The New Patron

In the western county, the city god temple had stood for years without a proper god. The old statue had cracked; the priests were old; the worshippers had begun, half-jesting, to pray anywhere but there. Then, in the autumn after Song's death, things began to change.

The local magistrate dreamed one night that a young scholar in a dark blue robe came to his hall, bowed, and announced himself as the newly appointed tutelary of the county. He asked that the temple be swept, the tablet set upright, and the annual offerings restored. The magistrate, a pious man, rose at dawn and went himself to see the place.

He found it exactly as the dream had described, but for one thing: there was no tablet. He ordered a master carver to make one, and, on a hunch, sent messengers to Song's village to ask the dead scholar's name. When the name came back, the magistrate wrote it himself in the proper characters and set it in its place.