Jade Man's Skin

by Daniel Fox

  Surveying Old Yen and Pao in the boat there, precariously huddled against the sheer rock of the Forge.

  He was utterly certain that she saw him in person, specifically. Saw him and dismissed him, he hoped, he prayed: why would she care about one more mortal man, so long as his boat was not out upon her waters?

  But she seemed to grow in the sky as she came lower, as she spiraled lazily in the air above the Forge, as she stretched out her legs and the claws glinted darkly and she came down; and for a little while there he really did think that owning a boat was offense enough and she was coming down to destroy them.

  He told Pao to swim for shore but the boy wasn’t listening, or couldn’t move. He wasn’t sure that he could move himself. His limbs were tired, awkward, useless things; his body was a trap, dull and heavy, beneath contempt. Her contempt, as he stood within her shadow.

  And then the dragon wasn’t interested in them after all, or not yet. She settled on the island’s peak, where the smoke was rising. Old Yen couldn’t guess and refused to imagine what business she had with the pirate or his passengers, why the smoke should summon her.

  He didn’t at all imagine that it could end well, for any except the dragon.

  EVEN SO he stayed, and the boy with him. His goddess wouldn’t be pleased if he abandoned innocents, marooning them on this island where nobody came, giving them over to the dragon’s uncertain care. He would have fewer qualms—no, he’d have no qualms at all—about abandoning the pirate. That man was responsible for everything dreadful that had happened here, the slaughter of the monks and the dragon’s release. It would be nothing but justice to leave him with the bones of his victims and no help else. If he wanted a reward, he could look to the dragon for it, and hope not to find it in her belly.

  The goddess might disagree, though, even about that. These were her waters, in many ways the dragon had been her prisoner; she would frown—he thought—on anyone’s being left to those untender mercies. The guilty too could look to her for succor. Even if it came tempered with justice, that would be her own and not Old Yen’s. Neither the dragon’s.

  Pao stayed because there was nowhere to go, if the boat wasn’t leaving. That’s what Old Yen assumed, at least. The boy crouched high in the bows, turned away from him and the island both, not to see if the dragon came down to eat them.

  WHO CAME, in the end, were the pirate and the doctor and the girl.

  Not the boy with the chains and the crippled hand. On the way here, Old Yen had wondered if he had a crippled mind as well, he had behaved so oddly. Perhaps they had bought the dragon’s favor, with his life? Old Yen was sure that the pirate at least would leap at such a bargain.

  They came down in a little group together, like conspirators, struggling over the rocks. The pirate even helped the others when he had to, and they accepted it, when they had to; then he whistled across the water for the sampan.

  Old Yen fetched them himself, giving Pao just a little more time to find his courage.

  Himself, he felt emboldened. A dragon had passed across his sky; more, she had looked at him directly. What should he fear now?

  He said, “Where is the boy?”

  “The boy will not be coming.”

  Old Yen stopped plying his oar, right there in the slack water between boat and rocky shore. “Why not?”

  For this he was ready to fight, unless the boy was dead already. It would be a fight he would lose, of course; but then they would all be losers, because the pirate could not take his boat over the rocks. He thought—he hoped!—the man would realize that, and not fight.

  In fact it was the girl who answered him, who dispelled any need for fighting. “Han told us to go.” She sounded desolate but determined.

  “Why so?”

  “Because he and the dragon are … bonded, in ways I can’t explain.” Not ways she didn’t understand; it was apparently his understanding that would fail, if she tried to lay them out. Well, he could believe that. He had seen the boy, and he had seen the dragon. There was no bargaining there. “He thinks we’ll be safer if we’re gone,” the girl went on, “he says we must go …”

  The pirate had fetched them here; would a cripple boy send them away?

  Perhaps, with the dragon’s shadow at his back. The pirate was nodding. “Believe it, fisherman. The boy has some hold on the dragon. Not much, but enough perhaps to hold her off, while you take us to safety.”

  “And what of the boy, then?”

  A shrug. “Perhaps he can keep her away indefinitely, without us to worry about.”

  “And do what, live here? Live how?”

  Another shrug. Li Ton had no answer. Nor did the girl: only a silent, obvious, impossible wish for things to be otherwise. It was her uncle the doctor who said, “One man could live here, if he was careful about it. The monks had gardens, I saw those, and there must be game. Small game. Han is no fool. He could survive …”

  For a while, perhaps, if he was lucky. He didn’t seem to have been very lucky so far in his life.

  “You could bring him fish?” the girl suggested. Meaning, all too clearly, you could bring him fish and eggs and rice and meat. And greenstuff that he’s not smart enough to grow. And me …

  With the dragon abroad, Old Yen thought that no one would be bringing anything to the boy. No one would be sailing to the Forge, or anywhere else in the strait. He was kind; he didn’t say so, yet. Also, he didn’t want her plunging off the sampan to hide up somewhere on the island until the dragon left.

  He said, “I’ll take you back to Taishu.”

  “No,” the pirate said. “Not Taishu. Not Santung, either. Anywhere but the city.”

  “Why so?”

  “If we go to Taishu, we lose the boat. If we go to Santung, we lose the boat.” He meant, clearly, I lose the boat, but he was right either way. The emperor’s men on Taishu, the generalissimo’s men in Santung, either would seize command and mastery of Old Yen’s boat as soon as he brought her into harbor. The emperor needed all the fleet he could achieve, to provision and protect his empire, his little island; the generalissimo had just lost all the fleet he had. “I need to speak to someone,” Li Ton went on, “and General Ping Wen may not be so easy to reach a second time. Also, he might not be so pleased to see us back. Tunghai Wang will see me, I am sure, so we will go that way. I am less sure that I will want to give him what he asks for. I want to keep this boat and you to sail her, fisherman, since my own Shalla has been taken from me. You must know somewhere we can put in undisturbed, close enough to reach Santung, far enough to be safe.”

  Old Yen did what he had to, to survive. He had been a fisherman all his life, for his own sake and his family’s; now at last there was only himself to consider. Himself and his boat. He had been a faithful subject, plying back and forth across the strait in the emperor’s cause, because the risks of cooperation were always fewer than the risks of refusal. Now apparently he was enlisted in the ranks of the rebels, for the selfsame reason. Old Yen could worry about that, because the rebels’ triumph would be the emperor’s despair, and Mei Feng was with the emperor. Worrying was all that he could manage, though, and it was probably useless. Nothing he did was likely to affect the outcome. One man with a boat was not so much.

  And yes, of course he knew a place on the coast where he could bring them privately to land.

  He knew many such, but he had one particularly in mind.

  IT FELT strange to be watching the sky for something other than weather; it was hard to remember that he must watch the water too, that she was as likely to rise as to fall.

  Impossible not to watch, although there was nothing he could do if the dragon came.

  Nothing but pray, at any rate, and he was doing that already.

  He did that anyway, his simply being on the water was a prayer; his boat’s hull carried the characters for “hope” and “luck” and the goddess’s blessing, cut deep into the wood below the waterline. He had asked a priest to write them on when she was beach
ed one time, long ago; the cutting he had done himself, and renewed it himself every storm season.

  More, his every glance, his every move at sea carried an awareness of the Li-goddess, her generosity, her benevolence. He could not look at a horizon without seeing her hand cupped in protection; he could not taste the salt wind without feeling her kiss on his lips. All of that was prayer, a constant muted undercurrent.

  Today, though, he prayed aloud. Surprised himself, almost, with the steady monotone growl of it as he chanted like a dutiful monk in appeal to his goddess to watch over them, as he kept peering back over his shoulder like a doubtful fisherman in case the dragon took wing in their pursuit.

  For a long time he could still see her, as motionless as a temple roof-dragon, where she coiled squatly on the peak of the Forge: an outline, poised and deadly. And blessedly holding still, not uncurling in outrage at the impudence of a boat upon her waters, not flying lethally arrow-straight to send them down and down to her former prison, to the deep.

  But she dropped below his skyline, and then he had nothing to trust but prayer; his eyes were no use anymore where she might come striking through the underwater, invisible to watchers.

  He could not, he dared not distrust his goddess, but neither would he take her for granted. He was dutifully anxious, then, although she sent a helpful wind on his quarter and a smoothing sea that even his bastard boat could scud across like a young cat over short grass, head high and delighted.

  The pirate was just as watchful, staying close beside him at the stern and calling the boy Pao to his duty if the sails slacked even a little, interrogating Old Yen about the landing-place he’d chosen, even while his head kept turning just as often as Old Yen’s did to scan the sky behind them, and—even more uselessly—the dark secrets of the sea.

  THE SUN covered its track across the sky as the boat covered its track across the waters, and no dragon came from above or below. Nothing threatened, even the weather stayed kindly; Old Yen almost faltered in his praying as the coast rose like a wall ahead, like a limit to worry. Almost. It was his song now, though, settled in his bones. He worked his oar to the rhythm of his chanting; it was his prayer that brought them home.

  That brought them actually into a deep shadowed creek, just around sunset. For Old Yen, at least, it was sunset. There was still light enough above to make the temple stand out on the headland. Old Yen smiled privately as he spoke to the pirate, as he nodded across the creek:

  “There is a path, that you will see come morning. That will take you to the road, and the road will take you to Santung.”

  “Come morning, the road will take us all, I think. To be certain.

  I might leave the boy. There is work enough aboard to keep him busy, and I don’t believe he could sail her single-handed.”

  Nor could he defend her single-handed—but Pao was a sensible lad, with a gift for avoiding trouble. It was Old Yen who had dragged him into this; who had no recourse now but to nod easily and say, “Will you object if I go up to the temple there, to give my thanks to the Li-goddess?”

  “I thought you had done that, all the way over. But go if you want to, go now. Ask the priests if the goddess has any food she can spare us.”

  There were no priests at this temple, and Old Yen doubted that there was any food to spare anywhere within forage of Santung. Even the goddess might be going hungry, even in her busy places. Old Yen liked to make little offerings from the boat, as though all the sea were her temple; even he hadn’t had much to give her recently, bar fish heads. Which might have made a soup else, but he was perhaps a little tired of fish-head soup.

  Still, he thanked the pirate politely, as though he did need permission to leave his own boat; he took the sampan and poled ashore as though he cared not a whit about leaving his boat in that man’s charge. He didn’t offer to take any of the others. The boy would have to learn to deal with the pirate, at least until the pirate wasn’t there. The other two, the girl and the doctor, were not his concern. Let them make their own devotions in their own way, if they were devout at all. He supposed the doctor must be, or how else would he bring about his cures?

  This, now, this was a devotion in itself for Old Yen: this climb from the little strand to the clifftop. There was a path but it was steep and hard to find in the thick light, muddy and slippery underfoot, always a penance. Today, exhausted by nerves and wonder on top of too much work, feeling every year of his age, he had to pause halfway. And looked down to see his boat solitary in the channel, picked out by lamplight in the cabin and at the stern, and thought a little about each of those separate lives below, and how unlikely it was that they had all been brought here together.

  And turned and went on up, knowing that at least he was still on the track of his life, serving the Li-goddess and sailing the strait; and came to the top of the cliff at last, aching and grunting, glad to be alone.

  And stood for a little while looking at the sun as it fell again, that last little way to a farther horizon. Dull red fire was swallowed by darkening glistening quenching waters, as though the dragon had been repossessed by the goddess. That thought made him search for the Forge but there was nothing now, not the least touch of light on its peak to tease his eyes into wondering whether or not the silhouette of a dragon still showed.

  With the sea dark and the sky darkening to match it, Old Yen turned at last toward the temple where he would light a lamp and make little offerings—the best that he could manage, better than fish heads but only slightly—and stay awhile just to speak to the goddess, to tell her about his day and his anxieties about tomorrow and his granddaughter and the world …

  AND STOPPED, because a light already showed in the doorway, in this place where no one came except himself. There was no priest, no nun; rumors and fear kept local people away. Briefly he thought the rumors must be true after all, the goddess herself did indeed visit her own house here; he thought she had come for him.

  Then a shadow moved between the light and the door and, briefly again, he thought his own suspicions were right instead, the temple was used as a shelter for thieves and smugglers, outlaws. Spies, perhaps. He wasn’t the only man who took the emperor’s men to and fro across the strait. He had brought them to this same creek, indeed, though never to this holy place. Another sea-captain might have suggested the temple as a roof, shelter, a base to return to; or the men might have found it themselves, empty and apparently abandoned …

  Except that, even to old and tired eyes at this most confusing moment of the half-light, that shadow was no man, be he thief or spy. No woman, neither. Just too short …

  And then he knew, he was sure he knew who was here, where they ought not to be. And he ought to tell them so, tell the mother at least; but it was the little girl who stepped out onto the broad top step and stooped to pick up something, a basket he thought, and called back over her shoulder as she did so, “We have greens here, Mother, and cold rice, and vinegar. That’s good, Jin likes—”

  And then she must have seen him in the corner of her eye, although he didn’t think he’d moved. Perhaps she only sensed his watching, felt the weight of his gaze. She turned and peered into the near-dark, and called a little uncertainly, “Hullo? Have you brought us food, too …?”

  And then her mother was there, swift and anxious with a lamp in her hand, the other arm around her little girl and her voice sharp, “Who’s there? Come into the light, let the goddess see you …”

  That was a bluff, but a good one. Anyone come this far from the road, lingering uncertainly, likely they’d be no more than a gawping peasant drawn by whispers; likely her command would make them run. Which she would want, far more than a man standing in her light, on her threshold …

  Old Yen was that man, and likely she would not want him either, but he went anyway: across the thick tussock-grass to the temple steps and up those, four and four; so that they met in the doorway, on the threshold, both of them knowing it was not hers and she had no right to it.

&
nbsp; He said, “You should not,” and again, “you should not be here.”

  His fault, perhaps; he had sent them here, the woman and her two daughters, when they found him on the strand below. But only for a night or two, he’d meant, and then move on. They couldn’t treat the Li-goddess as a landlady, her house as common boarding …

  He’d thought that was obvious. He did still think so. What was she, a priestess, to linger like this? What were her daughters, votive offerings?

  Someone thought so, apparently; more than someone. She said, “I know; but the people hereabouts bring us gifts of food, and the temple gives us a roof. Should I take my daughters on the road, in the rain, to face their hunger?”

  “If you had done that, the goddess would have led you somewhere safe.”

  She smiled wryly, an expression he was used to on others’ faces. “I feel safe here. I don’t believe the goddess will turn us out. We take care of her house, at least, and burn incense when the people bring us some.”

  He could smell it, indeed, like prayer in the air, and still didn’t think that was enough. It was for the goddess to say, of course, not for him—but it was hard to step back from indignation, to settle his soul to the notion.

  He stepped inside, and yes, this was not the temple he had left last, filthy and neglected. There was lamplight rather than starlight, not a hole in the roof; there was nothing underfoot but the proper planking of the floor, well scrubbed; there were all the idols in their niches in the walls, gleaming bright in the writhing smoke from incense pots and joss sticks everywhere.

  And there was a bed improvised in one corner, quilts and comfort; and there were the two girls as well as the woman, and still none of this felt right.

  Perhaps he only wanted his old ruined temple back because it was his own, by right of long observance? Perhaps he resented her for making this place more properly a place of worship, and so less his own …?