Silk Road

by Jeanne Larsen

  ‘Dear niece,’ says the vermilion dragon, ‘in human lands did you ever wade through the waters on the Doublefifth? Or partake of iris wine and holy hemp? Ah, a beauty such as you might have been sent on a cassiawood raft out into a river to be wedded to its deity. In the old days – did you know that in the old days young women were dropped like belt ornaments of tinkling jade into this lake?’ He, who has recently indulged in both hemp and wine, blinks then, and catches a strained expression on Seagem’s face. ‘No offence meant.’ His toothy smile is foolish, almost winning. ‘The women knew it was an honour, and I treated them’ – he sighs reminiscently – ‘quite well.’

  ‘But wait,’ he says, ‘I’m being rude,’ and changes into manly form. ‘Come sit with me awhile.’ One red-sleeved arm waves her to a coral bench, and he joins her there.

  At least I’m not blubbering, Seagem thinks, or struck dumb with terror. She regards his new appearance with some pleasure. Nice of him to take on such an attractive aspect, just for her. But she’d best keep the conversation going. ‘We don’t do that where I come from, in the north,’ she says, ignoring a little internal shudder at his nearness. ‘Tell me about the old days, please. What was it the folk of the southland used to do?’

  The vermilion dragon describes it all: the holy music, the flower wand passed from one dancer to the next, the appearance to the fortunate priest or priestess of a divine lover in a dragon-chariot. The wide pupils of his eyes radiate dark light. Almost (but not quite) imperceptibly, he slides closer to Seagem on the bench.

  What now? Shall she give his newly handsome face a stinging slap? Certainly a chaste wife should. And yet, she thinks of her first, and hardest lesson here: that she did not belong to the general who picked her out and wed her. What’s more, to her surprise, she wants the dragon-man. The summer solstice nears and the libidinous yin prepares to rise.

  How much easier life seemed when she knew her place in it! Surely he can see her nipples erect beneath her bodice. Does he despise her, think her body stridently outspoken? She remembers the Hsiao River Princeling’s sulky withdrawal last night when she put out the moonpearl lamp on her writing table and came at last to bed. He is still the one she loves, despite their present disagreements, but perhaps there is a difference between love and desire? Awash in the romance he brought into her life, she has never thought of this before. With General Li, she learned of sex as a slightly unpleasant duty. With the Princeling, she came to think of it as physical love. Might there be another lesson, might a woman (didn’t that disturbing ghost once speak to her of this?) enjoy pure lust? Unbidden, a mental image rises: her legs wrapped round the dragon-man’s broad back, her heels dug into his muscular buttocks, a quick exhausting rutting among the waterweeds.

  Whatever he is thinking, the dragon in man’s form certainly has caught something of her mood. With what for him is great restraint, he bends his head to brush his lips above the gold-cream of her breasts.

  ‘No!’ Seagem’s cry is half smothered, since a heartbeat later she throws herself against him, and meets his mouth with hers.

  It nearly happens. The intercourse prohibition on this day applies to mundane couples; to such rules the dragon realm pays little heed.

  Footfalls on the pathway interrupt them. Seagem jerks away, and to her feet. ‘Yes?’ she snaps at the crawfish-runner who bows before her.

  ‘Your pardon, madam, sir,’ the runner says. No telling from his bulging eyes what he might have seen. ‘We’ve received a message in the guardhouse from the Moon Lady, for Mistress Seagem.’

  The vermilion dragon snorts, but Seagem draws herself up tall and takes a calming breath. ‘Yes?’ she says again. This time her impatience is for the message.

  ‘The Moon Lady wishes you to know…’ The runner’s antennae thrash and one claw clicks anxiously until he retrieves the memory. ‘Ah. She wishes you to know that your daughter and the other candidates have passed through… through an examination? I think that’s it. In any case, the main point was that one of them is about to find some stone beneath the Yangzi, and the humans need help in transporting it. She says she knows that was no part of your agreement, but it seems your daughter has tied herself in some way to the stone and won’t go on until if s dealt with. That’s all.’ His antennae twitch, and he bows again.

  Seagem dismisses him and considers. The plan has moved on nicely since she made her secret agreement with the Moon Lady’s student, that nice White Aureole. And some months ago, when Seagem had slipped into despair at the slowness of its working out, Guan-yin the Compassionate gave her a certain necklace as a sign of Greenpearl’s well-being. But recently her daughter has been difficult, dawdling about as a swordswoman instead of hurrying along as her mother would have her do. Seagem shakes her head at the wilfulness, not thinking how much it resembles her new-found own.

  ‘So?’ The handsome man clothed all in red steps towards her, now that they are alone again. He assumes an authoritative air.

  A mistake. Seagem still feels herself pulled to him, and she needs his help now; but she has had enough of domineering men. She turns her face away.

  ‘All I can think about is my daughter,’ she says. That’s close enough to true. After all this time, Seagem still yearns for her. ‘Perhaps you and I will meet out here again someday,’ she adds. She wonders at the touch of wistful longing in her voice but decides it is purely innocent; she has put manipulation aside.

  The sound of promise is not without effect. The vermilion dragon snorts again. He shakes violently and resumes his natural sinuous form. He turns to leave and then turns back again. He wants to strike a bargain with this woman, but something tells him that she cannot be had that way. With every bit of indifference he can muster, he says, ‘Perhaps.’ After all, he has his pride.

  Seagem stands her ground, despite the transformation. The unspoken notion of exchange still lies between them. He has already done so much spying for her – what could she offer for his further aid? If only she weren’t bound to stay at the Mother-of-Pearl Villa, except for that one wild journey of her spirit to the Western Motherqueen! Then she remembers the last time she saw the dragon so mild-mannered, when he brought White Aureole down from the moon, mellowed by the opaline elixir he had been served.

  She resolves to take things into her own hands, as she once would not have done. ‘Dear Uncle,’ she says. ‘Might I ask of you one more favour?’ She starts to cock her head winsomely, as she used to do when she wanted something from her father or the general, Then she stiffens into an unusual awkwardness. ‘Not because of – this,’ she mumbles, her determination not to be charming covering half her charm.

  Half’s enough, but the canny dragon merely says urbanely, ‘Quite. Of course.’ He’s getting restless, though. If in these modern times nothing else comes to him for the festival save iris wine and such, that will have to be enough. But he thinks he’d like a bit more.

  She makes her proposition. If her dear uncle will fetch from the Yangzi bottom the stone the Moon Lady wants and carry it up to her – no more than that – Seagem will arrange for him to be given a flask of that supremely pleasing opaline elixir. ‘The Lady and I have an arrangement,’ she declares. ‘I guarantee it. Will you. Uncle, please?’

  In fact, though they are in league, Seagem is by no means so certain of the Moon Lady’s co-operation. A mere year ago, she’d not have dared such boldness, yet she thinks the gamble will work out. She will write a quick note for the dragon to take with him, assuring the goddess of some favour in return.

  Shortly, the vermilion dragon whirls from Cavegarden Lake, churning the waters of the Yangzi as he makes his way with supernatural speed to a village below the gorges. Upstream folded rockbeds rise up rich with thunder-lizard bones. Downstream Cavegarden empties into the river from its great bed of alluvial soil. Just here, two women stare without speaking towards the spot where a man has sunk beneath the surface currents, while another woman howls and gibbers in her trance.

  The vermilion d
ragon cares for none of this. His mind is on opaline elixir, and to get it he must find a silly stone. There. The man clutches an unnaturally heavy, inkstone-sized chatoyant, holds on to it as determinedly as he holds on to his last breath.

  The man has just now realized the precise nature of the bargain he made with the Moon Lady: he said that he was willing to pay any price for the friend who saved him once from drowning, long ago when they were boys. Pay he shall. This self-promoting son of doting parents has come to true nobility. Seeing the fearsome, bewhiskered dragon heading for him, he knows there will be no reprieve. His last hope vanishes, but not his will to see the thing through. So long selfish and unfilial, he wishes only that his father and his mother might know of his valour. A few bubbles seep from his lips. Blackness overtakes him.

  The dragon barely notices the man. Snatching up the stone, he bursts upwards through the river to the air. The crowd on shore erupts in one collective gasp. The dragon hurtles on, through concentric seas of rarefied vapours someday to be named troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, ionosphere. He lands among the glimmering dusts of the moon.

  Brave Selena greets him at the palace gate. She takes the chatoyant stone and Seagem’s letter to the Moon Lady, and soon returns with the flask the vermilion dragon wants. The goddess, admiring the human woman’s uncharacteristically daring move, has consented; the dragon quickly takes his leave.

  Up in the crystalline keep, the Moon Lady gathers with her seven students for an impromptu celebration of the beautiful new inkstone. With a respectful bow, and a flick of her graceful wrist, the goddess herself hurls the old stone from a lofty window. It falls meteor-bright to earth, a flash in the sky of the planet’s dark side: the few bronze-rimmed human eyes watching there just now recognize its mantric power. Spiralling downwards, it lands not far from Chang-an, on hallowed Flower Mountain, westernmost of the five peaks that marked off and sustained the realm of the primordial emperors along the lower reaches of the River Huang; the present empire is a far larger one, but the five mountains’ spiritual energies still protect the order it maintains.

  The stone shakes. It crumbles. Sparker emerges from it, scratching his belly, rubbing his eyes. Back in Dragongate Cave, the vanity of human aspirations flashed upon him as his very haemoglobin crystallized. He is free now, far from the society that called him slave. He picks up a stick to serve him as a staff. He laughs and walks away.

  The little moonmaid Oyster has arranged fragrant cinnamon branches upon the Moon Lady’s banqueting table. The underground storehouse-burrows of the moon hold opaline elixir to spare. Having brought up one flask for the dragon, Selena suggests opening another, and soon the party is making merry jokes about the new inkstone and what fine things might be written with it. The Moon Lady observes White Aureole’s self-possessed demeanour, her quietly displayed understanding of her arcane studies. It is nearly time, the goddess thinks, to send this oldest of the moonmaids off to the position for which she has been preparing, as jade-white damosel guardian of an esoteric archive.

  Sister! A variable flickering surges through the room. From a vortex of photons and unstable hydrogen, an erratic voice shoots out. It is as the Amah told me! Ah, why do I ever doubt! Oh, hut first my greetings. And to the lady students, too. Now: that little human chit – chit, I called her, but I will do so no longer – the dancer has proved herself a seer. She spoke the mystic names of starswords, spoke the true name of a demon, foresaw some man’s riverine plunge. Sister! Are you not glad?

  In tranquil tones, the Moon Lady indicates her pleasure at the news. The seven moonmaids follow suit, though Oyster, wide-eyed at Dame Shamanka Star’s fluctuations, grasps Selena’s hand beneath the table.

  Oh, she was wrong, in her presumption! Long-held resentment briefly overwhelms the Star’s tones of joy. But I’ve forgiven her. She’s found her linking spirit, did I tell you? An unquiet ghost who’s finally had her fill of fleshly things! Oh, sister, forgive my rudeness. Forgive me, lady moonmaids. I must run off. There’s much for me to do.

  She vanishes. But down on earth, new power rushes into the little round-eyed dancer shrieking on the riverbank. With the Shamanka Star’s blessing upon them at last, a wild-haired, proud-breasted ghost achieves full union with the medium.

  The villagers remain astounded by their vision of the vermilion dragon soaring skyward. They knew, of course, that the sacrifice of the stranger-scholar would bring fertility to their fields, but they never expected so much. Those clustered around the little dancer put aside the terror that the distorted sounds torn from her lips provoked in them; she speaks clearly now, decisive, free of pain.

  There’s much to say,’ the dancer tells them. She no longer twitches. Only the far-off focus of her gaze indicates her unworldly state. Her eyes have double pupils now. The villagers know this marks her as a true seer.

  ‘Greenpearl! You’ve been shown that my name has another meaning. Do you still think all others invisible pointing sticks?’ These words flow from her in Soghdian, the language of Greenpearl’s nanny. The rest she speaks in unhesitant Chinese, touched slightly with the accents of the southland. ‘Second Daughter, listen to the poem on the scroll. But when you come to write, it will be another way. Let neither of you mourn Dreamdragon Feng. He chose rightly.’

  A cloudbank dims the sunlight, like dark banners carried by the vanguard of a spirit army. A maiden known as Sweetflag takes a small shell from her bosom and presses it into the medium’s hand. ‘Purple Treasure, this is yours,’ she murmurs. ‘Use it as you will.’ She steps back, and her mother comes forward to place a wreath of pomegranate flowers in the dancer’s hair. A chubby boy darts forward to lay a magnolia branch at her feet.

  At that. Baby gives a sigh, long and shuddering, as if she cast off the old pain of abuse and years of conflict and denial. The ghost joined with her shudders, too. The wind picks up, whipping whitecaps on the broad expanse of muddy river. A

  rumbling, as of distant hoofbeats or the great wheels of mighty chariots, sounds.

  ‘Now this village is my home,’ the dancer cries. ‘I am shamanka now, not entertainer, and no man’s concubine. For this village, I call down the rain!’

  In the sudden coolness, hairs on more than one neck rise. The storm breaks, first of the summer rains. A sheet of silver races from the south shore towards the village and the needy paddy fields. A few people dash for the reed-mat awnings, but most laugh and cut capers and talk excitedly, making plans for the sustenance of the maga come to live among them. Several couples who took part in the singing contests earlier slip off unnoticed, hand in hand, Sweetflag among them. From a time-worn shrine on the edge of the village, a temple raven calls.

  From

  Biographies of Chivalrous Wanderers

  compiled by Mi Tu (fl. after 1066)

  Yin Er-jie was a virtuous maiden of Mothbrow Town. She was frank and brave by nature. Stolen from her father’s house by four roving brigands, she escaped from them, taking with her a precious sword and what she had learned of their arts.

  She travelled widely, defending the helpless and righting wrongs. Once she killed an outlaw from India who had slaughtered a monk. She won the admiration of both the upper classes and the common people.

  Later she grew tired of such things, and shut herself away to study. Her only amusement was calligraphy.

  Feng Sheng-wen, known to his friends as Meng-long, was a native of Jia-jou. As a child, he showed himself to be intelligent and generous with others.

  He travelled to Chang-an, where he made friends with many of the most dashing youths of the empire, hunting or watching cockfights, and raising many a cup. His nature was free and easy, and he loved to gamble, thinking nothing of selling a priceless charger to pay a debt or provide more wine for his host. Yet he had great ambitions.

  He was eager to aid victims of injustice. With only his frost-bright dagger, he single-handedly slew fifteen bandits who were terrorizing a country town. Another time, he helped a young woman named Purple
Treasure join with her true mate.

  In the end, he was seduced by an evil female kraken called Sweetflag, disguised as a dancer from the far west. This she-demon made him drunk on wine that was really human blood, then pulled him into the Hsiao River. Some say this never happened, that he gave his life in a battle on the riverbank to save a friend. In any case, he was never seen again. Of him it may be said, as the poet Li Bo wrote of two earlier knights-errant, ‘sweet the scent of chivalrous bones!’

  Tao jia-huo came from Shu. He was a potbellied man with tousled hair. Born into poverty, he indulged in chivalrous deeds and followed the Taoist way. It is said that his mother was impregnated by a meteor. Once he saw a boy drowning and jumped into the river to rescue him, with no thought of his own life.

  He spent some years with his hair let down, as pilgrims do, walking barefoot among the mountains. On Mothbrow Mountain, he saw a jade-white hare making a potion of immortality with a mortar and pestle. Then he retired utterly from the world and received secret instruction from a Purified Teacher named Jade Clarity.

  Li Tian-jian, swordswoman, poet, and musician, was a native of the capital district. She lost her mother at birth. Originally a man, she transformed herself into a woman. She cared little for conventional behaviour but cultivated her personal integrity.

  One day, she met a young woman weeping beside the road. ‘I have no money to bury the bones of my mother,’ the young woman sobbed. Hearing this, Li quietly gave her fifty ounces of gold belonging to her own paternal grandfather. She never asked the other woman’s name. When word of this reached the grandfather he was astounded. But Li regretted acquiring a reputation for generosity at her grandfather’s expense, so she took a job as a serving girl in the Chen family hall to earn the money back, although she was a gentlewoman.