Bridge of Birds

by Barry Hughart

  We tiptoed back to the other side of the tower to see how Ma and Fang were coming along. Bees were droning beside the wall, and Ma the Grub was surprised to see a trail of honey. His fingers slid slyly toward the stuff. Our porcupine merchant had brought out a plate of sweetmeats, and he was automatically lifting them to his gaping mouth as he listened to the members of the mob bellow one accusation after another. Ma the Grub craftily covered the ashes in the funeral urn with honey. He slid the urn beneath the merchant's fat fingers, and the hand lifted again and again to the insatiable maw....

  "Monster!" Ma shrieked in horror. "Fang, look what these fiends are doing! First they try to steal the incarnation of your beloved mother, and now they devour her very ashes!"

  "Cannibals!" screamed Pawnbroker Fang. He pried the merchant's mouth open and peered into the black hole. "Mother, speak to me!" he howled.

  Chaos ensued, and the soldiers in the courtyard converged upon the screaming pandemonium, and we dragged the flag and the basket to the rear of the roof. We climbed in, and I grasped the lanyards.

  "I have decided to ask the Yama Kings to let me be reborn as a three-toed sloth, and Ox wishes to become a cloud. Do you have any preference?" Li Kao asked Miser Shen.

  "A tree," Miser Shen said promptly. "In this life I have done nothing but foreclose mortgages, and when I am reborn I would like to provide free shade for the weary, free roosts for the birds, free fruit for the hungry, and free firewood for woodcutters when I am old and useless. Peasants name their favorite trees, and it is the dearest wish of Miser Shen to be known as 'Old Generosity.'"

  "I shall hang by my tail from one of your branches," said Master Li.

  "I shall drift overhead and bring rain for your roots," I said.

  "I am overcome," Miser Shen sniffled.

  "Farewell, tree."

  "Farewell, cloud."

  "Farewell, sloth."

  I pushed off, and we plunged toward the cobblestones like three bugs clinging to a boulder. I consigned my soul to Heaven, and then the flag billowed wide, and we halted in mid-air so suddenly that my arms were nearly pulled from their sockets.

  "We really must stop somewhere and collect some pearls for Lotus Cloud," said Miser Shen.

  "And jade," I agreed.

  "Incredible," sighed Master Li.

  The wind caught the flag, and we drifted lazily away across the treetops toward a green valley where a river sparkled in the distance. The tower dwindled behind us, and we landed quite gently, and in the first village we bought a small boat and a great deal of wine.

  The Duke of Ch'in, like all his predecessors, continued his tax trip past the terrible Desert of Salt, and after drifting uneventfully downstream for six days Li Kao found the landmark he was looking for. It was a tiny trail that ran from the bank toward a low hill, and the boat was light enough so that I could carry it over my head until we reached water again. It was a small, rapid stream, and as the days passed it grew narrower and shallower. The air became very hot and we began to perspire freely, and on the fourth day we floated around a bend and I realized that the stream was disappearing, vanishing into cracks in the hard-caked earth. A blinding white glare was all that I could see of the horizon. The boat scraped bottom, and we climbed out to the bank, and Li Kao pointed ahead to the glare.

  "The Desert of Salt," he said. "Peasants swear that when the Duke of Ch'in passes this way on his tax trip, his army reaches this point and then vanishes for days."

  He searched for another landmark, and pointed to a faint line that was barely visible beneath the white expanse of salt.

  "Too straight to be the work of nature," he said. "Swirling salt will cover hoofprints and wheel tracks, but the underlying traces of a road will remain if it is used every year."

  "Do you think that it leads to another treasure trove?" I asked.

  "Well, it's an idea, and even a bad idea is better than none," said Master Li. "Error can point the way to truth, while empty-headedness can only lead to more empty-headedness or to a career in politics. Miser Shen, now is the time when a wise man would turn back. If we keep chasing the duke we will eventually get back to Lotus Cloud, but the Desert of Salt has swallowed whole caravans, and our deaths are not likely to be pleasant."

  "What is life without Lotus Cloud?" Miser Shen asked, quite reasonably from my point of view. "Besides, after a lifetime of disgrace, the least I can do is die with dignity."

  I was really astonished to see what a splendid fellow had been lurking behind a skinflint's exterior, and that night I learned a great deal about Miser Shen. We emptied our wine jars and filled them with water, and I cut the sail of the boat to make a tent. Then we followed the faint path into the desert, and just before dawn we crawled into the tent to protect ourselves from the direct rays of the sun. Miser Shen was afraid that we might think badly of Lotus Cloud for having accepted the love of someone so old and ugly as him, and he begged to be allowed to tell his story.

  "Many years ago I was a happy man," he said in a shy, halting voice. "I was a peasant, and I was poor, but I had a small farm and a wife who loved me and the most adorable little daughter in the world. We almost always had enough to eat, and I never dreamed of asking for more. Then our village fell on hard times. The rain would not fall, or if it did, it fell so hard that our dikes broke and our crops were washed away. Our animals fell sick, and bandits bullied us and stole our rice, and then one day we learned that the Duke of Ch'in, the father of the present duke, had doubled out taxes. We could not possibly pay such a tax. The men of the village drew lots, and I was the unlucky one who was sent to plead to the duke.

  "There were many peasants waiting to plead for lower taxes, so I spent hours rehearsing my speech. When my time came, I fell upon my knees in front of the throne and I told the duke of all the hardships that had come to my village. I know that I told my story well. When I had finished I raised my eyes to the terrible tiger mask, and the voice of metal frightened me but the words brought joy to my heart.

  " 'Shen Chunlieh,' said the duke, 'today I have heard many tales from those who wish to cheat me, but your story rings true. I am convinced that you cannot pay my tax, and I will grant you a very special favor. Go home to your village, and tell your family and friends that never again shall the village of Shen Chunlieh be asked to pay taxes to the Dukes of Ch'in, not so long as the stars shine in the sky and the fish swim in the sea.'

  "I kissed the floor and bowed backward from the presence of the duke, and my feet had wings as I raced over the hills. I could not run as fast as his horsemen could ride, however, and when I had climbed the last hill I stared down at smoldering ruins. The duke had sworn that never again would we pay taxes, and then he had destroyed my village as an example to others. The only villagers who had been spared were those who had been away, fishing at a nearby lake, and one of those was my wife. We wept in each other's arms, but do you remember that I had a little daughter? Her name was Ah Chen, and I loved her more than anything in the world, and she had been left behind in the village and had been killed with the others.

  "I was wild with grief. I saw the face of my little girl everywhere, and at night I would hear her crying in the woods and I would run out and shout, 'Ah Chen, your father is here!' They said that I would feel better if I sent a prayer to her. I could not read or write, so I went to a priest who wrote down my prayer and burned it to send to Hell, where my little girl had gone to be judged. I did not feel better. I could not work and I could not sleep, and one day a traveler told of a great magician who lived in a cave at the end of Bear's Path, high in the Omei Mountains. 'He is called the Old Man of the Mountain,' the traveler told me. 'He is the wisest man in the world, and he can surely bring your little girl back to life, but you must bring money. You must bring a great deal of money, because the Old Man of the Mountain does not sell his secrets cheaply.'

  "I had no money, so I set out to make some. Like anyone else who sets out to make money I lied and I cheated and I ruined my friends, but nothin
g mattered except getting enough money to bring little Ah Chen back to life. 'Beloved husband, you must forget our daughter,' my wife told me. 'If you continue this way, you will surely go insane.' Then she fell ill, but I was too busy making money to care for her. She died, and I wept, but I went right on making money. The money mattered, only the money, and I could not spend a penny of it because I would need it all for the Old Man of the Mountain. I was not aware of losing my mind, but as the years passed I forgot what the money was for. Now and then I would remember, but I would tell myself that I needed twice as much money to pay the wisest man in the world to bring my daughter back to life. I buried gold in chests and ran out to grab for more. I became Miser Shen, the greediest and most miserable of men, and so I would have remained if Lotus Cloud had not bankrupted me and brought me to my senses.

  "Noble Sirs, there are women who can see right into the heart of a man, and I would like you to know that Lotus Cloud never accepted the love of Miser Shen. She accepted the love of a poor peasant who loved his little girl too much, and who went insane."

  18. The Hand of Hell

  We traveled at night, and spent the days huddled in the tent while we fried in the heat. When we peeped through the folds we saw multiple images of the sun reflected in the glaring white salt, surrounded by orange and violet halos that spun round and round and made us sick to our stomachs. Whirlwinds danced in mad patterns, and the wind howled horribly. Even at night the heat never released us from its blazing fingers, and often the moon and stars were obscured by flying salt. The faint trace of what we hoped was a road ran on and on, seemingly without end, and it was a relief when the mirages began, because they gave us something to look at.

  I would see a castle with a silver dome, standing in the center of an emerald lake. "No, no!" Miser Shen would say. "It is a large rock in the middle of a river, and the rock is covered with nesting birds. Seagulls, I think, although I cannot imagine what seagulls are doing in a desert." Master Li would snort and say, "Nonsense. I can clearly see a large pleasure barge floating in a pond, and the banks are lined with bright green trees."

  Then the mirage would dissolve into nothingness, and we would gaze at an endless expanse of white salt.

  We saw cities and cemeteries and armies arrayed in battle formation, and always there was water and a green oasis of some sort. As the days passed we had to ration water, and thirst began to torment us. Then one day Miser Shen pointed ahead.

  "Look at that ghastly mirage!" he exclaimed.

  "Mirage?" I said. "Shen, it's the nightmare of a demented baboon."

  Li Kao studied the shimmering image carefully and said, "Tell me what you see."

  "Well, I see the usual green oasis, but it is standing in the middle of a mess of shattered stones," said Miser Shen. "Geysers of steam are hissing up from the bowels of the earth, and I smell a horrible stench of sulphur."

  "The whole mirage is surrounded by a broad belt like a moat, and it's filled with a strange fiery liquid that makes a sickening sort of bubbling sound," I said.

  "My friends, I regret to report that I see precisely the same thing," Master Li said grimly. "That is not a mirage, and the path we are following leads straight to it."

  As we came closer we realized that we were looking at the ruins of a once great city, but what a terrible catastrophe had befallen it! The walls were tumbled ruins. One narrow span of what had once been a mighty stone bridge still crossed a moat that had formerly held blue water and white swans and golden fish, and now bubbled with fiery red-black lava. On the other side a pair of enormous bronze gates stood open, but bent and twisted by some unimaginable force, and when we nervously crossed the moat and passed through the gates a terrible sight met our eyes. Steam hissed like the breath of angry dragons through great gaping holes in the earth, and pools of murderous lava heaved and bubbled, and it seemed to me that the harsh wind that howled through the ruins was wailing death, death, death. A lunatic tangle of side streets branched from both sides of a central avenue — if one could call them streets, since not one building remained standing — and in the distance we saw a great mass of tumbled stones. It had probably been the palace of the king, and we decided to climb to the top of it to try to find the green oasis that we had glimpsed from a distance.

  It had certainly been a palace. We climbed over smashed statues and beautiful stone friezes, and then we stopped dead in our tracks and stared. Ahead of us was a wall about thirty feet high and perhaps five times as long, and the three of us had the same thought at once.

  "That wall could not possibly have survived the catastrophe!" I cried. "It must have been built afterward, from the toppled stones."

  "I would not like to meet whatever it was that knocked a hole in it," Master Li said thoughtfully.

  Nor would I. Some incredible force had jerked out enormous stone slabs and tossed them aside like pebbles. A great gaping hole confronted us like a screaming mouth, and when we cautiously stepped through it we stared at great piles of human bones. Miser Shen turned quite pale.

  "I swear that those poor souls were chewed!" he gasped.

  He was right. Nothing but monstrous grinding teeth could have shredded bones like that, and not only bones. Armor had been pulverized as well, and Miser Shen and I were greatly relieved when Li Kao examined it with critical eyes and said:

  "This armor is in the style of five hundred years ago, or more. Perhaps a thousand years would be closer. Whatever the creature was, it has been dust for centuries."

  He bent over and examined the mangled skeletons.

  "You know, I recall a monster that could have done this to armed warriors," he said thoughtfully. "It was discovered frozen in the ice of a Mongolian glacier. Half mammal, half lizard, one hundred feet from head to tail, and equipped with teeth like steel doorposts. The sages wanted to preserve it for scientific study, but we had an exceptionally idiotic emperor at the time, and I regret to say that the imperial dolt had the beast cut up and boiled for a state banquet. The fact that it smelled like two thousand old unopened rooms and tasted like diseased whale blubber didn't bother the Son of Heaven one bit. He happily awarded himself the medal 'Heroic Slayer of Inedible Monstrosities,' which he wore on all state occasions."

  I was staring at a large toppled slab.

  "Master Li, I think this is covered with writing, but the script is so ancient that I can't make any sense of it," I said.

  He examined the slab with interest, and brushed a layer of salt from it. Time and the wind had made much of the writing illegible, but enough remained to make my hair stand up on my head.

  "It begins with a prayer to the gods," he said. "Then some words are missing, and then it says: '... punished for our sins, and the earth opened with a great roar and flames engulfed us. Fiery black rock sprayed up like water, and for eight days the earth heaved and shuddered, and on the ninth day the earth vomited forth the Hand That No One Sees, from the very depths of Hell.' "

  "The what?" Miser Shen asked.

  "The Hand That No One Sees, but don't ask me what it means," said Master Li. "More words are missing, and then it says: '... sixth day of our doom, and we labor on the wall but we are faint of heart. We pray and sacrifice, but the gods remain implacable. The queen and her ladies have chosen the more merciful death, and have jumped into the lake of fiery molten rock. We did not try to stop them. The Hand moves closer. Our spears are hurled at nothingness and bounce away from nothingness. The wall is beginning to shake. The Hand…' "

  Li Kao straightened up. "That's all there is," he said quietly.

  "Whoof!" Miser Shen gasped. "I don't care how many centuries ago that happened. I want to get out of here."

  So did I. I scrambled up to the top of the wall and peered around.

  "I see the oasis!" I cried. "There's a lake of lava covering the back of the palace, so we'll have to try to reach the oasis through the side streets."

  That wasn't as simple as it sounded. Time and again we came to dead ends where scalding steam or b
ubbling lava blocked the way, and we were not the only ones who had reached dead ends. Skeletons, chewed to pieces in their useless armor, littered almost every side street.

  "Whatever that thing was, it certainly ate well," Miser Shen said nervously.

  We tried street after street with no success, and finally we were almost back where we had entered the city. Li Kao looked at the huge bronze gates and the narrow span of bridge and shrugged his shoulders.

  "Perhaps we had better go back across the moat and see if there is another bridge on the side where the oasis is," he said.

  We started forward, and then we stopped and gaped with eyes that nearly popped from the sockets. Those gates weighed tons. Nothing was touching them, but they were creaking shut! They came together with a terrible crash of metal, and a mark appeared in the layer of salt upon the ground. It took several moments for my brain to believe what my eyes were showing me. I was staring at the print of an enormous thumb, and four huge fingerprints followed, and then an immense sliding mark. An enormous invisible hand was crawling toward us, dragging the palm and heel behind the terrible fingers!

  Miser Shen and I stood rooted to the spot in horror, but Master Li whirled around and gazed back at the tangle of the side streets. Then he yelled, "Ox, pick us up!"

  I scooped up Master Li in one arm and Miser Shen in the other, and Master Li grabbed the dragon pendant that dangled from the chain around my neck. His fingers found the place where the dragon had stopped after leading us to the treasure trove.

  "I should have realized at once that this place was another labyrinth," he said grimly. "Turn into the second street on the right, and I would advise you to hurry."

  Even though I was carrying the two of them I doubt that my record for the course will be surpassed until a Tibetan snow leopard tries it, but the Hand That No One Sees was almost as fast. Those great invisible fingers were stretching out twenty or thirty feet, and salt was billowing up behind the sliding palm. "First left!" Master Li yelled. "Second left!... Fourth right!... Third left!... First right!... ." I panted through the maze, leaping over lava and darting around geysers of steam, and at last I saw the tops of green trees and realized that the dragon was leading us to the oasis. Then I skidded to a halt.