Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

by Justin Hill

  If he had a bow, he thought, and at that moment the deer looked up and saw him, and in a flash the dappled forest was empty. In the shadows he saw a simple bamboo bridge, and he clambered toward it over rocks that were twice his height or more. All the time the roar of water filled his hearing. But when he got to the top he saw the bridge, if three lengths of bamboo lashed together with reed ropes could be called such a thing.

  Muttering a prayer of blessing he balanced his way across and leaped up the rocks on the other side, finding the path again, which after an hour or so brought him to a level space and a little clearing where stood a shaggy little hut of bamboo with reeds as a roof.

  A little monk sat cross-legged on the bare earth outside his house, a copper begging bowl on the ground before him. Over his shoulders was thrown a raincoat of leaves. His eyes were closed. His face was as wrinkled and brown and glossy as a polished walnut.

  Wei-fang stopped and looked around. The clearing was empty. Birds were calling. It seemed like a trap. He walked warily ­forward.

  “Hello,” he called.

  The man did not move or open his eyes. Wei-fang came forward again. He held onto his staff and crouched down a few feet before the man. In the bowl he saw no money, but a few green leaves, a twig with two chestnuts, and a wrinkled old peach.

  Under his raincoat the monk appeared to be naked. The skin of his chest and belly was slack and empty and sagging, like old women’s breasts.

  Suddenly his eyes opened. “Welcome,” the man said, and smiled.

  Wei-fang hesitated before moving any closer. He held his hands open. “I have nothing to give.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” the old monk said. “It is a poor man who cannot give another anything. You do not seem so impoverished. Not to me, at least.”

  “You are right,” Wei-fang said as he sat down on the other side of the copper bowl and pulled open the top of his sack. “I have this.” He took out half a steamed bun he had saved. “It is all the food I have left. I’ve been thinking all day of eating it. But it is said that a man can find good friends with half a piece of bread and a cup of wine.”

  “A cup of wine. Did you bring wine?”

  Wei-fang took out his wine pot, removed the porcelain stopper and tipped it on end, and let the last few drops of water fall.

  The old man shut his eyes and said, “Even in the water I smell wine. It sings to me. Does it sing to you?”

  “Yes,” Wei-fang said and tore the piece of stale bread in half, dropping one half into the monk’s bowl. The monk took the bread and tore off a small piece.

  They sat silently and ate. Wei-fang swallowed his piece in two mouthfuls. The monk nibbled slowly at his, like a mouse. Wei-fang watched each crumb with the yawning hole of his stomach wishing he had kept the whole piece for himself. At the end the monk looked into his bowl, took the twig with the chestnuts and broke them both off, handing one to Wei-fang and cracking the other open with his back teeth. He shared the leaves also, and then he lifted out the peach, dusted away a few scraps of dirt from the fur-matted skin, and after a moment’s consideration he presented it to Wei-fang with both hands.

  “Eat,” he said, and when Wei-fang tried to hand it back he shut his eyes and shook his head.

  The peach was soft and sweet, and Wei-fang was so hungry he ate it all, even where the wasps had scarred it.

  At the end the monk reached behind him and brought out a bamboo dipper filled with rainwater. He lifted it to his mouth and slurped loudly. After he had drunk he offered it to Wei-fang. He took a long draft, and handed it back.

  “It is better than wine, is it not?”

  Wei-fang laughed. He was not so sure.

  The monk drank again. They sat in silence for a little while, paused to listen to the forest.

  “It is so quiet here in winter. No one sings, except the gibbons. But in summer the cicadas fill the forest with song, until one by one, their song lessens, and when autumn comes, the last cicada sings a solitary song, and there are none left to answer. I think it is sad to hear the call of the last cicada. Does it know its season is almost over, I wonder? Is that why they sing so loud in summer? What do you think?”

  “I do not think so much of cicadas, to be honest.”

  “No? Why? Tell me you are not one of those who thinks only of himself. That way lies madness.” He held out his arms. “I think little of myself, but much of the world. All the world, from the black cicada to the mountain leopard. I think of them all. They are all my concern, all living beings.”

  “Cicadas sing in the spring as well as the autumn.”

  “Yes, but not so long or so intensely.”

  They sat and listened to the forest’s deep silence for a while. There was a rustle of wind through bamboo thickets.

  “What is your name?” the monk said.

  “Wei-fang. You?”

  “Me? Do I need a name? Wild Old Man, some call me. The Mount Song Hermit, say others. You can call me whatever you like. It does not change what I am. Names do not have such power.”

  “I will call you Mount Song Hermit.”

  The Mount Song Hermit bowed. “Did you come looking for me? No, I see not. So you must be looking for something else. Tell me, if this is not your destination, then where are you going?”

  “I am looking for the Twelve-Sided Pagoda.”

  Mount Song Hermit looked at him and shook his head. “Why?”

  “I am looking for a master.”

  “A master of what?”

  “A teacher. Of wushu.”

  “Ah! You are a warrior. I see. That is a dangerous path.”

  “I am not afraid,” Wei-fang said quickly.

  “No? You should be.” Wei-fang felt foolish. The old man sighed and nodded to himself. “There are demons and sorcerers and fox spirits and worse.”

  Wei-fang nodded. He would not show his fear.

  The day was drawing on. The sun set early here and the mountains blocked out the light. As it touched the high western crags and lit the edge with gold the Mount Song Hermit suddenly stood up. “It is time to sleep,” he said. “Would you like to share my poor hut?” He went inside without waiting for an answer and lay down on a bed of old brown bamboo leaves. Wei-fang noticed that there was no door on the hut. He was going to ask about it but the Mount Song Hermit was already snoring gently.

  Wei-fang used his pack as a pillow, and soon he slept too: a deep and gentle sleep.

  In the morning the Mount Song Hermit had already risen. Wei-fang could hear him rustling outside. He yawned. He felt strangely refreshed and when he went out he saw the Mount Song Hermit putting the last touches to a feast of roots and herbs.

  “Come,” he said. “Eat!”

  Wei-fang had never seen such curious dishes. The Mount Song Hermit introduced each to him. He held up a worm. “This is good for the spleen,” he said. A knobbly thin root was good for the liver. “This is for fat women. It will help them lose weight.” He took a nibble from each and Wei-fang hungrily crunched through them all.

  At the end the Mount Song Hermit, who had hardly eaten anything, patted his stomach as if he had consumed a great feast. “So,” he said. “You are taking the narrow road up into the mountain interior?” They stood and lifted their faces to gaze the mountain in the face. “I am going down, it is an easier path. If you go up it will not be easy.”

  “Sometimes the hard path is a better one to tread.”

  The Mount Song Hermit did not look at him, but he nodded slowly as if weighing the young man’s words. At the end he smiled. “You may be right,” he said. “If you go I do not think we shall meet again.”

  The words seemed ominous.

  “Perhaps we shall meet in another life,” the Mount Song Hermit said as farewell. There was no sadness there, simply fact.

  The Mount Song Hermit led Wei-fang to t
he base of the path. The cliff rose ahead like an enormous wall. “There are steps carved into the rock. It is steep sometimes. You will need to hold the chain to make your way across.”

  Wei-fang wanted to embrace the man, but he waved his hand and turned and left with a rustle of his reed cloak.

  Wei-fang walked to the cliff face. The steps were little more than chiseled hand- and foot-holes. He put his hand to the rock. It was cool but not cold, hard and gritty to the palm. It did not crumble. He looked up. The cliff face was a little off vertical, but now as he stood at the bottom the height seemed to have grown, but there was only one way up, he thought, and put his right foot into one hole and his right hand into another, and then he began to climb.

  It took him half an hour to reach the chain, and there the cliff was less steep and the path slanted left and then right, before an overhang where the chain hung down.

  Wei-fang looked behind him. Space yawned at his back. He swayed for a moment as the space seemed to suck at him. It was almost sentient, as if it willed him to jump.

  He closed his eyes. When he opened them he found that he was clinging to the rock, his face pressed against it, his breathing wild. He did not look down. He looked up to where the chain hung. It was old and iron, and even though it was mottled with rust, the links seemed strong and uncorroded.

  He tugged at it. It was solid. He let out a breath, tugged once more and then pushed himself up. The higher he got the more pronounced the overhang became, until his legs were swinging wildly, looking for purchase. There is no foothold, he told himself, and calmed himself. Panic here would be death. He would not panic. He would keep climbing. The chain creaked. The iron links ground against each other. They were stiff with the weight. He kept climbing. He felt the muscles in his arms strain and for a wild moment he imagined letting go and tumbling back to the earth’s rough kiss.

  And then he was at the top. It was hard getting purchase over the lip of the cliff. He scrabbled for the chain, but it was pulled so tight he could not get his fingers underneath. He pulled at grass and it came away in his hand. He found a stem of bamboo and his hand clamped around it and it seemed firm. He shut his eyes and pulled, and inch by inch he made it, crawling like a worm, not daring to lift his weight in case he lost his footing and tumbled down to his death.

  Wei-fang lay on the top and shook with delayed fear, then rose and dusted himself down, and looked around him. He pushed through bracken and found a narrow trail that met the path, which was lined with gray pebbles, and led off through the thick forest. He picked up his pack and started walking.

  Wei-fang climbed for two days toward the peaks of Song Mountain.

  There were thirty-six peaks, men said, and as many temples. There was the Shaolin Temple, where the finest wushu masters were trained. Fawang Temple, the Temple of the Bounteous Fist, the Forest of Pagodas.

  The ways were deserted, except for old Taoist masters, who stood like stones, exposing themselves to wind and rain and lichen. Above—always above him—gibbons called out: long and strange and melancholy. Or old monks who sat with their sutras and mumbled through them, waiting for passing birds to fill their begging bowls with nuts or fruit, whatever was in season.

  “I am looking for the Twelve-Sided Pagoda,” he told them, but none of them knew.

  As the day darkened the air grew chill, and mist rose up from the valleys below, until he stood in evening gloom with a wall of pale mist all around him. He was lost and he was alone, and he was going to starve if he did not turn back. Then he stumbled forward; a great chasm opened up before him, but fifty feet below he saw a man dressed in simple black trousers, stripped to the waist despite the cold, practicing Eagle Style Fists: clawed fingers gripping, catching and locking an arm or leg to their maximum, striking pressure points.

  The style reminded him of the old woman who fought him the night he left home.

  “Hoi!” he shouted.

  The man kept fighting, but once this move was done, he stopped, performed the last moves, and then turned and looked up.

  “I am looking for Hades Dai and the Twelve-Sided Pagoda!” Wei-fang shouted, then waved and scrambled down the slope.

  The man turned. He was lean and fit but his hair was shot through with gray. He gestured for Wei-fang to approach, and stood silent and still as he waited.

  “You are looking for Hades Dai? Are you sure you want to find him? He is not a gentle man. Many fear him. Even I fear him.”

  “You?”

  The lean man nodded. Wei-fang drew in a deep breath and nodded. “Yes,” he said. “My first master told me to come to study at the Twelve-Sided Pagoda. I am Wei-fang.”

  The man took Wei-fang in. “My name is Iron Crow. Hades Dai only takes the best fighters. If you wish to join his band you must defeat one of his men.”

  “I can do it.”

  “Can you?”

  Wei-fang jutted out his chin. “Yes,” he said.

  The man named Iron Crow made a sudden movement, and Wei-fang found himself slammed flat on his back. He groaned and pushed himself up.

  “Why did you do that?” he said.

  “Wrong question,” Iron Crow said.

  “How did you do that?”

  Iron Crow put out a hand and pulled Wei-fang up. The old man’s smile was as sudden as monsoon rain. “Good,” he said. “There is hope. If you really want to join Hades Dai then I will teach you.”

  Wei-fang nodded seriously.

  “Only when I think you are ready will I take you to meet Hades Dai. And the rest is up to you.”

  8

  “Is it far?” Wei-fang asked as they tramped along, but the warrior named Iron Crow did not answer. As they climbed, the trees and bushes and bamboo fell away, and at the top of a rocky outcrop Iron Crow stopped. There was a black pagoda, stabbing up into the evening blue sky, closer. “We are going there?”

  Iron Crow nodded. Each step they took toward the pagoda increased Wei-fang’s sense of foreboding. Iron Crow had spent many days training him, and this morning he had decided. He was a man of few words but, after he had finished the rice that Wei-fang had cooked, he had said, “You are ready.”

  “I am?”

  Iron Crow nodded. “We shall go today.”

  “Is it far?”

  “Far enough,” Iron Crow had said.

  They had spent a long day winding deeper into the hills. A bat flew overhead. Wei-fang flinched as if it were a missile aimed at him. He cursed himself and bumped into Iron Crow, who had abruptly stopped.

  “You are come to the Camp of the West Lotus warriors,” he said. “And the master, Hades Dai . . .”

  Wei-fang stopped and looked up at the pagoda and the ringing mountain crags. Two great stone guardian statues leered down at him, their enormous sabers and halberds ready to fend off evil spirits.

  He faltered. This was not what he had expected. He had imagined Hades Dai to be an older, wiser version of Master Zhang: jutting white eyebrows, smooth baby skin, riddling speech. Instead he saw grisly totems, scalps and worse, nailed to the trees, and before, at the foot of a great black tree, was a pyramid of skulls: the empty sockets staring out at him in silent warning.

  Wei-fang stopped.

  “What is wrong?” Iron Crow said, and then saw where his student was looking. “I told you this was dangerous. Those are the ones who tried to oppose Hades Dai,” he explained, “and those who have tried to join the West Lotus Temple and failed. Are you sure you still want to continue?”

  Wei-fang opened his mouth, but before he could answer a voice boomed out.

  “Who approaches the camp of the West Lotus warriors?”

  “It is Iron Crow. I bring one who wishes to join the camp.”

  “What is his name?”

  Iron Crow stood aside. Wei-fang told himself that this was his moment. It was the trial he would have to pass through
. His voice betrayed his fear. “I am Wei-fang. The Iron Knight.”

  “That is a grand name.”

  “And I am a grand fighter.”

  There was low laughter. Wei-fang’s eyes were drawn to a giant who moved through them like a grown man through children. Stripped to the waist, he had a broad belly, thick leather girdle, and coal-hard eyes. His hair was white, but there was no infirmity about the man. He was broad and tall, moved like a tiger, heavy and lithe and deadly.

  “Greetings, Iron Knight,” he said, and with a casual move swept his blade, a broad saber, calmly through the air. “You like my sheath?” he said, and held it up in an absent-minded manner. “I had it stitched from the skin of the last man who tried to kill me. His name was Ox Neck Lo. He accused me of sleeping with his wife.” As he spoke he put the edge of his sword to a spinning whetstone. Sparks flew off, he lifted it clear, tested it, and put it back to grind once more. The second time blood started from his thumb. Hades Dai slid the blade back into the scabbard. “In that he was not wrong . . .” he said, “but is it a crime to love a beautiful and easy woman?”

  He licked the blood and took a step toward Wei-fang. “What do you think, child?”

  Wei-fang shook his head. “No crime,” he stammered.

  Hades Dai strode toward him, and Wei-fang wasn’t sure if the ground was shaking, or if his own legs were quivering. “I killed her too,” Hades Dai said, and patted the sheath of his knife. “Because she could not keep a secret. Can you keep secrets, child?”

  Wei-fang nodded. He willed Hades Dai to believe him, for he was sure that the only other future for him was death.

  “Really?” Hades Dai said, and stretched out a hand. Iron Crow stepped between them. “His name is Wei-fang. He has come to seek a master.”

  Hades Dai gave a short, almost sad, sigh. “Another for the pyramid of skulls,” he said. “Where do you come from, child?”