Bridge of Birds mlanto-1

by Barry Hughart

  “During the rainy season in Heaven, the Great River of Stars is filled with raging water. The young god who is called the Star Shepherd must stride through the waves day and night, guiding the stars to safety with his long shepherd's crook, but during the dry season he is free to travel as he pleases. One day during the dry season the Star Shepherd decided to visit earth, so he floated down from Heaven and landed beside a small village. He wandered around admiring the sights, and then he came to a lovely grove of bamboo and he found a path and strolled inside. In the center of the grove was a clearing where wildflowers grew, and in the center of the clearing was a pool where tiny fish of many colors swam, and in the center of the pool was a peasant girl who was bathing. Her skin was ivory brushed with honey, and her eyes were black almonds flecked with gold, and her hair was a cloud of soft swirling smoke, and her lips were ripe and full and bursting with sweetness, like plums. There were many other items of interest about the peasant girl, and you may be sure that the Star Shepherd didn't miss any of them. ‘Oh!’ cried Jade Pearl as she saw a face reflected in the water, and when she looked up, the most beautiful girl in the world was gazing at the handsomest god in Heaven.

  “One thing led to another, as it usually does, and one day in Heaven an old retainer who had been granted the right to fish in the Great River of Stars came panting into the palace of the emperor and demanded an audience with the August Personage of Jade. ‘Your Heavenly Majesty, the rainy season is upon us but the Star Shepherd has not returned from earth!’ he wailed. The Great River is filled with wild waves, and terrified stars are crashing into the great black rocks, and many are badly damaged and some have even sunk!’

  “The August Personage of Jade could not believe that his favorite nephew would so neglect his duties, but he rushed outside to see for himself, and when he saw that it was just as the old retainer had said, he uttered a great roar of rage and flew down to earth and landed with a terrible clap of thunder in the middle of the bamboo grove. The emperor grabbed the Star Shepherd by the hair and swung him around like a toy on the end of a string, and then he hurled him clear up to the constellation Aquila.

  “ ‘Back to your duties, you insolent puppy!’ he roared. ‘I swear by the name of my predecessor, the Heavenly Master of the First Origin, that never again will you be allowed to visit earth!’ Then he turned to Jade Pearl. ‘On your knees, strumpet!’ he yelled. ‘Prepare to face the wrath of Heaven!’

  “Jade Pearl fell upon her knees and clasped her hands together. ‘Your Heavenly Majesty, there is no need to punish poor Jade Pearl,’ she sobbed. ‘I have given my heart to the Star Shepherd, and if I am never to see him again, I shall die.’

  “The August Personage of Jade took a close look at Jade Pearl, and remembered that he too had once been young. He took a second look, and remembered that only recently he had sworn that the Star Shepherd had more common sense in his little finger than his other nephews had in their whole bodies. He took a third look, and he began to think deep thoughts about his beloved wife, the Queen Mother Wang, who used more powder and paint with less effect than any other woman he had ever known. He took a fourth look and said, ‘Ten thousand curses!’

  “The emperor sighed and sat down beside the pool, and after a moment he patted the grass beside him. ‘Come sit here beside me, my child,’ he said.

  “So the peasant girl sat down beside the Emperor of Heaven, and he took off his sandals and they dangled their feet in the water. The emperor watched tiny gold and scarlet fish glide around his toes like brightly painted snowflakes, and then he said, ‘Jade Pearl, I have sworn upon the sacred name of the Heavenly Master of the First Origin that the Star Shepherd will never again be allowed to visit earth. That oath cannot be broken.’

  “Jade Pearl began to weep bitterly.

  “ ‘Well, you should see what that boy did to the Great River of Stars!’ the emperor yelled. ‘Every hospital in Heaven will be filled with broken stars for at least six months, and you don't know what misery is until you try to bandage a broken star!’

  “Jade Pearl continued to weep, and the emperor's eyes softened as he looked at her. Finally he shrugged his shoulders and muttered, ‘I'm going to regret this. I feel it in my bones.’ Then he reached into the left sleeve of his robe and pulled out a small golden crown. ‘Peasant girl, since the Star Shepherd cannot visit you on earth, I will allow you to visit him in Heaven,’ he said.

  “ ‘Your Majesty honors me far beyond my worth!’ cried Jade Pearl.

  “ ‘That is precisely true, and I do not want to think of what will happen when my beloved wife, the Queen Mother Wang, finds out about it,’ he muttered grimly. ‘However, Heaven could use a little brightening up, and you have at least confirmed my suspicion that the Star Shepherd is the most sensible of my nephews.’ The emperor cheered up at another thought. ‘Besides, my wife owes me something after that disgraceful affair with her blasted Peaches of Immortality, and Chang-o, and that loathsome White Rabbit that keeps twitching his nose at me when I fly past the moon. Take my advice, young lady, and stay away from rabbits!’

  “The August Personage of Jade reached into the right sleeve of his robe and pulled out three tiny white feathers, which he carefully placed upon the rim of the crown. ‘What day is it?’ he asked.

  “ ‘Your Majesty, it is the seventh day of the seventh moon,’ said Jade Pearl.

  “ ‘Very well,’ said the emperor. ‘Jade Pearl, these are three feathers from the Kings of Birds. So long as you wear them on your crown, you will be Princess of Birds, and all the birds of China will be your loving subjects. I hereby decree that on the seventh day of the seventh moon you will be allowed to summon the birds, who will build a bridge for you to climb, so that you may rejoin the Star Shepherd in Heaven, but it is illegal for one who has not completed the full cycle around the Great Wheel of Transmigrations to spend a full year in Heaven. On the first day of the first moon you must summon the birds once more, and they will build the bridge that will return you to earth, and on the seventh day of the seventh moon you will be allowed to climb once more to Heaven, and so it will continue throughout eternity because if the Star Shepherd doesn't give you the Peach of Immortality, he's a greater fool than I think he is.’

  “The August Personage of Jade waggled a finger in front of the peasant girl's nose to emphasize the importance of what he was saying.

  “ ‘Jade Pearl, do not forget the seventh day of the seventh moon! The conditions will be entered in the Imperial Book of Etiquette, which not even I am allowed to disobey, and if you fail to return to the Star Shepherd on the appointed day you will pass from the protection of Heaven. The Imperial Book of Etiquette does not allow for excuses,’ the emperor said urgently. ‘The gods will be forbidden to help you, and none but a mortal can restore you to Heaven, and at a conservative estimate the odds against somebody pulling off a trick like that are one in ten thousand billion trillion. Do you understand me?’

  “ ‘I hear and obey,’ Jade Pearl whispered.

  “So the peasant girl knelt before the Emperor of Heaven and he placed the little gold crown upon her head. ‘Arise, Princess of Birds!’ he commanded, and when Jade Pearl stood up she was astonished to see that she shone with a divine light. ‘Call your subjects!’ the emperor commanded, and when she called to the birds a great song of joy arose, and all the birds of China came flying toward their princess. They carried green twigs and branches, and with these they built a bridge that stretched up to the stars. Jade Pearl climbed the bridge to Heaven, and the Star Shepherd married the Princess of Birds and gave her the Peach of Immortality, and on the first day of the first moon they parted with many tears and the beautiful Bridge of Birds returned Jade Pearl to earth.

  “Heaven saw to it that her little village lacked for nothing, so that the princess could spend her time singing songs and weaving daisy chains. She had three girls from her own village as handmaidens, Snowgoose, Little Ping, and Autumn Moon, and she had a goat and a cat and a little dog to help h
er pass the time. Still, it seemed an eternity before the seventh day of the seventh moon arrived. Jade Pearl kissed her handmaidens and bowed to her parents. Then she called to the birds, and the peasants of China gazed up in wonder and delight as the Bridge of Birds ascended to the stars, and the Princess of Birds ran to the arms of the Star Shepherd, and they lived…”

  Henpecked Ho sighed and shrugged.

  “Happily ever after?” he said. “You see, that's as far as I had gone when my dear wife had the fragments destroyed. If they lived happily ever after, I cannot imagine why half of the tale remained to be deciphered, although at some point it would most certainly have returned to ginseng lore. What do you think, Li Kao?”

  “Ho, they did not live happily ever after, and I strongly suspect that your tablets did not preserve an ancient fairy tale,” Master Li said grimly. “When history crumbles into dust, the events of history are sometimes preserved in the form of myth or fable, and I am rash enough to believe that if Ox and I can get our hands on one or two more missing pieces, we will have the solution to a rather baffling puzzle.”

  Li Kao chewed thoughtfully on his beard, and then he said,

  “Ho, Ox and I are wrapped in so many chains that we can't move, you are attached to the wall by a leg chain, this dungeon is solid rock, the torture chamber is crammed with soldiers, we are eleven stories beneath the earth, and each landing is guarded by more soldiers. The palace is swarming with the army of the Ancestress, the army of the Duke of Ch'in is camped outside the walls, and Ox and I must escape from here immediately. Unless you look forward to being drawn and quartered, I suggest that you accompany us.”

  “I think that's a splendid idea,” said Henpecked Ho.

  25. The Triumph of Henpecked Ho

  You who know so much more about the world than does Number Ten Ox will have already figured out six or seven different ways to escape from that place, and if you will bear the momentary indignity of imagining that you are soldiers in the service of the Duke of Ch'in we will see if any of your methods is similar to that of Li Kao.

  Very well, you are soldiers who have been forced to stand guard in a loathsome torture chamber deep in the bowels of the earth, where slimy green water drips from black stone walls, and sickly white cockroaches crawl through puddles of blood, and fetid feverish odors mingle with the stench of discarded intestines and eyeballs. A horrible scream splits the air! The Key Rabbit topples over in a dead faint, and you follow the executioner into an adjoining dungeon where a ghastly spectacle greets your bulging eyes.

  An elderly gentleman of scholarly mien lurches in lunatic circles at the end of a leg chain, frantically clawing at his throat. His face and hands are covered with loathsome black splotches, and his blotched black tongue protrudes most unpleasantly, and black saliva spurts and dribbles from his blotched lips. His eyes roll up until only the whites are visible, and he does an acrobatic somersault and lands upon his back. His hands spastically pound the floor. He bounces rigidly up and down, jerks, twitches, spurts more saliva, and finally comes to rest as stiff as a board.

  Another gentleman who is even more ancient, and who is wrapped in so many chains that he can't move, views the scene with eyes that bulge in terror and screams, “The cockroaches! For the love of Buddha, look at the cockroaches!”

  The black wine called Wu-fan is invisible upon a black stone floor, and you cannot possibly see that the pounding hands of the deceased scholar have uncovered a trail of it, and that the trail leads to large invisible ideographs that are traced upon a black stone wall. What you do see is that ten thousand repulsive white cockroaches are scrambling frantically across the floor, dashing up the wall, and writhing in artistic patterns upon thick sweet invisible lines that spell out the following message from the Board of Health:

  RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!

  IT IS THE PLAGUE OF

  THE TEN THOUSAND

  PESTILENTIAL PUTRESCENCES!

  I sincerely doubt that you will stand there and make learned comments concerning the calligraphy of insects.

  It was all up to Henpecked Ho, and his timing couldn't have been better. The executioner turned and fled. Ho jerked his leg chain taut and the executioner tripped and fell to the floor, where he was pounded into jelly by the feet of the fleeing soldiers who dashed back into the torture chamber, scooped up the Key Rabbit, who had just regained his consciousness and his feet, and carried him up the stairs like a minnow riding the quest of a tidal wave. “Run for your lives!” they screamed. “It is the plague of the ten thousand pestilential putrescences!” The pounding feet and shrieking voices faded away and Henpecked Ho collected the keys from the flattened form of the executioner. His eyes were worried as he unlocked his leg chain and started to work on ours.

  “Do you think that I overdid the saliva?” he asked in a small voice.

  “It was perfect,” I said.

  “Do you really think so? I was afraid that the final spurt and dribble might appear to be in poor taste.”

  “When you do it again, don't change a single spurt or dribble,” Master Li said firmly.

  The last chain fell away, and it felt marvelous to stand up and stretch my limbs. We walked into the torture chamber and collected weapons. Li Kao filled his belt with daggers, and I took a sword and a spear. Henpecked Ho had his heart set on the monstrous axe that was used for decapitation, but since he was quite incapable of lifting it, he was forced to settle for a small double-bladed model. Li Kao started leisurely for the stairs.

  “There is no hurry,” he explained. “The soldiers from the torture chamber will have collected the soldiers on the landings, and by the time they burst into the palace they will have become a large screaming mob. Anyone who isn't trampled flat will dash into the courtyard, where they will collect a couple of divisions from the army of the Ancestress, and when they hit the wall I doubt that a stone will remain standing. They will then collect the army of the Duke of Ch'in and bolt hysterically through the city and reduce it to rubble, and the citizens who survive will follow in their wake. It is quite possible that we will have to walk to Hangchow before we see another living soul.”

  There was a flaw in his reasoning. We climbed the stairs and saw nothing but a few flattened bodies, but when we stepped through the door to the throne room, we ran right into a creature who would not have blinked an eye if the South China Sea had suddenly turned into soy sauce. A bloated figure with a crown on her head leveled a finger like a sausage.

  “There is no such thing as the plague of the ten thousand pestilential putrescences,” the Ancestress snarled. “Soldiers, chop these dogs to pieces!”

  Her bodyguards closed in on all sides, and we would have been killed instantly if it hadn't been for Henpecked Ho. He whooped with joy and charged straight toward the throne, and his axe was whirling so swiftly above his head that if he had spurted a little flame and smoke he would have resembled the Bamboo Dragonfly.

  “Chop-chop!” he howled happily. “Chop-chop-chop-chop-chop!”

  Of course he ran right into the spears of the soldiers. We gave him up for dead, but the distraction allowed us to clear a path. Li Kao filled the air with flying daggers and four soldiers fell. “Quick, Master Li, climb upon my back!” I yelled. He hopped up and I raced straight toward the throne, planted the butt of my spear, vaulted over the head of the Ancestress, and took to my heels.

  It was a losing game. The soldiers knew the palace and we did not, and sooner or later we were going to reach a dead end. I raced up staircases while Li Kao snatched vases from pedestals and smashed them over the heads of the soldiers below, but there were simply too many soldiers. I ran down a long hallway and tugged at a pair of massive bronze doors. They were locked. I turned and started back, and skidded to a halt as the hallway filled with soldiers. Two columns of men started toward us along the walls, while the captain of the bodyguards led a double rank down the center. We stared at a solid line of glittering spears, and I consigned my humble soul to the August Personage of Jade.<
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  Then an elephant charged into the hall and squashed the captain flat. At least I thought it was an elephant until I realized that it was the Ancestress, and I gaped at an incredible sight.

  “Chop-chop!” yelled Henpecked Ho. “Chop-chop-chop-chop-chop!”

  He had no right to be alive. Blood spurted from twenty wounds with every step that he took, but he kept right on taking them. “Save me!” the Ancestress howled, and then her five hundred pounds flattened three more soldiers who might have saved her. It was over in a few minutes.

  The Ancestress ran around in circles and squashed everything in front of her, and Henpecked Ho swung his axe and whacked everything in sight, and Li Kao slipped through the carnage slitting throats, and I flailed away with my sword. Toward the end it became rather messy, because we were slipping and sliding upon pieces of the Ancestress, and there was a lot of Ancestress to go around. Then we staggered away from the last fallen soldier and knelt beside Henpecked Ho.

  He lay on his back with his axe still clutched in his hands. His life was draining away in red rivulets, and his face was ashen, and his eyes strained to focus on us.

  “Did I get her?” he whispered.

  “Ho, you chopped that monster into a hundred pieces,” Master Li said proudly.

  “I am so happy,” the gentle scholar whispered. “Now my ancestors will not be ashamed to greet me when I arrive in Hell to be judged.”

  “Bright Star will be waiting for you,” I said.

  “Oh no, that would be far too much to ask,” he said seriously. “The most that I dare ask of the Yama Kings is that I may be reborn as a beautiful flower, so that sometime, somewhere, a dancing girl might choose to pluck me and wear me in her hair.”