Chapter 129: A Very Small Panda

The house was small and extremely cheerful about it.

It sat at the edge of the river path like it had grown there, vines climbing one wall, flowers in pots along the window ledge, a string of small painted stones hanging from the doorframe that clicked together in the breeze. Smoke rose from the chimney in a thin, contented thread.

Mò Lǎo knocked twice and stepped back.

For approximately one second, nothing happened.

Then the door opened and the world became considerably louder.

“MÒ LǍO! You were supposed to visit three weeks ago, I made soup, I had to eat it myself, do you know how much soup that is for one person and a toddler—” The woman stopped.

She looked at Mò Lǎo.

She looked at Zhāo Yàn.

She looked at Han Shān.

Her eyes dropped to the bandage at Zhāo Yàn’s side, to the mud on both cubs, to the general condition of two small creatures who had, in the last twenty four hours, hunted a boar, fallen into a hole, been hissed at by a snake, and walked through a forest on injuries that should have been resting.

“Oh my,” she breathed.

Then, with a speed that suggested this was not her first encounter with wounded small things, she was already moving.

“Come in, come in, come in—” Her hands were gentle and immediate, ushering them through the door. “Are you hurt? Of course you’re hurt, look at you, sit down, sit right there, don’t move—”

“I’m fine,” Zhāo Yàn started.

“You’re bleeding through your bandage sweetheart, that is the opposite of fine, sit.”

He sat.

This was surprising to him. He did not generally sit when told to sit, not without at least a preliminary argument to maintain appearances. But there was something about the way she said it, warm and brisk and completely without judgment, that bypassed his defenses entirely and communicated directly with the part of him that was tired and hurting and had been awake since before dawn doing things his body had not appreciated.

Han Shān sat beside him, without being told, which was either solidarity or the recognition that sitting was sensible given the circumstances.

The woman was already at her shelf, pulling things. Small clay pots. Folded cloth. Something wrapped in waxed leaves that smelled sharply clean when she opened it.

She was not tall. She had soft brown hair that was escaping from a knot at the back of her head in several directions, and her robes were plain and slightly dustef. Her eyes, behind a pair of small, slightly crooked glasses, were the warmest brown Zhāo Yàn had ever seen.

They moved quickly, taking things in, making assessments, landing on him with an attention that was focused and kind in equal measure.

“I’m Wēn Jìng,” she said, kneeling in front of him with her materials organized beside her. “What’s your name?”

“Zhāo Yàn. Of the Eastern Hills.”

“That’s a lovely name.”

She began unwrapping his bandage with gentle, careful hands, and her voice did not change or soften with pity, which he appreciated more than he could have explained. “Three tails at your age is remarkable. Who taught you to wrap a wound?”

“I taught myself.”

“You did a reasonable job for someone who taught themselves in the dark.” She examined the cut. “This is from a tusk.”

“The Hollow Boar.”

Her hands stilled for exactly one moment. Then continued. “The one the senior warriors have been hunting.”

“We addressed it,” Zhāo Yàn said.

She looked up at him over her glasses.

“I see,” she said. “Very brave.”

“Very,” Mò Lǎo agreed from the corner, where he had settled himself against the wall with a cup of tea that had appeared from somewhere.

“What’s that?”

“Tea.”

“Uh? What’s a tea?”

“Nevermind.”

The woman was cleaning the wound now, and it stung, but her hands were so steady and the process was so matter of fact that Zhāo Yàn found himself sitting still without really deciding to.

She talked while she worked, not at him exactly, more like someone who thought out loud as a habit and had never seen a reason to stop.

“The Hollow Boar has been causing trouble since spring. Two hunters from the northern edge of the territory. Everyone’s been very stressed about it.” She glanced up briefly. “You said we. Both of you?”

Han Shān looked up. “Yes.”

She turned to look at him properly for the first time since they had come in, the full warm attention of it and Han Shān went slightly still in a different way.

“You must be tired,” she said simply. “There’s water in the pitcher if you want it.”

Han Shān looked at the pitcher before looking back at her. “Thank you,” he said slowly.

She had already turned back to Zhāo Yàn’s wound and was applying something from one of the small clay pots.

“This will close it properly,” she said. “It’ll itch tomorrow. Don’t scratch.”

“I won’t scratch.”

“Everyone says that.”

“I have exceptional self control.”

She smiled without looking up. “Of course you do.”

From somewhere deeper in the house, a sound emerged.

Wēn Jìng’s head tilted. “Oh, he’s up.”

She rose, crossed to the back room, and returned a moment later with a child balanced on her hip.

He was very small. Soft auburn hair going in several directions, large sleepy eyes blinking at the sudden company, round cheeks flushed from sleep.

He had his mother’s glasses, miniaturized, perched on a nose that was slightly too small for them, and he was clutching something to his chest with both hands, a rolled piece of bark, Zhāo Yàn realized, covered in what appeared to be extremely earnest scratching.

He had small, rounded red panda ears poking through his hair, dark tipped and slightly flattened from sleep. His tail, striped in russet and cream, was wrapped around his own leg.

He was four years old.

He stared at the two cubs on his mother’s floor.

They stared back.

“This is Yàn Shū.”

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