Where else to go but to Cavegarden Lake? I had failed to enter the dragonrealm beneath it, but I felt that it would be a comfort to see those broad waters again before we wandered on. If there was no place for us in the home of the wise and careful Widow Chian, what chance was there of finding one – free of spite, or the threat of unwanted marriage – in some other household? If only we could rescue my mother. She would know where we might make our home.
Second Daughter and I had had our fill of the Yangzi. We chose paths tending southwards and so kept the great river at our backs. Since it was the third day of the third month, people were gathering on its banks for the holiday, wearing spring clothes and sprigs of shepherd’s purse on their heads. Let others dance and make sacrifice to river women, I thought bitterly. I had been turned out into the world with only one companion, to make a search with no direction and an uncertain end. A deep breath filled my lungs.
We struck the lake’s great springtime mudflats at a point a little east of where we’d been before. I insisted that we rest awhile under the maple trees on a low knoll. The tiny red flowers at the branches’ tips matched the festive day but not my mood.
‘Now what?’ I asked Second Daughter, as if it were her responsibility to form a plan. She shook her head, and seeing the sorrow in her fine eyes I regretted my childishly demanding tone.
I stared out at the lake. ‘If we turn east,’ I said, ‘we’ll reach the lake’s outlet to the Yangzi and have to pay someone to ferry us across to Yue-jou. I know there’s a town westwards on the lakeshore – Springgauze’s husband goes there to buy silk.’ I drew in another lungful of the lake-moist air and set my lips into a smile. ‘Surely sooner or later we’ll find whatever it is that will let us reach my mother and carry her away. Shall we try our luck to the west?’ Now I’d adopted the false cheer of a nursemaid encouraging a fussy charge. That too suited my friend poorly.
‘Or,’ she murmured, ‘we might go straight ahead.’
On Flower Mountain
Dawn: the third day of the third month. Festival of Drowned Women. Birthday of the Western Motherqueen. Bearing the emblem of her authority – a moon-bright mirror inscribed with a cinnamon tree, a toad, a riddle-poem that is answered by the thing itself – the moonmaid White Aureole arrives on sacred Flower Mountain. To a traveller from the direction of Chang-an, Flower Mountain, a great upthrust of Precambrian granite veined by erosion, resembles last year’s dried lotus leaf rising above the cracked mud in a ruined pleasure garden. Its stone stands so unyielding 332
i that the southbound River Huang, striking it, veers acutely eastwards towards the sea. Five peaks linked by knife-edge ridges manifest the sinuous spine of an enormous dragon sleeping in the earth. Cool moss and early sprouts of columbine and spring-stark oaks and pine trees bearing huge cones all cling to the grey-mauve rocks. From the West Peak one sees the village-dotted plain spread out as if it mapped itself; sees, too, the waters of the River Wei, rich with all they have carried out of Chang-an, pouring themselves into the mighty Huang. Soon, the crucial pass at Flower Mountain’s foot will flash red with the disastrous failure to halt the rebel general An Lu-shan’s advance towards the Brilliant Emperor’s capital. But you know how that story ends.
White Aureole is not concerned with an empire’s fall. Her education completed, she comes to take up new responsibilities on the holy mountain, as archivist and teacher to seekers of astral lore. She already knows the first human to whom she must reveal herself.
Feet calloused, calf muscles knotted, belly rounded and relaxed, the Flower Mountain Hermit wanders down the narrow trail leading from the cave that is his home. After his long journey to Liang-jou and Darkdazzle Vista – where he received instruction from a certain Lady of the Tao whom his old friend Parrot once told him all about – he walked back to Flower Mountain, returning to the spot where he broke forth from his stony form. Today he is out looking, in a casual way, for the rare white fungus said to grow here, an edible fungus that transforms a mortal into a sylph. Actually, he doesn’t much care about finding out; after a life of servitude, he is finally happy as he is.
The hermit pauses to scratch an itch on his left shoulder blade. He ambles on, round a head-high boulder. He stops short and stares.
Austere, serene, and gracious. White Aureole nods her head. The hermit cannot remember their earlier meeting in the lunar palace, when he was senseless stone. But at Darkdazzle Vista, his lovely teacher passed on to him the secret signs by which he recognizes an unearthly guardian of the mountain’s hidden library of esoteric texts. Perhaps, he thinks, she will grant the one thing he still craves. Released from the desire for action, the hermit nonetheless still holds within himself one attachment to the world. Some months ago. Nephrite arranged for him an exchange of poetic messages with his mortal friends. All, he thinks, is well with them, and he is very nearly right. But growing up in the properly Confucian household of Old Tutor Feng, the hermit soaked in a bone-deep sense of the student’s binding obligation to the teacher. And what has he done to repay Nephrite’s assistance in the matter of the poem exchange, or all her kind instructions?
Nothing. That is, nothing yet. But this meeting may be his opportunity. He laughs a belly laugh, delighted by this splendid working out of cosmic chance. Then he pauses, as the demon of uncertainty rises up within him: will the heavenly damosel grant his wish?
White Aureole allows herself a pleasant, close-lipped smile. She delivers a message transmitted to the Moon Lady from King Yama’s tribunal down in hell. Some years from now, when the hermit’s aged joints begin to ache, an ignorant, fiery-eyed lad from a nondescript village on the plain will stumble across his path. This lad will have been reborn early, excused from further years of purgatorial pain as recompense for an unscheduled early death in his previous existence.
In that life just past. White Aureole continues, the lad was a mighty general from Chang-an, slain in Khotan by a vermilion dragon. In this new one, he will be given the chance to become the Flower Mountain Hermit’s disciple. ‘And,’ she says with delicate majesty, ‘may he seize this spiritual opportunity as well as he once gripped his sword!’
The hermit indicates his willingness to take the general-disciple on. Then he gathers up his nerve – something wandering Taoists seldom need to do – and makes his request. His former teacher, whose name in the world was Nephrite, has achieved the spiritual power necessary to let her soul fly to the Western Motherqueen. But she cannot travel anywhere she wants – and where she wants to travel is to the side of their mutual friend, variously known as Parrot and Skywhistle and so forth. Could the unearthly maiden now before him somehow make this possible? It would bring great joy to the heart of a devoted lady of the Tao, and – the hermit must admit – it would ease his own.
White Aureole pauses to consider. Perhaps, with the aid of her lunar mistress, such a thing can be arranged.
Meanwhile, down in the reeking, tortuous depths of hell, the hermit’s agreement to accept as his disciple the reincarnation of one General Li is jotted down in King Yama’s Book of Life and Death. But what, the infernal recorder idly wonders, of the vacancy White Aureole’s departure has created for a seventh student in the palace on the moon?
PARROT
SPEAKS:
23
I was giddy from the breeze blowing off the lake, giddy and light as a cloud. Each lap of water on Cavegarden’s shore echoed those before it, and Second Daughter’s murmured words – we might go straight ahead – rang inside my head. Sunlight glanced off the waves in glittering designs; the brilliance struck dark spots on my field of vision. Squinting, I made out a steep-sided island, the tip of a submerged mountain really, still wrapped in morning mist.
Startled, I blinked. It seemed like somewhere I had lived a long time ago, and yet like no place my eyes had ever seen.
Second Daughter jumped to her feet.
‘What is that – ‘ I began, then let the question drop. A rare energy swelled inside me, born of that day – the Amah’s bi
rthday – and that remarkable place. The island’s name meant nothing in the face of its compelling beauty. Tell me the place means risk of death, I thought, or that it means the silent time before awareness. We can get ourselves there, somehow. I stared at the bright-dark dragon-patterns on the water, and caught my breath.
Second Daughter was searching wildly through her bundle, looking for something. ‘Cavegarden Isle,’ she said, her voice faraway and certain. ‘Remember? In one of the weaving songs that Springgauze taught us to read last winter – a huge rock from the Kun-lun Mountains. It flew here.’ She snatched the knife she had taken from her father’s kitchen and waved it above her head. ‘Get something,’ she said. Those sewing scissors Spring-gauze gave you this morning.’
I laughed, and understood precisely what to do, as when I suddenly saw the right words to finish off a poem. An old temple to the Hsian River Ladies stands on Cavegarden Isle: I had copied out a poem about it for calligraphy practice, years ago in Liang-jou. ‘Maybe the Ladies of the Hsiang will tell us how to reach my mother.’ I snatched up the scissors and added, ‘Once we’re there.’
Second Daughter dulled her knife as she sawed through four great bamboo from a nearby grove. I ruined the pretty sewing scissors hacking the slim branches off those large bamboo and two smaller ones that would serve as poles. Everything we did seemed part of an elaborate dance, rehearsed time and time again.
We worked steadily but with more than natural haste, tearing our spare clothing into strips and braiding ropes to lash the four bamboo together. My body felt fully alive – for the first time, I realized, since we settled into the confines of the Chian courtyard and the throat-clutching security I had clung to.
The sun slid westwards as Second Daughter and I finished. Our eyes met and we laughed. The long narrow raft looked so preposterous, the lake so large. ‘The currents – ‘ I began.
‘Not so bad this season,’ Second Daughter said, and grinned. ‘Our biggest worry is the mud.’ Our laughter burst out again; for a moment, I thought it might carry me up into the air. We threw our boots off and rolled our trouser legs to our knees. Whether the lake opened to us was beyond our doing, and until that point we could not rely on starswords or on human protectors. All we had were things we had learned – a snatch of a weaving song in the women’s language, some lines from an old poem – brought together within ourselves.
We discarded the knife and scissors. Our few coins we placed beneath a flat stone, our cups and flint and cooking pot deep in a clump of bushes. I tucked the little scroll I’d carried for so long snugly into my sash and kept one thing more. ‘Remember this?’ I held a small pearl on a chain up to Second Daughter. ‘The day we met? It reminded me of one I used to have, so I didn’t add it to the sergeant’s bribe.’
‘Wear it, then,’ she said. ‘We’re bound to get soaked, but at least that way you won’t lose it.’ We cackled like happy madwomen once again. I put it around my neck and realized it was the first time I had ever worn the thing properly, since it had seemed too elegant for a swordswoman or a hired girl at Widow Chian’s.
We put out west of the island, hoping to angle across the lake’s eastward currents. The hollow sections of the bamboo rode low but buoyantly. Waves soaked our clothes and skin. I nearly tipped the raft trying to guide it with my pole, which proved completely useless as we moved out into deeper waters.
My self-assurance faded. I began to imagine drowning in that enigmatic lake, as I had nearly done the other time I tried to enter it. Wasn’t this day the festival of drowned women of antiquity? Poor Feng had met his fate on the Doublefifth, the day dedicated to the drowned official Chu Yuan. I began to wish for some water spirit to rescue us, a giant tortoise, say, that would rise beneath the flimsy raft and carry us safely on its back to the island.
The bamboo clattered against unseen stones that would have smashed a hole in the bottom of a proper boat. Now the poles showed their worth as we wedged them between the smooth stones and pushed ourselves close to the island. We scrambled ashore.
A faint path wound up the steep hill before us. We took it at a run, still moving with the haste of the possessed. Beneath a flowering citrus tree, we stopped to catch our breath.
‘Listen!’ Second Daughter hissed. ‘There’s a spring here. And I’m thirsty.’ She stepped round a rocky shelf and called to me to join her. The water had a faint sweet taste of wine. I’d heard the stories: this was the island where the Hsiang River Ladies’ temple stands. Rapt, panting, we resumed our climb.
The roof of the shrine had vanished long ago. Lichens splayed their unreadable messages on the walls. Within the dimness we could just make out the forms of the two archaic sisters carved into the stone wall above the altar. We sank to our knees on prayer cushions of moss. I heard Second Daughter sigh and felt my own breath ease.
At last we slipped outside, into the twilight. ‘We should make an offering,’ I whispered. ‘My necklace? The little scroll?’
She shook her head and looked around. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘Those would be out of place here. It should be something one of us has made, don’t you think? You’ll have to compose a poem.’
‘No paper.’
‘You can write it on the wall, as temple visitors do.’
‘No ink.’
‘Scratch it with a stone, then. In the women’s words.’
And so I did.
Looking for the Goddess on
Cavegarden Isle
Spring: a maple shore
tinged red with flowers.
Glossy waters spread
out to sky’s edge.
Uncertain currents sweep
a bamboo raft;
Wild waves carry it
to misty shores.
The rocky isle’s brushed green
by sourpeel-orange trees.
Travellers laugh, gone high
on sweet wine springs.
Now spotted bamboo trace
an uphill trail.
And pepperwort inscribes
the mossy altar.
We breathe here, where the empty
sanctum stands –
Unroofed, untouched – and waits
a poet’s words.
Around the Go Board
The Guardian of the Celestial Stores lights the camellia-scented oil in his ruby-sunset lamp and sets it on a nearby puff of cloud. He tugs one earlobe thoughtfully and looks around: everything is prepared for the visit of his friend, now an underling in the Ministry of Babble but formerly the Assistant Undersecretary of Baubles, and –who knows? – perhaps soon to rise again.
The Guardian is a bit nervous. At the former Undersecretary’s request, he has slipped a certain precious set for playing Go out of the Jade Emperor’s treasure vaults. The Go board’s squares of inlaid rhinoceros horn form a grid of nineteen horizontal and nineteen vertical lines. Two bowls hold the stones to be placed upon the intersections: perfectly matched black pearls fill one; the pale pearls in the other bowl glimmer in a lovely multitude of tints. In fact. His Heavenly Highness has lost all interest in the precious gewgaw, but still the Guardian doubts the wisdom of acceding to his crony’s desire to see that marvellous set again. No question about it, since his demotion the former Undersecretary has been obsessed with the thing. But the obligations of friendship cannot be ignored.
With a flurry of splendid robes and elegant bows, the former Undersecretary arrives. The game begins. The Guardian would like them to linger over their cups of Jade Sap and chat a bit before they start to play, but obviously that is impossible. He tugs at his earlobe again. Naturally, the story of the Undersecretary’s demotion flashed through the ranks of courtiers and bureaucrats in Taoist heaven at once. Yet little has been said recently; the Guardian would like an update on the whole affair.
After several cups of delightful elixir, when chains of pearls have begun to weave and twine across the board, he brings the subject up. The former Undersecretary grunts, describing bits of what has happe
ned.
In a desultory way, the fragmentary story of a certain pearl necklace begins to come out – not the banished Luminous Emerald Green Lunar Essence Sprite itself, but something somehow like it. This odd gem, presented by the Dragon Monarch to a greedy merchant upon the betrothal of the merchant’s daughter to the dragon’s son, fell into a trunk with her possessions, and so went with her when she was wed to another man.
The Undersecretary drains his cup and goes on talking. When a vermilion dragon went in doctor’s guise to the human realm to fetch the mortal woman to Cavegarden Lake, he brought the necklace back as well. The woman gave it to the Moon Lady, with whom she is in league, and the Lady to the woman’s roving daughter, incarnation of the green pearl sprite.
‘You know how, ah, assertive that particular goddess can be,’ the former Undersecretary grouses, cocking one greyed bushy eyebrow and rolling a sky-coloured pearl between his forefinger and his thumb. ‘His Divine Majesty charged me personally with overseeing the case of the banished pearl – the one born as a woman – so of course I had to keep an eye on this necklace-pearl too. But when I called on the Moon Lady to inquire about it, she just smiled her smug, frosty smile and said, “Every mother gives a pearl to her girlchild,” or some such thing. Next thing I know, the human – the green pearl sprite, that is – has given it’ – he drains his cup – ‘to the Lady Guan-yin.’
The Guardian grimaces knowingly.
‘Guan-yin’s no more forthcoming than any Buddhist deity,’ the former Undersecretary continues. ‘Did I ever tell you how she sent me once to muck about in a sand dune, rescuing some monk who was vaguely involved in this case? Well – he’s rather famous, that monk, or will be when enough tales have accumulated around him – after I did it, I heard he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, heading in the wrong direction. At least if you believe his record of his travels.’ His eyebrows perform a kind of jig. ‘History!’ he snorts. ‘At its best it’s full of loops and loopholes.’
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