Lan Sizhui tries not to touch the array. Everything in it is cold, though there is no ice or frost to be seen. Touching fabric doesn’t hurt, but a brief brush against Bichen’s hilt had marked his skin when they were first shifting Hanguang-Jun into a less undignified position, so he’s very careful.
But before he starts building a wall around it, he pulls the talisman just to the point where he can see it, without removing it from the array. Paper should not feel cold, but it does, the blood so cold that it leaves marks on his fingertips. That the blood is still wet when he pulls back is startling.
Their bodies have not changed in the two days he’s spent gathering stones. One would think on a mountain of stones there would be more of them suitable for his purposes, but the steep slope that killed them is rough and ragged and covered with gravel, not good stone for building.
He wonders if time just stopped inside the array, the moment they died. Their bodies were cold but not rigid when they’d moved them, as if the last breath had just flown.
Wen Ning disappeared a few hours into the gathering of stones, and is not yet back when Lan Sizhui finishes sketching the talisman. He’s not planning on making another one, he just wants to understand what happened, whether his fathers still somehow exist together, in some other past, or if this world of his is now some ghost remnant, soon to crumble, undermined of the things that made it.
Would that be a bad thing? How far back would they go? He doesn’t know.
He’s using his power to help shape the stones to fit them together when Lan Xichen steps off Shuoyue next to him.
“Sizhui,” his uncle says, and that is all it takes. Lan Sizhui stands and lets himself be folded into his uncle’s embrace. He doesn’t cry, he can’t yet, but Lan Xichen has been close to him since the day his father brought him home, and it is good to not be alone in this.
“They’re gone, but they’re not exactly dead, I think,” Lan Sizhui says when Xichen releases him. “Don’t touch the array, it isn’t pleasant.”
“Can they be… is there a way… What is it? Wen Qionglin said they were dead.”
“They’re dead to us, here,” Lan Sizhui says. “But Wei-qian…” he falters; it is hard to think of him as anything but A-Die now. “He had been working on an emergency measure, one he told me might allow someone to go backwards in time from the moment of their death by severing the spiritual cognition from the body. He said it wouldn’t work unless the spirit was on the verge of separating anyway. So he couldn’t test it. You know how many ideas he played with that he had no intention of ever using.”
Lan Xichen nods, staring at the tableau, his brother’s small smile just visible from where his head lies on his husband’s shoulder, eyes closed. There’s blood on his robes, but no obvious wounds. Wei Wuxian’s body is in much worse shape. There are obvious breaks, a head wound, a lot of blood, and something about how he’s lying makes Xichen think that some part of his spine broke on the way down the hill.
Most bodies have some obvious spiritual residue clinging to them if you know how to look. But these, despite looking fresh, have no trace. The familiar essence of Lan Wangji is completely absent.
“So whatever it was he was working on didn’t work?” Lan Xichen asks.
“I’m not sure,” Lan Sizhui says. “He said that we don’t know how time works, that maybe using something like this would erase the future we’re in, that maybe it would make a new future alongside the old. That maybe it wouldn’t work at all. That he would probably never use it because who’d want the responsibility?”
That’s when he cracks.
“Wangji would take the responsibility,” Lan Xichen says wryly, wrapping an arm around Lan Sizhui’s shoulders, which shake harder with that.
Lan Sizhui is half laughing, half crying when he says, “That’s so very much like them. I wish… I just wish I could tell Xian-gege that I know how it works now.” And then he’s sobbing.
Lan Xichen stands with him, and says, “Jingyi is coming. He’s getting some of your friends and bringing them. You don’t have to do this alone. He left a class full of students.”
Lan Sizhui nods. And then says, through tears, “I have to believe they’re together, somewhere, somewhen. I… don’t think Hanguang-Jun died of injuries. I’m not sure what caused it, but when we shifted him, he was just gone, not…”
“Broken,” Lan Xichen says, looking at Wei Wuxian.
“I don’t think he wanted him to go alone.”
Wen Ning is very fast when he wants to be, but it still takes time to get from Cloud Recesses to Lotus Pier.
He waits for a gate guard to send a message to Jiang Wanyin, head bowed.
“What,” he hears, and looks up to find Jiang Wanyin standing there, scowling. The years have worn on him a little, but not nearly as much as one might expect of a man of fifty.
Wen Ning bows low. “I regret to inform you of the passing of Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji. We believe their spiritual essences may be completely gone from this world. No trace of spiritual energy remained with their bodies.”
When he looks up, Jiang Wanyin is already walking away. Then Jiang Wanyin calls out, without looking back, “Stay there.”
Wen Ning waits.
Jiang Cheng walks straight into his private rooms, opens a chest, and pulls out Suibian, in its sheath.
He walks back out to the gate, gripping the sheath with white-knuckled fingers.
When he gets there, he hands it to Wen Ning. “Open it.” The sword had sealed itself to all others while Wei Wuxian was alive, and while he was a spirit, and while he was alive again. But if the spirit is gone?
Wen Ning wraps his fingers around the sword’s hilt, and slides the blade out of the sheath, and then back in.
Jiang Cheng’s knees stop holding him up, and he slumps down to the wood of the walkway. He manages one word. “How.”
“Sizhui… Lan Sizhui thinks they… There was a rock slide. Hanguang-Jun appears to have activated a talisman… it… I’m not sure I can explain it. He thinks that at the moment of their deaths, they may have used a talisman that Wei-gongzi created to separate their spiritual cognition from their bodies. That they might have used that somehow to travel in time. They appear dead to us, there is no… I can usually see when there’s other… they left nothing but their bodies for us to find. The array is still active…”
“You weren’t with them?” Jiang Cheng asks, his voice sharp.
“I was with Lan Sizhui; we went ahead while they brought the donkey. When they didn’t arrive… We went back to find them. We tried to move their bodies, but the array… Sizhui is going to build a cairn there. He’s there now.”
“Can you show me?”
Wen Ning says, “If I tell you, I can go get Jin Rulan.”
Jiang Cheng sighs. “You’d best have me with you if you’re going to Lanling. Can you fly?”
Wen Ning considers Suibian, and says, “Let’s see.” He’s used the sword before, but not like this.
He steps onto it, and rises. Energy is energy and his undeath has left him with a vast sea of power to draw on at will.
“Right,” Jiang Cheng says. “Let’s go.”
They place the stones by hand, carefully. It is meditative work. The stones are large, and have to be fit, sometimes cut to fit more stably. They build it about a hand outside the round ring of the array.
“What’s powering it?” Lan Xichen asks as the day bleeds into afternoon.
“I don’t think it’s powered so much as just stopped,” Lan Sizhui says. “Time… we don’t know what moves us forward from the past to the future. I can only imagine that something that tore two souls out of time would leave a scar?”
“And you don’t want to pull their bodies out…”
“If there’s any chance that doing so would disrupt what they were trying to do?” Lan Sizhui shakes his head. “We don’t know enough to guess. The way A-Die’s mind works… I don’t even know if he knew, exactly.”
“Too bad we can’t ask them,” Lan Xichen says. “I suppose you tried Inquiry?”
“There’s nothing. Less than nothing. A complete absence of even a remnant.”
“Mn,” Lan Xichen says. He picks up another stone, studies it, and then places it with more force than is strictly necessary.
Lan Jingyi shows up with Ouyang Zizhen mid-afternoon. Jin Rulan, Jiang Wanyin, and Wen Ning show up not long after.
Lan Xichen explains to each new arrival what they are doing, and they all start lifting rocks into place.
Nie Huaisang appears with a number of disciples and a hot meal in the early evening. He studies the cairn, listens to the explanation, and then says, “We should build a more permanent structure here. I am willing to provide the skilled labor.”
“Lanling Jin will provide money for the materials,” Jin Ling says without looking to his uncle.
“Gusu Lan will keep a guard here,” Lan Xichen says.
“Yunmeng Jiang will assist with the guard,” Jiang Wanyin says. He frowns at the site. “Leave it to Wei Wuxian to die in the middle of nowhere at the foot of a mountain. We’ll need to do something to protect it from rain.” He stares at the last, unbuilt section. Their bodies and the glowing blue array are still visible through it. He swallows, and then shakes his head, scowling. “We should finish this for now, and then discuss further steps. There’s a town nearby?”
“I can show you,” Lan Sizhui says.
It is almost completely dark—but for several hastily built bonfires—when the last stone is placed. A faint glow can still be seen between some of the cracks, but the danger of someone accidentally putting their hand in the array is past. They’ve been careful. Lan Sizhui showed the marks on his hands to each as they started working.
They make their way via sword to the little village, completely overwhelming two innkeepers with the major sect leadership of the four realms.
They sit in the common room of one of the inns, drinking, all of them, well into the night.
Jiang Wanyin tells of his childhood with Wei Wuxian. Lan Xichen is quiet for a long time, but two cups in he tells them about the rabbits at Cloud Recesses, and the extensive discussions which took place before they were finally, permanently accepted.
“At one point, they were going to trap all of them and release them far away,” Xichen says, his words slurring a little despite his previous proclamations that he always neutralized the alcohol with his golden core. “And the elders couldn’t find any of them. Ten days they had traps out. And the minute they took the traps down, the bunnies were all back.”
“How?” Nie Huaisang asks.
“I never told… never told them. Wangji had them. In the Jingshi. All of them. Five litters of babies. All the adults. Like wall-to-wall bunnies. It was, oh, four years after Nightless City. Wei Wuxian gave him the first ones, so he was never letting them go. But wall-to-wall bunnies. So many. I don’t know why they didn’t smell.”
“Probably didn’t dare,” Nie Huaisang says.
“I…” Lan Sizhui pauses to take another drink. “I helped him sneak food in for them. And bedding. We were cleaning constantly. I must have been eight? He told me that rules and discipline are nothing without reason and compassion. And that removing something gentle that gives people calm and joy was neither reasonable nor compassionate, and counter to the spirit of the Lan principles. That the injunction against pets was more out of concern for the animals than for any deep moral flaw in sharing space with small creatures.”
“That’s a switch from when we were teenagers,” Jiang Wanyin says. “He actually fought A-Xian for bringing booze in, the day they met.”
“But fighting is against the rules?” Lan Jingyi says, fascinated.
Lan Xichen actually giggles. “Wangji had such a crush. He was furious about it. More than about the alcohol.”
“That far back?” Jiang Wanyin says.
“He told me once that he was never going to marry, that he did not understand why men would be so completely obsessed with women as to ruin lives over it. I don’t think it occurred to him until he met Wei Wuxian that the right pretty face could do that to him, too,” Lan Xichen says, and downs another cup. He had worked quite assiduously at building up a tolerance after Wei Wuxian moved to Cloud Recesses, years ago.
“I hope they succeeded,” Lan Sizhui says. “I hope their souls are still together. I hope they get their second chance.”
The company raises their cups to this.
“How would we ever know?” Nie Huaisang asks. “It’s not like we can go ask them.”
Lan Sizhui sits up straighter, eyes wide. There is a little flare of energy from him as he neutralizes the alcohol in his system. “I wonder if we can?”
“A-Yuan, no,” says Wen Ning from the corner. He’s been very quiet, not drinking. “It only works at the moment of death. They wouldn’t want you to… And it damaged me, just being in that space. If you send part of your soul into the array, you might not get it back.”
“Not like that, I’m just… I need to think about it. Need to understand the talisman. I’ll look in A-Die’s workshop at Cloud Recesses tomorrow.”
“May I come with you?” Nie Huaisang asks. “I’ve had practice deciphering his notes.”
“No one should use this technique again,” Jiang Wanyin says. “We know it won’t work to change our own future, and we don’t know if their souls survived.”
“I don’t want to use it again,” Lan Sizhui says. “I want to figure out if I can communicate with them, through the array. It might be possible. I don’t… the past is what it is, the future is what it will be. But I’d like to know.”
“Too deep,” Lan Jingyi says, and falls asleep on his shoulder.
That’s the start of it. There’s a lot of back and forth and research over the coming months, while a small mausoleum is built around the cairn, and a tower above it. Wei Wuxian’s notes, tools—everything they can gather from four sects—are placed there, a private library with guards set. A small secondary building is made to house the guards.
Lan Sizhui and Wei Ning stay there for five years after it is built. Sizhui spends most of the time reading and making notes. Wei Ning patrols the countryside around them at night, and keeps his cousin company during the day.
Jingyi comes to visit, but has teaching responsibilities that prevent him from staying. Zizhen visits less often; he has a wife and several children. Nie Huaisang spends the most time there, reading, making suggestions, bringing meals.
Lan Sizhui stops researching after five years, and goes back to Cloud Recesses. He’s been wandering or studying most of his adult life, and one day he just really needs to be in the green forest again, away from the rocks and the grief and the unsolvable puzzle. He is forty years old, and something feels unsettled in him.
Cloud Recesses is home as much as it has ever been home. He teaches, he night hunts. Lan Jingyi marries a woman he met in one of the smaller sects when they called for help. Lan Sizhui is happy for him; Jingyi really adores his wife. Even Jin Ling is married now, though it was an arranged thing and they’re making each other miserable.
He asks Lan Qiren why he never married, and his great-uncle sighs and says, “I fell in love, once, and she married someone else. It never would have been me. I didn’t have the heart for it, after. Have you ever been in love?”
Lan Sizhui shakes his head. He’s loved many people, but never in the all-consuming way that his fathers had loved each other. He wonders what it would be like, but he’s never felt a desperate need for it.
Perhaps there was some fated someone for him, once, but the wars stripped the world of so many lives, so much talent, that whoever they were, they were probably lost before he could know them.
He is an honorary uncle to his friends’ children, and enjoys them. There are people who will welcome him in any sect in the land. Sometimes, now, when he is not teaching, he will travel with Wen Ning again, and they are even welcome at Lotus Pier.
Jiang Wanyin sits with them next to the water and they eat lotus seeds and they don’t speak, but there is peace now between them all. Jiang Wanyin has adopted the senior Jiang disciple as his heir, and Lotus Pier is thriving again through sheer force of will.
When the wondering gets to be too much, he returns to the still-guarded tower, takes up residence, and resumes his contemplation of the nature of time. Wen Ning goes with him.
Nie Huaisang shows up a month into his latest sabbatical, ten years after the strange passing of Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian.
“Do you come to the shrine often?” Lan Sizhui asks. It wasn’t unusual to see the Nie sect leader when Sizhui was here before, but he’s been gone a long time.
“A little bird told me you were here,” Nie Huaisang says. “Did you make any progress?”
“The problem has always been that if someone manages to get into the spell, will they be able to get back out again?” Lan Sizhui says.
Huaisang cocks his head. “I thought the problem was that the only way to work was to die?”
“I’m not sure of that anymore,” Sizhui says. “We’re pretty certain that it took a little bit of Wen Ning’s spiritual cognition when he was in there.”
“He’s a fierce corpse,” Nie Huaisang says. “Not convincing.”
“Ah, but there’s no injury on Hanguang-Jun,” Lan Sizhui says. “Or none that we could discern. As far as I can tell, he’s only gone because he forced the issue. How, exactly, I’m not sure, but we’ve got lots of methods for separating a bit of spiritual cognition for spellwork. The trick is, I think, going to be getting that bit back when the work is finished.”
“It sounds hazardous,” Nie Huaisang says with a flip of his fan. “What if you can’t get it back?”
“I don’t know,” Lan Sizhui says, “but I really, really think I need to try.”
Nie Huaisang considers this. “Do you know how Wei Wuxian knew where my brother’s head was, all those years ago?”
Lan Sizhui frowns. “I… he never said.”
“I got it out of him over drinks, years later. He used a paperman. Jin Guangyao almost caught it, too. But he put enough spirit into it that it was able to perform Empathy and to activate Suibian. That’s how he escaped.”
“Could it be that simple?” Lan Sizhui asks.
“Damage to a fully activated paperman can be hazardous to the user,” Nie Huaisang says. “If it can’t come back…”
“What if instead of putting spiritual cognition in and detaching it, I kept it on a thread?” Lan Sizhui asks.
“Would that even work?” Nie Huaisang asks.
Lan Sizhui sighs, long and slow. “I think I’m willing to try.”
“Be very sure. You don’t know if you can come back.”
“Mn,” Lan Sizhui says with a quick nod.
Nie Huaisang stays with Lan Sizhui while he experiments with tethering papermen.
“What if I was the anchor, instead?” Nie Huaisang asks, finally, when they realize that the tether keeps rebounding to the paperman.
“It might work better,” Lan Sizhui says slowly. “But… there’s a Lan technique that would allow us to communicate better. It’s quite, hm, personal, though. If you have secrets you want to hide, they might not stay hidden.”
“You don’t seem prone to babble,” Nie Huaisang says dryly. “Most of my secrets are either public knowledge now, or the relevant people are dead. I’m not sure this old man has enough reputation to ruin at this point, if you were inclined to do so.”
“Then let me show you,” Sizhui says. “It takes a little getting used to.”
Nie Huaisang hesitates, and then nods.
Lan Sizhui pulls a luminous spark from his own forehead, and then leans forward to press it into Nie Huaisang’s.
Huaisang’s eyes go wide and he draws in a sharp breath. “Sizhui, are you always this sad?”
“You sound surprised,” Sizhui says. “You…”
“I am accustomed to my own sadness, and it has had time to be papered over with life’s pleasures,” Huaisang says. “You always seem so calm.”
“Training,” Sizhui says. “It isn’t important, though. Can we try the anchor?”
It is important, and they both know it, but Nie Huaisang allows Lan Sizhui his polite fiction, because the underlying urgency is plain to him.
“You first,” Huaisang says.
Sizhui nods, and activates the paperman.
Huaisang touches his own forehead, and then touches the little paper with a thread of spiritual energy, without putting any of his actual spirit into it. He pictures himself holding the little doll’s hand, and Sizhui actually laughs.
“Now, take the paperman across the room,” Huaisang sends through the link.
It glides away.
“Don’t help me, but don’t stop me from doing what I do next,” Nie Huaisang sends. Then he envisions pulling the little paperman back to himself.
It comes readily.
“Can you let me see what you see through its eyes?” Huaisang asks.
And there is a flare of something and he looks, and his nose is giant in front of his vision, and his grey beard. He withdraws, startled.
“Put me back into myself,” Lan Sizhui sends.
It takes a shift of perspective to see the spark of energy, but he uses the little thread of his own power to draw it back into Lan Sizhui.
The flare of hope sparking through their link is overwhelming.
This might actually work.
They summon the other sect leaders the next day for the attempt, and enough disciples to dismantle part of the cairn.
Jin Rulan and Lan Xichen show up at the same time. Jiang Wanyin shows up an hour later.
Xichen’s first reaction, on hearing the plan, is to try to talk Lan Sizhui out of this.
“The risk is too great. Your fathers wouldn’t want you to risk yourself this way,” he says. “Please…”
He doesn’t say, “You’re all that I have left,” but it hangs there in the air anyway.
“I need to know,” Sizhui says. “I’ve been going through the motions for too long. It’s worth the chance.”
“And you,” Lan Xichen says, turning to Nie Huaisang. “You’re old enough to know better.”
“Sizhui is forty-five!” Nie Huaisang says. “He’s also old enough to know better, and yet…”
“Does your wife know you’re doing this? Your sons?” Jin Ling asks.
“They’re far more competent than I ever was,” Nie Huaisang says dryly. “And I think the risk to me will be minimal.”
When Jiang Wanyin hears what they’re doing, he looks sorely tempted to try it himself.
Lan Sizhui won’t hear of it. “You’re the Jiang sect leader. They still need you.”
“And Gusu Lan doesn’t need you?” Jiang Wanyin demands.
“No. I’ve made very sure that they don’t,” Lan Sizhui says.
Lan Xichen wants to contradict this, but the only way he honestly could would be to say, but I need you, and he can’t; it’s never been something he could say to anyone safely.
“Sect leaders, we’ve taken out the south section,” a disciple calls out. “How much more do we need?”
“That’s enough,” Lan Sizhui says. “I don’t need much space.”
They peer curiously into the cairn.
The bodies have not changed an iota since the thing was built. Curious, Lan Sizhui takes a candle from the wall, and sets it down inside the array. As soon as his hand leaves it, it freezes mid-flicker. He wonders what would have happened if they’d not kept their feet out of the array when they first interacted with it.
No matter.
Wen Ning has put a pallet next to the cairn, and Sizhui lies down on it. Huaisang sits next to him, and Sizhui refreshes their link, and then activates the paperman.
His body goes limp as the little man glows gold. Huaisang reaches out a finger to touch the hand of the paperman, which bows, and then flits over to the top of the cairn, looks around, waves, and then drops in.
He’s not sure what he was expecting, but seeing the outside world freeze was not it. I want to see my fathers, alive and happy, now.
The whole world shifts. There is a tremendous flickering, and it takes him a moment to realize that now has no set meaning in this state. If they went back in time, I’d like to see the future they made.
And that is when the world stills.
He recognizes Lotus Pier by the flowers and the water, not the buildings. He’s been there several times, and it’s not this ornate in his world, nor this packed with people. There are people everywhere. A whim floats him above, and he can see that the place is vastly expanded, people laughing in the streets. He drifts over to see the part that should be a training field, a pasture, but instead finds an intricately decorated series of buildings stretching from the water to the farmland beyond. Characters mark the largest as the Wei Changze School of Medicine, and another sign points to a clinic and an apothecary.
Where is Wei Ying? he thinks, and then he sees a man who is almost, but not quite, familiar. He is taller, stronger, younger and at the same time older than Sizhui remembers. The undercurrent of sadness that was always in him is no more. He glows with power, even to Sizhui’s attenuated senses.
The man is throwing a little girl into the air. She has ridiculous pigtails, and is maybe two or three years old. She is giggling as Wei Ying catches her, and she squeals “Again!”
Sizhui drifts around them, curious and delighted. Wei Ying flops down onto the ground with her, and says, “You’ve slayed me, Xixi! I can’t move.”
“Yuan-ge, help me move A-Die!” she shouts.
If he could feel his lungs, Sizhui would gasp at the boy who climbs to his feet from under a tree and says, “Let’s go find your Baba, Xi-mei. Your A-Die is tired.” The boy is about nine or ten, from the way he speaks, and Sizhui wonders if he is looking at an alternate version of himself.
He has no way to ask.
Wei Ying calls out, “Wawa, I can’t move.”
“Big strong cultivator like you?” A woman’s voice, thick with amusement, sounds from a wide covered entry, where she sits watching and sorting herbs. It takes Sizhui a moment to realize that he recognizes this face, but from where?
“A-Qing… our daughter has worn me out.”
A-Qing? Wen Qing? Daughter? Sizhui is perplexed.
“I’ll take her to her Baba,” A-Yuan says. “He doesn’t tire.”
“True,” Wei Ying says with a smile. “Off you go!”
Sizhui follows the children, curious.
They run (run!) along the wooden walkway to a spacious building that reminds Sizhui of Wei Wuxian’s old workshop. And there is Hanguang-Jun, only not. Lan Wangji is also, impossibly, a little taller and wider than Sizhui remembers his fuqin being, his shoulders more thickly muscled, his body singing with the kind of energy that comes from joyful work, rather than desperate compliance. And he looks nothing like the reserved figure Lan Sizhui remembers: no headband, no ornate headgear, grey robes with no ornamentation, no marks of status, playing an instrument with a bow in a quick, lively tune.
Little Xixi dances into the room, pulling A-Yuan into a twirling spin. Lan Zhan looks up and beams at them.
Sizhui would cry if he could remember how, to see his father actually joyful.
“Baba, I dance!” Xixi calls out.
This goes on for a bit, and then she glances at the door and says, “A-Die! You dance, too!”
And Wei Ying, who was maybe not so completely exhausted after all, picks up his daughter and spins her around, then sets her down and flops down next to Lan Zhan, tucking his head up in Lan Zhan’s lap.
This, finally, has Lan Zhan stopping, to fondly stroke Wei Ying’s hair.
Xixi looks up, and says, “Why is there a glowy spot right there?”
“Hm?” Wei Ying says, and looks, expecting sunshine. “I don’t see anything.”
Lan Zhan cocks his head. “What do you see, Chenxi?”
Chenxi. Lan Sizhui floats down closer to her, studying the little girl’s face. It’s hard to tell with her baby cheeks, but her eyes are all Lan Zhan. And they are tracking his position in the air.
You see me? He tries to speak, but he has no real presence in this world.
“There’s a ghost who isn’t a ghost,” she says. “He’s right here.”
“He?” Wei Ying’s voice is on alert, careful, calm.
“Mn,” the tiny girl says, and that makes Sizhui smile.
“He’s smiling at me,” Xixi says.
“Do you know who he is?” Lan Zhan asks.
“Who are you?” she asks.
Sizhui looks around, and then points to A-Yuan, and then holds his hand up high. He doesn’t know if she can see his hands, but she saw him smile, so he’s hoping.
“He pointed at A-Yuan. He held his hand up like this,” she says, and demonstrates.
Her fathers sit bolt upright.
“Lan Sizhui?” Lan Zhan says urgently.
“He nodded,” she reports.
“Lan Yuan, did you get yourself killed trying to reach us?” Wei Ying demands.
She says, “He’s shaking his head but I don’t think he’s sure.”
Lan Zhan stands up, walks over to a cupboard and brings out a familiar guqin, setting it on one of the tables. “Sizhui, if you can hear me, imagine a guqin in front of you. Overlay mine. Then play in the language of Inquiry.”
It takes Sizhui a few moments to process this, but then he follows the directions given.
When the string chimes, he wants to weep with relief.
“How long has it been for you?” Wei Ying says as soon as the note plays.
Eleven years.
“Life continued there, then?” Lan Zhan asks. “I was worried when we first came back.”
Yes. Many things have changed. We built a cairn over your bodies, and a temple.
“Oh, please tell me no one worships there,” Wei Ying says. “How embarrassing. We’re not ancestors, we’re not dead.”
We could not be sure. I wanted to be sure. No worship, just a cairn and a guard to keep the cairn safe. The array is still active. I think it will always be active.
“Oh, that’s interesting,” Wei Ying says. “You know we couldn’t move forward in time from the moment of our deaths, not a bit. In fact… time probably isn’t passing for you. How did you come back?”
Paperman. Nie Huaisang is my anchor. But I can’t feel him right now. Please tell me everything? If I can’t go back, I want to know. And if I can.
“Clever boy!”
I’m forty-five.
“A-Yuan is forever three to me,” Wei Ying says.
“Xixi is three years old!” Xixi says. “A-Yuan is ten!”
“Different A-Yuan,” Wei Ying says, and there is a wistful tone in his voice. “Even the children with the same names aren’t exactly who they were.”
You have a daughter.
“We do!” Wei Ying says.
“Wei Qing, you might remember as Wen Qing, moved here as a child,” Lan Zhan says. “The three of us are a family. Xixi is my daughter. Our daughter. She is pregnant with Wei Ying’s son. With our son.”
There is a pause, and then, Congratulations, she is beautiful. All three?
“Lan Xichen is married to both A-Yao and Ying-jie,” Wei Ying says with a laugh.
Jin Guangyao? The guqin does not really allow for nuances of shock.
“He never became Jin Guangyao,” Wei Ying says gently. “We rescued him very early and he grew up with his mother in Cloud Recesses. We grew up here, with our mothers.”
The pause is longer. Your mothers survived?
Lan Zhan says, “We went back to early childhood, and saved them. It’s been over two decades for us. You are not our son in this time, because we saved your entire family. All of them. Your older sister, your parents, your aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins. Wei—Wen Ning and Wen Qing. Their parents. Qishan Wen is only just now starting to recover from their civil war. Lotus Pier and Cloud Recesses never burned. Jin Zixuan never died.”
“My shijie is alive and has three children,” Wei Ying says softly. “Jiang Cheng’s parents are still alive, and he has a little brother and a little sister. I have my own little sister, as well, who is married to Wei Ning. She’s also expecting.”
Lan Sizhui thinks about how hollow Lotus Pier feels compared to the bustle he saw on the way over. How lonely Jin Ling was, even after marriage. How is Jin Ling?
Wei Ying laughs an odd laugh. “Jin Ling is a girl. She has a little brother, Jin Xiang, who reminds us more of the Jin Ling you know. Lan Jingyi is a quiet little boy.”
Jingyi got married. He’s calmed down a lot. Xichen is pushing to make him sect heir.
Lan Zhan laughs. “Good, they deserve to have him as their Sect Leader one day. Xichen has two children here. We’re pushing for his daughter to become the sect heir. A-Yu doesn’t have the temperament. It will give my father fits if he ever bothers to find out.”
“Have we told him about Xixi yet?” Wei Ying asks. “I forget.”
“No,” Lan Zhan says.
Who is Ying-jie? Sizhui asks.
“You remember Mo Xuanyu? His mother is only a year or two older than Xichen,” Wei Ying says. “Mo Xuanyu was never born. We took his mother out of Jin Guangshan’s way. She died in your time, before I came back.”
“So many people lived who would not have lived,” Lan Zhan says. Then he picks up the instrument and stands. “Follow me, I will show you.”
Sizhui remembers Popo, and Fourth Uncle, and so many other faces. He does not remember his parents, but now, finally, he knows what they look like. What his older sister looks like. He has younger siblings in this world. Part of him wishes he could just fall into this happier place, into his younger self, but he would not… He would not inflict that on this happy boy who somehow just isn’t quite him. He is an A-Yuan. But not Lan Sizhui’s A-Yuan. This little boy has never gone hungry, has never been torn even once from the people he loves.
He thinks it might be enough, maybe, to know they are here, to know they are happy, that they have created this better, thriving world so full of people.
The instrument is still in front of Lan Zhan.
Tell me everything, he says, the plucked notes nowhere near as wistful as he feels.
They talk and talk, telling him of Nie Mingjue, who married the girl who killed Jin Guangshan. How Jin Zixuan is happy with his children. How even Jin Zixun comes to visit sometimes, and while he’s still kind of a dick, he behaves and is respectful most of the time. Some of these names don’t mean much to Lan Sizhui except that he’s aware of them in a historical context.
“If you can,” Lan Zhan says, “tell Xichen that I saved Meng Yao. That he is now Lan Yao, and an inner disciple.”
“We saved Xue Yang, too, when he was a baby,” Wei Ying says. “Turns out he literally sucked evil from the tit. Lan Qiren cleansed him and adopted him. He’s a nice kid.”
Even though he did so much evil? Sizhui asks.
“He was an actual infant. We don’t punish people for what they haven’t done,” Wei Ying says. “Though we do set traps for the ones we know are likely to fuck up.”
“Wen Ruohan was his own fault,” Lan Zhan says.
“So were Jin Guangshan and Sect Leader Yao,” Wei Ying says. “I have no regrets. And far more Wen survived the civil war than survived Sunshot.”
Sizhui listens to their stories for hours.
As the evening lengthens, and the children go to bed, Wei Ying says, “I need you to try to go back. You can come back here if you fail. But try not to fail.”
“You deserve to live,” Lan Zhan says. “You deserve happiness. You are loved in two worlds.”
I think I can, now that I know you’re safe, Sizhui plucks the strings. Can I visit?
“Anytime,” Wei Ying says. “We love you, A-Yuan. Always. Forever.”
You are my fathers. I hold you close, always. And then, because he suddenly can’t stay without knowing if he can go back, he plucks, Goodbye.
“Farewell, my son,” Lan Zhan whispers.
There is no response.
They’ve told him enough about how they navigated during their own journey into the past that he wills himself back to the cairn, to the frozen moment, and then into the frozen paperman.
It would be impossible without Nie Huaisang’s tether, which he follows out and then back into his own body.
The resulting headache is so profound that he spasms and clutches at his head.
Nie Huaisang gasps, and then Lan Sizhui passes out.
Nie Huaisang looks up at the surrounding sect leaders. They’re alarmed.
“It worked,” he says.
“Already?” Jiang Wanyin says. “But there was no time…”
“Time does not pass in the array,” Nie Huaisang says. “He was in there for many hours, from his perspective, I believe. He has so many new memories…” He drops his greying head, shaking it. “He found them. It will take some time, I think, for his body to adjust to the new memories.”
Then he looks up at Lan Xichen. “They told him of Da-ge. Wei Wuxian managed to save…” he pauses, trying to sort through the images in Sizhui’s head. “I think they saved my father, and my brother… I am young in that world, younger than Sizhui is now, and have a strong core because… Oh, why didn’t I think of that? Wei Wuxian, you beautiful bastard. In that world, I cultivated with spiritual war fans.”
“Da-ge is alive for them?” Lan Xichen says.
“And… they went so far back. They saved Meng Yao, before he was broken. They took him to you, when you were young. In that world, you are married… Xichen, you’re married to him and to a woman… you have children. Your mother is alive. Oh. That’s why they went back so far. So they could save them. Their mothers.”
Lan Xichen drops to his knees, and then pitches forward, weeping against Huaisang’s knees.
“They stopped the war,” Huaisang says. “Lotus Pier, it never burned.” He looks up at Jiang Wanyin. “Your parents, your sister, all alive. Yanli-guniang is married and has three children.” Then he laughs. “Jin Ling is a girl. And she has two little brothers. They think Jin Xiang is an awful lot like you,” and here he looks up at Jin Rulan. “They gave him the same courtesy name.”
Jin Ling looks bemused. “I’m a girl in their world?”
“No,” Huaisang says, and sobers. “They think every child born after they went back is a little different. They know an A-Yuan, with the same parents as Sizhui, but he’s not quite… They were glad to know our Sizhui had lived on, that all of you had, because the idea that you younger ones might not exist was too awful to think about. But all of the adults are different, too. They changed so much.”
Then he looks up at Wen Ning. “They saved you, they saved your whole branch of the Wen family.” He pauses, sorting memories, and his eyebrows go up. “All of you took his name. Moved to Lotus Pier. There was a war… in Qishan only. He saved your family from getting involved. You are… a great inventor and musician there, as close as brothers with both of them. And your sister…” Huaisang stops, trying to parse a complex set of images.
Wen Ning listens with eyes wide.
Then Huaisang laughs. “She lives with them, but refuses to marry. She gave them a child, a little girl, Chenxi. And is pregnant with a boy.”
Xichen looks up at him. “Chenxi?”
“Wei Chenxi,” Huaisang says. “But she has your brother’s eyes.”
Sizhui opens his eyes and then says, “She’s the one who spotted me. None of the rest could see me, but there’s a technique… I spoke to them using Inquiry. They just spoke, and I could understand them. But Xixi noticed me right away.”
“I’m trying to imagine Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji noticing anyone else exists,” Jiang Wanyin mutters.
“I don’t know,” Sizhui says. “It’s… I think they’re happy. I needed… I wanted to know that they’re happy. Our world lost so many people. I saw my popo, and my uncle, that I remembered. And so many other uncles and aunties and my parents and my sister who I never knew. And they saved them all. I just needed to know they were okay, somewhere, but it’s not just them. I think all of you, there, are as happy as you can be.”
“My sister is a mother?” Wen Ning says softly.
“Oh! And you!” Sizhui says. “Wei Wuxian, his mother… she was pregnant when they rescued her. He has a little sister. And in that world, you married her a year ago. She and A-Qing are both pregnant. In this world, she never existed because of how his parents died.”
Wen Ning nods. “That must make Wei-gongzi very happy.”
“Was I married?” Jiang Wanyin asks.
“No, I don’t think you wanted to be,” Lan Sizhui says. “But you have younger siblings. A-Shun will probably marry in a year or two. They said that your mother finally stopped trying to get you to marry and have kids. I told them you’d adopted a disciple, and Wei-qianbei was very glad. He said that the Jiang Wanyin he knows there is much less angry with the world. He really pushed your mother and father to let you be you, and he never… he and Hanguang-Jun never competed in your age group because it would have been cheating. The sect heirs are all good friends because of the things he made to connect the sects more closely.”
“Oh?” Jin Rulan says.
“He showed Sizhui diagrams,” Nie Huaisang says. “I think I understand them. They wouldn’t be impossible to replicate.”
“Now that we know I can go and come back,” Lan Sizhui says, “I can do it again if we need more information.”
They return to their sects the next day. There is something bittersweet in knowing what they know. Bitter to look around at their world when it is missing so very many faces. Sweet to know that somewhere, the people they lost are happy.
Before they go, they wall up the cairn. It’s too tempting for some, to think of going to watch their alternate selves in their alternate lives.
Or, for Jin Rulan, to see his mother and father and the siblings that might have been.
Lan Sizhui feels washed clean of the clinging grief that has stuck to him for so many years. He has not needed to be with his family constantly, but he always needed to know they were there, and now, there is just somewhere a little harder to get to. At forty-five years old, he begins to smile again, to join the world, to go out into it without having to fight it all the time.
The world continues to recover, slowly. Lan Sizhui starts seeking out potential cultivators that the world has missed… the chaos of losing a whole sect plus most of another and parts of the rest has left a deep scar on a world filled with resentful energy. He brings them to Lotus Pier, to Cloud Recesses, and then goes out again.
Jiang Cheng and Lan Xichen each work on some of the designs Sizhui brought back. The purifiers are beyond them, for the moment, but Jiang Cheng’s protégé is fascinated by the idea, and sets out for a season to learn, as Wei Ying did in another lifetime, how to understand glass and metal.
Nie Huaisang anchors each of them, once, to see the other world behind the cairn. They don’t ask a second time, but both Jiang Cheng and Lan Xichen bring back a sense of peace. They now know that most of their griefs are the fault of circumstance, and not some fundamental failing or lack of worthiness. It makes it easier, somehow. They are all struggling with this difficult world, but it is not because they are inadequate, but that the tasks and the burdens are so large. They move forward encumbered only by their actual burdens, and not their fears of their own inadequacies.
Lan Xichen takes it all in, looks around the crumbling shell of his sorrows, and passes sect leadership on to Jingyi.
The day Lan Xichen shows up at Lotus Pier, Jiang Wanyin is not surprised to see him.
“I don’t know why I’m here,” Lan Xichen says. “But I can’t be there—Gusu—right now, and I think you… I think maybe you understand.”
“I don’t have much of a choice about living where my ghosts are,” Jiang Wanyin says. “But at least I’m the only one I have to answer to.”
“I miss them,” Xichen says, and he doesn’t say who.
“Yeah,” Wanyin agrees. “There is no one left who calls me by my name.”
“Nie-zongzhu sent me the plans for more of the new designs your brother made,” Xichen says. “Maybe we can work on it together?”
Jiang Wanyin studies Lan Xichen for a long moment. “I think… yes. But I have a request.”
Lan Xichen raises an eyebrow and makes a ‘go on’ gesture.
“Sizhui said that the sect heirs of our generation were sworn brothers, all of them. I miss… I miss having a brother. I think maybe you do, too. My brother called me Jiang Cheng.”
For the first time in a very long time, Lan Xichen smiles. “Jiang Cheng. It would be an honor. My brother called me Da-ge.”
Stories start appearing in the world, unauthored, fables about two worlds, about choices, about choosing peace, about the folly of ambition. Their little group knows Nie Huaisang is responsible, but the stories get told in teahouses and they nudge the world to a kinder path.
None of them is really striving for immortality anymore. They know that this world will continue past them, and that a brighter future awaits the people they love in an alternate world, that the alternate versions of their own selves are happy and thriving there. And it is enough.
Lan Sizhui is too old to bother counting when Wen Ning carries him into the sanctuary for the last time, setting him on the platform that remains next to the cairn, and then tearing the stones away.
“You know you won’t be able to join an alternate self,” Wen Ning says as he works. “Are you content to watch the world and never be part of it?”
Lan Sizhui nods his grey head. “Mn.” His voice creaks a little. He is very old and very tired.
Wen Ning has not changed in the many decades since his undeath. His hair is still black, his skin still veined with black, his body still unnaturally strong. He makes quick work of the cairn, periodically glancing at Sizhui.
“I’m still breathing,” Sizhui mutters.
They are not the only people in the room. Jingyi’s daughter and Jin Ling’s son are there, to rebuild when they are done.
Finally, Wen Ning picks Sizhui’s frail body up, cradles him carefully, and then steps around the rubble to set his cousin in the array, an old man curled against Wei Ying’s hip, his hand coming to rest on Lan Zhan’s leg as his last breath leaves and he is caught by the array.
Wen Ning winces in the array’s pull, and then sinks down into it, freezing in place on his knees, a dark, protective angel bowing over those he has served for so long.
They become aware of each other, hanging over Lotus Pier, the shining, other Lotus Pier.
Sizhui looks neither the old man nor the youth. Wen Ning is a little tattered, swirling light and dark. Together, they find their family.
Xixi is still small. This surprises Sizhui, as so very many years have passed for him.
Wei Qing is with her daughter, and Wen Ning’s shock at seeing his sister is plain. Sizhui moves closer to his Ghost Uncle, until they are brushing elbows, and says, “She hasn’t had her baby yet.”
Wen Ning looks up at Sizhui and says, “You can talk? We can talk.”
“Mn,” Sizhui says. “They said it was like this.”
Xixi looks up and smiles. “A-Niang, he’s back.”
Wei Qing looks up and says, “Sizhui?”
“And someone who looks like Jiufu, but scarier.”
Something passes over her face, and a moment later Lan Zhan and Wei Ying appear at a dead run from opposite ends of the compound. Wei Ying is dragging Wei Ning along by the wrist.
Wei Ning looks up and stops. He cocks his head, smiles, and asks, “Have you come to stay?”
Wen Ning echoes the head tilt and says, “You can see me?”
“I can’t hear you,” Wei Ning says. “But I can see you. I already have part of you. Have you come to stay?”
Wen Ning nods.
Wei Ning smiles, and holds up a hand. “Then come.”
As if pulled, Wen Ning draws closer, wisps of something pulling away from his spirit and extending to his other self. Suddenly, in a rush, the two merge. Wei Ning bows his head and sways with the intensity of it.
Sizhui cries out, reaching toward him.
Wei Ning opens his eyes, looks up at Sizhui, and smiles. “It’s okay. I’m here. We’re both here. It… I can’t explain. I’ve had a part of him for so long, it feels very natural. Come, brush your hand against my arm, I can help you communicate.”
Sizhui reaches for the proffered arm, and says, “You know everything?”
Wei Ning nods. “It’s actually a relief, knowing all of it. The parts I had were the worst. I offset that by living a happy life. Now I can see the best, as well, and it’s less like remembered nightmares, and more like memories I should have had all along. I’m still me, just more.”
“You are both?” Wei Ying says. “And A-Yuan is here?”
“He grew very old, and his last wish was that if he was going to become a spirit somewhere, he’d rather be a spirit here.”
“You could have been reborn,” Lan Zhan says. “You could have passed on and rejoined the cycle anew.”
“Maybe I will,” says Sizhui. “But if I am to be reborn, I choose the world of your making. I had a long, full life. And that world is much recovered. But it’s not a world that contains the people I love most.”
Wei Ning repeats this for them.
“Tell us everything,” Wei Ying says.
Xixi calls him “Ghost-gege” and doesn’t seem to mind him hanging nearby. He mostly watches, enjoying the bustling busy-ness of this world.
One day, Cangse Sanren takes Xixi in the middle of the night, Wei Ying carrying his daughter over to her and then rushing back to the house he shares with Wei Qing and Lan Zhan.
“Stay with me, Ghost-gege,” Xixi says. “It’s dark and A-Niang hurts.”
“Is your Ghost-gege here?” Tang Lijuan asks.
“Mn,” Xixi says, holding up a hand toward him.
Sizhui lets his hand overlap with hers, and sends to her, “It’s okay. When this is all done, you’ll have a little didi of your own!”
Xixi smiles. “Brothers are important, gege. Sing to me?”
“He can sing to you?” Cangse Sanren asks.
“He remembers Baba and A-Die singing,” Xixi says. “It’s pretty in my head.”
He obliges, and she starts to drift to sleep in her grandmother’s arms.
He waits, but he’s good at that, letting the memory of a song play out for her.
She gets restless when he stops, and so he finds another, and then another, as the night lengthens.
She sleeps, but he still sings, and it is just a few hours until dawn when he stops, feeling something strange pulling at him.
“Gege?” she murmurs sleepily.
“Sorry,” he says, strained. “I don’t know…”
And then the rush becomes a compulsion, and the last thing he hears is Xixi crying out, “Gege!” and her running footsteps as his world goes dark.
A sharp wail pierces the night as a new baby takes his first breath and cries.
Xixi barrels into the birthing room, eyes wild, moments after her baby brother is born. She looks around the room franticly, searching the air.
Her baba looks over at her, and says, “Look, Xixi. Your brother is here.”
Baba is kneeling in front of A-Niang, who is leaning back against A-Die. Popo is watching from one side.
The baby is wet and sticky and sprawled across Xixi’s mother’s bare chest, over her softening belly, now breathing rather than wailing. There is a familiar glow about him, sinking into the shining, birth-damp skin, fading as it connects, as the cord connecting the baby with their mother shrinks.
Xixi cocks her head to one side, and says, “Oh! There you are! Ghost-gege is didi now?”
Her parents all stare at her. Finally A-Die asks, “Xixi, what do you mean?”
“He stopped singing and something pulled him away. He couldn’t help it… But he’s there, now.” Xixi points at her baby brother.
They look down at the baby. Wei Qing puts a frantic finger on her son’s wrist.
Wei Jinjing reaches down and puts a finger on the other wrist. “It doesn’t feel like they felt, I don’t think he brought the weight of his other life with him.”
“He said he wanted to be reborn here,” Wei Ying says, his voice cracking.
“Our son,” Lan Zhan says, and tears rush down his cheeks. He lays a hand along the baby’s back. “We have our son.”
“We can’t name him Yuan,” Wei Ying says. “We already have one.”
“Wei Quan (全),” Lan Zhan says. “His courtesy name can be Zhaohui (朝晖), as our light has returned.”
“Are you planning on naming all our children after the morning?” Wei Qing asks.
“All?” Lan Zhan asks, eyes wide.
Wei Qing looks down at the sticky baby in her arms, and trails a finger down her son’s cheek. “Ask me in a couple years.”
Wei Ying turns and kisses her cheek, his hand in her hair. “You gave us our son,” he says softly. “A-Qing, you can have anything you want from us.”