A year or two back, I tried to write a young adult novel based on the Firmament concept for NaNoWriMo. I only wrote one chapter and this is it.

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Li Shen entered the world of human suffering kicking and screaming. This was not, in itself, unusual. When interviewed later, the resident physicians at People’s Liberation Army Central Hospital were, at first, unable to remember that particular delivery. Under significant pressure, they managed to recall an energetic and particularly vocal baby boy, one born on the 29th day of February,1988.

Shen’s mother had not wanted to give birth at the PLA Hospital, but Mr. Li insisted. There were better medical centers, but the Li Family was to set an example for the common soldier. Besides, the hospital would take particularly good care of Shen’s mother on account of Mr. Li’s connections to the Undersecretary of Defense. She relented in the end, but only once her labor began.

The investigators wrote this down. They wrote everything down.

They named the boy Shen, a body shielded by two hands, the sun split by a beam, the spirit, the ninth Earthly Branch. If the sun in Shen rose just a bit higher, if the hands shielded the head instead of the body, then it became Jia, a germinating seed, armour, the first Heavenly Stem. Jia was the initial month of the true calendar, which started at Spring Festival. By the true reckoning, Shen was born on the 13th day of Jia month of the year 4686. Shen’s similarity to Jia was thought to be auspicious, protecting the baby from meddling Gregorians.

Little Shen did not hear the students’ shouting. He was not even present for angry discussions at dinner. His paternal grandmother took him into the bedroom and sang songs about the moon and boats on the Huai River. By the time the chaos started, he was asleep. He slept through gunfire and the rumble of tanks. He slept until the 90’s brought sunshine.

There was a red phone in his parents’ room that Shen was forbidden to answer. Once, when Mr. Li was buying eggs, it rang. Shen’s mother was calling with a reminder about eggs, but the she heard Shen’s frightened voice. She was not pleased. Neither was Mr. Li, when he returned. That was the only time either parent could remember beating their son.

The investigators nodded politely, but exchanged significant glances.

When he was 6, Li Shen began attending Haidian Primary School, where he learned about the strange people of the West. It was from the West that China had received February 29th, the day on which he was born, the day that only occurred once every four years. People in the West had bizarre ideas about time. They changed their clocks twice a year, moving them backwards and forwards. Western clocks also varied from place to place, so New York might call Los Angeles and discover that everyone was asleep. They put their names in the wrong order too – “Albert Einstein” instead of “Einstein Albert” – but Li Shen was more interested in their violence towards time.

As a 12-year-old, Li Shen began biking to the Second Middle School Affiliated With Beijing Normal University. He excelled in history and hated English. He developed a crush on classmate Xu Ronghua.

At least, this is what his teachers and classmates told the investigators.

“And then, one day, he was gone.”

Each story ends this way. They press for details, they corroborate facts, they twist arms every now and then, but the narratives always come out the same. In most situations, the investigators know what to do with cases like Li Shen’s. People go missing and, after a few months, their investigation papers disappear as well, filed away in oblivion. But Li Shen’s father exerts quite a bit of influence, so they persevere, pursuing a lead every now and again for more than five years, mainly to keep the money flowing. And recently, for no discernable reason, others have gotten interested in Li Shen’s disappearance, powerful others, others who prefer to remain nameless. This makes the investigators uneasy. It doesn’t, however, make the boy any easier to find.

What follows is an account of what happened to Li Shen.

It was the Heavenly Wolf, the Dog Star, Sirius, who has been the doom of many. Li Shen was looking out his bedroom window on the evening of December 20th, 1991. Then he saw it, rising dimly through the glare and smog of the Beijing skyline, barely visible above the horizon, naked of its usual companions: Mirzam, Wezen, Adhara, Aludra.

He reached out and his fingertips brushed the star, candle-warm and crystalline. It was an impossible, beautiful gesture. The smudge of Sirius came to rest in a small crack between his cupped fingers. Curiously, the star remained suspended in the firmament like a petal in a pool of water. He tried to gently tug it free, but the star held fast. Shen, however, did not.

And that is how it all began.