Emmi Itäranta

‘Only what changes can remain.’

Wei Wulong, ‘The Path of Tea’

7th century of Old Qian time

The tunnel descended towards the inside of the fell. I noticed that the metal pipe ran along its length. I had no space to walk with my back straight, and my father’s head brushed the ceiling at times. The rock under our feet was unexpectedly smooth. The light of my lantern clung to the creases on the back of my father’s jacket and the darkness clung to the dents in the walls. I listened to the silence of the earth around us, different from the silence above the ground: denser, stiller. And slowly I began to distinguish a stretching, growing sound at its core, familiar and yet strange. I had never before heard it flowing free, entirely pushed by its own weight and will. It was akin to sounds like rain knuckling the windows or bathwater poured on the roots of the pine trees, but this sound wasn’t tame or narrow, not chained in man-made confines. It wrapped me and pulled me in, until it was close as the walls, close as the dark.

My father’s face remained mute and unreadable as he apportioned the tea into the cups and offered the first one to Major Bolin, then the second one to Commander Taro.

I couldn’t help but admire your garden, Master. It’s highly unusual to see such verdancy so far away from the watering areas

I was holding in my hand one of the old books that remained in the house, a tale of a journey through winter. I knew it by heart, and the words flowed elusive across the pages before my eyes, evading the grip of my thoughts. I wasn’t thinking of the story. I was thinking of the world in which it had been written.

I had often tried to imagine how winters had been in the past-world.

She tried all three TDKs several times, spinning the tapes back and forth and turning the TDKs from one side to the other, but all we heard were ghosts of sounds sunken in time and distance, a near-silence that was more frustrating than complete soundlessness. If the tapes had once held something comprehensible, earth, air, rain and sun had worn the past-world echoes thin a long time ago.

Memory has a shape of its own, and it’s not always the shape of life. When I think back now, I look in that day for omens and signs of what was to come, and sometimes I believe I see them. It’s a strange and hollow comfort, one that never carries me for long. Past-world seers used to read tea leaves to tell the future. But they are only tea leaves, dark residue of things gone by, and they spell no pattern except their own. Yet memory slips and slides and shatters, and its patterns are not to be trusted.

I believe it is possible to change the surface of things while retaining their core intact, just as it is possible to retain the surface appearances while carving the core hollow

‘When the Ocean-Dragons roam, it means the world is changing,’ I said.

Sanja chewed on her roasted almonds and drank water from her skin.

‘It’s just a story, Noria,’ she said. ‘Fishfires are colliding particles caused by the closeness of the North Pole. An electromagnetic reaction, no more exciting than a light bulb or a glow-worm. There are no dragons living in the sea, no shoals of fish following them or the flashing of scales in the dark sky.’

These people were strange to me; we had no memories or words in common. I was alone among them.