Harvest Moon

by Nick Yee

The boy was born with a mark on his forehead - several shards in the shape of a crescent moon. And because he was born during the wheat harvest, he was named Cheng Yu - born under the harvest moon. When he was six, he realized that other children were avoiding him because they thought the broken moon was a bad omen, and so he grew his hair out to cover his mark. With no friends, he devised games and told himself stories to pass the hours. And then one day, when he was twelve, he stumbled into a story that he could not end.

That night at dinner, he tells his mother the unfinished story of the Prince and the Stone Guardian. His mother listens patiently, but she too doesn’t know how the story should end, so she tells Cheng Yu to visit Meng, the Confucian scholar. The scholar offered these words to Cheng Yu,

“The greatest wisdoms have already been distilled into the scrolls passed down through the ages.”

And so Cheng Yu spent day after day in the Confucian libraries, but the words merely became entangled until they became cacophonous. The ancient words offered answers, but without unity, answers only became questions. Cheng Yu returned home, still unable to end his story. And so his mother tells him to visit Tan Yang, the provincial minister. The minister offered these words to Cheng Yu,

“The truth is merely the sum of all answers.”

And so on a long parchment, Cheng Yu wrote down each ending that the villagers devised, but he realized that stories were not numbers that could be added and then averaged. There is no time that is both night and day. The summation of answers describe truths that can never occur at all. Cheng Yu returned home, still unable to end his story. And so his mother tells him to find Tian Yi, the wandering minstrel who has heard every story ever told.

Cheng Yu leaves his village in search of the wandering minstrel. He slowly traces the villages that the minstrel has traveled through for three years before he hears that Tian Yi has just passed away in the last winter. Cheng Yu arrives at the pristine lake where the minstrel’s ashes were scattered and carried away by the Northern Wind. It is winter again, and the crescent moon wades in the sleeping waters. A solitary snow flake falls from the night sky. The waters tremble, shattering the moon in a field of dancing silver.

When he returned home, his mother asked him whether he found the wandering minstrel. Cheng Yu replied,

“I didn’t find the minstrel, but I found the ending to my story.”