Please Stop Spreading Rumors About Me — They Keep Coming True

”Where are they gonna sleep?” Tao Tao asked.

It was the third morning. None of us had asked it out loud yet, which I think was just us being cowards.

”In their houses,” I told her.

”Lin Bo.” She sat on the log across from me, chin in her hands. ”Their houses are a thousand years gone.”

Xue Ningzhi walked over with a board and stayed standing. ”Two million, four hundred thousand have somewhere to go — living family, a standing town, a village that kept the land. That’s the good news, and I want you to enjoy it for about four seconds.” She flipped the board around. ”The rest don’t. And Ping has six million names still to read.”

”So they build,” Tao Tao said. ”We help them build.”

”With what? On whose land? Half of them grew up in provinces that speak a different language now.” Xue Ningzhi tapped the board. ”There’s a man in the eastern terraces who’s been dead for nine hundred years and has a legal claim to a farm that currently has eleven people on it. What do I do about him?”

”Ask him,” I said.

”That’s not a policy.”

”It’s what we’ve done about everything else.” I stood up and took the board from her. ”Ask him what he wants. Ask the eleven what they want. Some of it will work out, some of it won’t, and the ones that don’t get brought to Yun Shu.”

Xue Ningzhi stared at me for a second. ”You realize that’s eight million conversations.”

”Yeah,” I said. ”Get more people.”

— • —

That was the shape of the whole season, and I want it written down plainly, because the songs make it sound like one glorious morning and it wasn’t. It was one glorious morning, and then two years of the most enormous, boring, wonderful argument in the history of the world.

The good part was that everyone wanted to help, but nobody had any idea how. The bad part was exactly the same thing.

— • —

I went to the farm in the eastern terraces myself, because I’d made it a policy and Xue Ningzhi wanted me to see what a policy actually costs.

The claimant’s name was Deng. Nine hundred years dead, up for four days, sitting on a wall watching his own fields while eleven people stood in the yard watching him do it.

”That’s my well,” he said.

”It’s a good well,” the oldest of the eleven said. Her name was Sura. She had a baby on her hip and her chin out. ”My grandfather re-dug it forty years ago. It had fallen in.”

”Because nobody was minding it.”

”Because you were dead.”

”That wasn’t my idea,” Deng said.

Nobody said anything for a second. The baby grabbed at Sura’s collar.

”What do you want?” I asked him.

”My farm.”

”Right. And if you get it, those eleven go where?”

Deng opened his mouth, then shut it, and really looked at the yard for the first time — at the drying racks that weren’t his, the wall someone had rebuilt in different stone, and a six-year-old kid who’d come out to stare at him.

”...I don’t know,” he said. ”I hadn’t got that far. I’ve been alive again since Tuesday.”

”Then don’t get that far today.” I sat down on the wall next to him. ”Do you want to know what usually happens? They stay, you stay, it’s awkward for about a year, and then one of you marries the other one’s nephew and the argument becomes somebody else’s problem.”

”That isn’t a settlement,” Sura said.

”No. It’s what actually happens, though.” I stood up. ”Yun Shu will come out in the spring and write down who’s owed what. Until then, nobody digs up the well and nobody burns any racks. Can you both manage that?”

Sura looked at Deng. Deng looked at the well.

”He can have the north field,” she said. ”It’s stony and we don’t use it.”

”I hate the north field,” Deng said.

”I know you hate the north field. Your name’s cut into the gatepost there, and you wrote that the field is a curse right under it.”

Deng just stared at her.

”We kept the gatepost,” Sura said, shifting the baby. ”We didn’t know whose it was. We just never got around to pulling it out.”

He went and looked at the gatepost. He was still looking at it when I left.

That was one. There were eight million to go.

— • —

Su Yue couldn’t sleep.

I found them on about the fifth night sitting outside the tent we’d given them, wrapped in three blankets, staring at the fire.

”Cold?”

”I don’t know,” they said. ”I don’t know what cold is yet. I have a body again and it keeps doing things and nobody explains them.” They pulled the blankets tighter. ”My back hurts. Does everyone’s back hurt?”

”Most people’s, yeah.”

”Nobody mentioned that in the songs.” They shifted. ”Lin Bo. How do you stand it?”

”Backs?”

”Them.” They nodded toward the dark, where four hundred fires were burning in a ring around our one, and every one of them had somebody in it who had walked a long way to be near the Lantern of the Nine Skies. ”I came down that sky wanting a bowl of soup and a place to sit. There are people out there who have been singing my name every night for a thousand years, and I have never met one of them, and they are all waiting for me to be something.”

”Yes,” I said. ”That’s the job now.”

”I don’t want the job.”

”I know. I didn’t either.” I sat down beside them, looking at the embers. ”I spent years trying to put it down. I filed denials. I ran away twice. I even had a whole plan about making noodles.”

”Did any of it work?”

”Not one bit of it. It made it worse every time.” I poked at the fire with a stick. ”Here’s the only useful thing I know. You can’t stop them from knowing you. That’s finished; it happened, and it’s not coming back. What you can do is make sure the thing they know is true.” I shrugged. ”They’re going to tell stories about you either way. Ugly ones if you hide, because hiding leaves a gap and people fill a gap with whatever they’ve got. So don’t hide. Go and be short and tired and bad at sleeping in front of them, and let that be the story.”

Su Yue was quiet for a while.

”That’s a terrible plan,” they said.

”It’s the worst plan. It’s also the only one that’s ever worked.” I stood up. ”Come and be bad at sleeping by the big fire instead of out here on your own. Tao Tao’s been pretending not to hover for three hours and it’s killing her.”

They came. Tao Tao pretended she had happened to be walking past.

— • —

The Scroll had nothing to grieve and did not know what to do with itself.

It moped for about six days. I have never seen it mope. It would start a legend and stop halfway, and once it published a notice about the weather, which I did not even know it could do.

Then on the seventh morning it woke me at an hour I object to.

”Talent. I have decided what I am going to do.”

”It’s dark.”

”I am going to write the homecoming. All of it. Properly — every name, every town, the fisherwoman and the tide table, the old people on the mountain, the four hundred and six who said no and the two seasons we waited. Not a legend. A record.” It was practically vibrating. ”And then I am going to send it to Heaven.”

”You said you’d send them the bill.”

”I am sending the bill AS WELL,” the Scroll said. ”Nine hundred years of back pay and one formal note observing that I was dismissed for making things up, and that the thing I made up came true, and that they may examine the sky if they wish to check my figures.”

”They’ll never answer.”

”I am aware. Talent, I do not need them to answer. I need it filed.” A pause. ”Also I would like it noted that I have not had a new grief in eleven days and I keep waiting for one and it has not come and I do not know what to do with the mornings.”

”Have breakfast.”

”I do not eat.”

”Then sit with me while I do.”

It did that. It has done it most mornings since.

— • —

I went down to the bottom of the world about once a week, which is less than I used to, and I felt guilty about that until the dark told me to stop coming so often.

”You have eight million people arguing about farms,” it said. ”Go and do that.”

”Are you all right down here?”

”I am light. I am still not used to it.” The cold shifted, slower than it used to. ”I sat down. You said I could sit down, so I did, and I have been sitting down for two months and nothing has come apart.” A pause. ”Is it the harvest yet?”

”Six weeks.”

”Come and tell me about the harvest.”

”I will.”

”Tell me whether it was a good one. Not the numbers. Whether people were pleased.”

”All right,” I said, and I have done that every year since, and it is the only report it has ever asked me for.

— • —

The thing nobody warned me about was that I was still the most powerful being alive and there was nothing whatsoever to do with it.

Yun Shu put it to me over a bad dinner about three months in.

”You lifted a barn yesterday.”

”It needed lifting.”

”It needed four men and a lever. You did it with your hands because you were bored.” She pointed her spoon at me. ”You are a Mythic power in a world with no war in it. Find a hobby before you start rearranging mountains for something to do.”

”I don’t think my Renown’s even dropping. I checked.”

”Of course it isn’t dropping. They love you more than they did, and now they’ve all met you.” She ate. ”That’s your problem forever, by the way. You’re not going to get less famous. You saved the world in front of everybody.”

”I didn’t save the world. A fisherwoman fixed the tide table.”

”Yes, well.” Yun Shu shrugged. ”Try telling them that.”

I tried telling them that. It made three new legends inside a month, one of which was about the fisherwoman and was, I am pleased to report, entirely accurate.