«And if I do not come out?» called the monk.
«Then we shall come back every night at sundown," screamed a demon with a head like a flayed bat, «and make a tumult, until, finally, our patience at an end, we shall burn down your little temple and we shall pluck your charred body from the ashes, and chomp it down eagerly with our sharp teeth!»
«So flee!» shouted another demon, its face that of a drowned man, flesh swollen, eyes blind and pearl–like, «flee this place and never come back!»
But the monk did not flee. Instead he walked out into the courtyard, and he picked up a burning brand from the fire.
«I will not leave this place," he said, «and I am tired of these performances. Now, whatever you are, fox or badger, take that! And that!» and he began to lay about him with the burning brand.
In a moment, where before there had stood a horde of demons, there was nothing more than a fat old he–badger, who scrabbled and began to run away. The monk threw the burning brand at the badger and struck him on the rear, burning its tail–fur and singeing its rump. The badger howled with pain, and vanished into the night.
At dawn the monk was half–woken from his sleep by a whispering voice from behind him.
«I wished to say sorry," said the voice. «It was a wager between the badger and me.»
The monk said nothing.
«The badger has fled to another province, his tail burned and his dignity in shreds," said the girl's voice. «I shall also leave, if you desire it. But I have lived my life in a den above the waterfall, by the twisted pine, and it would hurt me to leave.»
«Then stay," said the monk, «if you will play no more of your foolish fox tricks upon me.»
«Of course," said the whispering girl's voice behind him, and soon the monk returned to dreams. When he woke properly, an hour later, the monk found fox–footprints on the matting of his room.
The monk caught sight of the fox from time to time, slipping through the undergrowth, and the sight of her always made him smile.
He did not know that the fox had fallen violently in love with him, when she came to tell him she was sorry, or perhaps before, when he had picked her up from the muddy courtyard and taken her inside to dry herself by the fire. But whenever it had happened, it was unquestionably true that the fox was in love with the young monk.
And that was to be the cause of much misery in the time to come. Much misery, and heartbreak, and of a strange journey.
CHAPTER TWO
Now in those days there were many things walking the earth that we rarely see today. There were ghosts and demons, and spirits of all kinds; there were beast gods and little gods and great gods; there were all manner of entities, beings, and wraiths and creatures, both kind and malevolent.
The fox was hunting on the mountainside one night, after the moon had set and the night was at its darkest, when she saw, by a blasted pine tree, several bluish lights glimmering. Quiet and quick as a shadow she slipped toward them. As she approached, the lights resolved themselves into strange creatures, neither alive nor dead, which glowed with the flickering blue of marsh gas.
The creatures were talking to each other in low voices.
«So we are commanded," said the first creature, blue flame glistening on its naked skin, «and the monk shall die.»
The fox stopped moving then, and concealed herself behind a clump of ferns.
«Aye," said the second, its teeth sharp as tiny knives. «Our master, who is a Yin–Yang Diviner of great power, from his studies of the stars and of the patterns of the earth, has seen that, come the next full of the moon, either he or the monk shall be dead — and if it is not the monk, then it must be our master.»
«How, then, shall he die?» asked the third creature, its eyes shining with blue flame. «Hush! Is there any thing listening to our counsel? For I feel eyes upon me.»
The fox held her breath, and pushed her belly down into the earth, and lay still. The three creatures rose higher into the air and stared down at the dark woods. «There is nothing here but a dead fox," said the first creature.
A fly alighted on the fox's forehead, and walked, slowly, down to the tip of her muzzle. She resisted the urge to snap at it; instead she just lay there, eyes unfocused and blank, a dead thing.
«This is what our master intends," said the first of the creatures. «For three nights running, the monk shall have evil dreams. On the first night the monk shall dream of a box. On the second night he shall dream of a black key. On the third night he shall dream that he unlocks the box with the key. When, in his dream, he opens the box, he shall lose all connection to this world, and without food, and without water, he will die soon enough. His death will not be held to our master's conscience.» And then it looked about it one more time. «Can you be certain that we are not overheard?»
The fly crawled onto the fox's eyeball. She did not blink, although the tickling felt like madness in her mind.
«What could hear us?» asked the second of the creatures. «A fox's corpse?» And it laughed, high and distant.
«But it would not matter if someone did hear us," said the first of them, «for if someone did overhear us, and spoke of what he heard to another, no sooner would the first word leave his mouth than his heart will burst in his breast.»
A cold wind blew over the mountaintop. The sky began to lighten in the east.
«But is there no way the monk can escape his fate?» said the third.
«Only one way," said the second.
The fox strained to hear another word, but there was nothing, no more words were spoken. All she could hear was the whisper of the wind as it stirred the fallen leaves, the sighing of the trees as they breathed and swayed in the wind, and the distant ting ling of wind chimes in the little temple.
She lay there stiff as a fallen branch until the sun was high in the sky. Then she swished her tail, and snapped at the ants who were crawling over her paw; she made her way down the side of the mountain, until she reached her den. It was cool in her den, and dark, and it smclled of earth, and in the back of the fox's den was her most precious thing.
She had found it several years before, tangled in the roots of a great tree; so she had dug, and chewed, and dug some more, for days, until she had it out of the ground, and then she had licked it clean with her pink tongue, and had polished it with her own fur, and she had taken it back to her den, where she venerated it, and cared for it. It was her treasure. It was very old, and it had come from a far country.
It was a carving of a dragon, carved from jade, and its eyes were tiny red stones.
The dragon brought her comfort. In the gloom of her den its ruby eyes glowed, casting a warm radiance.
The fox picked her treasure up in her mouth, carrying it as gently as she would have carried one of her own kits.
She carried the statue in her mouth for many miles, until she came to a cliff at the edge of the sea. She could hear the seagulls screaming above her, and the pounding of the cold waves on the rocks below her. She could taste the salt on the air.
«For this is my most precious possession.» she thought. «And I give it up, give it to the sea, and all I ask is the knowledge of how to save the life of the monk. For if I do nothing he shall dream of a box, and then of a key, and then of a key opening the box, and then he will be dead.»
And then she nuzzled the pale jade statue over the cliff–edge, gently, and watched it tumble hundreds of feet into the churning sea. Then she sighed, for the little statue of the dragon had brought serenity and peace to her den.
Then she walked the miles back to her den and, tired beyond all imagining, she slept.
This was the dream the fox dreamed.
She was in a barren place of grey rock and brown rock, where nothing grew. The sky was grey as well, neither light nor dark. Poised on a great rock in front of her was a huge fox, jet black from the tip of its muzzle to almost the end of its tail, which was as white as if it had been dipped into a paint–pot. It was bigger than a tiger, bigger than a war–horse, bigger than any creature the fox had ever seen.