Bridge of Birds

1. The Village of Ku-fu

I shall clasp my hands together and bow to the corners of the world.

My surname is Lu and my personal name is Yu, but I am not to be confused with the eminent author of The Classic of Tea. My family is quite undistinguished, and since I am the tenth of my father's sons and rather strong I am usually referred to as Number Ten Ox. My father died when I was eight. A year later my mother followed him to the Yellow Springs Beneath the Earth, and since then I have lived with Uncle Nung and Auntie Hua in the village of Ku-fu in the valley of Cho. We take great pride in our landmarks. Until recently we also took great pride in two gentlemen who were such perfect specimens that people used to come from miles around just to stare at them, so perhaps I should begin a description of my village with a couple of classics.

When Pawnbroker Fang approached Ma the Grub with the idea of joining forces he opened negotiations by presenting Ma's wife with the picture of a small fish drawn upon a piece of cheap paper. Ma's wife accepted the magnificent gift, and in return she extended her right hand and made a circle with the thumb and forefinger. At that point the door crashed open and Ma the Grub charged inside and screamed: “Woman, would you ruin me? Half of a pie would have been enough!”

That may not be literally true, but the abbot of our monastery always said that fable has strong shoulders that carry far more truth than fact can.

Pawnbroker Fang's ability to guess the lowest possible amount that a person would accept for a pawned item was so unerring that I had concluded that it was supernatural, but then the abbot took me aside and explained that Fang wasn't guessing at all. There was always some smooth shiny object lying on top of his desk in the front room of Ma the Grub's warehouse, and it was used as a mirror that would reflect the eyes of the victim.

“Cheap, very cheap,” Fang would sneer, turning the object in his hands. “No more than two hundred cash.”

His eyes would drop to the shiny object, and if the pupils of the reflected eyes constricted too sharply he would try again.

“Well, the workmanship isn't too bad, in a crude peasant fashion. Make it two-fifty.”

The reflected pupils would dilate, but perhaps not quite far enough.

“It is the anniversary of my poor wife's untimely demise, the thought of which always destroys my business judgment,” Fang would whimper, in a voice clotted with tears. “Three hundred cash, but not one penny more!”

Actually no money would change hands because ours is a barter economy. The victim would take a credit slip through the door to the warehouse, and Ma the Grub would stare at it in disbelief and scream out to Fang: “Madman! Your lunatic generosity will drive us into bankruptcy! Who will feed your starving brats when we are reduced to tattered cloaks and begging bowls?” Then he would honor the credit slip with goods that had been marked up by 600 percent.

Pawnbroker Fang was a widower with two children, a pretty little daughter we called Fang's Fawn and a younger son that we called Fang's Flea. Ma the Grub was childless, and when his wife ran off with a rug peddler his household expenses were cut in half and his happiness was doubled. The happiest time of all for the team of Ma and Fang was our annual silk harvest, because silkworm eggs could only be purchased with money and they had all the money. Ma the Grub would buy the eggs and hand them out to each family in exchange for lOUs that were to be redeemed with silk, and since Pawnbroker Fang was the only qualified appraiser of silk for miles around they were able to take two-thirds of our crop to Peking and return with bulging bags of coins, which they buried in their gardens on moonless midnights.

The abbot used to say that the emotional health of a village depended upon having a man whom everyone loved to hate, and Heaven had blessed us with two of them.

Our landmarks are our lake and our wall, and both of them are the result of the superstition and mythology of ancient times. When our ancestors arrived in the valley of Cho they examined the terrain with the greatest of care, and we honestly believe that no village in the world has been better planned than the village of Ku-fu. Our ancestors laid it out so that it would be sheltered from the Black Tortoise, a beast of the very worst character, whose direction is north and whose element is water and whose season is winter. It is open to the Red Bird of the south, and the element of fire and the season of summer. And the eastern hills where the Blue Dragon lives, with the element of wood and the hopeful season of spring, are stronger than the hills to the west, which is the home of the White Tiger, metal, and the melancholy season of autumn.

Considerable thought was given to the shape of the village, on the grounds that a man who built a village like a fish while a neighboring village was built like a hook was begging for disaster. The finished shape was the outline of a unicorn, a gentle and law-abiding creature with no natural enemies whatsoever. But it appeared that something had gone wrong because one day there was a low snorting sort of a noise and the earth heaved, and several cottages collapsed and a great crack appeared in the soil. Our ancestors examined their village from every possible angle, and the flaw was discovered when one of them climbed to the top of the tallest tree on the eastern hills and gazed down. By a foolish oversight the last five rice paddies had been arranged so that they formed the wings and body of a huge hungry horsefly that had settled upon the tender flank of the unicorn, so of course the unicorn had kicked up its heels. The paddies were altered into the shape of a bandage, and Ku-fu was never again disturbed by upheavals.

They made sure that there would be no straight roads or rivers that might draw good influences away, and as a further precaution they dammed up the end of a narrow little valley and channeled rivulets down the sides of the hills, and thus produced a small lake that would capture and hold good influences that might otherwise trickle away to other villages. They had no aesthetic intent whatsoever. The beauty of our lake was an accident of superstition, but the result was such that when the great poet Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju passed through on a walking trip five hundred years ago he paused at the little lake and was inspired to write to a friend:

It is like that today, and Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju was not there in the season to see the masses of wildflowers, or the tiny dappled deer that come to drink and then vanish like puffs of smoke.

Our wall landmark is far more famous. It is only fair to point out that there are many different stories concerning the origin of Dragon's Pillow, but we in Ku-fu like to think that our version is the only correct one.

Many centuries ago there was a general who was ordered to build one of the defensive walls that were to be linked into the Great Wall, and one night he dreamed that he had been summoned to Heaven to present his plan for the wall to the August Personage of Jade. At his subsequent trial for treason he gave a vivid account of the trip.

He had dreamed that he had been inside a giant lotus, and the leaves had slowly opened to form a doorway, and he had stepped out upon the emerald grass of Heaven. The sky was sapphire, and a path made from pearls lay near his feet. A willow tree lifted a branch and pointed it like a finger, and the general followed the path to the River of Flowers, which was cascading down the Cliff of the Great Awakening. The concubines of the Emperor of Heaven were bathing in the Pool of Blissful Fragrances, laughing and splashing in a rainbow of rose petals, and they were so beautiful that the general found it hard to tear himself away. But duty called, so he followed the path as it climbed seven terraces where the leaves on the trees were made from precious stones, which rang musically when the breeze touched them, and where birds of bright plumage sang with divine voices of the Five Virtues and Excellent Doctrines. The path continued around the lush orchards where the Queen Mother Wang grew the Peaches of Immortality, and when the general made the last turn around the orchards he found himself directly in front of the palace of the Emperor of Heaven.

Flunkies were waiting for him. They ushered him into the audience chamber, and after the three obeisances and nine kowtows he was allowed to rise and approach the throne. The August Personage of Jade was seated with his hands crossed upon the Imperial Book of Etiquette, which lay upon his lap. He wore a flat hat rather like a board, from which dangled thirteen pendants of colored pearls upon red strings, and his black silk robe rippled with red and yellow dragons. The general bowed and humbly presented his plan for the wall.

Behind the throne stood T'ien-kou, the Celestial Dog, whose teeth had chewed mountains in half, and beside the Celestial Dog stood Ehr-lang, who is unquestionably the greatest of all warriors because he had been able to battle the stupendous Stone Monkey to a standstill. (The Monkey symbolizes intellect.) The two bodyguards appeared to be glaring at the general. He hastily lowered his eyes, and he saw that the symbol of the emperor's predecessor, the Heavenly Master of the First Origin, was stamped upon the left arm of the throne, and on the right arm was the symbol of the emperor's eventual successor, the Heavenly Master of the Dawn of Jade of the Golden Door. The general was so overcome by a dizzying sense of timelessness in which there was no means of measurement and comparison that he felt quite sick to his stomach. He was afraid that he was going to disgrace himself by throwing up, but in the nick of time he saw that his plan, neatly rolled back into a scroll and retied, was extended before his lowered eyes. He took it and dropped to his knees and awaited divine censure or praise, but none was forthcoming. The August Personage of Jade silently signaled the end of the interview. The general crawled backward, banging his head against the floor, and at the doorway he was seized by the flunkies, who marched him outside and across a couple of miles of meadow. Then they picked him up and dumped him into the Great River of Stars.

Oddly enough, the general testified, he had not been frightened at all. It was the rainy season in Heaven, and billions of brilliant stars were bouncing over raging waves that roared like a trillion tigers, but the general sank quite peacefully into the water. He drifted down farther and farther, and then he fell right through the bottom, and the glittering light of the Great River receded rapidly in the distance as he plunged head over heels toward earth. He landed smack in the middle of his bed, just as his servant entered to wake him for breakfast.

It was some time before he could gather enough courage to open his plan, and when he did he discovered that the Emperor of Heaven—or somebody—had moved the wall 122 miles to the south, which placed it in the middle of the valley of Cho, where it could serve no useful purpose whatsoever.

What was he to do? He could not possibly defy the mandate of Heaven, so he ordered his men to build a wall that led nowhere and connected to nothing, and that was why the general was arrested and brought before the Emperor of China on the charge of treason. When he told his tale the charge of treason was tossed out of court. Instead the general was sentenced to death for being drunk on duty, and desperation produced one of the loveliest excuses in history. That wall, the general said firmly, had been perfectly placed, but one night a dragon leaned against it and fell asleep, and in the morning it was discovered that the bulk of the beast had shoved the wall into its current ludicrous position.

Word of Dragon's Pillow swept through the delighted court, where the general had clever and unscrupulous friends. They began their campaign to save his neck by bribing the emperor's favorite soothsayer.

“O Son of Heaven,” the fellow screeched, “I have consulted the Trigrams, and for reasons known only to the August Personage of Jade that strange stretch of wall is the most important of all fortifications! So important is it that it cannot be guarded by mortal men, but only by the spirits of ten thousand soldiers who must be buried alive in the foundations!”

The emperor was quite humane, as emperors go, and he begged the soothsayer to try again and see if there might not have been some mistake. After pocketing another bribe the soothsayer came up with a different interpretation.

“O Son of Heaven, the Trigrams clearly state that wan must be buried alive in the foundations, but while wan can mean ten thousand, it is also a common family name!” he bellowed. “The solution is obvious, for what is the life of one insignificant soldier compared to the most important wall in China?”

The Emperor still didn't like it, but he didn't appear to have much of a choice, so he ordered his guards to go out and lay hands on the first common soldier named Wan. All accounts agree that Wan behaved with great dignity. His family was provided with a pension, and he was told that Heaven had honored him above all others, and he was given a trumpet with which to sound the alarm should China be threatened, and then a hole was cut in the base of the wall and Wan marched dutifully inside. The hole was bricked up again, and a watchtower—the Eye of the Dragon—was placed upon the highest point of Dragon's Pillow where Wan's ghost could maintain its lonely vigil.

The emperor was so sick of the whole affair that he refused to allow that cursed stretch of wall, or anyone connected with it, to be mentioned in his presence. Of course that is what the clever fellows had been planning all along, and their friend the general was quietly set free to write his memoirs.

For nearly a century Dragon's Pillow was a favorite of sightseers. A small number of soldiers was detached to maintain the wall, but since it served no purpose except as a watchtower for a ghost it was eventually allowed to fall into decay. Even the sightseers lost interest in it, and weeds grew and rocks crumbled. It was a paradise for children, however, and for a few centuries it was the favorite playpen of the children of my village, but then something happened that left Dragon's Pillow abandoned even by children.

One evening the children of Ku-fu were beginning one of the games that had originated somewhere back toward the beginning of time, and suddenly they stopped short. A hollow, bodiless voice—one boy later said that it might have been echoing through two hundred miles of bamboo pipe—drifted down to them from the Eye of the Dragon. So strange were the words that every one of the children remembered them perfectly, even though they took to their heels as soon as their hearts resumed beating.

Was it possible that poor Wan, the most important of all sentinels on the most important of all watchtowers, was sending a message to China through the children of the humble village of Ku-fu? If so, it was a very strange message indeed, and sages and scholars struggled for centuries to wrest some meaning from it.

If my illustrious readers would care to take a crack at it, I will wish them the very best of luck.

2. The Plague

My story begins with the silk harvest in the Year of the Tiger 3,337 (A.D. 639), when the prospects for a record crop had never seemed better.

The eggs that Ma the Grub handed out were quite beautiful, jet-black and glowing with health, and the leaves on the mulberry trees were so thick that the groves resembled tapestries woven from deep green brocade, and youngsters raced around singing, “Mulberry leaves so shiny and bright, children all clap hands at the sight!” Our village crackled with excitement. Girls carried straw baskets up the hill to the monastery, and the bonzes lined them with yellow paper upon which they had drawn pictures of Lady Horsehead, and the abbot blessed the baskets and burned incense to the patron of sericulture. Bamboo racks and trays were taken to the river and vigorously scrubbed. Wildflowers were picked and crushed, lamp wicks cut into tiny pieces, and the oldest members of each family smeared cloves of garlic with moist earth and placed them against the walls of the cottages. If the garlic produced many sprouts it would mean a bountiful harvest, and never in living memory had anyone seen so many sprouts. The women slept with the sheets of silkworm eggs pressed against their bare flesh, in order to hasten the hatching process through body heat, and the old ones tossed handfuls of rice into pots that bubbled over charcoal fires. When the steam lifted straight up, without a quiver, they yelled, “Now!”

The women brushed the eggs into the baskets with goose feathers. Then they sprinkled the crushed wildflowers and the pieces of lamp wicks on top and placed the baskets upon the bamboo racks. The goose feathers were carefully pinned to the sides of the baskets, and charcoal fires were lit beneath the racks. (The significance of wildflowers, lamp wicks, and goose feathers has been lost in antiquity, but we would never dream of changing the custom.) The families knelt to pray to Lady Horsehead, and in every cottage the eggs hatched right on schedule.

The Dark Ladies wriggled lazily, enjoying the heat of the fires, but they were not lazy for long. Unless one has seen them, it is quite impossible to imagine how much silkworms can—must—eat, and their only food is mulberry leaves. It is not much of an exaggeration to say that the chewing sounds of ravenous silkworms are enough to waken hibernating bears, but sleep would be out of the question anyway. It takes thirty days, more or less, for silkworms to prepare to spin, and there are but three brief periods when they aren't eating: the Short Sleep, the Second Sleep, and the Big Sleep. After the Big Sleep silkworms will die if an hour passes without food, and we worked day and night stripping leaves from trees and carrying them to the cottages in basket brigades. The children were given regular rest periods, of course, but during the thirty days the rest of us were lucky to get sixty hours of sleep.

The old ones tended the fires, because silkworms must have steady heat, and the children who were too young to work in basket brigades were turned out to fend for themselves. In grove after grove we stripped the trees to the bare branches, and then we stumbled in exhaustion to the mulberry grove that belonged to Pawnbroker Fang. That cost us more IOUs, but they were the finest trees in the village. Gradually the silkworms changed color, from black to green, and from green to white, and then translucent, and the oldest family members erected bamboo screens in front of the racks, because silkworms are shy when they begin to spin and must have privacy.

The deafening feeding noises dropped to a roar, and then to a sound like distant surf, and then to a whisper. The silence that finally settled over our village seemed eerily unreal. There was nothing more to be done except to keep the fires going, and if fortune favored us we would pull the screens away in three days and see fields of snow: the white cocoons called Silkworm Blossoms, massed upon the racks and waiting to be reeled onto spindles in continuous strands more than a thousand feet long.

Some of us made it to our beds, but others simply dropped in their tracks.

I awoke on the fifteenth day of the eighth moon, which happened to be my nineteenth birthday, to the sound of a soft pattering rain. The clouds were beginning to lift. Slanting rays of sunlight slid through silver raindrops, and a soft mist drifted across the fields like smoke. In the distance I could see the hazy outline of Dragon's Pillow, and nearby on the riverbank some boys were teasing Fang's Fawn, who was riding a water buffalo. I decided that the boys were following her around because the rain had plastered her tunic around small shapely breasts that the pretty little girl didn't have a month ago, and Fawn was enjoying the attention immensely. Bells were ringing from the monastery upon the hill.

I stretched lazily in bed, savoring the smells of tea and porridge from Auntie Hua's kitchen, and then I jerked upright. The boys at the riverbank were staring wide-eyed at Fang's Fawn, who had turned pale as death. She clutched her throat and gave a sharp cry of pain and toppled from the water buffalo to the grass.

I was out the door in an instant. Fawn's eyes were wide and staring, but she didn't see me while I tested her pulse, which was faint and erratic. Perspiration glistened on her forehead. I told the boys to run for her father, and then I picked her up and raced up the hill to the monastery.

The abbot was also our doctor, professionally trained at Hanlin Academy, but he was clearly puzzled by Fawn's sickness. Her vital signs had dropped so low that he had to hold a mirror to her lips to find a trace of condensation, and when he took a pin and pricked her flesh at various pain points there was no reaction. Her eyes were still wide and unseeing.

Suddenly the pretty little girl sat up and screamed. The sound was shocking in the hush of the monastery. Her hands clawed the air, fending off something that wasn't there, and she jerked convulsively. Then she fell back upon the bed and her eyes closed. Her body grew limp, and once more her vital signs dropped to almost nothing.

“Demons!” I whispered.

“I sincerely hope so,” the abbot said grimly, and I later learned that he had begun to suspect rabies, and that he would prefer to confront the most hideous demons from the most horrible corners of Hell.

There had been noises swelling up in the village below the hill, a confusion of sounds, and now we began to hear curses from the men and wails and lamentations from the women. The abbot looked at me and raised an eyebrow. I was out the door and down the hill in a flash, and after that things got so confusing that I have difficulty sorting them out in my mind.

It began with Auntie Hua. She had been tending the fire at the silkworm rack in her cottage and she had smelled something that worried her. When she cautiously peered through a crack in the screen she had not seen a field of snow, but a black rotting mass of pulp. Her agonized wails brought the neighbors, who raced back to their own cottages, and as howls arose from every corner of the village it became apparent that for the first time in living memory our silk harvest had been a total failure. That was merely the beginning.

Big Hong the blacksmith ran from his house with wide frightened eyes, carrying his small son in his arms. Little Hong's eyes were wide and unseeing, and he screamed and clawed the air. The blacksmith was followed by Wang the wineseller, whose small daughter was screaming and clawing the air. More and more parents dashed out with children in their arms, and a frantic mob raced up the hill toward the monastery.

It was not rabies. It was a plague.

I stared in disbelief at two tiny girls who were standing in a doorway with their thumbs in their mouths. Mother Ho's great-granddaughters were so sickly that the abbot had worked night and day to keep them alive, yet they were completely untouched by the plague. I ran past them into their cottage. Mother Ho was ninety-two and sinking fast, and my heart was in my mouth as I approached her bed and drew back the covers. I received a stinging slap on my nose.

“Who do you think you are? The Imperial Prick?” the old lady yelled.

(She meant Emperor Wu-ti. After his death his lecherous ghost kept hopping into his concubines’ beds, and in desperation they had recruited new brides from all over, and it was not until the total reached 503 that the exhausted spectre finally gave up and crawled back into its tomb.)

I ran back out and turned into cottage after cottage, where tiny children stared at me and cried, or laughed and wanted to play, and the old ones who wept beside the racks of rotting silkworms were otherwise as healthy as horses. Then I ran back up the hill and told the abbot what I had seen, and when we made a list the truth was indisputable, and it was also unbelievable.

Not one child under the age of eight and not one person over the age of thirteen had been affected by the plague, but every child—every single one—between the ages of eight and thirteen had screamed and blindly clawed the air, and now lay as still as death in the infirmary that the abbot had set up in the bonzes’ common room. The weeping parents looked to the abbot for a cure, but he spread his arms and cried out in despair:

“First tell me how a plague can learn how to count!”

Auntie Hua had always been the decisive one in our family. She took me aside. “Ox, the abbot is right,” she said hoarsely. “We need a wise man who can tell us how a plague can learn to count, and I have heard that there are such men in Peking, and that they live on the Street of Eyes. I have also heard that they charge dearly for their services.”

“Auntie, it will take a week to squeeze money out of Pawnbroker Fang, even though Fawn is one of the victims,” I said.

She nodded, and then she reached into her dress and pulled out a worn leather purse. When she dumped the contents into my hands I stared at more money than I had ever seen in my life: hundreds of copper coins, strung upon a green cord.

“Five thousand copper cash, and you are never to tell your uncle about this. Not ever!” the old lady said fiercely. “Run to Peking. Go to the Street of Eyes and bring a wise man back to our village.”

I had heard that Auntie Hua had been a rather wild beauty in her youth and I briefly wondered whether she might have reason to sacrifice to P'an Chin-lien, the patron of fallen women, but I had no time for such speculations because I was off and running like the wind.

I share my birthday with the moon, and Peking was a madhouse when I arrived. Trying to shove through the mobs that had turned out for the Moon Festival was like one of those nightmares in which one struggles through quicksand. The din was incredible, and I forced my way through the streets with the wild eyes and aching ears of a colt at a blacksmiths’ convention, and I was quite terrified when I finally reached the street that I was looking for. It was an elegant avenue that was lined on both sides with very expensive houses, and above each door was the sign of a wide unblinking eye.

“The truth revealed,” those eyes seemed to be saying. “We see everything.”

I felt the first stirrings of hope, and I banged at the nearest door. It was opened by a haughty eunuch who was attired in clothes that I had previously associated with royalty, and he ran his eyes from my bamboo hat to my shabby sandals, clapped a perfumed handkerchief to his nose, and ordered me to state my business. The eunuch didn't blink an eye when I said that I wanted his master to explain how a plague could learn to count, but when I said that I was prepared to pay as much as five thousand copper cash he turned pale, leaned weakly against the wall, and groped for smelling salts.

“Five thousand copper cash?” he whispered. “Boy, my master charges fifty pieces of silver to find a lost dog!”

The door slammed in my face, and when I tried the next house I exited through the air, pitched by six husky footmen while a bejeweled lackey shook his fist and screamed, “You dare to offer five thousand copper cash to the former chief investigator for the Son of Heaven himself? Back to your mud hovel, you insolent peasant!”

In house after house the result was the same, except that I exited in a more dignified manner—my fists were clenched and there was a glint in my eyes, and I am not exactly small—and I decided that I was going to have to hit a wise man over the head, stuff him in a bag, and carry him back to Ku-fu whether he liked it or not. Then I received a sign from Heaven. I had reached the end of the avenue and was starting to go back up the other side, and suddenly a shaft of brilliant sunlight shot through the clouds and darted like an arrow into a narrow winding alley. It sparkled upon the sign of an eye, but this eye was not wide open. It was half-shut.

“Part of the truth revealed,” the eye seemed to be saying. “Some things I see, but some I don't.”

If that was the message it was the first sensible thing that I had seen in Peking, and I turned and started down the alley.

3. A Sage with a Slight Flaw in His Character

The sign was old and shabby, and it hung above the open door of a sagging bamboo shack. When I timidly stepped inside I saw smashed furniture and a mass of shattered crockery, and the reek of sour wine made my head reel. The sole inhabitant was snoring upon a filthy mattress.

He was old almost beyond belief. He could not have weighed more than ninety pounds, and his frail bones would have been more suitable for a large bird. Drunken flies were staggering through pools of spilled wine, and crawling giddily up the ancient gentleman's bald skull, and tumbling down the wrinkled seams of a face that might have been a relief map of all China, and becoming entangled in a wispy white beard. Small bubbles formed and burst upon the old man's lips, and his breath was foul.

I sighed and turned to go, and then I stopped dead in my tracks and caught my breath.

Once an eminent visitor to our monastery had displayed the gold diploma that was awarded to the scholar who had won third place in the imperial chin-shih examination, and in school-books I had seen illustrations of the silver diploma that was awarded to second place, but never did I dream that I would be privileged to see the flower. The real thing, not a picture of it. There it was, casually tacked to a post not two feet from my eyes, and I reverently blew away the dust to read that seventy-eight years ago a certain Li Kao had been awarded first place among all the scholars in China, and had received an appointment as a full research fellow in the Forest of Culture Academy.

I turned from the picture of the rose and gazed with wide eyes at the ancient gentleman upon the mattress. Could this be the great Li Kao, whose brain had caused the empire to bow at his feet? Who had been elevated to the highest rank of mandarin, and whose mighty head was now being used as a pillow for drunken flies? I stood there, rooted in wonder, while the wrinkles began to heave like the waves of a gray and storm-tossed sea. Two red-rimmed eyes appeared, and a long spotted tongue slid out and painfully licked parched lips.

“Wine!” he wheezed.

I searched for an unbroken jar, but there wasn't one. “Venerable Sir, I fear that all the wine is gone,” I said politely.

His eyes creaked toward a shabby purse that lay in a puddle. “Money!” he wheezed.

I picked up the purse and opened it. “Venerable Sir, I fear that the money is gone too,” I said.

His eyeballs rolled up toward the top of his head, and I decided to change the subject.

“Have I the honor of addressing the great Li Kao, foremost among the scholars of China? I have a problem to place before such a man, but all that I can afford to pay is five thousand copper cash,” I said sadly.

A hand like a claw slid from the sleeve of his robe. “Give!” he wheezed.

I placed the string of coins in his hand, and his fingers closed around it, taking possession. Then the fingers opened.

“Take this five thousand copper cash,” he said, enunciating with a painful effort, “and return as soon as possible with all the wine that you can buy.”

“At once, Venerable Sir,” I sighed.

Having performed similar chores for Uncle Nung more times than I cared to count I judged it wiser to buy some food as well, and when I returned I had two small jars of wine, two small bowls of congee, and a valuable lesson in the buying power of copper coins. I propped the old man's head up and poured wine down his throat until he had revived enough to grab the jar and finish the rest of it at a gulp, and long practice enabled me to slip a bowl of congee into his fingers and get it to his lips before he realized that it wasn't wine. Two spots of color had appeared in his cheeks when he finished it, and after the second jar of wine he willingly attacked the second bowl of congee.

“Who you?” he said between slurps.

“My surname is Lu and my personal name is Yu, but I am not to be confused with the eminent author of The Classic of Tea. Everyone calls me Number Ten Ox,” I said.

“My surname is Li and my personal name is Kao, and there is a slight flaw in my character,” he said matter-of-factly. “You got a problem?”

I told him the whole story, and I was weeping at the end. He listened with interest, and had me go over it again, and then he pitched the empty bowl over his shoulder so that it smashed upon the rest of the crockery. When he hopped up from his mattress I was astonished to see that he was as spry as a goat.

“Number Ten Ox, eh? Muscles are highly overrated, but yours may come in handy,” he said. “We will have to hurry, and for a variety of reasons you may be required to twist somebody's head off.”

I could scarcely believe my ears.

“Master Li, do you mean that you will come to my village and find out how a plague can learn to count?” I cried.

“I already know how your plague learned to count,” he said calmly. “Bend over.”

I was so stunned that I bent over backward until he advised me to try it the other way around. Master Li hopped nimbly upon my back and wrapped his arms around my neck and stuck his tiny feet into the pockets of my tunic. He was as light as a feather.

“Number Ten Ox, I am no longer as fast on my feet as I used to be, and I suspect that time may be crucial. I would suggest that you take aim at your village and start running like hell,” said the ancient sage.

My head was spinning, but my heart was wild with hope. I took off like a deer. Li Kao ducked as I bolted through the door and my head struck something, and when I skidded from the alley and glanced back I saw that my head had struck the bottom of an old shabby sign, and that a half-closed eye was spinning around and around as though it was peering at mysteries in every corner of the empire.

I have no idea whether or not it was premonition, but the image remained with me throughout our journey back to Ku-fu.

Auntie Hua looked somewhat askance at the sage I had brought back to our village, but not for long. That antiquated gentleman stank of wine, and his robe was as filthy as his beard, but such was his air of authority that even the abbot accepted his leadership without question, and Li Kao walked from bed to bed, peeling back the children's eyelids and grunting with satisfaction when he saw that the pupils of their eyes were not fixed and dilated.

“Good!” he grunted. “It is not a question of teaching a plague how to count, which is quite simple, but of which agent was used, and I had feared that there might be brain damage. Now I shall need samples of mulberry leaves from every grove, clearly labeled so that we will know where they came from.”

We raced to do his bidding, Basket after basket of mulberry leaves was carried up the hill to the monastery, and Li Kao placed them in vials and added chemicals, while the abbot adjusted the fires beneath alchemists’ stoves. When the eighteenth batch of leaves turned the chemicals pale orange Li Kao began to work with great speed, boiling the leaves to a pulp, adding more chemicals a drop at a time, increasing the heat and reducing the liquid. The pale-orange color began to turn green. When the liquid had been reduced to nothingness a tiny pile of black crystals remained in the vial, and Li Kao placed half of them into a new vial to which he added some colorless liquid. Then he straightened up and stretched wearily.

“Another minute and I will be sure,” he said, and he walked over to the window. Some of the younger children who had escaped the plague were wandering disconsolately in the abbot's garden, and Li Kao pointed to a small boy. “Watch,” he said.

We watched and nothing happened. Then the boy absent-mindedly plucked a leaf from a tree, and he lifted it to his mouth and began to chew.

“All children do that,” Master Li said quietly. “The children of your village who were old enough to work in basket brigades chewed mulberry leaves, but the older they were, the more self-conscious they became about doing childish things, and that is why the seizures were limited to children between the ages of eight and thirteen. You see, we are not dealing with a plague but with an agent that was deliberately designed to kill silkworms.”

He turned and pointed to the vial. The liquid had the evilest color that I had ever seen: slick and green and slimy and garish, like gangrene.

“That is ku poison, for which there is no known antidote,” he said grimly. “It was smeared upon the leaves in the mulberry grove that belongs to a certain Pawnbroker Fang.”

A lynch mob poured down the hill, but the warehouse door was locked. “Ox!” the abbot snarled. I kicked the door halfway across the room, and a pathetic sight met our eyes. Ma the Grub was lying on his back. Traces of ku poison smeared his lips, and he was as dead as Confucius. Pawnbroker Fang was still alive, but barely. His glazed eyes tried to focus on us, and his lips moved.

“We never intended to… It was the silkworms,” he whispered. “If they died… the IOUs… own everything… Now my daughter…”

He was almost gone. The abbot knelt and placed a small jade Buddha in the pawnbroker's hands and began to pray for his miserable soul. Fang's eyes opened one last time, and he looked blindly down at the jade Buddha, and he made a truly heroic effort.

“Cheap, very cheap,” he sneered. “No more than two hundred…”

Then he too was dead.

Li Kao gazed down at the bodies with a rather strange expression on his face, and then he shrugged his shoulders.

“So be it,” he said. “I suggest that we leave them here to rot and return to the monastery. We have far more important things to worry about.”

Pawnbroker Fang and Ma the Grub had almost certainly killed the children of my village, but when I looked back at the bodies I could find no anger in my heart.

The abbot led the way. We lit candles, and our shadows loomed like twisted giants upon the gray stone walls as we trudged down the long winding flight of steps to the great vaulted cellar where the scrolls were stacked in long rows of wooden shelves. Our monastery is very old, and over the centuries the abbots had added to the library. The medical texts numbered in the hundreds, and I helped the novices bring scroll after scroll to the long tables where the abbot and his bonzes checked every reference to ku poison. The references were extensive, since the poison has been a favorite agent for assassination for nearly two thousand years, and the information was always the same: The victims’ vital signs would drop so low that they expended almost no energy at all and could last for months, but nothing could restore them to consciousness, and death was inevitable. There was no antidote.

The poison was said to have been imported from Tibet. Li Kao was the only scholar who was qualified to interpret the ancient Tibetan texts such as Chalog Job Jad, and he said that the abbot's copy of Zaraga Dib Jad was so rare that there might not be another one in existence. The rustle of the old parchment was punctuated by Master Li's soft curses. The Tibetan physicians had been magnificent at describing treatments but terrible at describing symptoms, and apparently it had been taboo to mention by name any agent whose sole purpose was murder—possibly, he pointed out, because the alchemists who invented such things belonged to the same monkish orders as the physicians. Another problem was the antiquity of the texts, which were faded and spotted to the point of illegibility. The sun had set and was rising again when Master Li bent close to a page in Jud Chi, The Eight Branches of the Four Principles of Special Therapy.

“I can make out the ancient ideograph for ‘star,’ and next to it is a badly spotted character that could mean many things, but among them is the ideograph for ‘wine vessel,’ ” he muttered. “What would you get if you combined the ideographs of star and wine vessel?”

“You would get the logograph ‘to awake from a drunken stupor,’ ” said the abbot.

“Precisely, and ‘drunken stupor,’ if used figuratively, is such a maddeningly vague description of symptoms that it could mean almost anything. The interesting thing is that the preceding text suggests seizures and clawing of air,” said Master Li. “Can we say that the children are now lying in stupors?”

He bent close to the text and read aloud.

“To awake from a drunken stupor, only one treatment is effective, and this will succeed only if the physician has access to the rarest and mightiest of all healing agents….” He paused and scratched his head. “The ancient ideograph for ‘ginseng’ is accompanied by an exceptionally elaborate construction that I would translate as ‘Great Root of Power.’ Has anyone ever heard of a ginseng Great Root of Power?”

Nobody had. Li Kao went back to the text.

“The Great Root must be distilled to the essence, and three drops must be applied to the tongue of the patient. The treatment must be repeated three times, and if it is truly the Great Root, the patient will recover almost immediately. Without such a root no cure is possible….” Master Li paused for emphasis. “And while the patient may remain in his stupor for months, he cannot be awakened, and death is inevitable.”

“Ku poison!” the abbot exclaimed.

Now the bonzes checked every reference to ginseng, which meant almost every page because at one time or another the plant had been prescribed for almost every ailment known to man, but nowhere was there a reference to a Great Root of Power. We had reached a dead end.

Li Kao suddenly smacked the table and jumped to his feet.

“Back to Pawnbroker Fang's office at the warehouse!” he commanded, and he started up the stairs at a trot, with the rest of us at his heels. “The Guild of Pawnbrokers represents the world's second-oldest profession, and their records are older than the oracle bones of An-yang. The Guild publishes lists of extremely rare and valuable items that might escape the untutored eye, and a Great Root of Power, if such a thing exists, will probably be worth ten times its weight in diamonds and will look like a dog turd,” he explained. “A fellow like Fang would undoubtedly subscribe to the entire list, in hopes of swindling an heir who does not know the value of his inheritance.”

He trotted rapidly down the path and through the door of the warehouse, and then he trotted right over the spot where two bodies should have been lying.

“Those fellows?” he said in answer to our stunned expressions. “Oh, they got up and took to their heels a long time ago.”

I grabbed the abbot and held him, but Big Hong and a number of others were closing in on the ancient sage in a menacing manner.

“Do you mean that you knew all along that those murderers were faking their suicides?” the abbot roared.

“Of course, but one should be careful about charging them with murder. So far as I know, they haven't killed anyone yet, and they certainly never intended to,” Master Li said calmly. “Reverend Sir, have you considered the plight of Pawnbroker Fang's children? His daughter will probably die, but even if she recovers, what sort of a life could she look forward to when she discovered that her father had been torn to pieces by the people of her own village? Her little brother would be condemned to a life of shame at the age of five, which seems a trifle unfair. Surely there is a family that will care for innocent children, and explain that their father was only trying to improve the silk, but that he made a mistake and ran away, and all is forgiven.”

I released the abbot, who bowed to the sage, and Big Hong cleared his throat.

“My wife and I will take Fang's Flea,” he said huskily. “Fawn, too, if she lives. They will have a loving home.”

“Good man,” said Master Li. “As for Pawnbroker Fang and Ma the Grub, why not let them punish themselves? Greed such as theirs gnaws at the vitals like packs of rats, day and night, never ceasing, and when they arrive in Hell they will have already experienced whatever torments the Yama Kings may decree. Now let's get to work.”

Fang's files were so extensive that they filled two large cabinets and a trunk, and the abbot found the first reference to a Root of Power. We had no idea whether it was the same as a Great Root of Power. The bonzes found three other references, but only one of them was contemporary.

“Thirty years ago, at a price of three hundred talents, which I cannot possibly believe, a Root of Power was sold to the Ancestress,” said the abbot, looking up from his lists. “There is no further mention of it, and I assume that it is still in the dear lady's possession.”

Li Kao looked as though he had bitten into a green persimmon.

“If that woman laid eyes on me, she'd have my head in two seconds,” he said sourly. Then he had second thoughts. “Come to think of it, it would be a miracle if she recognized me. She couldn't have been more than sixteen when I was summoned to the emperor's palace, and that was a good fifty years ago.”

“Master Li, you were summoned by an emperor?” I asked with wide eyes.

“Several, but this particular one was old Wen,” he said. “In the carefree days of my youth I once sold him some shares in a mustard mine.”

We stared at him.

“A mustard mine?” the abbot said weakly.

“I was trying to win a bet concerning the intelligence of emperors,” he explained. “When I was summoned to court I assumed that I was going to be rewarded with the Death of Ten Thousand Cuts, but Emperor Wen had something else in mind. Oddly enough, it was sericulture. Some barbarians were trying to learn the secret of silk, and the emperor thought that they might be getting close to the truth. ‘Li Kao,’ he commanded, ‘sell these dogs a mustard mine!’ It was one of the most ghastly experiences of my life.”

Li Kao turned and trotted back out the door, and we followed like sheep as he started back toward the monastery. I was learning that there were many sides to Master Li, and I listened with fascination.

“I had to turn their brains to butter with strong wine, and every morning I pried my eyelids open and glared at red-bearded barbarians who were snoring in puddles of vomit,” he said. “They had the constitutions of billy goats, and it was a month and a half before I was able to persuade them that silk is extracted from the semen of snow-white dragons that breed only in caverns concealed in the mysterious Mongolian glaciers. Before sailing away with the sad news, their leader came to see me. He was an oaf named Procopius, and the wine had not improved his appearance. ‘O great and mighty Master Li, pray impart to me the Secret of Wisdom!’ he bawled. A silly smile was sliding down the side of his face like a dripping watercolor, and his eyeballs resembled a pair of pink pigeon eggs that were gently bouncing in saucers of yellow wonton soup. To my great credit I never batted an eyelash. ‘Take a large bowl,’ I said. ‘Fill it with equal measures of fact, fantasy, history, mythology, science, superstition, logic, and lunacy. Darken the mixture with bitter tears, brighten it with howls of laughter, toss in three thousand years of civilization, bellow kan pei—which means “dry cup”—and drink to the dregs.’ Procopius stared at me. ‘And I will be wise?’ he asked. ‘Better,’ I said. ‘You will be Chinese.’ ”

Li Kao led the way back to the infirmary and slowly walked up the long line of beds. Weariness bowed his shoulders, and in the bright morning sunlight his wrinkled skin was nearly transparent.

The children of Ku-fu looked like wax effigies. Fang's Fawn had always been pretty, but now the bone structure was showing beneath her smooth skin. She was exquisite as a carving in white jade is exquisite, without warmth or life. On the bed next to her was a woodcutter's daughter named Bone Helmet, a thin, plain girl who had been gentle and loving. Since she had been old enough to thread a needle, she had worked on her father's burial garment, and he had proudly worn it at every festival, and now the heartbroken father had dressed his daughter in his own garment. Bone Helmet looked incredibly small and helpless in a blue silk robe that was five times too big for her, and the irony of “longevity” that she had embroidered over it in gold thread was not very funny.

Favorite toys had been placed near each child's limp hands, and the parents sat silent and helpless beside the beds. Mournful howls drifted up from the village, where lonesome dogs were searching for their young masters.

Li Kao sighed and straightened his shoulders and beckoned for me to come closer. “Number Ten Ox, I have no idea whether or not a Root of Power is the same as a Great Root of Power, and for all I know the only use for such a thing is to mix it with glue and use it to repair sandals,” he said quietly. “Two things I do know. Anyone who tries to steal a valuable item from the Ancestress is begging for an unpleasant death, and I am now too old to attempt it without having some muscle to back me up. I have accepted your five thousand copper cash, and you are my client, and the decision is yours.”

“Master Li, when do we leave?” I asked eagerly.

I was ready to race out the door, but he looked at me wryly.

“Ox, if the children die suddenly there is nothing that we can do about it, and if the textbook prognosis holds true, they should last for months. The worst thing that we could do would be to arrive at our destination weary and unprepared,” he said patiently. “I'm going to get some rest, and if you can't sleep, perhaps the abbot will be kind enough to expand your education on the subject of the quest. Ginseng is the most interesting as well as the most valuable plant in the whole world.”

He yawned and stretched.

“We'll have to go back through Peking to pick up some money, and we'll leave at the first watch,” he said.

Li Kao lay down in the bonzes’ bedchamber. I had never been so wide awake in my life. The abbot took me into his study for instruction, and what I learned about ginseng was so interesting that I was almost able to forget the children for an hour.

4. Root of Lightning

No medicinal plant is quite so controversial, the abbot explained. There are eminent physicians who swear that it is no more effective than strong tea, and there are those who swear that it is effective in treating anemia, cachexia, scrofula, gastrointestinal catarrh, and malfunctions of the lungs, kidneys, liver, heart, and genital organs. Long ago when the plant was plentiful, peasants would mix the ginseng root with owl brains and turtle fat and smear the mixture over the heads of patients to cure insanity, or blend it with the powdered horns of wapiti deer and sprinkle it over the patients’ chests to cure tuberculosis. Strangest of all is the viewpoint of the professional ginseng hunter, because for him it is not a plant but a religion.

The legends are quite marvelous. Ginseng hunters refer to the plant as chang-diang shen, “the root of lightning,” because it is believed that it appears only on the spot where a small mountain spring has been dried up by a lightning bolt. After a life of three hundred years the green juice turns white and the plant acquires a soul. It is then able to take on human form, but it never becomes truly human because ginseng does not know the meaning of selfishness.

It is totally good, and will happily sacrifice itself to aid the pure in heart. In human form it can appear as a man or as a beautiful woman, but more often it takes the form of a child, plump and brown, with red cheeks and laughing eyes. Long ago, evil men discovered that a ginseng child can be captured by tying it with a red ribbon, and that is why the plant is now so hard to find, the hunters say. It has been forced to run away from evil men, and it is for that reason that ginseng hunting has become one of the most hazardous occupations upon the face of the earth.

The ginseng hunter must display the purity of his intentions right from the start, so he carries no weapons. He wears a conical hat made from birch bark, and shoes of tarred pigskin, and an oiled apron to protect him from dew, and a badger skin attached to his belt, on which he sits when the ground is wet. He carries small spades made from bone and two small pliable knives that are quite useless for defense. Along with a little food and wine, that is all he has, and his quest takes him into the wildest mountains where no men have dared to pass before. Tigers and bears are his companions, and the hunter fears strange creatures that are even more dangerous than tigers—such as the tiny owls that will call him by name and lead him into the Forest of Oblivion from which no man returns, and the bandits that are more brutal than savage bears and who crouch beside the few paths in order to murder an unarmed hunter and steal his roots.

Ginseng hunters, when they have thoroughly searched an area and found nothing, will mark the barks of trees with kao chu kua, which are tiny secret signs that tell other hunters not to waste their time there. Hunters would not dream of deceiving each other, because they are not competitors but fellow worshippers. Where a find has been made a shrine is raised, and other hunters who pass will leave offerings of stones, or scraps of cloth. If a hunter finds a plant that is not mature enough he will put stakes around it with his mark on them. If other hunters find the place they will pray and offer gifts, but they would rather cut their throats than take the plant for themselves. The behavior of a man who makes a find is very strange.

A weatherworn, clawed, half-starved ginseng hunter will occasionally have the good fortune to make his way through dense underbrush and come upon a small plant with four branches that have violet flowers and a fifth branch in the center that rises higher than the others and is crowned with red berries. The stalk is deep red, and the leaves are deep green on the outside and pale green on the inside, He will drop to his knees, his eyes streaming with tears, and spread his arms wide to show that he is unarmed. Then he will kowtow and bang his head three times upon the ground, and he will pray,

“O Great Spirit, do not leave me! I have come with a pure heart and soul, after freeing myself from sins and evil thoughts. Do not leave me.”

Then the hunter covers his eyes and lies still for many minutes. If the ginseng plant does not trust him, and wishes to change into a beautiful woman or a plump brown child and run away, the hunter does not want to see where it has gone. At length he opens his eyes, and if the plant is still there his joy is not so much from the fact that he has found a valuable root as it is from the fact that he has been judged and found to be pure in heart.

He takes the seeds and carefully replants them so that the ginseng can grow again. The leaves and flowers are stripped and ceremoniously burned, with many prayers. The hunter's bone spades are used to dig up the root, which is forked and has something of a human shape—skeptics point to the shape as the basis of an ignorant folk religion—and the small pliable knives are used to clean the tiny tendrils called beards, which are supposed to be crucial to the curative powers. The root is wrapped in birch bark and sprinkled with pepper to keep insects away, and the happy hunter begins the long, dangerous trek back toward the safety of civilization.

“Where his throat will probably be slit by somebody like Ma the Grub,” the abbot said sourly. “Who will be swindled by somebody like Pawnbroker Fang, who will sell the root to somebody like the Ancestress, who will squat like a huge venomous toad upon a folk deity whose sole purpose in life is to aid the pure in heart.”

“Reverend Sir, I have never heard of the Ancestress,” I said shyly.

The abbot leaned back and rubbed his weary eyes.

“What a woman,” he said with grudging admiration. “Ox, she began her career as an eleven-year-old imperial concubine, and by the time she was sixteen she had Emperor Wen wrapped around her fingers to the point where he took her as his number three wife. The Ancestress promptly poisoned the emperor, strangled his other wives, decapitated all but the youngest of his sons, elevated that weakling to the throne—Emperor Yang—and settled down behind the scenes as the real ruler of China.”

“Reverend Sir, I have heard all my life that Emperor Yang was a depraved and vicious ruler who nearly destroyed the empire,” I exclaimed.

“That's the official version, with parricide tossed in,” the abbot said drily. “Actually he was a timid little fellow, and quite likable. The real ruler was the Ancestress, which is a title that she awarded herself and which carries a certain Confucian finality. Her reign was brief, but gorgeous. She set about bankrupting the empire by decreeing that every leaf that fell in her imperial pleasure garden must be replaced by an artificial leaf fashioned from the costliest silk. Her imperial pleasure barge was 270 feet long, four decks high, and boasted a three-story throne room and 120 cabins decorated in gold and jade. The problem was finding a pond big enough for the thing, so she conscripted 3,600,000 peasants and forced them to link the Yellow and Yangtze rivers by digging a ditch 40 feet deep, 50 yards wide, and 1,000 miles long. The Grand Canal has been invaluable for commerce, but the important thing for the Ancestress was that three million men died during the construction, and a figure like that confirmed her godlike grandeur.

“When the canal was finished,” the abbot said, “the Ancestress invited a few friends to accompany her on an important mission of state to Yang-chou. The fleet of pleasure barges stretched sixty miles from stem to stern, was manned by 9,000 boatmen, and was towed by 80,000 peasants, some of whom survived. The important mission of state was to watch the moon-flowers bloom, but Emperor Yang did not watch the moon-flowers. The excesses of the Ancestress were being performed in his name, so he spent the entire trip staring into a mirror. ‘What an excellent head!’ he kept whimpering. ‘I wonder who will cut it off?’ The chopping was performed by some friends of the great soldier Li Shih-min, who eventually took the imperial name T'ang T'ai-tsung and who sits upon the throne today. T'ang shows every sign of becoming the greatest emperor in history, but I will humbly submit that he made a bad mistake when he assumed that little Yang was responsible for the crimes of the Sui Dynasty and allowed the Ancestress to retire in luxury.”

I suppose that I was pale as a ghost. The abbot reached out and patted one of my knees.

“Ox, you will be traveling with a man who has been walking into dangerous situations for at least ninety years, assuming that he began at your age, and he is still alive to tell about it. Besides, Master Li knows far more about the Ancestress than I do, and he is sure to exploit her weaknesses.”

The abbot paused to consider his words. Bees droned and flies buzzed, and I wondered if the knocking of my knees was audible. A few minutes ago I had been ready to dash out like a racehorse, and now I would prefer to dart down a hole like a rabbit.

“You are a good boy, and I would not like to meet the man who can surpass you in physical strength, but you know very little about this wicked world,” the abbot said slowly. “To tell the truth, I am not so worried about the damage to your body as I am about the damage to your soul. You see, you know nothing whatsoever about men like Master Li, and he said that he would stop in Peking to acquire some money, and I rather suspect…”

His voice trailed off, and he groped for the proper words. Then he decided that it would take several years to prepare me properly.

“Number Ten Ox, our only hope is Master Li,” he said somberly. “You must do as he commands, and I shall be praying for your immortal soul.”

With that rather alarming blessing he left me to return to the children, and I went out to say farewell to my family and friends. Later I was able to catch some sleep. In my dreams I was surrounded by plump brown children as I attempted to tie a red ribbon around a root of lightning in a garden where three million fake silk leaves rustled in a breeze that stank of three million real rotting bodies.

5. Of Goats, Gold, and Miser Shen

“A spring wind is like wine,” wrote Chang Chou, “a summer wind is like tea, an autumn wind is like smoke, and a winter wind is like ginger or mustard.” The breeze that blew through Peking was tea touched with smoke, and spiced with the fragrance of plum, poppy, peony, plane trees, lotus, narcissus, orchid, wild rose, and the sweet-smelling leaves of banana and bamboo. The breeze was also pungent with pork fat, perspiration, sour wine, and the bewildering odors of more people than I had dreamed there were in the whole world.

The first time I was there I had been too intent upon reaching the Street of Eyes to pay much attention to the Moon Festival, but now I gaped at the jugglers and acrobats who were filling the air with clubs and bodies, and at girls who were as tiny and delicate as porcelain dolls, and who danced on the tips of their toes upon enormous artificial lotus blossoms. The palanquins and carriages of the nobility moved grandly through the streets, and men and women laughed and wept in open-air theatres, and gamblers screamed and swore around dice games and cricket fights. I envied the elegance and assurance of the gentlemen who basked in the practiced admiration of singsong girls—or tiptoed into the Alley of Four Hundred Forbidden Delights if they wanted more action. The most beautiful young women that I had ever seen were pounding drums in brightly painted tents as they sang and chanted the Flower Drum Songs. On almost every corner I saw old ladies with twinkling eyes who sold soft drinks and candied fruits while they cried, “Aiieeee! Aiieeee! Come closer, my children! Spread ears like elephants, and I shall tell you the tale of the great Ehr-lang, and of the time when he was devoured by the hideous Transcendent Pig!”

Master Li had sharp elbows. He moved easily through the throngs, followed by yelps of pain, and he pointed out the landmarks and explained that the strange sounds of the city were as comprehensible to urban ears as barnyard sounds were to mine. The twanging of long tuning forks, for example, meant that barbers had set up shop, and porcelain spoons rapping against bowls advertised tiny dumplings in hot syrup, and clanging copper saucers meant that soft drinks made from wild plums and sweet and sour crab apples were for sale.

As he moved toward his destination, I assumed in my innocence that he was intending to acquire some money by visiting a wealthy friend, or a moneylender who owed him a favor. I blush to admit that not once did I pause to consider the state of the bamboo shack in which I had found him or the nature of friends that he was likely to have. I was quite surprised when he turned abruptly from the main street and trotted down an alley that reeked of refuse. Rats glared at us with fierce glittering eyes, and fermenting garbage bubbled and stank, and I stepped nervously over a corpse—or so I thought until I smelled the fellow's breath. He was not dead but dead-drunk, and at the end of the alley, the blue flag of a wine seller hung above a sagging wooden shack.

I later learned that the wineshop of One-Eyed Wong was the most notorious in all China, but at the time I merely noticed that the low dark room was swarming with vermin and flies, and that a thug with a jade earring that dangled from one chewed earlobe did not approve of the product.

“You Peking weaklings call this watery piss wine?” he roared. “Back in Soochow we make wine so strong that it knocks you out for a month if you smell it on somebody's breath!”

One-Eyed Wong turned to his wife, who was blending the stuff behind the counter.

“We must add more cayenne, my turtledove.”

“Two hundred and twenty-two transcendent miseries!” wailed Fat Fu. “We have run out of cayenne!”

“In that case, O light of my existence, we shall substitute the stomach acid of diseased sheep,” One-Eyed Wong said calmly.

The thug with the earring whipped out a dagger and lurched around the room, savagely slashing the air.

“You Peking weaklings call these things flies?” he yelled. “Back in Soochow we have flies so big that we clip their wings, hitch them to plows, and use them for oxen!”

“Perhaps a few flattened flies might add bouquet,” One-Eyed Wong said thoughtfully.

“Yours is genius of the highest order, O noble stallion of the bedchamber, but flies are too risky,” said Fat Fu. “They might overpower our famous flavor of crushed cockroaches.”

The thug did not approve of Master Li. “You Peking weaklings call these midgets men?” he howled. “Back in Soochow we grow men so big that their heads brush the clouds while their feet are planted upon the ground!”

“Indeed? In my humble village,” Master Li said sweetly, “we grow men so big that their upper lips lick the stars, while their lower lips nuzzle the earth.”

The thug thought about it.

“And where are their bodies?”

“They are like you,” said Master Li. “All mouth.”

His hand shot out, a blade glinted, blood spurted, and he calmly dropped the thug's earring into his pocket, along with the ear that was attached to it. “My surname is Li and my personal name is Kao, and there is a slight flaw in my character,” he said with a polite bow. “This is my esteemed client, Number Ten Ox, who is about to strike you over the head with a blunt object.”

I wasn't quite sure what a blunt object was, but I was spared the embarrassment of asking when the thug sat down at a table and began to cry. Li Kao exchanged a bawdy joke with One-Eyed Wong, pinched Fat Fu's vast behind, and beckoned for me to join them at a table with a jar of wine that was not of their own manufacture.

“Ox, it occurs to me that your education may be deficient in certain basic aspects of human intercourse, and I suggest that you pay close attention,” he said. He placed the thug's jade earring, which was quite beautiful, upon the table. “A lovely thing,” he said.

“Trash,” sneered One-Eyed Wong.

“Cheap imitation jade,” sneered Fat Fu.

“Carved by a blind man,” sneered One-Eyed Wong.

“Worst earring I ever saw,” sneered Fat Fu.

“How much?” asked One-Eyed Wong.

“It is yours for a song,” said Master Li. “In this case a song means a large purse of fake gold coins, two elegant suits of clothes, the temporary use of a palatial palanquin and suitably attired bearers, a cart of garbage, and a goat.”

One-Eyed Wong did some mental addition.

“No goat.”

“But I must have a goat.”

“It isn't that good an earring.”

“It doesn't have to be that good a goat.”

“No goat.”

“But you not only get the earring, you also get the ear that is attached to it,” said Master Li.

The proprietors bent over the table and examined the bloody thing with interest.

“This is not a very good ear,” sneered One-Eyed Wong.

“It is a terrible ear,” sneered Fat Fu.

“Revolting,” sneered One-Eyed Wong.

“Worst ear I ever saw,” sneered Fat Fu.

“Besides, what good is it?” asked One-Eyed Wong.

“Look at the vile creature it came from, and imagine the filth that has been hissed into it.” Master Li bent over the table and whispered, “Let us assume that you have an enemy.”

“Enemy,” said One-Eyed Wong.

“He is a wealthy man with a country estate.”

“Estate,” said Fat Fu.

“A stream flows through the estate.”

“Stream,” said One-Eyed Wong.

“It is midnight. You climb the fence and cleverly elude the dogs. Silent as a shadow you slip to the top of the stream and peer around slyly. Then you take this revolting ear from your pocket and dip it into the water, and words of such vileness flow out that the fish are poisoned for miles, and your enemy's cattle drink from the stream and drop dead on the spot, and his lush irrigated fields wither into bleak desolation, and his children splash in their bathing pool and acquire leprosy, and all for the price of a goat.”

Fat Fu buried her face in her hands.

“Ten thousand blessings upon the mother who brought Li Kao into the world,” she sobbed, while One-Eyed Wong dabbed at his eyes with a filthy handkerchief and sniffled, “Sold.”

In the country my life had been attuned to the rhythm of the seasons, and things happened gradually. Now I had entered the whirlwind world of Li Kao, and I believe that I was in a state of shock. At any rate, the next thing that I remember was riding through the streets with Li Kao and Fat Fu in a palatial palanquin, while One-Eyed Wong marched ahead of us and bashed the lower classes out of the way with a gold-tipped staff. One-Eyed Wong was dressed as the majordomo of a great house, and Fat Fu was attired as a noble nurse, and Master Li and I dazzled the eyes in tunics of sea-green silk that were secured by silver girdles with borders of jade. The jeweled pendants that dangled from our fine tasseled hats tinkled in the breeze, and we languidly waved gold-splattered Szech'uen fans.

A servant brought up the rear, dragging a cart filled with garbage and a mangy goat. The servant was a thug of low appearance with a bandage around his head, and he kept whimpering, “My ear!”

“The house of Miser Shen,” said Fat Fu, pointing ahead to a large unpainted building in front of which cheap incense burned before the statues of the Immortal of Commerical Profits, the Celestial Discoverer of Buried Treasures, the Lord of Lucrative Legacies, and every other greedy deity in the Heavenly Ministry of Wealth. “Miser Shen owns eight flourishing businesses, six houses in six different cities, one carriage, one sedan chair, one horse, three cows, ten pigs, twenty chickens, eight savage guard dogs, seven half-starved servants, and one young and beautiful concubine named Pretty Ping,” said Fat Fu. “He acquired all of them by foreclosing mortgages.”

Ahead of us was an old peasant with a mule that was hauling a stone-wheeled cart that belonged in a museum.

“Manure!” he shouted in a quavering melancholy voice. “Fresh manuuuuuuure!”

Inside the house a rasping voice exclaimed, “Stone wheels? Stone wheels in Peking?” Shutters flew open and an extraordinarily ugly gentleman stuck his head out. “Great Buddha, they are stone wheels!” he yelled, and he vanished inside the house. A moment later I heard him scream, “Cook! Cook! Don't waste a second!” And then the front door crashed open and Miser Shen and his cook raced outside and fell in behind the ancient cart.

They were carrying armloads of kitchen cutlery, which they began to sharpen against the slowly revolving stone wheels.

“At least two copper coins saved, Master!” the cook cried.

“What a bonanza!” howled Miser Shen.

“Manure!” cried the peasant. “Fresh manuuuure!”

Another pair of shutters flew open, and Fat Fu pointed toward a heart-shaped face and a pair of luscious almond eyes.

“Pretty Ping,” she said. “Pretty Ping owns one cheap dress, one cheap coat, one cheap hat, one pair of cheap sandals, one pair of cheap shoes, one cheap comb, one cheap ring, and enough humiliation to last twenty lifetimes.”

“More cutlery!” howled Miser Shen. “Bring the hoes and shovels too!”

“One million mortifications,” moaned Pretty Ping, and the shutters slammed shut.

“Manure!” the old peasant cried. “Fresh manuuuure!”

“The heat,” Master Li panted, fluttering his fan in front of his face. “The stench. The noise!”

“Our lord is weary and must rest!” Fat Fu shouted to One-Eyed Wong.

“Even this pigpen will do,” Master Li said weakly.

One-Eyed Wong rapped Miser Shen's shoulder with his gold-tipped staff.

“You there!” he bellowed. “A thousand blessings have descended upon you, for Lord Li of Kao has condescended to rest in your miserable hovel!”

“Eh?” said Miser Shen, and he gaped at the gold coin that One-Eyed Wong slapped into his hand.

“Lord Li of Kao shall also require a suite for his beloved ward, Lord Lu of Yu!” bellowed One-Eyed Wong, slapping a second gold coin into Miser Shen's hand.

“Eh?” said Miser Shen, and a third gold coin smacked into his palm.

“Lord Li of Kao shall also require a suite for his goat!” bellowed One-Eyed Wong.

“Your master must be made of gold!” Miser Shen gasped.

“No,” One-Eyed Wong said absentmindedly. “His goat is.”

A few minutes later I found myself in Miser Shen's best room with Li Kao, the goat, and the garbage. The fake gold coins were concealed inside fish heads and mildewed mangoes, and Li Kao fed a shovelful of the stuff to the goat. This was followed by a pint of castor oil, and shortly thereafter he raked through the mess on the floor with a pair of silver tongs and extracted two glittering coins.

“What!” he cried. “Only two gold coins? Miserable beast, do not arouse the wrath of Lord Li of Kao!”

A dull thump from the hallway suggested that Miser Shen had toppled from a peephole in a dead faint. Li Kao gave him time to recover, and then tried again with the garbage and castor oil.

“Four? Four gold coins?” he yelled furiously. “Insolent animal, Lord Li of Kao requires four hundred coins a day to maintain the style to which he is accustomed!”

The dull thump shook the flimsy wall. After Miser Shen recovered, Master Li tried for a third time, and now his rage knew no bounds.

“Six? Six gold coins? Cretinous creture, have you never heard of geometric progression? Two, four, eight, not two, four, six! I shall sell you for dog food and return to the Glittering Glades of Golden Grain for a better goat!”

The sound of the thump suggested that Miser Shen would be unconscious for quite some time, and Master Li led me out into the hallway. As we stepped over the prostrate body he took my arm and said quite seriously, “Number Ten Ox, if we are to survive our visit to the Ancestress you must learn that a soldier's best shield is a light heart. If you continue with that long face and soggy soul you will be the death of us, and we will attend to the matter immediately.” He trotted briskly up the stairs and opened doors until he found the right one.

“Who are you?” cried Pretty Ping.

“My surname is Li and my personal name is Kao, and there is a slight flaw in my character,” he said with a polite bow. “This is my esteemed client, Number Ten Ox.”

“But what are you doing in my bedchamber?” cried Pretty Ping.

“I am paying my respects, and my client is preparing to spend the night,” said Master Li.

“But where is Miser Shen?” cried Pretty Ping.

“Miser Shen is preparing to spend the night with a goat.”

“A goat?”

“It will be a very expensive goat.”

“A very ex… What are you doing?” cried Pretty Ping.

“I am undressing,” I said, because I had been well brought up and I would never dream of contradicting so venerable a sage as Li Kao. Besides, I had been told to obey him by the abbot, who was praying for my soul.

“I shall scream!” cried Pretty Ping.

“I sincerely hope so. Ah, if I could only be ninety again,” Master Li said nostalgically. “Ox, flex a few muscles for the young lady.”

Pretty Ping stared at me, as Li Kao turned and trotted back down the stairs. I grinned back at a young lady whose family had fallen into the clutches of a usurer, and whose beauty had condemned her to the embraces of an elderly gentleman who was equipped with a pair of glittering little pig eyes, a bald and mottled skull, a sharp curving nose like a parrot's beak, the loose flabby lips of a camel, and two drooping elephant ears from which sprouted thick tufts of coarse gray hair. Her luscious lips parted.

“Help,” said Pretty Ping.

The noises downstairs suggested that Miser Shen was acquiring a goat, some castor oil, and a load of garbage, and Pretty Ping and I took the opportunity to get acquainted. In China when young people wish to become acquainted they usually start by playing Fluttering Butterflies, because there is no better way to get to know somebody than to play Fluttering Butterflies.

“Eat!” Miser Shen screamed to the goat.

After young people have become acquainted it is customary to warm things up with the Kingfisher Union, because it is impossible to engage in the Kingfisher Union without becoming close friends.

“Gold!” screamed Miser Shen.

A cup of wine is then called for, and a discussion of relative merits that is usually resolved in favor of Hounds by the Ninth Day of Autumn.

“Eat!” screamed Miser Shen.

The young gentleman then plays the lute while the young lady dances in a manner that would cause a riot if performed in public, and they inevitably become entangled in Six Doves Beneath the Eaves on a Rainy Day.

“Gold!” screamed Miser Shen.

Now that friendship has been firmly established it is but a step and a jump to become soulmates, and the fastest way to become soulmates is Phoenix Sporting in the Cinnabar Crevice.

“Eat!” screamed Miser Shen.

This will lead to wine, love poems, and a return to Fluttering Butterflies, but slowly and drowsily, accompanied by giggles, and so it goes in China until the dawn, when somebody might calm down enough to consider testing the purity of gold coins.

“What is that appalling stench, O most perfect and penetrating of partners?” yawned Pretty Ping.

“I fear that it marks the approach of Miser Shen, O beauty beyond compare,” I said sadly, as I climbed out of bed and pulled on my trousers.

“And what is that angry noise, O most tantalizingly tender of tigers?” asked Pretty Ping.

“I fear that Miser Shen is arming his seven half-starved servants with clubs, O rarest of rose petals.” I sighed, as I collected my sandals, tunic, jade-embroidered silver girdle, fine tasseled hat, and gold-splattered Szech'uen fan.

“Merciful Buddha! What is the ghastly thing that is oozing obscenely through my doorway?” howled Pretty Ping.

“I fear that it is a mound of goat manure, beneath which you should find Miser Shen. Farewell, O seduction of the universe,” I said, and I jumped out the window to the street below.

Li Kao was waiting for me, well rested after a pleasant night with Fat Fu and One-Eyed Wong, and he appeared to approve of the sparkle in my eyes. I bent over and he hopped up upon my back, and then I raced through the streets toward the city walls while behind us Miser Shen screamed, “Bring back my five hundred pieces of gold!”

6. A Winsome Damsel

Our path toward the house of the Ancestress ran through steep mountains, and most of the time Master Li rode upon my back. Sea sounds filled the immense sky as the wind blew through tall trees—pine surfs, as the poets say—and the clouds looked like white sails that were gliding across an endless blue ocean.

One day we climbed down the last mountainside to a green valley, and Li Kao pointed ahead to a low hill.

“The summer estate of the Ancestress should be on the other side,” he said. “To tell the truth, I'm rather looking forward to seeing her again.”

He smiled at a memory of fifty years ago.

“Ox, I hear that she's put on a great deal of weight, but the Ancestress was the most beautiful girl that I have ever seen in my life, and the most charming when she felt like it,” he said. “Still, there was something about her that rang warning bells in my mind, and I was quite fond of old Wen. I was in high favor after the affair of Procopius and the other barbarians—I was even allowed to approach the throne on an east-west axis, instead of groveling up on my knees from the south—and one day I sidled up to the emperor and said with a sly wink that I had arranged for us to spy upon some newlyweds who were about to consummate the happy union. Wen was something of a voyeur, so we tiptoed to my suite and I opened a small curtain and pointed a pedantic finger.

“ ‘O Son of Heaven,’ I said, ‘it would appear that marriage to a certain kind of female can have unfortunate side effects.’

“The newlyweds happened to be praying mantises,” said Master Li. “The groom was happily engrossed in copulation, and right on cue his blushing bride craned her pretty neck and casually decapitated him. The groom's hindquarters continued to pump away while the bride devoured his head, which says something about the location of his brains, and for a moment the emperor had second thoughts about wedding bells. But the Ancestress got to him and I was exiled to Serendip, which was quite fortunate because I wasn't around when she poisoned poor Wen and began massacring everyone in sight.”

We reached the top of the hill and I stared down in horror at an estate that resembled a vast military fort. It covered almost an entire valley, and it was surrounded by high parallel walls. The corridors between them were patrolled by guards and savage dogs, and everywhere I looked I saw soldiers.

“I understand that her winter palace is really something,” Master Li said calmly.

“Can we really get into her treasure chambers and steal the Root of Power?” I asked in a tiny frightened voice.

“I have no intention of attempting such a thing,” he said. “We'll persuade the dear lady to bring the root to us. Unfortunately that means that we will have to murder somebody, and I have never truly enjoyed slitting the throats of innocent bystanders. We must pray that we will find somebody who thoroughly deserves it.”

He started down the hill.

“Of course, if she recognizes me, the funeral will be ours, and for once she will abandon the axe in favor of boiling oil,” he said.

In the last town of consequence Li Kao made certain arrangements, such as purchasing an elegant carriage and renting the largest suite in the inn, and then he went to the town square and tacked one of Miser Shen's gold coins to the message board. I assumed that it would be stolen as soon as we turned our backs, but he drew mysterious symbols around it, and the townspeople who approached the message board turned pale and backed away hurriedly, muttering spells to protect themselves from evil. I had no idea what was going on.

That evening the most alarming bunch of thugs that I had ever seen in my life paused at the message board, studied the coin and the symbols, and began trickling by twos and threes into the inn. Li Kao had set out jars of the strongest wine, which they swilled like hogs, growling and snarling and glaring at me with their hands on the hilts of their daggers. The animal noises stopped abruptly when Li Kao entered and climbed up upon a table.

It was as if hands had been clapped over their filthy mouths. Their eyes bulged, and sweat poured down their greasy faces. The leader of the thugs turned quite gray with terror, and I thought that he was going to faint.

Master Li was wearing a red robe that was covered with cosmological symbols, and a red headband with five loops. His right trouser leg was rolled up, and his left trouser leg was rolled down, and he wore a shoe on his right foot and a sandal on his left. He laid his left hand across his chest with the little and middle fingers extended, and he slid his right hand back inside the sleeve of his robe. The sleeve began to flutter in peculiar patterns as he wriggled the concealed fingers.

Four of the thugs grabbed their leader and forced him forward. Cut-Off-Their-Balls Wang was shaking so hard that he could barely stand, but he managed to slide his own right hand inside his sleeve, and the sleeve began to flutter in response. Master Li's sleeve moved faster and faster, Cut-Off-Their-Balls Wang replied in the same silent fashion, and so it went for many minutes. At last Li Kao extracted his hand from the sleeve and gestured dismissal, and to my astonishment the thugs and their leader backed out of the room on their knees, humbly banging their heads against the floor.

Li Kao smiled and opened a jar of better wine and motioned for me to join him at a table.

“The lower the criminal, the more impressed he is with the childlike mumbo-jumbo of the Secret Societies,” he said complacently. “For some reason Cut-Off-Their-Balls Wang is under the impression that I am a great grand master of the Triads, and that I intend to cut his gang in for a share of the loot when I make my move against the Ancestress. In the latter respect,” said Master Li, “he is absolutely right.”

Two days later some aristocratic ladies who were returning to the estate of the Ancestress were ambushed by villains whose appearance was so terrifying that the guards fled and left the ladies to their fate. Things were looking very bad for them until two intrepid noblemen rode to the rescue.

“On your knees, dogs, for you face the rage of Lord Li of Kao!” Master Li yelled.

“Cower, knaves, before the fury of Lord Lu of Yu!” I shouted.

Unfortunately, our lead horse slipped in some mud, and our carriage crashed into the ladies’ carriage, and we were pitched on top of half-naked females who were screaming their heads off. We gazed groggily at a pretty jade pendant that was dangling between a pair of pretty pink-tipped breasts, and it took a moment for us to remember what we were doing there. Then we jumped down to engage the ruffians.

Li Kao stabbed right and left with his sword, and I swung away with both hands—he was missing, of course, and I was pulling my punches short—and the thugs remembered that they weren't actually supposed to rob and rape anybody and began to do a very good job of acting. Once, when my foot slipped in the mud, a punch accidentally landed and sent the leader of the bandits sprawling. I forgot about the accident, and soon the bandits fled in terror and we turned to accept the gratitude of the rescued ladies.

Cut-Off-Their-Balls Wang had already lost his nose and both of his ears in back-alley battles, and he did not appreciate losing several teeth as well. He crept up behind me with a log in his hands.

“A present for Lord Lu of Yu!” he yelled, and he swung with all his might, and I saw a glorious burst of orange and purple stars, and then everything turned black.

I awoke in a very expensive bed surrounded by very expensive women who were battling for the honor of bathing the bump on my skull.

“He wakes!” they shrieked at the tops of their lungs. “Lord Lu of Yu opens his divine eyes!”

I had been brought up to be courteous, but there are limits.

“If you don't stop that infernal racket, Lord Lu of Yu will strangle you with his divine hands,” I groaned.

They paid no attention to me, and the ear-splitting babble continued, and gradually I began to make some sense out of it. Our miraculous intervention had saved them all from rape and ruin, and the esteem in which we were held was not diminished by our fine tasseled hats, green silk tunics, jade-bordered silver girdles, Szech'uen fans, and money belts that bulged with Miser Shen's gold coins. This was all according to plan, but I was rather puzzled by repeated references to “the bridegroom,” and I was trying to get up enough strength to ask a few questions when I began to realize that my wounds were far more serious than I had thought.

I was sick enough to imagine that the floor was shaking, and that my bed was starting to bounce up and down. The hallucination was accompanied by a dull, rhythmic, pounding noise that gradually increased in volume, and the ladies suddenly stopped babbling. They turned pale and tiptoed quietly from the room through a side door, and I began to smell a revolting odor of rotting flesh.

The bedroom door crashed open, and the woman who marched inside weighed approximately five hundred pounds. The floor shook as she marched toward my bed. The coldest eyes that I had ever seen, even in nightmares, glittered between puffy rolls of sagging gray flesh, and a massive swollen hand shot out and grabbed my chin. The icy eyes moved over my face.

“Satisfactory,” she grunted.

She grabbed my right arm and probed the biceps.

“Satisfactory,” she grunted.

She jerked the covers down and squeezed my chest.

“Satisfactory,” she grunted.

She ripped the covers all the way down and prodded my private parts.

“Satisfactory,” she grunted.

Then the creature stepped back and I stared pop-eyed at a leveled finger that resembled a gangrened sausage.

“They call you Lord Lu of Yu,” she growled. “I know Yu well, and there is no Lord Lu. They call your antiquated companion Lord Li of Kao, and the province of Kao does not exist. You are frauds and fortune hunters, and your criminal activities do not interest me in the least.”

She slapped her hands to her hips and glared at me.

“My granddaughter has taken a fancy to you, and I want great-grandchildren,” she snarled. “The wedding will take place as soon as your wounds have healed. You will present me with seven great-grandchildren, and they will be boys. I intend to overthrow the T'ang Dynasty and restore the Sui, and boys are more suitable for the purpose. In the meantime you will not annoy me by showing your silly face any more than is absolutely necessary, and you will not speak unless spoken to. Insolence in my household is punishable by immediate decaptiation.”

The monster turned and plodded from the room, and the door slammed viciously behind her. For a moment I lay there paralyzed, and then I jumped from the bed and ran across the floor and started to climb out of the window. The view made me stop. That immense estate boasted no less than seven pleasure gardens, and one of them, in the tradition of great houses, was a pretty artificial peasant village. I gazed at simple thatched roofs, and crude water wheels, and green fields, and pigs and cows and chickens and water buffaloes. I felt tears well in my eyes and trickle down my cheeks.

My village was praying for a ginseng root.

I made my way back to the bed, and I lay there wrapped in misery and terror.

7. A Great House

When I had recovered enough to take stock of my surroundings it gradually dawned on me that the monster had decided upon seven great-grandchildren some time ago, and that her granddaughter would be ordered to see to it that they were twelve years old at birth. I was lying in the dormitory of the boys who were going to aid in overthrowing the T'ang Dynasty, and I will confess that I wept when I considered the life that my poor children were to lead.

Seven small beds were aligned side by side with geometric precision. Seven small desks were placed precisely in front of them, and the writing brushes lay exactly three inches to the right of the inkstones. Nothing in that cold inhuman room was so much as an eyelash out of alignment, and that included the signs on the walls. Some were kung kuo-yo, Tables of Demerits, and I will give an example.

Other signs were lessons to be memorized, and my frightened eyes jerked from one to another. Now and then in my dreams I find myself in a classroom with fragments of lessons plastered all over it.

I slid down and pulled the covers over my head, and I did not emerge until I heard the door open and a familiar voice said, “What a stroke of luck! Your engagement is a godsend—incidentally, how did you like the winsome damsel who recently ruled China?”

I jumped up and embraced him. “Master Li,” I sobbed, “if my fiancée resembles her grandmother in any way, I can never go through with this!” A happy thought suddenly occurred to me. “But if we're engaged, I won't see her until the wedding.”

“Normally that would be the case, but an exception has been made because you've already seen almost all of her,” he said. “She was the one in the carriage with the pretty jade pendant between the pretty breasts. Don't worry about it. All you have to do is to take an occasional stroll with her in the gardens, while I figure out whom we have to kill in order to get the Root of Power.”

“But the Ancestress…” I quavered.

“Has not recognized me,” said Master Li. “Her natural distaste for fortune-hunting criminals has been reinforced by my unfortunate habit of rolling my eyes, drooling saliva, giggling at inopportune moments, and popping my cheek with an unwashed finger. I doubt that she will seek out your company, and all you'll have to worry about will be your fiancée, her father, and the butler.”

My future father-in-law turned out to be the sweetest and gentlest of men, and as a scholar he bowed only to Li Kao. Ho Wen had earned second place in the chin-shih examinations, and I would have had to enter Hanlin Academy to find two such minds under one roof. The contrast between them was fascinating.

Li Kao would toss an idea into the air and watch it sparkle, and then he would toss a second one, and then he would send handfuls of associated ideas spinning into space, and when they returned to earth they would be neatly linked into a necklace that fit perfectly around the throat of the subject. Ho Wen, on the other hand, was a plodding one-step-at-a-time scholar who never made a mistake, and whose memory was so prodigious that not even Li Kao could match it. I once asked him the name of a distant mountain, and this is the answer that I received.

“The sacred mountains are five in number: Hengshan, Changshan, Huashan, Taishan, and Sungshan, with Taishan leading in rank and Sungshan in the center. Mountains not sacred but very distinguished include Wuyi, Wutang, Tienmu, Tienchu, Tienmuh, Niushi, Omei, Shiunherh, Chichu, Chihua, Kungtung, Chunyu, Yentang, Tientai, Lungmen, Kueiku, Chiuyi, Shiherh, Pakung, Huchiu, Wolung, Niuchu, Paotu, Peiyo, Huangshan, Pichi, Chinshu, Liangfu, Shuanglang, Maku, Tulu, Peiku, Chinshan, Chiaoshan, and Chungnan. Since the mountain to which you refer is none of these—”

“Ho,” I moaned.

“— it might not be too rash to conclude that it is Kuangfu, although I would not like to be quoted in the presence of the Ancestress because the slightest mistake can mean instant decapitation.”

Li Kao immediately grasped the potential of Ho's memory. He told him to drop our titles when we were alone and address us as Li Kao and Number Ten Ox, and at the first opportunity he turned the subject to ginseng. Ho's eyes lit up, but before he could begin a discourse that might last several weeks Li Kao asked him if he had ever heard of a Great Root of Power. Even Ho Wen had to stop and think about that, and then he said, slowly and hesitantly,

“I was four years old, visiting a cousin at the Blessings of Heaven Library in Loyang.” He paused for more thought. “Third basement, fifth row on the left, second rack from the top. Behind Chou-pi Mathematics I found Chang Chi's Typhoid Fever and Other Diseases, behind which I found the sixteen volumes in fifty-two rolls of Li Shih-chen's Outline of Herb Medicine, behind which I found a mouse's nest. I was chasing the mouse at the time. In the nest was a scrap of parchment with a pretty picture that was labeled ‘Great Root of Power,’ but the parchment had been so badly chewed that I could not make out what species the root belonged to.”

He squinted and pursed his lips as he tried to visualize the picture.

“It was a very strange root,” he said. “There were two tiny tendrils that were the Legs of Power, two more that were the Arms of Power, and a fifth tendril that was the Head of Power. The central mass of the root was the Heart of Power, which was labeled ‘The Ultimate.’ Unfortunately the mice had devoured everything else, so I do not know what the word ‘ultimate’ referred to. I very much doubt that the root was ginseng, because I have never heard of ginseng that resembled it.”

His interest in ginseng had a specific origin. One day a grave was being dug in the family cemetery and a shovel had pitched out some fragments of clay tablets. Ho Wen had instantly recognized ideographs of immense antiquity. He had persuaded the workmen to gather every fragment that there was, and then he had settled down to an impossible task. The fragments were almost illegible, but he was determined to decipher the text or die in the attempt. His face was flushed with pride when he took us to his workshop and showed us the tiny clay fragments, and the theories of mathematical probability that he had devised to suggest the sequence of characters in the ancient script. He had been working on it for sixteen years, and already he had deciphered ten whole sentences, and if he lasted another sixteen years he hoped to have four whole paragraphs.

One thing he was sure of. It was a ginseng folk or fairy tale, and it was one of the oldest known to man.

Ho Wen had no money of his own. In my innocence I assumed that the distinction of his scholar's rank was worth more than money, but I soon learned otherwise. I suspect that the rich are the same in every country in that money is their sole standard of value, and was Ho Wen referred to as Master Ho? Venerable Scholar Ho? Second-Most-Learned-of-Mortals Ho? Not exactly. He was referred to as Henpecked Ho, and he lived in mortal terror of the Ancestress, his wife, her seven fat sisters, and his daughter. In a great house a poor scholar's status is just slightly higher than that of the boy who carries away the night soil.

There was no resemblance whatsoever between Henpecked Ho and his daughter. My bride-to-be was a startlingly pretty girl whose name was Fainting Maid. I assumed that the unusual name came from a line of poetry, but I learned better on our first stroll through the gardens when we were chaperoned by Li Kao and her father.

“Hark!” cried Fainting Maid, pausing on the path and pointing dramatically. “A cuckoo!”

Well, I am a country boy.

“Nay, my beloved,” I chuckled. “It is a magpie.”

She stamped a pretty foot. “It is a cuckoo!”

“Precious one, the magpie is imitating a cuckoo,” I said, pointing to the magpie that was imitating a cuckoo.

“It is a cuckoo!”

“Light of my life,” I sighed, “it is a magpie.”

Fainting Maid turned red, turned white, reeled, clutched her heart, and screeched, “Oh, thou hast slain me!” Then she staggered backward, lurched to the left, and gracefully swooned.

“Two feet back, six to the left,” her father sighed.

“Does she ever vary it?” Li Kao asked with scientific interest.

“Not so much as an inch. Precisely two feet back and six feet to the left. And now, dear boy, you are required to kneel and bathe her delicate temples and beg her forgiveness for your intolerable rudeness. My daughter,” said Henpecked Ho, “is never wrong, and I might add that never in her life has she been denied anything that she wanted.”

Is it possible that among my illustrious readers there may be one or two who are contemplating marriage for money? I have a very clear memory of a golden afternoon when the butler was instructing me in the etiquette of a great house, Henpecked Ho's beloved wife and her seven fat sisters were sipping tea in the Garden of Forty Felicitous Fragrances, Fainting Maid was insulting the intelligence of her ladies-in-waiting in the Gallery of Precious Peacocks, and the Ancestress was chiding a servant who had dropped a cup on the Terrace of Sixty Serenities.

“The cook hands the guest a ladle with an engraved handle and a stand which is placed west of the tripods,” said the butler. “The guest takes the handle of the ladle with his right hand, palm inward, and lays the ladle alongside the stand.”

“Off with his head!” roared the Ancestress.

“Then,” continued the butler, “he faces east, at the west of the tripods, to receive the food that is his due and that is determined by his attire, beginning with the state umbrella that is displayed by his servants.”

“Gabble-gabble-gabble-gabble-gabble!” squawked Henpecked Ho's wife and her seven fat sisters.

“The umbrella of First and Second Rank officials have yellowish-black gauze covers, red raw silk linings, three tiers, and silver spires, and the umbrellas of the Third and Fourth Rank officials are the same, except that the spires are red.”

“Forgive me, My Lady! Of course The Gentlewoman's Guide to Needlepointwas written by Confucius!” wailed a lady-in-waiting.

“The umbrellas of the Fifth Rank,” said the butler, “have blue gauze coverings, red raw silk linings, two tiers, and silver spires, and those of the Sixth through Ninth Rank have blue oiled, raw silk coverings, red raw silk linings, one tier, and silver spires.”

“Deposit the corpse in the pigsty!” roared the Ancestress.

Enough.

8. Dancing Girl

One night Li Kao and I stopped by Henpecked Ho's workshop and found him in tears, holding a cheap silver comb in his hands while he wailed. When he had recovered enough to speak he asked us to hear his story, because he had no one else with whom to share joys or sorrows. Li Kao made him drink some wine, and then we sat down to listen.

“A few years ago I managed to please the Ancestress in some way,” said Henpecked Ho. “She graciously allowed me to take a concubine, but I had no money of my own. I could not aspire to a lady of quality, or even the maid of a lady of quality, so I chose a dancing girl from Hangchow. Her name was Bright Star, and she was very beautiful and very brave, and I loved her with all my heart. She did not love me, of course, because I am old and ugly and something of a worm, but I never forced myself on her and I think that she was reasonably happy. I gave her this comb as a token of my love. As you can see, it is not a very good comb, but it was all that I could afford, and she wore it in her hair to please me. I had never been in love before, and in my foolishness I thought that my joy would last forever.

“One night the Ancestress entertained some officers from the fort, and among them was a young captain whose family was so distinguished that it was common knowledge that the Ancestress would choose him to wed Fainting Maid. For some reason the name of Bright Star was mentioned, and suddenly the captain was all attention. She was no common dancing girl, he said excitedly. Bright Star had become a living legend in Hangchow through her skill and courage at the Sword Dance, and the young captain, who was a very famous swordsman himself, said that he would give anything to meet such an opponent. Since no distinctions of rank are allowed in the Sword Dance, the Ancestress ordered Bright Star to perform. When she opened an old wicker case and took out two swords I could see that she kept her heart in those glittering blades. She allowed me to oil her body, and I marveled at the pride and happiness in her eyes, and my beautiful dancing girl walked out the door like a queen.

“Sword Dancers wear only loincloths, of course, and I could not bear to see Bright Star displayed like a piece of meat for the soldiers to leer at. I did not attend the dance, but I did not have to. The wind drifted down from the mansion and with it came a clash of steel blades that grew louder and louder and faster and faster. I heard cheering, and then I heard the audience roaring at the tops of their lungs. The drums pounded like thunder, and when the sand clock ran out the audience continued to cheer in delight and wonder for nearly ten minutes. The judges refused to declare a winner. Only gods, they said, had the right to choose between gods, and the palm was cut in two and half was given to each contestant.

“That night I lay in my bed and listened to the sobs of a dancing girl. She had fallen in love with the young captain, but what was she to do? Her social status was so low that it would be quite impossible for a gentleman of his rank to take her as a secondary wife, and she would be forced to see him as the husband of my daughter but never could she reach out and touch him. All night long she wept, and in the morning I made my way to the fort and had a long talk with a young captain who had not slept a wink, because whenever he closed his eyes he saw the face of Bright Star. When I returned that evening I clasped a gold chain around the throat of a dancing girl, and on the end of it was a beautiful jade pendant that was the token of the captain's love.

“Am I not a worm?” said Henpecked Ho. “I had so little pride that I would even play panderer for the woman I loved. All that mattered was her happiness, and I went about it quite methodically. I discovered that there were two brief periods when the corridor between the walls was unguarded. At sunset, when the guards went off duty, the men in the kennels waited for a few minutes to make sure that everyone was out before they released the dogs, and at sunrise the guards waited for a few minutes before entering the corridor, to make sure the dogs were safely locked up. There was a small door in the inner wall at the north end of the estate, and I stole the key and gave it to Bright Star. That evening at sunset I gave the signal that the corridor was clear, and the young captain scaled the outer wall and raced across, and Bright Star opened the door. At sunrise he was able to return to the fort in the same way.

“For nearly a month she lived in Heaven. I lived in Hell, of course, but that was scarcely important on the relative scale of things,” said Henpecked Ho. “Then one evening I heard a terrible scream. I raced to the wall and found Bright Star frantically tugging at the door. She had just opened it, but somebody had approached and she had been forced to hide, and when she came back she discovered that the door had been closed and locked and that the key had been taken. I raced to the kennels to try to stop the men from releasing the dogs, but I was too late. The terrible baying pack raced down the corridor, and the young captain was able to kill a great many of them but he could not kill them all. As Bright Star desperately tugged at the door, she was forced to listen to the death of her captain. She could not stand it. When I ran back, I discovered that my beautiful dancing girl had thrown herself into an old well beside the wall.

“It was no accident. They knew at the fort that the captain was slipping away at night, and everyone who had attended the Sword Dance had seen the light in his eyes. From the joy in the eyes of Bright Star it was obvious that the captain had found a way to cross the corridor, but who could have been so cruel as to lock the door and take the key? It was the murder of two innocent young people.”

Henpecked Ho began to weep again, and it was nearly a minute before he could continue.

“Bright Star may have wanted to die, but her fate was far worse,” he sobbed. “So great had been her desire to reach the young captain that even in death she must continue to try to get through the door in time, but of course she cannot do it. The following night I returned to the well that had claimed her life, and I discovered that my beautiful dancing girl had been trapped in a ghost dance. Now I fear that she must suffer the agonies of the damned throughout eternity.”

Li Kao jumped to his feet and clapped his hands sharply together.

“Nonsense!” he said. “There has never been a ghost dance that couldn't be broken, and there never will be. Ho, take us to the scene of the tragedy and you and I and Number Ten Ox will take care of the problem immediately.”

It was almost the third watch, the hour of ghosts, when we walked through the garden in the moonlight. The breeze sighed sadly through the leaves, and a lonely dog barked in the distance, and an owl drifted down like a falling leaf across the face of the moon. When we reached the wall I saw that the door had been removed and the hole had been bricked up. The old well was covered over, and the path was overgrown by weeds.

Li Kao turned to me. “Ox, have you been taught how to see ghosts?” he asked quietly.

I blushed bright red. “Master Li,” I said humbly, “in my village young people are not introduced to the world of the dead until they have become civilized enough to respect the living. The abbot thought that I might possibly be ready for instruction after the fall harvest.”

“Don't worry about it,” he said reassuringly. “The world of the dead is immensely complicated, but seeing ghosts is simplicity itself. Take a look at the wall where the door used to be. Take a very close look, and keep looking until you see something strange.”

I stared until my eyeballs hurt.

“Master Li, I see something that puzzles me,” I said finally. “That faint shadow above the rose bush cannot possibly be caused by branches, or by clouds passing the face of the moon. Where does it come from?”

“Excellent,” he said. “You are looking at a ghost shadow. Ox, listen carefully because what I am about to say will sound silly, but it is not. Whenever you see a ghost shadow, you must realize that the dead are trying to show you something, and you must think of the shadow as being a soft comfortable blanket that you would like to pull over you. It is quite easy. Calm your heartbeat, and clear your mind of everything except a comfortable blanket. Now reach out with your mind and pull it toward you, and then up over your head. Gently… gently… gently…. No. You are trying much too hard. It requires no effort at all. Think of the comfort and warmth. Gently… gently… gently…. Good. Now tell me what you see.”

“Master Li, the patch in the wall is gone and the door is back in place!” I whispered. “It is standing open, and the well is uncovered, and the path is clear of weeds!”

And so it was, although it was like a picture with a hazy frame around it that flickered at the periphery of my vision. Faint in the distance I heard the watchman rap three times with his wooden knocker, and the three of us sat upon the grass beside the path. Henpecked Ho reached out and squeezed my shoulder.

“Dear boy, you are about to see something very beautiful, and you will learn that there is beauty that can break the heart,” he said quietly.

The Great River of Stars was sparkling above us, like a diamond necklace clasped around the black velvet throat of the sky. The cassia trees sparkled with dew, and the high brick wall appeared to be painted with silver, and bamboos lifted like long fingers that waved in a soft breeze as they pointed toward the moon. A flute began to play, but it was like no flute that I had ever heard before. The same few notes were repeated over and over, softly and sadly, but with subtle variations in pitch and tone that caused each note to flutter in the air like the petal of a flower. A strange flickering light moved slowly through the trees.

I caught my breath.

A ghost was dancing toward us to the hypnotic rhythm of the flute. Bright Star was so lovely that my heart felt as though a hand were squeezing it, and I found it difficult to breathe. She wore a long white robe that was embroidered with blue flowers, and she was dancing down the path with indescribable grace and delicacy. Every gesture of her hands, every movement of her feet, every subtle swirl of her robe gave meaning to the word perfection, but her eyes were wide and desperate.

Li Kao leaned over. “Look behind you,” he whispered.

The door was closing. Closing very slowly, but just slightly faster than the unchanging song of the flute, and now I realized that the music was a chain that bound a dancing girl. Her eyes were agonized as she watched the door swing slowly shut, and two ghost tears trickled down her cheeks like transparent pearls.

“Faster,” I prayed silently. “Beautiful girl, you must dance faster!”

But she could not. Bound to a rhythm that she could not break, she floated toward us like a cloud, feet barely touching the ground, whirling with exquisite grace and pathetic desire. Her arms and hands and long, flowing robe formed patterns that were as subtle as smoke, and even the fingers that reached toward the door were positioned in the pattern of the dance. She was too late.

The door closed tight, with a cold cruel click of a lock. Bright Star stood motionless, and a wave of agony flowed over me like a harsh winter wind. And then she was gone, and the music was gone, and the well was covered, and the path was overgrown by weeds, and I was staring with wet eyes at a bricked-up patch in a wall.

“Every night she dances, and every night I pray that she will be able to get through the door to her captain, but she cannot dance faster than the music allows,” Henpecked Ho said quietly. “Thus Bright Star must dance until time comes to an end.”

Li Kao was softly humming the flute song as he thought, and then he slapped a knee with a hand.

“Ho, the chain of a ghost dance is woven from the victim's own desire, but that magnificent young woman is ruled by more than one desire,” he said. “No power in life or in death can prevent her from honoring her art, and it is artistry that will free a dancing girl. Your job will be to steal two swords and a couple of drums. Ox, I'd do it myself if I could be ninety again, but it looks as though you can have the honor of chopping off your arms and legs.”

“Of doing what?” I asked in a tiny voice.

“It is said that the challenge of the Sword Dance is stronger than death itself, and now is the time to prove it,” said Master Li.

I quivered in my sandals, and I saw myself trundling upon a trolley with a begging bowl clutched in my two remaining fingers. “Alms for the poor! Alms for a poor legless cripple…”

Every year there are well-meaning officials who attempt to ban the Sword Dance on the grounds that it kills or maims hundreds, if not thousands, and though the dance will continue as long as the great Tang sits upon the throne (the Son of Heaven devotes an hour a day to practice with the swords) I suppose that I should explain a “barbaric ritual” that may someday become as obsolete as scapulimancy.

There are two contestants, two drummers, and three judges. The drums set the pace, and once the dance begins it is forbidden to break the rhythm in any way. The contestants are required to perform six mandatory maneuvers in sequence, each with an increasing level of difficulty, and all maneuvers are performed while leaping—both feet must leave the ground—and require precise slashes with two swords over, under, and around the body, that are graded according to grace, accuracy, closeness of blades to the body, and elevation of leap. These mandatory maneuvers are very important because the judges must beware of mismatches, and if one of the contestants is clearly outclassed, they will refuse to allow the dance to continue.

The contestants begin quite far apart and move closer with each maneuver, and at the completion of the six mandatory maneuvers they are practically face to face. If the judges are satisfied they signal for the drummers to sound the beat of the seventh level, and now the dance becomes art, and occasionally it becomes murder.

Seventh-level maneuvers are free-form, and the only requirement is that they must be of the highest difficulty. The dancers attempt to express their souls, and the fun lies in the fact that once a maneuver has been completed the dancer is free to clip the hair from his opponent's head, if he can do so before his feet touch the ground. The opponent is free to parry and thrust, but only after his own maneuver has been completed and only before his own feet touch the ground. A dancer who attempts a stroke while so much as a toe is touching the earth is immediately disqualified. Masters disdain such easy targets as the hair on the head and attempt to barber their opponent's beard or mustache, if he wears such adornments, and the loss of noses and eyes and ears is considered to be an occupational hazard of no great importance. Of course if a dancer panics and breaks the rhythm he will probably be killed, because he will be leaping up when he should be coming down and his opponent will aim for his hair and cut off his head.

During the mandatory maneuvers the drummers play together, but with the seventh level they split, one for each dancer, and it is said that a truly great drummer is the equivalent of a third sword. Sample gymnasium conversation:

“I hear that Fan Yun has challenged you. Who's your drummer?”

“Blind Meng.”

“Blind Meng! Great Buddha, I must sell my wife and wager the proceeds! Orderly, be so kind as to order flowers for Fan Yun's widow.”

Of course that is at the master level, and the enemy of the raw amateur, such as Number Ten Ox, is not his opponent but he himself. The swords are as sharp as razors, and terrific force is required to whip them around the body in a seventh-level maneuver, and the amateur is likely to beam with pride after a successful maneuver only to discover that he has left one of his legs lying upon the ground.

It is quite impossible to describe the beauty of the Sword Dance in words. It is skill and pride and courage and grace and beauty rolled into one, and when two consummate masters go at it their bodies seem to float effortlessly into the air and hang suspended in space, and their swords are flashing blinding blurs—particularly at night, in the light of torches—and the clash of steel meeting steel is like the songs of gongs that thrill the heart as well as the ears. Each brilliant maneuver inspires a counter maneuver even more brilliant, and the drummers drive their rhythms into the hearts of their champions and force them past human limitations into the realm of the supernatural. The audience screams as a blade slips through and blood spurts, but the dancers laugh out loud, and then the sand clock runs out and the drums fall silent, and even the judges leap to their feet and cheer as the panting contestants drop their swords and embrace.

One might assume that this dangerous sport requires the strength of a man, but speed and suppleness can counterbalance strength. It is said that among the six greatest dancers of all time there was one woman, and I insist that the figure must be revised. Two of them were women, and I am in a position to prove it.

That night Li Kao carried two sharp swords up the path toward the wall. They had to be sharp because an expert would spot dull blades in a second. Henpecked Ho carried two drums, and I carried two thousand pounds of sheer terror. My flesh was all goose bumps as I stripped to my loincloth, and my fingers were like icicles as I took the swords from Li Kao. They hid in the shrubbery, and I have never known time that passed so slowly yet reached midnight with such appalling swiftness.

The watchman's knocker rapped three times, and I turned to see the faint outlines of a ghost shadow upon the patch where the door had been. The shadow blanket slipped easily over my head, and the door stood open and the well was uncovered and the path was clear of weeds. I walked up the path to meet Bright Star.

The flute began to play its haunting melody. A light moved toward me. The exquisite girl came dancing down the path, and again I caught my breath as I watched the agony of her perfection as she honored her art, even while her heart was breaking. She did not see me.

Henpecked Ho began pounding his drum, and at first I couldn't imagine what he was doing. He certainly wasn't sounding the challenge to the Sword Dance, but finally my pulse told me the answer. The gentle scholar was playing the song that he loved most on earth and that he had learned during the lovesick sleepless nights; the heartbeat of a dancing girl. He leaned over his drum and put his weight into it, and the insistent heartbeat thudded and thundered through the trees, and the first flaw in the dance of Bright Star was the faintly puzzled expression that began to appear in her eyes.

Li Kao's drum rang out with the challenge to the Sword Dance, weaving in and out and over and around the steady beat of a heart, and an awareness, a growing wonder, began to shine in the eyes of the dancing girl. I stepped forward and raised my swords in the salute, and then I knew that the legend was true, and that the challenge to the dance is stronger than death itself, because her eyes began to sparkle, and as the challenge and the heartbeat pounded louder and louder her hands lifted gracefully to the clasp of her throat and her robe fell to the ground, and she danced toward me in her loincloth, with the jade pendant that her captain had given her hanging between her small firm breasts on a golden chain, and Henpecked Ho's silver comb in her hair.

Then she saw me. She spread her hands wide and two ghost swords suddenly sparkled in the moonlight. The heartbeat thudded even louder, and Li Kao began to pound the command for the mandatory maneuvers.

A master would never consent to dance with an amateur. It would be murder. I plastered a silly smile on my face and pretended that I was making a joke of boring classroom exercises, and then I launched into the air with the Tiger, the Kingfisher, Dragon's Breath, the Swan, the Serpent, and Night Rain. Bright Star didn't suspect that I was doing the very best that I could. She laughed and promptly imitated me, even to the slight stumble that I made after Dragon's Breath. We were moving closer and closer together, and Henpecked Ho's drum joined Li Kao's as they thundered the command for seventh-level maneuvers.

I sent a fervent prayer to the August Personage of Jade, and then I leaped off the ground with Eighth Drake Under the River Bridge. The August Personage of Jade must have heard me, because I managed to complete the eight savage slashes around my body and between my legs without castrating myself, but when I saw Bright Star's response I nearly fainted. She lifted effortlessly into the air and floated like a leaf as she slashed her swords around her body in Ice Falling From a Mountaintop—which is very nearly impossible—and still had time before her toes touched the ground to take a couple of playful swipes that would have neatly trimmed my eyebrows if her ghost swords had been real. I managed to complete Stallion Racing in the Meadow, and Bright Star tripled the level of difficulty with Storm Clouds, but her eyes narrowed suspiciously when she saw that I had left myself wide open.

It was now or never. I leaped into the air with Widow's Tears, and Bright Star turned pale with shock and horror. I was dancing backward, out of reach of her swords. The drums continued, and she almost lost her balance. My cowardice was plain to see, but the judges had not stopped the contest, and there could be only one explanation. They had been bribed, and the Sword Dance had been defiled, and her whole world was crashing down around her ears.

“What? You break the rhythm of the dance?” I sneered. “Are you afraid of me, base-born dancing girl?”

That did it. The beautiful ghost uttered a piercing scream of rage, and her lithe body shot up into the air, and her swords began to flicker around her body like tongues of flame as she pursued me down that path, performing seventh-level maneuvers that I could not possibly believe, even though the blades were flashing right in front of my face. I puffed and panted and danced backward as fast as I could, but nothing on earth could persuade a dancer to continue if the opponent failed to complete a maneuver, and now I was slicing myself to ribbons.

Henpecked Ho began to pound Bright Star's heartbeat so powerfully that blood was spurting from the palms of his hands, and Li Kao's drum was drowning out the ghost flute as it commanded: Faster! Faster! Faster! I glanced behind me. The door was already half-closed, and I danced faster, but my lungs were filled with hot coals and there were black spots before my eyes. Somehow I managed to complete Eagle Screams without leaving my severed feet upon the ground. Bright Star contemptuously countered with Eagle Screams Above the Lamb—which has been successfully performed no more than five times in the two thousand years of the Sword Dance—and had time for two swipes that would have removed my ears and a third that was intended to emasculate me. Her eyes were on fire and her hair was standing up like the fur of a big beautiful cat. The ghost swords were whipping around her leaping body with unbelievable force, and they slashed out to remove my eyes and my nose, and her toes barely touched the ground before she was airborne again.

Now and then she comes to dance for me in my dreams. I do not believe that many men are so honored.

Faster! the drums thundered. Faster! Faster! I danced faster, and then my swords got all tangled up as I attempted Tenth Dive of the Blue Heron, and I backed into a log upon the path and tripped and fell. The beautiful ghost leaped over me and her swords flashed out to remove my hide from my nose to my toes, and she landed on the other side. The drums stopped instantly. Bright Star shook her head dazedly, and then her eyes widened with wonder and hope as she realized that the log that had tripped me had been placed directly in front of the door, and it was still partly open, and she had leaped right through the gap.

Li Kao and Henpecked Ho came running up the path as the dancing girl slowly turned to her captain. He was a tall, handsome ghost, and in life he must have been very heroic because he was able to turn from Bright Star and lift his clenched fist in the soldier's salute, and to hold it for the full seven seconds before he swept his dancing girl into his arms. Then the ghosts faded away, and the flute faded away, and the door faded away, and the cover returned to the well, and the weeds returned to the path, and we were looking at a bricked-up patch in a wall.

The hands of Master Li and Henpecked Ho were dripping with blood, and I looked like something that the cat had dragged from a slaughterhouse. We made a rather bedraggled group for such solemn ceremonies, but we doubted that anyone would mind. At Henpecked Ho's workshop we cut paper silhouettes of the happy couple. We burned paper money for the dowry and food for the guests, and we spilled wine upon the ground. Henpecked Ho spoke for the bride, and I spoke for the groom, and Li Kao chanted the wedding vows, and when the cock crowed we thanked the newlyweds for the banquet and let them go at last to the bridal bed. Thus Bright Star married her captain, and Henpecked Ho's gentle heart was finally at rest.

“All in all,” said Master Li as he helped me limp down the path, “it has been a rather satisfactory evening.”

9. A Brief Interlude for Murder

As soon as my wounds had healed, Master Li suggested that I should take another stroll through the gardens with Fainting Maid, with her father and himself as chaperones, and Ho and I were quite surprised when he led the way up the path toward the old well and the bricked-up patch of wall. Fainting Maid was in good form.

“Roses! My favorite flowers!” she squealed, pointing to some petunias.

Maste Li's voice was as sweet and smooth as warm honey. “Beautiful roses indeed,” he cooed, “but as Chang Chou so charmingly put it, women are the only flowers that can talk.”

Fainting Maid simpered coyly.

“Stop!” cried Master Li. “Stop right here, with your exquisite feet against this mark in the path! Here the light strikes you perfectly, and never has your beauty been more breathtaking.”

Fainting Maid posed prettily.

“Absolute perfection,” Master Li sighed happily. “A lovely lady in a lovely setting. One can scarcely believe that so tranquil a spot could have been the scene of tragedy, yet I have heard that here a door was locked, and a key was stolen, and a handsome young man and the girl who loved him lost their lives.”

“A stupid soldier and a slut,” Fainting Maid said coldly.

Her father winced, but Li Kao at least partially agreed.

“Well, I'm not so sure about the slut, but the soldier was stupid indeed,” he said thoughtfully. “He was honored with the opportunity of marrying you, O vision of perfection, yet he dared to prefer a lowly dancing girl. Why, he even gave her a valuable jade pendant that should rightfully have been yours!”

I was beginning to sense a certain menace behind Li Kao's beaming smile.

“I would imagine that it was the first time in your life that you had been denied something that you wanted,” said Master Li. “You know, I find it rather odd that Bright Star wasn't wearing the captain's pendant when they fished her body from the water. She would scarcely have paused to take it off before seeking a watery grave, unless, of course, she wasn't seeking a watery grave at all. Meaning that somebody hired a pack of thugs to lock a door and steal a key and murder a dancing girl.”

His hands shot out and jerked a gold chain from Fainting Maid's neck, and up over her head. At the end of the chain was a jade pendant, which he bounced in the palm of his hand, and I realized with a sick sense of shock that I had seen it twice before. First between Fainting Maid's breasts in the carriage, and then in ghost form between the breasts of Bright Star.

“Tell me, dear child, do you always wear this next to your sweet little heart?” Master Li asked, smiling as warmly as ever.

Henpecked Ho was staring at his monstrous daughter with horror and revulsion, and I suppose that the expression on my face was similar. Fainting Maid decided that Li Kao was the safest.

“Surely you do not mean to suggest—”

“Ah, but I do.”

“You cannot possibly suspect—”

“Wrong again.”

“This incredible nonsense—”

“Is not nonsense.”

Fainting Maid turned red, turned white, clutched her chest, reeled, and screeched, “Oh, thou has slain me!” Then she lurched two steps back and six to the left and disappeared.

Li Kao gazed at the spot where she had vanished. “Captious critics might tend to agree with you,” he said mildly, and then he turned to her father. “Ho, you are perfectly free to hear whatever you choose, but what I hear is a magpie that is imitating the sounds of a scream and a splash.”

Henpecked Ho's face was white, and his hands trembled, and his voice was unsteady, but he never flinched.

“Clever little creature,” he whispered. “Now it is imitating the sound of somebody screaming ‘Help!’ ”

Li Kao linked arms with Henpecked Ho, and the two of them strolled up the path while I trotted nervously behind.

“What a talented magpie,” Master Li observed. “How on earth can it manage that sound of thrashing in the water, and the gurgle that sounds strikingly like somebody sinking down into a deep pool?”

“Nature is full of remarkable talents,” Henpecked Ho whispered. “Yours, for example.”

“There is a slight flaw in my character,” Master Li said modestly.

When we returned an hour later I judged from the silence that the talented magpie was no longer with us.

“I think that I had best remove this mark from the path, lest busybodies wonder why it is precisely two feet in front and six feet to the right of an old well from which somebody has rashly removed the cover,” said Master Li. “Ready?”

“Ready,” I said.

“Ready,” said Henpecked Ho.

We rent our garments and tore our hair as we raced back toward the mansion.

“Woe!” we howled. “Woe! Woe! Woe! Poor Fainting Maid has fallen into a well!”

Li Kao and I were viewed with suspicion, but since the girl's own father had been with us there could be no question that it had been an accident.

10. It Was a Grand Funeral

Li Kao was delighted that he had been able to murder somebody who thoroughly deserved it, and his reason for murder was that the Ancestress, in her own inimitable way, was deeply religious. An example of her piety was the immense mausoleum that she had erected for herself, assuming that someday she would condescend to join the gods. It was a giant iron pillar more than a hundred feet high, with the burial chamber in the center and the message that she wished to preserve for posterity engraved in huge characters above the entrance. If the history of the Ancestress is lost in the passage of time, I imagine that the scholars of the future will be rather puzzled by her epitaph.

Another example of her piety was her fondness for lohans. I don't mean the statues of Buddhist saints, such as the 142,289 that can be found in Lung-men. I mean real lohans.

A real lohan is a saintly monk who has given up the ghost while seated in the meditative mudra. This is considered to be a sign from Heaven, and when the deceased is discovered contemplating his navel, with his legs crossed, the soles of his feet turned up, and his hands lying limply upon his lap with the palms up, his body is carefully wrapped in layers of burlap. The burlap is treated with successive coats of lacquer and the finished product is a real saint whose preserved body will last for centuries, (If the lacquer is properly applied and the body is placed in water, it will last forever.) Such lacquered lohans are extremely rare, but the Ancestress possessed no less than twelve of them. Those with nasty minds suspected that more than one of the saints had been peacefully contemplating when an agent of the Ancestress slipped a knife between his ribs. This may or may not have been true, but the Ancestress was unquestionably proud of them and brought them out for all great ceremonial occasions.

In the days that followed the demise of Fainting Maid mourners gathered from all over, and the most illustrious erected sacrificial tents along the road that the funeral procession would take to the cemetery. They brought private orchestras, and even troupes of actors and acrobats, and there was a great deal of socializing among the nobility. More and more people poured into the estate, including countless bonzes who were employed by the Ancestress to pray day and night for her soul, and the affair rather resembled a festival.

The great day dawned with a drizzle. Clouds hovered overhead throughout the morning and early afternoon, and it was hot and humid with a sulphurous smell in the air. Henpecked Ho, who had willingly agreed to help us, muttered grim warnings about evil signs as he walked from count to marquis to duke. Shaggy black beasts with eyes like fire had been seen in the woods, said Henpecked Ho. Servants had seen two ominous ghosts—“A woman in white and a woman in green!”—who had warned of demons, and when a search was made of the pleasure pavilions the carving of a demon had indeed been found, with an iron band around its head and a chain around its neck. A bronze candelabrum had floated through the air beside the Lake of the Fifth Fragrance: “With seven flames!” hissed Henpecked Ho, and I hope that no one will judge that sweet old man rashly when I report that at the funeral of his daughter he was having the time of his life.

A great roll of drums signaled the approach of the funeral procession. First came outriders in double rows, followed by servants waving phoenix banners and musicians playing mournful music. They were followed by long lines of priests who swung lighted censers of gold, and then by the coffin with the sixty-four bearers that designated a princess. As the bereaved fiancé I had the place of honor, wailing and tearing my hair as I walked beside the coffin. Next came soldiers from the army of the Ancestress who carried an immense canopy of phoenix-embroidered yellow silk, and beneath the canopy were bonzes who pulled twelve bejeweled carts. In each cart, seated in the meditative mudra, was a lacquered lohan.

The saints were looking down approvingly at the visible signs of the piety and grief of the Ancestress. She had opened her treasure chambers to provide suitable offerings to the spirit of the departed, and items of immense value were placed at the lohans’ feet. Of course everyone understood that the Ancestress had no intention of burying her wealth with Fainting Maid, but the display was customary, and it was also designed to make lesser mortals turn green with envy. After the burial gifts came four soldiers who were carrying the state umbrella of the Ancestress, and beneath the umbrella marched her chief eunuch, who was carrying the great crown of the Sui Dynasty upon a silken pillow. Then came the great lady herself. An army of servants groaned beneath the crushing weight as they carried her sedan chair, which was covered with a canopy of phoenix-embroidered yellow silk, with silver bells at the sides and a golden knob in back.

In case anyone wonders why she used the phoenix symbols of an imperial consort rather than the dragon symbols of an emperor, the answer is simple. The imperial dragons were embroidered all over a large silken pillow, and the Ancestress was sitting on it.

I will not describe the ceremony of the burial in detail because I would have to begin with the 3,300 rules of chu etiquette, which would send my readers screaming into the night, but I will mention that the body of my beloved had been covered with quicksilver and “Dragon's Brains,” and that I had been quite disappointed when I had discovered that the latter was merely Borneo camphor.

Fainting Maid could not presume to share the mausoleum with the Ancestress. Like all other family members, she was buried in the common dirt, in order to spend eternity at the great lady's feet, and I was required to pour handfuls of dirt over my head and wail like a man demented as I flung myself upon the grave, while the aristocracy made critical comments concerning the artistry of my performance. Hooded monks surrounded the grave, banging bells and gongs and spraying incense in all directions. Their leader had his hands clasped piously in prayer, or so I thought until his real hands slipped slyly from his robe and neatly picked the pockets of the Marquis of Tzu.

Henpecked Ho ran around with wild eyes, babbling about evil spirits and demons, and who could doubt it? Lightning flickered evily in the distance, and terrible things began to happen. Prince Han Li, for example, was engrossed in a profound theological discussion with one of the hooded monks, and when the prince was next seen he was lying in a ditch with a large bump on his head, divested of his purse, jewelry, red leather belt studded with emeralds, silver-winged cap with white tassels, and knife-pleated white mourning garment with a gold-threaded design of five-clawed dragons. Screams and roars of rage were lifting from the pavilions of the wealthy, whose valuable funeral gifts had miraculously disappeared. Lady Wu, whose beauty was said to rival that of the semilegendary Queen Feiyen, was carried into the bushes by a creature who had no ears or nose, and whose eyes were as yellow as his teeth.

We all have our little weaknesses, but I must question the judgment of Cut-Off-Their-Balls Wang when he abandoned his fellow hooded monks to disport in the bushes with Lady Wu. He missed a great deal of excitement.

It was obvious that Henpecked Ho's warnings had been correct, and that the funeral of Fainting Maid had been attacked by demons. Only an immediate exorcism could save the lives of one and all, and Henpecked Ho was nothing less than magnificent as he led the Grand Master Wizard and the forty-nine assistants—who had fortuitously arrived with the hooded monks—and soon the cemetery was shrouded by rolling clouds of incense. Henpecked Ho bravely waved the banners that represented the five directions of Heaven, while wizards who wore cosmological mantles and seven-starred tiaras sprayed the graves with holy water. Drums nearly deafened us as Ho and the wizards grappled with invisible demons, swinging peachwood whips and swords that were engraved with the Eight Diagrams and the Nine Heavenly Spheres. They stuffed the nasty demons into jars and bottles, which were stoppered and sealed and stamped with closure decrees that forbade them to be opened throughout all eternity.

In the middle of all this a miracle occurred that could have converted the most stubborn atheist in the whole world.

An exceptionally saintly lacquered lohan was admiring the diamond-encrusted imperial sceptre that the Ancestress had placed at his feet, and apparently he feared that the other funeral gifts might be defiled by demons. So he stood up from the meditative mudra and began making a tour of inspection. Bonzes screamed and fainted in droves, and even the Ancestress, who had been screaming “Off with their heads!” turned pale and drew back in fear. The lacquer glinted like dull gold in the sultry light, and the saint appeared to be floating through the clouds of incense as he drifted among his fellow lohans and inspected each gift to make sure that it was safe. The last gift was inside a small jade casket, which the saint picked up and opened.

“Got it!” he exclaimed happily.

Unfortunately the light coat of lacquer had wiped fifty years of wrinkles from the lohan's face, and the Ancestress sat up straight.

“You!” she screamed. “You and your damned praying mantises nearly ruined me with Emperor Wen! Soldiers, seize this fraudulent dog!”

Master Li took to his heels, clutching the jade casket, and I hopped up from Fainting Maid's grave and raced in pursuit. The army of the Ancestress ran after us, and the diversion was a godsend to Cut-Off-Their-Balls Wang, who emerged from the bushes and gathered his men and began stealing everything in sight, and confusion degenerated into chaos. Then the storm that had been hovering all day broke with a bang, and lightning and thunder joined the drums of the wizards and the howls of the victims, and blinding rain became an even better cover than rolling clouds of incense. We escaped quite easily and reached our hiding place, a small natural cave in the riverbank. Then we stripped and dried off, and Li Kao opened the casket and held it out to me.

Inside was the most magnificent ginseng root imaginable. No wonder the Ancestress had included it among her most valuable possessions, as Master Li had foreseen, and the aroma that came from it was so powerful that it made my head spin.

“Ox, this is truly extraordinary, but the Root of Power in no way resembles the Great Root that Henpecked Ho described,” said Master Li. “Of course Ho doubts that his root was ginseng, and we must pray that this will do the job.”

I was convinced that the children were as good as cured, and I cannot describe the joy in my heart. The rain soon ceased and the clouds drifted away, and we tiptoed through a thick swirling mist. Henpecked Ho was waiting for us at the entrance to the cemetery, and his eyes were sparkling as they had been when Bright Star passed safely through the door. We started off through the graves, and as we approached the mausoleum of the Ancestress we heard the faint sound of shovels.

“Ho, I rather suspect that some of the scum of the earth that Cut-Off-Their-Balls Wang recruited are digging up your daughter,” Master Li said thoughtfully. “Do you have any objection to having her coffin plundered?”

“None whatsoever,” said Henpecked Ho. “My beloved wife and her seven fat sisters provided some rather expensive jewelry, and I seriously doubt that my dear daughter deserved to take it with her.”

There was a good deal of iron beneath his meek exterior. We heard the sound of shovels striking the coffin, and then the sound of the lid being removed.

“This stuff any good?” asked a voice that was oddly familiar.

There was a pause for inspection, and then another oddly familiar voice answered, “First-rate.”

The mist cleared enough so that I could see a blade glint in the moonlight.

“You use the knife,” said the first voice. “I'm scared of corpses.”

“Ho, we can't let them desecrate your daughter's body!” I whispered.

“Hair and fingernails,” he whispered back.

“What?”

“Hair and fingernails,” Master Li said quietly. “It's a very ancient practice. Grave robbers dig up the bodies of ladies of quality and clip their silken tresses and flawless fingernails, which they sell for a high price to an expensive courtesan. The courtesan claims the hair and fingernails to be her own, and gives them as a fidelity gift to a wealthy lover. The lover assumes that the lovesick lady has handed him the power of life and death—any decent witch could use such things to destroy the donor—and is inspired to reply in kind with immensely valuable fidelity gifts, and thus many a departed beauty has continued to bankrupt lovers long after her demise. A rather interesting form of immortality,” said Master Li.

The shovels were pitching earth back into the grave, to delay discovery and pursuit, and I stuck my head through some bushes. My eyes very nearly popped out of their sockets.

“Who, pray tell, is shoveling earth so that it piles up neatly on the other side of the hole?” snarled Pawnbroker Fang.

“In answer to your question, my esteemed colleague,” hissed Ma the Grub, “I would advise you to piss upon the ground and examine your reflection in the puddle!”

Li Kao stuck his head out beside me, and his eyes narrowed as he examined the unlovely pair.

“Strange,” he said thoughtfully. “Destiny, perhaps, since Pawnbroker Fang is not the sort of man who would write down all he knows in his files. How do I look?”

“Look?” I asked stupidly.

“Lacquer holding?”

I examined him with a slight shudder. The lacquer was cracking, and he resembled a six-month-old corpse.

“You look ghastly,” I whispered.

“Careful with that shovel!” yelped Ma the Grub, leaping back in fear. “You almost trapped my shadow inside the grave!”

“Why don't you tie your shadow to your body with a cord, like a sensible person?” Pawnbroker Fang grumbled.

“Splendid. Superstition has its uses,” Master Li said happily.

Li Kao slipped from the bushes, and a lacquered lohan drifted eerily through the mist. “Oooooooooooooooooooo,” the horrible spectre moaned.

Ma the Grub toppled upon the half-covered coffin in a dead faint, and Pawnbroker Fang dropped to his knees and covered his eyes, and a hollow haunted voice with a thick Tibetan accent vibrated through the night.

“I am Tso Jed Chonu, the Patron of Ginseng. Who dares to steal my Root of Power?”

“Spirit, spare me!” howled Pawnbroker Fang. “I knew that the Ancestress possessed such a root, but I swear that I did not know where it was hidden!”

“Not the lesser root!” roared the Patron of Ginseng. “I mean the Great Root!”

“O Spirit, only one Great Root of Power exists in all the world, and no lowly pawnbroker would dare to touch it,” Fang sobbed.

“Who has my root? Where has he hidden it?”

“I dare not say!” Fang wailed.

Tso Jed Chonu lifted his horrible face to Heaven and extended his hand for a lightning bolt.

“The Duke of Ch'in!” screamed Pawnbroker Fang. “It's hidden in his labyrinth!”

The terrible lohan stood lost in thought for nearly a minute. Then he flicked a finger.

“Begone!”

Ma the Grub's faint was not what it appeared to be. He vaulted from the coffin and passed Pawnbroker Fang in twenty steps as they raced away into the mist. Li Kao was looking thoughtfully down into the grave, and then he got down on his knees and reached for something. He stood up with an object in his hands, which he turned this way and that in the moonlight, and then he walked back and handed it to Henpecked Ho, who yelped in delight. It was a fragment of a clay tablet, and it was covered with the same ancient ideographs as the fragments that Ho had been working on for sixteen years, but it was big enough to contain whole paragraphs.

In the distance we could hear that his wife and her seven fat sisters had joined the Ancestress. “Off with their heads!” they howled, and Henpecked Ho wondered whether his joy might be made complete.

“Li Kao, in your journeys around the estate did you happen to encounter any more old wells?” he asked hopefully.

“I would advise using an axe,” said Master Li.

“An axe. Yes, an axe by all means.”

We started off again, toward the wall beside the old well. Li Kao hooted like an owl, and a dog replied with three yelps and a howl. We said our farewells to Henpecked Ho, rather tearfully on my part, and Li Kao climbed upon my back. The patch in the wall was now a cleverly painted piece of canvas, and I pulled it aside and raced across the empty corridor. As I began to climb a rope ladder up the side of the opposite wall I glanced back and saw that Henpecked Ho was holding the precious clay tablet in one hand while his other hand wielded an imaginary axe.

“Chop-chop!” he chanted happily. “Chop-chop-chop-chop-chop!”

The mist swallowed him up, and I swung down the other side to Cut-Off-Their-Balls Wang and his scum of the earth. It had been twenty years since they had enjoyed a windfall like the funeral of Fainting Maid, and they begged Master Li to stay as their leader. We had other things to do. I was off like the wind, racing across the hills toward the village of Ku-fu, while Master Li rode upon my back clutching the Root of Power.

11. A Tale I Will Thee Tell

It was early afternoon, and dust danced in the sunlight that filtered into the monastery. The only sounds came from Li Kao and the abbot as they prepared the essence, and from bird songs that drifted with the breeze through the windows. The children had not moved so much as an eyelash since we had left, and the bonzes had been able to do no more for them than to bathe them and move them to different positions at regular intervals. It was hard to believe that the small pale bodies could still show faint vital signs, and the parents were as silent as the children.

An alchemist's stove burned beneath a bubbling vial of sugared water, in which Master Li had placed the Root of Power. The water began to turn orange, and the ginseng root took on a copperish-orange color that was almost translucent, like amber. Master Li moved the root to a fresh vial that was filled with mild rice wine. The abbot heated the liquid, and as it slowly bubbled down Master Li replaced it with the orange liquid from the first vial. Then the level of the liquid lowered until the root was barely covered, and the liquid turned saffron, and Master Li sealed the vial and placed it in a pan of boiling water. Both the liquid and the root began to turn orange-black, and then jet-black. Only a small puddle of liquid remained, and Master Li removed the vial from the pan and opened the seal. An incredible fresh and pungent aroma filled the room, like a whole forest of mountain herbs just after a rain.

“That's all there is to it, and now we will see what we will see,” he said calmly.

The abbot and Li Kao walked from bed to bed. The abbot parted the children's lips and Li Kao dipped the blackened root into the liquid and carefully applied three drops to each tongue. Three times the treatment was repeated, and there was just enough of the ginseng essence to go around.

We waited while the sounds of chickens and cows and water buffaloes drifted upon the breeze, and willows brushed their branches against the gray stone walls, and a woodpecker hammered in the garden.

Color was returning to the pale faces. The bedcovers began to lift and fall with strong regular breathing, and warmth flushed the cold limbs. Fang's Fawn sighed, and a wide smile spread across the face of Bone Helmet. All the children began to smile happily, and with a sense of humble awe I realized that I had witnessed a medical miracle. Parents wept for joy as they embraced their sons and daughters, and the grandparents danced, and the bonzes ran to the ropes and swung lustily up and down as they rang every bell in the monastery. The abbot was dancing a jig while he bellowed, “Namo Kuanshiyin Bodhisattva Mahasattva!” which is how good Buddhists say “hallelujah.”

Only Li Kao remained unmoved. He walked from bed to bed, examining each child with analytical coldness, and then he signaled for me to pry Big Hong loose from his son. He bent over the boy and began testing his pulse: first the left wrist for the functions of the heart, liver, kidneys, small intestine, gall bladder, and ureter; then the right wrist for the lungs, stomach, parta ulta, large intestine, spleen, and vital parts. He beckoned for the abbot to come and repeat the same process and compare results.

The abbot's face turned puzzled, and then anxious, and then desperate. He ran for his pins and began testing acupuncture and pain points, with no reaction whatsoever from the children. Little Hong's color remained high, and his pulse remained strong, and the happy smile remained on his lips, but when Master Li lifted one of his arms and released it, the arm remained suspended in air. He moved the arm to different positions, and it stayed precisely where he placed it. The abbot grabbed Fawn and shook her violently, and she did not even register a change in her pulse.

Li Kao straightened up and slowly walked back to the table and stared blankly down at the empty alchemist's vial. All eyes were fixed on him. He was immeasurably weary, and I could tell that in his tiredness he was struggling to think of words that would soften the fact that there is no such thing as an almost miracle. The Root of Power had almost done it, but it simply wasn't strong enough.

I couldn't bear it if his eyes turned to mine. I knew that he had only one thing to tell me, and the words of the ancient Tibetan text echoed in my mind. “Only one treatment is effective, and this will succeed only if the physician has access to the rarest and mightiest of all healing agents, the Great Root of Power.” I saw the terrified face of Pawnbroker Fang as he swore that only one Great Root existed in all the world, and I heard him scream, “The Duke of Ch'in! It's hidden in his labyrinth!” Even an ignorant country boy knew that the Duke of Ch'in was ten thousand times more dangerous than the Ancestress, and that copper coins do not purchase suicide. If I went after the Great Root, it would be on my own, and never in history had anyone returned alive from the duke's labyrinth.

I turned and walked rapidly out the door and down the maze of corridors that I knew like the back of my hand, and then I jumped from a low window to the grass below and began running across the hills.

I had no goal or purpose whatsoever, or perhaps I did in that I was subconsciously saying farewell to the village of Ku-fu. All I knew was that when I am depressed or frightened, I must do something physical, which is all I am good at, and if I keep at it long enough, I can usually forget my cares. I ran for hours through the hills and fields and forest, and lonely dogs began to follow me. I had quite a pack of them at my heels when my feet took me up a tiny winding path to a dense clump of shrubbery on a hillside, and I got down on my knees and wriggled through a tunnel into a small cave. The dogs squeezed in after me, and we sat down upon piles of bones.

They were called dragon bones, because it had once been believed that dragons periodically shed their bones as snakes shed their skins, but they actually were the shoulder bones of domestic animals that had been used for prophecy. Scapulimancy is very ancient, and the abbot had told me that the oracle bones of An-yang are the only solid proof that the semi-mythological Shang Dynasty had actually existed.

Do other people revert to childhood when they are frightened? I know that I did. The cave had been headquarters for youthful desperadoes when I was a small boy, and we had brought all important questions to the infallible dragon bones. Now I lit a fire in the old brazier and placed the poker in it. The dogs crowded around me and watched with interest while I searched for a bone with a smooth unmarked side. I wrote Yes on the left and No on the right, and I cleared my throat.

“O Dragon, will I find the Great Root of Power in the labyrinth of the Duke of Ch'in and get out of there alive?” I whispered hoarsely.

I wrapped my hand in an old piece of horsehide and picked up the hot poker. The point sizzled as it bored into the bone, and the crack started slowly, lifting toward the answer. Then it split neatly in half, and the left crack shot up and speared Yes while the right half impaled No. I stared at the message. I would find the root, but wouldn't live to tell the tale? I would live to tell the tale, but wouldn't find the root? I was quite upset until it occurred to me that I was no longer ten years old, and I blushed bright red.

“Idiot,” I muttered.

The sun had set. Moonbeams reached into the cave and touched my left hand, and the small scar on my wrist gleamed like silver. I threw back my head and laughed. The childhood friends who had passed the knife around the circle as we became blood brothers would have died from envy had they known that the skeleton of Number Ten Ox was destined to rattle in the duke's mysterious labyrinth, and I hugged a few dogs as I solemnly chanted the sacred vow of the Seven Bloody Bandits of the Dragon Bones Cave.

“Bat shit, rat shit, three-toed-sloth shit, bones and blades and bloody oath writ—”

“Now that has real merit,” a voice said approvingly. “It beats the scholar's oath by a mile and a half.”

The dogs barked excitedly as Master Li crawled into the cave. He sat down and looked around.

“Scapulimancy was a racket,” he observed. “With a little practice a soothsayer could make a bone crack any way he wanted to, or jump through a hoop, for that matter. Did you ever cheat when you were a boy?”

“It would have spoiled our games,” I mumbled.

“Very wise,” he said. “The abbot, who is also very wise, told me that I would find you here, and if not, I should simply sit and wait. Don't be ashamed of reliving your childhood, Ox, because all of us must do it now and then in order to maintain our sanity.”

He was carrying a large flask of wine, which he extended to me.

“Have a drink, and a tale I will thee tell,” he said.

I sipped and choked on the fiery liquid. Li Kao reclaimed the flask and swallowed about a pint.

“It was a dark and stormy night,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “A cold wind howled, and lightning flickered across the sky like the tongues of snakes, and thunder roared like dragons, and rain fell in torrents. Piercing through the gale came the sound of wheels and hoofbeats, followed by the most dreaded sound in all China: the high-pitched hunting horns of the soldiers of the Duke of Ch'in.”

This time I choked without benefit of wine, and Li Kao pounded my back in a kindly fashion.

“A mule was pulling a buggy down a mountain path at a suicidal rate, and a man and a woman were bouncing upon the seat,” he said. “The woman was nine months pregnant, and she clutched a large burlap bag while the man wielded a buggy whip. Once more the terrible horns sounded behind them, and then a volley of arrows shot into the night. The mule staggered and fell, and the buggy crashed into a ditch. Apparently the soldiers were after the bag that the woman carried, because the man tried to take it from her so that the soldiers would attack him while she escaped, but the woman was equally brave and refused to relinquish the bag, and they were tugging back and forth when the second volley of arrows reached them. The man fell back mortally wounded, and the woman staggered away with the shaft of an arrow protruding from beneath her left shoulder blade, and the rain mercifully covered the small determined figure as she crawled up the winding path that led to the Monastery of Sh'u.”

Master Li hoisted the flask and drank thirstily. I had no idea why he was telling me the story, but at least he was taking my mind off my troubles.

“The arrow was her passport,” he said. “It was stamped with the tiger emblem of the Duke of Ch'in, and the Monastery of Sh'u hated the Duke of Ch'in. They did all they could for her, and with the first faint light of dawn the tiny wail of a newborn babe lifted above the walls. The abbot and the midwife had worked a small miracle to save the child, but nothing could be done for the mother.

“ ‘Brave Soul,’ the abbot whispered, wiping the sweat from her fevered brow. ‘Brave rebel against the evil Duke of Ch'in.’

“The midwife lifted the wailing child. ‘A thousand blessings, my lady, for you have given birth to a healthy son!’ she said.

“The dying woman's nostrils twitched, and she opened her eyes. With an immense effort she lifted a hand and pointed to the midwife.

“ ‘Kao,’ she panted. ‘Li… Li… Li… Kao…’ ”

I jerked up my head and looked wide-eyed at Master Li, who winked at me.

“Tears blurred the abbot's eyes. ‘I hear, my daughter,’ he sniffled. ‘Your son shall be named Li Kao.’

“ ‘Kao!’ the woman gasped. ‘Li… Li… Li… Kao…’

“ ‘I understand, my daughter,’ the abbot sobbed. ‘I shall raise Li Kao as my own son, and I shall place his tiny feet upon the True Path. He shall be instructed in the Five Virtues and Excellent Doctrines, and at the end of his blameless life his spirit shall surely pass through the Gates of the Great Void into the Blessed Regions of Purified Semblance.’ ”

Master Li swallowed another pint and offered me another sip, which produced the same choking result.

“The woman's eyes blazed with a strong emotion that strangely resembled fury,” he said, “but her strength was spent. Her eyes closed, and her hand fell limply to her side, and her soul departed to the Yellow Springs Beneath the Earth. The midwife was greatly moved, and when she whipped a small goatskin flask from her robe and drank deeply, the smell of the stuff brought a cold chill to the abbot's heart. That revolting odor could only come from the finest paint remover and worst wine ever invented: Kao-liang. Repeat: Kao-liang. Was it possible that the dying woman had not been naming a baby but demanding a snort? It was indeed possible, and it further developed that she had not been pursued by the duke's soldiers because she was an heroic rebel, but because she and her husband had stolen the regimental payroll. My parents were the most notorious crooks in China, and my mother could have escaped quite easily if she had not tried to battle my father for the loot.”

Master Li shook his head wonderingly.

“Ox, heredity is a remarkable thing. I never knew my parents, yet at the tender age of five I stole the abbot's silver belt buckle. When I was six I made off with his jade inkstone. On my eighth birthday I stole the gold tassels from the abbot's best hat, and I still take pride in the feat because he happened to be wearing the hat at the time. When I was eleven I exchanged the abbot's bronze incense burners for a couple of jars of wine and got royally drunk in the Alley of Flies, and at thirteen I borrowed his silver candlesticks and tiptoed into the Alley of Four Hundred Forbidden Delights. Youth!” cried Master Li. “How sweet yet sadly swift pass the halcyon days of our innocence.”

He buried his nose in his wine flask again, and burped comfortably.

“The abbot of the Monastery of Sh'u was truly heroic,” he said. “He had vowed to raise me as his own, and he kept his word, and so well did he pound an education into my head that I eventually did quite well in my chin-shih examination. When I left the monastery, it was not in pursuit of scholarship, however, but in pursuit of an unparalleled career in crime. It was quite a shock for me to discover that crime was so easy that it was boring. I reluctantly turned to scholarship, and by the accident of handing in some good papers I was entombed in the Forest of Culture Academy as a research fellow, and I escaped from that morgue by bribing the court eunuchs to get me an appointment as a military strategist. I managed to lose a few battles in the approved manner, and then I became one of the emperor's wandering persuaders, and then Governor of Yu, and it was in the last occupation that the light finally dawned. I was trying to get enough evidence to hang the loathsome Dog-Meat General of Wusan, but he was so slippery that I couldn't prove a thing. Fortunately the Yellow River was flooding again, and I managed to convince the priests that the only way to appease the river god was through the custom of the ancients. So the Dog-Meat General disappeared beneath the waves tied to a gray horse—I was sorry about the horse, but it was the custom—and I tendered my resignation. Solving crime, I had belatedly discovered, was at least a hundred times more difficult than committing it, so I hung the sign of a half-closed eye above my door and I have never regretted it. I might add that I have also never left a case half-finished.”

I gulped noisily, and I suppose that the hope in my eyes was shining as brightly as the moon.

“Why do you think I've been telling you this?” said Master Li. “I have a very good reason to be angry at the Duke of Ch'in, since one of his ancestors killed my parents, and if nothing else, my various careers have uniquely prepared me for the task of stealing ginseng roots.”

He patted my shoulder.

“Besides, I'd take you for a great-grandson any day,” he said. “I would never dream of allowing you to go out on your own to be slaughtered. Get some sleep, and we'll leave at dawn.”

Tears blurred my eyes. Master Li called to the dogs and crawled from the cave, and they gamboled happily around him as he danced down the path toward the monastery, waving his wine flask. The high-pitched four-tone liquid-voweled song of High Mandarin drifted back upon the night breeze.

I wished that I could have seen him when he was ninety. Even now his leaps and capers were magnificent in the moonlight.