Where the Mountain Meets the Moon (Newbery Honor Book)

by Grace Lin

What kept Minli from becoming dull and brown like the rest of the village were the stories her father told her every night at dinner. She glowed with such wonder and excitement that even Ma would smile, though she would shake her head at the same time. Ba seemed to drop his gray and work weariness—his black eyes sparkled like raindrops in the sun when he began a story.

Long looked down at the earth. “I will sacrifice myself for the people of earth,” he said. “I will lie on the land and transform myself into water for them to drink.” The others looked at him in astonishment, but one by one they nodded. “I will do the same,” Yellow said. “As will we,” Pearl and Black said. So Jade Dragon’s children went down to earth and turned themselves into water, saving the people on the earth. They became the four great rivers of the land, stopping the drought and death of

“I thought to see the Old Man of the Moon was impossible. You must be very wise to know how to find him.” “Not really,” Minli said. “I got the directions from a goldfish.”

“Perhaps,” the goldfish man said, “you need to trust her.” “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?”

Minli and the buffalo boy pushed through the crowd as the sun burned the tops of their heads. Minli, used to the spare harvests of her village, couldn’t help gaping at the tall mounds of food for sale at the Market of Green Abundance. The street and open courtyard were filled with umbrella-covered stands and stalls, flaunting jade-colored cabbages, curled cucumbers, purple eggplants, and tangy oranges. Glossy sugared hawthorne berries, like rubies on a stick, made Minli’s mouth water.

“We have clung to it, always afraid of losing it,” the king said. “But if I choose to release it, there is no loss.”

“And perhaps it was never meant for us to cling to. No matter whom the paper originally belonged to, this is a page from the Book of Fortune—a book that no one owns,” the king said. “So, perhaps, it is time for the paper to return to the book.” A wind skimmed the water, and Minli could see her anxious face as pale and as white as the moon reflected in it. “You only lose what you cling to,” the king repeated to himself. He glanced again at the paper and then looked at Minli. A serene expression settled on his face and then he quietly smiled and said, “So, by choosing to give you the line, I do not lose it.”

“Do you remember the story I told you about the paper of happiness? And the secret, which was one word written over and over again?” The back of Ma’s head nodded and Ba allowed himself a small smile. “I have thought a long time about what that word could have been,” Ba said. “Was it wisdom or honor? Love or truth? For a long time I liked to think that the word was kindness.” Ma’s face remained hidden in Minli’s bed, but her sobs had stopped and Ba knew she was listening. “But now,” Ba said, “I think, perhaps, the word was faith.”

But that night, Minli could not fall asleep. Even with the dragon snoring behind her, the fire crackling, and her blanket around her shoulders, her eyes did not close. Like the stone dust that the wind blew, thoughts kept circling in her head. She kept thinking about Ma and Ba and the orphan buffalo boy. With pangs of guilt, she thought about how Ma and Ba pushed her to go home early from the field, how her rice bowl was always the first filled, how every night when she went to sleep in her warm bed she knew they were there, and how worried they must have been that now she was not. The buffalo boy didn’t have that. Instead he had a dirt floor, a pile of grass for his bed, a muddy buffalo, and a secretive friend. Yet he turned away her copper coin and laughed in the sun. Minli couldn’t quite understand it and, somehow, felt ashamed.

So Minli told them about Ma and Ba, their struggles in the muddy fields, the goldfish man and the goldfish. She told them about meeting the dragon that could not fly and the monkeys and the buffalo boy. She told them about the King of the City of Bright Moonlight and the borrowed lines. She told them about her whole journey.

Minli smiled gratefully, but as she looked at their comfortable, round, pink faces—how both A-Fu and Da-Fu leaned against their grandmother with devotion and how she rested her hands on their

heads with tenderness—Minli suddenly thought of Ma and Ba. A wave of longing washed through her and a dryness caught in her throat that the tea could not moisten.

“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!” The family all cheered at that, and there was a look of softness in Dragon’s eyes that Minli had never seen before. He was unused to kindness, she realized. He had spent most of his years alone and trapped by his flightless body.

A-Gong put his hands on Minli’s shoulders and said, “You’re a brave girl, Minli, quick and clever. But you have been away from home too long. Go as quickly as you can.”

The jacket was multicolored, made of large patches sewn together—some dark blue, some deep purple, a few bright red. Minli smiled thankfully; already the cold wind was chilling her but she was hesitant to ask these people for anything since they had already given her so much. As she put it on, she marveled at its warmth. The fabric looked like plain cotton, but she felt as warm as if she had put on a thick fur.

“Goodbye!” Da-A-Fu’s family waved. As they waved, Minli saw each of them had missing material in their sleeves. Her goodbyes froze in her throat as she realized her warm coat was made of pieces cut from the family’s own clothing.

The kites brought our wishes up to the Old Man of the Moon and he must have decided that our destinies lay here,” Ye Ye said, and he motioned upward. “For there is only one other here with us tonight. It is only us and the moon.”

“No,” Da-A-Fu said, laughing. “Why would we want to change our fortune?”

The moonlight seemed to transform her, lifting the years of bitterness and hardship and leaving her with a sad serenity. It affected Ba unexpectedly, in a way he had not felt in years; he filled with great tenderness.

“I think,” Dragon said slowly, “I am not destined to see the Old Man of the Moon.” Minli looked at Dragon’s downcast eyes and read the years of sadness and frustration in his face. Tears burned in her eyes as she thought about their long travels that had led to this disappointment. “I wish I could fly,” the dragon said simply.

But when Minli thought about Dragon, waiting for her patiently, it was as if she had been struck. And like seeds falling from Wu Kang’s tree, images of the Dragon rained upon her—their laughter as they passed the monkeys, his awkward struggles walking in the woods, his echoing roar as he flung the Green Tiger into the air, the kind hand he put on her shoulder when she cried, and the hopeful

look in his eyes as she left. Dragon is my friend, Minli said to herself. What should I do?

For the line was only made of one word, written over and over again. And that word was Thank fulness. And suddenly, like the light when the clouds move away from the moon, Minli knew clearly what question to ask. “There is a dragon waiting at the bridge,” she said. “Why can he not fly?”

The woman was so caught up in her dissatisfaction, she did not realize that she was planting seeds of discontent in her daughter as well. Until then, her daughter had been pleased with their life, but now she began to feel troubled.

Finally, unable to bear the growing frustration, the daughter stole away in the middle of the night—vowing not to return until she could bring a fortune back to her family. And it was only then that the woman saw the stupidity of her behavior. 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.

suddenly memories rushed through her. She heard the buffalo boy’s laughter as he refused her money, saw the king’s generous smile as he willingly parted with his family’s treasure, and remembered Da-A-Fu’s last words to her. “Why would we want to change our fortune?” they had said. She had shaken her head in confusion then, but now, finally, Minli understood all of it. Fortune was not a house full of gold and jade, but something much more. Something she already had and did not need to change.

Moonlight misted over the rough floors and made the sparse room glow silver, the goldfish bowl looking like a second moon. The shabby walls and worn stones seemed to shimmer as if a translucent silk veil covered them, muting any flaws and transforming the house into a dwelling of luminous light and delicate shadows. Minli had never seen her home look so beautiful.

“Minli? Minli!” Ma and Ba’s happiness burst from them like exploding firecrackers and even before she could open her eyes they had flung themselves upon her. 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. Ma and Ba only stopped hugging her when her stomach began to grumble with hunger. Ma rushed to make a special breakfast, taking out the carefully saved dried pork to make Minli’s favorite porridge, while Ba jumped to get some fresh water to make tea.

And suddenly, as she thought about her journey to and from Never-Ending Mountain, Minli realized that while she had not asked the Old Man of the Moon any of her questions, they all had been answered.