The young Daoist had already rehearsed a whole string of speeches to answer the straw-sandaled boy's inevitable question — "Who?" — but to his surprise, the courtyard gate opened almost at once. Evidently the boy of the mean little lane had simply skipped that part of the script altogether.
Clay Bottle Alley was among the most cramped and oppressive passages in all the small town; there was no way the Daoist's two-wheeled wooden cart could be left outside to block the way. Fortunately, though Chen Ping'an looked as gaunt as kindling, without an ounce of strength to spare, his arms in fact carried no small might, and he helped the young Daoist wrestle the heavy cart into the courtyard without much trouble at all. From beginning to end, the boy said nothing — and that left the young Daoist, once the gate was shut, distinctly awkward. It was like a man who had brazenly come calling to borrow money, only to find his host serving up fine wine, tea, and meat with eager hospitality; if a guest kept any shred of conscience at all, the words of request grew only harder to force out.
The young Daoist thought to himself: since it will be uncomfortable either way, better to get it over with in one stroke. So he flipped back the cotton quilt-cushion spread over the cart, revealing the figure of a black-robed girl lying curled on her side. A veiled hat, tilted askew yet refusing to fall, still stubbornly shielded her face. And oddly, it was only when the thin bedding was tossed aside that a breath of blood suddenly rushed up at them. Only now did Chen Ping'an notice the black of her robes was stained here and there with seeping blood. He had not given a thought to how a small quilt could have smothered so heavy a smell; the boy simply fell back a few paces and asked, "Honored Daoist, what are you going to do?"
The young Daoist replied, "Save her! She's gravely wounded. No one in town is willing to take her in — and little wonder, for every household sweeps its own doorstep here. So your poor priest mulled it over and concluded you just might be the one exception."
Chen Ping'an struck at the very heart of the matter: "How was she hurt?"
The Daoist, without a flush or a quickened pulse, replied, "When your poor priest passed by the memorial archway a little while ago with the cart, I saw this out-of-town young woman — would you believe it — she declared she was going to make a rubbing of that giant plaque inscribed 'Spirit Soaring to Fight the Bull,' climbed straight up there with her rubbing-mallet and brush and all, scurrying up quick as an ape. As for rubbing inscriptions, well, it's a sort of copying pastime — mostly bookish fellows with more belly than sense doing it to while away their boredom, and your poor priest can't explain it clearly in a moment. Anyway, after this little miss got up there she sat hunched on that crossbeam, head bowed, and it made your poor priest's heart leap into my throat to watch her. I had to stop and keep calling up cautions to mind herself. Who could have guessed that still, lost in her work, she'd suddenly — splat — thud down hard on the ground. You know that ground beneath the archway. It's not like your Clay Bottle Alley — it's hard as the blue stone slabs of Fortune Street. Well, that fall must have bruised every last organ and gut she owns. Your poor priest is a man of the cloth — I had to be compassionate, I couldn't just turn my back on her, could I? The whole way here, every household turned up its nose at her drenched in blood — barely past the New Year, too unlucky to be borne into anyone's home, they all said. I know that's just human nature, so with no other recourse I came to you. To put it bluntly — if even you refuse to take her in, I'm no immortal who can haul a soul back from the gates of death. I'd be left to wait until the girl breathes her last, then find some patch of ground, dig a pit, plant a marker, and call the matter settled."
The Daoist deliberately spoke at a furious gallop, his syllables blurring into one another — plainly he meant to spin the boy around until he was dizzy, to talk his way through the pass first and reckon with the rest afterwards. Every start is the hard part; once a beginning was made, he could take each step as it came. Heaven never bars the way of a man entirely, and beyond every dark hill there is always some turning of the road to bright pasture.
Chen Ping'an's gaze was full of tangled feelings. He looked at the young Daoist radiant with hope, then glanced at the black-robed girl who lay as still as death. After a long war between heart and mind, he nodded. "How do we save her?"
The young Daoist's face lit up with triumph. "There! With that one word from you, Chen Ping'an, the work is already half done. Don't judge by how frightful her wounds look — like King Yama has struck her name off the book of life. It's nowhere near as bad as you might think... though of course, everything I just told you is the plain truth as well. It all involves all manner of mysteries — this girl's will to live, for one, burns fiercely, and beyond that she seems to carry some art handed down in her family that guards the seat of her heart and her elixir field and such. And then there's the little matter of our town — it's quite the interesting place, thick with the strangest oddities. Eating a bit of this, or catching a bit of that, does a body a world of good."
The young Daoist came back to himself, realizing he had leaked a great deal of heaven's secret. With a dry laugh he said, "Anyway — you wouldn't understand any of it, would you?"
The boy said earnestly, "I don't understand it. But most of it I would remember."
The young Daoist probed: "So you can tell, just from a knock on your door, that it's your poor priest — the fortune-teller who runs the stall?"
Chen Ping'an hesitated a moment, then said, "Yes."
The young Daoist grew more curious. "Your memory is remarkable, is it? How remarkable?"
The boy glanced at the black-robed girl, clinging to the last thread of life, and the young Daoist explained with a smile, "She's in a rather mysterious sort of state just now. She can't be moved carelessly. Best to wait a moment."
Chen Ping'an took this with a grain of salt. "I remember what I see with my eyes more readily than what I hear said with tongues."
The young Daoist pressed: "Can you give an example?"
Chen Ping'an thought for a moment. "Take the master at the mouth of our dragon kiln — Master Yao. His 'jump-cut' technique is the finest of all the old masters in town. I only ever needed to watch once to hold every detail of it in my memory. But..."
The young Daoist laughed and took up the thread: "But your hands can never quite keep pace. Am I right?"
Chen Ping'an's eyes flashed bright, and he nodded hard.
The young Daoist smiled knowingly. "Then have you ever thought about where old Yao's signature skill is truly strong?"
Chen Ping'an's face darkened. "I couldn't puzzle it out no matter how I tried. Then one day Liu Xianyang told me old Yao says that to master the jump-cut craft, one must be steady in the heart — not merely steady in the hand. When I heard those words, some light broke through for me. Before, I was too anxious. The more I fretted, the wilder my hands went, and the wilder they went, the easier I made mistakes. And once I made a mistake, I could see it with perfect clarity — I knew precisely where I fell short of old Yao. And that only made me more anxious next time. So at the kiln, at the wheel, I've always been the worst there is."
The young Daoist said mildly, "There's an old saying: the master leads you in through the gate, but the cultivation is your own. Yet when your so-called master never meant to lead you in at all — how are you to cultivate?"
Chen Ping'an shook his head. "I have clumsy hands and feet. Never mind comparing myself to Liu Xianyang — I can't even match the ordinary apprentices. It's no wonder old Yao thought little of me."
The young Daoist suddenly smiled. "Chen Ping'an, do you have any idea how hard it is to grasp those two words, 'a steady heart'? It's no easy thing to understand. You mustn't sell yourself short."
Chen Ping'an shook his head again. "It's like catching fish in a little brook. I stand where the water comes only to my knee, bend down, and scoop up a fish — that's catching. Another man, a good swimmer, dives headfirst into a deep pool, holds his breath for a long time, and comes up with a fish — that's catching too. Both catch a fish, Honored Daoist. But the two are not the same thing at all. Do you see?"
The young Daoist burst into laughter, neither agreeing nor denying, and suddenly said, "Then we can save her now."
Chen Ping'an stood transfixed. The young Daoist gave him a baffled look in turn. "What are you staring at? Carry the young lady inside to the bed!"
Chen Ping'an did not stir a hair. "And then?"
The Daoist said as if it were the most natural thing in the world: "Naturally you first help the young lady into a change of clean clothes, then run to the apothecary for a few measures of herbs to nourish her breath and fortify her vitality. And by that point your poor priest shall have to come out in person and show off a bit of wit."
Chen Ping'an asked, his face dark, "When the young lady wakes up, will she beat me to death?"
The young Daoist declared without a tremor: "She will not! You'll be her savior — how could the world hold anyone so ungrateful as that?!"
Chen Ping'an said nothing.
The Daoist coughed, and his grand manner collapsed by a stair. "Probably not?"
Chen Ping'an sighed, and tried another tack: "There's a girl next door named Zhigui. Could she do these things?"
The young Daoist said helplessly, "No. That's precisely the crux of the problem."
Chen Ping'an did not press it. He crouched down on the dirt, both hands scratching at his hair.
The young Daoist suddenly asked, "Is there nothing you want to ask me? I can't promise to resolve every question you put to me, but I'll do my best to answer the ones I can. Well?"
Chen Ping'an let out a sigh and rose to his feet. "Let's save her first."
The young Daoist's face broke into a grin. "Well spoken!"
Then, without a visible sign, he flicked his sleeve, pressing back into its sheath a restless flying sword that had been all but straining to leap out.
Chen Ping'an carried the girl upon his back into the house and set her gently down upon the plank bed that was cushioned with bedding — the very bed Liu Xianyang had once collapsed by plopping his weight straight through it, only recently mended, with a wooden stool wedged beneath for support.
The young Daoist stepped in over the threshold behind him and looked about. Four bare walls and nothing more — it was exactly the poverty one would expect.
The young Daoist slapped his forehead and went out to fetch paper and brush, meaning to write out a prescription for the boy to take to the druggist.
Back in the house, the young Daoist shook his head, deliberately keeping his eyes off the plank bed, thinking to himself that this penniless boy was nailed down, past all doubt, to a fate of biting off more than he could chew.
For there on the edge of the bed sat the boy, who had already lifted the girl's veiled hat from her — laying bare a pale face smeared all over with blood and grime.
'A mouth, a nose, both ears, both eyes — seven orifices all bleeding out' — that was more or less the picture now laid beneath the boy's eyelids.
Chen Ping'an scrambled to his feet, first fetched a stool from beside the table and set it by the bed, then hurried over to a corner of the wall where a little wooden shelf stood, stacked with neat rows of pots, pans, bowls, and ladles. Beside the shelf was a small water vat covered with a plank to keep off flies and mosquitoes — filled with well-water drawn from the Iron Chain Well over in Apricot Blossom Lane. The boy took a wooden basin and a gourd-ladle, crouched by the vat, scooped up clean water and poured it into the basin in quick measure, then draped a clean cotton cloth over its rim, carried the basin to the bedside and set it on the stool, and began to wipe the gore from the face of the girl whose veil he had removed.
The young Daoist turned his head and waved a sheet of paper in his hand. "There's a small apothecary over on Fortune Street. Take this prescription and fetch the herbs."
The boy looked puzzled. "Didn't the Honored Daoist just say...?"
The young Daoist wore a face of dim innocence and blinked. "Of course. I meant you should be careful when fetching the herbs — not make too great a show of it, lest word of it spread through the whole town and mar the young lady's reputation."
Chen Ping'an let out an "oh," and while rinsing out the cotton cloth asked, "Does the Honored Daoist have coin for the herbs?"
The young Daoist grew suddenly tense. "Don't you?"
Chen Ping'an set the basin on the table, then took out a single copper — a golden one, from none knows where — and pressed it lightly down upon the tabletop. "Honored Daoist, I'll swap this with you for plain copper coins. As for the rate of exchange, the Daoist may name it."
The young Daoist considered a moment. "This one coin on the table is enough to buy everything on the prescription. Your poor priest will fetch you the money at once."
He was back quick enough with a pouch of ordinary copper coins and a few slivers of silver besides, and handed the whole lot over to Chen Ping'an.
Chen Ping'an cautioned him: "This basin of water, I'll pour out myself, when the time comes. Don't trouble yourself, Master. Song Jixin lives just next door, and he has a taste for fresh novelties. If he caught sight of it, that would be bad."
The young Daoist said gravely, "Chen Ping'an — is there truly nothing you want to ask me?"
Chen Ping'an stood where he was, roughly hefting the weight of the copper and silver in his hands. Once he had made a fair account of it in his mind, he tucked it away with care and flicked his eyes toward the door, indicating they should talk outside. The two stepped over the threshold, and the straw-sandaled boy raised his head and spoke, slowly: "I know the two of you are no common folk. Long ago, when old Yao was deep in his cups, he once said our town is far from ordinary — strange in every quarter, everyone in it strange. But what precisely is strange about it, even old Yao couldn't say, and of course I understood even less. This time, Gu Can said that storyteller could pour out a whole huge vat of water from an ordinary white bowl. Gu Can is a tiresome little pest, but I know he wasn't lying about this thing. Just like..."
The boy paused, then went on, "Just like today, when a very tall woman in the lane outside this gate flicked my forehead once with her finger, struck me once in the chest with the flat of her palm, and finally said I would soon die. I know her words were true."
The young Daoist's face grew heavy.
Chen Ping'an finished: "The Daoist said the talisman-drawing you wrote, once burned, would bring good fortune to my father and mother. I truly believe the Daoist. So when the Daoist came to my door and asked me to save someone, I said nothing against it just now — but there is one thing I ask the Daoist to promise me. If it is promised, then whatever the Daoist may ask of me from here on, all is well. If it is refused, then once I've fetched this prescription and brewed the medicine, I will be showing the Daoist the door."
The Daoist asked, "What term? Speak it, then."
The boy — who had always given the impression of being steady and worldly-wise beyond his years — now grew oddly hesitant. "My father and mother passed away early, when I was very small. For reasons I can't explain, I remember a great many things from my childhood — only the faces of my parents have always been blurred, never clear in my memory. Later, I survived on a cup of rice here and a share of porridge there, the charity of my neighbors keeping me alive. Once, I happened to overhear someone say I was born on the fifth day of the fifth month. From their tone, it was no auspicious day. And one neighbor put it plainer still..."
The boy had been circling the point for some while. He halted, then at last drove straight to the heart of it, lowering his head, his voice dull. "After I've helped the Daoist save her — if, I mean, only if — if I should suddenly die someday, could the Daoist see to it that in my next life I'm reborn once more as my father and mother's child?"
The young Daoist said nothing at all.
Chen Ping'an bared his teeth in a grin and scratched his head. "If it can't be done, then never mind. Truly, how could such a thing exist under heaven? I've only put the Daoist on the spot."
The Daoist said with a bitter laugh, "Then what's to be done about that young lady?"
Chen Ping'an turned abruptly, his back to the Daoist, lifted a fist and shook it, and — for the first time in his life — cracked a joke: "She's that pretty. Not to save her would be to be a fool!"
The young Daoist watched the straw-sandaled boy, who had put on such an air of ease, push open the gate and leave.
The boy, walking through Clay Bottle Alley, seemed to think of some one. And all at once his face was swimming in tears.