“You opened no wound that wasn’t already festering.”
“Excuse me, child, but I need the ear of the Uros.” Setenay stepped up next to Aizarg, took his arm and pulled him back from the main group. “Walk with me, Aizarg.”
“I take it you want my ear and my ear alone, my Isp?”
“Tell me, what have you noticed since we left Virag’s camp?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“How many insects crawled across your mat last night? How many flies have you swatted away from your face? Do you see any birds in the clear, blue sky? The beast by the river should have been covered with flies and vultures. The Scythian should have been a feast for the same.”
Aizarg didn’t respond.
“Do you not feel it, Uros?”
“Feel what?”
“It is as if the world is holding its breath, waiting for something. I sense the hand of a strange god, one more powerful than the earth or sea or sky.”
She looked back over her shoulder toward the setting sun.
“Our time is running out.” She gazed up at Aizarg. “I thought about your idea, the one you told me and Okta about before we found the tracks.”
Aizarg raised his eyebrow, “Yes? And...?”
“We should do it tonight, when we make camp. I see no reason to wait.”
Aizarg smiled. “What convinced you?”
Setenay looked to the north and watched Ba-lok on the ridge. He walked alone just below the crest, parallel but separated from the group.
“In the face of darkness, mercy,” she whispered. She laid her head against Aizarg’s arm while they walked. “I want to tell you something I’ve never spoken to anyone, Uros, even my late husband.”
Aizarg cocked his head. “Yes?”
“Let me tell you of a Scythian prince and a Lo maiden...”
15. The Two Dragons
At midnight we stood arm and arm under the unblinking gaze of the Threshold Dragon, about to begin our long journey down the Silver Stairs. It would be dawn before we reached the Offering Temple. It was the first Offering Festival and Nushen was only an isolated convent carved out of the untamed forest. My immortal flesh was still that of a young boy and my dead father’s ashes were still warm on his funeral pyre atop Tortoise Mountain.
“Why are we going to the village, Mother?” I asked, looking down at the Silver Stairs glowing in the full moon. Far below, the convent’s lanterns twinkled on the other side of the grotto bridge.
She placed her shaking, wrinkled hand on my shoulder. “It is spring, the time of renewal. My children below will offer up their most treasured harvest so that I may be born anew.”
I pondered her words. “Will they renew my father as well?”
“Your father is dead,” she said flatly. “His body is gone and his spirit dwells forever with our Celestial Emperor.”
“Will I die, too?”
A smile lit her wizened face like the way the sun kisses the east, welcome and warm after the dark night.
“Beloved son, you shall grow to become a shepherd of men and live as long as the earth abides. I will teach you many wondrous things, and in turn, you shall instruct the Tall Men. With the light of truth you shall drive evil from this fallen world. The Emperor of Heaven would sooner curse the world before death corrupts your flesh.”
Her words didn’t soothe my grief, but they gave me hope. She took my hand.
“Please help an old woman down all these stairs. Dawn’s bitter duty will be here soon.”
The Chronicle of Fu Xi
***
Fu Xi bounded up the Silver Stairs, the red sword tucked in his sash. Fury gave fire to his flesh and he didn’t pause at the platforms.
Before reaching the top, his lantern died. He cast it off the mountain and kept running. Fu Xi didn’t need light to find his way. Each of the 12,342 stairs and nineteen switchbacks were etched in his mind. He climbed higher until the air became thin and cold. Faint white strips, icy survivors of last year’s snowpack, clung to the mountain, waiting for winter’s salvation.
Fu Xi once asked his mother who built her temple on top of Tortoise Mountain.
“My three realms were born of fire,” she replied. “Brought forth like water from a spring, they radiated into being like ripples across a lake.”
The First Realm began with the first limestone step beyond the Offering Temple and encompassed all of Tortoise Mountain. The dome-shaped mountain stretched twenty-one miles in diameter and almost perfectly circular. A deep, cold river flowed from the far north and split into two streams surrounding the mountain in a moat-like canyon. The canyon cliffs rose hundreds of feet, forming an impregnable fortress. Nushen’s grotto bridge presented the only way to cross over to the mountain. The two branches rejoined under the grotto bridge and flowed into the forest.
A deep coniferous forest blanketed the mountain above the cliffs, summoning an image of a giant turtle rising from the earth. No trees grew within a hundred yards of the Silver Stairs as they zigzagged up the mountainside. At each switchback, a small platform was cut from the rock.
A silver torch, about the height of a man, and looking as if it had been formed by rolling a sheet of rice paper into a tight cone, imbedded into the rock on each platform. They could not be extinguished by the mightiest wind or heaviest rain. Next to each silver torch sat a small stone bench.
Chest heaving, Fu Xi stood between the last two torches flanking the top of the Silver Stairs. Beyond lay the temple’s entrance and threshold to the Second Realm, a broad, smooth platform supporting seven giant pillars.
The alabaster pillars were so glossy they almost glowed in the starlight. The colonnade supported a stone entablature of living rock shaped into a giant dragon. The Threshold Dragon, the sacred symbol of the Goddess Nuwa, looked as if writhing from the living rock. Fu Xi never encountered a flesh and blood dragon such as this throughout his many travels.
Long and wingless like a snake, it possessed a face similar to a lion’s. Its short legs were armed with menacing three-toed claws. Covered in gilded scales, the dragon stretched the entire length of the temple and then doubled back on itself. Its head loomed over the center of the colonnade as it peered straight down the Silver Stairs with fiery eyes that outshone the silver torches.
Fu Xi walked under the dragon’s stare and stepped between the center pillars into the Second Realm of Nuwa. Far below at the base of the mountain, the glittering string of silver torches slowly extinguished one by one.
***
I cannot easily recall each time I accompanied my mother down the Silver Stairs. Can one remember the details of every spring or every harvest of their lives? I will therefore tell the tale of the final Offering Ceremony which transpired many decades before my journey to Wu.
The preceding winter, a thin tendril of white smoke rose from Tortoise Mountain, announcing the mortal husband of the Goddess Nuwa had died. The village hummed with activity, as the goddess would chose an acolyte in the spring.
In the weeks preceding the Offering Festival, the Elder Mother carefully selected seven candidates. Those girls not chosen had to watch the proceedings with the villagers. It was a bittersweet moment for those in their eleventh year of life, the final year of eligibility as an acolyte. Never again could they wear the white silk robes. Husbands, babies, and common lives were now their fate.
On the spring equinox, the seven blessed Acolytes of Nuwa, virgins all, filed down from the convent in the cool darkness. Tortoise Mountain was a shadow against the lightening east. The acolytes dressed in long, white silk robes and carried white candles. The children fully understood the implications of being chosen by Nuwa, but their solemn, tender faces betrayed nothing.
The Chronicle of Fu Xi
***
In Nushen, he sometimes found time’s unrelenting flow uncomfortable. The Second Realm, which his mother called the Place of Perfect Sorrows, separated the physical world from Nuwa’s inner dwelling. When he crossed this
membrane the fury of earthly change ceased.
He stepped from the limestone colonnade to a polished granite foyer as wide as the outer threshold. About seven paces inside the foyer stood another set of alabaster pillars, identical to the outer structures, and beyond that a sunken peristyle courtyard. Fu Xi rushed several paces into the courtyard, intent on confronting his mother.
“Your sword,” her voice reverberated from deep in the temple.
Fu Xi halted, his fury checked by the power in her voice. He sighed, pulled the red sword from his sash and approached a table against one of the foyer pillars. The small black lacquered table contrasted perfectly against the alabaster. On top of the table sat a crystal rack in the image of a carp arching out of the water, supported on its pectoral fins and tail. A deep groove carved into its back matched his old bronze blade. Fu Xi knew the smaller, lighter orichalcum sword would slide out of the groove. He placed the sword on the table next to the holder and stepped away.
“All things have their place,” her voice echoed again.
Fu Xi frowned and placed the orichalcum sword in the groove on the carp’s back, expecting it to fall out and clatter to the table. The two pieces fit as one, like art purposely formed whole from the craftsman’s hand.
How did she know? Alas, one more mystery he may never understand. Impatient for answers, Fu Xi’s anger simmered as he turned to enter the inner sanctuary.
“Is this how you enter my house, child?” the disembodied voice came again.
Fu Xi stopped and saw two pairs of simple wicker sandals against the pillar opposite the sword, one pair large and the other small. Both pairs’ soles were worn and rubbed, comfortably molded from years of use.
Heng still lives if his sandals sit next to hers.
Fu Xi sighed and took off his wooden sandals, much larger than the other two pairs, and placed them against the pillar.
“Purify yourself,” she called from the depths of the temple.
***
Along the hill and on each side of the path the villagers waited silently in the dark. Everyone looked on in anticipation. No torches or lanterns were allowed except the acolytes’ candles.
An Offering Ceremony came but once in a lifetime.
The old hoped they’d live to see this day. The young would speak of it the rest of their lives.
The acolytes filed past the Offering Temple and placed their candles in the jade dais. Two Holy Mothers stood on either side of the dais, holding large paper fans decorated with the goddess’s symbol: the wingless, three-toed spirit dragon encircling a white lotus flower. Their duty was to shield the candles from the wind. It would be an ill omen should any girl’s candle extinguish before the ceremony was complete.
One by one, the girls approached the sacred peach tree, where the elder Holy Mother waited in her unadorned black silk robe. The children’s hair piled high on their heads and held in place by ornate ivory pins. The robe wrapped tightly around their small bodies and held in place by a pure white sash. Their long sleeves flared outward at their wrists and their small, delicate feet were bound in silk slippers. In each sash was tucked a folded paper fan, also adorned with the goddess symbol.
As they approached the Elder Mother, they removed their fans and spread them demurely in front of their faces. In turn, each bowed by slightly bending her knees and nodding her head. The Elder Mother returned the greeting and motioned to the tree.
One at a time, the acolytes plucked a peach. The sacred Tree of Immortality only bore fruit in the years of the white smoke, and then the little tree produced exactly seven peaches. The peaches sprung ripe from blossoms seven days before the ceremony. They hung low and heavy on the small branches. Any impure mortal unwise enough to touch one would instantly die. The tainted fruit would wither and fall from the tree and be replaced by a new blossom in a day.
Holding the peach in their right hands and the fan in the other, the acolytes stood side by side along the pebble lane, oldest to youngest, from the Offering Temple. The sun was only moments away from cresting over the temple as all eyes were on the Silver Stairs.
The Chronicle of Fu Xi
***
Here, Fu Xi felt his immortality. Here, Fu Xi felt his spirit grow in power. Part of him wanted to defy her and storm the Inner Realm, but the wiser part knew better.
He stepped past the pillars and down into the courtyard. Seven pillars, each with its own silver torch, lined the expansive courtyard. Above, the courtyard opened to the night, but neither snow nor rain ever fell on the temple.
In the center of the courtyard, a polished granite fountain seven feet across rose out of the floor. Steaming water gently flowed over its smooth sides, giving them a glass-like texture, and into four shallow canals cut into the floor. The canals formed a cross with the raised fountain in the center. At about three feet across, each canal ran along a cardinal direction until it vanished into a hole in the rock in the courtyard’s edge. A round island, upon which grew a small peach tree, rose in the fountain’s center. The Eternal Tree, sister of the Immortality Tree in the village, retained only a few brown leaves on its bare, black limbs.
The tree may never be renewed.
To his right, on the east side of the fountain, stood the Altar Rock, a raw piece of granite protruding about four feet above the polished floor like an island. Several small steps carved into its side led to the rock’s polished slab top. The fountain’s eastern canal flowed under the rock and emerged on the other side.
He once asked his mother why she called the Second Realm the Place of Perfect Sorrows, but she never answered.
***
We stood arm in arm on the last platform above the grotto bridge. From here, the villagers were shadowy forms along the hill below us. I could hear murmurs. Their excitement was palpable.
The seven acolytes were already in a line, waiting for us.
Mother’s frail arm gently locked in mine, she grasped her cane in her other hand. Usually, we waited here in silence for the sun, but this morning she spoke.
“I assume you will return to the village tonight for the festival?” she said dryly.
I raised an eyebrow at the unexpected conversation.
“Of course.”
She poked at my formal robes. “I also assume you positioned a change of clothes in the blacksmith’s hut?”
“Yes, Mother.”
She shook her head, doing a poor job of masking her disgust.
“Another night of drinking and carousing with mortals, eh? I should forbid it, but I suppose there is a price for your familiarity with them.”
I patted Mother’s hand and winked. “It’s a steep price, but one I’m willing to pay.”
She turned away and scowled. “You are more of Nushen than of Tortoise Mountain,” she sighed.
A thought simultaneously crossed my mind and my lips. “Then let me marry one of them. Let me raise a family and be one of them.”
She didn’t say anything for several long moments, and then spoke. “They revere me, but they love you. It is your father’s gentle spirit that has earned that love.”
“You are permitted the love of a husband,” I blurted. “Why do you deny me a wife?”
Mother’s eyes narrowed, but she didn’t look up at me. “I picture the maidens of Nushen competing for your hand. I see the young men sulking at the thought of a god stealing their sweethearts.” She paused and looked beyond the eastern horizon. “I see your children and their children. They will be giants among men. Your father’s gentleness would be diluted in their bloodline, but your power will not. Nushen is not enough for such men. The world is not enough for such men.” It was her gaze to the east that still haunts me. Perhaps she was looking to Wu and thinking of my next quest. “Anyway, you are too young to get married...and too innocent.” She shook her head and tugged on my arm. “Son, please help an old woman down all these stairs. Dawn’s bitter duty is upon us.”
The Chronicle of Fu Xi
***
; Fu Xi stood on the fountain’s lip, let his clothing fall to the floor and slipped into the comfortably hot water, which welled up from the heart of the mountain through holes cut in the stone.
He sank to his chin and his long black hair floated around him. Fu Xi closed his eyes, submerged below the water and stayed there until his lungs burned. He slowly rose above the surface and let the used air slip between his teeth in a slow hiss. His breathing eased. He relaxed his body until his fingertips floated independent of any mental control.
This wasn’t a bath as much as purification. Without scrubbing or washing, the waters lifted not only the dirt from his skin, but the turmoil from his soul.
He opened his eyes.
Through the Eternal Tree’s barren limbs, the Milky Way slowly flowed across the sky. Nuwa told him the fountain’s water represented time flowing from Heaven to the four corners of the world.
While calm and centered, peace still eluded Fu Xi. His rage and anguish were only numbed.
Fu Xi stepped out of the fountain to discover his clothes were gone, replaced by a neatly folded homespun wool towel and a golden silk robe. A pair of wicker sandals sat next to them. As he dried off, he found an ivory comb placed in the folds of the towel. He ran it though his long black hair until it was straight. Fu Xi tied his hair into a top knot and placed the comb through it. He donned the robe and sandals and placed the towel around his neck. He took a deep breath, exhaled and felt ready to confront his mother, to make her answer for abandoning the people of Nushen.
He stepped around the fountain, his sandals lightly clopping on the floor. That is when he spotted a set of wet footprints emerging from the fountain towards the Inner Realm.
Those are recent and too big to be either Mother’s or Heng’s. The evening’s mysteries deepened.
Fu Xi followed the footprints and climbed the steps on the opposite side of the courtyard from whence he entered. He passed through the seven pillars and into her inner sanctum, the Third Realm of Nuwa.
***
Mother always appeared exactly when the sun crested over Tortoise Mountain. Gasps rose from the crowd as the equinox dawn silhouetted their deity’s small form. For many in the crowd, it was the first time they’d ever beheld the goddess. I sometimes wondered if they were disappointed, though I doubt it. I was too familiar with her, accustomed to her power and grace. I could not see her through their eyes.
Black Sea Gods: Chronicles of Fu Xi Page 17
