The next morning, a hawk-nosed, eagle-eyed beggar came to our door. In his left hand he carried a dog-beating staff made of hollowed-out bamboo, while in his right he held a ceramic bowl with two deep chips on the rim. He was filthy, as if he’d just rolled in the dirt, or had completed a thousand-mile trudge; dirt filled his ears and was crusted in the corners of his eyes. Without a word, he walked into our parlor, freely and casually, as if it were his own home. He removed the lid from the pot on the stove, ladled out a bowlful of herbal soup, and began slurping it down. When he’d finished, he sat on the stove counter, again without a word, and scraped Mother’s face with his knifelike gaze. Despite the discomfort she felt inside, she put on a calm exterior. “Honored guest,” she said, “poor as we are, we have nothing for you. Please don’t be offended if I offer you this.” She handed him a clump of wild herbs. He refused the offer. Licking his chapped and bloody lips, he said, “Your son-in-law asked me to deliver two things to you.” But he took nothing out for us, and as we examined his thin, tattered clothes and the filthy, scaly gray skin showing through the many holes, we could not imagine where he could have hidden whatever it was he had brought for us. “Which son-in-law would that be?” Mother asked, clearly puzzled. The hawk-nosed, eagle-eyed man said, “Don’t ask me. All I know is that he’s a mute, that he can write, that he’s a wonderful swordsman, that he saved my life once, and that I repaid the favor. Neither of us is in debt to the other. And that is why no more than two minutes ago, I was wondering whether I should give you these two treasures or not. If, when I was ladling out a bowl of your soup, you, the lady of the house, had made a single rude or impertinent comment, I’d have kept them for myself. But not only did you say nothing rude or impertinent, you actually offered me a handful of wild herbs. So I have decided to give them to you.” With that, he stood up, laid his chipped bowl on the stove counter, and said, “This is a piece of fine ceramic, as rare as unicorns and phoenixes. It may be the only piece of its kind in the world. That mute son-in-law of yours did not know its value. All he knew was that it was part of the loot from one of his raids, and he wanted you to have it, maybe because it is so big. Then there is this.” He hit the floor with his bamboo staff, producing a hollow sound. “Do you have a knife?” Mother handed him her cleaver. He used it to cut almost invisible threads at each end, and the bamboo split into pieces, which opened up to let fall a painted scroll. He unrolled it, releasing the smell of mildew and decay. There in the middle of the yellowed silk was a painting of a large bird. We were stunned. The image was an exact replica of the big, incomparably delicious bird Third Sister had brought home that time. In the painting, it was standing straight, head up, looking contemptuously at us with lackluster eyes. The hawk-nosed, eagle-eyed man told us nothing about the scroll or the bird on it. Rather, he rolled it back up, laid it atop the ceramic bowl, turned, and walked out the door without a backward glance. His now freed hands hung loosely at his sides and moved stiffly in concert with his long strides.
Mother was rooted to the spot like a pine tree, and I was a knot on the trunk of that tree. Five of my sisters were like willow trees; the Sima boy an oak sapling. We stood there like a little wooded area in front of the mysterious ceramic bowl and bird scroll. If Third Sister hadn’t broken the silence with a mocking laugh, we might really have turned into trees.
Her prediction had come true. With extraordinary reverence, we carried the bird scroll into the meditation room and hung it in front of the incense table. And since the chipped ceramic bowl had such an extraordinary history, what mortal was worthy of using it? So Mother, feeling blessed by good fortune, placed it on the incense table and filled it with fresh water for the Bird Fairy.
Word that our family had produced a Bird Fairy quickly made the rounds in Northeast Gaomi and beyond. A steady stream of pilgrims seeking nostrums and predictions beat a path to our door, but the Bird Fairy saw no more than ten a day. They knelt on the ground outside the window of her meditation room, in which a tiny hole permitted her birdlike predictions for the curious and prescriptions for the infirm to filter through. The prescriptions Third Sister – I mean the Bird Fairy – dispensed were truly unique and filled with an aura of mischief. Here is what she prescribed for someone suffering from a stomach problem: A powdered mixture of seven bees, a pair of dung beetle’s excrement balls, an ounce of peach leaves, and half a catty of crushed eggshells, taken with water. And for someone in a rabbitskin cap who was afflicted with an eye disease: A paste made of seven locusts, a pair of crickets, five praying mantises, and four earthworms, spread on the palms of the hands. When the patient caught his prescription as it floated out from the hole in the window and read it, a look of irreverence appeared on his face, and we heard him grumble, “She’s a Bird Fairy, all right. Everything on this prescription is bird food.” He walked off, still grumbling, and we couldn’t help feeling ashamed of Third Sister. Locusts and crickets, they were all bird delicacies, so how were they supposed to cure human eye ailments? But while I was caught up in confusion, the man with the eye problem nearly flew down the road our way, fell to his knees beneath the window, banged his head on the ground as if he were mashing garlic stalks, and intoned repeatedly: “Great Fairy, forgive me, Great Fairy, forgive me…” His pleas for forgiveness drew mocking laughter from Third Sister inside the room. Eventually, we learned that when the garrulous man was on the road home, a hawk swooped down out of the sky and dug its talons into his head, before flying off with his cap in its clutches. Then there was a man with mischief on his mind who knelt outside the window pretending to be suffering from urethritis. The Bird Fairy asked through the window, “What ails you?” The man said, “When I urinate, it feels like I’m passing ice cubes.” Suddenly the room went silent, as if the Bird Fairy had left out of embarrassment. The lewd, daring man put his eye up to the hole in the window, but before he could see a thing, he shrieked in agony as a monstrous scorpion fell from the window onto his neck and stung him. His neck swelled up immediately, and then his face, until his eyes were mere slits, like those of a salamander.
The Bird Fairy had used her mystical powers to punish that terrible man, to the boisterous delight of the good people and the enhancement of her own reputation. In the days that followed, the pilgrims coming to be cured of ailments or have their fortunes told spoke with accents from far-off places. When Mother asked around, she learned that some had come from as far away as the Eastern Sea, and others from the Northern Sea. When she asked how they had heard about the mystical powers of the Bird Fairy, they stood there wide-eyed, not knowing what to say. They emitted a salty odor, which, Mother informed us, was the smell of the ocean. The pilgrims slept on the ground in our compound as they waited patiently. The Bird Fairy followed a schedule of her own devising: Once she had seen ten pilgrims, she retired for the day, bringing a deathly silence to the eastern side room. Mother sent Fourth Sister over with fresh water; when she entered, Third Sister came out. Then Fifth Sister went in with food, and Fourth Sister came out. This stream of girls entering and leaving dazzled the eyes of the pilgrims, who could not tell which of the girls was the actual Bird Fairy.
When Third Sister separated herself from the Bird Fairy, she was just another girl, albeit one with a number of unusual expressions and movements. She seldom spoke, squinted most of the time, preferred squatting to standing, drank plain water and thrust out her neck with each swallow, just like a bird. She didn’t eat any sort of grain, but then, neither did we, since there wasn’t any. The pilgrims brought offerings suited to the habits of a bird: locusts, silkworm chrysalises, aphids, scarab beetles, and fireflies. Some also came with vegetarian fare, such as sesame seeds, pine nuts, and sunflower seeds. Of course, we gave it all to Third Sister; what she didn’t eat was divided up among Mother, my other sisters, and the little Sima heir. My sisters, wonderful daughters all, would get red in the face over trying to present their silkworm chrysalises to others. Mother’s supply of milk was decreasing, though the quality remained high. It was during those squawking days that Mother tried to wean me from breast-feeding, but she abandoned the idea when it became clear that I’d cry myself into the grave before I’d give it up.