a bath for both of you stinky boys!”

The boys groaned, but ran off to the house to eat.