At dinnertime, Ke Ke Shu returned from his errand to procure supplies. He came through the door leaning heavily on the horn, the sound full and resonant — no rickety tuk-tuk could compare.

It was a second-hand white van — a Haishi model. The previous owner had modified it extensively: the roof had been cut out with a fitted support frame that could be propped open; the steel panels had been reinforced, anti-collision bars and shock absorbers added; iron safety cages covered the headlights; the side mirrors and all four doors had been reinforced. At the rear, a tall antenna rose straight up, and at the top of it…

Wei Lai frowned. The modifications were solid, but the van was genuinely ugly — inconspicuous, old, its body caked in dust. The only exception was the little plastic honeybee sleeved onto the tip of the antenna: brand new, bright yellow with black stripes, its two small wings a clean white.

“What’s that thing?” Wei Lai asked.

He wanted to rip the little honeybee right off.

“It’s for the radio antenna — a built-in receiver!” Ke Ke Shu reached out and swayed the antenna back and forth. “In the desert there are no people and no signal. You need a radio to keep yourself sane, don’t you?”

Wei Lai pointed at the honeybee. “I meant that.”

“It’s decorative — isn’t it pretty? Lots of locals put these on.”

Is that so?

Wei Lai realized his own convictions were rather unsteady. Now that Ke Ke Shu said it that way, he actually found it kind of charming.

He slid open the rear door. The back half of the van was packed with gear. Several large water drums were the most striking sight; all the food was compressed rations. There was also a woven basket holding a loose arrangement of dates, tomatoes, and a watermelon — and, almost comically, a satellite phone tucked among them, its antenna half-extended, poking up like a little braid on top of someone’s head.

“Crossing the desert straight through would take over ten hours at top speed,” Ke Ke Shu said. “I’m guessing you’ll take two days. I’ve packed five days’ worth of food and water — generous of me, right? Use the satellite phone out in the open where the signal can catch the satellites; eat the fruit sooner rather than later, or it’ll all go rotten.”

But that wasn’t even the most touching part.

Wei Lai looked into the van and couldn’t believe his eyes. “This van has air conditioning?”

“A cold air unit.” Ke Ke Shu reached in and rapped on the iron casing with a knuckle — clank clank. “Old, yes, and noisy, but it works well…”

He turned the knob as he spoke.

A long-missed wave of cool air swept over them. Khartoum was called the world’s furnace, but in this precise spot, at this precise moment, the ground beneath Wei Lai’s feet was paradise on earth.

With no other way to repay him, Wei Lai pulled Ke Ke Shu into a forceful bear hug.

“Don’t mention it,” Ke Ke Shu said. “Milu told me to find you the most fully equipped vehicle I could. Anyway, the cost comes out of your fee…”

Wei Lai grabbed Ke Ke Shu by the head and shoved him away.

After dinner, the power had still not come back on.

The hotel owner brought candles. Cen Jin sorted through her luggage by candlelight — some of her winter clothes were no longer needed, and the bag grew thinner as she worked through it.

She suddenly noticed the gold rectangular-cased lipstick. She opened it and twisted it out to look. The waxy body had gone soft, its oils seeping out, gleaming in a blurry, water-bright red.

She felt a small pang of regret, paused, then twisted it back in and packed it anyway.

Wei Lai recalled a memory from the past. “The first time I went to La Pu Lan, I had no experience. I brought ointment for frostbite — but when I really needed it and opened the tube, it had frozen into a solid block.”

“The outer tube had cracked apart, but the ointment itself was still hard as an iron lump.”

“And then there was a Siberian jay, calling right above my head the whole time. A very unpleasant sound.”

The Siberian jay sounded like this: Sheee — kak — kk…

Cen Jin kept her head down, folding a white shirt. “And then?”

The candlelight enlarged her shadow and gilded the dark outline of her silhouette with a soft, faint gold.

“Then I threw the ointment at it to scare it off, and it flew away — two feathers floated down from the sky.”

Cen Jin smiled briefly. “You made that up.”

“How do you know?”

When he’d told Ai Lin the story, Ai Lin had believed every word, stamping her feet and crying, “Oh no — do you think you killed it? Or at least left it unable to reproduce?”

“You’d take life-saving medicine somewhere that cold and just throw it away? Who would do that?”

That was fair.

Of course he hadn’t thrown it. The jay had gone on calling over his head; he’d used his knife to carve out a lump and held it over the flame to melt it, then stuffed the rest into a plastic bag and tucked it inside his clothes to warm with his body heat.

“You really love La Pu Lan, don’t you? I remember during the interview, Yanus asked why your last assignment had been so long ago, and you said it was because you’d gone to La Pu Lan.”

Wei Lai found himself at a loss for an answer.

Why did he love La Pu Lan? He’d never actually thought it through.

— Because it was cold there.

The far north. Vast, empty, barely inhabited.

No people meant no “human warmth,” and that meant no tangled relationships.

— Because he loved the legend: when the Northern Lights appear, you must not whistle, or the aurora will come and grab you by the hair.

So he would often go out at midnight, face the aurora blazing across the night sky, and let out a whistle — then close his eyes and wait for something to come and take hold of his hair.

— Because there, among the reindeer and the Siberian jays and the wolverines, he was simply another creature struggling to survive in the bitter cold.

They didn’t look at him strangely. They didn’t ask where he came from or where his home was. They didn’t care that he’d gone off the rails, weren’t bothered by whether a boat was moored at the river mouth or how long it might stay…

Why wouldn’t Ai Lin believe that he’d gone there, truly, just to take a holiday?

…

Cen Jin did not ask further.

Suddenly a paper airplane came whooshing in from the darkness outside, sailing into the circle of candlelight and nosediving headfirst into the half-packed travel bag, its tail end sticking up at an absurd angle.

Ke Ke Shu’s voice drifted in from outside: “Wei! Mission accomplished. Give me an A rating — I need to go home with my dignity intact.”