The blossom forests, broken up by streams and severed hillsides, had turned back to rich greens and browns. A great stretch of bamboo forest arose: impossibly high stalks, almost bending at the top, as though eager to form a tunnel over the green pathway that shot as straight as an arrow to an invisible end. Only their wagon wandered this road.

Then back to the coniferous forests, rolling with the hills, dense with white mist, leaves forever dripping. India slept under their canopy, not far from some curious white pandas. Shang Yei spoke, unsolicited, to him alone: tales of the ponya, the giant fire pandas that lived in the red under-heart of China. India listened to her nighttime murmurings, sweet in his ears, and to the drip of the leaves and the rustling and chewing of the pandas. He dreamed of silken figures with sweeping swords, flying between the treetops. He dreamed of moon rabbits, pounding elixirs of immortality with mortars and pestles. And he dreamed of pink lightning and blue and green fires, and of impossible kingdoms everlasting.