The Well
Han sends another hostage to Qin. Again. It survives by being the road everyone needs — the water no one can own and everyone must drink.
The well doesn't move. The town moves around it.
The town had grown up around the well the way moss grows around a stone, and the well did not seem to notice.
It was old — older than the wall, older than the shrine — a ring of worn stone in the square under a roof on four posts, and all day the town turned around it: the water-sellers, the gossips, the mules, the women with the yokes. Every faction in the town hated some other faction. All of them drank from the well.
"Nobody guards it," Dog said. He had been looking for who held the place — there was always someone who held the place — and could not find them. "A thing that important, somebody owns it. Where's the man who owns the well?"
"There is no such man. That is exactly why it's still here." The Wu drew up the bucket and drank; it was good water, cold and a little iron. "The day one house owns the well, every other house has a reason to poison it, or seize it, or cut the rope. So no one owns it, and everyone needs it. A thing everyone needs and no one can own is the hardest thing in the world to destroy. The armies that have come through here drank from it and marched on. You do not burn the well you are about to be thirsty at."
She thought of the little kingdom three valleys west — no army worth the name, hostage after hostage sent to Qin to buy another year — which had outlived prouder neighbors for one reason: it sat astride the only road, the gate everyone had to pass, the throat of the map. It survived by being the well. Strong states are envied and eaten. The indispensable ones are merely used, and used things last.
Dog looked at the stone ring a while. "You can't be a person like that," he said. "A person isn't a well."
"No." She filled the skins. "A person has to choose between being wanted and being safe, and they are almost never the same choice. But it's worth knowing the shape of the thing that gets to be both — just in case the world ever offers it to you. Which it won't."
The history. From the Zhanguoce. Han was the weakest of the great states — no army to speak of, forever sending hostages and cities west to Qin to buy another year. Yet it endured, because of where it sat: astride the passes, the throat of the map, the gate the others had to move through. To destroy Han was to choke the road everyone needed. It survived not by strength but by being indispensable terrain — the water no neighbor could own, and none could do without.
The figure. ䷯ The Well (Jing) · line 6 — One draws from the well without hindrance. It is dependable. Supreme good fortune. The well is there for all. No one is forbidden to take water. No matter how many come, all find what they need—the well is dependable, with a spring that never runs dry. A great blessing to the whole land. The same is true of the really great person, whose inner wealth is inexhaustible: the more that people draw from them, the greater their wealth becomes.
The reading. The well doesn't move; the town moves around it. The pair drink at a town well no faction owns and every faction needs, and the Wu reads weak Han into it: strong states are envied and eaten, but the indispensable ones are merely used, and used things last. A person, the boy notes, doesn't get to be a well — wanted and safe are almost never the same choice.
Source: Zhanguoce · State of Han (韓) · Hexagram ䷯ The Well · line 6
Illustrated & divined by Digital Rain Studios.