My shoes hit something solid. The rest of the fall never comes.
Beneath me, stone slabs stretch in every direction. The joins between them are wide enough to walk along.
‘A year from now, calamity will overrun every corner of Shen.’
Grandfather Moon's voice comes softly from behind me. One sentence. Nothing more.
I spin round. ‘What do you mean, “calamity will overrun Shen”? Does the year start today? And—’
The doorway is gone. Moonlight narrows to a thread and drains between the slabs.
‘Grandfather Moon?’
Wind comes at me from every direction. It has a clean, cold smell I've never known before.
Great. I ask several questions and receive a breeze.
I draw a breath. A year from now is still circling inside my head with the roar of that backwards-running sea.
Are Mum and Jun Hao all right?
I follow the edge of one slab for several steps without reaching its corner.
A cliff wall rises in front of me.
Or an actual wall. Grey-gold, with no end to the left, the right or above me.
I go right up to it.
It isn't one piece of stone. It's built from blocks, each one the size of a room. The grey joins sink into trenches whose bottoms I can't see. Carvings cover the stone higher up, layer over layer, and the lowest ledge stands taller than two of me.
Mountains don't usually bother with this much decoration.
I look up.
The sky has disappeared. An eave reaches out from the wall and spreads over my head. Just the part sticking out is as wide as a street. Whatever this wall belongs to, its roof has swallowed the sky.
So I walk, keeping the wall on my right, and look for a door.
Two hundred steps. Three hundred. The joins stay just as wide. The eave follows me. When I glance back, I can't tell which part I've already passed.
No door.
I head out across the plaza instead. If I get far enough away, I might work out what I'm standing under.
By the time my legs ache, I turn and look up.
Then I stop.
The first eave cuts across the plaza like another horizon. Above it, the tower is still rising.
Clouds circle higher up. Five different colours shine across them. Stars float beyond that—and the tower passes them too.
Even a skyscraper is supposed to stop somewhere. This doesn't.
I tip my head farther back.
In Taipei, the stars are the furthest things there are. Not here. Here, even the stars can be left below.
My neck won't bend any farther, and I still can't find the top. It isn't hidden by distance. It simply doesn't end anywhere inside this sky.
The whole tower tilts towards me.
I drop onto the stone and catch myself with both hands. My heart makes enough noise for the entire plaza. Nothing else does.
The Celestial Tower.
I wasn't standing beside a wall built around it. That wall was the Tower.
Those two words were all through the old book, but no page ever mentioned this.
‘Whoa—’
My phone is already in my hand. Snap. Snap. Snap.
The camera shows a grey-gold wall and several enormous joins. I turn the phone sideways, back up two steps and nearly trip over my rucksack. Still wall. If I keep going, I might back all the way to Earth.
Fine. Picture taken.
I open the family group chat and type beneath it: Show this to Jun Hao.
Send.
The little circle turns and turns.
Failed to send.
There isn't a single bar of signal in the corner. I know. I'm not stupid.
I tap retry.
Failed.
Again.
Still failed.
The third time, the phone doesn't even bother spinning. The family group chat stays frozen on the screen. In the last photo, Jun Hao is grinning with one front tooth missing, his face so close to the camera that his nose is a blur.
This new picture just won't go through.
‘It'll send when I get a signal.’
Nobody is here for me to explain that to.
Seventy per cent battery. Loads. Enough to find Zuobituo. Enough to ask how I get home. Obviously enough for one picture to send.
I put the phone in my rucksack, think better of it, then move it to the innermost pocket of my jacket and pull the zip shut.
‘Right. Zuobituo.’
My voice strikes the tower and comes back to me.
I keep walking.
The main entrance is set into that endless wall. Each door is as tall as my apartment. Two door gods are carved into them with their weapons crossed, locking the way. Their metal eyes look down at me—or perhaps at nothing at all.
I cup my hands around my mouth. ‘Hello—? Is Zuobituo in?’
Neither door god blinks.
I stand on tiptoe to knock on one's metal boot.
My fingers hurt. The door god is fine.
Farther along the wall, I find another gate. It's much smaller than the main entrance, but still wider than the entire front of our apartment building.
Four characters are carved above it. I recognise them one by one.
Zuobituo.
‘Oh. It's an address.’
Someone has burnt a ragged hole through it. Melted trails have hardened along the edges and run all the way to the ground.
I stand back and peer inside.
Pitch-black. I can't see a thing.
The first drop of rain lands on my nose. The old book shifts against my chest.
I open it. A line of ink slowly appears across the blank page.
The brave girl from another world, Peach, stands before the entrance, apparently preparing to advance with courage.
‘Apparently according to whom? I'm just standing here. That's all.’
The ink dries in silence.
‘And who said you could just write that?’
The book doesn't answer. I clap it shut and retreat three steps.
Rain thickens. Wet hair sticks to my face. There is nobody else in the plaza and not a single light. The only way in with Zuobituo written above it is the gate with a hole burnt through it.
I grip my rucksack strap until my knuckles pale. Let go. Grip it again.
Then I take out my phone and switch on the torch.
The beam reaches only a few stone steps descending beyond the gate, and two long drag marks beside them.
‘Just so we're clear.’ I speak to the doorway and to the book under my arm. ‘I'm going in because I need to find Zuobituo. Not because you told me to.’
I step through the hole. Rubble cracks beneath my shoes.
A line of rainy light remains behind me. The plaza is still there.
I've gone only a little way when voices carry in from outside.
‘They haven't moved everything out yet. Send a few more inside.’
I slap off the torch.
‘Once you've got it, come straight out. Hurry up so we have the Rock Guai seal the hole.’