The Invisible Valley

by Wei, Su; Woerner, Austin;

  In no time Jade was back, carrying an armful of glistening leaves and twigs. She threw them down, then turned and vanished again into the night. The next time she appeared she was holding a charred tree branch, felled by lightning in some previous thunderstorm. When she laid it down Lu Beiping was surprised to hear it give off a brittle rustle, and he saw that the leaves were dry.

  —Take a gander at that, you four-eyed sissy.

  With all four eyes Lu Beiping stared in amazement. Jade brushed the wet hair out of her face and grinned triumphantly.

  —I dug it out of a crack in the rocks. A roof of stone’ll keep anything dry. Where there’s wet, there’s dry, and when there’s dryness at hand, there’s no need to fear the wet. That’s the law of the living. You got me, Four Eyes?

  (There was something magical about the fire they built that night, Lu Beiping would say to Tsung years later. If it hadn’t been for the lantern she’d borne unextinguished through the storm, if it hadn’t been for the dry kindling she’d conjured out of the wet forest, there’d have been no flame, no fire, no way to quell the fury of the flood. That woman was superhuman. Do you believe me? Well, no matter—believe what you want!)

  —Quit standing around! Jade barked. Help me get this fire started.

  Borrowing the barn lantern’s feeble flame, they managed to get the firewood burning. Sure enough, the crackling flames lit from the few dry branches soon sucked in the wet leaves, crumpling them and desiccating them. As the flames mounted, humid billows of smoke enveloped Jade and Lu Beiping, turning the floodwater-encircled slope into an island of warmth.

  Fire is life; that was another law of the living. As Lu Beiping hacked and wheezed, Maria let out a long bellow, and soon the fog-shrouded hills echoed with her vigorous cries.

  Ngauugh—AUUUUUGH! . . . Ngauugh—AUUUUUGH!

  Jade busied herself at the fireside, tying a knot in one panel of her blouse and using it to ferry dripping mouthfuls of silty water to the cow’s lips. Till then, Maria’s eyes had been closed; now they popped open, glistening like a pair of sleigh bells, and she lapped at the water with a quiet moan of happiness. Jade warmed her hands by the fire, then began rubbing them slowly up and down the cow’s twitching flank.

  Lu Beiping laid a hand on her shoulder and pointed wordlessly down the slope.

  The floodwater now swirled not six feet from where they stood. Dark swells raced through the ring of firelight, and through them tumbled the jagged shapes of severed branches borne downward on the swift current.

  Jade, still mopping rain from her face, stared at the water with enmity building in her eyes.

  —Ruin and balefire! she cried out at last, flinging an accusatory finger at the water. I curse you! What kind of evil demon harries a mother about to give birth! I curse you, curse you right on back to hell! When I’m done with you, you won’t dare show your face in front of your daddy the Devil!

  Muttering under her breath, Jade gathered a hissing handful of ash and, leaning down, scattered it in a line between the fire and the advancing flood, as if forbidding the spirits of the water to pass over this boundary. Then she turned, grabbed a burning stick out of the flames, held it aloft over the black, churning torrent and, drawing a fiery symbol in the air, she danced and called out in a keening singsong:

  —Iron, woodsbane! Water, flamesbane! Mother Heaven, Father Earth! We honor your laws, but you should too! Dragons, devils, serpents, specters—how dare you get in the way of a mother bringing new life into the world? Rainfather! Wind-sisters! Gods in heaven, have mercy on us! Open your eyes!

  Lu Beiping stared at her, speechless, utterly taken aback by this frenzied, leaping, chanting performance. Finally Jade clasped her hands in prayer, bowed once toward the water, and then fell to her knees.

  —Gods, demons, spirits! she cried out, knocking her forehead against the ground: I curse you, I damn you, I pray to you, I beg you!

  Then Lu Beiping followed suit, and got down on his knees.

  The firelight illuminated their paired silhouettes: two tiny human beings supplicating a vast, watery darkness. Forks of lightning flickered soundless and fitful in the sky, as if the heavens had spent all their strength in the preceding maelstrom. As they knelt, a succession of bright, abstract figures played silently across the black canvas of the night.

  Once again Maria’s wooden cowbell rang out crisply: Tock! . . . Tock! . . . Tock-tock! . . . Tock-tock! . . . Kneeling by the water, Lu Beiping stared wide-eyed at the trail of ashes strewn on the ground before him—for amid the peals of the clapper, it seemed like a miracle had occurred: Strange, he thought . . . the advancing floodwater, as if heeding a divine command, appeared to have halted just short of the line of ash. And when Jade came to the end of her incantation, they both turned and gave a simultaneous cry of surprise: There in the firelight, as if it had fallen out of the sky, stood another living being: a calf, its body covered in fine, curly hairs like a lamb or doe, sopping wet, already teetering unsteadily on its own delicate legs. Behind it Maria lay wet and gleaming, licking with quiet focus at her calf’s bloodstained pelt. Seeing Jade and Lu Beiping, she tossed her head and gave a jubilant bellow, and the clapper hanging around her neck sounded a brisk tattoo in reply.

  Ngauugh—AUUUUUGH!

  Tock-tock, tock-tock!

  Ngauugh—AUUUUUGH!

  Tock-tock, tock-tock!

  —Maria! Lu Beiping gasped. Wow! You really . . . He rushed over and threw his arms around her, squeezing her big, gallant head, then gave her a hearty shake before reaching out to stroke her calf. But Maria drew the line at that, and standing up immediately she placed the mountain of her body between Lu Beiping and her child.

  —Ha! Sorry, Maria! I know, I know . . .

  Lu Beiping clapped his hands in admiration. The flames danced. Then abruptly, he lurched over to Jade and pulled her into his embrace. All over the valley of her bosom his kisses opened like wildflowers.

  —You’re crazy, Jade murmured, laughing and pushing him away.

  —Crazy . . . Lu Beiping repeated. Of course I’m crazy!

  Then he was transfixed by a bolt of desire stronger than any he’d felt before, and a sea like the one Jade had held at bay rose up and washed over everything. He grabbed her, hoisted her, laughing, off her feet, and crammed his lips against hers, cutting off her laughter.

  Flames lapped at the tranquil silhouettes of Maria and her newborn calf, lying side by side.

  He laid Jade down on the fire-warmed earth, then took off her blouse, whose fabric was still twisted and knotted. When the whites of her breasts showed in the firelight he stopped, tilting his head to one side, and smiled, admiring those soft, cream-colored hills, the curls of her pubic hair glinting. He made a goofy face at her, then, without hurry, he pulled off his own drenched shorts.

  All around them, the dark forms of the trees stood at attention. Naked, Jade lay on a flat rock near the fire, gazing at him silently, her eyes half-closed.

  —I missed you, Bull Devil, she said finally.

  —You missed me? Really?

  —Of course, silly. Does that surprise you, that somebody else was thinking of you out there in the wind and rain?

  —What’s there to miss about a four-eyed sissy like me?

  —A lot, Jade said, smiling as she reached to pluck the glasses off of his face: Like your Horn.

  She grabbed him, grinning playfully. He drew closer to her, feeling exalted, like a towering banyan.

  —Four Eyes, you really are my Horn.

  —Your Horn? Really? Forever?

  —What do you mean, forever?

  —Okay, just for now.

  Already this had become their secret code language, an affectionate nonsense whose meaning was immaterial. But now, at the end of this long, windblown day, Lu Beiping truly felt, as their bodies joined once more, that his books, his education, his future, every
thing, had melted away in the embrace of this wild mountain woman. For the sake of that tiny speck of light borne to him out of the boundless darkness, he’d cross oceans for her sake, walk through fire. (At that moment, Lu Beiping said to Tsung many years later, I thought I might never part from this woman again, for all the rest of my life.)

  The flames of the dying fire rose and fell like small, bright blades, sharp yet intangible. For a moment the scudding clouds parted to reveal a slice of silver-dusted sky, then they closed, piling thick again, and the fresh scent of rain filled the night air.

  —We’d better be careful, Jade said, panting: The storm might not be done yet.

  —I don’t care. I’m not done yet!

  —Alright, hurry up!

  Lu Beiping laughed joyously, and renewed his efforts.

  The calf lay curled against its mother’s breast, sucking milk with its diminutive lips. Maria lay like a mountain, happy and at peace, gazing down at the rush and tumble of the humans below.

  The peals of the wooden clapper rocked gently on the wind, and finally the floodwaters began to ebb.

  Chapter 8

  The Ancient Tablet

  Mudkettle Mountain was a mess.

  What greeted Lu Beiping’s eyes the next morning was a disaster scene: All plants of any appreciable size on either side of Mudclaw Creek—prickly cane, kudzu brakes, wild banana trees—had been sheared off uniformly at the height of a human head, leaving a forest of cockeyed stubs thumbing randomly at the sky. His campsite looked like it had been carpet-bombed, the beams of his hut scattered like pickup sticks, his cot relocated to the creek, his frypan hung from a tree branch, and all his other possessions—clothes, books, water bucket, harmonica, alarm clock, radio—strewn over the hillside for hundreds of yards around. The corral was a naked, muddy pit out of which a few lonely palings protruded, and the rest of the logs that had fenced in the cattle were nowhere to be seen. Of the cattle themselves there had been, naturally, no news since last night. When the sun rose and Lu Beiping parted ways with Jade, he’d led Maria and her calf back to the devastated campsite, glanced toward The Tree That Dances in the Wind, and stood gazing at it in astonishment.

  The gorgontree, alone among its neighbors, had not toppled or been decapitated, and most of its branches had even survived intact. But the motley array of creepers and epiphytes that once coated the tree trunk had been stripped away as if by a giant magnet, and in their place jutted an odd collection of shrapnel: rock shards, wood splinters, even fragments of brick and roof tile blown up from the valley bottom, embedded in the bare wood like knives in dough. When Lu Beiping had first set up camp in the jungle, he’d tried to carve a message for posterity in the tree trunk and failed miserably; his machete, bouncing off the hard, knobbly wood, had flown out of his hand and landed a few yards away. The storm’s wrath, it seemed, had turned the sturdiest hardwood into clay, the smallest piece of debris into a deadly bullet. In fact, it was in just this manner that the notorious wanderer, Judas, had perished; later Lu Beiping would find him lying in a ditch on the far side of the mountain, a pebble lodged in his forehead. It was no surprise, then, that the local radio station had crowned “Typhoon Number Five” with so many frightening titles: an Unprecedented Calamity, a Tragedy of Vast Proportions, a Naturally Occurring Nuclear Explosion Rivaled Only by the Atomic Power of Mao Zedong Thought. That day, as he wandered through the gap-toothed forest wearing tattered clothing, hunting for his cattle, Lu Beiping discovered strange abominations at every turn: a pair of gigantic trees, their trunks unbroken but wrapped together like braided pastry; a boulder the size of an oxcart hanging in a hammock of vines over a steep ravine; ramrod-straight boulevards running through what was once impenetrable brush. Volcanic wasteland, atomic fallout, war, blight, plague—though he’d never witnessed any of these forms of devastation, he figured they couldn’t be much worse than this.

  Dark rain clouds still brooded in the sky. Hollering for his cattle, Lu Beiping heard, faintly at first, their answering lows drifting up from hill and valley. As he followed their voices he found himself once again crossing the low, sloping ridge where he’d first met Jade. As always Mudkettle Mountain loomed imposingly over the landscape, but now the green bowl of the mountain, swaddled in strips of cloud, showed patches of lighter color where the wind had reversed the leaves, and here and there he saw downed trees and severed branches. He could now tell that the lows of the cattle were mostly emanating from the high mountain bowl—the “high valley,” the driftfolk called it; this was the “kettle” that gave the mountain its name—which, he recalled, was accessible only by a steep path leading up from behind the driftfolk camp. How the cattle had managed to find their way to this remote refuge, a place even the wild swine couldn’t penetrate, was a mystery to him.

  The “tunnel of branches” was a tunnel no longer, its roof of foliage ripped away by the wind, and the slopes to either side strewn with wreckage. When Lu Beiping waded up out of the mire that had once been the creek, Smudge was waiting for him on the bank, Wildweed growling at his side. Gazing into the hollow, Lu Beiping gaped in surprise.

  Both of the thatched lodges were completely undamaged. The wood-cutting frame nailed to the lychee tree at the foot of the bluff had been blown slightly askew, but the entire exposed area between it and the hollow mouth remained miraculously undisturbed, the huts trim and tidy, the ground clear, the chickens still milling, as if this place had been a haven of tranquility at the eye of the storm, protected by a divine hand.

  —I hate you, said Smudge, pouting. I’ll not mind you nay more! He looked away from Lu Beiping, pretending to ignore him, and made no move to quiet the dog.

  —Nay mind me? I don’t believe it, Lu Beiping said, giving Smudge’s ear a playful pinch. Tell me, Smudge, what have I done to deserve your hatred?

  —Now all you care about’s my Pa, not me! Smudge harrumphed. Last night Pa didn’t sweat a drop about me, just hied on down the mountain looking for you, and wouldn’t let me come with! Lousy Bull Devil!

  —Oh, Smudge, Lu Beiping said with a grin: You know too much for your own good!

  At that moment Jade emerged from behind the lodge, her hands green with amaranth-pickling juice. Laughing, she said:

  —Looking for your animals? Autumn was fretting about them the moment he woke up. Must be something in the air this morning—first your cattle come running up here, then you. Did you smell the porridge I’m cooking?

  —Four Eyes isn’t looking for the kine, Pa, he’s looking for you! You think I don’t wit—

  —I know you know, you little rascal, Jade said, slapping Smudge on the rump. Why don’t you call Four Eyes Pa from now on? He can be your pa now.

  —I won’t! Four Eyes isn’t my pa! He’s a dirty son of a dog! Smudge said, wrinkling his nose at Lu Beiping. Then he stalked away sullenly with Wildweed trotting at his heels.

  Lu Beiping started to lay a cautioning hand on Jade’s shoulder, then he stopped, his arm frozen mid-reach, something about this gesture feeling too oddly spouse-like.

  —Oof, Lu Beiping said. Don’t joke about that. I’d rather he not call me “pa.”

  —You sure? Jade said with a teasing smile. What should he call you, then? Oof? He-eyyyy, Oof! How’s it going, Oof? I love you, Uncle Oof!

  —Shhh! A little quieter! You’ll piss off Kingfisher and Stump!

  Sticking his machete in the dirt outside the door of the smaller lodge, Lu Beiping gazed up incredulously at the stoutly built structure, at the thatch roof woven from tidy grass plaits, and marveled at the strange selectivity with which the storm had vented its fury.

  —Piss me off? What about?

  Kingfisher’s bald dome popped up over the crest of the roof, causing Lu Beiping to go beet-red and splutter in surprise.

  —Take care what you say around here, Four Eyes, Kingfisher said with a fey laugh. Nothing’s private. Good thing I sent Jade down to l
ook for you last night, eh? An old lover owes it to his den mother to keep an eye out for the new favorite. Isn’t that right, Stump?

  Stump’s hearty chortle emanated from the far side of the roof.

  Kingfisher and Stump had been lying on the roof of the lodge, hidden from Lu Beiping’s sight, mending thatch. Now Stump’s sweat-gleaming, guileless face appeared next to Kingfisher’s, and joining in the banter he burbled jovially to Lu Beiping:

  —Wind ran off with a few knots of thatch, that’s all. She’ll be shipshape by breakfast time. Care to share a cup with us, Four Eyes? Heard you and Jade were up all night birthing a babe. Heh! Tiresome work, nay?

  More guffaws all around. This time Jade joined in too, her loud laughter pealing over the others’, and Lu Beiping felt some of his own awkwardness dissolve. He asked:

  —Have you seen my cattle? They ran off last night, and I think they somehow made their way up into the valley above here.

  —That’s what we were just discussing, Kingfisher replied. Your beasts have been keening all night. Talk about horned demons and hidden serpents—I think every demon on the mountain joined in the chorus! Autumn went up there first thing this morning, said he feared your horned demons wouldn’t stand a chance against the biggest hidden serpent of them all.

  —Autumn said what? Lu Beiping couldn’t believe his ears. “Horned demons and hidden serpents” was a catchphrase that in those days referred to society’s bad elements—capitalists, vagrants, troublemakers; in short, people like Jade, Kingfisher, and Stump. On Kingfisher’s lips, however, the phrase had an obvious, added layer of meaning.

  —Say! You don’t wit? Stump interjected. ’Course, as long as she’s happy, she keeps hidden. Let’s hope it stays that way!