Dao of Language

The brushstroke glides across the paper with deliberate slowness as I hold my breath and keep my wrist as steady as I can.

The rune I’m attempting to draw isn’t one of the most complicated, but its form is intricate and must be drawn with precision, since every curve has to connect with the next at an exact angle so the flow of Qi that will eventually pass through it neither disperses nor loses its direction.

Or at least that’s what the theory says, since I obviously can’t verify whether what I’m drawing actually works, not yet having the ability to channel Qi.

I finally lift the brush and examine the result with a critical eye, deciding it isn’t too bad, or at least not as bad as my first attempt, which looked more like a small child’s scribble than a rune.

I sigh as I set the brush aside and look at the sheets of paper that have been accumulating on the desk over the course of the morning. There are at least a dozen, each bearing several attempts at runes, some crossed out with a diagonal line when the error was too obvious to merit a second glance, and others marked with small annotations in the margins where I’ve noted the specific flaws I detected by comparing them against the image my memory preserves from the books.

Because that is the advantage of my Blessing in this case, I don’t need to have the book open in front of me to know exactly how each rune is supposed to look, since every book I’ve read is engraved in my mind with a precision that sometimes frightens me and other times I am profoundly grateful for.

I take another blank sheet and place it before me, preparing for another attempt, when I hear the study door open.

Lianhua enters with that walk of hers, discreet and audibly deliberate, a controlled cadence in her step that I’ve come to recognize as a conscious gesture toward me, so I always know she’s there without needing to turn my head to look.

“Zhāohuán Wen”, she says in her usual tone, stopping at my side. “Master Mu has finished her morning chat with Guifei Xiang and should be arriving shortly.”

At her words, a sigh escapes my lips before I can contain it, a small sigh of bemusement at one of those little ironies of life you simply can’t anticipate.

If someone had told me, barely two months ago when I started lessons, that my mother and Master Mu would end up becoming friends, I probably would have responded with the same incredulity as if they’d assured me that stones can float on water.

And yet here we are, because somehow, in a way I still don’t entirely understand, the woman who calls an imperial princess child and the consort who only seems to care about painting have found each other interesting enough to meet regularly.

And not for brief exchanges of courtesy, but conversations that, according to Lianhua, make Master Mu arrive early on the days of my lessons just to have them.

I don’t know exactly what they discuss, because my mother deflects the topic with the elegance of someone who has spent a lifetime dodging uncomfortable questions, but I only hope she isn’t playing the typical mother and parading all my embarrassing moments before Master Mu, since although they are few, having them is inevitable.

But just as I’m finishing that thought, I hear footsteps in the hallway, more unhurried than Lianhua’s and with that confident, unrushed cadence I’ve come to recognize perfectly, as though the entire world could wait for her to finish walking.

The study door opens and Master Mu enters with the same ease with which she would enter her own room, as though asking permission were something other people did.

And as she enters, the dark silk of her clothing catches the morning light streaming through the window, and the circular motifs embroidered with runes that adorn her outfit seem to glow faintly when she moves, as if the fabric itself were alive, while the fan in her right hand is closed and resting against her forearm.

“Good morning, child”, she says with a smile that is genuine but that, as always, resembles too closely that of a collector studying a piece she finds particularly fascinating for me to feel comfortable.

“Good morning, Master Mu”, I reply with a respectful bow as the epithet stabs at my pride, though by this point I ought to be more than accustomed to it.

Lianhua, as is customary, closes the door softly after Master Mu’s entrance and positions herself unobtrusively to one side of the room, in a spot from which she can assist me if needed without interfering in the lesson.

But Master Mu, instead of heading straight for the chair Lianhua always prepares for her lessons, stops.

Her gaze, which until that moment had been resting on me, shifts to my desk, where the sheets of paper bearing my rune practice are strewn in a disorder that suddenly seems far more chaotic than I remembered.

I watch her eyes sweep over my efforts with an interest she doesn’t try to disguise, moving from sheet to sheet with an evaluating look. She even leans forward slightly to examine more closely one of the pages where I’d attempted a particularly difficult rune.

After a moment she straightens and looks at me with that languid smile she adopts when she’s about to say something that will sound kind but is really an instruction.

“You don’t need to rush so much to learn to draw the runes, child”, she tells me, the fan swaying gently in her hand with a motion that seems as natural as breathing. “The first priority is to finish learning the books I gave you. Stroke practice will come later, once you’ve properly settled the theoretical foundations.”

At her words, a couple of small coughs escape my throat before I can speak, not from nerves but because I need a moment to find the right way to say what I have to say.

“Actually, Master Mu”, I begin, keeping my voice as steady as possible. “I was practicing because I’ve already finished learning the books you gave me, and since I had nothing left to do with them, I decided to start practicing the writing on my own.”

I see the change in Master Mu is immediate upon hearing my words. The languid smile vanishes from her lips, replaced by an expression of a seriousness I have only seen her use until now when speaking about something truly important.

Her body, which until that moment had been held in the relaxed posture that is habitual for her, tenses almost imperceptibly as she fixes me with her gaze. The fan, which had been swinging carelessly in her hand, suddenly descends and strikes the surface of my desk with a sharp, controlled tap as she grips it with a firmness that contrasts with the lightness with which she usually handles it.

“What do you mean you’ve finished learning all the books?” she asks, and her tone, though not hostile, carries an edge that makes it clear the question is not rhetorical.

I look her straight in the eyes without flinching, because I know that if I show any sign of doubt or hesitation she’ll interpret it as a signal that I’m exaggerating.

“Exactly what I said, Master Mu”, I reply with a calm I have no need to feign. “I’ve read all the books you gave me and learned them over these months while you’ve been giving me lessons.”

After hearing my confirmation, Master Mu stares at me for a moment that feels almost endless, her eyes locked on mine with an intensity that makes me feel like a specimen under a microscope lens.

“Anyone can say that”, she tells me at last, and her voice is so flat and serious that for an instant she reminds me more of my mother when she’s being stern than of the Master Mu I know. “But if you’re so sure, I’ll put you to the test.”

She pauses in a way that is deliberately dramatic, and when she continues, her tone takes on a hardness that admits no negotiation.

“But I’ll warn you of one thing, child”, she says, the tip of the fan pressing lightly against the wood of my desk. “If I discover you’ve been lying to me, I will cancel our agreement and leave, never to return.”

The words hang suspended in the air of the study like a sentence, and I am fully aware it is not an empty threat, since as far as I know, Master Mu does not make empty threats.

The day I met her, when she put Qi Sheng in his place with a single phrase and reduced him to a bundle of nerves, it was clear the poor man knew the consequences of angering her and didn’t seem particularly willing to do so.

But I don’t lie either, so I look at her steadily, without blinking, and reply in a voice that comes out firmer than I expected “I have no problem with that.”

And I mean it, because I trust my memory absolutely, and because I know that every word, every rune, and every explanation written in those books is stored in my mind with the same exactness with which it was printed on the page.

Upon hearing my confirmation, Master Mu wastes not a second and launches straight into her questions.

And what happens next makes the examination she gave me at the Hall of Ten Thousand Talismans, the one I thought so exhaustive at the time, look by comparison like a simple check of basic knowledge.

Because Master Mu does not examine me. She dissects me.

The questions begin straightforwardly, definitions of specific runes, their individual functions, and the variations depending on the context of the talisman in which they’re applied. But they quickly escalate in complexity when she asks me how variations in the strokes of runes can affect them beyond simply causing them to fail.

Then she moves on to specific cases that appear in the books, descriptions of common talismans with their rune schematics, the most frequent mistakes apprentices make when combining runes of different types, and the technical reasons behind those errors.

She even goes further, posing hypothetical situations in which I have to apply what I’ve learned, not simply repeat it, such as when she describes a talisman with a combined effect requiring a specific sequence of runes and asks me to identify what the correct order of inscription would be and why.

Question after question, without rest, without giving me time to breathe between one answer and the next, as though she were trying to find a gap in my knowledge by sheer brute force.

And I answer with calm, without growing nervous, because the pages of the books are there in my memory, available both for recitation and as reference, as vivid as the day I read them, and each of Master Mu’s questions simply triggers the corresponding recollection with a precision that at this point no longer surprises me but for which I am profoundly grateful.

Because runes, fortunately, are not drawings. They are a writing system and therefore a language, and my Blessing treats them exactly as what they are, characters and symbols that can be remembered with the same fidelity as any text. If they were illustrations or images I’d have a problem, but since they are functional equivalents of letters and words, my memory preserves them with the same ease with which it preserves everything else I’ve read.

The examination stretches on for a length of time I don’t dare estimate, but that feels as though it lasted an eternity, and when the final question arrives and my final answer leaves my lips, the silence that settles over the study is almost tangible.

Master Mu remains motionless for several seconds after my last answer, regarding me with an expression I can’t entirely decipher, and then, with a movement that lacks her usual elegance, she lets herself drop into the nearest chair.

And when I say she lets herself drop, I mean it literally, because the woman who normally sits with the grace of someone who turns every gesture into art now collapses into the seat with the air of someone who has just run a marathon and desperately needs to rest.

“If someone had told me what you’ve just done, I would have called them a liar or a storyteller”, she tells me, and her voice, which throughout the examination had remained firm and cutting, now sounds tinged with an exhaustion that seems more mental than physical. “But fortunately or unfortunately, I’ve suffered it myself.”

Hearing her, I tilt my head slightly and feign curiosity, since I know I’ve done something unreasonable again but can’t let it show that I’m aware of it.

“Why do you say that, Master Mu?” I ask. “I know I may have learned the books a little faster than expected, but surely there are people capable of doing the same thing in a similar time.”

Master Mu looks at me and something in her expression tells me she’s weighing her words with a care that isn’t typical of her.

“Perhaps some could read and learn the books in only a slightly longer time than you”, she concedes at last, and her voice has recovered some of its normal tone but retains a nuance I haven’t heard from her before. “But none of them would have the ability to achieve a perfect success rate when answering the questions.”

She pauses and picks up the fan, which at some point during the examination she’d left on my desk beside the sheets of my practice work.

“And that is what’s truly terrifying about you, child”, she continues, and the way she pronounces the word terrifying does not sound like a compliment but like a cold, honest observation. “Terrifying enough that I might consider kidnapping you.”

The effect of those words is immediate. My throat constricts in a reflexive motion as I swallow with a nervousness I can’t disguise, though a part of my mind tells me she’s probably exaggerating.

And I’m not the only one who reacts. From the side of the room where she has remained in silence throughout the entire examination, I feel Lianhua tense, and her posture, which until a moment ago was that of someone observing with calm, shifts to that of someone assessing distances and possible movements, her shoulders leaning slightly forward and the weight of her body redistributed onto the balls of her feet as she slides a hand inside her clothing.

But Master Mu, after an instant that feels like an eternity, makes a gesture with her free hand, a slow, open movement that is clearly conciliatory.

“Neither of you need worry”, she tells us, and although her tone returns to its usual register, I can sense she has noticed Lianhua’s reaction and has not taken it lightly. “I have no intention of doing so.”

She pauses briefly before continuing, as if wanting to make sure her next words are perfectly clear.

“The trouble it would bring me makes it not worth the effort”, she explains with a frankness that, curiously, I find more reassuring than any apology. “Apart from the fact that, given your condition, I’d be doing you a disservice by taking you to an environment where it would work too heavily against you.”

At her words, a sigh of relief leaves my lips with a force that probably betrays just how frightened I was, and the tension that had built in my shoulders during those few seconds begins to dissipate little by little.

Beside me, Lianhua also relaxes her posture, though not entirely. I know Lianhua well enough to know that, even though the immediate threat has passed, the guard she has just raised will not come fully down again for the rest of the session, and perhaps never again while Master Mu is present.

But Master Mu doesn’t seem to have finished speaking, because after giving me a moment to recover, I see her pensive expression return as she crosses her arms over her chest and rests the fan on one shoulder, beginning to tap it lightly.

“The problem, child”, she tells me, regarding me with a mixture of resignation and something that almost resembles amusement. “Is that now the entire program I’d designed for your lessons is completely useless.”

I blink at that, because of all the things I expected to hear after passing her test, that wasn’t one of them.

“I’d designed a lesson plan spanning the six months of my stay, based on you needing at least four to finish with the books and the remaining two to consolidate your knowledge and begin stroke practice”, she continues, halting the tapping of the fan against her shoulder. “But now that you’ve demolished that schedule, I need a moment to think about what to teach you from here.”

And as I watch her sitting there, temporarily reduced to being a tutor who has just discovered her student has accomplished in two months what she expected to take between four and six, I can’t help but feel a mixture of pride at having exceeded her expectations and a pang of guilt for having ruined her plan.

Although, being honest with myself, the guilt I feel is considerably less than the pride.

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