by Mike Ashley
However, when Master Lao directed the beam against the Queen, she laughed as her hair readily blocked it.
“Your little mirror might work on the undead, little priest, but do you really think it would affect one forged in the Lower Hells?”
“Kua Qing, the bow!” cried Master Lao.
Kua Qing hopped up onto a table, pulled out an arrow, aimed, and fired all in one smooth motion. The arrow flew straight at the Queen, but she easily plucked it out of the air with her hair, then gasped in pain and dropped it as her strands caught fire.
“Weeping mulberry arrows!” hissed the Queen, shaking out the flames. “You’re more clever than I thought! But it will avail you nothing. Get the bowman!”
The mob of skulls we had been fighting suddenly rose up and over our heads, making a beeline for Kua Qing. Chanting, Master Lao leapt up onto the table in front of him, assuming the crane stance as his palms took on the unmistakable glow of Lao Dan Hands.
And then the fight was truly on.
We raced back to form a protective perimeter around Kua Qing. Swords, hands and spears struck with all the skill we could muster, sending the skulls hurtling back from our blows. Gau Lou (his head finally extinguished), Orange Blossom and Old Man Zhang all swooped and dove, trying to sink their fangs into our necks, or, failing that, entangle us in their viscera. As Master Lao’s glowing blows hurtled around him like a firework prayer wheel, Kua Qing hunkered low on the table, popping up every now and then to shoot another arrow, but none ever made it beyond the Queen’s hair. Spring Moon and Autumn Wind cowered beneath the table, stabbing out with their kitchen knives anytime one of the horrors came near.
Alas, they had not counted on the speed of a White Crane apprentice, and an instant after I had kicked one of the skulls across the room, I received a painful but shallow wound in my right calf from Autumn Wind’s knife.
“Sorry!” she cried, aghast. But there was no time for recriminations, as Gau Lou suddenly raced for my neck. I jerked back just in time for his lunge to miss, then slashed him with the sword. It connected cleanly, almost cleaving his face in two and getting stuck in his skull. Despite the blow he was far from finished, as his viscera snapped up and around my neck.
“You’ll pay for that!” he said wetly.
There proceeded a most strange and desperate dance, as I simultaneously attempted to pull the sword free and remove Gau Lou’s burning tendrils from around my throat, succeeding at neither task. Soon Bang Zhou and Ba Le came to my assistance.
“Is that my sword?” asked Bang Zhou, as Ba Le attempted to unwrap the tendrils.
I nodded and answered to the extent possible, but due to the circumstances my assent sounded rather like a choking sheep.
“May I have it back?”
I agreed as best I could, sinking to my knees as my sight started to dim.
Bang Zhou gripped his sword with both hands while levering his left foot firmly against Gau Lou’s entrails. With a mighty tug he wrenched the sword free, then swiftly brought it to bear at the exposed length of viscera mere inches away from my throat.
I would have thought the blow sufficient to sever it, but it was unnaturally tough. However, it did cause the creature to let me loose and attempt to ensnare Bang Zhou instead. The three of us quickly wrestled it to the ground, ignoring the pain in our hands as we held it down, Bang Zhou bringing the sword down again and again without apparent effect.
“Quick, hand me a prayer ball!” I cried, and one of the younger apprentices complied. Avoiding Gau Lou’s unnatural teeth, I spread apart his jaws.
“Happy festival day!” I said, then shoved the sticky-rice wrapped offering into his mouth. Gau Lou let out a horrific scream. Then exploded.
Whatever demonic magic had held Gao Los decay at bay ceased, and the three of us found ourselves covered in tiny bits of putrefying remains. As we attempted to wipe them off, the Kongbu Feixing Tou Queen screamed in rage. “You wretched little maggots! You think slaying a single acolyte will stop me? Your pain shall be legendary!”
The battle seemed to be turning, if ever so slightly, in our favour. The blackened remains of a dozen skull servants littered the floor, but more still swooped above our heads. Kua Qing was down to his last six arrows, having dispatched several of the skull minions, but unable to bring down the Queen. Encouraged by our example, he took aim at Orange Blossom’s flying form, launching an arrow that missed by a hairsbreadth.
Master Lao leapt up yet again to dispatch two of the flying skulls trying to swoop in on Kua Qing, but as he landed the much abused table issued a loud crack and collapsed under him, and he and Kua Qing went crashing down upon Spring Moon and Autumn Wind.
Our enemies took that moment to redouble their assault, and it was all we could do to hold them back as Spring Moon and Autumn Wind sprinted for another table. However, Old Man Zhang managed to evade Dai Li’s spear thrust and attached himself to Spring Moon, sinking his fangs into her neck as his tendrils wrapped around her body. In a flash, Kua Qing drew an arrow, aimed, and fired, striking Zhang ‘s head dead center. Zhang let out a bellow of pain as his head and viscera ignited, quickly burning down to ash in a matter of seconds.
Autumn Wind frantically batted out the tiny flames on her mother’s dress caused by Zhang ‘s combustion. “Mother, are you all right? Mother? Mother?”
Spring Moon didn’t answer, her breathing shallow and unnaturally raspy, a fine network of dark lines already starting to spread out from the wound in her neck. Seeing this, Master Lao sprung into action, laid out both his herbal kit and his brush and ink set, then instantly started to scribe runes around the wound. “Chou Lin, this will take several minutes. You must defend Kua Qing!”
I nodded and raced back to the fight. There seemed only a half dozen of the skull things left, in addition to Orange Blossom, but the Queen herself had waded into the fight. She had ensnared both of Xau Qu’s arms, but was unable to bring her fangs to bear upon him due to the chair he held between them.
I quickly grabbed the prayer lantern from Lai Wang and raced to Xau Qu’s side. As they struggled, I wrestled one of the ropey strands from his arms and stuck it into the lantern’s opening. The Queen let out another below of rage as her hair ignited, letting loose of Xau Qu and knocking both of us across the room in her haste to shake out the flames.
“So you like fire, little man? Then have some fire!” At that the Queen opened her mouth and let loose a jet of flame, singeing my robes as I leapt away. I rolled across the floor to extinguish them, then scurried under a table to avoid the next fiery assault, which set it ablaze. Grabbing the table by its legs, I rushed back at her, using it as both a shield and weapon.
Unfortunately, I did not count on the Queen plucking the table from my grasp and tossing it back at me. I leapt just in time, receiving only a glancing blow to my left shoulder as it hurtled past.
Thinking the Queen distracted, Kua Qing let loose another arrow, but once again she snatched it from the air in mid-flight. Worse still, Orange Blossom chose that moment to swoop in on Kua Qing, wrapping her entrails around the bow. Kua Qing resisted with all his might, refusing to let the weapon be stolen from him without a fight. For a moment it was a tug-of-war.
Then the bow snapped in two.
Kua Qing went flying back, half of the broken bow still gripped in his hands, the remaining arrows in his quiver scattering across the floor. The Queen laughed, a sound inhumanly shrill and throaty at the same time. “Time’s up, vermin! Your pathetic attempts have failed! You may have slain two of my acolytes, but it’s easy enough to make more!”
At that the Queen rushed forward and snatched up Kua Qing, Autumn Wind and Master Lao, binding each so tightly with her hair that they were unable to free their arms no matter how hard they struggled.
“You’ve got spirit, little priest! That is why you shall make such a splendid slave when I eat your soul!”
As the Queen raised Master Lao to her lips, I grabbed one of the arrows off the floor, leapt up to
grab his robe, and then clambered onto his shoulders just before the Queen bestowed her deadly kiss.
“Eat this!” I said, thrusting the arrow directly into her gaping maw.
The Queen let out a deafening bellow of pain and rage, dropping her captives (and myself) unceremoniously to the floor. Flames licked out of her mouth and the wound at the back of her neck where the arrow had pierced, and then expanded until an inferno raged where her head had been, her hair writhing madly in its death-throes. All around the noodle house, Orange Blossom and the remaining skull minions suffered a similar fiery fate. The Queen let out a last scream and exploded in a shower of vile dust and ash.
We lay on the floor for a long moment, victorious, befouled and exhausted. Bang Zhou took the initiative to grab a pitcher of water and extinguish those portions of the noodle house set alight by the final conflagration. Master Lao climbed unsteadily to his feet, dusting himself off and coughing, then turned to me and bowed, a gesture nearly as shocking and unusual as battle had been.
“Chou Lin, you are a credit to the temple, and it is an honour to have you as a White Crane apprentice.”
For a moment I was struck entirely dumb, as Master Lao’s compliments were nearly as rare as summer snow. Finally, I got unsteadily to my feet and returned the bow. “It is, and has always been, a great honour to serve as your apprentice.”
Master Lao merely grunted, then returned to ministering to Spring Moon. “Will my mother be alright?” asked her daughter.
“Yes. Look, the unnatural infection is already starting to fade.”
Autumn Wind sighed in relief, then wrapped her arms around and kissed me, an event as shocking as it was welcome. I could not tell you how long that kiss lasted, though it seemed as if several dynasties rose and fell during its duration. It was far too short.
“Thank you for saving us, Chou Lin,” she said at last. I’m sure I made some reply to this, as I distinctly remember my mouth moving and sounds coming out of it, but I could not say with any certainty what was said for all the taels in Shanghai.
At that moment, exhausted and exultant, I truly knew what it was to be one with the Celestial Masters, to know the perfect contentment of balance and being, to move with the wind and be as still as the earth, to bask in the fullness of the world like a flower in the sun.
But even as I felt that moment of divine clarity passing, I thought I could see the path before me: a life together with Autumn Wind, a wedding presided over by Master Lao, a clutch of laughing, exasperating children, agile as cats and as mischievous as imps (how could they be otherwise, given their father?), growing old in joy and contentment.
Alas, it was not to be, as Autumn Wind and I would soon be ripped apart by the strange events surrounding an ancient scroll, a most unusual monkey, and three cursed coins.
But that’s a story for another day.
USING IT AND LOSING IT
Jonathan Lethem
Stories by Jonathan Lethem (b. 1964) began to appear in the specialist science-fiction magazines in 1989 and they showed signs then of an especially radical talent, heavily influenced by Philip K Dick. His first novel, Gun, With Occasional Music (1994), which blended hard-boiled detective fiction with bizarre images of science fiction, rapidly brought him to the attention of the literary scene and he has since gone on to establish a formidable reputation. His collection, The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye (1996), won the World Fantasy Award whilst his novel, The Fortress of Solitude (2003), where two children discover a means to become superheroes, became a New York Times bestseller. You can guarantee that every story by Lethem will be experimental or radical or surreal. Take the following, which considers the significance of language.
They sent Pratt to Montreal for a three-day conference, but after the first day he stopped attending the meetings, and spent the remainder of the long weekend wandering around the streets of the city. He liked Montreal, though at first he didn’t understand why. It reminded him of America, of the United States; not the least bit exotic – in fact it was startlingly familiar. The only difference was that he couldn’t understand what other people were saying. And that was what he liked.
Pratt had taken Spanish in high school. He passed the classes, but only narrowly, and he didn’t retain any memory of the language. He certainly didn’t have any handle on the French he heard around him in Montreal. He went to the store for cigarettes and pointed; first at the brand he wanted, then at the bowl of matches behind the cash register. He switched on the television in his hotel room and watched the news in French (weathermen gesturing at the odd Canadian-based map) and was unable to understand anything; all he could puzzle out were the categories: international news, local items, sports, weather, human interest. The news seemed very simple that way; reduced to a series of formats it became oddly small and comprehensible.
Pratt felt alone. He felt alone in New York, and it was a feeling he thrived on; his aloneness insulated him, made it possible for him to live in the city. Now, in Montreal, he felt the flowering within himself of a potential for a new kind of aloneness, something much deeper, and something more unique. Walking alone through a city of strangers, unable to share their language, suggested enticing possibilities to him.
Back in New York the following week Pratt walked the distance to work, stopped in at his accustomed cigar store to buy cigarettes, and rode the elevator upstairs to his office; in short, his standard routine, without deviation – yet it didn’t feel right. Pratt felt hemmed in by the people around him for the first time, his invisible Gardol shield of isolation stripped mysteriously away. He heard snippets of conversation as he passed or was passed on the sidewalks, and the packets of language landed unbidden on the doorstep of his consciousness, and intruded on his cool solitary thoughts. The cigar man struck up a needless conversation about the humidity, despite Pratt’s silently pointing at the desired items, the way he had in Montreal.
Pratt isolated himself in his office, put his folder of papers into the bottom drawer of his desk, then gathered the accumulated inter-office memos of the last week and balled them up and threw them away without reading them. Pratt had learned something about not being reached in Montreal, and he determined to apply it directly to his job. At some deeper level he knew that such an attitude would quickly mean the end of his job, but he could live with that. The path he was about to follow would lead him far beyond his job. He was on the verge, he felt, of developing a philosophy.
Pratt wondered what came next. He was carefully retying his shoelaces when the door to his office opened. It was Glock, Pratt’s supervisor, and the man who’d chosen Pratt for the Montreal deal. Glock didn’t come into the office; he leaned in the doorway, crossing his arms. His face was expressive and rubbery; now it expressed a scowl.
“You didn’t find things interesting in Montreal? Geez. You should’ve called. Northern’s guy really liked you, he really did, he called me to ask if anything was the matter. What’s the matter? Didn’t you like the guy? He said you two hit it off. That’s a good connection, Pratt. You should’ve called, we could have talked about it. What’s the matter?”
Pratt winced at the flood of language Glock undimmed in his direction. He couldn’t even remember the guy from Northern. “I don’t feel good,” he told Glock.
“Geez. You don’t look that good. You don’t feel good? You didn’t feel good?”
“I didn’t feel good.”
“You should have called. You don’t feel good? Geez, go home. This isn’t high school, Pratt. Go home if you don’t feel good.”
Pratt went home. He did his best to avoid overhearing conversations on the way back, taking side streets and veering wide when he passed couples or groups of people. A grey man with a tattered hat stepped up from against the side of a building and stuck his hand out at Pratt. “Spare change man? I gotta get something to eat.” Pratt edged away from him without answering.
By the time he was safely back in his apartment Pratt had formulated his new ambition: he
wanted a divorce from the English language. He felt amazed at the simplicity and grace of his plan. The relationship he strove to strike up with the world was uniquely shallow: the world consistently misunderstood, and pressed him for further commitment. Pratt wanted to turn the world down, definitively this time, and the abandonment of the language of his fellow men seemed to him the perfect embodiment of this ideal.
Pratt knew from lifelong experience that words sometimes slipped free of their meanings when he repeated them over and over, or wrote them down again and again; they became abstract, and refused to adhere. Words could hemorrhage, and bleed empty of their lifeblood meaning. He decided to perfect this technique, if it could be perfected, to systematize it, and through it, forget the entirety of the English language. The very thought of it made him hungry and impatient for this loss, for the empty completeness of it, like a man finally stepping free of his shadow, yet he knew it would take a long time – years perhaps. Pratt didn’t mind. He knew he could rein in his impatience, he knew he had what it took. He knew he was good for it.
Nonetheless, Pratt shook with excitement. He went into the living room and sat down in the middle of the couch, fighting to breathe evenly and cleanly, struggling not to cross his legs. I’ll start now, he told himself, and began searching for a word with which to begin. I’ll lose my first words first, he thought; that’s the proper way to do it.
Mommy, mommy, mommy, Pratt thought heavily and intentionally. He said it aloud: “Mommy, mommy, mommy, Mommy-mommymommy.” He groped on the coffee table for a legal pad and scribbled the word again and again in looping script; mommy, mommy, mommy.
The syllables were perfect, near nonsense to begin with, and they lost their meaning for Pratt almost immediately. But he didn’t stop there. He pressed on, his tongue swelling on big mommymommy syllables, spittle collecting in the corners of his mouth, four pages filled with illegible mommymommy and then on to the fifth, pencil point blunted fat like tongue, mommymommymommy.
