The professor followed her through the monastery’s many courtyards. Plaintive voices and sounds of muffled weeping seeped out from doorways and windows. In addition to the students, Chuanjiao Monastery sheltered other refugees, a constant stream over the past few months, the abbot had told him. The Star continued to the far end of the monastery and entered a small courtyard squeezed between two empty, dilapidated halls. The professor paused beside the first hall and peered inside the door. Stacks of broken furniture and empty crates lined the walls. A family lay fast asleep huddled in one corner, arms and legs thrown possessively over their belongings.

The door to the second hall was wide open. A man wandered in and out, muttering as he walked. His tunic of dove-gray cotton was streaked with ash, his trousers dirty at the knees. Despite his obvious confusion, there was dignity in his bearing. It was hard to tell his age; his face could’ve belonged to an exhausted thirty-year-old or a man of fifty.

“I’m sorry, so sorry,” he murmured over and over to no one in particular. “I could do nothing. So sorry.” The man made a circuit of the courtyard, then went inside the hall and came out to begin all over again.

The Star gestured Professor Kang to stay back.

She stepped in front of the man. He stared back at her with dull, unfocused eyes. The Star put her hands on his shoulders and slowly, his eyes cleared. He stood taller and his plain tunic shed its dirt and took on the unmistakable sheen of heavy silk, lengthened to a long robe with wide sleeves, elaborate bands of embroidery at the hems. Robes of state from another century. He was larger than any normal man, his bearing regal, features transformed by a long, magnificent beard.

“You’re a Star,” the deity said. “Which one?”

“The Willow Star,” she replied. “And you’re the Nanking City God.”

“I couldn’t do anything,” the City God said, his handsome face miserable. “How can I protect the boundaries against machines that fly over walls? I had to leave, I couldn’t bear watching the destruction anymore.”

“You’re not to blame,” the Star said. “Airplanes didn’t exist when the gods made you guardian of Nanking. Where are you going now?”

“I don’t know.” His voice faltered. “I’ve just been following some families from Nanking. Looking after them. They’re going west. That’s all they know. West.”

“West is good,” the Star said gently. “Northwest, actually. The Kunlun Mountains. The Queen Mother of Heaven has opened the Palace gates.”

The City God’s eyes widened.

“It’s time for you to leave,” the Star said. “The Palace gates won’t stay open forever. Can you find your way there?”