Silk Road

by Jeanne Larsen

  The gatekeeper’s jaw dropped and his eyes widened. Swallowing hard, he scuttled over to close and bar the gate. Before he had finished, Feng – or the Wizard Mimesis – had stalked on with great rolling strides into the second courtyard of the quarter. Sparker tossed a contemptuous look over his own shoulder and hurried after his master.

  The dancers were gathered in the courtyard, where a shiny roast pig formed the centrepiece of a great banquet offered up to the dead. Though the air was already heavy with incense smoke, the Wizard announced himself by shouting, ‘More incense! More incense! I am come to perform a hazardous exorcism, but however great the risks I am willing to take for your sakes, even I cannot succeed without cooperation.’

  All eyes peered through the haze towards the two strangers. Several of the dancers gasped, and the newest apprentice let out a tiny shriek. The staff twitched and yipped. ‘You!’ the Wizard Mimesis shouted. ‘And you, and you, and you. Light more incense, quickly. Light every stick you can find, if you value your health. And you, girl. Snuff out those candles over there. Now!’

  Those he had pointed to rushed to do his bidding. Then one gimlet-eyed, wiry old dancing instructor stepped forward from the dumbstruck crowd. ‘Stop,’ she said. ‘Snuff out no candles. Light no incense. Not until this interloper tells us who he is to barge in here and order us about.’

  Now it was Sparker’s turn to gasp as if in fear. But before anyone could say anything, the Wizard’s staff wrenched itself free and flew towards the old woman. The Wizard merely folded his arms across his chest, in the pose of one determined not to interfere with a just punishment, but as the staff screamed a terrible scream of rage, the servant dropped his bundles with an awful clatter and hurled himself forward to intercept the heavy stick in its flight. Catching it in both hands, he fell down, interposing his body between the gleaming persimmon wood and the ground. He writhed and twisted like one engaged in a wrestling match with death itself. Except for an occasional wheeze of pain, Sparker was silent. The staff, however, yipped and cursed and vowed vengeance on all unbelievers.

  At last it was subdued. Servant and staff lay like exhausted lovers on the beaten earth of the courtyard. The new apprentice sniffled nervously in a corner. The Wizard Mimesis flicked a hand in the direction of the candles, and two Turkish dancers bustled over to snuff them out as quickly as they could. Someone else stepped tentatively towards the offering table and began touching new sticks of incense to the glowing tips of those already burning. One by one, half a dozen others joined her. The wiry old woman shrugged and snorted and walked off towards her room in the farthest courtyard. No one else said a word.

  ‘Let her go,’ the Wizard boomed, shaking his head in mournful resignation. ‘Let her go. Her soul will repay its debt to this brave green-clothed lad here sooner or later, in this life or another. It is all one to me.’ He turned a fierce glare on the staff. ‘You, Banished Immortal Undersecretary of the Jade Emperor’s Heaven of Uppermost Purity, arise! You have done well to summon me to this ghost-ridden place. Now return yourself to me and hold your peace.’

  At that, the staff jerked an arm’s length into the air above the servant’s chest. He did not loosen his grip, but crawled and stumbled after it like a criminal being dragged behind an oxcart through the city streets. Only when the Wizard himself grasped the thing did Sparker let go, collapsing before his master’s feet. The staff sent forth a final defiant scream and spoke no more.

  ‘Now,’ said the Wizard in patient, weary tones, ‘I will find the one my spirit-staff has brought me here to seek. It was told to me in a dream’ – and here, dear listeners, he spoke the truth – ‘that you have here a young dancer who cannot speak.’ Eyes widened, and more than one face turned towards a slender-waisted, round-faced girl who stood near the doorway to the central hall. ‘Wait!’ The Wizard’s voice rang out harshly again. ‘The staff will find her.’ With that, he pressed one hand against his forehead and followed the staff as it twisted and jerked in his fist.

  The crowd of dancers stepped aside to avoid the Wizard as he groped his way towards the round-faced mute, who stood straight and unmoving, half defiant, half paralysed with fear. ‘This is the one!’ he cried as he came to a halt before her, and again several people gasped. ‘A curse of silence has been laid upon her, poor thing, by – ‘

  The Wizard paused for a moment, his face frozen in the wiped-clean look of an actor who has forgotten his lines. Then the staff spoke in quavering tones: ‘A curse from one who died by violence and cannot rest.’ A shadow flickered deep in the mute dancer’s eyes, and the Wizard nodded as if satisfied. In the gathering gloom, Sparker cleared his throat. ‘More than that, I cannot say,’ the Wizard proclaimed. ‘But I can tell you this: on this festival of ghosts, one of three things will happen. The girl will be cured. Or she will die. Or she will bring death to those about her.’

  Now the other dancers stepped farther away, but the round-faced one only set her lips together and bit them hard. ‘Do not fear, little one,’ the Wizard said quietly. ‘For even should you chance to die this evening, I can bring you back to life, if I am allowed to have my way.’ Then he whirled on the crowd and his voice was loud and rough again. ‘But if another dies by incurring the wrath of the spirits, I can do nothing to help. Now let the ceremony begin!’

  Sparker began to move among the assembled watchers, urging them to sit quietly on the benches that lined the walls of the courtyard and to join him in chanting a secret mantra of great power which they were not, under any circumstances, to utter idly in the future. Next, taking up a handbell from his bundle of paraphernalia, he began to ring it gently in rhythm with the purifying chant. Through the swirling smoke, the dancers watched while the Wizard wrote magical words upon a sheet of splendid red paper and gave it to the mute girl to hold.

  ‘Let the woman who is responsible for this poor creature step forward,’ he commanded, and a timid-looking beldame who looked after ten or so of the young dancers inched towards him. ‘Good,’ said the Wizard after staring for a long moment at her face. ‘Do not fear, good woman, but go and light one of the candles and bring it here.’ She hurried to do so, and when she returned he took her aside and spoke long and gravely to her, passing the candle’s flame back and forth before her face and instructing her in low, even tones as to her role in the ritual to come. The others watched, continuing their chant, as the tension in the beldame’s shoulders eased. She nodded her head in agreement to all the Wizard said. Then she walked without haste to a bench and sat staring like one who neither wakes nor sleeps.

  Holding the candle beneath his face, which took on a terrible aspect in the smoky twilight, the Wizard began his conjuration:

  I call on all the maidens of the moon,

  I conjure up Shamanka Star herself:

  Send your light to aid this spell of mine!

  Bind up the evil spirit! Cast it out!

  The mute girl quivered, but she did not speak. The Wizard gestured to his assistant, who drew from the larger of his sacks a leather wine flask. He gave it to the girl. ‘Three sips, no more,’ Sparker hissed. ‘And remember, all shall go well with you.’

  For a moment, it seemed the girl would refuse, but Sparker resumed the ringing of the handbell, and the candle flickered, and the chanting of the mantra swirled amid the incense smoke, and she shrugged and drank. Sparker took the flask from her and squatted near her feet.

  The Wizard now began to step with the dragging pace of one who dances a ritual dance among the stars, invoking the gods and goddesses of the astral realm. Finally, he raised his persimmon-wood staff high above his head, and addressing it again as Banished Immortal Undersecretary of the Jade Emperor’s Heaven of Uppermost Purity, he bade it clasp the soul of the one who died by violence and carry it away. Then he turned to the round-faced dancer and asked her if she could speak.

  Her mouth opened. The chanting of the mantra died away. Then her eyes rolled upwards in her head and she fainted clean away. One of the Turkish dancers ru
shed forward, but the Wizard held his palm up and ordered her to stop. He bent to check on the girl’s condition. Sparker unrolled a length of heavy cloth between the two bamboo poles that had formed the bulk of his burden and carefully arranged the limp body upon it.

  ‘Let the woman responsible for her step forth again,’ the Wizard said.

  The old caretaker came up to him like one who walks about in sleep. Her face smiled and the other dancers took heart from her relaxed manner.

  ‘It is not the worst,’ the Wizard said, as if to the beldame but loudly enough for all to hear, ‘but it is as I feared. The malicious ghost has disappeared. Yet as my spirit-staff wrenched it away, the ghost laid a final curse upon the girl. Now she is neither living nor dead, and if I do not take her off to the east at once and wash her in the waters of Tortoise Creek, she will die indeed. The rest of you need not fear. The talisman I have written out will keep you safe from harm, and in three days your sister will return full of happy chatter to resume her life among you once again.’ Bowing to the group, he gave the red paper talisman to the caretaker and bent to pick up the ends of the two bamboo poles. Sparker placed their other belongings beside the unconscious form of the mute and took up the other ends, that they might leave.

  ‘Wait!’ cried the gimlet-eyed woman who had doubted the Wizard before, emerging from the direction of her room. ‘Who grants you permission to carry off one of the dancers of the Imperial Teaching Quarters?’

  The Wizard shrugged, and turning to face the caretaker, said to her, loudly and clearly, ‘Speak.’

  The caretaker blinked. ‘Let them go,’ she said in a dreamy voice. ‘Let them go, let them go. I am responsible for this girl, and I say let them go.’

  The gimlet-eyed old woman snorted and turned away. No one else said a word. The Wizard and his assistant, carrying their burden as casually as they could, walked from the second courtyard into the first, where the gatekeeper made haste to swing open the gate.

  ‘You’d best hurry, sir,’ he ventured to say. ‘They’ll be sounding the curfew drum soon.’

  ‘Hurry we shall,’ said the Wizard, never once breaking stride. Most of the dancers remained sitting half dazed on the benches, though a few of the bolder ones were peeking through the doorway of the second courtyard. ‘Gatekeeper,’ the Wizard said in a low tone as he passed out into the street, ‘if perchance the beldame in charge of this poor girl doesn’t awaken in the morning, someone must say to her, “The Wizard Mimesis bids you wake,” and she shall be as she always was. Those exact words. Do you understand?’

  The gatekeeper gabbled some words of assent, and the two rogues vanished, carrying with them the one they had come to fetch. They hurried to leave the city before nightfall and took her not to anyplace east of the city, but southwards, to the deserted shrine cave of the Western Motherqueen. Bordermoon had arranged to meet them there the next day. The drug they had given the little mute in the wine wore off by morning, and when she heard that the two claimed friendship with Bordermoon she smiled, and waited for the lute player’s arrival at the shrine.

  Now, as to how the two young women had become acquainted…

  The text ends thus. I have not left anything out.

  This fragment was discovered in a hitherto unknown 1644 edition of the great Ming Dynasty redactor Meng Long-feng’s fourth anthology of tales written in the form of marketplace storytellers’ ‘promptbooks’. The volume, found in a second-hand book shop in Shaoguan, Guangdong province, had been torn in half. The last two sentences are a comment by the copyist upon whose work this unauthorized edition was evidently based. They are one of many signs of corruption in this text.

  All Souls’ and the Full Moon’s Light

  All Souls’ and the full moon’s silk-white light, disturbs the sleep of the living and the dead. Perhaps you too have known something like this, sometime towards the end of a summer. This is how it might have been: You were awakened that morning far too early, by bright beams from a disc still lightly flattened on one side. You buried your face in the pillow (a soft lump, feather-filled, no cool white-glazed ceramic brick). But you could not return to sleep, so persistent were the rays angling into the room through your window (a window, remember, made not of gauze or wooden latticework, but – remarkable! – of clear glass). The familiar things around you, even the flesh of your restive hands, all were changed, their colour drained away. Do ghosts, you may have wondered, see only tints and shades of grey? You moved through the day remotely troubled, found yourself humming the song your mother used to sing. Then the sun’s light faded, and the full moon rose.

  But whatever happened (or will have happened) to you, it is others who are disturbed on the full moon of the seventh lunar month of the year (you call it ad 733) this story has led you to. The usual ghosts are out and about: weeping suicides lurk near wells; proud patriarchs accept offerings of food and flowers as their due – no matter how great the cost to the living; neglected souls linger at country crossroads, hoping to feast on the life-force of the unwary. And one particular ghost is stirred up anew by a trickster’s random words.

  One who died by violence and cannot rest, said the glib servant of the Wizard Mimesis, unwittingly invoking this moaning, wild-haired creature. In fact, this ghost did not cause the little dancer’s muteness, but it has been linked to her since that feverish morning in Liang-jou when it possessed her body and made her speak. So when the false wizard, prattling, invented for his staff (which was not rare ebony persimmon wood, but only painted poplar after all) the name Banished Immortal Undersecretary of the Jade Emperor’s Heaven of Uppermost Purity, and ordered it to clasp this troubling ghost and carry it far away, his speechifying did more than he ever thought it would. For there is indeed (remember?) a banished Undersecretary, who occupies himself with keeping track of the ghost, the little dancer, and all who have to do with the corporeal form taken by that talkative pearl, the Luminous Emerald-Green Lunar Essence Sprite.

  So now the Undersecretary, astride a yellow crane, hovers unseen by mortal eyes above the second courtyard of the Imperial Dancing School. Now he catches sight of the ghost’s streaming hair and reads in its full breasts and knowledgeable hips the signs of his own desire. And now the ghost spies him and sees in him some promise of brief release from its own agonized attachments to the subcelestial realm. The crane swoops down, invisible. The ghost rises towards the great bird and mounts behind the Undersecretary, pressing a half-round belly and eager nipples against his back. The humans gawk at other things. The crane soars through smoke and shadow and ethereal clouds. And behind a bank of cumuli shaped like haystacks, in a far corner of one of the lower heavens, the couple clasp one another in that deep embrace, and the ghost is relieved, for now, on this night of restless death, of those unnamed fears that woke, or wake, or will have woken you.

  PARROT

  SPEAKS:

  15

  She would have seen me die before she saw me bear a child. I thought this as I crept by the full moon’s ghostly light into the tiny side-garden next to Mama Lu’s own room. Kneeling, I dug behind the drooping stalks of the peonies for the chest of silver ingots buried beneath her window. All Souls’ was the safest night for this, or so I hoped. The maids had joked about how Mama Lu would drink a great deal that evening. Though Felicity Hall was closed to guests, she had drunk heavily indeed, growing red-faced and shouting out coarse jokes, first cursing each of us, saying we should be dead, then weeping in repentance and, finally, collapsing into sodden sleep. I suppose that was how she mourned the sweet-faced entertainer called Charmeur, whom Mama Lu had killed with the same herbs she had made me drink. Listening for any break in the rough snores from her bedroom, I made a shovel of a broken roof tile, and quickly dug.

  Although it was forbidden to us. Amber took me into that garden once, some months before, when the crimson peonies hung their domed, heavy heads. She had laughed softly as she told me – thinking little of it – that Mama Lu’s hoard was hidden there.

 
; But Madam Lu had heard our voices, that late spring afternoon, and beat us both with a willow switch until we promised never to go into her garden again. It wasn’t such a terrible beating. She didn’t know that the secret of her treasure hoard was out. She was angry simply because we had presumed to go into the garden that was hers alone; I believe it had some association with dead Charmeur.

  I would have taken the silver even if she hadn’t beaten me. There was no other way to leave, no other way to rescue my mother. But when I found the chest, I was careful to remove no more than one ounce out of ten from the trove; Felicity Hall might need the rest. Walleye had been talking daily of the famine he said was bound to come. It will rain all autumn. Miss Bordermoon,’ he would say. ‘I can feel it in my left knee, here, where the Tibetan arrow struck. Months of rain to come yet, and there’s already flooding in the lowest fields. More of the harvest will be lost this year than last, you mark my words.’ Then he would tap his kneecap with surprising ferocity and talk of how rich they said the land around Chang-an had been long ago, before the fall of the Han Dynasty, before the centuries of chaos when the old drainage and irrigation system broke down.

  It wasn’t fear of the famine that determined me to try to escape. It was the dream I’d had. ‘Dream’ was what I persisted in calling it in my thoughts, for all that I had proof it was no ordinary dream. Every morning I looked secretly at the puzzling words newly written on the little scroll of silk I kept beneath my bed, and every morning saw that they were still there.

  I had another reminder of the mysterious charge that the Moon Lady had given me. The bare-legged moonmaid had pressed it into my hand as she bade me farewell: a necklace, a plain silver chain from which hung a small, oddly coloured pearl. The next morning, when I uncurled my fist and showed it to Feng, he had touched it lightly with one finger and then stepped quickly back as if afraid. He told me not to worry about Baby, but to meet the two of them and his servant Sparker with all the money I could manage, the day after the festival of All Souls’.