by Mike Heppner
A mesa of swirled sand covered the northern peak. Across the valley, she could see the people of her village still waiting to peer into the telescope. Regaining her bearings, she noticed a slender black object perched atop a cairn. The Raven! The great bird stared at the girl fiercely, its red eyes blinking as it held a tattered carcass in its beak. When it finally spoke, the piece of shredded flesh fell to the ground.
“I know your dreams,” the creature hissed. Steam filled its mouth, rising in thick curls. “You seek to leave this place, my daughter. The men of this tribe have done you a great wrong. You do not deserve their rejection.”
“It is Sirius that I desire, my lord.” Tsin-gah’s knees ached as she lowered herself to the earth. Sand sifted across the mesa, hurting her eyes. “Sirius is the only man who can make me happy. His blaze is the brightest in all of the tar-black sky. Men and women from all tribes worship his authority. I wish to be the one that people see— even if only as a half-hidden presence—whenever they gaze up at Sirius’s flame. To be his wife, to share his happiness . . . please grant me this wish, O blessed Raven!”
The Raven stood silent for a moment, his clawed fingers chipping away at the stony ground. “Your request is odd,” he said, then stooped to seize the carcass in his jaws. “And yet I know your heart is true.” His wings beat once against his rocky pedestal, propelling him across the cold Pacific. The sky opened, and the Raven slipped into a fold.
Across the narrow valley, the forest shook, overcome by a violent storm. The tribesmen stood near the edge of the lower mesa. With a gasp, Tsin-gah suddenly realized that they were all looking at her. A flash of pale light revealed the terror in their eyes. All at once, the hill dropped out from under her feet. Cold wind rushed past her ears, and as the planet shrank away, the air became harder and harder to breathe. Far from home, she could see the rocky coast of the Pacific. The great patch of land beyond the ocean was surprisingly vast. Having crossed the upper atmosphere, she could no longer move, or scream, or—worst of all—close her eyes, for a thick layer of dirty ice now covered her body, freezing her joints solid. She could only accept the burn of the ice, the way it stung her optic nerves to the core. Passing planets, weird spaceships, she left the galaxy transformed into a fiery rock of combustion. Magma settled; lightning crossed the equator. She had no real awareness of her body, only a dim belief that she occupied a large space within a gigantic void. She retained her sight, if little else; she could see her own glow, its cloudy shade the milky texture of a pearl. A bright circle, bigger than the rest, pulsed in the distance. Sirius! Claimed by a rush of passion, Tsin-gah’s light swelled and then cooled. She stared at him, waiting. Sirius remained aloof, an engine raging in the peak of its years. Alien. Remote. Self-sufficient. The young girl stammered. She didn’t know what to say.
“Sirius!” she cried. “It is Tsin-gah, your wife! I have traveled these many light years to serve by your side. Why won’t you embrace me?”
Silence. A familiar sound, a smell would have calmed her, eased her fear. But the void would yield nothing, only the sight of Sirius’s bold profile, large and two-dimensional. Just then, the Raven spread its wings across the sun. So poised, the bird resembled an ungodly insignia, the corporate stamp of whatever agency had brought Tsin-gah to this doomed place.
“Raven!” she shouted. The bird moved its head in response, yawing its beak three times to show that it understood. “What is wrong with my husband? Why won’t he acknowledge his beloved Tsin-gah?”
“You are Tsin-gah no longer,” responded the Raven. His knobby toes flexed in the starlight. “From now on, you shall be known as Sirius B.”
“But . . .” Tsin-gah stammered, not liking the cold precision of this, her new name. “How will my family know me, then?”
“You shall have no further use for them,” the bird continued. “You belong to your husband. He is your reality. You are merely a suffix to his glory.”
“I don’t believe you,” she cried, frantic now. She longed for her hands and feet, her young girl’s body. “Let me talk to him. I won’t listen to your lies.”
Blinking once, the Raven went on: “Though Sirius seems near in your sight, he is in fact many light years away. He hardly even knows you’re here. So long as you continue to live, you will never touch him, nor will you speak to him, nor will you share the slightest intimacy. You are the dying rock that makes his radiance seem all the brighter.”
“Dying?” Tsin-gah wondered, aware now of her changed appearance. “But I’m only thirteen years old!”
“Tsin-gah is no more,” the Raven reminded her. “Now you are Sirius B. Sirius B is a white dwarf. An old star nearing the final stages of its evolution.”
“But . . . but I thought—”
“You thought you were in love.” The bird flexed its wings, preparing for flight. “You saw Sirius’s grand light and assumed that it burned for you. But Sirius burns for no one but himself. You are less than incidental. The only feeling others have toward you is pity. When people look to the sky, they see only Sirius, rarely his insignificant partner. You have enslaved yourself, rendered yourself a secondary being. And for this, Sirius neither cares, nor shows his thanks. Look, here, how he shines!” Raising his wings, the Raven pulled his legs into his breast, showing more of the star’s white flame. “Stable. Distant. Wholly independent from you.”
“But surely Sirius loves me?” Tsin-gah asked.
Annoyed, the Raven sprang up and out of view. Unencumbered by the black bird’s form, the star Sirius blazed like a reckless sphere of amazement, insistently proclaiming its own superiority. Tsin-gah could not look away. This was the choice that she had made.
Commentary: Though its science may be obscure, this tale teaches us the value of properly considering a partner’s credentials before signing a contract of marriage. (M.H.S.)
The Tale of Jen-teen and the Second Draft
Compiler’s note: Our next story involves a controversial divorce between the Chinese emperor Jen-tsung and his neglected wife, Jen-teen. Hoping to regain the throne, Jen-teen alleged that her ex-husband had betrayed the principles of Confucian law by seeking an annulment. While her efforts succeeded in tarnishing the emperor’s image, she was ultimately unable to topple his reign, which lasted for forty-one years until his death in 1063. (M.H.S.)
It had rained in K’ai-feng, and the air smelled of wet wood. Wide boards ran between the buildings. Jen-teen’s hardwood sandals clacked across the busy street. She was a tall woman, and most of the ladies of the palace suspected her of being a foreigner. Then again, they suspected her of everything, from poisoning the Regent to seducing a drug merchant from Arabia. Once, while still empress, she was even accused of suffocating a child inside her womb. Since the divorce, she could not step outside without first wrapping a veil around her face. In the hot, wet months of Honan, this was a miserable way to live. As she walked past the market, she held the veil to one side, trying to breathe. Food merchants and mustachioed scamsters from the West crowded the road, selling fabulous inks at cut-rate prices. Near the edge of the fair, four Arab adolescents wheeled a lame tiger around on an iron cart. A fat, shirtless man with a red apple painted across his belly took money from the crowd, urging them to throw rocks at the tiger—for, as he said, the animal was a freak and deserved only more pain.
Pi Sheng’s factory was a large wooden shanty near the outskirts of the village. A discreet sign hung over the front door. Afraid of the government, Pi Sheng preferred to keep a low profile. The world of transmutation was a shady one, filled with power-mad supplicants hoping to turn copper into gold. Pi Sheng could do without the aggravation, the weird manipulations of the palace elect, all of which operated at cross-purposes and generally ended in blood and black passion.
Jen-teen stepped onto the porch and removed her veil. Long stretches of vellum hung from the roof, bulging and snapping as fabulous letters dried in the wind. Across the yard, a mound of dung steamed inside a wooden stockade. The smell was bad
and strong. Resolved, she pushed a curtain aside and entered the room. Pi Sheng was standing behind a high workbench, shaking a bottle of arsenic. He was not an old man, but many years’ worth of hard living had ruined his complexion. His bald skull was flat near the top, and he used it to balance pots of mercury whenever he needed both hands to hold his tools. In this way, he resembled a mushroom—his head swollen, a hooded stem. He wore a plain tunic, the same tunic every day, and once a week he could be seen dousing it in a bucket of fresh river water, standing naked and rubbing his chin as he waited for his laundry to dry. A naked Pi Sheng was a disconcerting sight, and this afternoon, Jen-teen was grateful for the tunic. She was bothered enough just being here, having to travel incognito, having to sit in a dark and unfamiliar place without the protection of her former guards.
“Master Magician,” she said, kneeling as her robes settled about her. “I come to you in secret. I trust that you will reveal this encounter to no one.”
“I reveal nothing,” the alchemist answered in a high, soft voice. A cloud of arsenic whirled and zoomed around the bell of a brass pot.
Jen-teen indicated the open doorway. “I have seen the scrolls hanging from the roof of your porch,” she said. Past the door, a broad piece of vellum turned in the wind. “You have experience, I trust, with the art of printing?”
“A true magician must know all things.” Pi Sheng moved the brass pot and blew on his fingers. “I have prepared many documents for the emperor. He shows a great interest in literature. Maybe too great.”
Jen-teen nodded, her eyes glittering. For the next hour, she and the magician discussed the state of the kingdom, her own recent divorce. Her mood changed from one extreme to another. Pi Sheng listened in silence, keeping his wisdom to himself. At last, she took his arm. “Pi Sheng, you must help me regain the crown!”
“You wish to poison the emperor?” he asked, bored by it all. “It is not easy. He must drink the metal. He must believe that by drinking the metal, he will gain the Isle of Bliss. This requires deception. Only the metal knows whom it wishes to deceive. I cannot make these decisions for the metal, for to do so would cause the sky to fold.”
“You misunderstand me, great sage.” Jen-teen dried her tears on her sleeve. “Where in the writings of Confucius is it lawful for an emperor to divorce his wife?”
Pi Sheng felt the top of his flat head. “It is not explicit. Confucius does not render an opinion.”
Jen-teen laughed bitterly. “Such is the fate of women! How could our spiritual leader condone such a thing?”
“Confucius neither condones nor condemns. He is not an advocate. The master of our people is never wrong because he is always right.” Something about Pi Sheng’s wry expression told Jen-teen that the man did not entirely believe his own words.
“And yet Confucius was a man. Is this right?” Her eyes flared in the gloom of the workshop. “He wrote laws like a man. His disciples were all men. He spoke to a man’s world.”
“This is true. And yet it is a man you seek to disgrace. A man is judged only by the laws of mankind. And the law of mankind, as spoken by Confucius, gives credence to the chung, the loyalty that each man holds to his own nature. If it is in Jen-tsung’s nature to divorce his wife, then he is not betraying his chung. If he is not betraying his chung, then he has committed no crime. If he has committed no crime—”
“I understand,” Jen-teen interrupted, raising both hands.
“I am only telling you what it says in the Lun yu.” Taking her sleeve, he spoke, cordially now. “Confucius, as you say, was only a man. He did not speak with the inexpressible authority of the Tao.”
A slow dawning lifted her head. “Who is to say, then, what is right? If Confucius was only a man, and his words only mortal opinions, then why may we not change his words to suit our own needs?”
Pi Sheng fiddled with his belt. His hand shook, and he tucked it behind his back. “Change the writings? This is a big thing, that you ask. It would be discovered. The villain would be executed for his crimes. There would be a public trial, a burning, a gruesome disembowelment!”
“No one need know,” she said, making a fist. “Look. Those lawyers in the capital—I know them all! They are fools! They do not know the law. They will believe anything they read.” She pushed the curtains aside and pointed at the long sheets of vellum hanging from the roof beams. The sun made a wide ray that extended all the way to the back of the room. A pile of bright red cinnabar burned in the light. The smell was dreadful, like rotten meat. She continued: “Print me a page of Confucius. Discredit the way of the chung . Prove that it is unlawful for an emperor to divorce his wife without cause or warning. We will drive Jen-tsung out of the capital and I will rule as regent.”
“But Empress,” he protested, “there is no time. I would have to recut the entire Lun yu, and that would take years!” Reaching for her hand, he tried drawing her back into the room, but she was already three steps down the path.
“You must try, sir magician, you must do your best.” Out of breath, she glanced up at the sun and ran across the yard. Inside the factory, the cinnabar ceased to burn as the curtains swung back into place. A white, rolling gas filled the room. Pi Sheng swished the air in front of him, then turned away. The smell of sweet poison stayed for hours. He spent the night asleep on the front porch.
In the morning, he awoke and sat on the steps, meditating. A strong wind blew in from the north, and a wall of dust slammed into the side of the house. The wind carried with it the smell of manure. Curious, he walked across the field and entered the stockade. The mound came up to his chest; the smell, while strong, was not unpleasant, and he saw clear waves pouring off of the surface, a visible heat that made the air around it wiggle and bend. An idea stirred inside his brain. He pressed his palm into the mound. A hard crust gave way to a softer consistency in the middle. Wiping his fingers, he left the stockade and walked back to the factory. The day would be short and he had much left to do.
Just past the workroom, a storage rack contained several dozen hardwood slabs, each ranked according to height. The Lun yu was a long document, nearly eight feet tall. The excessive nature of Pi Sheng’s language had always puzzled him. It seemed impractical, unnecessarily complex. If only there were a dozen symbols, perhaps two dozen, from which one could construct all of the larger meanings, perhaps the Chinese people could forge a more complete society, organized by language, a common system of letters. Instead, they were stuck with this hopelessly involved array of lines and dashes whose very multiplicity implied a kind of pointless forever. A library of image. It was all too much.
Wrapping two leather straps around the base of the slab, he heaved the weight onto his back and brought it outside. Entering the stockade, he filled a burlap sack with hunks of manure and carried it across the yard. All morning, he smoothed the dung over the slab, spreading it thin where carved characters made dark shadows in intricate bas-relief. By mid-afternoon, he was very tired. Leaving the slab to dry, he walked around to the back of the factory, where a clay oven stood like a giant turtle basking in the heat. Grabbing bunches of dead grass, he climbed a stool and dumped the fuel into a narrow slot. The heat grew; the inside of the stove was a bright red cavern. Returning to the stockade, he hefted the printing slab—now crisp with dried manure—and threw it into the fire. Bright sparks sailed across the yellow and brown field.
Back indoors, he slept for several hours, then woke at midnight. One ball of dung sat on the counter. He pressed it flat, stripping the excess with an ivory blade. Twisting the knife, he carved a few shapes, inventing as he went along. He made the shape for HUSBAND. He made the shape for WIFE. He took a breath and drank from a bowl of hot broth. He made the shape for SUNDER. He made the shape for DISGRACE. He wiped the blade on his hip and placed it inside a wooden box.
At dawn, he pulled the slab out of the fire, snagging it with a long hook. The dung had dried considerably, but it was still relatively soft toward the middle. Dragging the blade, h
e made an incision between two lines of text. With a copper pick, he inserted each of the four characters: HUSBAND WIFE SUNDER DISGRACE, then dribbled a line of silt along the crack. Glad to be done with the job, he returned the slab to the oven and walked back to the factory. Hot and tired, he drank a bowl of goat’s milk, then sat down on the step. All afternoon, he tried to forget about his bad deed; troubled, he experimented with strange chemicals, blends of mercury and sulfur. The clouds he made were white and wonderful, but the elixir of life continued to elude him.
In the evening, he removed the slab and let it cool on the ground. By the next day, the piece was ready. Working quickly, he spread the ink and unrolled a length of vellum across the surface. The new document resembled the old; only the details had changed. From noon until nightfall, he guarded the front door, the writings of Confucius the Great hanging above his head, drying in the hot summer wind. The Empress would be pleased.
Commentary: If nothing else, this sentimental tale reminds ladies of all cultures that despite the advance of history, women have always had to work outside the law to get their way. (M.H.S.)
X
Promises Made
The Concerned Parent
1998
Simon knew the answer: Andrew Jackson. Mrs. Oates had asked the question—“Who was the seventh president of the United States?”— and Simon knew but wouldn’t say it because that would mean having to answer even more questions, and the kids who gave the correct response would advance to the next round, and on and on until only one kid remained, usually some freckled girly-poo—little bitch, you wanted to rub her face in the hot lunch—and Mrs. Oates would hand her the grand prize, a pencil case or maybe even a gift certificate to Big Boy’s. Nancy Watkins won the grand prize last year. She dedicated the award to her uncle, who’d been hospitalized earlier in the month for a ruptured pancreas.
