Water into Wine

By Joyce Chng

When war comes to your planet, everything changes.. perhaps even the meaning of family and identity.

Xin inherits a vineyard on a distant planet, and moves there to build a life... but an interstellar war intervenes. Will Xin’s dreams of a new life get caught in the crossfire? Xin's understanding of family and sense of self must evolve to cope with the changes brought by life on a new planet and a war that threatens everything.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Annorlunda Books
• Release date: Sep 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9781944354343

Joyce Chng

Joyce Chng is a Chinese-Singaporean children's book author. Her work is regularly anthologized and she has a passion for steampunk, science fiction, and tales of transfiguration.

Book preview

BOOK ONE

graphic chapter divider

1. Bequeathed

"He bequeathed me what?"

The equine-faced lawyer peered at me over his black spectacles. We were in his office, a tiny velvet-filled and book-musty room with piles of paper everywhere. I was sure he was joking. His expression was serious: unsmiling, all business. I was sure that he was one of those men who think smiling is tedious.

A vineyard, he said levelly.

I had to lean back. The leather chair was solid and real. Everything else felt like a dream. A vague, confusing dream. My Ye Ye left me a vineyard. Not a sum of money, not books (he loved them), not even Ngai Ngai’s restaurant.

I was now the legal owner of a vineyard on Tertullian VI.

section divider

The children and I left on the shuttle for Tertullian VI the next week, our lives packed into plastic-sealed boxes and our lives uprooted again. I had recently divorced my husband. Mother came along with us. We also brought triches, our riding birds.

And there it was, the vineyard, sprawling over two rolling hills, lush jade green in color and blanketed under a thin layer of mist. Above us spun an unfamiliar sun and swirling white clouds. Our triches scratched the soil beneath their taloned feet.

All yours, Mother said, shielding her eyes from the sun’s glare. We had reached our new home two hours ago. Our bodies were still adjusting to the Earth-like gravity after time in the shuttle. I flexed my limbs to kick-start the blood circulation. The shuttle had cramped seats. Not surprisingly, the children bounded around the new courtyard and garden, relishing the freedom of youth and the miracle of young bodies. I checked for new dangerous animals and insects.

I let out a sigh. The trellises are empty. I need someone to help me. Indeed, the vineyard looked oddly bare, the vines leafless.

Not in season or harvest, Mother supplied helpfully with a bright smile. I knew she still missed Ye Ye a lot. She had lost her father. The funeral was a month ago.

But why a vineyard, Ma? I blurted out and my trich twitched, fluffing up its brown-white feathers.

Mother had always been beautiful in my eyes. Regal, elegant, the typical upper-class tai-tai. But now she had lines in her face, shadows under her eyes. She gazed at me long, hard.

Remember what you said when you were five? You told us that you wanted a vineyard when you grew up. Quite determinedly, I would say.

I did?

Ye Ye remembered. He always remembered the things his grandchildren said. He loved you a lot, but you didn’t know that, did you? You said that you wanted a vineyard to grow grapes for him. It was during Mid-Autumn Festival. Remember?

I had to close my eyes, against the hot tears and the feeling that I had indeed forgotten. I saw Ye Ye’s kind eyes in my mind, remembered the smell of his favorite tea.

That night, the skies were streaked with falling stars. It was also the night the war broke out.

2. The War

The war—what the historians would call the Secessionist War later—erupted across the Allied Planets. A faction pulled out of the Alliance, causing a power vacuum. Suddenly, all the planet governors were siding either with the Loyalists or the breakaway group, the Traitors, as they called themselves. The news was replete with angry official faces and speeches, figurative fingerpointing, gestures, and saber rattling; warships prowled in the space between. Tertullian VI was right in the path of the war. The planet was neutral as far as I knew and its population was sparse, small enough to have just a few towns, large enough to have villages and farms spread out in between.

At the time, we had just employed Galliano, an experienced vintner and grape expert, to help us. He gave the vineyard a sprucing-up, cutting off the dead vines to stimulate the growth cycle. The vines were merlot grapes—with Tertullian VI’s Mediterranean climate, merlot was the best choice. We celebrated this first step in the vineyard’s rebirth in my family’s typical style: feasting. Mother steamed large prawns with strips of ginger and spring onion, baked a whole chicken with gei zi, and made a fortifying tonic soup for strenuous days ahead, as she told me with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. We toasted each other—even the children had plastic cups filled with fizzy apple juice—while Galliano stood by looking slightly out of place and embarrassed.

May our vineyard be prosperous and abundant! Mother said. May it be a thing of beauty!

And like that, we had a name for our wine. Our vineyard was called Beauty and our wine bottles were to be labeled with the same name. Mother even designed the label with her paint brush. It was lovely cursive writing with smaller Chinese characters beneath it. Beauty. Mei Li. She added a blackbird with its beak facing skywards and its wings spread.

Then news of the war broke across all the vid feeds.

What can we do? The grapes are only just beginning to come into leaf! What will this mean for us? I sighed and stared at the vineyard hard.

Watch and wait, Galliano said matter-of-factly. He was a well-made man in his thirties, tanned by the sun, and muscled by hard work. His eyes were a piercing blue. Before we hired him, we ran an advertisement in the local news broadsheets and networks. He was one of the few applicants who answered. I was impressed by his confidence and his passion when he talked about grapes and winemaking. The man clearly knew what he was doing.

For several nights, the skies were crisscrossed with streaks and arcs of white and orange light. Like New Year fireworks! my oldest exclaimed as we watched, half captivated, half afraid. The war was happening above our heads. Ships were exploding. People were dying. The triches in their stables fluffed their feathers and stamped their feet. They could sense the war, too.

I woke up from a fitful sleep to see an orange ball of fire hit the distant hills. From my bedroom, I heard the subsequent rumble and saw the flash of light and felt the earthquake as it detonated. One of my daughters came running in, burying her face in my nightgown. Her tears soaked through the fabric, and I felt her trembling all over. We couldn’t sleep further that night.

Yet, besides the explosion of a warship (as the news rather unemotionally put it), nothing much happened. As the days plodded on, the vineyard woke up too, sending out green shoots and unfurling leaves. Galliano was pleased. I reassured myself by walking