Written by Sherry Yuan / Artwork by Lee Ann Barlow

Grandma waits for me at the end of my 20-hour journey: a cross-Pacific flight followed by a train ride through rice-paddied countryside. She moved in with her younger brother, my Granduncle, after Grandpa died two years ago. Granduncle’s unfamiliar apartment bursts with bright floral blankets, Ming-style furniture, and calligraphy posters. I orient myself in it with the pork noodle soup Grandma sets out, her go-to “Welcome home to Nanjing” meal. It’s my first visit without Dad because our summer schedules didn’t align. My Chinese is rusty, and I feel vulnerable without him bridging us.

Grandma pulls up a chair while I slurp. I prickle with self-consciousness under her stare. “You should eat too, Grandma.”

Her face crinkles with a smile, “Oh, you’re so thoughtful. Look at you, Lily, all grown up. But Grandma ate before you came. I’m just waiting to take you to Moon Island.”

We always visit the island on my first day. We approach the bookcase, the only furniture I recognize from Grandma’s apartment. She clutches my hands in her calloused ones. “I want to warn you again the island’s changed a lot since your last visit. You should prepare yourself.”

“I know.” She warns of the island’s dying forests and crumbling architecture at the end of every monthly phone call to drag them out longer. I wish she mentioned her own changes: her wispier hair, her stooped shoulders, her slower gait.

I help Grandma migrate the books on the two lowest shelves to a stack on the ground. Once they’re empty, she pulls up her left sleeve to reveal the moon on her wrist, usually dull brown but now glowing: the mark of Moon Island’s Keeper. My own wrist bears a shapeless birthmark that, according to her, means I’m her successor.

She holds her wrist up to a matching moon engraved into the shelf. The shelf rises to nestle against the shelf above it, creating an opening just large enough to fit an adult. Familiar excitement pulses through me as the back of the bookcase shimmers and gives way to a soft, exotic daylight.

Grandma gestures, “You first.”

I crawl into Moon Island’s light. It’s only when I emerge from a bookshelf on the other side that I realize she expects, but is too proud to admit, that I reach out to steady her passage.

The portal sends us to Moon Island’s only building, the teahouse near its bottom tip. It’s derelict, just as Grandma warned: book spines cracked and dusty, gaps in the curved tiled roof overhead, red paint curling away from ornate window sills like an apple peel. I’m unsettled by the new quiet, of the striking absence of songbirds. Even the ocean waves outside sound sluggish and irregular.

I instinctively brush dust off the bookshelf. Grandma puts a hand on my arm. “There’s no point. The cleanliness here follows different rules, and everything will become neater now that you’re back.”

She tugs me outside. Moon Island’s forest remains beautiful in its decline. The silver leaves have turned gold and brittle and coat the yellowed grasses. The trees’ usually plump purple berries grow sparse and shriveled. We follow the forest trail to the beach. Grandma pulls out her worn notebook and her bifocals and squints into the leaves overhead for birds.

Grandma claims half the species of flora and fauna on Moon Island don’t exist anywhere else. I grew skeptical of this in middle school. Moon Island doesn’t let us bring in cameras, so I brought pencil crayons and drew the species, badly at first, until I learned to capture wings in motion and translucid, fragile petals. My favorite subject is the songbirds with jeweled blue wings—named Baolan in past Keepers’ records. Their multi-note soprano trills are shockingly bright for their palm-sized bodies. When I asked my high school biology teacher to identify my illustrations, he shrugged and praised my creativity.

In college, my skepticism propelled me into environmental science with a minor in fine arts. In all the textbooks I pored over, I only identified two species from the island—bottlebrush, a fluffy red shrub native to Australia, and kakawahie, a flame-bright bird declared extinct in 1963. I excitedly told Grandma about them on our next phone call.

“Kaka…hee…English words are so funny! Well, if they’re extinct on Earth, it’s up to us Keepers to keep them alive at all.”

“What if we bring them through the portal? To Hawaii?” I love the thought of Moon Island restoring another island’s legacy.

“That won’t work. Keepers are the only living things that can pass through the portal.”

At the beach, I slip off my shoes and dig my toes into warm white sand. Moon Island is named after its crescent shape, and its other tip shimmers in the watery horizon.

~ * ~

I once suggested bringing an axe to build a raft to explore beyond the island. Grandma humored me by grabbing her biggest butcher knife. It clattered against an invisible wall where the bookshelf’s back should be. “I told you, the portal doesn’t allow weapons or electronics.”

A year later, I thought to bring a telescope. The portal let it through but revealed only an endless ocean.

~ * ~

Grandma wades knee-deep into the water to tally the fish. “The fish population seems okay, but I haven’t seen any Baolan in three months.”

“Oh no. Do you think they’re extinct?”

“Nah. They’re always the first to go. They disappeared for months when my grandfather stayed away for too long, too. But they can come back. They’re survivors, like our family.”

On our way back, Grandma takes an off-trail detour to what she calls the “Big Tree”, with its slight tilt that only children would dare to climb. “My brother and I hid up there for days. We lived off its berries.”

She picks a handful for me but doesn't eat any herself. They burst more sour than my last visit.

“The Japs followed us here, but the portal didn’t let them bring their bayonets. The tree grew sharp acorns, and we threw them down when they tried to climb up.

They camped out under the tree and shouted insults at us. They ran out of food after two days. When they tried to eat the berries, they got sick on both ends.” She laughs. “They’re much less scary when they’re squatting over a hole.”

There were no Japanese soldiers the last time she told the story, only she and her brother roasting fish and berries around a campfire as Nanjing burned on the other side of the portal. The time before that, the tree grew a hornet nest that they dropped on the soldiers’ heads. Before that, the soldiers went crazy and drowned themselves in the ocean, because Moon Island can sense and destroy evil.

The only consistent thread is that Moon Island sheltered Grandma and Granduncle during the massacre. I’m skeptical of the variations where the soldiers invade the island, because the portal won’t even let Dad through, but I don’t dare pull on the thread for fear of unraveling her. I read Iris Chang’s The Rape of Nanking and the atrocities were overwhelming even secondhand.

Grandma’s steps slow as her breathing rasps heavier. She stumbles on a root, and when I fling out my arm for her to grab, she clutches on with both hands and doesn’t let go until we reach the teahouse. In the hour we were gone, the tiles have straightened themselves and the cobwebs cleared.

Grandma says, “It’s already neater, you see? Moon Island missed you. I missed you. You have to visit more.”

“I’ll try, but it’ll be hard with my new job.” My first adult job as a science illustrator awaits me in Vancouver.

Prior to immigration when I was six, my grandparents practically raised me while my parents worked. Afterwards, up until college, I spent a month in Nanjing every summer. I craved the reunions with my grandparents at first. We waved at pandas at the zoo, explored toy and silk shops, and staved off heat with red bean popsicles. Pandas and popsicles lost their allure in high school, and I started envying friends who stayed in Vancouver, with their lush summer camps and beach days.

Grandma insists, “You can visit every winter.”

I think of all the holiday potlucks and ski trips I’d miss for winter visits, but they lodge in my throat against guilt and the language barrier. “I’ll try.”

~ * ~

Jet lag jolts me awake at dawn the next day. I dig my toiletries out of my suitcase and navigate to the bathroom in the dark. Suddenly, the living room floods with light.

“Good morning!” Grandma grins at me from the light switches.

“Oh no, did I wake you up?”

“Nah, I’m always up with the sun. Let’s make you breakfast.”

By the time I’m out of the bathroom and ready to help cook, steamed buns and tea eggs are already waiting on the table.

Grandma asks, “Do you still run? I can take you to Moon Island after breakfast.”

“Sure, I packed my shoes.”

I tried running in Nanjing years ago, but only lasted a mile before heat and smog smothered my lungs. I settled for a four-mile route on Moon Island instead: the tea house to its farther tip, then back. Grandma tallies flora and fauna at the beach while I run, or so she claims. When I pause at the tip and look across the water, she’s staring straight at me.

My remaining nine days in China are packed with meals with relatives I barely remember, who marvel at how tall I’ve grown even though my height hasn’t changed since my last visit. At Dad’s recommendation, I help Grandma and Granduncle set up Skype on their desktop computer. They fawn over his grainy video.

Grandma says she switched her Moon Island visits from weekly to daily after Grandpa died. She needs the oasis more with her newfound free time and Nanjing’s increasingly extreme temperatures and dwindling green space. I join most of her visits this trip, either to run or draw. The leaves return more full and silver every morning.

She clings to my side in Nanjing, too. Even when I’m in my room, she periodically cracks open the door to ask if I’m hungry. I teeter between savoring our scarce time together and missing my independence in Vancouver.

On my last day, Moon Island greets us with a pristine teahouse and birdsong. I gasp with excitement and hurry to the teahouse steps. A handful of Baolan glint in the forest canopy. We perch on the steps in silence, Grandma writing in her notebook and me drawing them.

Grandma says, “The Island must know you’re leaving soon. It’s telling us if we want the Baolan to survive, you have to visit more often.”

The moment is ruined. A rush of frustration drowns out the birdsong. I stand up and stalk back into the teahouse, desperate for distance from her codependence. “I can’t! I don’t get that many vacation days!” I don’t want to waste them in a far-flung and increasingly foreign city.

Grandma shakes her head chidingly. “The island picked you as its next Keeper, and it needs you. It’s our family’s legacy. Do you know how long it’s been part of the Tao bloodline?”

“Since the 1200s. Song dynasty.” She’s told me countless times.

“Yes, that’s our earliest written record. And it’s saved us so many times. Me and my brother during the massacre. My great-grandparents during the Taiping rebellion. Our ancestors during the Yuan dynasty famines.”

I bristle at her guilt tripping. “If Moon Island’s so powerful, I don’t see why the portal can’t leave Nanjing.”

According to Grandma, the portal hopped between a few trees before settling in the bookshelf, but always within the city.

“Moon Island works in mysterious ways.”

I turn to the birds and shout, “I can’t visit you every year! If you want a Keeper that won’t leave, you should pick one of my cousins instead!”

They sing on without interruption.

As usual, Grandma sobs during our train station goodbye, so loud other travelers look over with concern. Her tears soak into my shoulder while I’m trapped in a hug.

~ * ~

Grandma calls me on Skype on my second day back and cheerfully rambles as if we never argued. She requests a tour of my downtown apartment, which I moved into just before the visit. She asks to make our calls weekly, and I counter with keeping them monthly.

“Fine, fine. Busy girl.” She ends the call without mentioning Moon Island.

Grandma spends her time between our calls brainstorming for them. When they come around, she fills the time with outdated life advice and soliloquies on the importance of family. My only contributions are: yes, work’s going well; no, I’m not dating anyone; yes, I still paint. I don’t tell her about Cody Jing because we met recently and aren’t official yet, although I’m starting to want officiality. He’s a physics student, lovely to his friends, and remembers my favorite pen brand and makes great lattes. It’s too hard to explain to Grandma that, in North America, dating doesn’t guarantee marriage.

Grandma skirts around the topic of Moon Island for two months until curiosity pushes me to ask on our third post-visit call. She says it remains stable. The Baolan still sing.

~ * ~

A few weeks after we make it official, Cody comes over for a Sunday night movie. I take an intermission break when Grandma calls.

After we hang up, Cody asks, “You call your Grandma so often. Do you actually like talking to her?”

His grandparents, also ethnically Chinese, all live within a two-hour drive of Vancouver and, strangely, don’t mind that he only visits once or twice a year.

I shrug. “I guess the calls are a habit. I don’t mind them.”

When we first immigrated, I loved hearing Grandma’s stories and reminiscing about life in Nanjing. Now it’s a duty, a force of nature beyond my control. But Grandma has experienced so much, and I still perk up for the rare gems in her rambles.

~ * ~

Grandma asks, “Do you remember the first time I took you to Moon Island?”

“I don’t! How old was I?”

“You were four. Your dad didn’t let me take you earlier. Moon Island never let him in, so he thought it would reject you, too. But the birds asked to see my granddaughter.”

“Wait. The birds can talk?” She’s never mentioned it before. I wonder if it’s another one of her half-truths.

“Very occasionally. They have to coordinate all their voices to form words. It’s hard for them.”

“I didn’t know! Have you tried asking them questions? Like why dad isn’t allowed in? And what’s beyond the island?”

“Of course I’ve tried. They never answer.”

~ * ~

Life post-college passes both slowly and all at once. Cody ponders grad school and gets halfway through a GRE prep program before settling for a technical writing job. Against the rhythm of my 9-to-5, my social circle expands to overlap with Cody’s. Nights out are livelier with steady paychecks and no schoolwork. Cody’s family has accumulated a garage full of backpacking and water sports equipment over their Pacific Northwest lifetimes, and we make the most of it in our first summer together. We explore forests and seaside coves and each other. We carve our initials into towering sequoias and surround them with a heart.

I only realize a year has passed since my last visit when Grandma asks, “So can you come home this summer?”

“I don’t think so, it’ll be hard to get the time off…”

“The island is getting sick again. I haven't seen a Baolan in weeks, and the fish are so small and pale.”

“I’ll try to visit sometime this year, but I can’t promise anything.”

“You know Moon Island and I both stay alive for you.”

Irritation wells up at her heavy, uncomfortable declarations that any existences hinge on mine. “Right. I should go, um, prepare for bed.”

“It’s only 9pm there, right? You sleep so early.” She sighs, “I won’t keep you, good night.”

~ * ~

My parents visit China without me. When we get dinner in Vancouver afterwards, Dad says, “Your Grandma asked us to move back permanently again.”

“What did you say?”

“I told her Canada has better opportunities.” He pauses. “She was always stubborn, and quick to anger when I was growing up. I know she lived through a lot, especially the war, but our relationship feels better with some distance.”

~ * ~

Three more years pass, and with them a promotion and a new apartment near a tree-lined park perfect for morning runs. Grandma asks me to visit countless times. But when the Europe trip finally solidifies years after my friends created its group chat, I opt for its novelty over China’s limbo of home-but-not-really.

I visit California with Cody when his sister moves there for work. At Stanford, he picks up a glossy brochure showcasing its physics program.

On our plane ride back, he says, “I want to go to grad school for physics.”

My chest tightens, but more from fear of change than surprise. He promises to try to stay close to Vancouver, and if not, we’d make long distance work.

After each trip, I try to make it up to Grandma with longer calls.

~ * ~

Grandma starts our call saying, “Lily. My granddaughter.” She bursts into sobs.

I ask, alarmed, “What happened?”

“All the birds are dead! You have to come home.”

“Haven’t they been gone for a while? They’ll be back once I visit again, right?”

“No, this time is different. There are dead birds all over the dead leaves on the ground. It’s heartbreaking.”

“Okay…” I grab my journal and skim through my schedule. “I could visit in two months.”

“I bought your flights already. April 13 to 22.”

“What? That’s in two weeks!”

“Tell your boss you need to see your sick Grandma. Moon Island can't wait any longer.”

My manager was unhappy with my sudden request, but humane enough to acquiesce for a sick grandparent.

~ * ~

My Granduncle waves me over at the train station, Grandma surprisingly absent from his side. “Welcome back! Your Grandma’s waiting at the cafe.”

Her appearance shocks me cold. I never noticed her new liver spots, bald patches, and frailty on our Skype calls; the Pacific Ocean’s limited bandwidth pixelated the worst of them. “Oh, my dear granddaughter…”

She holds out her arms and I drop into them.

“Sorry I wasn’t there to greet you. These legs aren’t what they used to be.” She pats her thighs with one hand, clad in floral linen pants she wore on my last visit, now faded and loose. The other hand clings to my arm throughout our trek to a taxi.

Four years of humidity faded and cracked the once-cheerful paint on their low-rise apartment’s walls. Its surrounding neighbourhood is unrecognizable. A nearby block of low-rises metamorphosed into a mall, a park into a subway station, a grocery store into a park. Skyscrapers bloom along the skyline, and Grandma looks shrunken against them.

She eats little for dinner, and soon sets down her chopsticks to stare unnervingly at me while I eat. “Let’s go to Moon Island once you’re done. We always visit on your first day.”

Moon Island is silent, its trees too bare of leaves to rustle. I thought Grandma was exaggerating its decline, but it’s worse than I imagined. No wonder she was so desperate for my visit. Maybe it’s my fault. I feel like I did something terribly wrong, but the only fix—moving to a hometown that’s moved on without me—is unfathomable.

Grandma tugs me outside. “I walk to the Big Tree every day. It’s good exercise.”

Once we reach it, she sinks onto a stump to catch her breath. “I don’t go all the way to the beach anymore because I had a scary fall the last time I tried. I wasn’t hurt, but it was hard to get back up.”

“Oh, you never told me!” I don’t understand why she considers this lower priority than all her repeated, mundane advice.

“No use worrying you while you’re in Canada.”

“We can head back if you’re tired.”

“Did you bring your sketchbook?”

“Yep, it’s in my pocket.”

“I miss the beach, and I want to know what it’s like now. Can you paint it for me? I’ll wait at the teahouse.”

She walks away before I can respond.

The beach breaks my heart further. The sand lies flat and hostile with sharp rocks and dead crabs, and brown algae blooms in the still water. I paint the first layer. While it dries, I imagine a beach halfway between its current state and its former pristineness, a euphemism on reality that Grandma might believe. My next layers bring it to life. I outline a koi on the second layer, then wash it away on the third to avoid raising Grandma’s suspicion.

She studies the painting back at the teahouse. “You didn’t see any fish?”

“No, but they might still be around.”

At Granduncle’s apartment, I stumble around Dad-recommended Chinese websites in search of things to do in Nanjing. I whiplash between temples older than Canada and dizzyingly modern malls, cathedrals to newfound consumerism. I have more dinners with relatives around perpetually-spinning Lazy Susans. I tag along with a cousin to late night skewers and a five-story karaoke lounge.

Whenever I return from an excursion, Grandma asks me how it went, then interrupts my answer to point out I have all the time in the world to explore tourist traps but she won’t be alive forever.

I suppose she’s right. I appease her by spending evenings on the couch with my sketchbook while she and Granduncle watch WWII dramas on TV.

Moon Island revives with every visit. Grandma tells two war stories this trip. First: her grandfather, the Keeper before her, was taken by Japanese soldiers. The Baolan conveyed his messages from prison: comfort and advice on gutting fish. Second: although the island’s winters aren’t as harsh as Nanjing’s, their threadbare shirts were no match for its nighttime chill. The Big Tree grew larger, fuzzy leaves that they could nestle under like silver blankets.

I don’t bother pointing out all the discrepancies from her previous stories. Did they hide in the treetops or the forest floor? Did the soldiers really enter the Island?

On my last day, she says, “I think I can make it to the beach.” She uses a cane and my arm, and makes it. The ocean’s rhythm has returned, washing away enough algae to reveal a few fish. There, Grandma recounts the portal’s history. It’s her most consistent story.

The Tao family tree’s roots extend centuries deep in Nanjing, and Moon Island has intertwined with it for as long as Keeper records go. Only two members at a time are permitted through: the current Keeper and their successor. The island plucks its Keepers from the family tree seemingly at random. Until the Ming dynasty, the portal was set in an unremarkable tree in the woods skirting the city. It opened onto the same teahouse bookcase on the Moon Island side.

Taiping forces swept through Nanjing in the mid-19th century. They claimed the city as their capital and expanded it into the woods. The Keeper was horrified to find the tree holding the portal razed overnight. A few anxious days later, he found the portal in another tree. Then that tree was cleared, and the portal migrated again.

Moon Island’s birds told the Keeper to cut down the third tree himself, before the troops could, and build a bookshelf. A scholar with soft hands, he carefully measured the Island-side bookshelf. He hauled the logs into the family compound’s courtyard—only two miles from Granduncle’s apartment—and devoured carpentry books until he mustered the courage to build. He returned to Moon Island stronger after a month of woodworking and was relieved to see the island remained unchanged.

Within Grandma’s lifetime, the bookshelf moved from the compound to a state-owned low-rise apartment to a slightly taller low-rise, all within a 5-mile radius of the portal’s original woods.

Grandma cries when we say goodbye. “Promise me, you’ll visit Moon Island every year even after I die. You can’t abandon our family’s legacy, it’s saved us so many times.”

Grandma’s survived a massacre and a famine, but I doubt Nanjing would suffer so much in my lifetime. “I’ll come as often as I can. What would I have to do as the next Keeper?”

“I can’t explain everything now. We’ll talk next time you visit.”

~ * ~

The island starts deteriorating after only three months. Grandma says, “Moon Island needs you again. Can you come for Mid-Autumn Festival?”

I sigh. “That’s not a holiday here.” It would be nice to visit for a Chinese holiday with its citywide celebrations, but I’m exhausted by the mere thought of the full, disorienting days of travel so soon after my last trip. “I can try for Chinese New Year.”

“The island can't wait that long.” But she sounds uncharacteristically resigned.

~ * ~

Stomach cancer comes swift and silent soon after that call. When jaundice and bloodstained coughs urge Grandma to the hospital, the doctors give her one month. She loses consciousness in the three days between my parents’ flight in and mine. My parents suggest I fly in for the funeral instead.

~ * ~

Granduncle set up Grandma’s altar on the bookshelf. Her black and white photo observes the apartment, fragrant with incense, from behind pyramids of bright fruit. Grandma’s presence lingers, but has lost her corporeality. Nanjing feels even more foreign without her gesticulations and disregard for personal space. I can’t bear to approach the bookshelf yet.

Dad’s eulogy is short and moving. Granduncle speaks for longer. He says Grandma saved him, and that many of us, now flung all over the globe, only exist thanks to her courage. I shiver when his gaze sweeps over me. When Japanese soldiers invaded Nanjing, she followed their parents’ instructions to hide the two of them in the crawlspace under the floorboards; their parents didn’t fit. She clapped her hand over his mouth when their parents were murdered overhead. She risked darting out at night to gather food. At some point in those two terrible months, she buried their parents.

He doesn’t mention Moon Island because of the near-hundred white-clad funeral guests, only the handful who lived with Grandma—my parents, Granduncle, and my dad’s siblings—know about it. Grandma said the birds want the secret kept close. We bury her ashes in a plot near the crematorium.

Jet lag carries me to sleep that night, but I’m awake before dawn. I keep expecting the apartment to flood with light and Grandma’s too-bright morning banter. Finally, I turn on the lights myself and go to the bookshelf. I thought I’d know what to do once I touch the moon engraving, that the portal will somehow acknowledge its new Keeper. But without Grandma, I can’t even sense whether Moon Island still exists. I rub the birthmark on my wrist, still blobby and decidedly not moon-shaped.

Panic seeps in and I finally start crying. Why didn’t I visit earlier, like Grandma asked? What if my selfishness cost me and my family an entire world? I wish I flew in with my parents. I could’ve caught a window of lucidity for her to hand over her promised explanation. I could’ve learned how to open the portal.

Granduncle joins me at the bookshelf. “Couldn’t sleep?”

I wipe at my tears. “No, too much on my mind. You?”

“Not a wink.”

“Do you know how to get through? Grandma said I’m the next Keeper, but maybe I’ve been away for too long…”

“I don’t. Moon Island was always her thing. It never let me in again after the war.”

“Your eulogy was beautiful. If you don’t mind sharing, what was your experience with the island? I’ve only ever heard Grandma’s version.”

“I don’t mind. Moon Island only let me in because my sister forced it to. The Japs took our grandfather prisoner in November, and we knew he died when she got her Keeper mark—just in time, because they’d started murdering our neighbours. My sister refused to hide on the Island without her family. She opened the portal and knelt at it for three days and three nights. She shouted she’d die with us if it didn’t let us in. She described the brutality to the birds: people bayonetted open then left to die on the streets, gang rapes, eviscerated babies…

“On the third night, the birds heard the screams firsthand from a block down. The birds said Moon Island can only let in two people at a time, the current Keeper and the next. Since there was no next Keeper yet, they’d make an exception. My family decided I’d be the exception.”

“But the Island didn’t want a non-Keeper there. It only produced enough food for one person. My sister gathered berries and caught fish, and let me eat most of them. When she asked the birds for more, they said they had their limits, but they could tell her when the coast was clear on the other side for her to gather supplies.

“Every time she left, I was terrified I’d never see her again. But she always returned, shivering from the cold and from the horrors she saw. She’d bring rice and potatoes that we cooked over fires. Moon Island blew the smoke at me.

“Finally, she said it was safe to return. We emerged into a different world. Our aunt and uncle took us in.”

I didn’t know Grandma witnessed so much of the massacre. She implied they spent the entire time protected on Moon Island. “I can’t believe I let the island disappear.”

Granduncle pats my shoulder. “Moon Island works in mysterious ways. I hope it’s not lost, but I also hope we won’t need it again.”

I check the bookshelf every morning, but it stays dormant and my birthmark stays blobby. I feel restless, with nowhere to run to release my grief. Granduncle fills half my suitcase with photocopies of previous Keepers’ notebooks in case I can continue the record keeping. We agree that he’ll keep the originals in Nanjing.

I fly back three days after the funeral, for once untethered to any promises to return. Granduncle and I vow to stay in touch, but he doesn’t pine for monthly calls and annual visits like Grandma. Maybe Moon Island still needs me, but it would hurt to return only for the portal to shun me again.

~ * ~

Back in Vancouver, I take comfort in a long run and a good cry in Cody’s arms. A few weeks later, he’s gone too, for his first year of grad school at Stanford.

~ * ~

Two months later, on a heartbreaking, hours-long phone call, Cody and I agreed that long distance wouldn’t work. I slip on running shoes after we hang up.

I recall the first time I ran through my neighbourhood park with Cody. I jog the same trail, then slow and wander off it, past picnic tables, into the old growth sequoias bordering the park. The air shifts cooler, darker, raising goosebumps. I find the sequoia wider than my arm span, and search its trunk with my phone flashlight until light catches on our engraved initials. I raise my key to it, but crossing it feels silly. Instead, I circle halfway around the trunk and carve in a crescent moon. For Grandma.

A tug on my wrist jolts me from sorrow into surprise. The edge of my birthmark glows under my sweater sleeve. I’m astonished to find my birthmark finally transfigured into a crescent. I put it against the moon engraving. A groove in the trunk silently slides open. I duck through and find myself in Moon Island’s tea house.

The trees are full of silver and birdsong. Rhythmic ocean waves accompany the chirps. I soak in the island’s restored beauty, but still find it hard to believe I recreated the portal.

The Baolan’s songs synchronize to rain down an ethereal question: “Where are we?”

“Vancouver, Canada.” My turn to ask. “All I had to do was carve a different tree? How is the island healed?”

“We follow the Keeper. The Keeper’s healthy, so we’re healthy.”

“Wait, doesn’t it depend on how far I am from Nanjing?” A troubling thought creeps in. “Was Grandma lying?”

The birds don’t answer.

On my run back, I think of all the summers I gave up to keep this stupid island alive, of all the guilt and promises Grandma stoked.

I call Dad and explained what happened. I conclude, “Grandma said the island was dying because of me. But all along, it was because of her health!”

He’s also surprised. “Mom had a hard life, and she saw you as her proudest achievement. I wouldn’t put it past her to stretch the truth to see you more. But why don’t you give her the benefit of the doubt? Maybe she really believed the island’s health depends on how far the Keeper goes from the original portal. You’re the first Keeper to move far away, and she was so anxious it would mean the end of the island.”

I ponder Dad’s comments after our call. The only other time Grandma saw the island decline was during her grandfather’s imprisonment. She didn’t know where they took him, nor what they did to him, only that he was far. The island revived when he died and she, still in Nanjing, became its new Keeper.

Maybe it was easier for Grandma to believe the Island needed its Keepers close than to dwell on her grandfather’s suffering or her own frailty. It was she, not Moon Island, that flourished with my presence. Moon Island could go wherever it wished, but Grandma couldn’t imagine leaving Nanjing.

I wish I could ask her to sift fact from fiction. Instead, I incorporate Moon Island into my running route and hope the Baolan will eventually answer.

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