She looks up at him again, says nothing, brings a smile to her lips. At least the slap-slap-slapping has stopped.
‘Dear,’ he continues, ‘I thought you might want me to comb your hair for you. Maybe try that new Towering Nebula style they’re doing in the Eastern Sea, hmmm?’ He looks at her expectantly. She always likes it when he does her hair.
Seagem thanks him. ‘Maybe later, darling,’ she says. ‘I’m copying Song Yu’s rhapsody on the goddess of Shamanka Gorge. I should be finished soon.’ Not quite true, but near enough, she thinks.
The Princeling’s eyebrows knot again. Well, then, he suggests, perhaps she could stop for just a few moments? He would like to have a little talk. Surely the calligraphy can wait?
She doesn’t sigh, but when she puts her brush down again, it seems as if she did. Then she swings her legs round, so that she faces him, still sitting on her stool. He stands so close that she has to tilt her head back to look up at him. ‘Yes?’ is all she says.
After a great deal of stammering, the Princeling blurts out his problem. Since she took up this calligraphy, and reading, and now even memorizing poems, she has, well, to put it bluntly, she has been neglecting him. ‘Understand, dear love,’ he tells her, ‘I don’t want to stop you from pursuing your new interests. Actually, I think they’re quite nice, and I realize you never had the chance to do all this in the human world. But, don’t you ever miss your embroidery and such? When we were still betrothed…’ Here he pauses, blushing at his indelicacy in alluding, however indirectly, to her father’s failure to keep his promise and to the years when she was the human general’s wife. But Seagem has changed. No tears. She merely nods her head and, politely, waits.
‘Your fame as a needlewoman preceded you here beneath the waves. Word of the smoothness of your weaving spread from Chang-an to the Yangzi Valley, and thence down here to us. I hate to see you give that up. Besides . . ,’ He stops and prepares to lay down the clincher. ‘When you did that sort of thing, I could sit somewhere nearby, and we could talk.’
A pang strikes Seagem’s heart. She does so love the Princeling. And she likes to be near him. It’s just that she can hardly pour her full energies into the words she brushes on the page while carrying on a conversation; indeed, she likes it best when no one else is in the room at all. How selfish of her!
She hangs her head, and the Princeling pats her shoulder, and stoops to kiss her glossy hair. Soon the two have drifted over to their silk-covered bed and give to one another joys laden with the honey-sweetness of reconciliation. Then it’s time to dress for the family’s evening banquet. Seagem practises no more that day, and a carp-cousin come to visit from the Southern Ocean watches them tenderly sharing morsels at the table and smiles to see such a model of mutual devotion. But that night, Seagem lies awake for hours, not quite certain what disturbs her. Tomorrow, she thinks, she will gather up her courage and pay a call on her mother-in-law, to ask for her advice.
Outside of Liang-jou, in the community of Taoist women known as Darkdazzle Vista, the novice jade Clarity – whose name in the world was Nephrite – washes off her makeup in preparation for her ordination. Certain secret teachings have been passed to her by women of the Vista. She has purified her body by spiritual disciplines, has gathered essential energies through intercourse with eager smooth-skinned youths, in hectic battles of pleasure and denial. She can now go nine days without a bite of food, quite unaware of hunger.
Yet a longing remains in her. She yearns for a divine lover, hopes to summon him by her careful pacing of a ritual dance, tracing patterns on a greensward as the calligrapher traces signs upon the page, as stars trace out their powerful constellations in the sky. Her languid steps may bring her to a mystic consummation. It is her one desire. Soon she will be given tables inscribed with esoteric texts. Soon her soul will roam free to the palace of the Western Motherqueen.
After wintering in the Brocade City, four travellers and their cumbersome military escort have made their way south by riverboat to Jia-jou, and overland to the town of Mothbrow, at the famous mountain’s foot. They have come on a false quest for the local governor, and a true one for the Lady in the Moon. Long before the spring came, three of them had grown impatient, but Dreamdragon Feng held back from making that last stage of the journey. And who could blame him? He failed to take the imperial examination and squandered all his parents’ money besides. He may have the remote protection of the Moon Lady, but to a good Confucian scholar that goddess is little more than a runaway wife. Now he makes his living as an alchemist-magician of dubious honesty. No, he was hardly eager, when it came down to it, to move on to his old hometown.
And yet, they managed to pass quickly through the town, and no one from Jia-jou’s thirty thousand households guessed that the proud Wizard Mimesis (who sports a beard as long and coarse as the hair from a horse’s tail) has anything to do with the son of respectable old Tutor Feng. Now they have come to Mothbrow Town, and tomorrow they will enter the mountain’s faerie realm.
But first, a final piece of business. The soldiers the military governor sent from the Brocade City for their protection in the wild mountain realm must be got rid of. A considerable inducement is needed, one that will make it worth their while to tell His Excellency that somewhere amid the cloudy ravines of Mothbrow Mountain the foursome magically vanished. Yet the travellers’ catch-as-catch-can earnings over the winter have left them with little after expenses. Even today, in this country town, they are busy scraping up every bit they can. The two common soldiers can be fooled with a bit of razzle-dazzle and perhaps a cloud of coloured smoke, but their sergeant (who has observed rather carefully the party’s ways of making money) has let Mimesis know he is a hard-headed realist, with a taste for cash.
Meanwhile, just outside Mothbrow Town, the second daughter of a wealthy farmer of the Yin clan has been planning her future. She is perceptive, straightforward, skilled at the loom, and badly pockmarked. It is beginning to look as if no one will send a go-between to compare the horoscopes and choose an auspicious wedding day. She has set her own eye on a neighbour who is reasonably intelligent, not unkind, relatively well-to-do. Unfortunately, the match would not be, for him, a particularly advantageous one. He would only ask his parents – who dote on him – to arrange a marriage with Second Daughter Yin if he were in love with her, but how is that to be when young men see pitted skin and not what lies within?
Second Daughter has decided to take matters into her own hands. A love charm – ah, a love charm would cure everything, bringing her security, and happiness, and a way out of her father’s house, where remarks about her age are becoming rather pointed. So, weary though she is with caring for the silkworms, she has come on this day of their moulting sleep to the inn on the edge of town. After a few minutes of thoughtful watching, she approaches the slender apprentice of the wizard who has lodged there these last two nights waiting for the rainy spell to break.
‘It’s Master Skywhistle I want to speak to,’ she says with quiet boldness, and the two of them withdraw into a comer of the inn’s main room. Once they are away from Sparker and the townsmen idling over their cups, her back straightens, her face loses its drawn look, and she smiles a reassuring smile. ‘I know you are no man,’ she whispers then. Skywhistle freezes. ‘But I’ll tell no one. And I’ll pay a fair price for what I’m asking. If you can arrange to fool so many, and travel about in freedom, I am certain that you can manage what I need.’ Skywhistle belatedly begins to feign outrage at the accusation of womanhood, but seeing amused intelligence gleaming in Second Daughter’s eyes desists, and asks her what she wants.
Soon the deal is concluded. Skywhistle hands her a twist of paper containing an occult mixture known as Scarlet Dust. Second Daughter is to find a sturdy box and place within it a snake, a centipede, a scorpion, a wombguard lizard, and a toad. She may give them no food or water. When only one of these antagonists remains alive, embodying the powers of all the others, she is to feed it the Scarlet Dust.
When it dies, she must dry its body, grind it in an unused mortar by the full moon’s light, and sprinkle a pinch of the powder in a cup of wine, serving it with her own hands to her intended. No harm will come to him, Skywhistle assures her, but his heart – and a place in his household – will then be hers.
Second Daughter’s gratitude is great. She tucks the twist of paper inside her sleeve and gives Skywhistle silver to the value of five strings of cash, or five bolts of high-grade silk. Small payment, she thinks, for escaping an old maid’s doom of condescension and disdain. And so, she abstractedly hands the wizard’s apprentice one thing more, a simple necklace with a single lumpy pearl. ‘My father gave me this,’ she says, with a wry smile. ‘He’s never bought me jewellery. Says I’ll just take it with me when I leave the family anyway. I think he got this in a swap of some kind on the cheap. Perhaps you’ll have some use for it.’
At the sight of the pearl necklace, Skywhistle’s eyes grow wide. Second Daughter rises, and with a grace and dignity unusual in a provincial farmer’s daughter, turns and leaves.
Skywhistle holds the odd-shaped pearl with care and prays a silent prayer that the love charm will work. Surely an afternoon of wine and conversation will lead any young man to see Second Daughter’s worth; she lacks only self-confidence to replace the apologetic hunch her shoulders take when she is with men.
Elsewhere, Lady Guan-yin lowers her eyes to the terrestrial realm, gazes at the little pearl, nods her elegant head, and calmly smiles.
A Geographical Guide to
Jia-jou and Environs
(Yu Nuo-hu, ed.)
CHAPTER 13: MOTHBROW MOUNTAIN
Shu has many faerie mountains, but none of them compares with Mothbrow’s magic realm. Its bold precipices thrust upwards with the virility of a heroic man; its awesome crests arch like the eyebrows of a beautiful woman, delicate and resilient as a moth’s feathery antennae. Yes, it harbours the dynamic interplay of the forces of yin and yang. In the remote gullies and coves of its winding ridges, fire demons roam. From its Golden Summit, travellers view mysterious spirit lamps gathered in the crevasses and actually see their own auras glowing on clouds spread out below them like hanks of soft silk floss!
Famous sites on Mothbrow Mountain: Among the numinous objects on this great mountain are the precipices known as Jade Maiden and Skycleaver and wondrous stones such as the Flying Sword, Heavensdoor, and Chameleon Rock. Thousands of caves penetrate the sacred mount. The people venerate them all, especially Nu Wa’s Cavern, Fu Hsi’s Grotto, the Three Immortals, and Dragongate.
Flora: Buddha pine, bodhisattva creeper, his-face trees dripping pollen, ragged-leaf plantains, golden chestnuts, parasol shrubs, banyans, redolent camphor trees, cypresses, desolate thickets of mountain laurel, giant ginkgos, mimosas whose leaves fold companionably together all night, and cassia trees that grow vigorously even when half their bark is gone. Climbing the high peaks, one sees the foliage change as if one journeyed many miles to the north: near the summit, all is windblown junipers and hardy rhododendrons.
In the foothills there are peaches, efficacious herbs, tea of surpassing flavour, and wild camellias filling the air with their haunting aroma. These last bloom rose and purple, pink and white amid early winter’s snows.
Fauna: Mysterious phoenixes dance upon the branches of the tung trees, and from time to time a fortunate traveller may hear the sweetcry bird, trilling, ‘Buddha comes! Buddha, Buddha comes!’
Among animals there are wolves and tigers, giant pandas, bearded monkeys, enchanting choruses of frogs, and pythons a hundred feet long.
Sources of Spiritual Power: Those who study earthmagic instantly recognize a galvanic potency in the mountain’s form.
Jade Nectar Spring, which lies partway up the main slope, is known to have its distant source in the mighty worldmountain. Only here does it emerge into the human realm. A dragon maiden guards these pure and holy waters.
Buddhists interpret the haloes shimmering around one’s shadow cast on the clouds below Golden Summit to signify that the mountain has been granted special favour by The Enlightened One; seeing this ‘Buddha’s Glory’ round one’s own head, one is a blessed bodhisattva.
In tier after tier the skyward ranges, of which Mothbrow forms the easternmost promontory, run west to the Kun-lun massif, reaching the icy fastness of the Western Motherqueen herself.
PARROT
SPEAKS:
18
‘Stop!’
The panting voice rang out behind us. ‘The soldiers!’ Feng cried out. ‘They’ve come back!’ He and Sparker vanished. Baby grabbed my wrist and pulled me after her into the crevice where the others hid. We pressed close together in the darkness, breathing as shallowly as panic would allow.
The months I had spent as Skywhistle had quickened my tongue. Since the day I had talked us past a dangerously cautious official at Swordgate Pass, I sometimes felt I could prattle my way out of nearly anything. Only the bright-eyed pockmarked farmer’s daughter I had met yesterday had seen through my disguise as a boy, and only when I had forecast an unpleasant future for the Brilliant Emperor had my fortune-telling in the Brocade City got me into trouble.
But the sergeant we bribed must have betrayed us, I thought when I heard that indistinct shout: we were being pursued. My new skill with the language of – call it double-dealing – would prove useless if they caught us. The crevice had no other exit. j What were we to do?
I pressed myself harder against the rough rock wall and prayed to Lady Guan-yin to protect us. The scheme had seemed ; to go so well. Feng and the sergeant had come to an understanding, and we four had taken care to keep the troopers a bit I off-balance: now a writing brush changed into a newt (Sparker I had got very good at that one), now a pass of the hand and the flames of a cooking fire burning eerie green.
We had never wanted soldiers to escort us, but when Feng and Baby fooled the local governor to get the money for the last stage of our quest he had insisted on sending along a military guard for our protection. They were still with us when we left Mothbrow Town that morning, peering up through the tender-leafed willow branches at massive folded peaks.
Passing Chameleon Rock, I caught my breath. And before noon we reached the hundred-year-old Monastery of the Long-lived Sage, deep among a grove of hoary trees, where the monks gave us pickled vegetables and let us cook our rice. ‘Crossing the Bridge of Deliverance,’ the novice who waited upon us said, ‘you will escape the sordid attachments of earthly life. The swift waters carry all fatigue and woe away. Only do not forget to cleanse your hands and mouths in the pool there, before you enter the bamboo grove and start your ascent.’ With this last, his eyes bulged like a spirit-general’s. The troopers gasped.
We climbed more than a thousand feet on wooden steps, the ground around us slick and pale with a mat of dried bamboo leaves decades deep. The stems of the giant grasses creaked one against the other as they wavered overhead, a frost of grey dusted on their even green. Bamboo keep to themselves, no other plants grew within the huge grove. As we laboured upwards I reached out to run my fingers down a stalk, marvelling at its smoothness and its constancy.
Behind me, Feng cleared his throat and laughed softly. I fixed my mind on the dispassionate emptiness at each bamboo’s hollow heart. ‘Ah, you’re a cool one,’ he murmured, but I still would not turn round.
The trail began to tack across the mountain. The third or fourth of its Ninety-nine Turns took us over a side ridge and into a small ravine thick with trees. Greening branches filled our vision with cheerless shadows. Feng turned to the sergeant and cocked an eyebrow. It was time. The sergeant called a halt.
Sparker gathered sticks and struck his flint to start a fire while Baby shaved tea from a pressed brick. I took the pot from my pack and fetched water from a nearby spring. Silently we waited until the water boiled, hissing in the stillness of the afternoon.
‘Foolish to halt in this gloomy place,’ the shortest soldier muttered to his fattish friend.
‘Look how the shadows have started to grow longer. We’ll have to stop for the night soon.’
‘Hope there’s a monastery or a nunnery to take us in,’ the fat one replied. ‘Shouldn’t like to camp out here.’
The sergeant’s dark face glared in their direction, and the two soldiers – one plump, one stubby – stared down at their hands.
We sat in an uneasy silence. The ravine faced east, and I realized Feng had chosen it for its early afternoon shade. Just as great bubbles of air began to rustle upwards from the bottom of the pot, I ambled by the three soldiers, loosening my trousers at the waist. We had travelled together long enough that jokes about my boyish shyness in relieving myself had finally ceased, and they paid me little mind. The short soldier sat with his arms wrapped about his knees; he had foolishly chosen to sit on a stone rather than to squat, and in the coolness of the fourth month the well-shaded stone was evidently drawing the heat from his body. As we had arranged, Sparker kept a casual eye on me. When he saw me pass the soldiers, he reached out for the pot of water, spilled it, and ripped the still air with his scream.
Even I started at the sound of pain echoing through the silent ravine. All three soldiers jumped to their feet, though they were slow to draw their swords. It was easy for me to drop unnoticed the paper Feng had given me. It landed on the rock the short one had been sitting on.
Sparker trudged off, nursing his hand, to refill the pot with water. The rest of us laughed nervously and prepared to wait again.
‘Hullo! What’s this?’ the short soldier cried. ‘Paper, eh?’ He squinted at it. ‘Well, it’s blank,’ he said and made as if to throw it away.’
Another sharp sound, deeper and more commanding, set my heart beating faster again. ‘What are you doing, fool?’ raged Feng (or perhaps I should call him Wizard Mimesis here). He drew himself up to his full height, giving off an air of dignity and authority. ‘You find a mysterious paper on this mountain of python deities and fire demons and you’d toss it away? Bring it here, lad, bring it here!’
Silk Road Page 28