Chapter 97 — The Song Beneath the Waters

Feng Xiuyun's face turned grave and she darted in front of Shen Mu — and suddenly bubbles came surging up from the riverbed, more and more of them, and the mist thickened with them. But beyond that, nothing else stirred.

Shen Mu steadied himself. The river was too vast; the white mist deepened until they could no longer tell direction.

The little white fox worked her arts, trying to summon demon wind to her command, but the wind proved utterly useless — it could not stir the mist in the least.

Feng Xiuyun drew out a fan and snapped it open, and in an instant it grew taller than a man. The girl swung it in great sweeps before her, and a furious gale arose, mightier than any demon wind — yet she could not push the white mist back a hair's breadth. The calm current carried the tower ship gliding downstream; the great towing beast had hidden beneath the hull, trembling too frightened to show itself, so that only the flowing water bore the ship along.

Feng Xiuyun was frantic with alarm — and just then a song rose from the water, lilting and soft, like the tune a mother hums to lull her infant to sleep, melody alone, without words. Shen Mu started, and through the haze he felt the song was somehow familiar. "I've heard this song before!

" He stood looking down, and saw beneath the water a woman in white with long flowing hair, drifting downstream alongside the tower ship. The ship moved onward and the woman in the water followed it like its shadow, and the song seemed to come from her lips. "I really have heard this song.

But it isn't the one Granny Zhu used to sing when she lulled me to sleep. .

.

" At the sound of that song from the water, Shen Mu felt a strange tenderness stir in his heart, and a turmoil with it, as though some memory buried deep were struggling to break free of his mind.

All at once he leapt from the tower ship and landed upon the surface of the water. Feng Xiuyun snatched at him and missed; Xue Hu'er jumped out after him, and the moment she saw the woman in the water a chill ran through her.

She scrambled after him in a flurry of hops and bounds, the little fox sprinting across the water and leaving rings of ripples in her wake. "Young master, slow down!

I'm scared. .

. " The song went on, but however fast he moved he could not catch the woman in the water.

The tumult in Shen Mu's heart grew and grew, and he was about to turn back to the ship when suddenly he felt the jade pendant at his chest float gently upward. He froze, stopped where he was, and looked at the woman's face in the water. The woman in the water stopped as well — as if it were not Shen Mu chasing her, but she chasing Shen Mu. A soft splash.

The youth from Yincan Village knelt upon the water, his hand trembling as it reached out to touch the woman's face, tears sliding from his eyes and falling upon the still surface of the river.

"Is it you?

Were you the one who sent me to Yincan Village. .

.

?

"