The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox

by Barry Hughart

  “The what?” Miser Shen asked.

  “The Hand That No One Sees, but don’t ask me what it means,” said Master Li. “More words are missing, and then it says: ‘…sixth day of our doom, and we labor on the wall but we are faint of heart. We pray and sacrifice, but the gods remain implacable. The queen and her ladies have chosen the more merciful death, and have jumped into the lake of fiery molten rock. We did not try to stop them. The Hand moves closer. Our spears are hurled at nothingness and bounce away from nothingness. The wall is beginning to shake. The Hand…’”

  Li Kao straightened up. “That’s all there is,” he said quietly.

  “Whoof!” Miser Shen gasped. “I don’t care how many centuries ago that happened. I want to get out of here.”

  So did I. I scrambled up to the top of the wall and peered around.

  “I see the oasis!” I cried. “There’s a lake of lava covering the back of the palace, so we’ll have to try to reach the oasis through the side streets.”

  That wasn’t as simple as it sounded. Time and again we came to dead ends where scalding steam or bubbling lava blocked the way, and we were not the only ones who had reached dead ends. Skeletons, chewed to pieces in their useless armor, littered almost every side street.

  “Whatever that thing was, it certainly ate well,” Miser Shen said nervously.

  We tried street after street with no success, and finally we were almost back where we had entered the city. Li Kao looked at the huge bronze gates and the narrow span of bridge and shrugged his shoulders.

  “Perhaps we had better go back across the moat and see if there is another bridge on the side where the oasis is,” he said.

  We started forward, and then we stopped and gaped with eyes that nearly popped from the sockets. Those gates weighed tons. Nothing was touching them, but they were creaking shut! They came together with a terrible crash of metal, and a mark appeared in the layer of salt upon the ground. It took several moments for my brain to believe what my eyes were showing me. I was staring at the print of an enormous thumb, and four huge fingerprints followed, and then an immense sliding mark. An enormous invisible hand was crawling toward us, dragging the palm and heel behind the terrible fingers!

  Miser Shen and I stood rooted to the spot in horror, but Master Li whirled around and gazed back at the tangle of the side streets. Then he yelled, “Ox, pick us up!”

  I scooped up Master Li in one arm and Miser Shen in the other, and Master Li grabbed the dragon pendant that dangled from the chain around my neck. His fingers found the place where the dragon had stopped after leading us to the treasure trove.

  “I should have realized at once that this place was another labyrinth,” he said grimly. “Turn into the second street on the right, and I would advise you to hurry.”

  Even though I was carrying the two of them I doubt that my record for the course will be surpassed until a Tibetan snow leopard tries it, but the Hand That No One Sees was almost as fast. Those great invisible fingers were stretching out twenty or thirty feet, and salt was billowing up behind the sliding palm. “First left!” Master Li yelled. “Second left! … Fourth right! … Third left! … First right! ….” I panted through the maze, leaping over lava and darting around geysers of steam, and at last I saw the tops of green trees and realized that the dragon was leading us to the oasis. Then I skidded to a halt.

  “May the Buddha have mercy on our souls!” howled Miser Shen.

  There was the beautiful green oasis, right in front of us, but it was encircled by a moat of bubbling lava. A narrow stone bridge led safely across the fiery rock, but the Hand That No One Sees had taken a shortcut. The bridge was far too narrow for the monster to cross, but that would do us no good unless we were on the other side, and I stared in horror at the salt on the ground in front of the bridge. Great invisible fingers pawed, and salt billowed, and then the Hand from Hell began crawling toward us, blocking any path to the oasis.

  At the edge of the moat was the only upright building that we had seen, a watchtower, probably, tall and narrow and teetering upon cracked stone slabs. I unceremoniously dumped Li Kao and Miser Shen and raced up and put my shoulder to the thing. I heaved with everything that I had, and the tower began to tilt. Then I heaved with more than I had, and when I heard a snapping sound I assumed that my spine had split in half. Instead it was one of the supporting slabs that had split, and the tall tower dissolved into a shower of stones that toppled down into the moat.

  The lava was nearly as dense as the stones, and they sank very slowly. I ran back and scooped up Li Kao and Miser Shen, and then I raced to the edge of the moat and jumped. My feet touched the first stone and I vaulted to the second. My sandals were smoking and my lungs were raw from bubbling sulphur as I hopped from stone to stone, and the last one had nearly sunk out of sight. I sent a prayer to the August Personage of Jade and leaped, and my toes touched the searing surface and I leaped again, and perhaps the August Personage of Jade gave me a helpful shove because I landed with my face buried in green grass.

  I was dimly aware that Master Li and Miser Shen were shouting in my ears and pounding my back, but the world was spinning before my eyes, and I felt as thought I were falling down a hole that had no end. Then a cool, peaceful blackness closed around me.

  Bamboo Dragonfly

  I awoke to see Li Kao smiling down at me, and Miser Shen tilted a gourd filled with delicious spring water to my lips. It revived me as if by magic. Soon I was able to get up and examine the little oasis, which had clearly been used as a pleasure garden.

  Trees and shrubs from every corner of the empire had been planted there, and the variety was astonishing. Silver bells had once tinkled in the branches, and paper lanterns had glowed in the night like fireflies, and lovers had walked hand in hand through mazes of moonflowers. Then the horrible eruption, and the Hand That No One Sees. I wondered what terrible crime the city had committed to deserve such a fate, but then I decided that I didn’t want to know. I turned around and shuddered as I saw the marks of invisible fingers angrily pawing in the salt at the other end of the narrow bridge. The Hand was waiting.

  A clear path led through wildflowers toward the bronze roof of a pagoda that sparkled in the light of the setting sun. We started toward it, and as we drew closer we saw that the pagoda had escaped destruction because it was nearly solid stone. Only the wooden doors had rotted away. The sun sank below the horizon, but the moon had already lifted into the sky, and a pale path of moonbeams reached through the hole where the door had been and touched something that sparkled. Tears began to trickle down Miser Shen’s cheeks as he stared at a pile of treasure that was even larger than the one at the Castle of the Labyrinth.

  “Cured!” he cried joyfully. “I could not be sure before, but now when I look at this loot, my fingers itch only for the pearls and jade, and that is because I would like to give them to Lotus Cloud.”

  Li Kao’s eyes met mine, and I nodded. Both of us had instinctively studied the top of the pile of treasure for a ghost shadow, and there it was. I was getting rather good at it, and the shadow blanket lifted easily over my head.

  I was looking at the same ghost! No, not the same, but dressed in the same ancient fashion, and with the same streak of blood where a blade had pierced her heart. Again I sensed that she was making a terrible effort to appear before us, and I felt the same searing wave of agony when her lips parted.

  “Take pity upon a faithless handmaiden,” she whispered “Is not a thousand years enough?” Ghost tears like transparent pearls trickled down her cheeks. “I swear that I did not know what I had done!” she sobbed. “Oh, take pity, and exchange this for the feather. The birds must fly.” Then she was gone.

  Miser Shen had seen nothing, and he gazed in wonder at the stunned expressions on our faces. I snarled and scrambled up the pile, and slid back down with an identical jade casket in my hands. I jerked the lid open, and then I cried out in despair.

  Inside was not the Heart of Power, which was
supposed to be the ultimate, but two more tiny tendrils. They were the Arms of the Great Root, and if the Legs had failed, what more could we expect from the Arms? The ginseng aroma made my eyes water, and I turned the casket upside down. Something else fell to the floor.

  Li Kao got down on his knees and carefully examined a tiny crystal ball, about the size of the miniature flute.

  “Miser Shen, I would advise you to sit down and prepare for a rather unusual phenomenon,” he said grimly. Then he spat on his hand and reached out and cautiously rubbed the crystal surface.

  The ball began to glow with a strange inner light. Then it began to expand. It grew until it was several feet in diameter, and the inner light grew brighter and brighter, and then we all cried out in wonder as a picture appeared, and then we heard sounds.

  We were looking at the interior of a pretty little cottage where an old lady snoozed on a stool. We could hear her peaceful snores, and the sounds of chickens and pigs, and the gentle murmur of a stream. Birds sang and bees droned drowsily, and the sun-dappled leaves of a tree rustled outside the window.

  An ant scurried across the floor, carrying a tiny crust of bread. After a moment a roach took notice, and began to scuttle after the ant. A rat stuck its head from a hole and dashed after the roach. A cat bounded after the rat, and then a dog bounded through the door and raced after the cat. The whole procession charged beneath the old lady’s stool and tipped it over, and she sat up and rubbed her eyes, unleashed a torrent of peasant profanity, grabbed a broom, and started in hot pursuit of the dog that was chasing the cat that was chasing the rat that was chasing the roach that was chasing the ant that was carrying the crust of bread.

  It is difficult to describe in words, but the scene that unfolded was incredibly comic. Around and around they went, racing through the door, climbing back inside through the window, smashing through the flimsy walls, reappearing through a hole in the roof, and reducing the furniture to splinters. The variations appeared to be endless, and they were so ingenious that Miser Shen and I held our sides as we howled with laughter. At one point, the old lady’s slashing broom sent every piece of pottery flying into the air, and they all came together with a crash. The fragments fell to the floor, and as one piece landed upon the other, they formed a solemn statue of the Sacred and Venerable Sage of Serenity. The mad procession raced outside and splashed through a pond, and when they crashed back inside through another ruined wall there was a huge bullfrog squatting upon the old lady’s head, croaking indignantly.

  Miser Shen and I might have laughed ourselves to death if Li Kao hadn’t reached out and touched the crystal ball. The glow faded, and the sounds and the picture vanished, and the ball shrank down to its former size.

  “Shen, have you ever seen anything like this?” Master Li asked, as soon as Miser Shen had recovered enough to breathe.

  Miser Shen scratched his head and said, “Well, I can’t be sure. Surely I have never seen anything like that incredible scene, but I once saw a tiny crystal ball that resembled this one in an ancient painting. It was in the Cavern of Bells. An old lame peddler with his back to the viewer was facing three young ladies who were dressed in the style of many centuries ago. In one of his hands he held three feathers—”

  “Feathers?” Master Li yelped. “Girls dressed in the ancient style?”

  “Ah…yes,” said Miser Shen. “In the other hand the peddler was holding a ball that resembled this one, a tiny bell, and a miniature flute.”

  Li Kao grunted in satisfaction and unsnapped one of the fake shells on his belt.

  “Like this?”

  Precisely like that,” said Miser Shen as he examined the tiny tin flute. “I don’t remember much else about the painting except that it was said to be very mysterious and that the old lame peddler was thought to be divine. The Cavern of Bells has become a shrine in his honor, and it is tended by a small order of monks.”

  Li Kao placed the flute back into the shell, and added the crystal ball and the Arms of the Great Root of Power to his smuggler’s belt.

  “Let’s get some sleep. In the morning we’ll find out how to get off this island, and our first stop will be the Cavern of Bells,” he said.

  He spoke too soon. When we made a circuit of the oasis the following morning we discovered that it was indeed an island, completely encircled by murderous lava, and the narrow bridge was the only exit. Fingerprints pawed in the salt, and my heart sank to my toes as I realized that we would never be able to get back to the children of Ku-fu. I could not stop the tears that welled in my eyes and trickled down my cheeks, and Miser Shen looked at me and then hastily averted his eyes.

  “Number Ten Ox, this is not such a bad place in which to spend the rest of our days,” he said shyly. “We shall live like kings on fruits and berries and pure spring water, while the rest of the world enjoys war, famine, and pestilence.”

  And death, I thought. I heard weeping and mournful bells, and I saw a long row of small coffins disappearing into the ground.

  “Of course, the rest of the world will also be enjoying Lotus Cloud,” Miser Shen said thoughtfully.

  “You have a point,” I sniffled.

  We were sitting upon the grass with our backs against the trunk of a huge palm tree. Li Kao trotted up and joined us, and I saw that his eyes were sparkling.

  “Gentlemen, how much do you know about the great Chang Heng?” he asked.

  I dimly recalled schoolroom lessons. “Didn’t he invent the seismograph, about five hundred years ago?”

  “And the Fire Drug,” said Miser Shen.

  “He did indeed, and his achievements did not stop there,” said Master Li. “The great Chang Heng was a superb poet, a competent painter, an engineer and astronomer without equal, and the world’s greatest student of the phenomenon of flight. He perfected the science of latitude and longitude, determined the value of pi, revolutionized the armillary sphere, and constructed kites that could carry men through the air for long distances. One day he happened to be sitting as we are, with his back against a tree, and something brushed his face.”

  Li Kao lifted his right hand and opened it, displaying a tiny object.

  “A sycamore seed?” said Miser Shen.

  “Precisely,” said Master Li. “Chang Heng had seen thousands of them, but never before had he thought to examine one closely. The more he studied it, the more convinced he became that he was gazing at one of the marvels of nature.”

  Miser Shen and I stared fixedly at the seed. It was nothing but a tiny stem and a circle of fan-shaped blades.

  “Observe,” said Master Li.

  He blew gently into the palm of his hand. The fan-shaped blades began to revolve, faster and faster, then the seed lifted straight up into the air. The breeze caught it and away it went, spinning into the sky, sailing over the treetops, dwindling to a tiny speck in the distance.

  “Chang Heng was gazing at one of the most efficient flying machines in the world, and he immediately began to build a sycamore seed that could carry a man,” said Master Li. “The emperor graciously provided pilots from the ranks of criminals who had been sentenced to death, and one after another the wailing wretches were strapped into Chang Heng’s flying machines and pushed off the tops of cliffs. One of them encountered a strong updraft and actually flew for several hundred feet, but the end result was the same. The blades could not whirl fast enough to compensate for the weight, and the pilots all crashed to their deaths. Do you know what Chang Heng did then?”

  “We are as ignorant as apples,” sighed Miser Shen, speaking for both of us.

  “The great Chang Heng mixed sulphur, saltpeter, and charcoal, and invented the Fire Drug,” Master Li said. “We use it mostly for fireworks, but he had something else in mind. By adding resin, he managed to produce a compound that would burn steadily instead of exploding, and he packed it into long tubes of bamboo. He built a wicker carriage and attached it to a revolving pole. On top of the pole he placed fan-shaped blades and at the bottom he add
ed a wheel to which he attached his tubes of Fire Drug. The emperor and all the top officials gathered to watch what promised to be a spectacular execution, and the weeping convict was strapped to the seat in the carriage. Chang Heng lit the fuses. There was a spurt of flame, and then another and another, and a great cloud of black smoke obscured everything. When the smoke cleared, the astonished audience saw that the contraption had lifted straight up into the air, with the blades whirling furiously. A trail of smoke and flame stretched out behind as it flew through the air, and the screams of the pilot could faintly be heard as the thing streaked toward one of the palace towers. The emperor cheered and the audience applauded madly as it hit the tower and exploded with a great roar, and it was said that pieces of pilot rained down for a week, although that may be a slight exaggeration. The great Chang Heng locked himself in his workroom, and one month later he had completed the final design of the most marvelous of all his inventions: the incredible Bamboo Dragonfly.”

  Li Kao smiled happily. “The plans for which I have seen in the Forest of Culture Academy in Hanlin,” he said.

  There was a moment of silence.

  “You can’t possibly mean….” Miser Shen whispered.

  “Right above us is a circle of palm branches that are light, strong, and fan-shaped,” said Master Li.

  “Surely you don’t intend to….” I said weakly.

  “Bamboo is all around us, and so is resin. The lava is full of sulphur. There are natural deposits of saltpeter all over China, and probably on this very island, and if a former peasant like Miser Shen can’t make a little charcoal, I will be very surprised indeed.”

  “But it would be suicide!” I exclaimed.

  “Insanity!” cried Miser Shen.

  “We will have no hope of survival at all,” Master Li agreed. “Ox, you get the palm branches and resin and bamboo. The charcoal will be Miser Shen’s department, and I will search for saltpeter and extract the sulphur from the lava. I suggest that we hurry, because with every passing moment I grow closer to expiring from old age.”