The Legend of Green Snake and White Snake
Page 3
"Of course, Xu, I would be much honored to have him in our home," she replied. (And Xu heard the "him" as "her" because he already knew Miss White was a woman. He had no idea of the firestorm about to engulf him. Bringing a demon home to meet your mother is not a good idea.)
Xu lead Miss White into the front room of their small house and then went into the kitchen to meet his mother. As soon as she looked at Miss White she turned to Xu and hissed in a not-very-quiet whisper, "I thought you said you were bringing you sponsor here! Why did you bring this hussy in shiny clothes into my house?"
Xu was a bit flummoxed by this turn of events. He thought he had been clear, and wasn't sure why his mother was so upset. "Mother, Miss White is my sponsor. She is the one who will help me."
"No she won't. Have you been the one with my son these long weeks? Are you the one who has taken my son away from me? Leave my house at once. At once!" Spittle flew from her mouth as she became increasingly enraged at Miss White. "Out! I knew from the moment I saw you that you were trouble! Out of my house!"
Miss White was in no condition to deal with Xu's mother. In all of her years of taking young men back to the Banbudao she had never actually talked to one of their mothers, and she could tell that Xu's mother meant to have her head. Only the thought of helping Xu to do good stopped her from reaching out and plucking the head of the old woman's shoulders. She turned to Xu and said as calmly as possible, "Perhaps we should end our business for today. I will meet you in the public square at 9 o'clock tomorrow morning and we will begin your work." She turned on her heel and was out the door in a flash.
"To your room right now, young man, and don't come out until you can recite an entire royal edict from memory!" Xu looked at his mother aghast, and said "I thought you didn't want me to study any more mother!"
"Go to your room this instant. You won't be going to the square tomorrow or any other day! I will run that woman out of our village if it's the last thing I ever do!" She stormed out of the house as well, not sure of where she should go but knowing that she had to do something to save her son.
As she walked out onto the high street she saw Fahai passed out by the side of the road. In the six weeks of Xu's absence he had shown no magical abilities aside from an amazing capacity to put away wine. He was a schmuck, but maybe that was just the kind of person Xu's mother was looking for at the moment.
"Master Fahai, I need your help," she called out. Fahai lifted up his head and stared at her without a wink of comprehension. "You remember me, don't you? You helped me when my son disappeared. I need your help because I think he had been consorting with a demon!"
Fahai's head rolled back down toward his chest as she spoke, but at the word demon he perked up a bit. "Did you say demon?" he slurred. "I can take care of demons all right. Where is it? I'll take it on single-handed!"
"Oh Master Fahai, thank you. Please come with me to my house and I will tell you the whole situation over a fine lunch."
"Will there be wine?"
"Yes, I suppose there will be or you will have a hard time holding your interest." And so Fahai followed after Xu's mother to begin an assault on a demon that she wasn’t sure existed. She hoped that Fahai was not so incapable that he couldn't scare away a dreadful woman after her son. It wasn't a very elegant solution, but one that she could live with.
Xu stayed in his room for most of the day. He heard his mother bring Fahai back to the house and listened as she told Fahai that Miss White was a demon and needed to be run out of town. The more wine she brought to him the more willing he became to attack her. Xu was amazed that a man could drink as much wine as Fahai without dying. Maybe he had learned some mystical secret of how to hold alcohol in his training. (No, he just practiced a lot.) It took a while for Xu to understand the danger in the situation. Since Miss White was in fact a demon, if Fahai was in any way competent as a sorcerer then he could actually hurt Miss White. Xu decided he had to help her. He packed his bag as quietly as possible and left through his window to try and find Miss White and Miss Green and warn them. His mother wouldn't find that he was gone until that evening when she brought dinner to his room, and by then he and the demons would be far away.
Xu wandered the streets of the town for hours looking for the Miss White and Miss Green. He was afraid that they had gone back to the Banbudao. If they had he was out of luck. They would come back just in time to be ambushed tomorrow morning. He became desperate, and decided to head down to the creek and see if Miss Green was hunting frogs. He worked his way through the thick brush that bordered the creek and spotted Miss Green with a huge congregation of frogs around her. She was chanting to them, and their little froggy heads seemed to bob in rhythm with her words.
Little froggies, delicious treats,
Who wants to come and be my eats?
I'll love you for the time it takes
For you to go to mouth from plates.
You'll love your home inside my gut,
And I'll love you from head to butt.
"Miss Green!" Xu called out. "Miss Green, you are in danger!"
She jumped straight up, and ended up clutching a branch in the form of a tiger. She let loose a roar that sent the frogs scattering and loosed Xu's bowels all over his pants. She seemed to regain herself enough to laugh at him, a strange sound when it comes from a tiger, and then she changed back into her human form.
"Xu, what in the world are you doing interrupting my dinner? Those froggies were practically ready to hop into my mouth when you interrupted us. What am I going to eat now?"
"Miss Green, I'm sorry for startling you. Please, don't turn into a tiger again. You could have killed me from fright."
"Well, I could have just killed you and eaten you for dinner, but you aren't nearly as nice as a frog."
"You and Miss White are in danger! My mother has told the sorcerer Fahai about you, and he is planning to attack tomorrow morning when Miss White waits for me in the square. We must leave now!"
"Eck, a sorcerer, eh? That's too bad. Well, hold my hand and I'll take you back into the Banbudao so we can find White. She won't be very pleased at this."
As they passed through the fabric of the mortal world in a puff of smoke, Xu thought that he heard Miss Green say something about finding a place with bigger frogs next time.
5
Miss White was very upset when Xu told him about his mother and Fahai. She and Miss Green left him for a while to talk together, and when they returned they told him their plan.
"You will return for a few minutes and write your mother a letter telling her that you are leaving for Beijing to prepare for the imperial examination. When that is done, we will leave for Xi'an immediately, and we will carry out our plan from there. Fahai will never find us there, it is too far from Beijing, and we will still be able to start you on your road to helping the people." Miss White looked at Xu for his approval of her plan, and he had no choice but to agree when she went for his left arm. As she ripped it off and began to eat it she said, "Next time you should remember to agree more quickly!" Xu laughed, pretty sure that Miss White was joking with him. Pretty sure.
Their life in Xi'an turned out to be a pleasant one. After spending a few weeks in the city observing the people and talking with them about what things they needed, Xu decided the best way he could help them would be to open an apothecary shop. With Miss White and Miss Green hidden in the back, he would be able to diagnose ailments accurately, and with their help he would also have a steady supply of any herbs he needed to make medicines for the people. He and Miss White played the role of a shopkeeper and his wife well, and it wasn't long before his shop became well-known and respected. While he couldn't save everyone who passed through his shop's door, he did much good in return for very little money. That year he decided to skip the imperial exam and continue helping the people of Xi'an, and Miss White agreed. She had become quite adept at playing the role of a happy housewife, and she thought one more year wouldn't hurt their plan at all.
Miss Green decided it was time to increase her cosmic powers of frog attraction. She worked out every morning in the Banbudao, learning more demonly skills and then practicing in the jungles in the afternoons. She tried to move around a lot, because the longer she stayed in any one place the sharper the drop in the frog population. She was good, very good, and she eventually began to experiment with eating different species of tree frogs in order to make different colored clouds of gas. It became a big hit at the parties that followed demon councils in the Banbudao, and Miss Green seemed quite content to eat her frogs and make her clouds of colored flatulence. What more could a demon ask for?
6
Fahai made his way west after leaving Xu's village. Xu's mother had told him of Xu's letter, but he really wasn't up for a trip to Beijing. He'd gotten kicked out a few years before after he faked a demon banishment by blowing up a duck. The duck's bill hit the provincial governor's wife in the eye as it blasted free during the explosion, and Fahai had to flee for his life. Going back there was not a good idea. Being a mystic really wasn't all that great. He went for really long periods between jobs because he had started to become a bit famous around the area. Everyone knew that if he came to town wine disappeared much faster than demons, and so many towns gave him just one barrel and told him flimsy little stories of demons in the next village. He knew they were lying, but he took their wine and left anyways. He had banished a few demons, like the one he turned into a milk bone and threw into a crowd of wild dogs. It would take that demon a long time to reform, he was sure of it. Other times had not been quite so successful. He turned two demons in a row into wine cups, which didn't help much as they reformed as soon as he finished drinking out of them. Maybe he was losing his touch.
He came into Xi'an in the spring. He had been without steady work in a village for almost six months, something that had never happened to him before. He decided that he would try to turn over a new leaf in the big city, become a reputable sorcerer. And if he did well enough at that maybe he could get an apprentice or two. He wouldn't ask for gold as payment, just wine. The young sorcerers would flock to learn from him. Wine for payment was a steal. (At least for him.)
He wasn't long in town before he heard about the apothecary shop that was so good at diagnosing problems. During his months on the road he had started to grow some really painful corns on the bottom of his feet, so he decided to stop in and see what they could do for him. As soon as he walked in he thought he recognized Xu. It took nearly a minute of staring and grunting before the name came to him, and during that time Xu had begun to think that he had some sort of nervous system disorder that made it impossible to speak. And his beard could definitely use a delousing. It was rank.
"Xu the scholar!" he finally blurted out. "I remember now. You come from that little village with all of the frogs by the creek. Your mother told me you were off to Beijing. How in the world did you end up opening an apothecary shop in Xi'an when you're supposed to be in Beijing?"
"Do I know you?" Xu asked. He had never actually seen Fahai, because most of the time the sorcerer was in his village Xu had been in the Banbudao with Miss White.
"Well, I suppose we never met. I was in your village for a while last year and your mother was gracious enough to feed and water me a few times. But that isn't important, what are you doing here?"
"I live here with my wife. Hold on, let me call her, I think she's in the back. She would like to meet a friend of mother's." As Xu left the front of the shop Fahai immediately began to feel suspicious. Xu's mother had told him that the first time he had ever brought a woman home to meet his mother it had been a demon, and if a demon was bold enough to pretend to meet his mother then she would definitely be bold enough to pretend to be his wife. He quietly began to take his magic items out of his bag, hoping that he was right. If he could banish a demon on his first day in town he would get a huge following for sure!
Fahai heard Xu talking to his wife as they came back towards the front of the shop. "I'm sure it's fine, White, he seems to be a harmless old man with a rotten beard, that's all."
"If that's all he is then I don't want to meet him right now. Do you understand how hard it is to make proper rice dumplings? I'm never going to finish in time for the party tonight, and now you're dragging me away from my work to meet a crusty old man with a beard that's falling off his face. I can't believe you!"
Fahai thought to himself that if this was a demon then it had certainly learned the knack of how to sound like a nitpicking housewife. A moment of doubt hit him, and he started to quickly put things back into his bag.
Xu came back around to the front of the shop with a shy smile and an apology on his lips. "Well, as you may have heard, it is pretty busy with the Duanwu festival tomorrow. We have actually been invited to a party by one of the local magistrates and my wife is working diligently to finish the dumplings that we're to take. The party itself should be really great; it's going to be out at the old Imperial Tower outside the city. You wouldn't want to meet us there and join us as guests, would you?" This was merely Xu's attempt at courtesy, but Fahai was starving.
"Yes, I'd be pleased to accept your invitation. What time shall I come by?"
Xu was now doubly embarrassed, first because of his wife not coming out to meet this guest, and now because he had invited a guest to come to someone else's party. He had barely even been invited himself, and now he had invited another person. "I suppose you could come out around 11 o'clock tonight. The magistrate told us not to come too early because he wanted us to enjoy the Duanwu moon at midnight together. Do you know the way to the tower?"
"Oh, I shall find my way alright. Say, you don't happen to have any medicine available for an old friend of your mother's, do you?"
"Certainly, just put this salve on your corns every day for two weeks and they will be gone."
"What? How did you know I have corns?"
"Ah, just call it a trick of the trade. I suppose I'll be seeing you tonight, Mr., Ah, I don't seem to have gotten your name."
"I am called Fahai. I look forward to tonight."
Fahai left wondering how Xu could have known that his problem was corns without him saying so, and Xu stared after him in wonder at the size of Fahai's corns. They were so big they looked ready to take over his feet. He would need a lot more than an herbal salve to get rid of those monsters.
In the late evening Xu and Miss White made their way out of the city towards the old Imperial Tower. It was a relic left over from the days when the capital was in Xi'an, before it had moved out to Beijing. The tower itself had been abandoned for years and looked about ready to fall over, but it made a great backdrop for a party and so the local magistrate used it for the purpose whenever he could. Miss White had been excited about attending as soon as they were invited.
"Do you know why I love the Duanwu Festival so much?" she asked Xu.
"No, dear, please tell me all about it." (Xu's henpecked husband was certainly the equal of White's nitpicking housewife by this time. What a couple they were!)
"This festival is really in honor of me. Qu Yuan was one of my favorite boyfriends, and he didn't jump in the river because of the emperor, he jumped because of me. I was so touched that I told the villagers they should throw rice dumplings in the river to save his body. What an act of love it was!"
"Dear, that happened hundreds of years ago, how could you h
ave known Qu Yuan?"
"You forget what I really am, my love." As Miss White turned to look at Xu she let her eyes transform into the eyes of the great white snake, milky white with a long, pointed black pupil. Xu was so startled that he nearly fell off his horse.
"Don't do that!" he screeched. It took ten minutes before his heart calmed back down, and Miss White laughed at him for most of the time.
"Oh, darling, don't worry. I haven't changed forms in ages. Sometimes I think I wouldn't even remember how." They rode the rest of the way to the tower in silence, Miss White sometimes chuckling to herself and Xu clutching at his chest.
The party was one of the great events of the season. The magistrate had gone to great lengths to observe as many customs as possible, so wormwood sprigs were hung from every tree, sachets of fragrant herbs were passed out to each guest as they arrived, and rice dumplings were steaming in great pots next to the serving tables. The guests were excited to be at such a great party, and even the servants seemed excited. The magistrate had a feeling that something amazing would happen that night, but of course he had no idea what. That didn't stop him from telling all the guests who cared to listen to his prediction, however.
Xu and Miss White were treated like local celebrities. The magistrate congratulated Xu on the success of his shop and all of the good it had been doing for the people of Xi'an. He told Xu and Miss White that he had already sent information on to the capital of what a good service it was to the people to have people such as them in the city, and he was sure that if Xu ever had dreams of imperial service this would be a help to him. Miss White just looked at Xu and smiled.
As midnight approached, the magistrate gathered the guests together and told them that he knew something exciting was about to happen. He was a very superstitious old man, but sometimes even the superstitious are given confirmation that their beliefs have merit. As he prattled on and on Miss White looked and Xu and said in a whisper, "Shall I give him a manifestation of the great white snake to prove him right?"