“In a single day, the nahji flies
from the Misty Blue Mountains to the sea.
Would that I had the wings of the nahji.”
“Tanda,” Chagum exclaimed. “You have a good voice!”
“Don’t be silly,” Tanda said gruffly, blushing. If Chagum realized it was a love song, he would be bound to tease him again, and Tanda had had quite enough of that. But Chagum did not appear to notice.
“So the egg must be at the bottom of the sea by now,” he continued. “I wonder when Nyunga Ro Im will hatch.”
“I don’t know,” Balsa said, “but it better start producing clouds soon or this year’s harvest will be a disaster. After all the trouble it caused us, it better do a good job as Nyunga Ro Im.” Everyone nodded fervently.
“Do you think that Rarunga lives for hundreds of years?” Chagum asked. “And does it only eat Nyunga Ro Im’s eggs?”
Torogai, who was lying on her side, her head pillowed on her arm, snorted. “Not likely. How could it survive if that’s all it ate? It must live on something else instead. Those eggs are probably a special treat that it gets once a century. Still, I don’t know for sure — I never even found out how Nyunga Ro Im got that egg inside you. Who knows? Maybe the Nyunga Ro Im that lays its eggs every hundred years in Sagu only exists on this peninsula, and there are other Nyunga Ro Im that protect their eggs in different ways in other parts of the world.”
Chagum’s expression suddenly grew serious. He looked at Torogai and said, “I think I know why Nyunga Ro Im picked me.”
Torogai sat up abruptly. “Really?”
“Well, I can’t say for certain. But while the egg was guiding me to the spring, I had a dream — a very strange dream. I think I must have seen what the soul of Nyunga Ro Im was dreaming.” Searching for words, he haltingly described the river of life that he had felt flowing through him. “Maybe Nyunga Ro Im chose me because it saw that I was protected by so many other lives. It must have felt that my life was the strongest, one that would protect the egg and give it the best chance of surviving…. But I don’t know how it laid the egg inside me.”
Torogai pondered this for a while and then nodded. “I see. Hmm. You might be right. Previous Guardians must have been in similar positions or had similar strength. You know, we Yakoo believe that children of eleven or twelve have the strongest life force. The souls of children under seven are not yet firmly rooted in this world, and so they die easily. And at the age of fourteen or fifteen, people’s bodies are preparing to give birth to the next generation, and their energy is channeled into that. Maybe Nyunga Ro Im’s egg is planted by the rain or something, but regardless of how it does it, the spirit picks a child with a strong life force to guard it. Of course, this is just a guess.” She sighed, threw herself onto her back, and stretched out her arms and legs. “Oh, dear. I’ve lived seventy years and there’s still so much I don’t know about this world! Drat! The heavens and earth turn so slowly, as if they didn’t care. Hey, you there, you good-for-nothing apprentice! You’d better give up the idea of being a magic weaver. Nothing could be more frustrating!”
Tanda smiled wryly. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It will take me at least another fifty years to come to that realization. I’ll stick with it a little longer.”
Mon and Jin exchanged glances. They had never dreamed that they would one day be sitting around a campfire with people like this. Just as Torogai and her companions lived in their own world, so Jin and Mon were bound to a world that would not let them go, one to which they would return as soon as they entered the capital tomorrow.
Balsa nudged Chagum and pointed upward. The night sky, so high it seemed it would swallow them, was spangled with stars that looked like silver grains of sand. Until a moment ago, it had been clear, but now a wisp of cloud scudded across it, slender and delicate as a breath on a snowy morning.
At evening on the following day, they reached Yamakage Bridge, which only the royal family and their retainers could cross. Balsa and her companions stopped at the foot of the bridge and watched an ox-drawn carriage pull up in front of Chagum. He turned and looked back at Balsa.
“Balsa,” he said, “Call me Chagum. Say ‘Farewell, Chagum.’ ”
Balsa smiled faintly. “Farewell, Chagum,” she said.
He clenched his teeth. “Thank you. And good-bye. Balsa, Tanda, Master Torogai … Thank you.”
Then he turned abruptly and bent his head to climb into the carriage. It rolled forward, the sound of its wheels echoing in the valley below. The summer sun flashed on its fittings as it slowly disappeared into the golden light of sunset.