The Story of the Stone mlanto-2

by Barry Hughart

  They finally broke apart. The king gestured. Moon Boy led Grief of Dawn up to the throne, and with great gentleness the King of Chao reached down and picked up first Moon Boy and then Grief of Dawn and placed them upon his vast lap.

  “What charming children you are,” he said. He kissed Moon Boy's cheek. “This is the most special of all my special people, and clearly he shares his soul with Grief of Dawn. Why should that be?” He gently tilted Grief of Dawn's chin and looked deep into her eyes. “Are you special too, my child?” For a long time he studied her, and then he said, almost whispering, “Yes. In you is something very like the strange inner core of Moon Boy, although he is not properly named. He is more like the sun, and it is you who are more like the moon. One cannot look directly at the sun without being blinded, so wise men study the sun by looking at the moon.”

  The king suddenly smiled, and it was breathtaking. His smile was as open and spontaneous as that of a child, but there was a strange hint of yearning and melancholy to it, and he delicately lifted her free hair and replaced the clasp.

  “Would you like to wear a uniform of sable and carry a golden bow?” he asked softly. Then he chuckled. “That is not a fair question, of course, and you are not forced to reply. None of our girls has ever been forced. Grief of Dawn, we want you, but we shall court you as we have courted all the others, and the decision will be yours alone to make.”

  He effortlessly picked up both of them and placed them back upon the floor. His eyes moved to Master Li.

  “Even this humble orphan has heard of the astonishing Li Kao, whose achievements are said to be without limit,” the king said graciously. “There is much we would like to discuss with you, and we look forward to the enlightenment of your wisdom. One day you may even confide in us the real purpose of your visit, but there is no hurry. You have brought us Grief of Dawn, for which we are deeply grateful. She shall be our honored guest, and may your own visit be a long one.”

  A flick of a royal finger dismissed us. We bowed backward from the throne room. The chamberlain directed us back to our suite, where a splendid repast was waiting.

  “Master Li, did he mean what I thought he meant?” I asked.

  “That Grief of Dawn and I have just joined his collection of special people? I hope so,” Master Li said cheerfully. “Well, my love, are you ready for gold and sable?”

  Grief of Dawn blushed and lowered her eyes. “What an extraordinary man,” she whispered.

  I didn't realize just how extraordinary the king was until late that night. I awoke just after the third watch. Musical instruments were playing somewhere. I slipped into my tunic and stumbled out to the central room, yawning and rubbing my eyes, and I discovered that Grief of Dawn had heard it also and was standing at the window overlooking a garden.

  It was the Golden Girls. Instead of bows they carried lutes and pipes, and they played very well. Then a great dark shape moved from the shadows, and the King of Chao stepped out into the bright moonlight. He was absolute monarch. He could take whatever he wanted, but that wasn't his way. Even at a distance I could sense that he was enjoying himself immensely, and he bowed deeply toward Grief of Dawn's bedchamber and then turned to face the moon. The king placed the big toe of his right foot upon the big toe of his left foot and began to sing a love charm from the barbaric country of his birth.

  I can't explain it, but it was one of the most impressive things I have ever seen and heard in my life.

  “I loose my arrow and the moon clouds over,

  I loose it and the sun is extinguished,

  I loose it and the stars burn dim,

  But it is not the moon, sun, and stars I shoot at.

  It is the heart of Grief of Dawn.”

  His majesty flapped his arms, imitating some sort of bird, and began to dance with grace that was accentuated by his huge bulk. There was nothing funny about it. He was like a vast force of nature, totally incapable of making a fool of himself.

  “Cluck-cluck! Grief of Dawn, come and walk with me,

  Come and sit with me,

  Come and sleep and share my pillow.

  Cluck-cluck! Grief of Dawn,

  When thunder rumbles remember me,

  When wind whistles remember me,

  When the Red Bird sings remember me,

  When you see the moon remember me.

  When you see the sun remember me,

  When you see the stars remember me.

  Cluck-cluck! Grief of Dawn,

  Come hither to me,

  Let your heart come hither to mine.”

  Three times the song charm was repeated, and then his majesty bowed again toward Grief of Dawn's bedchamber. The Golden Girls also bowed. Then the king and his girls were gone, blending into the shadows, and I suppose that my face was rather expressive. How many young women are courted by a huge, powerful, infinitely courteous and gentle, yet infinitely barbaric monarch? Sable and gold awaited Grief of Dawn, not to mention an impossibly handsome young man named Moon Boy.

  “Oh, Ox. Poor Ox,” Grief of Dawn said softly.

  Her hand slipped into mine. “Come and walk with me, come and sit with me, come and sleep and share my pillow,” she whispered.

  “Cluck-cluck!” I said.

  There are mornings one would prefer to forget.

  This one began beautifully, with sunlight sliding through the window and dappling Grief of Dawn's lovely shoulder. I nuzzled her cheek and listened to the lethargic buzz of lazy flies, and a drowsy drone of bees, and the curtains gently rustling in a whispering breeze, and a happy voice that bellowed, “Come back here, you little bugger!”

  I sat bolt upright.

  “Oh, damn,” Grief of Dawn sighed plaintively.

  A naked boy, perhaps thirteen or fourteen, raced past the window on the veranda.

  “Hey, bugger, don't you want the plugger snugger?” the happy voice yelled.

  “Ten million curses,” Grief of Dawn groaned, smothering a yawn.

  A naked young man galloped past the window after the boy, stopped, trotted back, and stuck his head inside the room.

  “Good morning, my love!” Moon Boy said cheerfully.

  “Why must you waste that thing on boys?” she said.

  He glanced down complacently at his crotch. “Waste? What do you mean waste? You know very well that some of the little darlings can't sit down for a month.” Moon Boy climbed through the window and sauntered up to the bed. “My, you've certainly picked a splendid specimen this time. Congratulations!”

  I hastily jerked the covers up to my shoulders.

  “You're Number Ten Ox, aren't you? Where did you get that divine nose? Looks like a cow stepped on it,” Moon Boy said.

  “Er… A slight disagreement with Big Hong the blacksmith,” I mumbled.

  “I trust he received a decent funeral,” Moon Boy said, and then he sat down on the side of the bed and began caressing Grief of Dawn's right thigh. “Speaking of funerals, I once saw Master Li during one of his black periods,” he said. “He wouldn't remember me. I was in the back row at court waiting to give my first imperial performance, and this wicked old man kowtowed to the emperor, got to his feet, whipped a knife from his sleeve, and cut the throat of the Minister of Trade. Blood all over the place.”

  “Moon Boy, is that true?” Grief of Dawn said skeptically.

  “Every word. When the emperor learned the motive for the mayhem, he couldn't decide whether to boil Master Li in oil or make him a duke, but it was academic because the old man had already escaped to Turkestan. Shortly thereafter the High Priest of Samarkand was found with his nose caressing the sole of his left foot, which says something about the condition of his spine, and when the bailiffs paid a call on Master Li, they found he'd suddenly been called to the sickbed of a great-granddaughter in Serendip.”

  I was used to Master Li stories, only a tiny fraction of which are even marginally true, but I was not used to hearing one from a revoltingly beautiful young man who climbed stark naked through th
e bedroom window and began stroking my girl's bare leg. Now he was stroking her left breast, and taking her into his arms.

  “I've missed you,” he said softly.

  “How I love you,” she whispered.

  The king was wrong about Moon Boy's name. He was perfectly named, I decided, because the moon is inhabited by a large white rabbit, and everybody knows that rabbits are notorious perverts.

  “Why not give up boys for a week and try me?” Grief of Dawn whispered.

  In addition, I decided, he moved like a cat, and Master Li once said that certain Egyptians say that a cat lives in the moon, and everybody knows that the soul of a cat is formed from the composite souls of nine debauched nuns who failed in their vows.

  “Come away with me,” Grief of Dawn whispered.

  “Darling, I'd like nothing better, but his majesty is a wee bit possessive,” he said.

  “Master Li will take care of that. He has a job for you, and that boy you were chasing resembles a Swatow sea slug.”

  “Tell the wicked old man I accept. I shall pack a few essential clothes and jewels—you must see the emerald the king gave me—and kiss the lads farewell.”

  The lad on the balcony had realized he was no longer being chased, and was coughing self-consciously outside the window. Moon Boy was up with a smooth feline motion.

  “Work, work, work,” he complained. “Why must one's responsibilities always interfere with one's pleasures? Still, duty is duty.”

  With a catlike bound he was at the window, and with another he was out of it. “Come back here, you little bugger!” he yelled, and he was gone.

  Grief of Dawn smiled and settled back in my arms. “Well, now you've met Moon Boy,” she said. “Slightly larger than life, isn't he?”

  “Will he come to visit after we're married?” I asked apprehensively.

  She looked at me gravely, “Ox, I can never get married,” she said. “Moon Boy and I think that we were part of the same soul, and somehow it was split on the Great Wheel of Incarnations, and a piece of it is still missing. Apart we're nothing, and even when we're together we aren't complete. We wander the world, Ox, searching for the missing piece, and I can never settle down until I find it.”

  I wanted to argue about that, but Grief of Dawn had a better idea. We were getting back to where we started before the interruption, and things warmed up nicely, and it appeared that the morning would be saved after all.

  “Good morning, my children!” Master Li said happily as he trotted into the room. “Why is it that the most delightful of physical positions to the participants is an aesthetic abomination to onlookers?”

  We managed to get separated, and Master Li took Moon Boy's position on the side of the bed.

  “Your absurdly good-looking young man just galloped lewdly past my window,” he said to Grief of Dawn. “I've never been much for hopping into bed with boys, but if I could be ninety again, I'd be delighted to make an exception with him. Buddha, what a creature! Has he agreed?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  “Good. I want to get out of here as fast as possible. Ox, Grief of Dawn, I want you to find the highest point in the castle you can reach, with the best view of the courtyards and walls.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “This evening Moon Boy is scheduled to perform, and after that the Golden Girls will put on a show. Nobody will pay attention to young lovers walking by the lakes in the gardens. How long would it take you to get a sackful of toads and two sackfuls of lanternflies?”

  “Not long,” I said. “An hour or two.”

  “Splendid,” said Master Li. “Plan to slip out and collect them just after Moon Boy's performance, and with any luck we'll be out of here before midnight. In the meantime, enjoy yourselves.”

  Grief of Dawn and I lay back. Dogs were barking and cats were yowling and roosters were crowing and grooms were swearing and cooks were screaming. We got up and dressed and went out to find the highest vantage point.

  11

  About an hour later we were able to report to Master Li that there were two accessible turrets with good views of the castle and walls, and he explained to us that bandit gangs crossed through Chao at this time of the year to reach their mountain hideouts before the rainy season made the roads impassable, and Shih Hu's favorite sport was massacring bandit gangs.

  “He leads his troops personally, and he's renowned for being out of his castle and on the attack within minutes,” Master Li explained. “The drawbridges are slow and cumbersome. I want to know whether or not he uses them, and my bet is that he has some other exit.”

  We had nothing to do until evening except mingle with the distinguished guests. Master Li huddled with Grief of Dawn and sent her out wearing her dusty travel clothes, with a wicked dagger in her belt and her bow over her shoulder and her hair bound by a leather cord apparently jerked from a broken bridle. Her hair clasp was polished like an emperor's adornment and pinned to the front of her sweat-stained tunic, and if ever there was a wild warrior princess, it was Grief of Dawn. She was besieged by admirers. I got close enough to hear her explain—apparently Master Li's suggestion—that she was searching for her brother, who had been transformed by an evil shaman and was wandering through the woods in the form of a tiger, with his matching clasp around his furry neck. After that I couldn't get within forty feet of her, so I wandered off.

  King Shih Hu's special people were all over, and Master Li got into a furious argument with the world's greatest astronomer about the direction of currents in the Great River of Stars during the rainy season: “neo-Chang Hengian epicycles” and “Phalguni asterisms” and “reverse ch'i concentrations”—I couldn't understand a word of it. I fled to the company of the most beautiful woman in the world and had a very interesting conversation.

  She had blond hair and green eyes and said she was a Greek from Bactria. She also said she was sick and tired of being kidnapped by one king after another ever since she had been ten years old, and she would insist upon being buried standing up because she never wanted to see another bed throughout eternity. I liked her very much, although there was a certain tightness at the corners of her eyes and mouth that argued against a close relationship.

  I wandered off again and talked with an old man who had a very interesting story to tell, because he had once urinated over the statue of a local Place God when he was drunk, and apparently the God of Walls and Ditches had been passing by, because the next thing he knew, he was encased in bronze and standing on a pedestal as a T'u-ti himself, and there was a terrible drought and the peasants demanded that he bring rain to the fields, and when no rain came, they brought out the ceremonial cudgels and beat him black and blue. He still had some very impressive welts to display. I was pressing him for more details when I heard the drawbridge lower, and then a courier came galloping across it and jumped from his horse and dashed into the palace to report to the king.

  Master Li was nodding at me. Grief of Dawn was buried in admirers and couldn't get away, so I made hasty apologies to the former T'u-ti and ran for the stairs. I arrived at my lookout spot just as the king and his Golden Girls came from a side door into a courtyard and entered the stables. I knew that Master Li had been right when I heard the drawbridge raise and slam shut, and several minutes later I blinked at the sight of Shih Hu outside the walls. He was riding on a revolving couch on a great war chariot. He had racks of bows and mountains of arrows within easy reach, and Master Li had told me that he was one of the great archers of the world and would whirl around and around on his couch firing arrows so fast they looked like a waterfall. The Golden Girls rode on horses, and they were followed by foot soldiers jogging in disciplined ranks.

  I went back down to report that the king had some kind of exit through the stables. Master Li was delighted.

  The afternoon festivities continued with the chamberlain playing host. There were actors and acrobats and Sogdian spin-dance girls who wore crimson pantaloons and performed on top of huge roll
ing balls. Great mounds of food were brought out. It was half-civilized and half-barbarian. A perfectly traditional dish of ducks’ feet and ham steamed with Peking dates and black tree fungus was followed by an exotic Mongolian stew: venison, rabbit, chicken, fish, figs, apples, peaches, curds, butter, spices, and herbs, all boiled together with mounds of sugar candy. I thought it was quite good, but I noticed that both Master Li and Grief of Dawn spat out the sugar candy.

  The king and his bodyguards and soldiers returned just as the sun was setting. They were in high spirits, and the soldiers were carrying a new collection of severed heads mounted upon pikes. When the king and the Golden Girls had bathed and changed, it was time for the high point of the festivities: Moon Boy.

  I will admit I was skeptical. A person who looked like Moon Boy could announce, “The song of the lark,” and then go “quack-quack-quack” and get a standing ovation.

  We entered a great stone hall. The chamberlain made a great show of rapping walls and floors to show that there was no trickery involved, and then some servants placed a simple wooden table at one corner of the room. More servants brought in two paper fans, a small jar of water, and four cups, which they placed upon the table. Then Moon Boy appeared. He was carrying a simple sounding board like the ones used by girls in my village, and his eyes searched the audience until he found Grief of Dawn. He gave her a wink, and I assumed he was going to perform something especially for her. The servants unfolded a large screen, blocking out the table, and the lanterns were extinguished until the room was almost dark. There was a buzz of conversation while Moon Boy warmed up, and then there were three sharp raps from behind the screen and the room was hushed.