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This folk tale from China's Zhuang people shows how devotion to one's art can plant the seeds of a magical new life.
If I pulled one blue thread out of your blanket, my loves, what do you suppose I could make with it? A little loop to go round my finger, perhaps. A tail for a very small kite. Well, in an old story of the Zhuang people of southern China, there was a mother who took one blue thread and made a river. And if you tuck those toes in, I’ll tell you what came swimming down it.
The mother was a weaver. Every morning her three sons woke to the knock of her wooden loom beneath the window. Over and back went the little wooden shuttle, carrying thread through thread. She wove bright, patterned cloth called brocade, and on market days she folded it over her arm and walked down the hill to sell it.
One market day she saw a picture of a valley. There was a pear tree beside a red-roofed house, and a river broad enough to carry the reflection of the whole sky. The weaver stood looking so long that the picture seller offered her his stool. At last she paid him for the picture and carried it home.
“Which part do you like best?” her youngest son asked.
“The kitchen window,” she said. “If you stood there washing the rice, you could see who was coming over the bridge. You’d know just when to put another handful in the pot.”
That night she hung the picture above her loom. In the morning she began to weave the valley. She earned their supper weaving cloth to sell, and in the hours left over she worked on the river. Sometimes she did only a finger’s width before bed. Her youngest boy used to measure it with his thumb. In the first year, the river grew faster than his thumb. In the second, his thumb put on a very good race.
She made the pear blossoms out of cream-colored thread. She put moss between the stones of the bridge. At last she wove a white duck on the riverbank. There wasn’t quite enough white left for the last feather, so she gave him a blue one.
“There’s no duck in the picture,” said her eldest.
“Well,” said his mother, “there ought to be. Look at all that lovely water going to waste.”
After three years she cut the finished cloth from her loom. Her sons took the corners and held it up to the window. Sunlight ran along the blue thread. The middle boy put out a finger to feel whether the river was wet.
Just then a wind came slipping between his fingers. It bellied out the cloth like a sail. Up it went, brushing the boys’ noses, and away it flew over the roof. They chased it to the top of the hill. Far off, against the clouds, a white duck with one blue feather grew smaller and smaller and disappeared.
For days the mother climbed the hill to look east. Then came a morning when she was too tired to climb. Her eldest son packed some rice and went to bring the brocade home. At the foot of a red mountain he found an old woman feeding grass to a stone horse.
“Your mother’s cloth is in the palace beyond the icy sea,” she said. “You may ride my horse there. Or you may take this bag of gold and turn for home.”
The eldest weighed the bag in his hand. Surely gold could buy his mother something just as fine. He came home with a bolt of red silk. She thanked him and ran it between her fingers. Then she folded it away.
The middle son tried next. At the red mountain he too chose the gold. He brought home a quilt soft as a duckling’s back. His mother drew it over her knees. That evening, under her window, the loom stood quiet.
When the youngest announced he was going, his brothers helped him pack. One wrapped rice in a leaf. The other mended the strap of his sandal. Their mother slipped a short end of blue thread into his pocket.
“From the duck’s tail,” she said, and for the first time in days she smiled.
At the foot of the mountain the old woman made him the same offer. He took one look at the stone horse. Rainwater lay in its ears.
“I’d like the ride, please,” he said. “Though if we have to wait for this fellow to finish his breakfast, we may be here quite a while.”
The old woman chuckled. “Give him something from home.”
The boy divided the rice his brothers had packed. He ate half and held the rest under the horse’s nose. Two stone nostrils quivered. Two ears tipped forward, spilling rain down his neck. A warm tongue swept the rice off his palm.
“Keep talking to him,” said the old woman, helping him up. “It’s a long way for anybody to carry somebody else.”
The mountain burned red beneath the horse’s feet. Heat rose in wobbly waves. The boy shut his eyes, then remembered his promise to keep the horse company. He told him about the market, the picture seller’s stool, and the time his middle brother tried to feel a woven river. By the time they reached the top he could laugh about it. The horse tossed his mane and snorted one little spark.
Down the other side lay the icy sea. The horse stepped onto it. Crack went the ice behind one hoof. Crack went the ice behind the next. The boy’s teeth chattered too hard for storytelling. But he could still tap his fingers against the horse’s neck. Over and back, over and back. His mother’s loom had sung them all to sleep a thousand times. That was the tune they crossed to.
On the far shore, warm lamplight shone from a palace window. Inside sat a roomful of celestial weavers, with his mother’s cloth spread out before them. Each was trying to copy something. One had managed the pear blossoms. Another had got the moss just right. The youngest weaver was frowning over the duck.
“Why is that one feather blue?” she asked.
He told her. She laughed so hard she had to lay her shuttle down. Then he told them how quiet it was at home with nobody working beneath the window. The weavers looked at the lovely cloth they’d asked the wind to fetch. None of them had thought about the empty loom.
The youngest weaver rolled up the brocade herself. Before the last fold she slipped a few threads through the cloth, working so swiftly he could scarcely follow her fingers.
“There,” she said. “Something for the kitchen window.”
The stone horse knew the way home. At the old woman’s door he stopped to lick the boy’s empty palm. The boy promised to come back with more rice. Then he ran the last mile with the brocade on his shoulder and his sandal strap holding firm all the way.
His mother heard him coming. Both brothers helped her out into the sunshine. Together the three boys unrolled the cloth across the grass. For a moment it lay still. Then a pear blossom shook loose and landed in their mother’s hair.
Water ran over her bare toes. Where the grass had been, a river curled beneath a mossy bridge. The red roof rose above them. From the bank came a very cross quack. A white duck was trying to pull a blue thread out of his tail, and having no luck at all.
In the kitchen window stood the youngest celestial weaver, exactly where she’d woven herself. “How much rice shall I wash?” she called.
The mother looked across the bridge. Here came her boys. Here came an old woman leading a hungry horse. Behind them came the neighbors, following the sound of running water where yesterday there hadn’t been a drop.
“Oh,” she called back, rolling up her sleeves. “Use the big pot.”
That night there were bowls for everybody. There was rice for the horse, who ate quite a lot for somebody made of stone. Later, while his brothers carried the bowls inside, the youngest sat with his mother on the step. A duck sailed down the river, his one blue feather trailing a little line through the reflection of the moon.
The mother rested her head against her boy’s shoulder. Across the water the pear tree let fall one blossom, then another. They watched until they couldn’t tell the white petals from the stars.
And now, my loves, let me pull your blanket up. I think we’ll leave that blue thread just where it is. Who knows where your river might take you tonight?
