I thanked my grandmother for letting me learn the secret of our pencils. I even thanked her for her reluctance, told her I now understood, oh, how I understood. I cried for my mother, for there could not have been a better mother for me—her steadiness, her unfailing work ethic that kept us alive and sheltered, war after war, how much she sacrificed to attain that for us. She had deserved a life of pleasure, a life of happiness.

As for you and your mother, I prayed you were still alive even if I could not reach you by letter or pencil. I hoped your mother would never learn about my affair with Mr. Gao, and that if she did, she would know that for him, it had always been her. Now there were only the two of you, when there were once five of us gathered around my grandmother’s roaring flame—and I was alone. Where were you? I had no idea. Did you ever feel the utter loneliness I felt then, on the other side of the world, so far from everyone I loved? Could it be that you felt that exactly as we both lit the fire on what should have been our homes?

I splashed some cooking oil around the stove and on the box of pencils. I poured the remaining oil into the pot I once used to make soup and added water.

I moved the pot to the flame. It would take a while for the oil to heat, to cause the water to splatter, to ignite the oil around the stove, the drawing, the pencils beneath. First the ancestors and gods would receive the drawing of the phoenix. Then Mother’s pencils would come pouring in, a gift to give voice to those we couldn’t hear anymore.

I used the time it took for the oil to heat to clear out of the house and begin my walk to the bus station. It was night. I crinkled the bus ticket in my pocket. A reminder this wasn’t the end, even though it certainly felt like it. My last remaining connection to my family, my home, burned behind me.

Soon I was on a bus driving across the country I had hoped would save me, heading toward one of the only other cities I knew by name. My only requirement was that I end up far from the place where I had resurrected so many words that should have been left alone.

I had only the smallest sliver of hope that I would find Torou there.

Chapter 27

From the diary of Monica Tsai, backed up on three servers spanning two continents

November 23, 2018 (2018-11-23T09:49:14.489947)

loc: Cambridge, Massachusetts. United States of America (42.3742289,71.133843)