The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 9 - Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Kada’s Book (Part 3)

Maomao went back to the library and looked around again. Haven’t I seen this design somewhere? she wondered. The two-tone pattern on the walls tugged at something in her memory, but she couldn’t quite think of what.

Yao and En’en, like Maomao, were ignoring the bookshelves and instead looking at the walls and ceiling.

“If what you said is true, Maomao, there’s no point checking the shelves,” Yao said. She must have told En’en what the two of them had talked about together, because her servant was studying the walls intently.

“I can’t shake the sense that that wall looks familiar,” Maomao said. The pattern was slightly different from those on the other three walls—although it was also mostly hidden by the bookshelves. “So... A book on human anatomy.” That, she surmised, was what the missing volume was, given its number.

Her muttering was interrupted by a crash. She looked over in surprise to find that Yao was flat on her bottom and one of the bookshelves had fallen over.

En’en paled and rushed over to her. “Lady Yao!” Her mistress didn’t seem to be hurt; she got to her feet, patting away dust.

“Looks like you’re all right,” Maomao said. “But what happened? How did you manage to knock over a bookshelf?”

Chances were nothing was damaged—the books were sturdy enough—but the shelf was heavy. It would take an effort to stand it up again.

“Here, look at this,” Yao said. She held out a book with the code 一-2-I. It was the number before the one that was missing.

“What about it?” Maomao asked.

“Look at the last page,” Yao said. She opened the book to show them a small circle drawn on the edge of the final page. It was divided in two: half black, half white.

“Is that a taiji symbol?” Maomao asked.

A taiji symbol: a diagram of the Great Ultimate, sometimes called the yin-yang, and sometimes taken to look like a black fish and a white fish swimming after each other. It was a common image in fortune-telling, and it had a connection to “five elements” theory—which, yes, was related to medicine, although Maomao, being of a more pragmatic bent, didn’t know much about it.

“But what’s it doing there?” She gave it a perplexed look.

“There’s another one,” En’en said. “Here.” She brought over a book numbered 一-2-III. “Here, it’s written on the first page.”

Maomao lined the two books up and pondered them. “And the book we’re missing is the one that belongs right between them.”

“That’s right. So I had an idea,” Yao said, giving the wall a confident smack. “I think the missing book is hidden.”

“What makes you say that?”

Maomao wanted an explanation. En’en, however, clapped her hands, her eyes wide. “Of course! Lady Yao, you’re brilliant!”

Even En’en wouldn’t flatter her mistress simply because she was adorable. What was so brilliant about her suggestion?

“These walls show the eight trigrams!”

“Yes! That’s what I thought!” Yao said.

“The eight trigrams?” Maomao, puzzled, searched her mind. She ate...a gram of what? I guess you could...try... No... Oh! “You mean those diagrams?” she said. They had something to do with the taiji, she recalled, but unfortunately she didn’t remember what. This wasn’t her specialty—and her ability to remember things dropped precipitously when she wasn’t interested in them. At least it explained why the patterns had looked so familiar.

My old man did tell me to at least learn them. But it hadn’t seemed as practical as herbal theory, so she’d mostly ignored it. Forget having an acquaintance with them; she’d barely said hello.

“Yes! You know. This pattern here, I think it’s supposed to be a yao,” said Yao.

“Yao?” Maomao asked. It clearly wasn’t the other woman’s name, but she was damned if she knew what it was.

“Don’t tell me you don’t know about them?” Yao looked surprised—but also, maybe, just a little bit pleased.

“I’d guess people who know about them are in the minority,” Maomao grumbled, feeling a rush of petulance. Now she wished she’d paid a little more attention to the subject.

“Do you recognize this sort of pattern?” Yao asked, running her fingers along the walls. There were whitish planks and blackish ones; she touched only the black ones. Unlike the other boards on the wall, which all ran vertically, the ones Yao touched ran horizontally. “Trigrams are made up of yao, which are either a single long line or two short ones. The patterns are said to represent yin and yang, or sometimes hard and soft.”

Maomao crooked her fingers, counting. By having three sets of two yao, you could make eight possible combinations; hence, the eight trigrams. “So, you knocked over the shelf to...”

“Be able to see the entire wall. And one other thing.” Yao peeled up the faded carpet—showing that there were trigrams underneath it, just like the wall.

“Luomen said the book was somewhere in this room,” Maomao said, remembering. In this room, but not necessarily on the shelves. “And the architect who lived here loved little tricks.” That was what Lahan had told them. There was a good chance this room contained one of those architectural contraptions. “And then there’s the taiji symbols, and the trigrams...”

Not a subject she was very interested in. And her father had said she wouldn’t be able to solve this riddle alone.

“So that’s what he meant,” Maomao said, clapping her hands.

“It all makes sense!” said En’en, catching on.

Once they had the idea, Maomao and En’en worked quickly. They started trying to move one of the bookshelves.

“Hey! I found it first!” Yao said.

“You just sit quietly, Lady Yao. This is dangerous. Plus, it’s very physical labor.”

I think Yao is probably the stronger of the two of them, Maomao thought, although she had just enough sense not to say it out loud.

Even working together, it proved impossible for them to move the bookcase. Instead they emptied it, then slid the empty case into the hallway. Over and over they did this. Yao helped by taking books off the shelves, although she didn’t look very happy about it.

When all of the bookshelves had been removed, the walls were revealed in their entirety. It was enough to make the women’s heads spin, but when they took up the carpet as well, the sensation became downright vertiginous.

“Is this it?” Maomao said, looking at the floor. Right in the center was a white piece of wood, in the middle of what was otherwise a standard trigram. Like the painting on the ceiling, it was divided into nine parts.

“It’s showing the Primordial system!” Yao said, her eyes sparkling. Once again, they were venturing into vocabulary Maomao didn’t recognize. She almost asked about it, but it occurred to her that doing so would only slow things down, so she decided to play along instead.

“Yes, of course. The Primordial system. So, where’s the book?”

Yao was silent. Evidently that was as far as she’d gotten.

Luomen had given them this task, which meant that there was an answer to be found somewhere. Maomao looked at the two books with the taiji symbols. They were both about human anatomy, one detailing the hands and the other the feet.

“Yao,” Maomao said. “Does each of the trigrams have a specific meaning?”

“Lots. They’re associated with directions, animals, and even family relationships.”

“Are they ever associated with parts of the human body?”

“Yes! Yes, they are!” Yao said, turning quickly to the books.

“Excepting the missing volume, there are eight books with the code 一-2,” said Maomao. They were missing the second volume, but all the rest, including volumes four through nine, were still on the shelves. The numbers were divided the same way as the pictures on the floor and ceiling.

“We’ve already got books on the feet and hands,” Yao said. “That would imply the others are about the head, mouth, eyes, thighs, ears, and stomach. Six volumes.”

“I brought them,” said En’en, ever the quick study. They opened the books and found it was exactly as Yao had predicted.

“In terms of the theory of the taiji, nothing is missing,” Yao said. And yet they were short one number. Did the book not relate to a specific part of the body?

Maomao stood smack in the middle of the room, where there was no trigram. On a hunch, she looked up. “Someone drew a lot of animals up there,” she said.

“You can tell what they are if you take a good look. I see a horse, and a dog, and a pheasant, and... Does that one kind of look like a dragon? You think that’s all right?” Yao said.

“It does seem like a questionable choice,” Maomao said. The dragon represented the Imperial family, and using it without permission could get people in trouble.

“You know what? Even the ceiling pictures are related to the trigrams,” said Yao.

Maomao squinted. The pictures were faded with age, but still visible. “Right in the middle of the ceiling, I see one horse and two sheep. Does that mean anything to you, Yao?” The horse was drawn above and the sheep below.

“The trigram associated with the horse is called qian,” Yao answered. “According to the Primordial system, qian’s direction is south, its familial relationship is the father, its body part is the head, its element is metal, and its number is one.”

“Number? Well, how much is a sheep?”

“A sheep can be two or eight, but under the Primordial system it’s two.”

“So we have one one, and two twos.”

Maomao looked at the books. Mysteriously—or perhaps not—the missing volume bore the number 一-2-II. One, two, two.

Had Luomen tried not to make the problem too hard? It could, after all, be solved simply with knowledge of the trigrams, whether or not you noticed the books. Conversely, without that knowledge, the challenge would have been insuperable.

Maomao looked back at the floor; it bore a more complex pattern of white and black planks than the ceiling did. “Yao?” she said.

“Yes?”

“Which are the trigrams representing one and two?”

Yao moved over to two spots on the floor. “One is this one, with three long lines. For two, the topmost line is broken, while the bottom two are long.”

☰ and ☱, then. Maomao looked so hard at the wall it seemed like she might burn a hole through it.

“What are you doing?” Yao asked.

“Trying to see if there’s an arrangement of one, two, and two.” It made her head hurt; all the combinations looked so similar. Worst of all, with the slightest lapse in concentration, she would lose her place and have to start again.

“I’ll start looking on the opposite side,” Yao said.

“And I’ll cheer you on! I’ll go make a snack,” En’en said, and made her escape. Maomao wanted to chase after her, but she didn’t dare take her eyes off the wall. She wished she could mark the trigrams off, but she couldn’t go writing on the wall. The headache continued.

Maomao didn’t say anything.

Yao didn’t say anything.

En’en didn’t say anything, since she was preparing tea.

With so many trigrams, one would have expected there to be an arrangement of one, two, and two somewhere—but it didn’t look like it. One, then two, Maomao found repeatedly, but never with that elusive second two.

It’s got to be around here somewhere! she thought—and at exactly that moment, she bumped into Yao.

“Did you find it?”

“No, it’s not here,” Maomao said.

“How can that be?”

“Maybe we missed it?” Maomao blinked several times and looked at the walls. She would have to go through everything again, see if they had overlooked anything, but she really didn’t want to.

“Who wants tea?” En’en asked, coming in with a clatter of drinkware.

“I do!”

“Yes, please!” Yao and Maomao spoke simultaneously.

Since all the furnishings had been moved into the hallway, they unrolled a rug on the floor to have their drink.

“Thath’s delithiouth!” Yao said, very happy, but when they were done, they were going to have to check the walls again. If they still couldn’t find what they were looking for, they would have to admit that Maomao’s guess had been wrong. “It’s frustrating how many times one and two show up, but then the last number is different.”

“Yeah. We never find that last two. We only need it to show up once!” Maomao said.

“That’s right, but one different line makes it another number. Like here—if only this yin were a yang.”

Yang was a single long line; yin was two short ones.

“If yin were yang?” Maomao said, and looked at the trigrams on the floor. If you took the uppermost yang line of ☰ and changed it to yin, it became ☱.

She stood up and looked at the walls again. It was right around here...

She found a one, two, and one. She didn’t think this was a pattern that was repeated anywhere else. She went to the third one, the ☰, and touched the uppermost line.

She could feel something under her fingers. She pressed firmly on the middle of the line and it gave way, receding inward.

From yang to yin!

There was a mechanical bump, and something came jutting out of the wall—a drawer.

“You’re kidding,” Yao said, her eyes wide.

“That’s a surprise,” said En’en, staring at the drawer.

Maomao pulled it out, and found a book within.

一-2-II.

The construction of the missing book was much less sophisticated than that of anything else on the shelves; the thickness of the pages wasn’t quite uniform.

“Is that sheepskin parchment?” En’en asked.

“From the feel, I would say so,” Maomao said. Sheepskin lasted much longer than crude paper.

With much trembling, Maomao turned the pages. The text was written not with a brush, but a western-style pen. Very little of it was written in the Li script. Instead it was in the spidery, flowing characters of the west, with occasional glosses in Linese.

This must be from when he was studying there. Her father had lived and studied in the west when he was younger, an experience that had bestowed upon him much of his extraordinary medical knowledge. Maomao muttered to herself as she deciphered the foreign text. There were plenty of words she didn’t understand, but she could work her way through it if she took her time.

Then the blood drained from her face. She’d found exactly what she’d expected.

“Maomao...” En’en said, looking anxious.

“What is it? What’s it say?” asked Yao, the only one who couldn’t read western letters. Maomao stood there, not moving. “What’s wrong?” Yao reached out and turned the page instead.

There, Maomao and En’en saw what they had feared.

“What is that?” Yao asked.

There was a carefully wrought drawing of a human body. That wasn’t, in and of itself, a problem. But this picture showed the person without their skin, revealing the details of the flesh underneath.

Yao caught her breath and averted her eyes, looking sick. The image was far too realistic to have been drawn from the imagination. The artist must have had an example in front of them.

Still fearful, Maomao turned to the next page. This one showed a human stomach, sliced open, the guts within depicted in detail.

My old man used the medical expertise he learned in the west to slice open the Empress Dowager’s belly. It was how he had delivered her child. Normally, when mother and child were both in danger, a physician would endeavor to at least save the baby—but Luomen had managed to save them both. It wasn’t a feat mere knowledge alone could accomplish. He must have done it before—who knew how many people he had cut open? How many bodies he had cut into in the name of practice?

Now Maomao saw why her old man had always tried to keep her away from corpses. Why he’d raised her as an apothecary instead of a physician.

This explains everything.

Maomao closed the vile book. She didn’t censure Luomen for what he had done. If you wanted to practice medicine, you had to know about the human body—even Maomao experimented on a real person, namely herself. But most people? They would react the way Yao had.

She was pressing her hands to her mouth, looking at the awful text with repulsion. Maomao didn’t know how it was in the west—but the average person in Li would never be able to accept what was in this book. There was faith; there were taboos. This went against both of them.

Maomao looked at the back of the book, which bore spindly letters reading:

w i t c h c r a f t

She didn’t know what it meant, but she knew why Luomen had hidden the book. If anyone found out about it, it would be burned. It couldn’t be allowed to exist.

Accepting Kada’s Book was the condition of Luomen’s tutelage. They would have to cope with what they had found here—be willing to live with it.

If any book could be called Kada’s, this was it.