It was an afternoon exactly a month after the gathering beyond the bamboo grove.

Market day had come to the small market at Xinye (新野). After a long while, Liu Bei (劉備) went out alone. Zhang Fei (張飛) had gone hunting that morning; Guan Yu (關羽) was shut in the reading room. Liu Bei said he was going to sell a pair of straw sandals, and indeed a pair of straw sandals hung from his left hand.

They were the same shape of sandal he had woven and sold with his mother at twenty-eight. That afternoon, Liu Bei at forty-seven had woven a pair again with his own hand. His hand no longer moved as quickly as in the old days, yet the straw had been bound firm.

At a corner of the market stood a rice-seller, a man who had not been in Xinye a full month. He was one of the watchers Cai Mao (蔡瑁) had sent out from Xiangyang (襄陽). But the rice-seller was poor at trade — he carried more rumor than rice.

As Liu Bei passed with his sandals, the rice-seller was speaking with the keeper of the soup stall beside him. His voice was low, but a single sentence reached Liu Bei's ear clearly as he walked by.

"A word: there is one man in the south. It is not yet time to say his name. But whoever seeks that man, they say, need seek no other three times."

Liu Bei's step paused briefly, only for a short moment. He took up his step again. That sentence, though, began to follow him at about a stride's distance behind.

The one who bought the sandals was an old woman on the far side of the market. She did not recognize Liu Bei's face. She took the pair for a small handful of coins, and Liu Bei left.

The weight of a few coins felt heavy inside his left palm.

For the first time in nineteen years, Liu Bei at forty-seven held coins earned from a pair of straw sandals he had woven with his own hand.

The coins were light. But within that lightness, the weight of nineteen years had been quietly folded. After swallowing a single sentence at twenty-eight, the man of forty-seven had, this day, become once more a man who received with his own two hands the price of a pair of straw sandals.

On the northern alley on the way back, Liu Bei heard the same sentence once more — this time from the mouth of a child.

One child was speaking to another.

"My big brother says there's one man in the south. Nobody knows his name yet. If you find just that one, you don't need to go find anyone else."

That the sentence had come from a child's mouth drove it deeper still into Liu Bei. That it was being passed among children meant it was no longer the secret of adults. It meant, too, that almost everyone in Jingzhou had already guessed whose sentence this was.

Liu Bei paused a short moment before the two children. Then he spoke quietly.

"Children. Might one ask, where does one go to find the name of that one man?"

One child tilted his head. The other answered, half-playing.

"Uncle, no one's allowed to tell the name. But go south of Xiangyang. Beyond the bamboo grove, they say, there's a thatched hall."

That single sentence became, that afternoon, the largest map Liu Bei carried.

Back at the magistrate's office, early that evening Liu Bei called Guan Yu and Zhang Fei to the room. Under the lamp, the three brothers sat facing one another.

Liu Bei passed on the two sentences from the market, just as he had heard them. Guan Yu was long silent. Zhang Fei at first half-believed and half-doubted, but upon hearing that even the children had been passing the sentence, he slowly opened his eyes wide.

"Brother. That one man — we must go seek him."

Zhang Fei spoke first. Liu Bei nodded.

"Yide (翼德). But not today, not right now. When next spring comes, Cao Cao's southern campaign will begin. Before then, we must have time to go three times. The first stride is a month from now; the second, three months after that; the third, one more after that."

"Three times, you say?"

"That man's door will not open at a single visit. Not even at a second. Only at the third will he receive us."

Guan Yu bowed his head deeply. Zhang Fei closed his mouth, then slowly nodded.

That night, Liu Bei returned to his own room and sat alone.

The few coins, the price of the sandals sold that day, lay upon his desk. Beside them was the paper of the four characters, 髀肉復生, that Guan Yu had written and left the day before. Liu Bei laid his hand upon the coins. Then slowly he took up the brush.

In the margin below the paper, he wrote five small characters.

有人在南方.

(There is one man in the south.)

And beside those five characters, he added three yet smaller characters.

三顧 (Three Strides, three visits).

Beyond the western window, the night sky held many stars. From the first dawn at Wuchao (烏巢) to that evening's market at Xinye, thirty days of a long night had each taken their seat. A great star had fallen; a small star had shone half a year more and set; a man of forty-seven had, for the first time in nineteen years, received from his own hand the price of a single pair of straw sandals.

From tomorrow, Book 5 The Third Door begins. Its first strand will be an evening on which, at the third stride, one man's door opens quietly for the first time.

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