Chapter 27 Mid-Autumn Dinner
Inside Jiaofang Hall, I studied the candle flame in the bronze mirror.
The firelight spread, like that sunset on the lotus lake from before, so red it could make a person drunk.
Staring too long made me a little dizzy. I closed my eyes and rubbed my locked brows.
When I opened them again, the candle had turned to tears, the bronze mirror had mottled, and the woman in the mirror had aged fifty years.
Fifty years ago Lan Zhi had struck in Yangxin Hall. The late emperor died. This Dowager held court behind the curtain for eighteen years, then returned power to the new emperor.
I rubbed my old waist and walked out. I saw The Emperor leading a white-clothed swordsman toward me.
"Mother Empress!" the two of them said together.
It was the Mid-Autumn Festival. The children had come to eat with me.
Xiao Jingchen and Xiao Jinghe. The brother and sister looked more and more alike. The same phoenix eyes, slightly lifted. The same thin lips, curved. The same face that did not show man or woman.
This Dowager was old, and I could tell them apart less and less. I only remembered that the older brother had six fingers on his left hand, and the younger sister did not.
I was just about to steal a glance when the two of them hid their hands at the same time.
"Mother Empress, have you forgotten which of us is which again!"
This Dowager did not dare answer.
Both children had tempers. I still remembered asking them, small as they were, what they wanted to be when they grew up. One read policy essays and said they would be a wise ruler of a prosperous age. One swung a red-tasseled spear and said they would be a wandering hero of the rivers and lakes.
I could not remember who had said wandering hero, and who had said wise ruler.
Ah, it did not matter. The two of them looked exactly the same anyway, man and woman impossible to tell apart.
After the meal, the three of us drank to the moon.
I was very drunk, and I listened to the children chatter their little stories.
"Mother Empress," the emperor asked, "is there a wish for the Mid-Autumn Festival? Say it, and your son makes it real for you!"
A wish.
I looked at that moon, big and round.
What I wanted most already had no chance to come true.
My head was heavy and muddled. I closed my eyes.