He didn’t tell her anything that would make her worry. Nothing about his own illness. He made light of the hardships and the long miles, the tragic sights along the way. He didn’t mention Lian. His mother listened but soon she grew restless and distracted, her eyes darting around the room. Then she gestured to the nurse.

“Just a small amount,” the nurse said, holding out a spoonful of brown liquid. Shao’s mother swallowed eagerly, then leaned back on the pillows, her face pale, all strength spent. Her eyes closed but she held on to his hand.

“Will you send Sparrow to see me later,” she murmured. “She’s such a good girl. A good servant.”

The rest of her words were inaudible. He sat beside his mother until she sank into sleep.

SHAO’S FATHER INVITED him for lunch downtown, a signal that he considered Shao sufficiently recovered to go out again. Rather than take one of the family cars, Shao had the gatekeeper call him a rickshaw. All the way to his father’s office, he took in the streets of Shanghai. So familiar, yet completely changed.

At exit points where Shanghai’s residents were allowed to cross in and out of the Settlement stood unsightly and intimidating barbed-wire barricades, the guardhouses were manned by Japanese soldiers. Refugees from outlying areas struggled to enter the safety of the Settlement. They feared the Japanese guards but lined up anyway. One man carried a birdcage, his only possession.

At the barriers, the backdrop behind the anxious crowds was one Shao had only seen so far in news photos. The bombed-out buildings of Greater Shanghai, blackened and bullet-ridden.

“Go some other way,” Shao called out to the rickshaw puller. “I don’t care if it takes longer. I don’t want to see those barricades.”

The staff at the newspaper office, most of whom Shao had known since he was a boy, greeted him enthusiastically. They wanted firsthand accounts of his evacuation, the conditions China’s schools faced during their evacuation. He recounted a few stories about Minghua 123’s long journey. After repeating them so often to his own family over the past few days, the narrative was now so familiar he felt as though he read from a script, his memories replaced by the words he spoke.

The long nighttime journeys and walking on moonless nights to avoid aerial attacks. The duty of transporting the Library of Legends, a heavy responsibility that also lifted their spirits. The day they learned the secret of tying straw sandals over cloth shoes. The never-ending pain of blisters. With each retelling, he’d made the experiences sound more amusing, the horrors he’d witnessed less unnerving. He even made their constant battles against vermin entertaining, small enemies they had to outwit. And all the time, west, to the west.

He didn’t mention Jenmei, only Mr. Shen, when asked whether Minghua 123 had lost any of its members to enemy attacks.