Saiyuki Story: Six (sixth in a series of eight)
Author: Sunspot
Title: Six
Rating: PG
Note: Sixth in a series of eight for the Advent Challenge. The Sanzo-ikkou, snowed in at a Tibetan inn, improvise Chanukah based on a one-page listing in Hakkai’s paperback Festivals of the World.
Six
Hakkai woke to warmth, heavy and delicious, and the snort-whistle of Goku’s snores, very close to his ear. Images of last night, some of them bordering on mortifying, slithered into his consciousness, as if on the (lessened, if Hakkai’s ear was correct, or was he just growing inured?) rush and roar of the wind.
He’d elected to share with Goku last night, tempting as the offered shelter of Gojyo’s arms had been. The very last thing Hakkai needed (and it was possible, their leader had both startling wisdom and an impressive inability to see past the end of his own nose) was for Sanzo to start thinking Hakkai’s melancholy was due to an unrequited longing for Gojyo.
Of course, he was currently a candidate for consideration as Goku’s paramour, the way their youngest companion was draped across Hakkai’s chest, ketty-corner, head on the shoulder opposite of where one would expect, limbs spread, as though he were protecting Hakkai from some sort of shrapnel-flinging blast.
Luckily, Goku was a heavy sleeper at the best of times, and more so after a night of merry-making (even the kind without alcohol. Gojyo and Sanzo had both complained at various points about the imposed dryness and strict one-to-a-meal beer rationing. Blizzard rules, Tamang pater had bluntly stated-drunks tended to wander outside and freeze to death.) Hakkai eased him off and away and Goku rolled over, still snoring, and proceeded to maul his pillow instead of his bedmate.
Hakkai slipped out of bed, the cold shocking after the almost excessive heat that Goku put out. Gojyo and Sanzo were inert mounds of duvet, buried enough that Hakkai couldn’t tell who was whom (the far side, Sanzo was on the far side, he’d put Gojyo between them). Hakkai took a breath, mastering himself.
Jeep, from his cozy nest atop the radiator, snaked up his head and cocked it inquisitively.
“No need to get up with me,” Hakkai said, voice low. He pushed his rapidly-chilling feet into slippers, and pulled the heavy sweater he’d purchased a few towns back over his head.
Downstairs, the kitchen was unexpectedly occupied, not by Mother Tamang, but by Namgyal, grinding coffee.
“Good morning, Monk Hakkai,” she said with teasing emphasis.
“Good morning,” Hakkai said, “shall I?” He indicated the grinder and she ceded her place, letting him take over the turning of the handle. The kitchen was filling with the rich smell of the beans.
“You’re not really a monk, are you?” Namgyal said.
Hakkai shook his head, smiling conspiratorially. “The sash I wear is called a layman’s sash. I am attached to the monastery though.” And increasingly to its leader, but that had best go unsaid. In Hakkai’s head, even.
“Then you can’t marry people?” Namgyal asked, something plaintive creeping into her formerly merry tones.
“A monk couldn’t, anyway,” Hakkai admitted. “But my friend Sanzo can.”
“The cranky one, with the blessings?” she asked.
“The very one,” Hakkai said. The last of the beans were through. He checked the hopper. “Is this enough for the urn?”
“It takes two hoppers full but there’s already one in, so yeah,” she said. Namgyal took the hopper from him and crossed to the urn. She had a considering look on her face.
Even at lessened ferocity, the blizzard outside was a wailing, devouring beast. Hakkai didn’t want to be a party to this admirable girl taking stupid risks.
“Er.” He would need to tread carefully here. “What if you were to get pregnant?”
The usual custom was to force the errant duo to wed, and more than a few star-crossed lovers circumvented parental disapproval through just that stratagem.
Namgyal looked over her shoulder at him as she readied the urn. “Is that what you did?”
Hakkai forced back a giggle. “Ah, no. We were both orphans, so there was no one to care what we did.” As long as they kept concealed that they were orphans of the same parents, at least. His own sister and now a misanthropic Sanzo priest. Hakkai could certainly pick them. Not that it was at all wise to equate his current infatuation with . . .
Namgyal was looking at him. Less than patiently.
“We don’t want to be like our parents,” she said. “I don’t want a lot of kids,” she clarified, “just three or four, and not right away, either.”
“Well,” Hakkai said. “We don’t plan to travel till the festival is over.” And Namgyal could make of that what she would. They talked of other, less consequential things while the urn burbled and percolated and the kitchen filled with the smell of a good strong brew.
Breakfast was the scene of the airing of a dispute that had arisen among the production team. Even Dorje put aside his dishrag and came to the table to present his view. Goku, arguing for production efficiency, was pushing the team to continue along an assembly line model. Gojyo, arguing for craftsmanship, wanted to work on each doll in turn, dividing up the individual dolls between them, with some passing back and forth for particular areas of expertise or ability.
They were, of course, turning to Hakkai to arbitrate. He gave it some thought.
“Is production on schedule?” he asked. The Book had been unclear on whether gift giving might continue beyond the last night of lamp lighting. Technically, the eighth day was still part of the festival, but without a lamp to light it seemed unlikely they would draw the crowd for a party, especially during the day.
Goku knit his brow. “Um, kinda hard to say,” he admitted. “We sorta wasted a lot of time fighting, yesterday.”
“’Cause someone wasted time being stubborn,” Gojyo put in.
“Hey, that’s not fair,” Dorje answered back, stout in his defense of his new friend.
Hakkai raised placating hands, before Sanzo could go for his fan, or worse, his gun. Though he seemed content (as content as Sanzo got) to bury his face in the newspaper and snort derisively. Hmmm. Sanzo on his best behavior. That was something to mull over.
No. No it wasn’t. And later.
“What is the better outcome,” Hakkai collected himself enough to shout over the rising brouhaha and ask, “all the dolls partly completed, or a couple of dolls unfinished but with more work left to do on them? Assuming time becomes tight.” Which, hopefully, it would not, or rather, just tight enough to occupy them for two more days.
The trio froze. Goku and Gojyo turned to Dorje. Dorje gave it some thought.
“The second option,” he declared after brief consideration. “We can give the unfinished dolls, if there are any, to the bigger girls. They’ll understand if I say I need to take a couple days to finish them up. Give the littler ones unfinished dolls and they’ll cry.”
The brother of four sisters under age ten had spoken.
“Told you,” Gojyo said to Goku. Hakkai shot him a look, and one to Goku for good measure. Hakkai was clearly on this morning, as they both subsided. Dorje returned to his kitchen duties, and Gojyo and Goku dug in and went back to their baseline bickering over who got which choice morsel of food.
Sanzo met Hakkai’s eyes over his newspaper, as he had so many times before. Kids today his look said.
Hakkai applied himself to his soup.
The kitchen was blessedly empty midmorning. Hakkai poked around, puttering idly and looking for things to fry. The supply of oil was holding out, at least. A laugh bubbled out of him at the thought that they might have their own parallel miracle of the oil. Jeep gave him a quizzical look, then, catching the mood, chirped along.
“There are plenty of onions,” he told the dragon. Indeed there were, net bag after net bag hanging from the rafters in the pantry. And the Tamangs had given him free rein to use their basic supplies. Ice water would not be a problem. A plan began to formulate in Hakkai’s mind. He would check in with Mother Tamang just to make sure.
Clearance obtained, Hakkai set to work. The first part of the plan was, not the hardest, but possibly the most onerous: twenty onions, all carefully cored and scored and set to soak in deep bowls (the bowls for rising dough, in fact) of ice water. Ice courtesy of the kitchen eaves.
Ice collection in a blizzard, even from just outside the kitchen door, was not a job for one man alone. Hakkai borrowed a rope from the store room (which seemed to have a great deal of rope, coil upon coil of it. Well, they were in a mountain pass.) and collected his dollmaking trio (and a small clutch of Gojyo-bedazzled young ladies) from the parlor.
When the girls learned the exact parameters of the project nearly all demurred, the exception being a stout and pretty Tamang sister, close to Dorje’s age. Which was not to say that most of them didn’t stick around the kitchen to watch the outcome of the adventure. Hakkai served them yak-butter tea while Gojyo, Goku, and the twin, as it turned out, Tamangs, went off to fetch their boots and warm outerwear.
“You are certifiably insane, Hakkai,” Gojyo said, warmth and glee equal in his eyes, as, back in the kitchen, he handed Hakkai boots and coat and hat and mittens and scarf, all in an impressive bundle, then set to putting on his own.
Dorje and his sister Dechen were full of helpful advice when it came to roping the four of them together. They would be harvesting the ice in the sheltered ell between the kitchen and the inn’s main wing, a yard that was home to the kitchen garden in better weather, but it was still a risky business to be out in the wind and nearly-blinding snow. Daisy-chained together, and with an anchoring knot on the door handle, Hakkai’s plan could be downgraded from idiotic to merely ill-advised, just the sort of adventure they all needed after so many days stuck indoors.
“Are we ready?” Hakkai asked, testing the knots one last time.
There was a pleasing chorus of yeah, yeses, and you bet your ass from his crew. They would work in two teams, plus an anchor man. Goku and Dechen, too short to reach any but the longest of icicles, would hold the stockpots. Gojyo and Hakkai, as the two tallest, would pair with each of them (Gojyo, with a wink, had called Dechen, of course) to break off as many icicles as they could before they grew too cold. And Dorje, who, like his sister, had actual mountaineering experience, would tie the rope’s distal end securely to the door handle, and lead them out into the blast.
With a cheer from Gojyo’s gaggle of admirers, Dorje pushed open the garden door.
The wind was a live thing, and grabbed their breath from out of their very throats, even as it flung spicules of ice in their muffler-wrapped faces. Three of them (Dorje, Gojyo, Hakkai) had to wrestle the door shut after they pushed their way out, while it was all Dechen, and even Goku could do to hold on to their stockpots as the wind filled and pulled at them.
It was utterly glorious.
Dorje got the rope secured, and tugged on it, hard, for safety. A clutch of girls watched through the window, waiting for the pounding and waving that would call them to reopen the door.
Dorje gave a sharp nod, and, braced against the nearly solid white wind, raised his hand in the universal signal for ‘follow me.’
He led them along the kitchen wall to the rope’s full extent, and Hakkai, and Gojyo, dimly visible scant meters away, set to cracking off icicles and dropping them into the waiting stockpots as fast as the tearing, biting, icy-toothed wind allowed.
They worked their way back toward the door, breaking off icicles as they staggered against the wind. Dorje, hands always on the wall for support and safety, kept them on course, reeling them back when the wind pushed them out into the yard.
There was a tricky moment, when Goku slipped, and nearly overturned his stockpot, and another, when the wind caught Dechen just wrong, and Gojyo and Hakkai had to stop their work and pull her back to them hand over hand. But soon they were in a cluster at the door, Gojyo having chivalrously relieved Dechen of her ice-heavy stock pot, and Hakkai and Dorje pounding at the door, till the girls within flung it wide and their stalwart, and ice-crusted, party stumbled in, bracing Dorje as he worked as quickly as numbed fingers allowed to free the rope and haul the door shut after them.
They were grinning and glowing and laughing, and all the ice they would need to make deep fried onion blossoms was secure in the two stockpots tucked just outside in the corner of the ell. The girls who’d stayed inside laughed and clapped and hugged and kissed all five of them, eagerly helping Gojyo and Goku and Dorje, and even Hakkai out of their wraps. Dechen was not neglected, as Gojyo personally (and without getting too fresh, at least under Dorje’s watchful eyes) helped her off with her snow-caked boots.
They all warmed up with still more yak butter tea, then the dollmakers and their entourage headed back to the parlor, their tale of adventure growing with each reiteration, till Hakkai called them back and swore them all to secrecy. He’d cleared the use of so many onions with Mother Tamang, but been carefully vague about the other requirements for the dish.
The kitchen his own again, Hakkai set to peeling twenty-odd onions, then crosscutting them into the sections that would open out into petals as they soaked. Tears streaked his face and he rubbed them off his wind-chapped cheeks with the back of his forearm. They were from the volatiles in the onions of course, but there was a kind of release in them just the same.
Onions bobbing amid the icicles in both rising bowls and the stockpots, Hakkai cleared and washed and worked the onion smell out of his hands as best he could, and gathered up his and Goku’s and Gojyo’s now-dry wraps, and vacated the kitchen just in advance of the lunchtime bustle.
After lunch, Hakkai set the nicely opened onion flowers to draining, bloom side down, and mixed up a slightly heartier version of tempura batter. Onion blossoms were cumbersome to fry, so he had resolved to pre-make them, slightly under done, then give them a quick revivifying dip in hot oil just before serving.
Good prep work was key to deep frying more than a score of battered vegetables the size of one’s fist. Hakkai had trays lined with brown paper for draining, and mesh skimmers and long tongs all at the ready.
He could not have said whether he was surprised when the kitchen door was pushed in, part way, and a cautious Sanzo looked around.
“Well,” Sanzo said.
“Well,” Hakkai echoed.
“You’re deep frying. Can you stay sensible and not set the kitchen on fire if I come in and help?”
Hakkai was so busted, as Gojyo would say.
“I suspect I’m equal to the task,” Hakkai said, trying to keep the happiness out of his voice.
“All right,” Sanzo said with a nod, and stepped into the kitchen at last. “What do I do?”
They worked well together. No surprise, they’d been working well together for years until Hakkai had recently lost his mind. Large quantities of hot oil, however, were proving to be a sufficient incentive to finding it again. It took care and focus, and ideally (thank you Sanzo) two people, to successfully fry an onion blossom, working with two skimmers and a set of tongs to lower, and then retrieve the heavy-yet-delicate treats. Frying twenty-plus of them in succession left little time for either conversation or neurosis.
It was late afternoon by the time the trays were all full of not-quite-perfectly-golden but still entirely impressive onions, each batter coated orb opened out to resemble a water lily. They surveyed their work with an unspoken yet shared satisfaction. Hakkai had always enjoyed the quiet moments when he and Sanzo were in sympathy. It was a relief to find that whatever was or was not brewing between them had not spoiled that simple pleasure entirely.
They parted with few words. Sanzo was naturally taciturn, but maybe he too, wanted to hold onto this fragile, familiar peace. Hakkai took himself off to check on the dollmakers, and check in with Mother Tamang, and give Sanzo time to get through a bath before he went to scrub the oil-and-onion smell off his skin and hair himself.
Mother Tamang had prepared another light dinner, prelude to the onions they would serve after the lamp lighting. Tonight the plan was for dreidels, and an early-ish end to the festivities-guests, hosts, and musicians were all tired after back to back dance parties. Sanzo sat by Hakkai again, this time without any funny business with elbows. Hakkai found himself in a strange state of detached wonderment. It was just on the far margins of possible that this was courtship, Sanzo style. Or that Hakkai had suffered a head injury and failed to notice.
Dechen stood with Goku and Dorje as the assembled gathered around the lamp. Hakkai poured careful glassfuls of oil into the shamash and six more of the improvised lamps. Only two nights to go. Hakkai stepped back and away, pulling his mind to focus on the here and now as Dorje took the lighter from Goku and stepped forward to do his work.
With seven flames burning, the glow from the lamp was warm and merry, burnishing Sanzo gold as he swept past Goku and his friends. Gojyo put a warm hand on Hakkai’s shoulder.
Sanzo’s eyes swept the room, then he faced off against the lamp. “It’s all an illusion,” he intoned, “but it’s a pretty lamp.”
Gojyo gave Hakkai a squeeze, then let go and followed along as Hakkai led the three ceremonial claps. Hakkai took a deep, centering breath, and headed back to the kitchen with Mother Tamang to fry.
There were some burnt tongues, and a few tears from the younger children, before Hakkai called the crowd to attention and presented a brief tutorial on the safe consumption of recently deep fried whole onions. After that, the party began to hop, and several guests and family members took Hakkai aside to say how much they’d enjoyed this treat in particular.
Sanzo normally gambled with his cronies, and a round or two with Goku and his friends, then wandered off to sit and smoke and watch. Hakkai, greatly daring, took the chair next to him, and they sat, and observed, and made the very occasional comment on the scene before them, while Hakkai drank (yak-butter-free) tea and Sanzo smoked. It was almost very nearly normal, except for the part where Hakkai’s heart was beating loudly enough he could almost convince himself Sanzo could hear it.
Title: Six
Rating: PG
Note: Sixth in a series of eight for the Advent Challenge. The Sanzo-ikkou, snowed in at a Tibetan inn, improvise Chanukah based on a one-page listing in Hakkai’s paperback Festivals of the World.
Six
Hakkai woke to warmth, heavy and delicious, and the snort-whistle of Goku’s snores, very close to his ear. Images of last night, some of them bordering on mortifying, slithered into his consciousness, as if on the (lessened, if Hakkai’s ear was correct, or was he just growing inured?) rush and roar of the wind.
He’d elected to share with Goku last night, tempting as the offered shelter of Gojyo’s arms had been. The very last thing Hakkai needed (and it was possible, their leader had both startling wisdom and an impressive inability to see past the end of his own nose) was for Sanzo to start thinking Hakkai’s melancholy was due to an unrequited longing for Gojyo.
Of course, he was currently a candidate for consideration as Goku’s paramour, the way their youngest companion was draped across Hakkai’s chest, ketty-corner, head on the shoulder opposite of where one would expect, limbs spread, as though he were protecting Hakkai from some sort of shrapnel-flinging blast.
Luckily, Goku was a heavy sleeper at the best of times, and more so after a night of merry-making (even the kind without alcohol. Gojyo and Sanzo had both complained at various points about the imposed dryness and strict one-to-a-meal beer rationing. Blizzard rules, Tamang pater had bluntly stated-drunks tended to wander outside and freeze to death.) Hakkai eased him off and away and Goku rolled over, still snoring, and proceeded to maul his pillow instead of his bedmate.
Hakkai slipped out of bed, the cold shocking after the almost excessive heat that Goku put out. Gojyo and Sanzo were inert mounds of duvet, buried enough that Hakkai couldn’t tell who was whom (the far side, Sanzo was on the far side, he’d put Gojyo between them). Hakkai took a breath, mastering himself.
Jeep, from his cozy nest atop the radiator, snaked up his head and cocked it inquisitively.
“No need to get up with me,” Hakkai said, voice low. He pushed his rapidly-chilling feet into slippers, and pulled the heavy sweater he’d purchased a few towns back over his head.
Downstairs, the kitchen was unexpectedly occupied, not by Mother Tamang, but by Namgyal, grinding coffee.
“Good morning, Monk Hakkai,” she said with teasing emphasis.
“Good morning,” Hakkai said, “shall I?” He indicated the grinder and she ceded her place, letting him take over the turning of the handle. The kitchen was filling with the rich smell of the beans.
“You’re not really a monk, are you?” Namgyal said.
Hakkai shook his head, smiling conspiratorially. “The sash I wear is called a layman’s sash. I am attached to the monastery though.” And increasingly to its leader, but that had best go unsaid. In Hakkai’s head, even.
“Then you can’t marry people?” Namgyal asked, something plaintive creeping into her formerly merry tones.
“A monk couldn’t, anyway,” Hakkai admitted. “But my friend Sanzo can.”
“The cranky one, with the blessings?” she asked.
“The very one,” Hakkai said. The last of the beans were through. He checked the hopper. “Is this enough for the urn?”
“It takes two hoppers full but there’s already one in, so yeah,” she said. Namgyal took the hopper from him and crossed to the urn. She had a considering look on her face.
Even at lessened ferocity, the blizzard outside was a wailing, devouring beast. Hakkai didn’t want to be a party to this admirable girl taking stupid risks.
“Er.” He would need to tread carefully here. “What if you were to get pregnant?”
The usual custom was to force the errant duo to wed, and more than a few star-crossed lovers circumvented parental disapproval through just that stratagem.
Namgyal looked over her shoulder at him as she readied the urn. “Is that what you did?”
Hakkai forced back a giggle. “Ah, no. We were both orphans, so there was no one to care what we did.” As long as they kept concealed that they were orphans of the same parents, at least. His own sister and now a misanthropic Sanzo priest. Hakkai could certainly pick them. Not that it was at all wise to equate his current infatuation with . . .
Namgyal was looking at him. Less than patiently.
“We don’t want to be like our parents,” she said. “I don’t want a lot of kids,” she clarified, “just three or four, and not right away, either.”
“Well,” Hakkai said. “We don’t plan to travel till the festival is over.” And Namgyal could make of that what she would. They talked of other, less consequential things while the urn burbled and percolated and the kitchen filled with the smell of a good strong brew.
Breakfast was the scene of the airing of a dispute that had arisen among the production team. Even Dorje put aside his dishrag and came to the table to present his view. Goku, arguing for production efficiency, was pushing the team to continue along an assembly line model. Gojyo, arguing for craftsmanship, wanted to work on each doll in turn, dividing up the individual dolls between them, with some passing back and forth for particular areas of expertise or ability.
They were, of course, turning to Hakkai to arbitrate. He gave it some thought.
“Is production on schedule?” he asked. The Book had been unclear on whether gift giving might continue beyond the last night of lamp lighting. Technically, the eighth day was still part of the festival, but without a lamp to light it seemed unlikely they would draw the crowd for a party, especially during the day.
Goku knit his brow. “Um, kinda hard to say,” he admitted. “We sorta wasted a lot of time fighting, yesterday.”
“’Cause someone wasted time being stubborn,” Gojyo put in.
“Hey, that’s not fair,” Dorje answered back, stout in his defense of his new friend.
Hakkai raised placating hands, before Sanzo could go for his fan, or worse, his gun. Though he seemed content (as content as Sanzo got) to bury his face in the newspaper and snort derisively. Hmmm. Sanzo on his best behavior. That was something to mull over.
No. No it wasn’t. And later.
“What is the better outcome,” Hakkai collected himself enough to shout over the rising brouhaha and ask, “all the dolls partly completed, or a couple of dolls unfinished but with more work left to do on them? Assuming time becomes tight.” Which, hopefully, it would not, or rather, just tight enough to occupy them for two more days.
The trio froze. Goku and Gojyo turned to Dorje. Dorje gave it some thought.
“The second option,” he declared after brief consideration. “We can give the unfinished dolls, if there are any, to the bigger girls. They’ll understand if I say I need to take a couple days to finish them up. Give the littler ones unfinished dolls and they’ll cry.”
The brother of four sisters under age ten had spoken.
“Told you,” Gojyo said to Goku. Hakkai shot him a look, and one to Goku for good measure. Hakkai was clearly on this morning, as they both subsided. Dorje returned to his kitchen duties, and Gojyo and Goku dug in and went back to their baseline bickering over who got which choice morsel of food.
Sanzo met Hakkai’s eyes over his newspaper, as he had so many times before. Kids today his look said.
Hakkai applied himself to his soup.
The kitchen was blessedly empty midmorning. Hakkai poked around, puttering idly and looking for things to fry. The supply of oil was holding out, at least. A laugh bubbled out of him at the thought that they might have their own parallel miracle of the oil. Jeep gave him a quizzical look, then, catching the mood, chirped along.
“There are plenty of onions,” he told the dragon. Indeed there were, net bag after net bag hanging from the rafters in the pantry. And the Tamangs had given him free rein to use their basic supplies. Ice water would not be a problem. A plan began to formulate in Hakkai’s mind. He would check in with Mother Tamang just to make sure.
Clearance obtained, Hakkai set to work. The first part of the plan was, not the hardest, but possibly the most onerous: twenty onions, all carefully cored and scored and set to soak in deep bowls (the bowls for rising dough, in fact) of ice water. Ice courtesy of the kitchen eaves.
Ice collection in a blizzard, even from just outside the kitchen door, was not a job for one man alone. Hakkai borrowed a rope from the store room (which seemed to have a great deal of rope, coil upon coil of it. Well, they were in a mountain pass.) and collected his dollmaking trio (and a small clutch of Gojyo-bedazzled young ladies) from the parlor.
When the girls learned the exact parameters of the project nearly all demurred, the exception being a stout and pretty Tamang sister, close to Dorje’s age. Which was not to say that most of them didn’t stick around the kitchen to watch the outcome of the adventure. Hakkai served them yak-butter tea while Gojyo, Goku, and the twin, as it turned out, Tamangs, went off to fetch their boots and warm outerwear.
“You are certifiably insane, Hakkai,” Gojyo said, warmth and glee equal in his eyes, as, back in the kitchen, he handed Hakkai boots and coat and hat and mittens and scarf, all in an impressive bundle, then set to putting on his own.
Dorje and his sister Dechen were full of helpful advice when it came to roping the four of them together. They would be harvesting the ice in the sheltered ell between the kitchen and the inn’s main wing, a yard that was home to the kitchen garden in better weather, but it was still a risky business to be out in the wind and nearly-blinding snow. Daisy-chained together, and with an anchoring knot on the door handle, Hakkai’s plan could be downgraded from idiotic to merely ill-advised, just the sort of adventure they all needed after so many days stuck indoors.
“Are we ready?” Hakkai asked, testing the knots one last time.
There was a pleasing chorus of yeah, yeses, and you bet your ass from his crew. They would work in two teams, plus an anchor man. Goku and Dechen, too short to reach any but the longest of icicles, would hold the stockpots. Gojyo and Hakkai, as the two tallest, would pair with each of them (Gojyo, with a wink, had called Dechen, of course) to break off as many icicles as they could before they grew too cold. And Dorje, who, like his sister, had actual mountaineering experience, would tie the rope’s distal end securely to the door handle, and lead them out into the blast.
With a cheer from Gojyo’s gaggle of admirers, Dorje pushed open the garden door.
The wind was a live thing, and grabbed their breath from out of their very throats, even as it flung spicules of ice in their muffler-wrapped faces. Three of them (Dorje, Gojyo, Hakkai) had to wrestle the door shut after they pushed their way out, while it was all Dechen, and even Goku could do to hold on to their stockpots as the wind filled and pulled at them.
It was utterly glorious.
Dorje got the rope secured, and tugged on it, hard, for safety. A clutch of girls watched through the window, waiting for the pounding and waving that would call them to reopen the door.
Dorje gave a sharp nod, and, braced against the nearly solid white wind, raised his hand in the universal signal for ‘follow me.’
He led them along the kitchen wall to the rope’s full extent, and Hakkai, and Gojyo, dimly visible scant meters away, set to cracking off icicles and dropping them into the waiting stockpots as fast as the tearing, biting, icy-toothed wind allowed.
They worked their way back toward the door, breaking off icicles as they staggered against the wind. Dorje, hands always on the wall for support and safety, kept them on course, reeling them back when the wind pushed them out into the yard.
There was a tricky moment, when Goku slipped, and nearly overturned his stockpot, and another, when the wind caught Dechen just wrong, and Gojyo and Hakkai had to stop their work and pull her back to them hand over hand. But soon they were in a cluster at the door, Gojyo having chivalrously relieved Dechen of her ice-heavy stock pot, and Hakkai and Dorje pounding at the door, till the girls within flung it wide and their stalwart, and ice-crusted, party stumbled in, bracing Dorje as he worked as quickly as numbed fingers allowed to free the rope and haul the door shut after them.
They were grinning and glowing and laughing, and all the ice they would need to make deep fried onion blossoms was secure in the two stockpots tucked just outside in the corner of the ell. The girls who’d stayed inside laughed and clapped and hugged and kissed all five of them, eagerly helping Gojyo and Goku and Dorje, and even Hakkai out of their wraps. Dechen was not neglected, as Gojyo personally (and without getting too fresh, at least under Dorje’s watchful eyes) helped her off with her snow-caked boots.
They all warmed up with still more yak butter tea, then the dollmakers and their entourage headed back to the parlor, their tale of adventure growing with each reiteration, till Hakkai called them back and swore them all to secrecy. He’d cleared the use of so many onions with Mother Tamang, but been carefully vague about the other requirements for the dish.
The kitchen his own again, Hakkai set to peeling twenty-odd onions, then crosscutting them into the sections that would open out into petals as they soaked. Tears streaked his face and he rubbed them off his wind-chapped cheeks with the back of his forearm. They were from the volatiles in the onions of course, but there was a kind of release in them just the same.
Onions bobbing amid the icicles in both rising bowls and the stockpots, Hakkai cleared and washed and worked the onion smell out of his hands as best he could, and gathered up his and Goku’s and Gojyo’s now-dry wraps, and vacated the kitchen just in advance of the lunchtime bustle.
After lunch, Hakkai set the nicely opened onion flowers to draining, bloom side down, and mixed up a slightly heartier version of tempura batter. Onion blossoms were cumbersome to fry, so he had resolved to pre-make them, slightly under done, then give them a quick revivifying dip in hot oil just before serving.
Good prep work was key to deep frying more than a score of battered vegetables the size of one’s fist. Hakkai had trays lined with brown paper for draining, and mesh skimmers and long tongs all at the ready.
He could not have said whether he was surprised when the kitchen door was pushed in, part way, and a cautious Sanzo looked around.
“Well,” Sanzo said.
“Well,” Hakkai echoed.
“You’re deep frying. Can you stay sensible and not set the kitchen on fire if I come in and help?”
Hakkai was so busted, as Gojyo would say.
“I suspect I’m equal to the task,” Hakkai said, trying to keep the happiness out of his voice.
“All right,” Sanzo said with a nod, and stepped into the kitchen at last. “What do I do?”
They worked well together. No surprise, they’d been working well together for years until Hakkai had recently lost his mind. Large quantities of hot oil, however, were proving to be a sufficient incentive to finding it again. It took care and focus, and ideally (thank you Sanzo) two people, to successfully fry an onion blossom, working with two skimmers and a set of tongs to lower, and then retrieve the heavy-yet-delicate treats. Frying twenty-plus of them in succession left little time for either conversation or neurosis.
It was late afternoon by the time the trays were all full of not-quite-perfectly-golden but still entirely impressive onions, each batter coated orb opened out to resemble a water lily. They surveyed their work with an unspoken yet shared satisfaction. Hakkai had always enjoyed the quiet moments when he and Sanzo were in sympathy. It was a relief to find that whatever was or was not brewing between them had not spoiled that simple pleasure entirely.
They parted with few words. Sanzo was naturally taciturn, but maybe he too, wanted to hold onto this fragile, familiar peace. Hakkai took himself off to check on the dollmakers, and check in with Mother Tamang, and give Sanzo time to get through a bath before he went to scrub the oil-and-onion smell off his skin and hair himself.
Mother Tamang had prepared another light dinner, prelude to the onions they would serve after the lamp lighting. Tonight the plan was for dreidels, and an early-ish end to the festivities-guests, hosts, and musicians were all tired after back to back dance parties. Sanzo sat by Hakkai again, this time without any funny business with elbows. Hakkai found himself in a strange state of detached wonderment. It was just on the far margins of possible that this was courtship, Sanzo style. Or that Hakkai had suffered a head injury and failed to notice.
Dechen stood with Goku and Dorje as the assembled gathered around the lamp. Hakkai poured careful glassfuls of oil into the shamash and six more of the improvised lamps. Only two nights to go. Hakkai stepped back and away, pulling his mind to focus on the here and now as Dorje took the lighter from Goku and stepped forward to do his work.
With seven flames burning, the glow from the lamp was warm and merry, burnishing Sanzo gold as he swept past Goku and his friends. Gojyo put a warm hand on Hakkai’s shoulder.
Sanzo’s eyes swept the room, then he faced off against the lamp. “It’s all an illusion,” he intoned, “but it’s a pretty lamp.”
Gojyo gave Hakkai a squeeze, then let go and followed along as Hakkai led the three ceremonial claps. Hakkai took a deep, centering breath, and headed back to the kitchen with Mother Tamang to fry.
There were some burnt tongues, and a few tears from the younger children, before Hakkai called the crowd to attention and presented a brief tutorial on the safe consumption of recently deep fried whole onions. After that, the party began to hop, and several guests and family members took Hakkai aside to say how much they’d enjoyed this treat in particular.
Sanzo normally gambled with his cronies, and a round or two with Goku and his friends, then wandered off to sit and smoke and watch. Hakkai, greatly daring, took the chair next to him, and they sat, and observed, and made the very occasional comment on the scene before them, while Hakkai drank (yak-butter-free) tea and Sanzo smoked. It was almost very nearly normal, except for the part where Hakkai’s heart was beating loudly enough he could almost convince himself Sanzo could hear it.