“Oh, Ox, what a beautiful piece of work,” he whispered.
A stone had once washed evil from a flower. Now the flower had shed the tears it had saved up to wash the flaw from the stone, and there wasn't a trace of a crack or a sign of soft gold. The three pieces were one, and it was as solid as a stone can be.
Master Li turned and raised his head toward Heaven and drew in great lungfuls of air. I covered my ears, but still the high harsh eagle screams that burst from the old man's throat hurt my eardrums. The screams lifted one after another, shooting to the crimson clouds, and the echoes bounced back and forth between the peaks.
He dropped to his knees. I followed his example. “It is La Kao,” he said simply. “I pray to be allowed to address the goddess Nu Kua.”
We knelt there in silence while clouds began to cover the sky. I suppose it was my imagination, but I began to sense something else that stretched from horizon to horizon: a vast maternal presence.
“Goddess,” Master Li said politely, “forgive me for beginning with a minor matter, but I have sworn a vow. The current Patron of Prostitutes is an incompetent disgrace, and the whores of China wish her to be replaced. Since the great Golden Lotus is scarcely available, they have nominated Empress Wu.”
The air was growing sulphurous. Thunder rumbled.
“Well, perhaps it might not be a good idea to let a woman like that run around loose,” Master Li hastily conceded. “I have been authorized to select a substitute, and I humbly nominate Tou Wan, wife of the late Laughing Prince. It is true that she attempted to murder her maid, but I have yet to meet a lady of quality who has not had the same urge now and then. So far as I know she took no part in her husband's massacres and tortures, and as for her qualifications, she was immoral, lecherous, seductive, avaricious, blessed with a heart of the purest granite, and as tough as a person can get without infringing upon the supernatural. She was intelligent and brooked no nonsense, and would surely be a first-class manager. I cannot imagine a better representative of prostitutes and should she cause trouble, it would only be necessary to send her a cool drink with lots and lots of ice in it. May I be so bold as to hope that a formal petition would receive favorable omens?”
The smell of sulphur faded away and the thunder died down. Master Li bowed again.
“Goddess, the world of men is a world of incomprehension,” he said softly. “Our senses are woefully limited. Our brains are but tiny candles flickering in an infinity of darkness. Our only wisdom is to admit that we cannot understand, and since we cannot understand we must do the best we can with faith, which is our only talent. The greatest act of faith we are capable of is that of loving another more than we love ourselves, and occasionally we can be quite good at it.”
He reached out and placed the stone upon the grass.
“We thank you for hoping that the one tiny talent of man might achieve what other forces could not,” he said. “We thank you for sending us a flawed stone that would call across the centuries to a flawed flower. We thank you for sending us the flower that would answer the call, and come with the greatest gift love is capable of. We thank you for bringing the pieces together, and we pray that a stone and a flower will finally be granted the acceptance of Heaven.”
He bowed flat to the ground. So did I, but I peeked, and Master Li did too.
A slanting sunbeam slid through the clouds and glided across the grass to the stone. I had the feeling that it was probing and testing as it moved over the surface. Then everything stood still. The birds stopped singing and the insects stopped buzzing and the animals stopped rustling. Even the breeze stopped blowing while the stone slowly lifted from the grass and came to a halt about four feet up in the air.
I heard a humming sound. A light was glowing inside the stone, and a vibration made my head spin. The inner light began to pulse faster and faster and the stone began to shake. The hum was now a muted roar of incredible power, and a halo of light began to spin around the stone. Another halo crossed it, and another and another. The stone was glowing with blinding light, and the halos formed a dizzying pattern of interlocking rings, and I knew with absolute certainty that the full ch'i and shih of a simple stone was powerful enough to reduce the Valley of Sorrow to a tiny pile of ashes.
The vibration still accompanied the roar, and the stone still shook. The roar increased and the stone threatened to shake itself to pieces.
Moon Boy was turning transparent, shimmering and melting and fading into nothingness, and something was appearing upon the shuddering surface of the stone. Colors deepened, buds lifted and opened, and we gazed at a lovely flower. The roar of power stopped vibrating and the stone stopped shaking, but then the power level lifted again—unbelievable force! — and the shaking and vibrating reappeared.
Now Grief of Dawn turned transparent. Her body melted like mist, and only the bent grass testified to the fact that it had lain there, and something else was appearing upon the stone. A slim graceful green creeper moved around the circumference, wrapping a stone and a flower in an eternal embrace, and the roar stopped vibrating and the stone stopped shaking.
Again the roar of awesome power grew stronger and stronger. The spinning halos were now seamless, and nothing could withstand the force as the energy level approached the infinite—nothing—yet the stone remained absolutely steady and resolute, and I lost my fear that it would burst. Then the blinding light faded, and the roar faded, and the halos spun slower, and the stone began climbing to the clouds, picking up speed, streaking like a tiny comet toward the Great River of Stars and the goddess Nu Kua and the Wall of Heaven. The distant twinkle of light faded away and was gone.
Master Li stood up and stretched. “How would I know?” he said, answering the expression on my face. “I'm no more capable of understanding the universe than the ancients were, and I applaud their good sense in leaving Heavenly matters to the gods. All I know is that certain things seem to work and certain things don't.”
He turned and gazed across the gorge.
“Well, Prince, fraud may rule the world, but classicism still packs a wallop when one removes the neo from it,” he said to the embers of the studio. “Classical truths still apply, and classical values still define the limits, and classical standards still hold the universe together.”
He turned to me. “Come on, Ox. Let's find a place where they still know how to get classically drunk.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
I bent over and he hopped nimbly up on my back. I turned and began loping down the path toward the monastery, and then on to Peking, and Heaven's Bridge, and the Alley of Flies, and the Wineshop of One-Eyed Wong.
THE END