I’ve heard there is a second-level school and even a third-level school. No one from our group of villages has passed the test to attend, so the idea is impossible to imagine, just as it’s hard to imagine him ever being allowed to leave.
“So what do you want?” he asks when I don’t say anything.
I reach into my pocket and pull out a small piece of cloth tied with a strip of dried corn husk. Inside is a pinch of tea my family processed from last-grade leaves. A-ma likes me to give Teacher Zhang some of this tea for two reasons. First, he is a sad and lonely man. Second, I must respect my teacher. And maybe it’s just a dream, but today I would add a third reason: to distract him from Ci-teh, so she might have more time to deal with her family’s losses.
In the afternoon, I see my leaves floating in the big glass jar he uses to drink his tea.
* * *
Every twelve days, the cycle begins anew with Sheep Day in honor of the god who gave birth to the universe. No work is done, and school is closed. A-ma waits until my nieces and nephews have settled and their mothers have begun their spinning before saying to me, “Come. You’ll need your cape.” I’m afraid of what she wants of me, but I bow my head, and follow her into the rain. We quickly pass through the spirit gate and leave our village behind. Her feet are sure and swift, even in the slippery mud, and I have to hurry to keep up with her. We climb the main trail that will eventually reach my brothers’ tea gardens, but we don’t turn onto the smaller paths that lead to them. The clatter of rain on the leaves of my cape seems to magnify A-ma’s quiet determination. She crosses over the trail to the tea collection center without saying a word. We enter the clouds. Everything turns ghostly gray. The path narrows and then narrows some more. We’ve thoroughly entered the terrain of the spirits. I’m glad I’m with A-ma, because she’ll always protect me and make sure I find my way home. I can’t bear to think about what might happen if we were to get separated. With that, a frightening thought enters my mind. Maybe A-ma plans to leave me out here. Perhaps I’ve disappointed her that much. And still we climb.
After a while, she stops. An immense boulder blocks the last frayed remnants of the path. We have nowhere left to go. A chill runs through my body.
“Look around you, Girl,” she orders. “What do you see?”
Rain . . . Rivulets of water streaming down the boulder’s ragged skin . . . Ghosts of trees draped in shadowy mists . . .
I’m so, so scared. But as much as my body shivers and shakes, I can’t make my mouth move.
“Look, Girl. See.” Her voice is so soft I barely hear it above the rain. “See deeply.”
I lick the rain from my lips, close my eyes, and take a breath. When I open my eyes, I try to see the world as she does.
Ready, I try. “A hunter might call this an animal trail, but it isn’t.”
“Why do you say that?” she asks.
“I’ve seen broken twigs up here.” I gesture to the height of A-ma’s shoulder. “Someone comes up here often and passes too closely to the plants and trees. And look at those rocks.” I point to some stones on the ground. “Someone placed them here to make this journey easier.”
A-ma’s smile is perhaps the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. “I’ll need to be more careful in the future.”
Feeling braver, I study the boulder. Huge trees—camphors—tower up behind it. The rock looks round, but a section juts out—a ledge over a steep drop—and curves to the right. I follow my intuition, put my hands on the face of the boulder, and follow the curve. What ledge there was disappears, leaving only hollows to tuck my toes. I slowly creep sideways around the boulder, my body flat against its ancient surface. Except it’s not a boulder. It’s more of an outcropping, a wall, a fortification made by nature, with a soul so powerful I feel it through my fingers and toes.
The ground comes back up to meet my feet, and I step into the grove of camphor trees I’d glimpsed earlier. Sheltered beneath the canopy of their great limbs are scattered about a dozen old tea trees. In the middle—surrounded by the smaller tea trees with camphor branches hanging above and the solid and well-cared-for ground beneath it—stands a single tea tree. Anyone would be able to tell how ancient it is by the twist of its branches.
“Is this my land?” I ask.
“When I went to your a-ba in marriage, the old traditions were supposed to be over. No more buying and selling of women into slavery or marriage. No more dowries either. But it doesn’t matter what the government says. This land belongs to the women in our line. It is ours alone to control. It was given to me as my dowry as it will one day go with you into marriage.”
I’m only half listening, because I’m so disappointed. It’s just as A-ba and everyone else in my family has said. What I’ve been allotted is worthless. It will be hard to get a basket of leaves around the boulder and down the mountain to the tea collection center. The hope I’ve hidden that my land isn’t as bad as everyone has always hinted has been smashed, but A-ma doesn’t notice. Instead, she takes my hand and leads me farther into the grove. “Look how the stone on this side has opened to embrace this special place,” she whispers. “See how part of the rock comes up and over, so you could sleep under it and stay dry, if you wished.”
Yes, it’s hollowed out on this side, forming a grotto, but what difference can that make to me?
She tells me the camphor trees are eight hundred years old or more and that the “sister trees” that surround the ancient tea tree are more than one thousand years old. My stomach sinks even further. Not only could no one find this place, but no one wants leaves from old trees. Tea bushes and pollarded tea trees bring money and food. Not that much money or food, but something. The leaves from these trees? The word that has been so much in my mind lately pounds against the inside of my skull. Worthless. Worthless. Worthless.
“And here is the mother tree,” A-ma continues. Her voice is at once softer and filled with more emotion than it ever is during ceremonial sacrifices. She places her palms on the trunk as delicately as she did on Deh-ja’s belly. “Isn’t she beautiful?”
Not really. The tree is much taller than the ones A-ma called sister trees, but the years show in the way they do in village elders. The bark is cracked. The limbs are bent and gnarled by age. Some of the color has faded from the leaves. And it also has eerie growths—not moles or cracked toenails, but parasites and fungi—that mottle the bark and fester in the crooks of the limbs and at the base of the trunk. I’ve seen things like this before when we’ve tramped into the forest, but one characteristic is new to me. Bright yellow threads have crept into, over, and around the other parasites. The tree looks like it could die tomorrow. Worthless.
“Rice is to nourish,” A-ma says. “Tea is to heal. Always remember that food is medicine, and medicine is food. If you take care of the trees, the trees will take care of you.”