Bridge of Birds mlanto-1

by Barry Hughart

  “We can't trust the acoustics,” Li Kao whispered in my ear. “If we go back, they'll probably be ready for us. We have to follow the tunnel and trust to luck.”

  He led the way with a torch in one hand and his knife in the other. The tunnel was sloping up, and the beautiful bell song was growing fainter. The only other sounds were the hiss of the torch and the slap of our sandals, and then Miser Shen groaned. His eyes opened, but they were feverish and puzzled and he did not seem to recognize us. We stopped and I set him down, with his back propped against the tunnel wall, and his lips moved.

  “You are the priest?” he said hoarsely to Li Kao. “My little girl has been murdered by the Duke of Ch'in, and they tell me that I will feel better if I burn a prayer and send it to her, but I do not know how to write.”

  For Miser Shen it was forty years ago, when the death of his daughter had begun to drive him insane.

  “I am the priest,” Master Li said quietly. “I will write down your prayer for you.”

  Miser Shen's lips moved silently, and I sensed that he was rehearsing. Finally he was ready, and he made a terrible effort to concentrate on what he wanted to say to his daughter. This is the prayer of Miser Shen.

  “Alas, great is my sorrow. Your name is Ah Chen, and when you were born I was not truly pleased. I am a farmer, and a farmer needs strong sons to help with his work, but before a year had passed you had stolen my heart. You grew more teeth, and you grew daily in wisdom, and you said ‘Mommy’ and ‘Daddy’ and your pronunciation was perfect. When you were three you would knock at the door and then you would run back and ask, ‘Who is it?’ When you were four your uncle came to visit and you played the host. Lifting your cup, you said, ‘Ching!’ and we roared with laughter and you blushed and covered your face with your hands, but I know that you thought yourself very clever. Now they tell me that I must try to forget you, but it is hard to forget you.

  “You carried a toy basket. You sat at a low stool to eat porridge. You repeated the Great Learning and bowed to Buddha. You played at guessing games, and romped around the house. You were very brave, and when you fell and cut your knee you did not cry because you did not think it was right. When you picked up fruit or rice, you always looked at people's faces to see if it was all right before putting it in your mouth, and you were careful not to tear your clothes.

  “Ah Chen, do you remember how worried we were when the flood broke our dikes and the sickness killed our pigs? Then the Duke of Ch'in raised our taxes and I was sent to plead with him, and I made him believe that we could not pay our taxes. Peasants who cannot pay taxes are useless to dukes, so he sent his soldiers to destroy our village, and thus it was the foolishness of your father that led to your death. Now you have gone to Hell to be judged, and I know that you must be very frightened, but you must try not to cry or make loud noises because it is not like being at home with your own people.

  “Ah Chen, do you remember Auntie Yang, the midwife? She was also killed, and she was very fond of you. She had no little girls of her own, so it is all right for you to try to find her, and to offer her your hand and ask her to take care of you. When you come before the Yama Kings, you should clasp your hands together and plead to them: ‘I am young and I am innocent. I was born in a poor family, and I was content with scanty meals. I was never willfully careless of my shoes and my clothing, and I never wasted a grain of rice. If evil spirits bully me, may thou protect me.’ You should put it just that way, and I am sure that the Yama Kings will protect you.

  “Ah Chen, I have soup for you and I will burn paper money for you to use, and the priest is writing down this prayer that I will send to you. If you hear my prayer, will you come to see me in my dreams? If fate so wills that you must yet lead an earthly life, I pray that you will come again to your mother's womb. Meanwhile I will cry, ‘Ah Chen, your father is here!’ I can but weep for you, and call your name.” [1]

  Miser Shen fell silent. I thought that he had died, but then he opened his eyes again.

  “Did I say it right?” he whispered. “I practiced for a long time, and I wanted to say it right, but I am confused in my mind and something seems to be wrong.”

  “You said it perfectly,” Master Li said quietly.

  Miser Shen appeared to be greatly relieved. His eyes closed and his breathing grew fainter. Then he coughed, and blood spurted from his lips and the soul of Miser Shen departed from the red dust of earth.

  We knelt beside Miser Shen and clasped our hands. In my mind the image of Ah Chen was mingled with the images of the children of Ku-fu and I could not speak through my tears, but the voice of Li Kao was firm and strong.

  “Miser Shen, great is your joy,” he said. “Now you are released from the prison of your body, and your soul is reunited with little Ah Chen. Surely the Yama Kings will allow you to be reborn as a tree, and for miles around the poor peasants will know you as Old Generosity.”

  I finally found my tongue.

  “Miser Shen, if fate so wills that I am reunited with Lotus Cloud, I will tell her your story, and she will weep for you and she will not forget you, and so long as I live you will live in the heart of Number Ten Ox.”

  We said the prayers together and made the symbolic sacrifice, but we could not bury the body in solid rock, so we begged his spirit to forgive us for not observing the customary decencies. Then we stood up and bowed, and Li Kao picked up the torch.

  “Master Li, if you ride on my back we can move quickly if we have to make a run for it,” I suggested.

  He climbed up and I started down the tunnel. It continued to slope upward, and in an hour the song of the bells faded away. (If any of my readers happen to be in the vicinity, I urge them to visit the Cavern of Bells, because the music truly comes from Heaven and was simply put to evil use by evil men who are no longer with us.) The beautiful song had just dwindled into silence when I turned a corner in the tunnel, and the light from the torch in Li Kao's hand reached out to touch a familiar figure. The little monk in the crimson robe was standing in front of us with a smirk on his face.

  “Stop, you idiot! Have you learned nothing from the death of Miser Shen?” Master Li yelled as I leaped forward.

  I tried to pull up, but it was too late. My hands were outstretched to strangle the monk and my weight was forward, and I took one more step and landed upon a reed mat that had been cleverly painted to resemble rock. I fell through it as though it were water, and tumbled down head over heels and landed with a crash that knocked the breath from my body. The torch fell with us, and when I had recovered enough to look around I saw that we had fallen into a pit that was about eight feet wide and fifteen feet deep, with walls made from large stone slabs fitted tightly together. I heard a grating metallic sound and looked up, and my heart nearly stopped beating.

  The little monk was pulling a heavy chain with all his might, and an iron lid was slowly sliding across the top of the pit.

  Li Kao's hand was cocked behind his right ear. “A present from Miser Shen!” he yelled, and torchlight glinted upon the blade of his knife as it flashed through the air. The monk dropped the chain. He clutched at his throat and clawed at the hilt that was buried there, and his eyes rolled to the top of his head and blood spurted, and he gurgled horribly and toppled over the edge of the pit.

  I lifted my hands to catch him, but he never landed. His legs became entangled in the chain and he jerked to a halt in midair, and I gasped as I saw that his weight was pulling the iron lid farther and farther across the opening of the pit, and then it slammed shut with a harsh metallic clang. In an instant I had grabbed the chain and had climbed up over the dangling monk. I shoved at the lid with all my might, but it was wasted effort. That sheet of iron had slid into grooves in solid rock, and I had no leverage at all.

  “Master Li, I can't budge it!” I panted.

  I dropped back to the floor, which was solid stone. Our torch was burning yellow, but soon it would burn orange, and then blue, and then it wouldn't burn at all. The last thi
ng that we would see before we suffocated would be the blackness of the tomb.

  I have a horror of small closed places. “Saparah, tarata, mita, prajna, para—” I mumbled hoarsely.

  “Oh, stop that mumbo-jumbo and get to work,” Master Li said testily. “I have no objection to Buddhism, but at least you can babble in a civilized language—either that or learn something about the one that you're massacring.”

  He picked up a couple of rocks and handed me one. Li Kao worked carefully around the circumference of the pit, tapping the slabs in the walls, while I climbed the chain and tapped the slabs higher up. On his second tour around the walls Li Kao heard a faint hollow echo as he rapped with his rock. He peered closely and saw that the slab had not been perfectly cut and joined, and that a tiny strip of mortar ran around the edges.

  I jumped down, and he turned and bowed politely to the dangling corpse. “Many thanks for returning my knife to me,” he said, and he jerked the knife from the monk's throat, which produced quite a mess on the floor. Half an hour later the mortar was gone and the slab was loose, but how were we supposed to work it out of the hole? My large clumsy fingers couldn't possibly fit into those narrow cracks, and even Li Kao's fingers were too large. When he tried to shift the slab with his knife, the only result was that the blade snapped in half. We were no better off than before, and that damned dangling monk was grinning at us. I growled and slapped the silly smile on his face, and as the corpse swung back and forth the creaking chain produced a sound like mocking laughter.

  Li Kao watched the monk with narrowed eyes. “Ox, smack him again,” he commanded.

  I smacked the corpse again, and the chain laughed even louder as it creaked back and forth.

  “Got it,” said Master Li. “Something about our dear friend was trying to speak to me when I watched him swing around. Unless I'm greatly mistaken, he was born for the job of pulling stones from walls.”

  I shoved the little monk over to the slab, and his tiny fingers easily slid into the cracks. I forced the fingers in as far as possible and pressed his thumbs around the edges and held them tight. How long I squeezed the cold corpse hands I cannot say, but it seemed several eternities before the body turned rigid. It was our last chance. The flickering flame of the torch was turning blue when I gently pulled the monk backward. His fingers clutched that slab with the rigid grasp of death, and the slab slid out with no effort at all and crashed to the floor.

  We did not rejoice. No fresh air had come out of the hole with the slab, and when Master Li inserted the torch, we saw a long low tunnel with many passageways branching out on both sides.

  “It's another labyrinth, but my old lungs won't last much longer,” Li Kao panted, and I could believe it because his face was nearly as blue as the torchlight. “Ox, tie me to your back with the cord from the monk's robe. We'll have to extinguish the torch, so you must follow the dragon by feel.”

  I tied him to my back, and we barely fit through the hole in the wall, and when Li Kao extinguished the torch my throat constricted so tightly that I nearly suffocated then and there. Blackness was pressing down upon me like a heavy shroud as I began to crawl, and what little air was left was foul. My fingers traced the path of the green jade dragon as it wound through the holes in the red coral pendant, while I groped for openings in the walls with the other hand. Third left… First left… Fourth right… Li Kao was almost unconscious, and the words that he muttered faintly in my ear made no sense.

  “Ox… not a tiger but a little boy… games… rules of games…”

  Then he sighed, and his body lay limply upon my back, and I could scarcely sense a heartbeat. There was nothing to do but crawl ahead, and my own consciousness was slipping away with every gasp of my aching lungs, and death was beckoning me to join my parents in the Yellow Springs Beneath the Earth. Second right… Second left…

  “Master Li, the dragon can lead us no farther!” I panted.

  There was no answer. The ancient sage was out cold, if not dead, and now everything depended upon the slow wits of Number Ten Ox, but what was I to do? The last direction of the dragon had led me against the stone wall of a dead end, and the dragon had wound all the way to the bottom of the pendant. It went no farther, so how could I? To turn back would be suicide, and I frantically felt around in the darkness. There was nothing but smooth unbroken stone, although my fingers found one small crack in the floor that might have been big enough for a mouse. Nothing else. No slab with mortar around the edges, no lever to pull, no keyhole. I lowered my head and wept.

  It was some time before I was able to think about the strange words that Master Li had muttered in my ear, and even longer before I remembered how he had muttered in his sleep while we flew on the Bamboo Dragonfly. “Why not on the island, waiting at the end of the bridge?” he had muttered. “Games. A little boy?” Was he saying that the duke was not the Tiger of Ch'in but a child, and that the Hand That No One Sees had not been waiting for victims at the end of the narrow bridge on the oasis because the victims would have no chance, and that would ruin a game?

  My head seemed to be packed with wool, and my ears were ringing. In my mind I saw the dying face of Miser Shen as he prayed to his little girl. “You played at guessing games…. You played at guessing games…. Guessing games… Guessing games…”

  What was the name of the game that we were playing with the Duke of Ch'in? Follow the Dragon, that's what, and what is the rule that a child must learn when playing a follow game? Keep following. Never assume and never give up. You can continue to follow, if only you try hard enough. The dragon had stopped, but was it possible that it could still go somewhere, and somehow I would be able to follow?

  My fingers crawled across the floor to that one tiny crack in the stone. It was a couple of inches long and irregularly oval. Lack of air had turned me into a small child, and I actually giggled as I removed the red coral pendant from the chain around my neck. It was a couple of inches long and irregularly oval, and it fit precisely into the crack.

  “Follow the dragon,” I giggled, and I released the pendant.

  The dragon dropped down. I waited for the sound when it landed, and waited and waited, and finally, far below, I heard a click as though it had landed like a key in a lock, and then I heard a second click, as though tumblers had turned.

  The stone floor tilted beneath me. I slid toward a side wall, and as the floor tilted more steeply a hole opened, and then I followed the dragon, with Master Li tied to my back, shooting out and down into moonlight and starlight and air. My lungs felt as though they were touched with fire as I gulped and gasped, and Master Li moaned softly, and I felt his lungs begin to heave. We tumbled down the side of a steep hill and landed upon something that glittered.

  Moonlight shone down upon a tiny glade, sunken way down in the center of Stone Bell Mountain, and upon an immense mountain of treasure. Instinctively my eyes lifted to the top of the pile to a shadow where no shadow should be. Then the third girl from that painting was gazing at me beseechingly, and blood stained her dress where a blade had pierced her heart.

  “Take pity upon a faithless handmaiden,” she whispered. Ghost tears trickled slowly down her cheeks. “Is not a thousand years enough?” she sobbed. “I swear that I did not know what I had done! Oh, take pity, and exchange this for the feather. The birds must fly.”

  Then she was gone.

  I crawled up a slope of diamonds and ripped the lid from the small jade casket that the ghost had cradled in her hands. Ginseng aroma stung my nostrils, but it was not the Heart of the Great Root of Power. It was the Head, and beside it lay a tiny bronze bell.

  My head sank wearily and I closed my eyes, and sleep cradled me like a baby. I did not dream at all.

  Part Three—THE PRINCESS OF BIRDS

  22. The Dream of the White Chamber

  Night rain is falling on the village of Ku-fu, glinting through moonbeams that slide through thin clouds, and the soft splashing sound outside my window blends with the drip of ink
from the mouse-whiskered tip of my writing brush. I have been trying as hard as I can, but I am unable to express my emotions when the Arms and the Head of Power brought the children back from death's doorstep, and then failed to complete the cure.

  Once more they awoke, but into the strange world of the Hopping Hide and Seek Game, and once more they smiled and laughed and chanted the nonsense rhyme from Dragon's Pillow. Then once more they yawned, and their eyes closed, and they sank back upon their beds. Once more they dropped into the depths of their trances.

  People with nothing else to turn to must revert to the superstitions of their ancestors, and grandparents began to tie mirrors to the children's foreheads so that the demons of sickness would see the reflections of their own ugly faces and flee in terror. Fathers shouted their children's names while they waved favorite toys tied to long poles, hoping to entice the wandering souls, and mothers stood tensely at the bedsides with cords that would tie the souls to the bodies should they return. I turned and ran into the abbot's study and slammed the door.

  Nothing but the Heart of the Great Root of Power could save the children of my village. I was sick with fear, and my eyes lifted to a framed quotation from The Study of the Ancients:

  All things have a root and a top,

  All events an end and a beginning;

  Whoever understands correctly

  What comes first and what follows

  Draws nearer to Tao.

  I was a long way from drawing nearer to Tao, and children's games and nonsense rhymes and ginseng roots and birds and feathers and flutes and balls and bells and agonized ghosts and terrible monsters and the Duke of Ch'in whirled round and round in my brain without making any sense at all.