by Justin Hill
It was evening before Snow Vase pushed Wei-fang back.
“I can’t,” she said. “I’m a little sore.”
He looked upset, but she lay and kissed his mouth. “You can’t be ready again,”
“I can,” he said.
She laughed again. “Save it for later,” she said.
Wei-fang yawned and stretched, and stood up. He was broad-chested, slender-hipped and his long body was smooth and tanned and honed. His buttocks were full and firm and dimpled. She loved the silhouette of him as he strode toward the papered windows.
He pulled the door open, and an angle of sunlight fell through the door, illuminating his flanks with a thin golden light.
Even with the arm in a sling, there was a lean beauty about him. She drank the sight of him in. He had been kind and gentle too, and hard when he needed.
She moved over to where he stood and put her arms around him, and felt him, skin to skin. She had never held anyone so close. Had never been so close, had never shared so much, had never opened herself to another soul. Had never surrendered without a fight.
Together they looked out into their courtyard. It was little changed from when they had stood there earlier that day. The cherry tree still stood, the gate was shut, the shadows had lengthened as the sun westered. The world was little changed, but they had done so irrevocably.
Snow Vase did not feel alone anymore. She carried his seed within her, and she pressed her naked body close to his. What more could she want? she thought, and kissed him again.
“I’m hungry,” she said. “Should we ask for our dinner to be brought here?”
He squeezed her with his good arm. “Yes,” he said.
Shulien waited for Snow Vase to come back to her room.
She was ready with stern looks, disapproving airs, but Snow Vase did not come. The shadows lengthened, the sun set, and the darkness deepened.
Why am I always waiting for others? Shulien asked herself, and decided not to sit at home. She may as well have been a concubine for all the waiting for others she did, she thought.
She walked to Silent Wolf’s hall, but his yard was dark, his room was empty.
She went to Sir Te’s courtyard, and heard Sir Te’s wife singing. She fancied herself an opera singer. She doubted that Silent Wolf was enjoying an evening of Sir Te’s wife’s musical talents.
So where could he be? she wondered.
She went back to her own courtyard, and her lone lamp burned in her room.
She checked Silent Wolf’s hall again, and at last she walked to Wei-fang’s hall.
As she approached she could hear laughter. There was a particular note to the sound. She stopped. It had been a long time since she had heard joy. The joy of people sitting together: talking, drinking, laughing.
She came closer. She walked silently, as if she were stalking an enemy.
There was silence and then laughter again. Wei-fang’s voice was unmistakable. Snow Vase was there as well, but there was a third voice too.
Shulien stood at the gate and peered through the crack.
How silly she was, a voice in her head told her, standing alone in the dark, peering through a crack at another’s evening party. She pushed the gate open and stepped inside.
Silent Wolf, Wei-fang and Snow Vase were sitting around a table. The doors of their hall were thrown back, and a pair of yellow lanterns hung from the beams. They threw a gentle yellow candlelight on all their faces as they stopped and looked up, and saw her and smiled.
Snow Vase was the first to stand. “Teacher,” she said. “Come! Sit! Join us.”
All of Shulien’s prurience fell from her. She found herself smiling and nodding.
“Thank you,” she said. “I will.”
Epilogue
Sir Te sat in a magnificent gown of thick red silk, embroidered with flowers, as he presided over a great feast for the four warriors, and afterwards, his wife sang for them the concubine’s soliloquy from the opera Ba Wang Bie Ji.
The four fighters had all been provided with clothes appropriate for the occasion. Silent Wolf wore a long black gown. Shulien was dressed in a modest dress of deep gray wool. The younger fighters were dressed in brighter colors: Wei-fang looked smart in a cream suit of the finest cotton, with slippers sown by Sir Te’s wife herself, while Snow Vase wore a red jacket with high collars, a little rouge on her pale cheeks, and in her piled black hair her mother’s pin with the blue grasshopper crouched at the end.
When the soliloquy ended Wei-fang showed his appreciation by engaging the lady in conversation. “Very fine,” he said, and went on at some length, covering the key points of the song, and noting how well Sir Te’s wife had managed.
By the end the hostess’s plump cheeks were red and she waved her hands in a modest gesture. “No, no,” she said. “Too kind. Really!”
Snow Vase watched Wei-fang charm the sir’s wife, and lifted her sleeves to hide her smile.
At last they got down to business.
“So you are leaving?” Sir Te said.
He looked at each of the fighters in turn, and they all bowed.
“And Shulien tells me that you are determined to go together. With the sword.”
“That is right,” Snow Vase said. “We shall all take the sword. How long our paths shall remain entwined we cannot say, but we have all resolved to set out together. If I had my choice, I would say that the first place we will go to is the West Lotus Temple. There are ghosts there that I think we all have to put to rest.”
She looked at Wei-fang and caught his eye.
At the same time Shulien and Silent Wolf exchanged looks as well. Release dragons back into the sea, the proverb went, let tigers go back to the mountains.
Next morning, dawn was just breaking when Old Horse pushed the stable gates open. The drum tower struck the first hour of the day.
The gates of the Forbidden City, Tiananmen, and the three great gates in the south walls of the city, the three in the west, the three in the east, and the two in the north were thrown open for the daily business of the great city again. Ministers and scholars hurried into the Forbidden City to petition the Emperor. Scholars, merchants, farmers, traders and warriors passed into and out of the city, and as the first of the morning traffic began to thicken, Shulien, Silent Wolf, Snow Vase and Wei-fang rode side by side through the streets. Sir Te had left them with kind words, offering a warm welcome should they ever return, and he gave them all gifts such as they could take with them, as well as much silver, in the shape of ingots, as they could carry safely.
“Sometimes silver smooths the path for travelers,” he said, “even for those who are as fearless as yourselves.”
They were dressed in their plain travel clothes as they passed through the west gate just before a long camel caravan entered.
The guards did not know them, who they were, or what they had done. But they stopped and watched the four horsemen canter off, the morning sun rising behind them.
One of them carried a sword on his back, the hilt of which flashed green in the sunlight.
They slowly diminished in size as the distance between them lengthened, and then when the guards looked up, the four horsemen had dropped out of sight, and only the memory of their faces, their air of confidence, remained.
As they paused Shulien looked out onto the vast green land that stretched out before them. It was a new world she was riding into, she thought. A new future, where much was unsure.
The past was behind her, like a city that a traveler lingers in for a while, and then leaves behind. Before them was West Lotus Temple, and a chance to make peace with Jiaolong, and her ghost.
She thought of the young girl who had come to Duke Te’s house all those years ago, with Jade Fox. They had bound their lives and deaths to Green Destiny. The sword gathered lives and great tales to it. Shulien wond
ered how her story would end.
She had once wanted nothing more than to disappear from the world and memory, but she had been found and remembered, and now she wondered why she had abandoned the world when there were still many springs to enjoy, many summers to savor, the last autumn she would see: glorious in its skirts of orange and yellow; and the last gentle silence of winter.
Silent Wolf rode beside her, jacket thrown loosely over his shoulders. She was comforted by his presence. She did not need to turn to see him, she knew he was watching her. She turned and saw Snow Vase and Wei-fang sharing a joke. There was a tender beauty in Snow Vase’s eyes as she gazed up at her lover’s face as he talked.
Her student had taught her much, Shulien thought.
Snow Vase had found a different path. She was neither like Shulien, nor like Jiaolong. Perhaps the Iron Way would lead her where she wished.
Joy was rare, Shulien thought, but perhaps Snow Vase and Wei-fang had found it together. She hoped so. The road narrowed, and Snow Vase and Wei-fang’s horses took the lead, and Shulien and Silent Wolf’s horses fell in behind.
The sun was still rising at their backs. Noon was not far off. Now, that morning, sunset still seemed a long way away.
Justin Hill has lived and worked in China since 1992. His novel The Drink and Dream Teahouse, a portrait of small-town China, won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and a Betty Trask Award and was banned within the People’s Republic of China. It was also a Washington Post Book of the Year in 2001.
His translations of Chinese poetry have been published in Modern Poetry in Translation, Asian Literary Review and Asian Cha. His work on the poems of Tang Dynasty poetess Yu Xuanji led to her reimagined life in the novel Passing Under Heaven, which was shortlisted for the Encore Award and awarded the 2006 Somerset Maugham Award.
The Independent on Sunday listed him as one of its Top Twenty Young British Writers. He currently lives in Hong Kong. He is Assistant Professor at City University of Hong Kong, where he teaches Creative Writing.
www.justinhillauthor.com
Wang du Lu is considered one of the four greatest wuxia writers of modern China, and in particular the seminal voice of The Northern School. His writing is known for its fresh, complex renderings of women and warriors.
Wang du Lu reconceived the archetypes of the genre, moving beyond formulaic chivalry and romance, and his original voice and enduring legacy have thrilled writers, readers and audiences around the world.
Like Dickens and Dumas, Wang’s tales were originally serialized, or “socialized,” in newspapers, and were hugely popular. Many of his writings were bound together as novels, and the best known of which, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (part of the Iron Crane pentology), was adapted by Ang Lee for his Academy Award–winning film in 2000.
After Wang du Lu’s death in 1977, the stories have continued to be immensely popular in China, and have recently been republished.