Bridge Of Birds (17 page)

“Yet when they repeated that rhyme, they were able to find the queen,” he said
thoughtfully.

“Yes, sir,” I said. “Monkey touched Fawn before the count reached forty-nine, and she
smiled because she had won the game.”

Li Kao swallowed his wine at a gulp and turned back to the room.

“Those children were completely unconscious. Then they had one tiny taste of the Great
Root, and how did they react? Every single one of them instantly started playing the
Hopping Hide and Seek Game, and every single one of them recited a nonsense rhyme that
children from this village had first heard many centuries ago at Dragon's Pillow. I am
beginning to suspect that the simple quest for a ginseng root is wrapped in more riddles
than that Mysterious Mountain Cavern of Winds, where the White Serpent crushes heroes in
the cold coils of enigmas, and while I am probably hallucinating, I am willing to bet that
the ghost of a murdered maiden fits in here somewhere.”

He turned to the abbot. “Reverend Sir, in your studies of myth and folklore, have you ever
encountered a ghostly handmaiden who pleads that birds must fly?”

The abbot shook his head negatively.

“Or ghosts who beg people to exchange things for feathers? Possibly things like this?”

He took the tiny flute from his smuggler's belt. The abbot studied it with interest but
without recognition, and Li Kao sighed and lifted it to his lips and blew gently into the
mouthpiece. Then he hurled the flute to the floor, and all three of us jumped back and
stared at it as one might view a cobra.

No flute sound came from that incredible thing. Instead we heard an old woman whose voice
was so rich and warm that she might have been the grandmother of the entire human race.

“Aiieeee! Aiieeee! Come closer, my children! Spread ears like elephants, and I will
tell you the tale of a girl named Beauty, and of her wicked stepmother and her good fairy
godmother, and of the magic fishbone and the carriage and the little slipper that fell
from Beauty's foot and led her to a handsome prince!”

Li Kao lunged. He grabbed the flute and covered the first of four tiny fingerholes and the
voice stopped abruptly. He covered the second fingerhole and blew lightly into the
mouthpiece.

“Aiieeee! Aiieeee! Come closer, my children! Spread ears like elephants, and I will
tell you the tale of the old woman and her little boy, and of the cow and the corn and the
peddler, and of the beanstalk that grew to the clouds, and what happened when the little
boy climbed it into a world of wonders!”

Li Kao tried the other fingerholes, and each one produced a tale that had been delighting
Chinese children for at least two thousand years, and which have even spread to the
barbarian tribes. He stopped the last tale and glowered at the marvelous thing.

“Master Li, we could exchange that flute for ten thousand tons of feathers,” I whispered.

“With the island of Taiwan tossed in for good measure,” the abbot said shakily.

Master Li looked from the flute to the infirmary where the children lay, and back to the
flute.

“That does it!” he snarled. “Ox, we have an evil duke who reads minds and laughs at axes,
treasure troves that are hidden in labyrinths that are supposedly guarded by monsters,
flutes that tell fairy tales, an incomprehensible ghost who might have come from one, an
ancient children's game, and a ghostly message from Dragon's Pillow. If you're wondering
about the wicked stepmother, just wait, because she's bound to turn up.”

He replaced the flute in his belt, and shook a finger in front of my nose.

“Nothing on the face of this earth - and I do mean nothing - is half so dangerous as a
children's story that happens to be real, and you and I are wandering blindfolded through
a myth devised by a maniac. Mark my words!” he shouted angrily. “If the Key Rabbit can
slip us into another one of the duke's treasure troves, we will most certainly shake hands
with a two-hundred-foot armor-plated winged water moccasin that can hit the eye of a gnat
with a spit of venom from twenty miles away, and that can only be slain by a hero who was
born inside a knitting needle during a total eclipse of the moon on the thirty-first day
of February.”

I flushed, and looked down at my toes.

“If it's all right with you, I'd rather worry about real heads splashing into real basins
filled with real blood,” I said meekly.

“You have a point.” He sighed.

Master Li looked wryly at the abbot and shrugged his shoulders.

“The supernatural can be very annoying until one finds the key that transforms it into
science,” he observed mildly. “I'm probably imagining complications that don't exist. Come
on, Ox, let's go out and get killed.”

The Duke of Ch'in had left on his annual tax trip, with the Key Rabbit and Lotus Cloud,
and we caught up with them in Chuyen. Unfortunately, the Key Rabbit's apartment was high
in an unclimbable tower in the palace of the duke's provincial governor. There were no
vines to cling to, and no foot- or handholds, and every entrance was guarded by soldiers.
Master Li did not appear to be greatly disturbed.

“Ox, I learned a valuable lesson in natural history when I was exiled to Serendip,” he
said. “When a foraging ant discovers something of value, it grabs a sample and dashes back
to the colony screaming, 'Awake! Arise! Beat the drums! Sound general quarters! I have
discovered wealth beyond the dreams of avarice!' Then the whole colony follows the ant
back to the treasure, but are they content to take what they see? Not if it is a trail of
something. Ants that find trails of something they like will follow those trails to the
source, even if it means crossing half of the world. Do you see the significance of that?”

“No, sir,” I said.

“You will,” said Master Li.

In the marketplace he bought a large jar of honey and a box that contained a colony of
ants. Then he bribed a maid to bring a message to Lotus Cloud, and on the first cloudy
night we scaled the outer walls of the governor's palace, slipped past the guards, and
made our way to the tower. I hooted three times like an owl. Lotus Cloud, who was enjoying
the game immensely, opened her window and poured the jar of honey that the maid had
brought down the wall, and when the thick sweet trickle reached us Li Kao opened the box
and released the ants. They plunged into the honey with bulging squeals of delight,
discovered that it was a trail, and started to climb.

The last ant was the biggest, and it was towing a gauze thread that was lighter than a
feather. It scrambled over Lotus Cloud's windowsill, and she detached the thread and
tugged three times. Li Kao tied a fine length of string to his end of the thread and
tugged back, and Lotus Cloud began pulling it up. Then came a cord tied to the end of the
string, and a rope tied to the end of the cord, and Lotus Cloud tied her end of the rope
to something sturdy inside the apartment. Li Kao hopped upon my back and in a matter of
minutes I had climbed an unclimbable wall and flopped over the windowsill.

“Boopsie!” Lotus Cloud squealed happily.

I dumped my pearls and jade at her feet. “Do I have a story to tell you!” I panted.

“Later,” Li Kao said warningly.

Footsteps were approaching the door. I took Master Li on my back and swung back out the
window, and then I clung to the rope and lifted my eyes back up over the windowsill. A
pasty-faced lout crashed through the door, staggered across the room, dumped an armload of
pearls and jade on top of my pearls and jade, fell to his knees, wrapped his arms around
Lotus Cloud's legs, and buried his face against her thighs.

“My surname is Chia and my personal name is Chen and it is my unhappy lot to serve in this
miserable rathole as the duke's provincial governor, and I have worshipped you ever since
you grinned at me in the garden this morning,” he moaned.

Lotus Cloud laughed happily; her fingers played with his hair.

“I shall call you Woofie,” she said.

I sighed and sadly climbed back down the wall.

“Woofie?” said Master Li. “Ox, far be it for me to interfere with your affairs, but there
would appear to be certain drawbacks in forming a close relationship with Lotus Cloud.”

“I love her as much as ever.” I sighed.

He patted my shoulder comfortingly. “At least you will never be lonely,” he said. “You and
her other admirers can hold annual conventions. Perhaps the imperial elephant stables
might be large enough for the purpose, and if not, you can rent an impoverished province.
I hear that the grain harvest in Hua has been miserable this year, and the peasants should
be delighted to entertain sixty or seventy thousand visitors with money in their pockets.
Although I am talking nonsense, since every one of you will be bankrupt.”

“Great Heavens!” the lout yelled above us. “There is a rope tied to your bed!”

“Rope? What rope?” said Lotus Cloud.

The pasty-face peered over the windowsill, and under the circumstances there was little
that we could do except smile in a friendly fashion and wave. The provincial governor
pointed down at us and squawked,

“
Burglars!
Fear not, my beloved, I have my trusty sword!”

And then the bastard cut the rope.

We had ample time to survey the landscape as we plunged toward the courtyard. In another
part of the palace a banquet was breaking up and the departing guests were climbing into
carriages and sedan chairs. We were plunging straight toward one of the latter, and we
landed upon the vast belly of an enormously fat fellow. I bounced off to the cobblestones,
but Li Kao was much lighter and he continued to bounce up and down like a ball while the
fat fellow's dinner sprayed into the air.

Pigeon-egg soup, with lotus roots and dumplings and crushed pine kernels was followed by
ducks' tongues cooked in sesame oil with mushrooms and bamboo shoots, which were followed
by the ducks themselves - at least three - which had been stuffed with shellfish and
steamed inside a cover of hardened bean curd, which were followed by spider crabs simmered
in sweet white wine, which were followed by lamb kidneys sauteed with minced walnuts,
which were followed by honeycakes, which were followed by candied fruits, which were
followed by sweetmeats, which were followed by green tea, which was followed by plum wine,
which was followed by Daffodil Digestive Tonic, which was followed by Seven Spirits
Regulating Tonic, which was followed by Fragrant Fire Vitality Tonic, which was followed
by hiccups, which were followed by a pair of hands that clamped around Li Kao's throat.

“What have you done with my case of compasses?”
screamed our porcupine merchant.

In a way we were quite lucky. The Duke of Ch'in was continuing his tax trip with the Key
Rabbit - Lotus Cloud was to rejoin them in a week or so - and in his absence we received a
very considerate death sentence from the provincial governor, who was understandably
annoyed because we had delayed his entrance into Lotus Cloud's bed.

“You may choose your own method for departing this earth!” he yelled.

Then we were marched up to the roof of the tallest tower and the door was bricked up. This
left us the choice between slowly starving to death or jumping to the cobblestones one
hundred feet below, and I sat down miserably and buried my head in my hands. How much
longer could the children last? Two months? Three? The keen-eyed bonzes that the abbot had
posted would stare in vain from the roof of the monastery, because Master Li and Number
Ten Ox were not going to return with the rest of the Great Root of Power. I wept until I
realized that some of the sounds were coming from below me, and with a startled sense of
hope I saw that the soldiers were unsealing the door.

Hope faded quickly when I understood that they were merely opening the door in order to
shove another condemned prisoner up upon the roof, and as they bricked it up again Master
Li took note of a pair of little pig eyes, a bald and mottled skull, a sharp curving nose
like a parrot's beak, the loose flabby lips of a camel, and two drooping elephant ears
from which sprouted thick tufts of coarse gray hair.

“Would you care to buy a goat?” he said with a polite bow.

To our astonishment Miser Shen ran to embrace us with cries of joy.

“What good fortune!” he cried. “I had feared that I would never have the opportunity of
thanking my benefactors in person!”

“Benefactors?” I said.

“Thanking us?” said Master Li.

“For saving my life!” cried Miser Shen. “If it had not been for you, the Key Rabbit would
not have determined the extent of my wealth, and if he had not determined the extent of my
wealth he would not have invited me to tea, and if he had not invited me to tea I would
still be the stingiest and most miserable miser in China. Lotus Cloud,” he said proudly,
“made a new man of me.”

“Let me guess,” Li Kao said. “She bankrupted you in a week?”

Miser Shen drew himself up proudly.

“Great Buddha, no! Why, such was the extent of my wealth that it took the dear girl almost
a month to reduce me to abject poverty. Of course I owe a good deal to luck,” he added
modestly. “After Lotus Cloud ran through my countless chests of buried gold I was able to
get very good prices for my eight businesses, my six houses, my carriage, my sedan chair,
my horse, my three cows, my ten pigs, my twenty chickens, my eight savage guard dogs, my
seven half-starved servants, my - Dear boy, do you happen to remember my young and
beautiful concubine?”

“Vividly,” I said.

“I was very lucky there, because I was able to buy three more days of Lotus Cloud by
selling Pretty Ping to an up-and-coming young fellow in the brothel business. Lucky for
Pretty Ping too, because one of her customers fell in love with her and made her his
number-three wife, and now he showers her with the gifts and affection that she never
received from me. Poor girl, I treated her terribly.” Miser Shen sighed. “But then I was
not truly human, because I had not yet met Lotus Cloud.”