A Fictional History of the United States with Huge Chunks Missing Read online

  And why is this? she asked.

  A dragon can fly in the air, swim in the sea, and run on land, he said.

  In the candlelight there in the blue stone walls of her room, she smiled at her son.

  Perhaps I’ll be a dragon too, she said.

  He had looked at her to see if she was mocking him.

  She remembers China differently than the guard’s captain.

  She pulls the hair from the brush and drops it over the side of the boat. She is as afraid that the fleet will never return as she is that it will. Here, on the other side of the world, her son enjoys freedom from a disgrace that will present itself the moment he realizes he is not his father’s legitimate heir. She has received no sign from the astronomer as to whether he will make her one of his wives on their return or not. But she knows he loves his son, even if she does not know how he feels for her and her future.

  She thinks of this as she approaches him in the dark, walking the wooden sides of the boat again after years in the comfort of the village.

  I should have named you Bird instead of Wing, she says.

  He turns at her voice, his face wet from his efforts.

  Yes, he says. You should have. Then I could fly.

  Come to bed, she says. Even birds sleep.

  Every now and then in the life of a child, he adds up what he has from his parents and something is missing, she considers, as she leads him back. She can feel China through the wall of night. She knows she will be lucky if this is his grudge.

  After she has seen her son to bed, she stops to bid goodnight to the astronomer in his quarters, but he pulls her back inside the door.

  Is there a storm tonight? she asks.

  He undoes the catch of her gown.

  They were to leave at dawn, but the last patrol has not returned. Thirty men, including the guard’s captain, were due back the day before, and made no appearance during the night, not even a messenger. The admiral has thus postponed their departure.

  The astronomer sits in his cabin with his son, at work on his morning calligraphy—even on this morning, even on the open sea. He knows his son is besotted with warcraft and so he keeps him strictly mixing his ink, the first of the tasks to master in the art.

  When he originally began this practice at his father’s own side, he did not understand how it would support him later in life. How this practice, of writing out the lines of Chinese classical poetry, with its descriptions of the land, could keep his country in sight when nothing else would.

  To be an explorer is to practice the art of getting lost, he considers, as he thinks of the missing guard. Each one, he has discovered, learns how he will keep his home known to him.

  The brush curls wetly as he inspects it. It shines, the viscosity is perfect, there is no precipitous drip. The hairs instead are plump.

  Have you written a poem for our departure, as I asked? he says to his son.

  I have just a line so far, he answers.

  And what is it? he asks.

  I do not know our land but it knows me, he says.

  He meets his son’s eyes. That’s very good, he replies.

  Further south, three ships were trapped in a bog and were declared lost. A fort was created from the timbers and the ballast stones, a guide tower raised to warn the ships coming from behind the bog. A copper mine was discovered, rich and of fine quality, though all were reluctant to add to what must return when the number of boats had been reduced. Objects were made to trade with the tribes found along the coast. Saddle ornaments for the horses given as gifts or in exchange for food, jewelry as presents for their women.

  We sell a bit of their own land back to them, the admiral noted to the astronomer.

  Trade was a Ming way. Each people met along the way were left with a gift of the emperor’s favorite chickens, and horses and ponies were typically traded for grains and vegetables.

  Some had never met a horse.

  The brush moved down and then back and forth, like the movements of a mare.

  Eventually there had been some in the fleet who would not return. Who chose to remain. Colonies, it was thought optimistically.

  The fleet’s creation had deforested much of their country. China is the land of the young tree and the old woman, his mother had said sadly, visiting him at his offices down at the harbor before he left.

  Come home quick as you can, she said.

  The expedition fleets filled the horizon as they left for as far as he could see, making it seem in the distance as if they were continents peopled by masts covered in red sails, and the glittering teak junks were the shiny new lands the fleets themselves sought. The rush of the boats down the waves in the open sea made it seem at times as if they could, on the next wave’s crest, fly.

  But they could not. And the southwestern fleet of Admiral Zhen Wen had shrunk first to twenty, then to seven, then to, now, just three boats. Colonies were now strewn along the coasts and islands of these farflung countries, and they were built of the ballast stones and timber wood of the lost boats, inhabited by their survivors. The first to be left were confident of further expeditions, of how their new towns could become cities known to China. The next, less so, but, to keep in spirit with the first, made themselves brave with their new mines, the distilleries outfitted for rice whiskey but using new grains found there, and the fine weather. Still, he shuddered as they passed near the skeletons of the boats, what had to be left, unable to be harvested.

  In discussing the decision to delay their departure, the admiral had said, I am in no rush to leave behind those who would not be left.

  The astronomer shrugged, bowed, and took his leave.

  Now he pushes his brush across the page. He copies out his son’s first line.

  His strokes are what he will remember of that morning. The mixing of the ink determines the character as much as the paper, the brush, and the man. Wing had not mastered the ink previously, and so for months his pages have frustrated him. The streaky characters make it seem as if the sight of his own country is dimmed, and it feels portentous as they wait. But then, he is not the astrologer. He is the astronomer. The one who knows from the stars, whenever he walks outside, how far they are from home.

  By evening the night patrol has not returned.

  With the next morning, the fleet divides. Another colony is born from those who will not leave off their waiting. The admiral departs, taking with him the astronomer’s best student. For the astronomer, the constellations are like the lines of poems. For his student, stars are new poets. The astronomer has heard what they have to say, while his student has only just now made out their voices.

  In just two nights, he thinks, China has grown to include the land he will live on now.

  His son, Wing, still hops. Angry when his mother calls him from what he calls his practicing.

  Each missed practice for him is just another day he cannot fly.

  The Guard’s Captain

  The dark is littered with our footprints.

  My patrol runs along the edges of the wind. It is a tricky art, not easily mastered nor used lightly.

  The wind can be run like a dune. I leap at the top of one current, sail briefly through several others until I hit another rising one, and run on that as well, feeling it change shape beneath me.

  We were attacked at night, our horses stolen, and in order to return to the fleet in time for the departure, we had no choice. Our nearest pursuers, a tribe who’d always condescended to trade with us, chased us on our own horses. They shouted with astonishment as we fled through the air.

  They’re out of sight, on the far side of the horizon. But we run still, knowing the ships were to have left the night before. And while we are important to the mission, they cannot stay too long for us without putting the entire mission at risk.

  At the edge of the forest we move to the treetops and leap along the forest roof. After the wind, it’s like running across hard land. While at first we shouted as we tossed ourselves from the
peaks of the wind, now we do not speak, we do not look at each other. There is nothing to say, until we return. We are the dark wind above the trees.

  The harbor and the signal fire come into view. A single boat waits. We arrive to find our concubines, our friends, who waited for us. Our admiral on the sea again.

  I envy him. For him to go home, all he has to do is put to sea.

  The chief astronomer moves toward me in greeting. He is a compliment to me, from the admiral. But then his son Wing runs out from behind him, shouting. And I can tell in his remaining, there is a father’s forbearance.

  His son loves me enough to have hated him forever if they left me behind.

  1436, NARRAGANSETT

  The Guard’s Captain

  Wing is in the yard practicing again at fighting the wind. He’s said he wants to call it Sword Wind School.

  I don’t laugh.

  It should be like the way the wind moves around you, he says. You go here, it goes here. It should teach the sword to be like that.

  Yes, I say.

  He stands with the sword out to his side, eyes closed, listening to the wind with just the surface of his skin. His form, as the sword takes on the wind, is perfect. If he were not so dear to me, I would blindfold him in battle, just to see a man die that way from him.

  Sword Wind School means the wind is his teacher. He must get it to speak to him and tell him how it fights.

  Wing is anxious to go back, wants to see the emperor, wants more teachers than just us or the wind. He is seventeen. His warrior braid shines as it winds out behind him. He wears just a strap; his body is dark from the sun and gleams.

  He is among the first of our new generation and he was born in the year of the Water Dragon, in a dragon hour, sixmetal star.

  Sword Wind School it will be—that’s what this means. It means even the emperor will know of his name.

  When do you teach me how to fly? he asked me several months ago.

  Go ask a duck if you want to fly, I said, and pulled at my arms. Do you see wings here?

  He smiled. He was an easy, friendly boy. But so is any dragon when he wants something from you.

  Wing is there, I said, and pointed at him. Teach me to fly.

  There is always a point in the training when it is right to teach this, and it is always difficult to teach the young because it requires an acute level of awareness, something that is like listening and like seeing and like scenting, but not precisely like any of them. And it often either comes or does not come in the student. There are many, many bitter proficient warriors who throw themselves the wrong way too many times.

  It is a movement of all the senses together, like when the arms swing and the legs thrust and you run. Up the wind.

  It is very dangerous, of course. If the years of training and conditioning leave you able to shatter a stone with your knifehand punch, then yes, if you fall off the top of the forest here you can survive. But if not, and you find yourself upwind and there is no next step to take, no next current in the air, then there is nothing for you except the ground.

  I am not convinced the Eight Immortals know to find us here. There are other gods in this forest here, closer to the ground, but they have never made friends with us and I do not trust them to catch the future founder of Sword Wind School if he falls.

  I walked him to the edge of the field where the grass grew blue and sweet and waist-high. I drew out a piece of it and poked his smooth forearm.

  Grass, he said.

  Grass, I said. And then hopped onto the next few blades, and ran across the surface of the field. Butterflies came up like a bright orange smoke around me. I leapt to the ground in front of him. Start with grass, I said.

  He jumped up and sank down into the grass.

  Don’t rely on the grass only, I said. To run is a conversation with what is underneath you. To run hard is to shout. Don’t shout. Ask.

  He raised an eyebrow.

  Ask, I said. And move on before the grass gives way.

  We spent that day—me running the tops of the field, him hopping in place at the edges of it—breaking it down.

  Yesterday, he ran across the top of the field.

  I worry that we are lost. We are the mapmakers of the emperor, and it is, in a sense, our function to be lost and then find ourselves, again and again. We are made to find the edge of what is known and pursue a path into the heart of it.

  There is no safety to it, though. And it is a long time to be in danger. We’ve stayed too long here; what we are doing here at the settlement could be either a part of our mission or a part of a slow rebellion. Another ship from the fleet, from another mission, could come at any time to find us, to see if there is word of us.

  What will they think of our smooth walls and towers? Our pipes and water? Will they stay or arrest us?

  The harder decision, of course, is that we must divide, if it is a true settlement. Some will remain and others return. For now we have been content to put such planning ahead, in the future.

  Sometimes I fear it will be our children’s children returning home to China. I had wanted to bring my grandmother the new flowers, found for her all over the world, unlike flowers anyone has ever seen. I want to sit with her and show her each one, and tell her the country it is from.

  I do not want to lay them on her grave.

  Wing

  To learn wind-walking, I undertook a fast.

  I still don’t understand how the fast works. I only know that first there is the terrible hunger, when even the smallest piece of fruit is in danger. At that time, even the smallest piece of food can be bigger than whatever you’re looking for on the other side.

  But this was the point, I understood later, about being able to walk on the grass.

  I woke in the middle of the night on the fifth night of it. The fierce hunger had receded. It was like the moment when the tide is low and a way can be made to the island. There was in its place an amazement that seemed a kind of echo of the moon and the glow of the night. And in those moments, it’s as if your hunger has stripped the world clean again. The wind outside begins to tell you how far it traveled to get here. The air has a weight and shape and color to it, like water.

  I woke to see that the night was an ocean. Also the day. That we rode our horses as if along the bottom of the sea. The breezes broke and crashed against the walls.

  I batted at it, feeling it move around my hand.

  I stepped outside and went down to the edge of the field, where I listened to the grass explain to me the way to ask its help correctly. When the morning came, the captain found me there, asleep.

  The secret to it is being a good guest. The secret to it, the grass explained, is that even the wind will help you if you agree not to linger.

  My mother brushes her thick white hair out and then turns to my own, which she oils and braids.

  The junk is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen or hope to see. The scarlet sails like the spread wings of dragons set to launch into the sky and lit by the sun. Out the window of our house, down the hill to the glittering sea, is the view of the world I have known all my life.

  For my first flight, I wait until the sun sets. I wait for stars.

  For me, they’re like night fires of the tribes I see from my patrols. I have watched but never approached.

  I have become a soldier. I study war. When a man walks toward me, I can see how I would take him apart, where he would not know to keep back a fist, or how the sword, in his hand, would swing only to here, or out to here. The fight is over before he has swung at me, and I know how I will bring him down.

  If I had no ability like this, my father might have been more tempted to make me his unwilling student.

  It is your father’s gift, my mother says of it. Dipped in my own.

  My mother reads men also, but differently. My mother has brought down many men, in her way. My father does not understand why she stopped with him. He knows he loves her, but he does not, it seems, see h
ow she loves him.

  She is still a beauty. She has to her an elemental quality. I know my mother is beautiful because of the expressions on the faces of the men and women around her, like wind on the field, known by the shape it makes against the grass.

  Sometimes I think it will never happen. That we will never return and I will never meet the emperor. I become certain that I will die out in the woods of this country we are trying to know. At those times I ache for a home, one that I have never met and know only in my blood; one that pulls at me like the wind and leaves me knowing always how even though this world is the only one I know, that world, that is the one that knows me. And it is tempting to see, in the stars, a path through the night sky that leads to Beijing. But I will not try this yet. I will, for now, remain here with the only family I have known.

  I stand on the top of the tower of blue stone the color of the moon’s features, that has stood overlooking the harbor most of my life. It has been home to my father’s work. It is also the repository of the lighthouse not one boat has used in the years since the admiral’s departure. The colonies left behind do not know we are here; we have never sent expeditions south, and they have never sent expeditions north. A well-supplied return fleet, as we all know, would take only months to make the trip from China through all the colonies that were left—if they were known to the fleet. My mother tells me my father has confided what we all fear, that the admiral failed to return to China.

  When I was young I thought the stars spoke to him, before I understood what it was he did. Later I laughed at myself for being foolish enough to believe this. Now I laugh at myself again for being foolish enough to miss how it is the stars speak to my father. He has taught me enough of what it is he does so that I can look up anywhere at night and learn where it is I am, even how to know the skies of China if I were to run my way along the sky.

  No one has ever studied enough to replace him, and for this reason it will be soon that we return. None of our generation wants his job, and he has said again and again to the captain that he cannot teach an unwilling student. And if we do not leave while he can see us home, we will never return.