Black Dragon, Black Cat

by Brian Edwards

  Mao could not figure out this puzzle, no matter how hard she thought about it. Several hours later, she gave it up and lay down on her mattress. Her last thoughts before sleeping again drifted to her master‘s history: if he could do this, maybe he actually was the greatest warrior of his generation, as old Chung Jun had claimed. She yawned and decided that she would have to think more on this later.

  After the tea ceremony the next evening, Jai-tien and Mao were walking down the hill near sunset. Mao grimaced as her feet touched the earth with each step, feeling acutely each joint and muscle in her aching body. She removed the flat stones from her inside pocket and began practicing her catches. She was surprised to discover that she could now catch five stones consistently with either hand, even while walking. However, she still could not manage six, at least while moving, and gave up after several unsuccessful attempts.

  Jai-tien began speaking without turning to see if Mao was paying attention. “You must learn to disguise your movements and to move patiently to be truly unnoticed by your enemies. The secret lies not in complete silence, which can never be achieved. The secret lies in moving in synchronization with natural sounds that will not be given any attention, even if noticed. If a hunter wishes to move unnoticed through an area rife with squirrels, he must move as the squirrel does. Not silently, but making the same sounds as the squirrel does when it moves. A squirrel hops once, twice, or three times in rapid succession, then halts to listen and watch for predators. A wily hunter can sneak up on a squirrel to within a small distance by making several quick hops and then pausing, even though each hop produces a distinct sound.”

  “Your movements last night were also too quick. The cat gets the mouse through patience, not speed. Often a person will hear a strange sound, and then acutely listen for another; but if he hears nothing, he will quickly forget about it. If another noise follows the first too closely, he will hear it even if it is barely audible relative to the first.”

  When it became clear that Jai-tien had finished his monologue, Mao hung her head in shame after her humiliation the night before. Her only response was “Yes, Master.”

  Winter broke with the return of the east wind, and spring spread its spectrum of bright colors on the hillsides. Summer swooped down on the valley with its sweltering heat, and another brisk fall threatened to herald in a particularly cold winter. Daily life in the house of Jai-tien continued in the same fashion as previous years, with its cycles of seasonal chores, ceremonies, training, and evening excursions to the house of Mother Lu-chin.

  Mao slowly became more adept at grappling and joint locks, and also more confident and accurate at delivering nerve strikes to various pressure points. The pains in her limbs mostly abated as she learned to maneuver her body to avoid being victimized by her master’s joint locks. Sparring between her and Master Jai-tien continued to become more intense, with the old man always being sure to maintain a slight superiority to Mao’s level of skill. Although her proficiency improved unabatedly, she had never managed to deliver a solid strike to her master, even when she felt that she had a momentary advantage or window of opportunity. He would always manage to parry or dodge her blows and kicks at the final fraction of a second, and she became increasingly frustrated as time wore on with her inability to strike him.

  As fall turned to winter, the sparring was becoming ferocious, as Jai-tien began battling in earnest, striking Mao with much more force and rapidity than in the past. She was often hard-pressed to defend herself, and left the training ground many evenings with bruised body and bloodied face.

  On the final day of fall, a sparring match threatened to spin out of Mao’s control when she attacked her master savagely after he had knocked her down for the fifth time that afternoon, cutting her upper lip. She pushed toward him with rapid fist strikes followed by several front leg kicks, but each was effectively blocked or shunted to the side by Jai-tien’s quick parries and dodges.

  Mao tried to finish off her attack with a rear-leg sidekick aimed directly toward her master’s torso, but again he stepped sideways to avoid it. Then Jai-tien switched direction and spun around the opposite way, delivering a solid hook kick that struck Mao in the temple and knocked her down. She became frustrated and slammed her fist down on the ground. “Master, you are always so lucky! I should have beaten you then. Why do you always have such good fortune?”

  Jai-tien chuckled to himself, then said, “I admit that my strike was merely good fortune, Hei Mao, but good fortune is no accident. Why should I leave my good luck to chance?”

  Mao looked at Jai-tien with a confused look on her face. “That makes no sense, Master,” she shrugged, biting down on her broken lip to stem the flow of blood. “Luck is something that cannot be foreseen or foretold. Why do you make fun of me?”

  Jai-tien chuckled once more, and then replied, “Get up, let us continue!”

  Mao picked herself up off the ground and resumed her offensive stance. Jai-tien assumed a defensive posture, and waited for Mao to attack. When she launched herself into him, this time with a flying roundhouse kick, he spun again in the opposite direction and knocked her back to the ground with the same spinning hook kick as he had used the first time.

  “Mmmm…,” he shook his head, “Amazing! I got lucky again! Get up! Let us continue!”

  Mao picked herself up once more, but the result was the same: she attacked with a different opening strike, but was felled again with the same spinning technique as the previous two times.

  “Now that is lucky! Three times in a row! What are the odds of that happening?”, Jai-tien exclaimed in a sarcastic tone. “Please, let us continue once more! This time, I tell you beforehand that I will knock you to the ground with the same spinning hook kick as the previous three times.”

  Mao rose to her feet with a set jaw, determined not to be taken down by sheer luck alone a fourth time. This time, she feinted a kick to Jai-tien’s side, then drove straight ahead toward the center of his chest so that he would have no room to spin sideways. Nevertheless, he parried her thrust with a slap to her head, spun around away from her hurtling body, and slammed his left foot against the side of her face, sending her sprawling on the hard dusty ground. She let out a gasp of pain when she hit the ground, and lay there holding her throbbing temple. For a brief instant, she felt as if she would fall unconscious, but this sensation passed in a heartbeat.

  “Can you believe such luck, Hei Mao?”, Jai-tien chided her. “Even when you knew what was coming, my good fortune prevailed! That is amazing! Don’t you agree?”

  Mao’s head was still throbbing from the force of her master’s blow. She tried to get up, but became dizzy and fell back down.

  Jai-tien shook his head and chuckled to himself. “Hei Mao, you must learn that good luck does not happen by chance alone. You must make your own luck. You gain skill by training, but you acquire good luck through experience. What often appears to be luck is only the inability of an inexperienced fighter to recognize the experience of the other.”

  With this, Jai-tien picked up his stick and slowly walked off in the direction of the house. Mao picked herself up off the ground and wobbled toward the well to splash cold water over her aching head.

  The warm embrace of the tea that evening lifted the depression that had set in Mao’s mind after the incident that afternoon. She had long ago grown accustomed to pain and blood, so the minor injury she had sustained from Jai-tien had slipped entirely from her mind. Yet she stewed interminably during the walk up the hillside, which had seemed to span the continent, and the tea did not have its usual calming power. She could not help but think of Jai-tien’s lecture about luck. Make your own luck! As ridiculous as it sounded, it appeared that Jai-tien could actually do it. Or was it just her mistaken perception that made it appear as if her master were merely lucky? Was Jai-tien really that good? Her mind once again turned to the words of Master Chung Jun that day long ago at the village fountain.

  The way down the hill after tea also seeme
d interminably long, but it gave Mao a chance to work on her hand coordination and quickness with the stones. She was still having trouble with six stones, but five she could now accomplish with only a rare slip. She and Jai-tien went directly to their beds upon entering the house. Mao fell quickly to sleep.

  During the late hours of the night, Mao was sleeping lightly when she sensed in her subconscious thoughts a strange presence approaching her. She puzzled over it for several seconds in a dream-like state. She did not know why she should feel such a sensation, which ate at her nerves in a way unlike any nightmare had ever done. Then a realization hit her, and she leapt off of her mattress and stood up as soon as her feet hit the floor. She took one step forward toward the center of the room, and stopped abruptly as a bucket of cold water drenched her face and upper body.

  Mao let out an exasperated sigh, turned around, and went back to her sleeping mat to lie down. Jai-tien stood smiling for a second in the faint light, then declared, “You are doing better! Remember: sleep lightly, or not at all!” Then he returned to his room and went back to bed.

  As she lay on her mat, Mao thought about the strange sensation she had felt as Jai-tien had approached her. How had she felt it? From where did it come? Could it be controlled? Is this what Jai-tien meant by ‘sleeping lightly’? She found no concrete answers, and gave up consideration of this as her hair and clothes dried sufficiently to allow her to return to sleep. Just before falling back to sleep, however, she reminded herself to sleep lightly.

  During the last days of winter, a late snow whitened the landscape from the tip of Mount Shai-lae all the way to the valley floor far below. A cold wind blew from the north for several days, swirling the accumulated snow into large drifts against the sides of the house and outbuildings. The daily chores became excruciating, and the evening trudge up the hill became almost unbearable. Yet still the afternoon training continued until the snow in the training area was trampled into a flat icy layer with brownish speckles of frozen blood splattered over it. Mao would shiver in her clothes throughout the afternoons, in spite of the intense activity, while Jai-tien appeared entirely unaffected by the weather.

  On the final day of winter, the intensity of their sparring became very severe as the cold weather began to wear down Mao’s composure and stamina. She and Jai-tien were engaged in a series of attacks, and despite all of her attempts to gain an advantage, she was hard pressed to defend against his attacks, let alone launch any of her own. For sixty minutes they moved back and forth, circling around each other, with Jai-tien forcing all encounters and Mao breathing increasingly heavy in the frigid air. Each time he attacked, the old man would finish his flurry with a strike to the left upper leg of his opponent, sending a sharp stab of pain along the exposed nerve at that location. Each time Mao would grimace from the momentary pain and the sensation of numbness in her leg. She began to weaken, and her left leg was becoming deadened from the abuse.

  After a particularly intense series of strikes, Jai-tien finished with another kick to the exposed nerve behind and slightly above the left knee. Mao felt the sharp jab of pain, and her leg suddenly became completely numb and dropped out from beneath her weight. As she collapsed to the ground, her knee struck the icy layer and produced an excruciating shock that ran the length of her spine and a scream that could be heard in the valley below. She clutched her knee to her chest, writhing in pain, and began to cry as she lay there flailing around in the snow. Jai-tien grabbed her by the legs, rolled her over onto her back, straddled her body with his knees, and began slapping her head with his open hands, first one side and then the other. “Come now, Hei Mao!”, he scolded her as she lay there sobbing as his blows landed on her temples. “What are you going to do? Tell me! Do you think your opponent will take pity on you if you fall to the ground and start crying like a baby? What are you going to do?”

  Jai-tien continued to slap her as she sobbed. Her master had always before let her get up after she fell to the ground, and she was confused and disoriented by the slaps to her face. Finally, she realized that he would not stop. She put her hands against her head to soften the blows and curled her back upward and flung her legs around Jai-tien’s head and then straightened out, pulling her master backwards and off of her chest. Jai-tien continued his backward motion and rolled over into a crouching position. Mao pulled her knees up to her chest and then thrust them outward, slamming both feet into Jai-tien’s chest, propelling him backward onto the ground.

  In a flash of anger, she flipped to her feet and attacked her master viciously. Jai-tien tried to roll to his feet, but she leapt upon him as he began to stand up. As her body landed on his, he fell back to the ground, but twisted his back and spun his legs to wrap them around her arm. The force of her momentum carried Mao over the old man’s shoulder, and she once again found herself on her back with the master on top of her. Again the intense anger flushed her cheeks. She arched her back upward and rolled the two of them over and gained the top position. She struck furiously at Jai-tien’s head with her fists, but the old man covered his head with his forearms and weathered the blows. After only ten blows, Mao had spent the remainder of the energy that the anger had fueled within her, and she collapsed on Jai-tien’s chest. He easily rolled her over onto her back and slapped her once more in the face before rising back to his feet. He wordlessly walked away from the training area back toward the house. Mao lay upon the ice face up, completely exhausted and gasping for breath. A dark stream of blood oozed from her nose and seeped down her cheek, staining the snow around her a deep shade of crimson.

  Later that evening at the appointed hour, Mao and Jai-tien began the long trudge up the hill through the knee-deep snow. Mao was very dejected during the endless trek, and her mind would not veer from the events of the day. She was upset at the conduct of her master: why had he so viciously attacked her? Why did he not let her get up? What honor was there in attacking someone who was on the ground? Her mind mulled these questions over and over as her feet plodded one after the other up the steep hillside. She thought about the momentary paralysis in her leg, and how she had managed to leap off the ground after Jai-tien’s attack. How had she managed to do that with her leg completely numb? Had she merely forgotten about it when she was overcome with anger? Had she managed to will her leg to function? Was it possible to control her bodily functions with her mind?

  Finally the slow climb ended at the door of Lu-chin, and the two winter visitors entered the house to find the old woman in her usual chair. Mao served the tea, and assumed her usual position on the floor, relishing the heat that eased into her frigid hands from the hot teacup. As she accepted the warm embrace of the tea, she felt the stresses of the afternoon slowly seep from her thoughts.

  After clearing the teacups and service, Mao and Jai-tien bowed to the old woman and bundled their clothes for the long walk back down the hill. The pair walked in stony silence for most of the way, with long cloths wrapped several times around their faces as they waded directly into the cold swirling wind. As they approached the last bend of the pathway, Jai-tien began to speak softly through the muffling scarf over his mouth, and Mao had to move closer to hear his wispy voice over the shrill wind.

  “You have learned two valuable lessons today, Maome. The first is that a true warrior never gives up and stops fighting. The second is that you must always control your emotions. It was not your skill that cost you a victory today. It was the lack of physical control that you displayed when you let your emotions get in the way of your training. Anger is also a useless drain of energy. You allowed yourself to burn precious energy through the heat of your fury.”

  Jai-tien became silent and walked another twenty paces before resuming his lecture. “Did you notice today, Hei Mao, that you used some of the grappling techniques that we have practiced during the past year? What would you have done without them? Can you see their usefulness now? What beautiful leaps and kicks are going to help you when you are knocked to the ground by a merciless opponent?�
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  Mao hung her head and trudged the remaining steps to the embracing warmth of the awaiting cottage.

  The arrival

  For several more days, winter clung to its grip on the valley with icy talons, but on the fifth day of spring its hold had been broken and the east wind whistled through the mountain passes and spilled across the valley once again. Although it would be many days until the last vestiges of snow had melted away, the fresh warm air brought a renewed spirit to life on the hillside. The daily routine continued as ever, but the ease with which it could be performed was much greater than during weeks past, and the tedium of the chores was replaced with a lively feeling of hope and promise.

  On the fifth day of the new spring, Mao finished her chores early, and plodded through the snow to the willow tree on the bank of the green pond, which was covered with an ice layer of a thickness not seen in many generations. She found the area under the tree where she had buried the ashes of the black cat, and dug through the snow and swept it away with her hands. The flat stone she had placed over the hole still guarded its charge, and was frozen to the ground in a most stubborn way. Mao tried to turn it over to check the ashes, but soon gave it up as she had no true purpose in doing so. She sat down on the icy ground next to the stone and dreamed of the promise of the new spring.

  She returned from her reverie to the voice of Jai-tien calling her to lunch. She arose quickly, dusted the snow from her clothes, and hurried up to the house. When she walked through the back door, she was greeted by the aroma of a pot of steaming stew, of which she and her master ate heartily. Afterward, Mao cleared the table and went to her corner to change into her training clothes.