Dreaming of Zhou Gong

by Traci Harding

  ‘They will eat you!’ he called, when his first warning provoked no reaction.

  I’ll eat you, thought Huxin, with a grin, as Shi was having some trouble getting his shirt on, and Huxin noted with delight that Shi had a more strapping physique than either Fa or Dan.

  ‘Jia, Jin!’ Shi called the tigers to him, and both hesitated until he let loose a growl that Huxin considered rather impressive.

  ‘You speak tiger?’ Huxin jested, as the pair relented and ran to him.

  ‘Well, they had to learn human, so I thought it only fair,’ Shi replied with good humour. ‘Didn’t Dan tell you we let the tigers loose at night. They’re our night security patrol.’

  ‘Why would Dan tell me?’ Huxin wondered. She’d barely seen him since she’d arrived.

  ‘Aren’t you the one they call You Ling?’ Shi motioned to the hooded cloak that hung about her shoulders when it should have been over her head, masking her identity. ‘Are you not assigned to my brother Dan’s charge?’

  ‘Ah, yes! Well …’ Huxin finally got the gist of the conversation. ‘Extreme spirits do not fear going where the wild things are. Why are you half dressed?’

  ‘I was about bathe, when I heard the tiger alarm.’ Shi finally finished fiddling with his shirt.

  ‘No alarm,’ Huxin emphasised ‘we were just saying hello.’

  ‘You are Wu, aren’t you?’ He sounded very sure of that.

  ‘That is an odd assumption?’ Huxin played naive.

  ‘There is not a woman of this earth Dan would choose to keep in his quarters. Only the women of Tian have ever interested him.’

  ‘I am whatever Ji Fa needs me to be.’ Huxin neatly sidestepped the query.

  ‘I knew it,’ Shi said, reassured. ‘My brother does have a plan.’

  ‘You are right to believe in your eldest brother. Xian would be a pale shadow of a king compared with the Xibo. You’ve backed the right sibling, believe me.’

  ‘I do not doubt that,’ Shi stated for the record, ‘but as one of the youngest brothers, I rarely get told anything before we march into battle!’

  Huxin could sympathise, but as she was not at liberty to enlighten him, she turned their exchange toward the animals they were stroking. ‘They are brother and sister,’ Huxin commented, seeing the family resemblance.

  ‘They are, how did you guess?’ Shi was very impressed, but Huxin only shrugged.

  ‘Where did you find them?’

  ‘Some of my brothers like to hunt,’ Shi was ashamed to say. ‘These two were left orphaned in the aftermath of one of those slaughters.’

  Huxin could barely breathe in the wake of the short tale. ‘Yet another reason to dislike Ji Xian and his minions.’

  ‘Master Shi!’ A manservant was yelling from the garden gate. It was obvious that no one bar Shi would venture any further at night. ‘Master Shi, your dinner guests are waiting!’

  Shi gave a heavy sigh. ‘I have to go, my brother is forcing me to seek a wife … but I prefer Jia’s company, don’t I, girl?’ He cuddled the female of the pair.

  ‘So you wish to rule a city like Fa and Xian?’ Huxin asked, as he seemed compelled to comply with the Xibo’s rule.

  ‘Not really,’ Shi admitted, ‘but I shall be whatever Ji Fa needs me to be, so …’

  ‘Master Shi!’

  ‘Coming!’ Shi called as he backed up. ‘If you would come back to the house with me, I’d feel much more at ease.’

  Huxin shook her head and backed away in the opposite direction. ‘Sorry … but this extreme spirit is running wild tonight.’ With a swirl of her cloak and a laugh of delight, she took off into the shadows of the night garden, Shi’s tigers in pursuit.

  When Dan arrived in the Hall of Records to meet Jiang Hudan for morning meditation, she was not awaiting him as usual. He sent one of the house staff to see if she had overslept, and the servant returned to report that the bed did not appear to have been slept in. Dan was about to instruct the servant to ask after her whereabouts around the house, when Fen Gong arrived.

  ‘Brother Fen, have you seen brother Hudan this morning?’ Dan queried.

  ‘No, lord.’ Fen replied. ‘Last night Hudan told me that she was going for a walk and if she was not back in time, I should conduct your lessons today.’

  ‘Where would she have gone?’ Dan was deeply concerned that she would wander around the city on her own at night.

  ‘I have no idea where she went,’ Fen replied. ‘There is no need to worry —’

  ‘I know she is Wu,’ Dan conceded, ‘but so was He Nuan.’ When he considered how she had ended up, the lord started to panic.

  ‘Nuan is a novice compared to Hudan,’ Fen stressed. ‘But if you really wish to know where Hudan is now, she is in conference with the Xibo. He Nuan was summoned also.’

  ‘You could have said so in the first place!’ Dan breathed a sign of relief. ‘What has happened, I wonder?’ He decided to go and investigate.

  ‘Begging my pardon, lord, but if the matter does concern you, the Xibo will have you summoned.’

  Dan was rather shocked to be put in his place by his young ward-cum-Shifu. ‘Are you pulling rank on me, Fen?’

  Fen grinned at the challenge. ‘If that is what it takes to get you to focus and not be distracted from your lessons. Hudan is unharmed, that is all you need to know.’

  Dan hated that his motives were so obvious to the lad. ‘I do have an obligation to attend to matters of state, you realise?’

  ‘Hudan is not interested in matters of state, only matters of heaven,’ Fen said patiently. ‘Any more excuses, or shall we begin?’

  With a smile of defeat, Dan relented. His curiosity would have to wait to be satisfied.

  That afternoon, Dan was excited to have the Xibo visit him in his Hall of Records. He and Fen were nearing the end of their Dao Yin practice for the day, and Dan was hot and completely exhausted. As disciplined as he was, the lord had been unable to prevent questions about Hudan’s absence from entering his mind, so Fa’s visit felt like a gift from Tian. Finally, he could ask what was going on.

  ‘I don’t wish to disturb your study, Dan …’ The Xibo left his guard outside the Hall of Records whilst another fellow followed Fa into the hall, carrying a large polished wooden case. ‘… but your new qin is finished, and I wanted to present it to you personally.’

  Fa smiled broadly, and the craftsman laid it on a table. ‘I hope your lordship is satisfied with the workmanship.’ The fellow withdrew, and was about to leave when Fa stopped him.

  ‘Surely, after you have spent so many months crafting our new qin, you would like to hear it played?’

  ‘I would, very much, my lord,’ replied the craftsman, whereby Fa looked back to Dan.

  ‘Play for us,’ Fa implored Dan, and took a seat, motioning for the qin’s maker to do the same.

  The last thing Dan had the patience for right now was playing the qin, but the craftsman did deserve to hear the results of his work. ‘Do you have your dizi?’ Dan queried Fen, who whipped the item from inside the leg of his boot.

  ‘Set a mood for us,’ Dan requested, approaching the case and opening it to behold the one-of-a-kind instrument. He’d been the first to play the six string qin and his performance for Daji with that instrument had sealed his father’s fate. Dan could only hope that this performance did not hex his brother in the same fashion.

  Placing it on a low writing table, Dan checked the qin’s tuning. When he plucked the new string, the sound was so uplifting it brought tears to his eyes, inspiring him to play and enrich Fen’s enchanting melody. The moment was soul stirring for Dan; he almost regretted having abstained from playing for so long. Bad memories were surfacing, but when he played the new seventh string, they melted away.

  Ji Fa and the craftsman applauded loudly. ‘That was just beautiful!’ the Xibo exclaimed. ‘However, for battle, perhaps something a bit more compelling might be in order.’

  Fa rose to say his farewells but his companion preced
ed him. The craftsman bowed to his Xibo and to Dan. ‘It has been an honour. My ears will never want for another note, for today I heard perfection.’

  Dan smiled. ‘Any artist is only as good as his tools,’ he said humbly, and the fellow was speechless at being so honoured. He bowed again and left the room.

  ‘I wanted to ask —’ Dan began.

  Fa held up a hand to prevent Dan’s query, before he’d even verbalised it. ‘I am not at liberty to say.’

  Dan was immediately deflated.

  ‘But I will say,’ Fa added in consolation, ‘that you will know before day’s end. Brother Fen, would you come with me, please. Your assistance is required.’

  ‘Of course.’ Fen put his dizi back in its hiding place. ‘I can send for He Nuan to finish your lesson,’ Fen offered to Dan, but the lord shook his head to decline.

  ‘I’m having trouble focussing today,’ Dan retorted, somewhat reproachfully, for Fa’s benefit.

  ‘Not like you to waste time being distracted,’ Fa commented, ‘and by a woman!’

  ‘The most knowledgeable woman … correction, person, on earth,’ Dan replied, stressing the exceptional circumstances.

  ‘Well, that being the case,’ Fa posited, ‘I should be confident, if I were you, that she knows what she is doing.’

  ‘What is she doing?’ Dan had to know. He remembered Hudan had mentioned she was considering performing an ancient rite to ‘seek yin by means of yin’.

  He knew this rite was a form of sympathetic magic. Women, especially Wu, represented metaphysical water in human form and by exposing themselves to the sun, or to an open flame, they drew water down from the sky, by scorching the water element in themselves and provoking a storm.

  ‘By sundown, Dan,’ Fa said, and he would say no more on the matter.

  ‘I shall report to you as soon as I have word.’ Fen reassured Dan.

  ‘Come along, Fen,’ Fa called, waiting by the door for the lad, who then closed it in their wake.

  Usually Dan was the one keeping others in the dark, and he did not like having the tables turned on him. He realised his distraction was misplaced energy, and as he did not wish to waste the remains of the day in this manner, he imagined what advice Hudan would give him in this moment. ‘Redirect your energy into something constructive,’ he concluded, and his sights came to rest upon his new qin.

  Last night Hudan had walked the valley, viewing the disheartening effects of the drought by the cover of darkness. She entreated Tian to allow her to bring an end to the hardship of the Zhou people and everyone in their lands. She wept in empathy for their suffering, and for the dead and dying animals, as she trekked on, increasingly convinced that something had to be done.

  It was the early hours of the morning when Hudan broke from her near-trance state to discover she had wondered into a star-field. This was one of many similar configurations of huge flat-topped, earth prisms — sloping or stepped — that littered the Zhou plains. These ancient structures, some the size of small mountains, were called by the people, jinzita. Legend said that the jinzita had been constructed by the sons of the sky, long ago, to map out the heavens on earth. What Hudan found most interesting about this legend was that the sons of sky were said to have golden hair, white skin and blue eyes … like many of the people of Tian that she had seen in her dreams.

  The silhouette of the tallest and largest jinzita in this field’s nine-tower array was very distinctive against the night sky and it sparked in her mind’s eye the recognition of a vision she’d had during Ji Fa’s oracle reading. She’d seen herself scaling a similar structure toward a flaming pyre, and the impression sent a wave of awareness surging through her being. This is the place … The thought brought tears of relief to her eyes. This is where it all begins.

  Hudan struggled to remember the chill on the air that she’d felt sitting in this very spot the night before. Now, twelve hours staked to the ground on the top of the jinzita, had melted any memory of coolness from her mind. During this day she had focused on a fragment of a vision of a son of the sky that she had seen in Ji Fa’s oracle. The son of the sky was the Lord of Elements and he was the key to manifesting a cloud to give her naked skin and the land around her some moist relief. Hudan had only to remember the lord’s name. Tian was testing Hudan’s tenacity and faith in her own abilities, but Jiang Hudan would not relent. She would come and lay on this pyramid every day until the lord’s name was forthcoming, and when it was Ji Fa would light a pyre atop the stepped jinzita next to this one, and she would enter the flame and bring down the rain.

  The sun was now only shining down one side of her body; the end of the long day neared and not a cloud could be seen.

  When she felt her foot being unbound from its stake, it felt like a beautiful dream, and Hudan did not have the strength to raise her head to see if it was reality.

  ‘Fen is on his way up.’ Nuan lay a light, damp cover over Hudan and then removed the rest of Hudan’s bonds. ‘Will you take a little water?’

  ‘No, nothing,’ she said, seeking to hold all the fire energy she had absorbed. ‘But thank you … for standing vigil for me this day.’

  ‘It will always be my honour to serve you, Jiang Hudan,’ Nuan advised in all seriousness. ‘Only now we shall be sisters, not brothers.’

  The comment made Hudan want to cringe, but in a way it was comforting to know that, when this war was over and they returned to Li Shan, Fen would have someone to take care of him. ‘You have won my greatest treasure, Nuan,’ Hudan told her, but internally choking on a strange mix of resentment and goodwill. ‘I hope you know how blessed you are.’

  ‘I promise you, Shanyu,’ Nuan’s words were more heartfelt than any that had passed between them before today, ‘I do know, and I praise Tian for him every day.’

  ‘Hudan!’ Fen said as he arrived, alarmed by her weakened appearance.

  ‘Little brother,’ she smiled, and the expression made her entire face sting. She had requested that Ji Fa send Fen to carry her down from the jinzita, and she had been looking forward to seeing his sweet face all day. ‘I made it.’

  Fen nodded, as if he was not entirely convinced about that. ‘You should have told me.’ He was annoyed at her and Nuan. ‘I could have been here to stand vigil for you.’ He eased his hands under her shoulders and legs, and as he lifted her, she growled in pain.

  ‘No one knew we were here,’ Hudan wheezed.

  Nuan came over to pull the cool cotton wrap over Hudan’s beaming red face, and Hudan saw a soft smile pass between Fen and his wife-to-be. The moment warmed Hudan inside more efficiently than the entire day in the summer sun. Hudan knew that much of her warm, fuzzy feeling was being fed by Fen’s love-struck emotions, but she didn’t care. After the day she’d had, this small comfort was bliss.

  ‘You must not heal me, Fen,’ Hudan said as she dozed against his shoulder.

  ‘I know,’ he answered, ‘but there is nothing in the rules that says I am not allowed to make you feel content.’

  ‘Like you,’ Hudan replied.

  ‘Yes, like me.’ Fen kissed Hudan’s head, as she’d done in the past to comfort him, before he began the long trek down the side of the jinzita.

  He Nuan drove the horse-drawn cart through the city streets whilst Fen kept Hudan company in the back. Inside the main courtyard of the Ji residence, Fen lifted Hudan from the cart and carried her up the steps to the interior, where the Xibo and his tigress awaited.

  Ji Shi came running from another direction. ‘Is that You Ling?’

  ‘Shi!’ The Xibo held up a palm and stopped his brother in his tracks.

  ‘But what has happened?’ the young lord appealed.

  ‘This is none of your affair.’ With a frown and a wave of his hand the Xibo dismissed Shi, who reluctantly withdrew.

  When Fen reached Fa, the Xibo drew aside Hudan’s face cover to speak with her.

  ‘I am sorry, brother Fa,’ she said, apologising for the cloudless sky. ‘Tomorrow I will go deep
er.’

  The Xibo was frowning and seemed quite upset as he nodded. ‘We both know you are on the right track, brother Hudan,’ he conceded. ‘I hope, for your sake, that our vision is fulfilled swiftly.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ Hudan insisted, barely able to keep her eyes open. ‘I will go deeper … I will find him, and know his name …’ Her words trailed off as she drifted out of consciousness.

  The timeless realm of the creative that Dan had been lost in for the past few hours vanished as Fen walked into the hall with the body of Jiang Hudan draped in his arms. Nuan followed them, along with the tigress who was obviously concerned for her sister.

  ‘What did she do?’ Dan rose quickly to investigate.

  ‘She has begun her preparation for seeking yin,’ Fen replied, to Dan’s horror.

  Dan pulled back the cover to see Hudan’s red and swollen face. ‘Can you heal her?’

  ‘I am not permitted,’ Fen replied, his voice sorrowful. ‘If Tian is with us, Hudan will absorb the heat hovering on the surface of her physical body into her spirit and heal herself by morning.’

  Dan’s heart and mind were thrown into complete conflict. If he was to learn the way of the Wu, he must trust them, although his human logic told him Hudan needed urgent medical attention.

  Jiang Huxin gave an annoyed growl. ‘Is something the matter?’ Dan looked to the tigress.

  ‘She wants a robe,’ informed Fen, as he moved off toward the door at the far end of the hall which led to the sleeping quarters.

  ‘Here.’ Nuan removed and offered hers to the lord.

  ‘Thank you,’ Dan said, holding onto it, whereby Nuan gave a bow and hurried to catch up with Fen.

  The lord turned away from the tigress, held the robe over his shoulder, and she retrieved it promptly.

  ‘You must vow that you will not let any of your physicians near my sister.’ Huxin walked around in front of him, still tying her robe.

  ‘She must be in terrible pain,’ he stalled, not wanting to show his lack of belief in their method.

  ‘That is the point,’ Huxin advised. ‘Beyond the pain barrier is the euphoria of a whole other world, and it is there that the Lord of Elements resides. Only he can break the drought and spare Hudan from the flames.’