The water totem on the balcony was humming again.
Mei Lin had the kettle on and a piece of yesterday's sweetbread in her paw, and the totem was doing the low steady hum it had been doing for weeks, the one that had finally prompted her letter to grandmother. The humming was home. An afternoon she had not thought about in years.
She closed her eyes. The balcony went away. She was small.
She had run home across the rice paddies at a sprint because a toad had spoken to her, and she had not yet learned that toads could do that. Grandmother was sitting on the porch step with a stick of willow in her teeth. She did not comment on the toad. She did not comment on the mud.
"Sit," she said around the willow. "I am going to show you three things today and you are going to forget two of them until you need them."
Small Mei Lin sat.
The first thing was a totem the colour of deep pond water, planted at the edge of the porch. Grandmother knocked it once with her palm and a slow blue pulse lifted out and settled into the air. Small Mei Lin's chest had been tight from the running, and the pulse found that tightness and filled it like tea filling a cup from underneath.
"This," grandmother said, "is a pot of tea for tired shamans. Any shaman who walks by can sit and drink. You will not ask who is thirsty. They will know."
"What if nobody is tired?"
"Then the tea goes cold and a frog gets it. The frog will not complain."
The second thing was Shao-lin, the neighbour boy, who chose that moment to come running out of the rain with his tunic pulled over his head. He was four. He always showed up when something was happening.
Grandmother did not pause. She reached out one hand and seven small river pebbles lifted off the porch, up, around, suspended in a slow wheel, and settled into an orbit around Shao-lin's shoulders. The pebbles rotated gently. One bumped his ear and he giggled so hard he sat down.
"Stones," grandmother said, "are a coat. Better than cloth, worse than armour, good for small angry things with sharp edges. You wrap a friend in them and the next bad thing does not go all the way through."
Shao-lin spun slowly in place, trying to watch all the pebbles at once, and walked into the porch post. The pebbles absorbed it. He giggled again and toddled off into the rain wearing his small coat of stones.
The third thing arrived in the shape of Trader Feng, although small Mei Lin did not yet know he would one day nearly die in her arms. Today he was borrowing a fishing spear. Grandmother handed it over, paused, took it back, and laid her palm along the haft. A soft flame walked the wood from her hand to the point and settled there like a small orange animal curling up for a nap. The flame did not eat the wood. It sat on it, patient, exactly where a fisherman needed it.
"Take it," grandmother said. "It will keep for a few hours. Long enough for the fish to make bad decisions."
Feng laughed. "What do I tell the fish?"
Grandmother did not break expression.
"Tell the fish it is their fault," she said.
Feng laughed all the way down the path. Small Mei Lin watched the flame bob along through the rain until it disappeared around the bend.
Grandmother ruffled the fur between her ears.
"You are going to forget two of these," she said. "That is alright. They keep. When you need them they will come up like onions in spring, from a bed you forgot you planted."
On the balcony, Mei Lin opened her eyes. The kettle was whistling. The water totem was still humming.
She had not planted a mana totem in years. She had not wrapped anyone in a coat of stones since the Wandering Isle. She had not laid a flame along anyone's spear since she was a girl. The shapes of the lessons were still there in her hands, but dim, the way a set of copper pots goes dim on a shelf if you never lift them down. Grandmother would say the tools go dull without use.
She pressed her paw to the soil of her pot plant on the railing. Seven small river pebbles lifted and rose into a slow wheel. She set them orbiting the wood where her elbow rested. A coat for a balcony. Nothing angry showed up to test it.
"That," she told the railing, "is the point."
She brewed her tea. The flame on the stove did its job without being asked. The pebbles kept turning. The totem kept humming in grandmother's key.
— Mist