Chapter 672: Water Banquet

Chapter 672 The Water Banquet

"Mother, this is delicious too. Try some. I brought this all the way from Daliang just for you."

"Oh, and these honeyed dates. I happened to spot them on the road and thought they tasted grand, so I bought you two catties."

"Mother, do you fancy sour things? I brought you a jar of sour ones as well."

Flushed with excitement, young Xiaohai no longer needed to maintain any pretense before his own flesh and blood, completely reverting to the boy he ought to be at his age.

"And this, look!" Xiaohai said, thrusting a bulky parcel of silver straight into his mother's arms.

"Oh dear, oh dear, this is far too much, far too much. Put it away, that is quite enough."

Hearing his own mother speak so, Xiaohai only grew more fervent in his retrieving, as though intent on stripping the entire carriage bare.

Only after his mother had spent a good while holding him back did Xiaohai finally cease unloading his wares.

He began to pour his heart out to his mother, speaking of the hardships and the yearning of all these years, but she was deaf; looking at her somewhat bewildered expression, it was plain she could hear nothing. This left the swell of words in Xiaohai's chest trapped with nowhere to go. "Come, come along, you have only just returned and do not know the family. Let me point them out to you." With those words, Xiaohai's mother stood up and, taking him by the hand, led him toward the other Dan people who had gathered round to watch.

"This is your second brother."

"Greetings, Second Brother!" Xiaohai called out to the man before him, who stood even shorter than himself.

The second brother appeared exceedingly tongue-tied and spoke in a rather rambling fashion. "Uh... aye, you're back then? Have you eaten?"

"And this is your third brother."

"Greetings, Third Brother." The third brother was far more composed than the second; he reached out and patted Xiaohai on the shoulder. "Grown so big, marvelous indeed. When you were small, you were no bigger than a chick."

"This is your youngest sister. Her childhood betrothal is set; she is to be wed after the New Year. When the time comes, you, as her brother, must surely drink to her joy."

"Most certainly, most certainly."

Aside from their own household, Xiaohai's mother introduced him one by one to the Dan folk watching the spectacle all around, every last one of them being his aunts and uncles of varying degrees.

Through his mother's words, Xiaohai finally realized that the Dan people he had encountered along his journey were, in truth, all kith and kin to him.

Furthermore, the generations were in a terrible tangle; he even had to address a girl younger than himself as Grand-Aunt.

Yet Xiaohai minded it not in the least; on the contrary, he felt a profound joy that he was not solitary in this world, that he still possessed so many kindred under heaven.

Having finished with the elders, it was time to introduce the younger generation. Xiaohai's mother pulled him toward the stern of the boat.

"Now, these two are your second brother's children, your nephews." She pointed her finger toward two toddlers in undergarments at the aft of the vessel.

The two nephews were fair enough, save for being somewhat gaunt, yet the ropes bound tight around their bodies struck Xiaohai as a thoroughly disagreeable sight; looking at them, one could scarcely tell whether they were raising children or keeping hounds.

Xiaohai felt an immense discomfort at the spectacle and could not help but cast a glance toward the carriage, where the three monkey-children were peering about; they too had been bound in just such a manner once.

"Mother, why must the nephews be trussed up so?" Xiaohai could not help but ask.

However, his mother's ears were deaf and still she heard nothing, merely pulling him along as she turned back.

Just then, Jiang Erlang stepped over from the side to clear his doubts. "You have tarried too long ashore to understand. This is how one must rear young ones on a boat; if they are not bound, they easily tumble into the water. That is how your second uncle was lost."

"Is that so? Yet surely they cannot remain bound until they are grown?"

"How could they be bound until grown? Once they pass their tender childhood and burn incense at the Dragon King Temple to enter the Dragon Registry, they can be set loose."

"The Dragon Registry? What is the Dragon Registry?"

"Folks like us are the Dragon Registry; it means the selfsame thing as entering the ancestral hall and the clan register ashore." Jiang Erlang traced the tattoos upon his skin with his hand.

"Oh~" Xiaohai nodded in understanding; it turned out the various rules the boat master had spoken of before were by no means fabricated, but had their reasons.

"Father! Guess who has come? Fifth Brother is back!" Hearing his second brother's voice from the prow, Xiaohai's heart instantly tightened. Father?

By the time Xiaohai led his mother back to the prow, he beheld a stern, unsmiling old man, appearing somewhat younger than Master Lyu, with a thick neck and fish-scale tattoos covering his hands and torso alike.

"Father?" Xiaohai took a very nervous step forward.

In the next breath, he watched his father leap from the neighboring prow back onto their own, reaching out to roll up his sleeve to inspect that faint birthmark.

With a sharp slap, the sleeve was rolled back down, and Xiaohai's father turned around, shouting to the layers upon layers of Dan folk surrounding them: "Today my fifth son has returned! A grand joy! Let no one light their hearths tonight! Our Chi family shall host a water banquet today!!"

As the cheers of the surrounding Dan folk rose, Xiaohai looked with deep emotion at the little old man beside him, and the tension in his heart vanished in an instant.

That night, Xiaohai finally witnessed what a Dan water banquet truly entailed; the boats of every household parted, leaving a watery thoroughfare between them.

Two small wooden skiffs were laden with large and small platters of victuals, beginning to ply swiftly back and forth along the edges of this water lane, allowing anyone to partake as they pleased; this was the water banquet.

Whether it was because the Dan folk were few and seldom went ashore, there were not many seasonings to be had; the dishes consisted mainly of various sliced raw fish and parboiled seafood.

There were also a few dishes from the shore, though such fare vanished the fastest, including even the hard flatbreads Xiaohai had used as rations on the road.

On this night, Xiaohai consumed more fish than he had in the past half of his youth, a dazzling array of all manner of unseen fish and sea-bounties before his eyes.

Xiaohai cared not what these things were, grabbing them and stuffing them into his mouth, filled with nothing but pure joy.

He picked up a long whelk, sucking hard at the front, then emulated his third brother, sucking fiercely at the rear of the long shell; the meat emerging from either end tasted entirely distinct, possessing a flavor all its own.

Glancing at his own father, who was clinking cups and changing bowls with his uncles inside the boat awning, Xiaohai questioned the brother beside him: "By the way, Third Brother, I recall it being said there were four children in our family? Where is the one who is missing?"

He remembered right well that the eunuch had indeed told him of four siblings.

Beside him, the second brother pried open a bloody bivalve, gave it a forceful suck into his mouth, and replied: "We still have an eldest sister; she is a formidable one, and our house only managed to rise because of her."

"Our eldest sister went to serve as a child bride in a wealthy house, and she often sends money home; otherwise, your second brother and I truly could never have taken wives."

"Oh, so that is how it is." Hearing this, Xiaohai felt a tinge of regret that he was still short of seeing one family member on this visit.

"Then where does Eldest Sister dwell? I should like to go and see her." Xiaohai thought that if it were not distant, he might make a detour to visit.

"No need! Eldest Sister happens to be returning to her mother's house these very days!" the youngest sister interjected.

Though somewhat reserved at the start, upon seeing that Xiaohai possessed a mild temper, the young girl gradually loosened up.

"Eldest Sister even said she would bring things for me!"

"Returning to her mother's house? Is she returning to escape the wind?" Xiaohai mused silently to himself, for he knew only too well what the shores of the Later Shu looked like these days.