Where the Mountain Meets the Moon (Newbery Honor Book)

by Grace Lin

“Oh, Minli!” Ma said impatiently. “Bringing fortune to our house! Making Fruitless Mountain bloom! You’re always wishing to do impossible things! Stop believing stories and stop wasting your time.” “Stories are not a waste of time,” Ba said.

“Stories are not foolish,” Ba said again, in his quiet way. “Says you!” Ma said. “Because you are the one who filled her with them. Making her believe she could change our miserable fortune with an impossible story! Ridiculous!” “Yes,” Ba said sadly, “it is impossible. But it is not ridiculous.”

“But,” Ma said, “but what she wants is impossible.” “Impossible?” the goldfish man said. “Don’t you see? Even fates written in the Book of Fortune can be changed. How can anything be impossible?”

“Perhaps if you cannot trust that your daughter will find Never-Ending Mountain, you should trust that she will return home to you. Because that is not impossible. So, whether Minli brings it to you or not, I wish you good fortune.”

“I should have known we could not fight the Green Tiger with more anger. We just add to his power that way. His anger is his strength, but it can also be his weakness. His anger can blind him, and that is when he is vulnerable.

“Maybe we should call it Well Tea,” A-Fu laughed, “since the Green Tiger is down in the well.” “No,” A-Gong said, “we want to remember our friends, not our enemies.” “Then we should call it Dragon Well Tea,” Da-Fu said, “because it made the dragon well!”

For without her daughter, the house became too large and empty, and she was not hungry for the extra rice. As the days passed in loneliness, fear, and worry, the woman cursed herself for her selfishness and foolishness. How lucky she had been! She was at last able to see that her daughter’s laughter and love could not be improved by having the finest clothes or jewels, that joy had been in her home like a gift waiting to be opened. The woman wept tears for which there was no comfort. For all the time that she had been longing for treasures, she had already had the one most precious.

“Ahh, good,” the fish said. “If you make happy those that are near, those that are far will come.”

Fortune was not a house full of gold and jade, but something much more. Something she already had and did not need to change. “I didn’t ask the question,” Minli said again and smiled, “because I don’t need to know the answer.”

The joy! How it flowed and flooded over her! More golden than the king’s dragon bracelet, sweeter than a peach from the Queen Mother’s garden, and more beautiful than a Goddess of Heaven! Minli smiled, treasuring her good fortune.

For even in the misty light, the goldfish man could see her smiling a secret smile up to the sky to where the mountain meets the moon.