Bridge Of Birds (23 page)
Authors: Barry Hughart
Tags: #Humor, #Mystery, #Fantasy, #Science Fiction, #Historical
Li Kao watched the monk with narrowed eyes. “Ox, smack him again,” he commanded.
I smacked the corpse again, and the chain laughed even louder as it creaked back and forth.
“Got it,” said Master Li. “Something about our dear friend was trying to speak to me when
I watched him swing around. Unless I'm greatly mistaken, he was born for the job of
pulling stones from walls.”
I shoved the little monk over to the slab, and his tiny fingers easily slid into the
cracks. I forced the fingers in as far as possible and pressed his thumbs around the edges
and held them tight. How long I squeezed the cold corpse hands I cannot say, but it seemed
several eternities before the body turned rigid. It was our last chance. The flickering
flame of the torch was turning blue when I gently pulled the monk backward. His fingers
clutched that slab with the rigid grasp of death, and the slab slid out with no effort at
all and crashed to the floor.
We did not rejoice. No fresh air had come out of the hole with the slab, and when Master
Li inserted the torch, we saw a long low tunnel with many passageways branching out on
both sides.
“It's another labyrinth, but my old lungs won't last much longer,” Li Kao panted, and I
could believe it because his face was nearly as blue as the torchlight. “Ox, tie me to
your back with the cord from the monk's robe. We'll have to extinguish the torch, so you
must follow the dragon by feel.”
I tied him to my back, and we barely fit through the hole in the wall, and when Li Kao
extinguished the torch my throat constricted so tightly that I nearly suffocated then and
there. Blackness was pressing down upon me like a heavy shroud as I began to crawl, and
what little air was left was foul. My fingers traced the path of the green jade dragon as
it wound through the holes in the red coral pendant, while I groped for openings in the
walls with the other hand. Third left... First left... Fourth right... Li Kao was almost
unconscious, and the words that he muttered faintly in my ear made no sense.
“Ox... not a tiger but a little boy... games... rules of games...”
Then he sighed, and his body lay limply upon my back, and I could scarcely sense a
heartbeat. There was nothing to do but crawl ahead, and my own consciousness was slipping
away with every gasp of my aching lungs, and death was beckoning me to join my parents in
the Yellow Springs Beneath the Earth. Second right... Second left...
“Master Li, the dragon can lead us no farther!” I panted.
There was no answer. The ancient sage was out cold, if not dead, and now everything
depended upon the slow wits of Number Ten Ox, but what was I to do? The last direction of
the dragon had led me against the stone wall of a dead end, and the dragon had wound all
the way to the bottom of the pendant. It went no farther, so how could I? To turn back
would be suicide, and I frantically felt around in the darkness. There was nothing but
smooth unbroken stone, although my fingers found one small crack in the floor that might
have been big enough for a mouse. Nothing else. No slab with mortar around the edges, no
lever to pull, no keyhole. I lowered my head and wept.
It was some time before I was able to think about the strange words that Master Li had
muttered in my ear, and even longer before I remembered how he had muttered in his sleep
while we flew on the Bamboo Dragonfly. “Why not on the island, waiting at the end of the
bridge?” he had muttered. “Games. A little boy?” Was he saying that the duke was not the
Tiger of Ch'in but a child, and that the Hand That No One Sees had not been waiting for
victims at the end of the narrow bridge on the oasis because the victims would have no
chance, and that would ruin a game?
My head seemed to be packed with wool, and my ears were ringing. In my mind I saw the
dying face of Miser Shen as he prayed to his little girl. “You played at guessing
games.... You played at guessing games.... Guessing games... Guessing games...”
What was the name of the game that we were playing with the Duke of Ch'in? Follow the
Dragon, that's what, and what is the rule that a child must learn when playing a follow
game? Keep following. Never assume and never give up. You
can
continue to follow, if only you try hard enough. The dragon had stopped, but was it
possible that it could still go somewhere, and somehow I would be able to follow?
My fingers crawled across the floor to that one tiny crack in the stone. It was a couple
of inches long and irregularly oval. Lack of air had turned me into a small child, and I
actually giggled as I removed the red coral pendant from the chain around my neck. It was
a couple of inches long and irregularly oval, and it fit precisely into the crack.
“Follow the dragon,” I giggled, and I released the pendant.
The dragon dropped down. I waited for the sound when it landed, and waited and waited, and
finally, far below, I heard a click as though it had landed like a key in a lock, and then
I heard a second click, as though tumblers had turned.
The stone floor tilted beneath me. I slid toward a side wall, and as the floor tilted more
steeply a hole opened, and then I followed the dragon, with Master Li tied to my back,
shooting out and down into moonlight and starlight and air. My lungs felt as though they
were touched with fire as I gulped and gasped, and Master Li moaned softly, and I felt his
lungs begin to heave. We tumbled down the side of a steep hill and landed upon something
that glittered.
Moonlight shone down upon a tiny glade, sunken way down in the center of Stone Bell
Mountain, and upon an immense mountain of treasure. Instinctively my eyes lifted to the
top of the pile to a shadow where no shadow should be. Then the third girl from that
painting was gazing at me beseechingly, and blood stained her dress where a blade had
pierced her heart.
“Take pity upon a faithless handmaiden,” she whispered. Ghost tears trickled slowly down
her cheeks. “Is not a thousand years enough?” she sobbed. “I swear that I did not know
what I had done! Oh, take pity, and exchange this for the feather. The birds must fly.”
Then she was gone.
I crawled up a slope of diamonds and ripped the lid from the small jade casket that the
ghost had cradled in her hands. Ginseng aroma stung my nostrils, but it was not the Heart
of the Great Root of Power. It was the Head, and beside it lay a tiny bronze bell.
My head sank wearily and I closed my eyes, and sleep cradled me like a baby. I did not
dream at all.
22. The Dream of the White Chamber
Night rain is falling on the village of Ku-fu, glinting through moonbeams that slide
through thin clouds, and the soft splashing sound outside my window blends with the drip
of ink from the mouse-whiskered tip of my writing brush. I have been trying as hard as I
can, but I am unable to express my emotions when the Arms and the Head of Power brought
the children back from death's doorstep, and then failed to complete the cure.
Once more they awoke, but into the strange world of the Hopping Hide and Seek Game, and
once more they smiled and laughed and chanted the nonsense rhyme from Dragon's Pillow.
Then once more they yawned, and their eyes closed, and they sank back upon their beds.
Once more they dropped into the depths of their trances.
People with nothing else to turn to must revert to the superstitions of their ancestors,
and grandparents began to tie mirrors to the children's foreheads so that the demons of
sickness would see the reflections of their own ugly faces and flee in terror. Fathers
shouted their children's names while they waved favorite toys tied to long poles, hoping
to entice the wandering souls, and mothers stood tensely at the bedsides with cords that
would tie the souls to the bodies should they return. I turned and ran into the abbot's
study and slammed the door.
Nothing but the Heart of the Great Root of Power could save the children of my village. I
was sick with fear, and my eyes lifted to a framed quotation from The Study of the
Ancients:
All things have a root and a top,
All events an end and a beginning;
Whoever understands correctly
What comes first and what follows
Draws nearer to Tao.
I was a long way from drawing nearer to Tao, and children's games and nonsense rhymes and
ginseng roots and birds and feathers and flutes and balls and bells and agonized ghosts
and terrible monsters and the Duke of Ch'in whirled round and round in my brain without
making any sense at all.
The door opened and Li Kao walked into the study. He drank three cups of wine, one after
another, and then he sat down across from me and took the little bronze bell from his belt
and gently rang it.
We listened to the beat of a drum, and then the beautifully trained voice of a young woman
began to chant and sing the story of the great courtesan who grew old, and who was forced
into the indignity of marrying a businessman. A second ring of the bell produced a lively
tempo, and the hilariously pornographic tale of Golden Lotus. A third ring brought sarcasm
and suppressed rage, and the story of Pi Kan, who was put to death because an idiot
emperor wanted to see if it was true that the heart of a wise man is pierced by seven
openings.
We had a flute that told fairy tales, a ball that showed funny pictures, and a bell that
sang Flower Drum Songs. And we were supposed to exchange them for feathers.
Li Kao sighed. He replaced the bell in his belt and poured another cup of wine.
“I am going to complete this task if I have to unscrew the roots of the sacred mountains,
hoist a sail on top of Taishan, and steer the world across the Great River of Stars to the
Gates of the Great Void,” he said grimly. “Ox, the slight flaw in my character has proved
to be a godsend. When I run into something that is really foul, I can counter with the
potential for foulness that resides in the depths of my soul, and that is why I can go
into a place like the Cavern of Bells and come out of it with a song on my lips. You, on
the other hand, suffer from an incurable case of purity of heart.”
He paused to consider his words carefully, but I was ahead of him.
“Master Li, it would take twenty tons of Fire Drug to pry me loose from the quest,” I said
as firmly as I could, which was not very firmly. “Besides, we'll have to try to get to the
Key Rabbit, and that means Lotus Cloud, and I will happily battle a tiger for the honor of
hopping into her bed.”
To my astonishment I discovered that what I had said was true. It was amazing what a tonic
the thought of Lotus Cloud was, and I stared in wonder at hands that were no longer
shaking.
“I will battle a regiment of tigers,” I said with real conviction.
Li Kao looked at me curiously. We sat in silence while the sound of two fighting cats
drifted into the room, and then the sound of Auntie Hua going after them with a broom. Li
Kao shrugged and reached out and pressed a finger to my forehead, and quoted Lao-tzu.
“Blessed are the idiots, for they are the happiest people on earth. Very well, both of us
will commit suicide, but it's Ching Ming and you must honor your dead. We'll leave in the
morning,” he said.
I bowed and left him to his thoughts. I took some food and wine from the bonzes' pantry
and went out into the bright sunshine, and I borrowed a hoe and a rake and a broom from
the tool-shed. It was the most perfect spring imaginable, glorious weather for the
Festival of Tombs, and I made my way to my parents' graves. I raked and pruned and swept
until their resting place was spotless, and then I made an offering of food and wine. I
had saved the tassels and ornaments from the fine hat that I had worn during our visit to
the Ancestress, and the silver belt with the jade trim and the gold-spattered fan. I
placed the tassels and ornaments and belt in the bowl that I used for special offerings.
Then I knelt to pray. I asked my mother and father to send me courage so that I would not
disgrace my ancestors, and I felt much better when I had finished. Then I got to my feet
and ran toward the eastern hills.
Centuries ago the great family of the Lius had ruled our valley. The estate still stood at
the crest of the largest hill, although the house was seldom visited by the owners now,
and gardeners still maintained the famous park that had been lovingly described by such
writers as Tsao Hsueh Chin and Kao Ngoh. I knew it like the back of my hand, and I crawled
through my secret tunnel in the high wall into a gardener's paradise. The ground was
shimmering with yellow chrysanthemums, and the hills were thick with silver poplars and
nodding aspens. A stream arched down the side of a cliff in a foaming waterfall that
splashed into a bright blue lake. The banks were lined with flowering peach, and chiching
trees with violet flowers growing directly from the trunks and branches, and behind them
was a shady bamboo grove, and then the pear trees, and then a thousand apricot trees that
were flaming with a million scarlet blossoms.
I followed the path around the moon terraces, and then turned off to a rough trail that
led down through deep gorges with creepers and moss-covered great gray rocks. The trail
dropped sharply down to the darkness of a cypress grove, where a quiet stream rippled past
the Sandbank Harbor of Blossoming Purity, and I crawled beneath some low bushes and untied
a small boat. I climbed in and pushed off, and drifted down a long winding gorge where
willows bent their branches to brush the water, and spirit creepers wound over rocks, and
clusters of fruit like red coral peeped beneath frost-blue foliage.
When I had tied the boat to a tree trunk and picked up the trail again, it climbed toward
bright clearings where winding brooks sparkled in green meadows, and always I reached
hills or rocks that blocked the view and then opened to even more beautiful vistas on the
other side. The path climbed steeply through masses of boulders toward a great glorious
rock that reached to the clouds, and on the other side was another gorge that was spanned
by a narrow wooden bridge. Then the path climbed again, and suddenly leveled to a small
ridge where orchids grew, and orioles sang, and grasshoppers chirped in the bright
sunshine. Far below I could see my village, spread out like a picture from a book.
At the end of the ridge was a willow grove. I slipped inside to a small green glade where
a single grave lay among the wildflowers.
The head gardener's daughter was buried there. Her name had been Scented Hairpin, but
since she had been a shy, quiet girl, who was timid with strangers, everyone had called
her Mouse. She had the most beautiful eyes that I had ever seen, and she had not been
timid when we played the Hopping Hide and Seek Game. Mouse almost always lasted longest
and became the queen, and she had also not been timid when she decided that some day we
would be man and wife. She had fallen ill when she was thirteen. Her parents had let me
hold her hand on her deathbed, and she had whispered the last words of Mei Fei: “I came
from the land of Fragrance; to the Land of Fragrance I now return.”
I knelt at the grave. “Mouse, it is Number Ten Ox, and I have something for you,” I said.
I placed the gold-spattered Szech'uen fan in her offering bowl, and I prayed, and then I
sat on the grass in the golden sunlight that filtered through the leaves and told her my
story. I could not explain it, but somehow I knew that Mouse wouldn't mind the fact that I
was in love with Lotus Cloud. I poured out my heart and felt it grow lighter, and the sun
was setting as I finished. The breeze always picked up at the approach of evening, and I
stayed to watch the willows.
Mouse's heartbroken father had used his art to honor his daughter. The wind sighed through
the trees, and the willows began to bend, and then one branch after another reached out
and gently swept the young girl's grave.
That night I had a very strange dream. At first it was a tangle of images: Henpecked Ho
weeping with a silver comb in his hands, and Bright Star dancing down the path toward a
door that always closed, and Miser Shen praying to his daughter, and the Hand of Hell and
the Cavern of Bells. Again and again I fled from a great golden tiger mask, and then I ran
through a door into a world of whiteness, milky and soft and glowing, and I felt
comfortable and safe. Something was forming in the whiteness. I smiled happily, because
Mouse had come to see me. She carried the Szech'uen fan, and her beautiful young eyes
looked fondly at me.
“How happy I am,” she said softly. “Ever since we held hands and recited the Orphan's
Song, I knew that you would fall in love with Lotus Cloud.”
“Mouse, I love you too,” I said.
“You must trust your heart,” she said gravely. “Ox, you have grown very strong. Now you
must use all of your strength to touch the queen before the count reaches forty-nine. It
must not reach forty-nine, which can mean for ever and ever and ever.” Mouse was fading
back into the milky whiteness. “Is not a thousand years enough?” she said faintly, as
though from very far away. “The birds must fly.... The birds must fly.... The birds must
fly....”
Mouse was gone, and for some reason I knew that it was important for me to understand the
glowing whiteness around me. Suddenly I understood that the world was white because I was
inside a giant pearl, and with awareness came awakening, and I sat up and blinked in the
morning sunlight.