When night leaks into the sunset, you flip the gate latches. They aren’t so much there to keep the cloud sheep in, more to signal that it’s time for them to roam the hayflower fields below the Sister Crescent Mountains—twin peaks standing side by side, sharing winding roads and sloping valleys. Each sheep unfurls their wings, bristles their hide, and rubs their horns against one another or a nearby tree trunk—the vibrations wake their siblings and relatives perched on the branches as thick as their bodies, hidden, partially, by head-sized leaves. Some munch on the hayflowers, others take to the sky. Before you leave them to frolic, knowing right at sundown you will return to shepherd them back before dawn, you sit under the shade of one your cloud sheep’s resting trees, watching the moon rise and settle between where the two mountains meet.
As the moon reaches its peak, you weave through the cloud sheep remaining on the ground, stooping only to nip the purple moon vines that reveal themselves in lunar light, careful not to slice your fingers on their white-tinged thorns with both the ability to heal with their encapsulated sap, and harm with their sharpness.
When the cloud sheep settle into their daily routine, you head off to continue yours.
In a cottage near the village, you make your home with a handful of your familiars: two passed down—you parents’ favourites while they had let the others go when they passed after the war—two you’ve claimed over the years, and one from a long-gone lover. The only reason you remember him is because you named the familiar after the man: Tangshu. The stoic-faced barn owl never fails to make you laugh, often reminding you of the humourous yet serious comments Tangshu used to make during his frequent visits: Your hair is as smooth as your cloud sheep’s horns. To think that was supposed to be a compliment.
The water bubbles over the hardened shell of a large pearl that you boil your morning tea in—jasmine infused with a touch of moon vine; a lavender-coloured concoction. You sip on half and pour the other into a coconut shell bowl and wait for your parents’ familiars: a single-toothed badger from Father and a bear-sized rabbit from Mother, to lumber through the door. Both seem to have caught a cold from the seasonal changes.
When they arrive, you pick up the basket in which you’ve placed the moon vines—ground down into powders sorted into various jars, the opening covered and secured by a small cloth spun from loosened hairs of the cloud sheep’s hide—and head to the village market nearby.
There isn’t much variation in what you bring to the village each day, nor the routine you’ve carried on to fill your parents’ absence, but this is enough. You couldn’t ask for anything more than to be surrounded by such loving familiars and embraced by a welcoming village. No one dares, or even wants to chase you off with flaming torches or nail you to a stake to burn you. Not here. But in your parents’ old village…
A hidden voice somewhere down the path halts your steps—one that is unfamiliar, but that’s what gets your heart racing.
“You must be the famous witch all the villagers speak about with such high praise.”
Your toes curl, and the veins running down your wrists tremble. Though this isn’t an unusual occurrence, you never fail to feel an embarrassing level of excitement when you cross paths with a stranger. To fall in love with a passing a low magic peddler, a travelling merchant, while crossing paths with anyone outside of the village, is almost routine for you.
Yesterday, you were in love with a centaur—their dashing mane was unlike anything you’ve seen. And the day before that, the old witch who claims she was once a siren—and you must admit, though her singing was off pitch at times, there was something extremely endearing about the tremor of each word, each note that left her lips.
Today, it’s a wizard.
You clear your throat, but your voice still came out scratchy. “Yes.” He raises a tanned hand to meet the un-sunkissed one you’ve extended—he must be from a place that wakes during the sun rather than the moon. “Huner.”
“Gamal.”
Though Gamal is on his way out of the village, he offers to walk you to the marketplace. He says it’s tradition to show hospitable acts to a new acquaintance, even if one is outside of one’s own lands. You watch each other from the side with sly, prodding eyes, challenging one another to be the first to speak, to ask questions. But you know what curiosity did to your parents who travelled to another country. And so you keep your lips sealed. You wonder if Gamal stays silent because it’s rude to ask questions first where he is from—the centaur, Yuke, said questions meant friendship to those from their lands, and so Yuke almost never paused to take a breath.
“Just in time.” Auntie Lunette welcomes us with hearty laughter, shooting a mischievous glance in your direction. “I thought you were heading off, young one?”
“I wanted to escort Huner here before I take my journey home.” Gamal gives a bow, a full ninety degrees rather than the slight forty-five customary of your village.
“Is that so?”
You give a polite grin but avoid Auntie Lunette’s playful expression.
“What do you have for me today?”
You look up and hand over the moon vines. “I know Auntie Gerna isn’t feeling too well these days.”
Auntie Lunette waves. “Don’t mind her.” She turns to Gamal. “My wife is always making a fuss about having small colds. Don’t know what we’d do without Huner!”
Gamal laughs and helps Auntie Lunette select a few vines and wrap them in the parchment paper usually reserved for the baked goods she sells. In the place of the missing vines in your basket, Auntie Lunette hands you a few hay rolls and cloud sheep-milk tarts.
When Auntie Lunette waves goodbye, Gamal accompanies you around the village to drop off the rest of the vines. It almost feels as though Gamal has been a part of your life for longer than the few hours you’ve spent with one another.
Yet, when you leave the village after dropping off your collections of the day and leaving with goods enough to last you the week, the wizard no longer holds the same glow as when your eyes first met his glorious elfin face. He looks mundane in the light of dawn. And you wonder who you will fall in love with next as you part ways at the fork with one path leading to your home and the other leading out of the village—the one you never take but always look down.
Perhaps what you fall in love with is the idea of a place outside of the one you know, a place that is possibly dangerous but new, unknown but filled with unheard wonder—a place you would want to visit one day if you could muster up the courage. But until then, you will continue your routine, continue to fall in love with this and that stranger, and continue to watch the moon until one day you travel to a place that rises to the sun.
Before dawn ends, you find yourself once again in the field of hayflowers under the Crescent Mountains, whispering through cupped hands, watching the cloud sheep remove themselves from the sky, unblocking the rising sun, and waiting, like you, for the moon to wake from its slumber once again.
One by one they walk past and nudge your hand with their head, as they turn in for the day, filling you with a sense of warmth you’ve become accustomed to, but only realizing at this moment how it makes your heart flutter.
You wonder if maybe you are seeking love the wrong way, that love perhaps isn’t a person, a being, you are looking for, but a place to truly call home. Maybe that place is right here all along—in its routine comfort, in its embrace that has unknowingly become so familiar. And maybe, just maybe, you need not look at the other path at the fork—not anymore.
Ai Jiang is a Chinese-Canadian writer, a Nebula and Locus Award finalist, and an immigrant from Fujian. Her work can be found in F&SF, The Dark, Uncanny, Prairie Fire, The Masters Review. She is the author of Linghun and I AM AI. Find her on Twitter (@AiJiang_) and online (http://aijiang.ca).
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