The taste had the greatest effect upon Moon Boy, who turned pale as death and began rocking back and forth with powerful emotion. I thought he was going to weep until I realized he never did. Moon Boy did not cry, not even when Grief of Dawn lay dead. Master Li was looking speculatively at him.
“You know, it's quite possible that I'm making the same mistake twice,” he said thoughtfully. “I didn't see the obvious about the prince because it was too simple, and now I may be straining to understand something that doesn't require understanding. Perhaps all we need to know is that the goddess Nu Kua is blowing on the dice for one last desperate roll, and all we can do is pray they come up with a pair of Blind Queens. After all, we must assume that the stone is one of the most important objects in all the universe. Why else would she go to the trouble of Moon Boy?”
Moon Boy stared at him. So did I, and the old man threw his head back and laughed until tears flowed.
“What a creation is Moon Boy!” he chortled. “My lad, on the one hand you're the apotheosis of beauty, irresponsibility, and unbridled sexuality on a rampage, and on the other hand there isn't an evil, unkind, or even unpleasant bone in your body.” Master Li shook his head wonderingly. “We may be sure that art is involved, for such a combination of excess and innocence is not to be found in nature,” he said. “You couldn't possibly have perfected guiltless sin without experimenting with the common garden variety, and when Ox and I watched you stand before the Mirror of Past Existences, our subconscious minds played a duet. Buddha, what a series of incarnations! From baseness to depravity to malignancy to monstrosity, culminating in an incarnation as the most dissolute and irresistible slut ever to shake her rear end across the pages of history.”
Master Li wiped his eyes and winked at me.
“Come, Ox, surely you recognized her? I thought every boy in China had memorized the more indelicate passages of her biography.”
I remembered having seen Moon Boy dressed as a girl, and then I realized he had been a girl, and then I turned bright red. Suddenly his incredible beauty made sense, and I recognized the lady in the mirror, all right.
“Golden Lotus,” Master Li said happily. “Moon Boy once walked the earth as a man-eating seductress so spectacularly immoral that she was elevated to Heaven to become the greatest Patron of Prostitutes in history, and I suspect that the goddess Nu Kua began to think deep thoughts about peculiar combinations of ch'i and shih the moment Golden Lotus began jiggling down the pearly paths, causing havoc among the young gods. Golden Lotus was removed from her post and given a new form. Remember it?”
I remembered Moon Boy in the mirror, changing and yet not changing, still beautiful but blending with bright colors, lifting his face and arms toward the sun, almost like—
“A flower,” Master Li said softly. “A beautiful flawed flower named Purple Pearl who was placed in the path of a flawed stone, and the stone brought dew and raindrops to wash the evil from the flower, and the flower fell in love and vowed to repay its debt by shedding every tear in its body. It might take centuries, or even millennia for the time to be right for a flower to be reborn, but the greatest virtue of stone is patience.”
Moon Boy's eyes were wide and wondering. Master Li picked up the stone, pieces still pressed together, and placed it in Moon Boy's hands. Then he took his wine flask and stood up.
“This will seem very silly, but who cares?” he said. “Clasp the stone tightly, Moon Boy. Close your eyes. Try to imagine a place without water near the River of Spirits, and dryness and wilting, and then a faithful stone flying up with the morning dew of Heaven.”
Moon Boy closed his eyes and clasped the stone. Master Li waited, and then he tilted the flask and sprinkled drops of Heavenly Nectar over Moon Boy's head. The effect wasn't silly at all. Moon Boy trembled all over, and squeezed the stone against his heart, and from his lips came an indescribably beautiful singing sound that gradually resolved itself into words.
“Love… love… but I have no tears… Not even as a child could I cry… How can I cry for a stone?… Love… love… love… but I cannot cry…”
Master Li motioned for me to follow him.
“We will leave you for a while,” he said quietly. “A flower that vows to shed tears is making a very serious commitment, and neither gods nor men have the right to influence the decision.”
He walked away. We went around the peak to the far side of Dragon's Left Horn, and Master Li sat down on a flat rock and gazed out at the valley. Peasants were scurrying around fearfully, but so far as I could see the damage from the earthquake was limited to fallen thatched roofs and a few collapsed barns. Soft blankets of shadows were sliding over the fields, and the birds were singing their last songs. Master Li tilted the flask and reverently rolled the liquid around his mouth before swallowing.
“Ox, I think Prince Liu Pao should be a hero,” he said thoughtfully. “It's better that way, even though it may cause long-term problems for his heirs. We'll tell the abbot that the prince fell in the final triumphant battle against the forces of evil, and never again will his abominable ancestor threaten the Valley of Sorrows.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“The peasants will want a temple for him, but a shrine should do.”
Master Li was beginning to warm to the subject. “Make that two shrines,” he said enthusiastically. “We'll say he wished to be cleft in half, from top to bottom, and each half buried in one of the destroyed areas of Princes’ Path to fertilize new plants.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“He'll be the Holy Half-Princes of the Valley of Sorrows, each half turning the seeing side to the peasants’ good deeds and the blind side to their bad, and the legend of what will happen when danger threatens and the two halves are reunited should be very interesting. I hope the cave of Wolf survived, because the boys should get to work on it at once.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“His last words were that he longed to lie in his graves and listen to the innocent laughter of children and the blissful bleating of little lambs and the—”
“No, sir,” I said.
“I suppose you're right,” Master Li admitted. “Peasants will go only so far. You'd better handle that part of it.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “His last words were instructions to his heirs to repair the damage from the earthquake and give the monastery a new roof.”
“Good boy,” Master Li said.
“And fix the dike at the intersection of paths between the monastery, village, and estate. One torrential rain and the melons will wind up in Soochow.”
“Anything else?”
“No, sir,” I said. “Anything else and the peasants will expect the prince's heirs to repair their sandals and empty the chamber pots.”
We sat in silence. Master Li's wrinkles seemed to be older than the seams and cracks in the hills across from us, and his mood was turning melancholy.
“You know, the prince was right,” he said. “I'm almost the last advocate of the old way of doing things. Perhaps it's just as well. If one leaves out the Neo-Confucians, there's much to be said for the modern style. Still, I hope you keep filling your notebooks as a record of an archaic approach to problems. There's a good deal of fun to be found in the old way, and a good deal of beauty, and the practitioners seldom expired from ennui.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
He looked at me gravely, and then he nodded. We got up and started back. I tried to prepare for it, but still it was like a blow to the pit of my stomach, and tears blurred my eyes.
“Oh, Moon Boy,” I sniffled.
He always did things neatly. Master Li's knife had been carefully cleaned, and he had built a small dam of earth so the blood from his slit wrist would build up around and over the stone without staining the grass unnecessarily. Moon Boy had placed Grief of Dawn's hand over his, with the stone beneath them, and Master Li walked up and gently lifted the hands and picked up the stone. He washed it in the wine it had produced and dried it on his tunic and held it up to the light.