Chapter 55

On the seventh day of his visit, Renton spent the morning helping his nephew with his chores before breakfast, and then went out to the orchard to check on the trees that he had planted for his brother. He was a little surprised at just how readily they had taken to their new homes; after he had spent months cautiously tending to them and coaxing them out of their seeds, the saplings had exploded in the Qi rich soil of the Shen family farm.

“They should blossom this year,” He said.

“If not this year, then the next,” his brother said, startling Renton. He glanced over his shoulder.

“Did you just purposefully sneak up on me?” he asked accusingly.

“Gotta keep you on your toes somehow,” Tren said, smiling. “So then. You said you’d stay for a week and it’s been a week. Are we going to do this or what?”

Renton sighed, taking his hand off the tree he had been examining. “They’re fine children. I won’t question you on that, or your decisions in raising them the way that you have been. I approve of that wholeheartedly, and am a little envious of them to be honest. I think they have had a much happier childhood than either of us.”

“And here’s the but,” Tren said, his tone serious despite the smile on his face.

“But,” Renton admitted, “When you do tell them who they really are, what then? Tan can read well enough, and I’m certain that Safron will be no less educated when she’s his age. But if he decides to come to court, and I would welcome him with open arms if he did, then he’ll be significantly behind his peers.”

“Would it matter?” Tren asked.

“Not to me,” Renton admitted. “But, still, there are ways to prepare him for life at court that you aren’t exploring. I could send a tutor, one with clear lines on what topics not to address, that would at least educate him on how things are. He’s a smart kid, he could --”

“Fine. You find a tutor and me and Wensho will interview them. If we approve, then they can live on the farm and teach our children,” Tren said.

Renton blinked. “Oh. Okay. I’ll be honest, I was expecting more resistance. I had this whole speech planned out about allowing flowers to bloom by giving them the light of an education and … okay fine. I’ll find someone that neither you nor your wife will find objectionable and send them.”

“Is that all that’s been troubling you?” Tren asked.

“No. We need to talk about Safron. If I noticed, then I’m certain that you and Wensho have noticed as well,” Renton said.

“The Qi block? Yes. We’re aware. We’re hoping that, now that she’s cultivating, the situation will resolve itself with time. Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing, and that is the same advice we’ve gotten from every expert in the matter we’ve consulted. And we’ve consulted the best, you can believe that,” Tren said.

Renton nodded. “But if it doesn’t resolve itself? What then?”

“Then when the time comes, we consult the best healers in the world once more, bring them together, and select the course of action which will give her the best future,” Tren said.

“Has she been examined by any of these experts?” Renton asked.

“Wensho has sent a memory-doll to each of them of Safron’s meridians,” Tren said. He frowned. “Although admittedly it’s been a while since the last time.”

Renton nodded. “I’ll send my best doctors to Lima city. You can arrange the examination from there, so as not to intrude on this home you’ve built for yourself,” he said. “If they all agree that the best action to take is to wait, then so be it. But if it doesn’t resolve itself … I will not see my niece wither on the vine, brother.”

“And I won’t see that happen to my daughter, Renton,” Tren agreed. “Okay. We’ve been monitoring the situation closely, you can believe that. But you’re right, it is time to become more proactive in the matter. When you are ready to have the doctors contact us, use the local lord, Lord Hara, as a proxy. He probably knows who we really are and has done his best to respect our privacy even before it was made obvious to him.”

“As you wish,” Renton said. He stood, awkwardly for a moment, then sighed. “I really need to be getting back. I’ll say goodbye to the children and then take off.”

“You’re welcome back anytime. Just don’t burn down the vegetable garden next time, okay?”

Renton grinned sheepishly. He went and said goodbye to Safron, and then Tan and the other children as a group. Once everyone was together, he stood in the center of them, scratching his head.

“Okay, so how does this technique go again?” he said jokingly, then he turned into lightning and flashed off into the sky.

The Shens watched the afterimage of his Qi fade back into the environment, then turned and went back to work. There was always something that needed doing on the Shen farm. Even when things were slow, they never really stopped.

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Renton’s departure marked a return to normalcy for the Shen household. While the adults and the children had genuinely enjoyed his presence, and the children especially had benefited from his mentoring, he had about him a sort of high-strung energy that prevented anyone else from truly relaxing. Of the entire household, only Safron was truly sad to see her uncle go. Everyone else had had their fill.

It also marked the return of the spirit animals, who had made themselves scarce during the visit. Soon after he had vanished over the horizon as a bolt of lightning, the children began catching glimpses of Ember the fox, and clover poked her head out of the complex beneath the cultivation hill, cuddling up to Safron to comfort the distraught girl.

The children once again were able to talk to and play with Elder Pike, and Thume began to make a nuisance of himself once more.

Life returned to normal. Everyone was happy, having a lazy summer tending the farm.

The attack came out of nowhere.

Clover was happily munching away on the grass in the new orchard. She was reflecting on the changes to the Qi in the area, happily minding her own business as rabbits do. Suddenly she felt a shiver of intent. She shuddered and looked around, annoyed that the children would draw her into their games when suddenly a shadow, and claws in her back, an she was swept up into the air by a predator.

At first the part of her brain that had always been a rabbit panicked as it realized that it was about to die.

Then the part of her mind that was more than it had been forced her to calm down. It was only a falcon, she reflected, and she wasn’t just a rabbit any longer.

She Popped and changed back into a woman, and the claws lost their grip on her back. She fell thirty feet from the air, but that was nothing to her. The falcon screeched and circled back, confused over what had just happened to its lunch.

“Hey! I saw that!” Tan called from atop the hill, and then he launched himself into the air to chase the falcon.

The falcon, realizing that there was more to this farm than it had initially thought, turned and fled.

Only for a flying monkey to appear from another angle.

“Clover is my friend!” the monkey screeched. “How dare you!”

The falcon squawked back at the monkey and tried once more to flee, changing its angle and putting on speed, but the wind turned against it. The wind, which had always been its friend, was violent and turbulent, and the falcon was driven from the sky rather than held aloft.

The boy landed above it, pinning it to the ground with his knee for a moment before scooping its wings behind its back and pinning them in the ‘up’ position, the way that one would hold a chicken. The falcon squawked in outrage and tried to peck at the boy, but the boy was having none of that. He quickly ran to his parents to explain what had just happened.

The parents conferred for a moment while the boy held the falcon, who was seriously wondering what the hell was happening at this point. The adults spoke to the boy, who was still outraged that his friend, Clover the Rabbit, had been attacked by this interloper. His parents took a more serene view of the matter, however, pointing out that it was the nature of falcons to eat rabbits, and that if Clover wasn’t special then nobody would have been upset by its actions at all.

The boy insisted on punishing the falcon anyway, and the adults relented. The falcon thought that its days were over, but instead it was blindfolded and placed in a cage in a shed.

“We’ll give it a time out,” Wensho told her son as she closed the door of the shed behind her. “In a few days we’ll let it go far from the farm, and hopefully that’s the last we’ll ever see of it.”

In the darkness, the falcon was silent as it contemplated what had just happened to it. Then, it began to hear whispers. It didn’t really understand the whispers, but suddenly it sensed something trying to merge with it.

It felt a burning heat, and it began to molt.

The adults came to check on it and realized that, when they had placed it in the same shack as the spirit stones, they had unintentionally given it an opportunity to become a spirit animal. They fed it chunks of meat and, once the children had calmed down in a day or two, Tren took it twenty miles away. He kept the blindfold on and spoke to it.

“I’m not certain if you’ll remember us or not when you become more than you were, but if you do, know that we don’t hate you despite what you did,” The man said to the falcon. “If you keep the peace of the farm, then you will be welcomed back. If you hunt my animals, however, then I’m afraid you’ll be unwelcome and we’ll have to deal with you, one way or the other.”

He took the blindfold off and threw the falcon into the air. The falcon caught the wind and flew away.

It’s life changed, after that. It began to think more clearly, its thoughts coming in bits and bursts at first, but it gradually began to understand that there was more to the wold than just eating and sleeping.

It thought back to that little farm, and it flew back to where it was. It saw the rabbit again and although it was hungry and wouldn’t mind a snack, it knew better than to repeat its past mistake. Instead it flew down and landed on a fence post while the woman of the farm was beating a rug.

“You’re back, huh?” the woman said to the falcon. “Well, that’s fine, just no attacking the rabbit, the fox, or the chickens.”

The falcon squawked. Then, realizing that she didn’t understand, it struggled to form words . “Teach. Me?”

The woman paused. She sighed. “We’re not responsible for everyone who learns to cultivate just because they know where we live, little one,” she said. “But if you vow to watch over the farm and protect it from any threats, and to help guide the Qi in the area into the natural pattern that it should be once you’re strong enough, then yes, we’ll teach you to be more than you were before. What is your name?”

The falcon paused. It considered the woman’s words, understanding them as it never had in the before. Then it carefully chose a name for itself.

“Freedom,” it said.

And that is how Freedom the falcon became part of the Shen farm.

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