The Boat of a Million Years

1

Where mountains began their long climb toward Tibet, a village nestled. On three sides its dell lifted steeply, making horizons high and close. A stream from the west rushed through upper woods of cypress and dwarf oak, gleamed as a waterfall, passed among the buildings, and lost itself in bamboo and ruggedness eastward. The people cultivated wheat, soybeans, vegetables, melons, some fruit trees on the floor of the vale and on small terraces above. They kept pigs, chickens, and a fishpond. This, their score or so of turf-roofed earthen houses, and they themselves had been there so long that sun, rain, snow, wind, and time had made them as much a part of the land as the pheasant, the panda, or the wildflowers in spring.

On the east the view opened, a wrinklescape manifoldly green and tawny with forest, to right and left a sight of snowpeaks afloat in heaven. Through it wound a road, scarcely more than a track, the village its terminus. Traffic was sparse. Several times a year, men undertook a journey of days, to market in a little town and home again. There they also paid taxes in kind. Thus the governor very seldom thought to send a man to them. When he did, the inspector only stayed overnight, inquired of the elders how things were going, received ritual answers, and departed eagerly. The place had a somewhat uncanny reputation.

That was in the eyes of orthodox outsiders. To others it was holy. Because of this awe, whether vague or devout, as well as its loneliness, war and banditry had passed the village by. It followed its own ways, enduring no more than die ordinary sorrows and calamities of life. Once in a while a pilgrim overcame the obstacles—distance, hardship, danger—to visit it. In the course of generations, a few among those had remained. The village took, them into its peace. Thus things were. Thus had they always been. Their beginnings were unknown save to myth and the Master.

Great, therefore, was the excitement when a herdboy came running and shrilled that a traveler was on the way, “Shame, bad, that you left your ox unattended,” chided his grandfather, but gently. The boy explained that he had first tethered the beast; and, after all, no tiger arrived. He was forgiven. Meanwhile folk bustled and shouted about. Presently a disciple struck the gong in the shrine. A metal voice toned forth, rang off the hillsides, mingled with shush of waterfall and murmur of wind.

Autumn comes early in the high hills. Woodlands were dappled brown and yellow, grass was turning sere, fallen leaves crunched underfoot near puddles left by last night’s rain. Overhead the sky arched unutterably blue, empty of all but wings. Bird cries drifted faint through air flowing down the mountainside. Smoke from hearthfires sharpened its chill.

As the stranger trudged up the last stretch of road, the gathered villagers saw with astonishment that this was a woman. Threadbare and oft mended, her gown of coarse cotton had faded to gray. Her boots were equally near the end of their service, and use had worn smooth the staff that swung in her right hand. From her left shoulder hung a rolled-up blanket, just as wayworn, which held a wooden bowl and perhaps one or two other things.

Yet she was no beggar granny. Her body was straight and slim, her stride firm and limber. Where a scarf fluttered loose, one could see hair like a crow’s wing, hacked off just below the earlobes; and her face, though weathered, drawn close over the bones, was unlined. Never had such a face appeared in these parts. She did not even seem of quite the same breed as the lowlanders from whose country she fared.

Elder Tsong trod forward. For lack of a better thought, he greeted her according to the ancient rite, despite every newcomer hitherto having been male. “In the name of the Master and the people, I bid you welcome to our Morning Dew Village. May you walk in the Tao, in peace, and the gods and spirits walk with you. May the hour of your advent prove lucky. Enter as a guest, depart as a friend.”

“This humble person thanks you, honorable sir,” she replied. Her accent was like none that anybody had heard before, but that was no surprise. “I come in search of ... enlightenment.” The word shook. Fervent must her hope be.

Tsong turned and bowed toward the shrine and the Master’s house behind it. “Here is the home of the Way,” he said. Some persons smiled smugly. Their home.

“May we know your name, that it be borne to the Master?” Tsong asked.

She hesitated, then: “I call myself Li, honorable sir.”

He nodded. The wind ruffled his thin white beard. “If you have chosen that, you have likely chosen well.” In her pronunciation, it could mean the measure of distance. Ignoring whispers, mutters, and stirrings among the folk, he forbore to inquire further. “Come. You shall take refreshment and stay with me.”

“Your ... leader—”

“In due course, young miss, in due course. Pray come.”

Her features settled into an aspect no one could fathom, something between resignation and an ageless determination. “Again, my humble thanks,” she said, and accompanied him.

The villagers moved aside. Several uttered words of goodwill. Beneath a natural curiosity, they were as alike in their mildness—the very children were—as in their padded garments and work-hardened hands. Alike, too, were many faces, broad and rather fiat-nosed above sturdy frames. After Tsong, his family, and Li disappeared, they chatted for a while, then piecemeal went back to their cookfires, handmills, looms, tools, animals, all that kept them alive as it had kept their ancestors alive from time out of mind.

Tseng’s oldest son, with wife and offspring, lived with him. They stayed in the background, except for serving tea and food. The house was larger, than most, four rooms inside rammed-earth walls, darksome but comfortably warm. While homes were poorly and rudely furnished, there was no real want; rather, contentment and cheerfulness prevailed. Tsong and Li sat on mats at a low table and enjoyed broth flavored with ruddy peppercorns, fragrant amidst the savors of other foodstuffs hung under the roof.

“You shall wash and rest before we meet with my fellow elders,” he promised.

Her spoon trembled. “Please,” she blurted, “when may I see the teacher? I have come, oh, a long and weary way.”

Tsong frowned. “I understand your desire. But we really know nothing about you, ah, Miss Li.”

Her lashes lowered. “Forgive me. I think what I have to tell is for his ears alone. And I think—I, I pray he will want to hear me soon. Soon!”

“We must not be overhasty. That would be irreverent, and maybe unlucky. What do you know about him?”

“Hardly more than rumors, I confess. The story—no, different stories in different places as I wandered. At first they sounded like folk tales. A holy man afar in the west, so holy that death dares not touch him— Only as I came nearer did anyone tell me that this is his dwelling ground. Few would say that much. They seemed afraid to speak, although ... I never heard ill of him.”

“No ill is there to hear,” said Tsong, softened by her earnestness. “You must have a great soul, that you ventured the pilgrimage. Quite alone, too, a youthful woman. Surely your stars are strong, that you took no harm. That bodes well.”

Dim of eye and in smoky dusk, he failed to see how she winced. “Nevertheless our wizard must read the bones,” he continued thoughtfully, “and we must offer to the ancestors and spirits, yes, hold a purification; for you are a woman.”

“What has the holy man to fear, if time itself obeys him?” she cried.

His tone calmed her somewhat: “Nothing, I daresay. And certainly he will protect us, his beloved people, as he always has. What do you wish to hear about him?”

“Everything, everything,” she whispered.

Tsong smiled. His few stumps of teeth glistened in what light passed through a tiny window. “That would take years,” he said. “He has been with us for centuries, if not longer.”

Again she tautened. “When did he come?”

Tsong sipped his tea. “Who knows? He has books, he can read and write, but the rest of us cannot. We tally the months, but not the years. Why should we? Under his good sway, lifespans are alike, as happy as the stars and the spirits may grant. The outside world troubles us never. Wars, famines, pestilences, those are gnat-buzz borne in from the market town, which itself hears little. I could not tell you who reigns in Nanking these days, nor do I care.”

“The Ming drove out the foreign Yuan some two hundred years ago, and the Imperial seat is Peking.”

“Ah, learned, are you?” the old man chuckled. “Yes, our forebears did hear about invaders from the north, and we know they are now gone. However, the Tibetans are much closer, and they have not attacked these parts for generations, nor ever our village. Thanks be to the Master.”

“He is your true king, then?”

“No, no.” The bald head shook. “To rule over us would be beneath his dignity. He counsels the elders when we ask, and of course we heed. He instructs us, during our childhoods and throughout our lives, in the Way; and of course we gladly follow it as well as we are able. When someone falls from it, the chastisement he orders is gentle—though quite enough, since real evildoing means expulsion, exile, homelessness for life and ever afterward.”

Tsong shuddered slightly before going on: “He receives pilgrims. From among them and from among our own youths who wish it, he accepts a few disciples at a time. They serve his worldly needs, listen to his wisdom, strive to attain a small part of his holiness. Not that this keeps them from eventually having households of their own; and often the Master honors a family, any family in the village, with his presence or his blood.”

“His blood?”

Li flushed when Tsong answered, “You have much to learn, young miss. Male Yang and female Yin must join for the health of the body, the soul, and the world. I am myself a grandson of the Master. Two daughters of mine have borne him children. One was already married, but her husband kept from her until they were sure it would indeed be a child of Tu Shan that blessed their home. The second, who is lame in one leg, suddenly needed only a bedspread for her dowry. Thus is the Way,”

“I see.” He could barely hear her. She had gone pale.

“If you cannot accept this,” he said kindly, “you may still meet him and receive his blessing before you leave. He forces no one.”

She gripped the spoon in her fist as if its handle were a post to which she clung lest she be whirled off the earth. “No, I will surely do his will,” stumbled from her throat, “I who have been seeking over all these lives, all these years.”

2

He could have been a peasant man of the village—but then, every one of them was closely or distantly descended from him—with the same strong frame clad in the same thick coat and trousers, the same grime and calluses on feet that indoors were bare. His beard hung thin, youthfully black, his hair was drawn into a topknot. The house he inhabited with his disciples was as big as any, but no bigger, also of plain earth above a clay floor. The room to which one of the young men admitted her before bowing and leaving was scarcely better furnished. There was a bedstead, wide enough for him and whatever woman might attend him; straw mats, stools, table, a calligraphic scroll, gone brown-spotted and flyspecked, on the wall above a stone altar; a wooden chest for clothing, a smaller brass one that doubtless held books; a few bowls, cups, cloths, and other everyday things. The window was shuttered against a blustery wind. A single lampflame did little to relieve murkiness. Coming in from outdoors, Li was first aware of the smell. It was not unpleasant, but it was heavy, blent of old smoke and grease, manure tracked in on shoes, humanity, centuries.

Seated, he lifted a hand in benison. “Welcome,” he said in die hill dialect. “May the spirits guide you along the Way.” His gaze was shrewd. “Do you wish to make offering?”

She bowed low. “I am a poor wanderer, Master.”

He smiled. “So they have told me. Fear not. Most who come here believe gifts will win them the favor of the gods. Well, if it helps uplift their souls, they are right. But the seeking soul itself is the only real sacrifice. Be seated, Lady JLi, and let us come to know each other.”

As the elders had instructed her, she knelt on the mat near his feet. His look searched her. “You do that otherwise than any woman I have seen before,” he murmured, “and you talk differently, too.”

“I am but newly in these parts, Master.”

“I mean that you do not talk like a lowlander who has picked up some of the highland form of speech.”

“I thought I had learned more than one Chinese tongue well, as long as I have been in the Middle Kingdom,” broke from her.

“I’ve been widely about, myself.” He shifted to the idiom of Shansi or Honan, though it was not quite what she remembered from the wealthy, populous northeastern provinces and he used it rustily. “Will you be more at ease talking this?”

“I learned it first, Master.”

“It’s been long since I— But where are you from, then?”

She raised her face toward his. Her heart thuttered. With an effort like reining in a wild horse, she kept her voice level. “Master, I was born across the sea, in the country of Nippon.”.

His eyes widened. “You have come far in your search for salvation.”

“Far and long, Master.” She drew breath. Her mouth had gone dry. “I was born four hundred years ago.”

“What?” He leaped to his feet.

She rose too. “It is true, it is true,” she said desperately. “How could I dare lie to you? The enlightenment I seek, have sought, oh, that was to find someone like myself, who never grows old—”

She could hold back the tears no more. He laid his arms around her. She clung close and felt how he also trembled.

After a time they drew apart and, for another while, stared at one another. The wind boomed outside.

A strange calm had fallen on her. She blinked her lashes clear and told him, “You have only my word for this, of course. I learned quite early to be nobody that anybody was ... much concerned about or would ... especially remember.”

“I believe you,” he answered hoarsely. “Your presence, you, a foreigner and a woman, that speaks for you. And I think I am afraid to disbelieve you.”

A laugh sobbed. “You will have time aplenty to make certain.”

“Time,” he mumbled. “Hundreds, thousands of years. And you a woman.”

Old fears awoke. Her hands fluttered before her. She forced herself to stand where she was. “I am a nun. I took vows to Amida Butsu—the Buddha.”

He nodded, against straining muscles. “How else could you travel freely?”

“I was not always safe,” she wrung out of her lips. “I have been violated in wild lands of this realm. Nor have I always been true. I have sometimes taken shelter with a man who offered it, and stayed with him till he died.”

“I’ll be kind,” he promised.

“I know. I asked ... of certain women here ... But what of those vows? I thought I had no choice before, but now—”

His laughter gusted louder than needful. “Ho! I release you from them.”

“Can you?”

“I am the Master, am I not? The people aren’t supposed to pray to me but I know they do, more than to their gods. i Nothing bad has come of it. Instead, we’ve had peace, lifetime after lifetime.”

“Did you ... foresee that?”

He shrugged. “No. Myself, I am—maybe a thousand and a half years old. I don’t remember just when I came here.”

The past took possession of him. He looked beyond her and the wall, he spoke low and rapidly:

“The years blur together, they become one, the dead are as real as the living and the living as unreal as the dead. For a while, long ago, I was mad, in a waking dream. Some monks took me in, and slowly, I’m not sure how, slowly I grew able to think again. Ah, I see that something like that .t happened to you too. Well, for me it still is often hard to be sure what I truly remember, and I forget much.

“I had found, like you, the safest thing was to be a footloose religious person. I only meant to stay here a few years, after they’d made me welcome. But tune went on and on, this was a snug den and foes feared to come, once word of me had drifted about, and what else, what better, was there? I’ve tried to do my people no harm. I think, they think I do them good.”

He shook himself, trod forward, caught both her hands. His were big, strong, but less hard than other men’s. She had heard that he lived off their labor, at most diverting himself with his ancient trade of blacksmith. “But who are you, Li? What are you?”

In sudden weariness, she sighed. “I have borne many names, Okura, Asagao, Yukiko—names did not matter among us, they changed as our positions changed, and we might use a different nickname for every friend. I was an attendant at a court that became a shadow. When no more pretense of being mortal was possible, and I feared to proclaim what I was, I turned nun and begged my way from shrine to shrine, place to place.”

“It was easier for me,” he admitted, “but I too found I’d better keep moving, and stay clear of anybody powerful who might want me to linger. Until I found this haven. How did you come to leave ... Nippon, you call that land?”

“I was forever hoping to find someone like me, an end to the loneliness, the—meaninglessness; for I had tried to find meaning in the Buddha, and no enlightenment ever came. Well, the news reached us that the Mongols—they who had conquered China and tried to invade us, but the Divine Wind wrecked their ships—they had been driven out. The Chinese were sailing far and wide, also to us. This land is ... our motherland in spirit, the mother of civilization.” She saw puzzlement, and recalled that he was of lowly birth and had lived withdrawn since before she came into the world. “We knew of many holy sites in China. I thought, as well, there if anywhere would be other ... immortals. So I took passage as a pilgrim, the captain gained merit by carrying me, and on these shores I set off afoot... I did not then know how vast the country is.”

“Have you never wished to go home?”

“What is home? Besides, the Chinese have stopped sailing. They have destroyed all their great ships. It is forbidden on pain of death to leave the Empire. You had not heard?”

“We’re free of overlords here. Welcome, welcome.” His tone deepened, strengthened. He let go her hands and once more laid arms about her waist, but now the clasp was strong and his breath turned musky. “You’ve found me, we’re together, you, my wife! I waited and waited, prayed, offered, cast spells, till at last I gave up hope. Then you came. Li!” His mouth sought hers.

She turned her cheek, protested faintly, no, this was too fast, unseemly. He paid no heed. It was not an assault, but it was an overwhelming. She surrendered as she might have surrendered to a storm or a dream. While he had her, she tried to bring her thoughts under control. Afterward he was drowsy and gentle for a while, then wildly merry.

3

Winter struck with blinding snow on wind that rampaged among the houses and stretched fingers through every crack around door or shutter. The calm that followed was so cold that silence seemed to ring, with stars uncountable above a white hardness that gave back their glitter. Folk went into the weather no more than they needed, to tend their livestock and get fuel. At home they crouched over tiny hearth-fires or slept the hours away within heaped sheepskins.

Li felt sick. She always did in the mornings during the first part of a pregnancy. That she had become fruitful was no surprise, as often as Tu Shan lay with her. Nor did she regret it. He meant well, and bit by bit, without letting him know what happened, she schooled him in what pleased her, until sometimes she too flew off into joy and came back down to lie happily wearied in the warmth and odor of him. And this child they had gotten together might also be ageless.

Still, she wished she could exult over it as he did. On her best days she was free of forebodings, no more. If only she had something to do. At least in Heian-kyo there had been color, music, the round of ceremonies, the often vicious but oftener titillating intrigues. At least on the road there had been changing landscape, changing people, unsureness, small victories over trouble or danger or despair. Here she could, if she liked, weave the same cloths, cook the same meals, sweep the same floors, empty the same muck buckets—though the disciples expected to do the menial tasks— and swap the same and the same words with women whose minds ranged as far as next year’s kitchen gardening.

Their men took interest in a little more than that, some of them, though not much more. However, they felt ill at ease with her. They knew her for the chosen of the Master and accorded her respect, in a clumsy fashion. Yet they also knew her for a woman; and she was soon taken for granted, sacred but a part of everyday life, like Tu Shan; and women did not sit in the councils of men. Li gathered that this was no great loss to her.

One day of that winter stood forth in memory, an island at the middle of an abyss that swallowed all the rest. The door swung open on dazzlingly sunlit, blue-shadowed drifts. A wave of chill poured through. Tu Shan’s bulk blotted the light. He entered and closed the door. Gloom clapped down again. “Hoo!” he whinnied, stamping the snow off his boots. “Cold enough to freeze a fire solid and the anvil with it.” She must have heard him say that a hundred times, and a few other favorite expressions.

Li looked up from the mat on which she knelt. Bright spots danced before her. They were due to reflection off the brass chest, which the disciples worshipfully kept polished. She had been staring at it for—an hour? two hours?—while sunken in the half-doze that was her retreat from these empty months.

A thought smote. The suddenness of it made her catch her breath. Next she wondered why it had not occurred to her before, then supposed that was because the newness of this life had driven everything else out of her mind until the life went stale, and she was saying: “Horseshoe,” the pet name she had given him, “I have never looked in yonder box.”

His mouth was open, he had been about to speak. He left it hanging thus for a moment before he replied slowly, “Why, uh, those are the books. And, uh, scrolls, yes, scrolls. The holy writings.”

Eagerness thrilled through her. “May I see them?”

“They’re not for, uh, ordinary eyes.”

She rose and told him fiercely, “I too am immortal. Have you forgotten?”

“Oh, no, no.” He waved his hands, a vague gesture. “But you’re a woman. You can’t read them.”

Li’s mind leaped back across centuries. Ladies of the court in Heian-kyo were literate in the vernacular but seldom in Chinese.’That was the classical language, which only men could properly comprehend. Nevertheless she had contrived to study the writing, and sometimes in China had found a chance, a span of rest in a tranquil place, to refresh that knowledge. Moreover, these texts were most likely Buddhist; that faith had intermingled here with Taoism and primitive animism. She would recognize passages.

“I can,” she said.

He gaped. “You can?” He shook his head. “Well, the gods have singled you out... Yes, look at them if you want. But handle them carefully. They’re quite old.”

Joyful, she went to the chest and opened it. At first she saw it only full of shadow. She fetched the lamp and held it above. Wan light nickered and fell.

The chest gaped across rot, mildew, and fungus.

She moaned. Barely did she keep from letting hot grease spill onto the corruption. With her free hand she groped, caught hold of something, lifted a gray tatter up to view.

Tu Shan bent over. “Well, well,” he muttered. “Water must have gotten in. How sad.”

She dropped the shred, replaced the lamp, rose to confront him. “When did you last look into that box?” she demanded most quietly.

His glance shifted elsewhere. “I don’t know. No reason to.”

“You never read the sacred texts? You have them perfectly by heart?”

“They were gifts from pilgrims. What are they to me?” He summoned bluster. “I don’t need writings. I am the Master. That’s enough.”

“You cannot read or write,” she said.

“They, well, they suppose I can, and— What harm? What harm, I ask you?” He turned on her. “Stop nagging me. Go. Go into the other rooms. Leave me be.”

Pity overcame her. He was, after all, so vulnerable—a simple man, a common man, whom karma or the gods or the demons or blind accident had made ageless for no know-able reason. With peasant shrewdness he had survived. He had acquired the sonorous phrases that a saint should utter. And he had not abused his position here; he was a god-figure that required little and returned much, assurance, protection, oneness. But the unchanging cycle of season after season after season, world without end, had dulled his wits and even, she saw, sapped his courage.

“I’m sorry,” she said, laying a hand on his. “I meant no reproach. I’ll tell nobody, of course. I’ll clean this out and from now on take care of such things for you—for us.”

“Thank you,” he replied uncomfortably. “Still, well, I meant to tell you you’ll have to stay in the back rooms till nightfall.”

“A woman is coming to you,” she said in a voice as leaden as the knowledge.

“They expect it.” His own voice loudened. “So it’s been since—since the beginning. What else was there for me? I can’t suddenly withhold my blessing from their households. Can I?”

“And she’s young and pretty.”

“Well, when they aren’t, I’ve been kind to them anyhow.” He forced indignation. “Who are you to call me faithless? How many men have you been with in your time, and you a nun?”

“I said nothing against you.” She turned around. “Very well, I go.” She felt his relief like radiance at her back.

The four disciples huddled together in one room of their quarters, blurs of darkness by lamplight, and played a game with slicks tossed on the floor. They sprang to their feet when Li entered, bowed awkwardly, stood in abashed silence. They knew quite well why she was here, but could not think what to say.

How young they were, she thought. And how handsome Wan, at least, was. She imagined his body on hers, lithe, hot, delirious.

Perhaps later. There would be boundless later. She smiled at them. “The Master wants me to rehearse you in the Diamond Sutra,” she told them.

4

It was raining when the village buried the first child of the Master and the Lady, They had hoped for sunshine but the wizard and the tiny corpse both told them they could not auspiciously wait longer than they had done. Spring that year had come late. Its bleakness and damp stretched on into the summer. They slipped through to the lungs of the girl-child, who gasped for a few days before she lay still. Oh, very still, when she cried and sucked and snuggled no more.

With Tu Shan, Li watched the wizard lower the coffin into a hole where water sloshed. The disciples stood close, the rest of the people in a rough ring. Beyond them she saw mists, shadowy hints of hillside, grandeur dissolved in this formless gray that tapped on her face and dripped off her hat and weighted her hair. Wet wool stank. Her breasts ached with milk.

The wizard rose, took up the rattle tucked under his rope belt, and shook it as he pranced around the grave screaming. Thus he warded off evil spirits. The disciples and those few others who had prayer wheels spun them. Everybody swayed to and fro. The chant sounded as raw as the air, “—honored ancestors, great souls, Honored ancestors, great souls—“ over and over, rite of a heathendom that the Tao and the Buddha had barely touched.

Tu Shan raised his arms and intoned words more fitting, but blurred and mechanical. He had spoken them too often. Li hardly noticed. She likewise had known too many deaths. She could not at the moment count the number of infants she had borne and lost. Seven, eight, a dozen? It hurt more to watch children grow old. But farewell, daughter of mine. May you not be lonely and afraid, wherever you have gone.

What Li felt now was the final hard freezing of resolution within herself.

Things ended. Folk mumbled words and went back to their work. The wizard remained. His task was to fill the grave. At her back, through his ongoing quavery song, Li heard clods fall on the coffin.

The disciples sought their parents’ homes for the nonce. Li and Tu Shan entered an empty house. He left the door ajar for light. Coals aglow on the hearth had somewhat wanned the room. He shucked his coat and tossed it on the bed. A sigh gusted from him. “Well,” he said. “That’s done.”

After a span, into her silence: “The poor wee girl. But it happens. Better luck next tune, eh? And maybe a son.”

She tensed. “There will be no next time, here,” she answered.

“What?” He lumbered around to stand before her. His arms dangled at his sides.

She met his stare full on. “I will not stay,” she told him. “You should leave with me.”

“Are you crazed?” Fear crossed the usually firm countenance. “Has a demon gotten into you?”

She shook her head. “Only an understanding, and it has been growing for months. This is simply no life for us.”

“It’s peaceful. It’s happy.”

“So you see it, because you’ve lain in it so long. I say it is stagnant and squalid.” She spoke calmly, the least bit sadly. “At first, yes, after my wanderings, I believed I had come to a sanctuary. Tu Shan,”—she would not give him his endearment name until he yielded, if ever he did—“I have learned what you should have seen an age ago. Earth holds no sanctuaries for anyone, anywhere.”

Amazement made his anger faint. “You want back to your palaces and monkey courtiers, eh?”

“No. That was another trap. I want ... freedom ... to be, to become whatever I am able to. Whatever we are able to.”

“They need me here!”

She must first put down scorn. If she showed hers for these half-animals, she could well lose him. And, true, in his liking for them, his concern and compassion, he was better than she was. Second she must muster all the will at her command. If she surrendered and abided, she would likewise slowly become one with the hillfolk. That might aid her toward selflessness, toward ultimate release from the Wheel; but she would give up every imaginable attainment that this life held. What escape, except through random violence, did she have from it?

“They lived much the same before you,” she said. “They will do so after you. And with or without you, it cannot be for always. The Han people press westward. I have seen them clearing forest and breaking earth. Someday they will take these lands.”

He fell into bewilderment. “Where can we go? Would you be a beggar again?”

“If need be, but then only for a short while. Tu Shan, a whole world lies beyond this horizon.”

“We kn-know nothing about it.”

“I know something.” Through the ice of her resolve shone a strengthening fire. “Foreign ships touch the shores of China. Barbarians thrust inward. I have heard about mighty stirrings to the south, on the far side of the mountains.”

“You told me ... it’s forbidden to leave the Empire—”

“Ha, what does that mean to us? What watchmen stand on those paths we can find? I tell you, if we cannot seize the opportunities that beckon everywhere around, we do not deserve our lives.”

“If we become famous, they ... would notice we don’t grow old—”

“We can cope with that. Change rushes through the world unbridled. The Empire can no more stay forever locked into itself than this village can. We’ll find advantages to take. Perhaps just setting money out at interest for a long time. We’ll see. My years have been harder than yours. I know how full of secret places chaos is. Yes, we may well go under, we may perish, but until then we will have been wholly alive!”

He stood dazed. She knew she would need months wherein to prevail, if indeed she could. Well, she had the patience of centuries to draw upon, when there was something for which to work.

Clouds thinned, light broke through, the rain in the doorway gleamed like flying arrows.

5

Springtime came back, and that year it was mild, overwhelmingly bright, full of fragrances and the cries of wildfowl returned. Gorged with snow melt, the stream sprang white amidst hillside leaves, brawled through the dell, plunged into the bamboo forest, bound for the great river and so at last the sea.

A man and a woman followed it on the road. They were clad for travel. Staves swung in their hands. On his back was a load of needful goods, on hers a swaddled baby boy who gurgled lustily and happily as he looked around him at wonders.

The people stood gathered together behind, where their homes came to an end, and wept.