| WHEN I opened my eyes it was night. The moon was huge and orange-yellow, and the sea surged against the base of the cliff far below the little cave. My mind was filled with a rather pleasant fog, and I had no idea where I was or how I got there, or whether I was awake or asleep. I closed my eyes and drifted back into dreams, and the Abbot of the Monastery of Sh'u was standing before me. "There are no accidents in the Great way of Tao," he said solemnly. "Nothing is wasted; nothing is without purpose." I opened my eyes again. The moonlight was reaching the top of a pile of something at the rear of the cave, casting shadows on the wall, and one shadow had no right to be there. I giggled. Henpecked Ho had told me just what to do with ghost shadows, hadn't he? |
1 |
| "It is a blanket," I told myself sleepily. "A soft comfortable blanket. Reach out with your mind and pull it over you. Gently...gently…gently" |
2 |
| I sat up with a start. |
3 |
| I was gazing at the ghost of a peasant girl who was dressed in the fashion of a thousand years ago. Blood stained the front of her gown where a blade had pierced her heart, and never had I seen such an agonized expression on a human face. I could not explain it but somehow I realized that the effort she was making to appear in her ghost form was causing her pain beyond mortal comprehension; that she was battling some terrible force. Her anguished eyes were fixed on mine, and her hands cupped some small object. |
4 |
| "Take pity upon a faithless handmaiden," the ghost whispered. "Is not a thousand years enough? I swear that I did not know what I had done!" Tears trickled down her cheeks, and mingled with the blood on her gown. "0 take pity, and exchange this for the feather. The birds must fly," she sobbed. |
5 |
| Then she flickered, and was gone. |
6 |
| I sat there shaking my head groggily. The fingers of moonlight reached down, and I was gazing straight at the Duke of Ch'in! Even as I reached for the dagger which I no longer had I realized that it was not the duke at all, but a copy of his great golden tiger mask which was hanging on the rear wall of the cave. Then the moonlight reached farther down, and I gasped in disbelief. |
7 |
| I had not imagined that there was this much treasure in the whole world! Gold, silver, diamonds, emeralds, rubies, tons of pearls and jade! I crawled forward and ran my fingers through the glorious stuff. It was real! I was not dreaming! |
8 |
| "How Lotus Cloud would love this place," I said reverently, for pearls and jade were piled almost to the ceiling. But then I thought: "If this Is real...if it is not a dream..." |
9 |
| I turned to the place where the ghost had been. I reached out and picked up the tiny object her hands had cradled. It was a little crystal ball. It was no more than an inch and a half in diameter, but the moment my fingers touched it it began to glow, and then it began to grow! As I gaped in disbelief the ball grew until it was a foot in diameter, and in the center I saw the image of a pretty little cottage. |
10 |
| An old woman was snoozing in a chair. Then an ant scuttled across the floor carrying a tiny piece of cheese. A roach began pursuing the ant. A rat joined the chase, pursuing the roach. This caught the attention of a cat, who raced after the rat. A dog barked loudly and charged after the cat, knocking the old woman's chair over in the process. She woke up, cursed most imaginatively, hopped to her feet and grabbed a broom. Round and round they went: woman after dog after cat after rat after roach after ant, charging out the door, climbing back through the window, smashing through the flimsy wall, reappearing through a hole in the ceiling - the variations appeared to be endless, each more comical than the one before, and the lunatic chase did not end until I put the crystal ball on the floor and withdrew my hand. Then the glow faded, the ball shrunk, and once more it was simply a plain crystal ball no more than an inch and a half in diameter. |
11 |
| "I am supposed to exchange this for a feather?" I yelled at the empty space where the ghost had been. "The birds must fly?" |
12 |
| I began working things out on my fingers, badly spraining two of them in the process. Five centuries ago a genius named Chang Heng had exclaimed, "Something has gone wrong in Heaven!", and he had set forth upon a mysterious quest. He had been seen near the Castle of the Labyrinth. |
13 |
| "I am looking," he said, "for a little crystal ball." |
14 |
| Then he had looked for a bronze bell, and a silver flute. Then he said he was trying to find a raindrop in a thunderstorm, or a petal in a field of flowers, or one special grain of sand concealed among a billion on a beach. He had sworn by all that was holy that he would never give up, and that the sky would fill with falling stars when we saw the beautiful Bridge of Birds. Then he was beheaded and his head was pitched into the Pool of Past Existences. |
15 |
| Five hundred years later a mysterious whistle had drawn me to the skull in the pool. I had imagined that I had seen my previous incarnation as the worst damn mongrel in the history of the world, and that a gentleman with an old-fashioned robe and a tall Confucian hat and strange shining eyes had said that he was going to send me to a dragon, and that I must follow the dragon. |
16 |
| I ran out of fingers and took off my sandals to have some toes to work with. |
17 |
| Immediately after leaving the pool I had encountered Henpecked Ho, who had taught me to see ghosts. If I had not been able to see ghosts I would not have seen Bright Star, and if I had not seen Bright Star I would not have sent Fainting Maid to the bottom of the well, and if I had not sent Fainting Maid to the bottom of the well she would not have brought me a dragon locket, and if I had not had the dragon locket I would not have escaped from the labyrinth of the Duke of Ch'in, and if I went on with this I would go mad. |
18 |
| I hopped to my feet and shook my fist at nothing in particular. |
19 |
| "Chang Heng, if you really expect me to continue your lunatic quest you are even crazier than I think you are! " I yelled. I ransacked my mind for the scant medical education provided at the Monastery of Sh'u. "You are suffering from a horrible case of woolsorters' disease!" I yelled. "What I am going to do is elope with Lotus Cloud and live happily ever after, and if you try to stop me I will return to your goddamned pool with a bottle of goddamned ink and watch your goddamned skull turn blue!" |
20 |
| I was about to pitch the crystal ball into the sea, but then I realized that the comic chase would make Lotus Cloud laugh for a month. I always wear a smuggler's belt. The one I had on was studded with large seashells, some of which were fake. I found that the ball would not grow if I held it with only two fingers, and it fit perfectly inside one of the fake shells. I filled my pockets with pearls and jade and marched with considerable dignity to the mouth of the cave. |
21 |
| The sea glistened two hundred feet below. The cliff was vertical and to try to climb down without a rope would have been suicidal, but there was one small calm pool nestled between jagged rocks beneath me, and the reflected moon seemed to be smiling up in a friendly fashion, which I took to be a favorable omen. I turned around. |
22 |
| "Chang Heng, I will not pretend to be sorry that you wasted five hundred years whistling for nothing. You know very well that there is a slight flaw in my character," I snarled, and then I turned back to the sea, held my nose, and jumped. |
23 |
| The wind whistled around my ears as I plunged down toward the reflection of the moon. I was also plunging toward a jagged rock that I had not noticed. "Left! Left!" I squawked, flapping my arms like a bird. The reflected moon grew so huge that I half expected Chang-o and the White Rabbit to stick their heads out and shake their fists at me. I missed the rock by half an inch, and the warm waters of the Yellow Sea embraced me like a long-lost friend. |
24 |
| (Insanity? Favorable omen or no favorable omen it had been madness to attempt that dive. I was not mad. In the back of my mind I had a good reason to try it. I will not explain it now. It becomes important a good deal later on, and you will see that there was a horrible flaw in my reasoning, but for the moment I will skip my reasons and proceed with my actions.) |
25 |
| I should have had the sense to realize that the tide that floweth in also floweth out, and two days later I was picked up far out to sea by a fishing boat. I was clinging to a piece of driftwood, half-starved and half-drowned. Fate seemed determined to keep me from Lotus Cloud because ee were promptly caught in a storm and spent a couple of weeks drifting off the coast of Korea. It was a month before we returned to Ch'in, and by that time the duke had departed on his annual tax trip, the Key Rabbit had accompanied the duke, and Lotus Cloud had accompanied the Key Rabbit. I finally caught up with the duke's party in Chefoo, and then I had some good luck for a change. |
26 |
| The Duke of Ch'in and the Key Rabbit were out scouring the countryside for every grain of rice they could squeeze from the peasantry and Lotus Cloud was all alone, staying at the palace of the duke's provincial governor. Unfortunately Lotus Cloud's apartment was high in an unclimbable tower - no vines and no footholds, nothing but smooth vertical stone - and soldiers guarded all the entrances. The soldiers did not bother to guard walls that could not be climbed, which meant that their education had been sadly neglected. |
27 |
| When I had been a promising lad of nine or ten I had received some lessons in creative criminality from a consummate crook that had been forced to flee the fabled land of Serendip. |
28 |
| "Li Kao," this worthy intoned, "the successful criminal is a keen student of natural history. Consider, for example, the behavior of the humble ant. When an ant discovers something of value it grabs a sample and dashes back to the colony screaming: 'Awake! Arise! Beat the drums! Sound general quarters! I have discovered wealth beyond the dreams of avarice!' Then the whole colony returns with the scout - but are they content to take what they can see? Not if it is on a trail of something. When an ant finds a trail of something it likes it will follow that trail until it reaches the source. It will follow it over mountains. It will follow it halfway around the world. It will even follow it into Hell, because nothing can stop an ant from seeking the source of something it likes. If you are incapable of putting such behavior to good use you will never rise higher in life than a master pickpocket," said the crook from Serendip. "My purse, if you please." |
29 |
| I bribed a maid to bring a jar of honey and a message to Lotus Cloud (a verbal message; I did not trust Lotus Cloud's reading ability), and slipped over the walls on a dark night and made my way to the base of the tower. I positioned myself beneath her high window, and in due course I saw the trickle of honey come sliding down the wall. Then I opened a jar and sent my colony of ants after the honey, holding back the biggest of the bunch. I tied a featherlight gauze thread to this monster and then I sent him after the others. What a champion! In three minutes flat he made it over Lotus Cloud's windowsill, and I saw her hand wave. I tied a light string to my end of the thread and hooted like an owl, and Lotus Cloud began to pull. I tied a light cord to the end of the string, a light rope to the end of the cord, and a heavy rope to the end of the light rope. Lotus Cloud tied her end of the heavy rope to something inside the apartment and tugged three times, and in a few minutes I had climbed an unclimbable wall. |
30 |
| "Boopsie!" Lotus Cloud squealed happily as I flopped over the windowsill. |
31 |
| "Do I have a story to tell you!" I panted as I dragged her toward the bed. |
32 |
| I still gnash my teeth when I think of the frustration that followed. I was just stepping out of my trousers when footsteps approached the door. "A thousand curses!" I snarled. I pulled my pants back on and barely had time to swing back out the window before the door opened and some lout staggered inside carrying an armload of pearls and jade. It was the duke's provincial governor. He dropped the treasure in front of Lotus Cloud, fell to his knees, wrapped his arms around her legs, buried his face against her thighs, and moaned: "My surname is Chia and my personal name is Chen and I have worshipped you ever since you grinned at me in the garden this morning." |
33 |
| Lotus Cloud's eyes devoured the pearls and jade. Her fingers played with the fellow's hair and she purred happily: |
34 |
| "I shall call you Woofie." |
35 |
| Is there no justice? Is there no sense of fair play? I had been sentenced to death, stabbed a duke who laughed at me, escaped from a terrible labyrinth with he aid of a man who had been dead for five hundred years, encountered a mysterious ghost, taken a lunatic swan dive into a tiny pool between jagged rocks, climbed an unclimbable wall - and now this oaf was going to claim my reward! |
36 |
| "Great Heavens!" he exclaimed. "There is a rope tied to your bed!" |
37 |
| "Rope?" Said Lotus Cloud. "What rope?" |
38 |
| Well, there I was dangling on the rope when the provincial governor stuck his head out the window, and under the circumstances there was nothing I could do but smile in a friendly fashion and wave. |
39 |
| "Great Buddha, a burglar!" he cried. "Fear not, my beloved, I have my trusty sword!" |
40 |
| Then the bastard cut the rope. |
41 |
| I had plenty of time to survey the landscape as I plunged toward earth. In the courtyard below the guests departing from a banquet were stepping into carriages or reclining upon sedan chairs, and I was hurtling down toward one of the latter. He was, thank Buddha, an enormously fat fellow, and I landed right in the middle of his bloated belly. There was something familiar about the fellow, and as I bounced up and down I thoughtfully examined the dinner which was spewing into the air, course by course. |
42 |
| The fat man sprayed the landscape with pigeon egg soup to which had been added flour balls made from lotus root and stuffed with crushed pine seeds, followed by lamb kidneys sautéed with crushed walnuts, followed by turtle meat fried in pork fat with ginger and cinnamon, followed by ducks' tongues cooked with mushrooms and bamboo shoots in sesame oil and flavored with sweet white wine, followed by the ducks themselves - at least three - which were stuffed with shellfish and steamed inside a cover of hardened bean curd, followed by honeycakes, fruit, and sweetmeats, followed by Ginseng Digestive Tonic, followed by Seven Spirits Regulating Tonic, followed by Fragrant Fire Vitality Tonic, followed by hiccups, followed by a pair of hands which clamped around my throat. |
43 |
"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH THAT CASE OF COMPASSES?" screamed the porcupine merchant.
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44 |