Chapter Eleven: Jing'er

The Zhang siblings worked tirelessly for days on end, crafting several pieces of everyday tableware for Lu Jing, so that he might carry on his daily life just as before in the other world. Tea-brewing implements, tea bowls, even a pot for holding jiang — everything was made complete. Zhang Ping also decided to fire a tall, sturdy horse full of spirited vigor, so that once the young master was free of illness and pain at last, he could give himself over entirely to the pleasure of riding at full gallop.

Turning his head at one point, Zhang Ping noticed Aning taking out a maidservant figurine whose facial features had not yet been painted. On the ground sat a basin of water, its surface reflecting her own face, and she was tracing her features onto the figurine stroke by careful stroke, comparing them against her own reflection in the water. It was at this moment that tears finally welled up in the corners of Zhang Ping's eyes, and quietly, following her example, he too took up a servant figurine with unpainted features, and began carefully rendering his own likeness upon it, intending that it should accompany the maidservant figurine Aning was making, so that together they might continue to keep the young master company in the other world...

Once Zhang Ning had finished painting her own likeness, Zhang Ping noticed her bring out that small human figurine that had struck him as strange before. He certainly recognized this particular figurine — it looked exactly identical to the figurine of the young master that had been fired together with the little horse. Having been too preoccupied with his own work at the time, he had not asked further about it, and only now did he realize that Aning had, in fact, made a duplicate of that figurine of Lu Jing.

Zhang Ping paused, puzzled, and asked, "Why have you shaped another one of the young master?"

Zhang Ning wiped away her tears with her sleeve and said quietly, "This one is mine."

***

After Lu Jing's funeral had at last been seen to completion, his mother, overcome with grief, fell ill herself and lay unable to rise from bed for several days. Once she was finally able to walk again on her own, she still did not dare, at first, to step into Lu Jing's bedroom, and instead dragged her weak yet leaden steps into his study.

She looked around her. Without her explicit order, none of the servants had dared to tidy or rearrange anything of Lu Jing's belongings while he had been alive. His qin still sat in its place behind and to the side of the writing desk; several poems by Wang Moji hung on the wall, all in Jing'er's own handwriting. His mother sat down before the desk, and there, at once, her eyes fell upon the painting stained faintly by grease — beside it hung Wang Moji's "Autumn Twilight in the Mountains."

His mother gazed at that painting for a long while before finally drawing her eyes away.

Just then Amo entered carrying a brocade box. Having learned that the lady of the house had risen and was walking about on her own, he had searched his way through the young master's bedroom and study, and it was here that he finally found her.

"I report to my lady." Amo respectfully presented the brocade box, saying, "The young master instructed that, should the day come when he was no longer here, Amo should deliver this figurine to you, my lady — so that it might take his place, keeping you company always at your side."

His mother, momentarily startled, took the box and opened it — inside sat that very figure dressed in the moon-white robe, Lord Seventh Lu himself, with a face of fine, clear features, the very image, in every detail, of Jing'er's own bearing and appearance.

His mother lifted the figurine out, and her tears could not help but burst forth uncontrollably. She clutched the figurine tightly to her chest, then caught sight, out of the corner of her eye, of that unfinished painting still resting upon the desk — its outline complete, but the colors never yet applied. The figure in the painting must have been Zhang Ning, the kiln girl, who had come to the residence that day for their final meeting; her two hands were entirely covered in clay, and clasped within them was that very figurine of Jing'er.

"Was it this kiln girl who shaped this figurine for the young master?" his mother asked.

"Yes. And also that little horse in the young master's hand. The young master said he envied his father and brothers, who could ride and shoot with such carefree grace, and so the young lady shaped the little horse for him, so that it might accompany the young master always, at his side."

Amo's voice choked, and after steadying his breath, he continued, "The young master was determined with all his heart to finish that painting, but as his illness only worsened, again and again he forced himself to pick up the brush, only for the heart pain to strike after a few strokes each time. In the end he never managed to finish it..."

Hearing this, his mother wept once more, tears streaming down. With one hand she gripped Jing'er's figurine tightly, and with the other she gently stroked that unfinished painting; then, raising her eyes once more to that painting on the wall — the joyful scene of the kiln yard, faintly stained though it was — she finally understood that her Jing'er had truly, in those final days, been happy. And in thinking of this, amid her grief, at last there came a small measure of comfort.