‘First we’ll need to map the place,’ says Feng. ‘Then analyse its components, dividing them among us so we cover them all thoroughly.’ He stops to stroke the beard that isn’t there.
Meanwhile Parrot has quickly given Baby’s hand a squeeze and leaned forward to gaze into the round, dark pool beside them. The strange light strikes its surface; it mirrors the bell curve of the dome above. ‘Look!’ she cries out.
Feng comes quickly. To Parrot, it seems for an instant as if the refracted likeness of the would-be official has a chelonian look: out-thrust neck gone leathery, jaw turned horny and toothless. Then someone knocks a pebble in the water, and concentric wavelets shatter the metamorphosed image as the pebble’s plunk shatters the brief silence. ‘No,’ says Parrot. ‘Look up!’ She points overhead, to what she first saw in watery effigy.
Two quivering caskets. From them emanates the light that fills the cave. And to the musician’s ears, a faint singing wells up. All the travellers can make out the writing on the caskets. Second Daughter looks at Parrot, Sparker at his Master Feng. ‘Moonsabre,’ the two readers say with one breath, and then, ‘Dragonrill.’
Time for action: Sparker scrambles up to the ledge and hands the caskets down to Feng, taking exquisite care. The Master lifts the lids, the unearthly singing rises, the servant clambers down. The swords match perfectly, strange talismanic figures chased on each twin blade. On Dragonrill, pearly inlaid stars of white jade inscribe a constellation; call it Draco. Moonsabre bears etched phases – bow, crescent, quarter, half, gibbous disc, round ringed silken fan.
‘Perhaps we shouldn’t – ‘ says Parrot, but Sparker pays no mind. Kneeling before the caskets, he takes one hilt in each hand.
‘Master,’ he says, preparing to offer them to the man he has always followed. Vision shimmers. Sparker turns into a small, flattish stone.
‘Oh!’ says Second Daughter sorrowfully. ‘Sparker.’
The swords go silent. They hover in midair. The stone is translucent, fine-grained, oblong, no longer than a handspan.
Feng merely echoes, ‘Oh.’
As if against her will. Parrot chants again the puzzling poem. ‘ “If men with swords should seek the stone …” Poor Sparker is to be the inkstone the Moon Lady sent us after! Why did I think only about that jabber in the poem’s second half? Can the Moon Lady be so cruel?’
For of course, one glance at Sparker’s transmogrification and all is clear: save for its cloudy crystalline look, the stone resembles the best of earthly inkstones; its glowing pallor marks it as suitable for the palace on the Moon. But Parrot errs in one thing, mistaking the goddess’s detachment for cruelty.
The swords break the mournful tableau. They fly, Dragonrill to Parrot, Moonsabre to Second Daughter, and settle, one hilt easy in each young woman’s hand.
Baby stares. ‘Say nothing!’ Feng shouts out, stepping towards them, prepared to snatch the enchanted things away, prepared to risk his own fleshly form, eager even, as if the sacrifice might bring back his servant, his boyhood friend.
Yet Parrot knows they are safe. ‘If men with swords,’ she chants and stands unchanged. She’s not sure she likes it, but she sees what’s meant to be.
Second Daughter inhales deeply. ‘One word,’ she says and shows no visible alteration, though perhaps inside she moves another plucky step away from the farmer’s browbeaten daughter that she used to be. Then she starts to laugh.
Soon the others join her, hoots and titters and wild guffaws rebounding off the bell-walls of the cavern, new laughter echoing with the old in an ear-splitting clamour of relief, and grief. Baby, still weakened from her frantic dancing, is the first to weep. But not the last.
After that they turn back towards the cave’s mouth. Second Daughter removes her linen headcloth and wraps the stone. Gently, Feng takes it from her then and carries it himself. No one says a word.
Evening has filled Dragongate Chasm, but the twin swords, thrust in knotted sashes, shed enough light to show the way. From the marbled cranny the four recover a lute and other belongings. When they reach Black Dragon River’s wider valley, the swords dim again; the moon is full and floods the trail with light. The shrunken company gathers on a wide spot and considers what to do.
Parrot remembers Sparker’s jokes and pranks, the struggle in him between his loyalty to Feng and his sceptical dismissal of society’s rules. One moment he would laugh madly at some pompous victim they had cheated, the next urge Baby to behave like a proper concubine, and after that confide in Parrot his hope that in some grotto of Mothbrow Mountain he might find a rare mineral that promotes long life and the search for spiritual release from the human world. This last memory prompts another, of her lost friend Nephrite. Tears rise up again.
‘Not now, my dear,’ says Second Daughter, who for years has swallowed her share of salt and more. ‘There’s work we have to do.’ Parrot looks at her companion and, like her, draws her sword.
The moonlight fashions its transmutations. Or perhaps the gem-horned constellation – Chinese Drago, tail tipped by the Shamanka Star, Antares glowing red within its breast – works the change. Like the antique starswords of Feng-cheng, forged long ago in fallen Wu, Dragonrill and Moonsabre turn into dragonets.
Each sword wielder mounts, and draws a companion up behind. Like the double rainbow-dragon – portent of womanly power – that arced through the sky some tens of years before, when Empress Wei declared herself the Regent, the twinned creatures climb the sky.
Opalescent dust puffs up. They have landed just outside the crystal lunar keep. Each dragonet turns sword again. Parrot leads the way.
A gate of ivory, hinged with silver, opens as they near it, and the party steps inside. A young woman gowned in undyed silk graciously bows before them. ‘Welcome,’ she says, ‘to you travellers from the crucible of changes. My teacher has been expecting you. Do please step inside.’
All four draw in their breath at the scintillating walls of the reception room, its argent furnishings. White Aureole bows to them again, offers round a tray with cups of pellucid nectar (but no one accepts), bows a third time, and leaves to tell the Moon Lady that the guests have come.
Second Daughter, who has never even been as far from her father’s house as Jia-jou, stands uneasy, balanced on the balls of her feet, as silent now as Baby. Something in her heart urges her to sit and make herself at home here, but remembering Sparker she refuses. Feng begins to question Parrot in an undertone, but she shrugs and he leaves off. Soon the goddess enters, waving them to white brocade cushions, and one by one the visitors bend their knees and sink down.
‘I thank you for your trouble,’ the Moon Lady says, in kindly, measured tones. ‘I’ve missed my Hyaline Cloud Inkstone and am certain that this new one will serve me well. Please do take a cup of nectar. It will refresh you. I’d like to talk to you about your rewards, my dears.’
This time – not from greed, but from their several proportions of courtesy and awe – each one lifts a cup from White Aureole’s tray. Maintaining anger towards one possessed of such charitable charm as the Moon Lady’s isn’t easy; but when the little cups are drained, Feng pulls the cloth-wrapped stone from the bundle by his side.
‘Madam,’ he begins, summoning all the gravity he can. ‘I believe this is the stone you want.’ He unwraps it, revealing the smooth lustre of the ink-grinding surface, the polished slope that runs down to its well.
She thanks them in her even, musical voice. But Feng has more to say.
‘We do not give it freely, madam. So –1 am correct, am I not? –I fear it cannot be yours.’
Shocked, White Aureole springs to her feet with haste unseemly in a moonmaid. Even the goddess lets one hand fly up, uncontrolled. And yet, she only murmurs, ‘Ah? Do tell me more.’
That is easily done: Feng has lots to say. Sparker saved his life in boyhood, saved him from brutish slavery in Chang-an, and though Feng respects the proper relationships between master and manservant (here the Moon Lady allows
herself a brief, dismissive gesture), he cannot, now that Sparker is gone, call him anything but ‘friend’. A friend, moreover, to whom he owes a life. He will not leave him to this fate.
‘Not even for an official position?’ the goddess asks. ‘One of no little note?’
A longing passes through Feng’s eyes. Yet it is soon replaced by firm determination. ‘No,’ he says.
When the Moon Lady directs a questioning look at Parrot, the young woman bites her lip and silently shakes her head. She will find her mother some other way, she thinks, not at such a price. Baby and Second Daughter cast their gazes to the carpet shimmering on the floor.
‘But what…’ the Moon Lady’s voice grows sweeter, more persuasive. ‘What if I told you this transformation is his destiny? You know his heartfelt wishes. Long life. Release from passions. Transcendence of the body’s appetites. Does not a stone have all these things?’
Feng begins to splutter in denial, but Parrot tells him quietly that what the goddess says is true. Sparker has confided these yearnings to her. The young man nods in acknowledgment, but still his jaw holds firm.
And, like Feng, Parrot insists that incarnation as a stone is not what Sparker sought. ‘Let him strive for these things in human form,’ she says, ‘as a mountain hermit, a seeker of the Way.’ A glance at Second Daughter somehow gives her courage, and she runs forward to throw herself in supplication at the Lady’s feet.
The goddess is moved. ‘Come, child,’ she says tenderly. ‘You needn’t do that. In truth, he would be better off as a stone, but I see the difficulty that notion causes humans. Let us try to come to an agreement. I really must have some replacement for my inkstone, and it seems you are the ones best suited to give it to me. Indeed, in your case – may I call you Greenpearl? – in your case, Greenpearl, what I may do is bound up by another bargain. White Aureole, will you be so good as to serve us all again?’
Parrot is silent, lost in wonder at the sound of her unknown name. Second Daughter watches White Aureole with a look of hunger. With her eyes still downcast. Baby’s fingers twitch, following some inner discourse. Feng throws back his head and drains his cup. He makes as if to speak, but the goddess overrides him.
‘Another rare stone, different but fully suitable for my needs, lies beneath the waters of the Yangzi River. You, Feng, shall fetch it for me. And shall pay a price – no small one – and be rewarded too. Then your friend shall be restored to human form. Agreed?’
‘Anything!’ he says. The Lady nods.
‘Dancer?’ Baby looks up at the soft interrogation. ‘Your destiny is already fixed. My volatile starsister has taken you in hand. But in helping the others with their journey onward, I shall help you as well. Remember this: to speak in pain, as you did in the dragon cave, is nonetheless a kind of speaking. And someday you shall speak in joy. Do you understand?’
Baby signals that she does. Second Daughter makes as if to touch her with a motherly touch, but just then Baby shifts out of reach.
‘Second Daughter.’ The young woman’s attention turns entirely to the goddess. ‘It has been arranged that you’ll continue with the others, for their good and your own. As for the recompense – tell me what it is you’d like.’
Second Daughter tries to speak, but something blocks her. It seems a shyness freezes her tongue to her palate. The unlovely, unwanted daughter of a provincial farmer to speak aloud of her desires? And in this place? She hangs her head. Impossible.
The Moon Lady beckons, remote, sympathetic, irresistible. Cheeks ablaze with shame, the pockmarked peasant swords-woman stands up. She makes her way to the goddess, whispers her longings into one tilted ear.
‘It shall happen,’ says the Lady. ‘Not now, and not so easily as you might wish, but – yes.’ Her smile warms just the merest fraction as the full moon warms in the hour of its setting, its light gone golden through a thicker sea of air.
Despite the years of practice, despite the vow she made once when confronted by her father’s anger, tears wet Second Daughter’s eyes. She blinks. They disappear.
‘Now,’ says the goddess. ‘As to the journey. The dragon-swords will return you to Black Dragon River. I’m afraid you cannot travel that way through the human realm, however, for you would not learn the things you need to learn. But I can make sure you needn’t beg and tell false fortunes and go on tired feet.’ In the middle of the river, she explains, there is a famous rock called Stoneboat. Second Daughter nods. She saw it once, before her mother’s death. The flying dragonets will take them there, the Moon Lady tells the humans, and for as long as it is required, the rock will maintain the form of a wooden boat. On it, they can travel downstream to a tributary of the southward-flowing Min, joining it at Beyond-the-Clouds Mountain, where the monk Hai-tong devotes himself to chiselling a towering Buddha into a great bluff. The Lady looks at Parrot. ‘A woman named Xue Tao will write poems at the temple there someday. Think of her, and on this journey see that you improve your fluency in the languages of verse.’ Parrot’s heart tightens, and she bows. If the goddess urges it, perhaps she is not over bold to make poems after all.
‘From there,’ the Moon Lady continues, ‘the waters will take you to the Yangzi, and eastwards through the gorges to your various destinations. Stop and rest yourselves from time to time. The rice store in the boat will not diminish, and there are quilts and clothes and such aboard.’ She looks pityingly at the cheap garments that have been Second Daughter’s lot and the stained near-rags the others wear. ‘The rest… will unfold when it unfolds. Now come, let us drink a farewell cup.’
Her voice is a mother’s good-night kiss, promising the rest of the bedtime story for another time. They savour the last drops of the pellucid nectar. But Parrot will not be content. ‘And my mother? Is she well?’
‘Well enough,’ replies the goddess. ‘Though I cannot say free of sorrow. Her life changes, though she still awaits you. I will tell you only that your journey takes you towards her. Don’t hurry it. You cannot reach her till the time is right, and you still have much to learn. But I think you have something else to ask?’
Parrot’s eyes flick towards Baby and return. ‘I have a friend,’ she says, faltering. ‘Retired from life in the world of dust and devoted to the Motherqueen. As they say you have been. Can you tell me how she is? Has she achieved what she longs for?’
The Moon Lady rests her cheek upon her fingers. ‘There is a way you can find out. Think over what I’ve said to you. Now, I must send all of you off with a warning. I will treat this inkstone like the treasure it is. But remember, nothing from the mortal realm, not stones or seas or mountains, lasts for ever. Conduct yourself with caution.’ She smiles in reassurance, though somewhere in the distance all can hear the steady sound of a mortar grinding in a pestle. ‘Now, I’m afraid it’s time for you to go’ They leave, four of them, not five. White Aureole shows the party to the door. And you who need not mount a dragon-sword may fly with them to the river and observe the alteration of a foam-rinsed boulder to a boat: long sweeps for steering mounted aft as well as astern, arched cabin of woven reeds ready to be removed for shelter when they moor in sand-soft coves. Let the currents of change carry you with them. Dream of the three great gorges of the Yangzi yet to come, when the shores close in high and sheer, and the water runs swift and deep.
Listen when the musician Greenpearl takes out her lute on the drifting boat, and – freed for once of an old reluctance – works another transformation, setting new words to a melody she knows.
PARROT
SPEAKS:
19
Bearing my starsword and a new name, Heavenglaive, I learned many things on my journey. Stoneboat carried us downstream to the Yangzi and through the gorges towards the village where Dreamdragon Feng repaid his debt to Sparker and Baby found her true voice. Some of the lessons were simple: among them, how to give my words the regional lilt the people use in Shu and eastwards, where the gorges rise. Proud though I was to speak in the tones of the capital – it
was all I had left of my lost birthright –1 saw the usefulness of talking as the country people did. After all, now I travelled not as a mysterious practitioner of magic arts, who gained face from a Chang-an accent, but as a roving swordswoman; wanderers like Second Daughter and I are rare, yet Shu is known to be a homeland of curiosities and knights-errant.
I learned, too, how little difference there was, at bottom, between Bordermoon’s life as charming entertainer and Sky-whistle’s as apprentice charlatan. Both sought out others’ needs in order to survive. But during those weeks as a swordswoman, I gathered up the bits of self-reliance scattered through my earlier lives and made of them a person quite unlike a contract-bound courtesan or Feng’s follower.
Early in our travels, on Beyond-the-Clouds Mountain, Baby taught me again something of the power of words. We made our way from the Black Dragon River to a larger one, and then to the confluence of two rivers with the lovely Min. Near evening, we moored our boat at the base of Beyond-the-Clouds’ grand stone bluff, where the Min curves out briefly towards the west on its southwards flow. Scrambling up by means of a few scrubby bushes wedged into the rock, we paused a moment on a shelf above the waterline. Cut deep into the bluff were the huge feet of a seated image of the Buddha of the Future.
My neck ached as I looked up. We had a better view as we approached it. Now I couldn’t see past the knees to the serene and mighty head three hundred feet or more above us.
We laboured up steps devout monks had chiselled into the stone. Mists floated off the river, and we climbed through wisps of fog. Halfway up, as we paused to rest, the air trembled with the deep tones of a temple bell overhead. We passed the gigantic mouth with its smooth smile, the broad nose and the long-lobed ears, the heavy-lidded inward-looking eyes, the skull’s dome, and reached, at last, the top. There a monk with an Indian look about his face greeted us.
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