Chapter 21 Chapter 21 Season Yuan Version

One of the strange things about living in this world is that it is only occasionally that you are sure that you will live forever and ever and ever.You know this sometimes, when you get up in the delicate solemn dawn, go out and stand alone, throw your head back deeply, look, go up, and watch the gray sky slowly change, redden, and the miraculous unknowable happen until the east almost screams and your mind settles for the strange, unchanging supremacy of the sunrise—a scene that has been happening every morning for thousands and billions of years.This is the moment you know it, which lasts about a moment.You know this sometimes, when you're alone in the woods at sunset, and the mysterious golden silence slant through the branches and falls under the tree, as if saying something slowly, over and over again, unintelligible, no matter how hard you try .Then, sometimes the boundless dark blue tranquility of the night, with billions of stars waiting and watching above, makes people sure; sometimes a sound of music in the distance makes it real;

It was like this when Colin first saw and heard of the garden hidden within the four high walls.That afternoon it seemed as if the whole world was bent on being perfect and radiant and being nice to a little boy.Perhaps, out of sheer celestial goodness, spring comes to pour everything it can have into one place, full like a crown.More than once, Dickon interrupted what he was doing, stood quietly, his eyes became more and more incredible, and shook his head slightly. "Ah! how nice!" he said. "I am twelve and turning thirteen, and there have been many afternoons in those thirteen years, but I don't think I have seen one as good as this one."

"Oh yes, yes," said Mary, with a sigh of pleasure, "I promise it's the best one in the whole world." "Don't you think," Colin said cautiously dreamily, "everything that happened like this was made to look like it was for me?" "My God!" exclaimed Mary enviously, "that's a fine Yorkshire dialect. Na's a quick imitator--Na's." Joy rules everything. They dragged the wheelchair to the plum tree, which was white with flowers and sweet with bees.Like the king's canopy, the king's in fairy tales.There were cherry trees in bloom nearby, and apple trees with pink and white buds, here and there a bud burst.Between the boughs of the canopy, little bits of blue sky look down like wondrous eyes.

Mary and Dickon worked a little here and there, and Colin watched them.They showed him things--opening buds, closed buds, a twig with just green leaves, a feather from a woodpecker dropped in the grass, the empty shell of an early-hatched bird's egg.Deacon pushed the wheelchair slowly round and round the garden, pausing now and then to let him watch miracles emerge from the earth and hang from the trees.It's like being taken into a magical kingdom, where the king and queen show you all the wonder and opulence contained in the kingdom. "I wonder if we can see the robin?" said Colin.

"You'll see him a lot in a while," replied Dickon, "and when the eggs hatch, the little ones will keep him busy. You'll see him flying around, taking with him a little bit more like himself. As soon as he got to the nest, there was a lot of noise there, and he was so busy that he didn't know which big mouth to feed the first piece. Each side was a big open beak, croaking and protesting. Mom said she Seeing what the robins were doing to fill their gaping mouths made her feel as if she had nothing to do. She said she'd seen the little ones seem to be dripping with sweat, but you couldn't see them. "

They were amused to giggle happily, remembering not to make a sound, and then put their hands to their mouths.A few days earlier, Colin had been told the whispering rules.He liked the mystery and did his best, but in the midst of the excitement it was hard never to let the laughter rise above the whispers. Every hour of the afternoon was filled with something new, and the gold of the sun deepened every hour.The wheelchair had been drawn back under the canopy, and Dickon had just pulled out his flute, sitting down on the grass, when Colin saw something he hadn't noticed in time. "That tree over there is old, isn't it?" he said.

Dickon looked across the grass at the tree, and Mary watched, and there was a brief silence. "Yes," Dickon answered, his voice low and tender after the silence. Mary stared at the tree, thinking. "The branch is dusty, and there's not a leaf anywhere," continued Colin. "It's dead, isn't it?" "Well, yes," admitted Dickon, "but the roses are all over it, and when the roses are full of leaves and flowers, they'll cover every bit of dead wood. It won't look dead then. It'll be the prettiest." Mary still stared at the tree, thinking.

"Looks like a big branch was broken," said Colin. "I wonder how." "It was broken many years ago," replied Dickon. "Ah!" He was startled, and suddenly relieved, and put his hand on Colin. "Look at the robin! There he is! He's looking for food for his wife Woolen cloth." Colin was almost late, but just caught sight of a flash of a red chest with something in its beak.It shoots through the green into the corner and is gone.Colin leaned back on the pillow again, smiling a little. "It brings her afternoon tea. It's about five o'clock. I'd like some tea myself."

So they are safe. "It was magic that sent the robin," Mary whispered afterwards to Dickon, "and I know it was magic." For both she and Dickon were afraid that Colin might ask about the tree whose branches broke off ten years ago, They had talked at length once, and Dickon stood there rubbing his head in annoyance. "We've got to make it look like any other tree," he once said, "and we'll never tell him how it broke, poor boy. If he mentions it we've got to--we've got to look happy." "Oh yes, we must," replied Mary. But she didn't think she looked happy when she stared at the tree.In those few moments she thought and wondered whether another thing Dickon had said was true.At that time he continued to rub his rust-red hair, looking puzzled, but gradually a good-looking and comforting look appeared in his blue eyes.

"Mrs. Craven is a very lovely young lady," he went on, rather hesitantly. "Mother said she thought she used to look after Master Colin in and around Misselwest Park, and with all the mothers out of this world The same as after taking it away. They must come back, you see. She was in the garden, and she made us work, and told me to bring him here." Mary thought he was talking about magic.She is a firm believer in magic.She was secretly convinced that Dickon was bewitched, good magic of course, on everything around him, and that was why people liked him so much, and the wild animals knew him as a friend.She wondered, really, if it was possible that Colin's talent might have been the robin at the moment when he asked the dangerous question.She felt that his magic had been working all afternoon, making Colin look like someone else entirely.He looked impossibly like a mad animal screaming and tearing at the pillow.Even his ivory seems to be changing.When he first entered the garden, the faint red light on his hands, face and neck never really disappeared.He appeared to be made of flesh and blood instead of ivory or wax.

Two or three times they saw the robin carrying food for his wife, so reminiscent of afternoon tea, that Colin thought they must have some too. "Go, and have the footman deliver some in a basket to the Rhododendron Lane," said he, "and you and Dickon can have them here." A heart-warming idea, easily carried out, when the white cloth was spread on the grass, and there was tea, buttered toast, and crispy scones, and a meal was happily filled, and a few birds on business errands stopped. Down to investigate what happened, was drawn into the busy study of breadcrumbs.Nuts and Pit moved swiftly up the tree with a piece of cake, and Soot took a full half of a buttered scone, pecking in the corner, examining, turning it over again, making hoarse comments until he decided to take a happy bite swallow. The afternoon slowly wears out its mellow hours.The sun made the grass more and more golden, the bees came home, and the birds passed less often.Dickon and Mary were sitting on the grass, the tea-basket repacked for taking home, and Colin was reclining on the pillow, his thick curls pushed back from his brow, and his face a very natural colour. "I don't want to let this afternoon go," he said, "but I'm coming tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after, and the day after." "You're going to get a lot of fresh air, right?" Mary said. "I want nothing else," he answered. "Now that I have seen the spring, I want to see the summer. I want to see everything grow here. I will grow here myself." "You will," said Dickon, "and we'll have you walking around here before long, and you can dig like the rest." Colin blushed startlingly. "Go!" he said. "Dig! Will I?" Dickon glanced at him, very delicately.Neither he nor Mary ever asked what happened to his leg. "Sure you can," he said firmly, "you—you have your own feet, like everybody else!" Instead Mary became frightened until she heard Colin's answer. "They're not really sick," he said, "but they're so thin and weak. They shake so much I'm afraid to use them to stand up." Both Mary and Dickon breathed a sigh of relief. "When you're no longer afraid to stand up on them," Dickon recovered, "you'll soon be no longer." "Would I?" said Colin, who lay still as if thinking. They were really quiet for a moment.The sun sets lower.At that hour, everything quieted down, and they were really busy and excited all afternoon.Colin seemed to be resting in luxury.Even the critters stopped moving around and were drawn together to rest near them.Sooty landed on a low branch, hunched up with one foot, and drowsily drooped gray films over his eyes.Mary thought to herself that it seemed to be snoring the next minute. In this silence, when Colin raised his head halfway, he suddenly exclaimed a warning whisper, quite scary: "who's that person?" Dickon and Mary scrambled to their feet. "Man!" they all yelled quickly. Colin pointed to the high wall. "Look!" he whispered excitedly, "Look!" Mary and Dickon looked around pushing the wheelchair.Ji Yuanben's aggrieved face glared at them from the top of the wall and the ladder!He even shook his fist at Mary. "If I wasn't a bachelor, and if you were my daughter," he cried, "I'd give you a whip!" He climbed up another length of ladder as a threat, as if he was actively intending to jump down to deal with her, but when she came to him, he obviously thought about it again, and stood on the top of the ladder and shook his fist at her below. "I never thought it was you!" He was impassioned, "I didn't want to see you the first time I saw you. A skinny little girl with a bitter face, always asking questions, going to places where no one is welcome Sniff. I never found out how you got on me. If it wasn't for the robin—damn—" "Ji Yuanben," Mary shouted, recovering her breath.She stood under him and called to him a little panting. "Ji Yuanben is the way the robin pointed me to!" At this time, Lao Ji seemed to be really going to fall off the wall on his side in a hurry, and he was angry. "You little villain!" he shouted at her, "put your own evil on a mockingbird--though he has the cheek to do anything. He shows you the way! It! Ah! You little..." She could see that he suddenly said the following words because curiosity overwhelmed him. "It was indeed the robin who showed me the way," she protested stubbornly. "It didn't know it was showing the way, but it did. You punch me, and I can't tell you from here." At that very moment, he stopped punching very suddenly, and at the same time his jaw dropped, and he stared up at something that was coming towards him from the grass. Colin was so startled at first hearing him babbling on that he just sat up and listened as if under a spell.But in the middle of it he came back to himself, nodded and ordered Dickon with emperor's style. "Push me over!" he ordered, "Push me close, right in front of him!" This is, with your permission, what caught Ji Yuanben's attention and made his jaw drop.A chair on wheels, full of luxurious pillows and robes, was coming towards him, looking like some kind of national teacher, because the little prince was lying on it backwards, with royal orders in his black-rimmed eyes, and his thin, pale hands held out to him haughtily.The wheelchair stopped under Ji Yuanben's nose.No surprise really, his jaw dropped and he couldn't close it. "Do you know who I am?" the prince asked. Ji Yuanben's eyes widened!His old red eyes were stuck in front of his eyes, as if he had seen a ghost.He stared and stared, swallowing a lump in his throat without saying a word. "Do you know who I am?" Colin continued to question, more like an emperor, "Answer!" Ji Yuanben raised his gnarled hand, wiped his eyes and forehead, and then replied with a strange trembling voice. "Who are you?" he said. "Oh yes, I know--stare at me with the eyes of your mother's face. God knows how you got here. But you're that poor little cripple." Colin forgot he never had a back.His face suddenly turned bright red, and he sat up straight. "I'm not a cripple!" he cried furiously, "I'm not!" "He's not!" cried Mary, almost yelling at the wall with savage indignation. "He doesn't even have a bag the size of a pinhead! I've seen it, and there isn't one—none!" Ji Yuanben wiped his forehead with his hand again and stared at it, as if he could never get enough of it.His hands trembled, his mouth trembled, his voice trembled.He was an ignorant old man, a tactless old man who only remembered what he had just heard. "Are you—are you stooped?" he said hoarsely. "No!" cried Colin. "You - aren't you bow-legged?" Old Ji's voice trembled even more hoarsely. unacceptable.The usual force of Colin's outbursts now rushed through him in a new way.He had never been accused of having bow legs—even in whispers—Ji Yuanben's voice showed that he took it for granted that bow legs existed, and the prince's flesh and blood could not bear it.His anger and his insulted pride made him forget everything but this moment, filling him with a power he had never known, an almost unnatural power. "Come here!" he called to Dickon, tearing off the covering of his lower limbs, and struggling to his feet, "Come here! Come here! Now!" Dickon blinked to his side.Mary let out a sharp breath, gasping for breath, feeling pale. "He can do it! He can do it! He can do it! He can!" She murmured to herself as fast as she could, her voice so low that she couldn't hear it. There was a brief frantic rush, the blanket was thrown on the floor, and Dickon took Colin's arm, and the thin leg came out and the thin foot was on the grass.Colin stood straight—straight—straight as an arrow, and strangely tall—his head thrown back, and lightning flashed from strange eyes. "Look at me!" He waved his arms at Ji Yuanben above, "Look at me——you! Look at me!" "He's as straight as I am!" cried Colin. "He's as straight as any boy in Yorkshire!" Mary found Ji Yuanben's reaction strange and unfathomable.He choked and swallowed hard, and suddenly, tears rolled down his weather-beaten face, and a pair of old hands twisted together. "Ah!" he burst out. "What a lie! You're as thin as a girl, and as white as a ghost, and you don't have a lump on you. You can grow into a man. God bless you!" Dickon took Colin's arm firmly, but the boy did not budge.He stood straighter and straighter, looking directly at Ji Yuanben. "I am your master," said he, "while my father is away. You shall obey me. This is my garden. Dare you speak a word to it! Come down that ladder, and go out into the long walk, Miss Mary will meet you there and bring you here. I have something to say to you. We don't want you, but now you must participate in the secret. Hurry up!" Ji Yuan's grumpy old face was still wet, stained with tears from that miraculous spring.It was as if he couldn't take his eyes off Colin, who was lean and straight, on two feet, with his head thrown back. "Ah! Good God!" he almost whispered, "Ah! My Goodness!" Then coming to his senses, he touched his hat suddenly, gardener-like, and said, "Yes, sir! Yes, sir!" Obeyed The underground ladder, disappeared.