The lights of the first paper boats washed up at the festival's shore, into waiting hands like the first fireflies of summer. Gentle ladies with trailing silk waited at the water's edge for the final push of the tide as the younger generation scooped their brightly-colored choices from the water like giants, eager for the presents within. An Yung, the Silver Garden, always set the prettiest, the sweetest, the most elegant of gifts adrift on their paper boats.<br/><br/>"There are so many, this year," a farmer's wife spoke. Her hanfu had been handed down from a wisened old seamstress of a grandmother, a part of her dowry of cotton, and her fondest duty was to care for it now, on those twice a year occasions when it was worn. She dared not venture into the mud. "Should we take another?"<br/>"It would be an insult to let boats go unclaimed."<br/>"How prosperous An Yung must be, to send twice as many as the year before."<br/><br/>Some boats were marked with bits of flair, lovers' gifts intended for a special someone downriver. But many, many more were random acts of kindness, a gesture between strangers. Young men compared their prizes.<br/>"There were candies and a good luck prayer in mine."<br/>"A peony bulb, wrapped in perfumed lace."<br/>"Mine is a paper fan, painted with a dragon."<br/>A fourth boy puzzled over a tightly sealed black envelope, gilded with the silver seal of a crane. After several plucks, the crisp origami tuck of the envelope open to reveal a neatly folded page torn from a book. The page was burgundy, the ink gold.<br/>"What is it?"<br/>Disbelieving, he read.<em>"The wangliang ogres ruled the holy mountain before us, but already were in decline prior to the birth of our race. For a century their revenge was devised, in a curse so vile that its sound will cause a man to shamble straight to the water and willingly drown. Its full pronunciation is as follows." </em><br/><br/>A woman screamed nearby. There were more black envelopes, more gold-lettered pages than this, dozens more finding their way into the hands of bright-eyed celebrants. The boy tucked the page away in his pocket, and fled from the river. Already it was too late to turn back this evil visited on Pai Sun.