Starry River of the Sky

Although he’s only a chore boy, Rendi joins the innkeeper, Peiyi, and the patrons for lunch. Madam Chang has noticed that Rendi never smiles, so she offers a deal. If her next story makes Rendi laugh, he must tell a story to match each of hers from that point forward. Peiyi says it doesn’t matter if Rendi accepts because he is “not going to laugh anyway” (64), so Rendi agrees.

Madam Chang tells the story of an old sage who lived atop a mountain and shooed away all those who tried to become his students, except for one. By day, the sage teaches the student, but by night, the sage reads from a book that he never shares. This habit makes the student wonder what wisdom is in the book. The sage agrees to share the book if the student sits in the tree at the base of the mountain for 99 nights, and the student complies. After sitting through a terrible storm, the student writes a poem about his greatness and has it delivered to the sage, who offers an unimpressed response. Offended, the student rushes up the mountain, forgetting that he hasn’t yet fulfilled his 99-night stay in the tree. As Madam Chang finishes the story, Rendi hears laughter and realizes that it is his own.

After lunch, Rendi fills buckets from a nearby well. The arduous process usually puts him in a bad mood, but this time, he only focuses on the story he will tell at dinner. Distracted and frustrated, he can’t think of a story, and he trips over the well wall, spilling all the water. Yelling, he attacks the wall, and “boiling rage seem[s] to have bubbled and burst inside him” (74). Catching sight of his reflection, he is horrified to see that he looks like his father. This kills his anger and replaces it with exhaustion.

Rendi is late for dinner and spends the entire meal desperately trying to think of a story. When Peiyi finally calls him out, he tells a story of dancing fish, which focuses on a magistrate who is constantly yelling at his family and trying to increase his power. One day, the magistrate brings his children to the garden pond and has them throw rice into the water as he plays a qin (a stringed instrument). Day after day, father and children partake in the ritual, amazed at how the fish leap from the water to catch the rice. One day, the magistrate brings a higher-ranking duke to the pond and plays the qin, making the fish jump. From a hiding place in a tree, the son sees this, and as the duke leaves, offering to make sure that the magistrate is noticed in the king’s court, the boy realizes that “his father had planned the whole thing” (84).

It’s dark when Rendi finishes his tale, and the group notices that the moon is still missing. Madam Chang brings everyone outside, where she lights a stalk of grass that summons fireflies that fill the night and make Rendi feel “as if he were in the Starry River of the Sky” (89). Together, the group makes firefly lanterns by catching the bugs in fabric. Rendi has the most carefree time he’s had in a while until a wail from the sky stops him. Madam Chang also hears the sky, but not as clearly as Rendi. This means that Rendi can listen and understand something that no one else can.

Madam Chang’s encouragement doesn’t make Rendi feel any better, and he resolves to leave the inn as soon as possible. One day, Madam Chang tells the story of the woman married to the man who shot down the suns. After the man’s heroic deeds, the Queen Mother of the Heavens gives him a pill of immortality, telling him to take it when it turns gold. The knowledge of his impending immortality makes the man hard and cruel, which leaves his wife heartbroken. She finds the immortality pill, which has turned white. Realizing the harm her husband will bring if he is allowed to live forever, she takes the pill and turns into a toad.

With her husband in pursuit, the woman hops away, going higher and higher until she finally reaches the sky. Mistaking the moon for another magic pill, she lands on it and makes it her new home. It is unclear what becomes of the woman-toad, but stories say that the pill eventually turns gold inside her, transforming her back into a human and making her the Moon Lady—a mythical being with the power to hear and grant wishes. Thinking about his own wish to leave, Rendi despairs because the moon is gone. He wonders, “[W]ithout [the moon], can the Moon Lady still grant wishes?” (103).

At the well the next day, Rendi finds Mr. Shan staring into the water and mumbling that what he seeks isn’t there. Before Mr. Shan leaves, he makes Rendi promise not to fall into the well. When Rendi agrees, Mr. Shan says, “Make sure you do as you say” (107). The words make Rendi feel guilty about leaving, because Madam Chang told a story, which means that he owes everyone a story, too.

At dinner, Rendi continues the story of the magistrate. True to his word, the duke has brought the king’s attention to the magistrate, and life at the magistrate’s home has become hectic with preparations for him to move up in society. One day, the magistrate calls his children to answer three riddles. They answer the first two correctly, but not the third, and the magistrate rages at their stupidity. Days later, the magistrate goes to a festival at the palace, and he returns with two prizes from the king for answering the same riddles he asked his children—a rice bowl and a giant wine bowl made of delicate porcelain. The son rages at his father’s behavior, but his sister reminds him that their father does everything for them. The son asks how stealing his answer could be an act on his behalf, and his sister says it just is, “but she sound[s] more hopeful than sure” (119).

The third riddle is about two neighbors throwing snails in one another’s gardens, and Peiyi gets upset because this very habit is what caused the feud between her family and the neighbors, ultimately leading Jiming’s decision to leave home. Madam Chang breaks up an argument between Peiyi and her father by asking Mr. Shan for the answer to the third riddle.

Mr. Shan does have the answer, and the group spends the next few days putting it into practice, culminating in a meeting between the innkeeper and his neighbor, who sit down to have tea together. Madam Chang, Peiyi, and Rendi serve food, including the snails, which helps the neighbors to realize that they have been holding onto grudges that originated generations ago. Both think the snails are delicious, and they answer the riddle of how to get snails out of two gardens with the idea to add them to recipes, concluding that the snails “are the best things to grow in the garden after all” (128).