Mr. Lee billeted them in an ancestral hall belonging to the largest clan in the village of Shingdian. Minghua 123 squeezed into all four of the buildings around the single small courtyard as well as the dining hall and servants’ quarters. Lian was so tired she could hardly wait to fall onto the bedroll she’d spread out on the floor. She’d already forgotten what the cook had fed them. Steamed buns stuffed with something. Meirong was sound asleep, curled into a tight ball, blankets pulled over her head to block the sunlight streaming in through carved window shutters.

They would travel like this day after day, Lian realized as she drifted into exhausted sleep. Walking by moonlight and starlight, sleeping in temples and ancestral halls because in some towns those were the only buildings large enough to house them all.

Minghua 123 set out again after sundown for their second night on the road. Meirong walked beside Lian. Since sleeping beside each other on the floor of the ancestral hall, she referred to Lian as her roommate.

“There was so much knowledge collected in the Jingtai Encyclopedia,” Meirong said, “all those volumes of poetry, epic histories, and scholarly essays. Why do you suppose the gods chose to save the volumes of legends and folklore instead of any other?”

“I thought it was the scholar-bureaucrat Yao and his descendants who saved the Library of Legends,” Lian said. She was starting to feel comfortable with Meirong, with the way her classmate changed topics suddenly, her mind busy as a dragonfly darting from one thought to another.

“What I think is this,” Meirong said, continuing as if she hadn’t heard. “Maybe it’s because legends are truer to our natures than serious literature. Maybe myths and legends reveal more about us than poetry or epic histories.”

“Very perceptive, Miss Yee,” Professor Kang said, as he walked up from behind. “Myths are the darkest and brightest incarnations of who we are. They slip into our dreams and underpin our reality. Perhaps that’s why the gods judged the Library of Legends worthy of special protection.”

Although the professor’s age and status entitled him to ride on a cart, he always walked a few miles each day, using the time to chat with students up and down the line.

“Or it could be even simpler,” he continued. “Maybe the gods are vain and want their stories remembered.”

He strode ahead, chuckling to himself.

PROFESSOR KANG MADE his way up the line, past donkey carts carrying books, supplies, and laboratory equipment, past students walking together in twos and threes. Sometimes he spoke to other travelers on the same road. Some refugees walked bent beneath the loads they carried, some were stunned with grief and loss. Some were as loud in anger against their own government as they were about the enemy.