Fruit Wine from Grave Dust

Fourth uncle was the only one of them, apart from jiejie, allowed into the Demon-Subduing Cave without invitation. Wen Ning tried not to feel bad about it. No one could say no to jiejie, after all. And if Wei-gongzi got along well with fourth uncle, what could be the problem with that?

Sixth uncle was less sanguine.

"He might have saved our lives, ge," he hissed, whenever Wei-gongzi wasn't around, which was often, "but he's hardly—stable. Reliable. You're too old to get your heart messed around with!"

"Who says my heart's involved?" fourth uncle would humph.

"Ge. I'm too old to watch you get messed around with," sixth uncle would say, and fourth uncle would sigh and shake his head, and eventually they would punch each other on the arm and get on with whatever task they'd put aside to bicker, which was how their arguments usually resolved themselves.

As for Wei-gongzi, he paid as much attention to these conversations as he did to any of them. Mostly he was in Demon-Subduing Cave, tinkering with his inventions and talking out loud to himself—Wen Ning heard all of it, whether he wanted to or not—and when he wasn't, he weaved through the last of the Wen as though they were so many wheat-sheaves, only perking up when he saw A-Yuan, which was to say, an excuse to act like a child himself, as jiejie frequently remarked.

Or, these days, if he saw fourth uncle. Wen Ning had got used to responding to Wei Wuxian's summons, be it conscious or not, and finding him with his head pillowed in fourth uncle's lap.

"Wei-gongzi," he'd say—not out of breath, because a fierce corpse didn't need to breathe, but something like it. Something eager and proud to be called.

And half the time, Wei-gongzi would have a task for him, or even be standing ready by their cart with the cracked right wheel, loaded with radishes and ready to be pulled downhill to Yiling. And sometimes he'd be drunk or his eyes would be red with unshed tears, and resentful energy would wreath him like a storm cloud, calling out to the very marrow of Wen Ning's bones, and fourth uncle would say, "Leave him be, A-Ning, he can't help it right now."

Fourth uncle said, when they were all eating together and making a good pretence of thriving, "Doesn't he remind you of me when I was young, this wild boy?" He led the laughter with his own bright voice and it echoed off the mountainside.

Jiejie said fourth uncle was doing Wei-gongzi no good, letting him have the first go of his fruit wine whenever there was a batch of it ready to drink.

Popo said, "We're all stuck up here on this mountain, Qing'er, why not let the boys have a little happiness where they can find it?"

And Wen Ning would have agreed—he wanted to agree with his Popo, and if any of them could be happy, he wanted that too—but for the fact that when Wei-gongzi sobbed in the night, he felt it in his own chest, the place where his heart used to beat. Was he happy? If fourth uncle soothed Wei-gongzi back to sleep, that comfort didn't come through to Wen Ning as warmth or peace, only as a slow return to neutrality, the grey feeling he walked through every day.

Wei-gongzi scribbled his talismans and dug in the corpse-dust dirt, pulling a handful up at a time to scrutinise and test his theories of how they could continue to live up here, even A-Yuan. Fourth uncle threw his arm around his bony shoulders and held him in place to drop kisses on the crown of his head, and Wei-gongzi leaned back against his chest as if it were the trunk of a solid old tree. The others mostly left them to it. Jiejie met sixth uncle's eyes and tsked, but neither of them protested any more; Wei-gongzi's temper was more stable than it had been since they'd got here, wasn't it? And fourth uncle was old enough to know his own mind.

"Come here, A-Ning," fourth uncle said. He was sitting up on the flat rock that served for a bed in Demon-Subduing Cave, his outer robe pulled around him for warmth but no inner shirt beneath it. "I can hear you shuffling around out there. Come in and sit down."

It was dark in the cave. When he sat on the dusty ground and leaned against that rock platform, he could see the moon through the ragged hole in the ceiling, and the end of the Northern Dipper's handle.

Wei-gongzi's breath was soft, where his face was pushed into fourth uncle's thigh. When he started in his sleep and tossed his head from side to side, fourth uncle would drop one hand onto his hair and push his fingers through it until he settled down.

Wei-gongzi was sleeping deeply, Wen Ning knew, thanks to his exertions earlier that evening. He didn't really want to know this. He was almost certain that fourth uncle had no idea he knew this, and he wasn't going to mention it. Still, he was glad there was consolation up here for some of them.

Fourth uncle was silent for a long time, long enough that the moon wheeled away from its peephole onto them, but at length he said, "Did you ever know Wen-zongzhu, A-Ning?"

"I, um—" he fumbled, but fourth uncle hadn't paused for his reply.

"Of course, you weren't even born when I first knew him," he reflected. "We were juniors together, long before he got all those ideas in his head and led us all into destruction."

Wen Ning looked up to see fourth uncle biting his lip.

"Well, perhaps he was already thinking his way along paths that should have been forbidden," he said. "But Han-xiong could talk you around to believe anything—that was his gift. Or maybe this old man's just a fool for a pretty face and a quick tongue, ah, who can say?"

Wei-gongzi snored, just once, and then he woke up for real: Wen Ning felt the disorientation of it, a clutch of panic that only eased up when Wei-gongzi lifted his head to mumble, "Da-ge?"

"I'm here, sweet boy," fourth uncle murmured, and neither of them noticed when Wen Ning slipped away.