Henpecked Ho began to pound Bright Star's heartbeat so powerfully that blood was spurting from the palms of his hands, and Li Kao's drum was drowning out the ghost flute as it commanded: Faster! Faster! Faster! I glanced behind me. The door was already half-closed, and I danced faster, but my lungs were filled with hot coals and there were black spots before my eyes. Somehow I managed to complete Eagle Screams without leaving my severed feet upon the ground. Bright Star contemptuously countered with Eagle Screams Above the Lamb—which has been successfully performed no more than five times in the two thousand years of the Sword Dance—and had time for two swipes that would have removed my ears and a third that was intended to emasculate me. Her eyes were on fire and her hair was standing up like the fur of a big beautiful cat. The ghost swords were whipping around her leaping body with unbelievable force, and they slashed out to remove my eyes and my nose, and her toes barely touched the ground before she was airborne again.
Now and then she comes to dance for me in my dreams. I do not believe that many men are so honored.
Faster! the drums thundered. Faster! Faster! I danced faster, and then my swords got all tangled up as I attempted Tenth Dive of the Blue Heron, and I backed into a log upon the path and tripped and fell. The beautiful ghost leaped over me and her swords flashed out to remove my hide from my nose to my toes, and she landed on the other side. The drums stopped instantly. Bright Star shook her head dazedly, and then her eyes widened with wonder and hope as she realized that the log that had tripped me had been placed directly in front of the door, and it was still partly open, and she had leaped right through the gap.
Li Kao and Henpecked Ho came running up the path as the dancing girl slowly turned to her captain. He was a tall, handsome ghost, and in life he must have been very heroic because he was able to turn from Bright Star and lift his clenched fist in the soldier's salute, and to hold it for the full seven seconds before he swept his dancing girl into his arms. Then the ghosts faded away, and the flute faded away, and the door faded away, and the cover returned to the well, and the weeds returned to the path, and we were looking at a bricked-up patch in a wall.
The hands of Master Li and Henpecked Ho were dripping with blood, and I looked like something that the cat had dragged from a slaughterhouse. We made a rather bedraggled group for such solemn ceremonies, but we doubted that anyone would mind. At Henpecked Ho's workshop we cut paper silhouettes of the happy couple. We burned paper money for the dowry and food for the guests, and we spilled wine upon the ground. Henpecked Ho spoke for the bride, and I spoke for the groom, and Li Kao chanted the wedding vows, and when the cock crowed we thanked the newlyweds for the banquet and let them go at last to the bridal bed. Thus Bright Star married her captain, and Henpecked Ho's gentle heart was finally at rest.
“All in all,” said Master Li as he helped me limp down the path, “it has been a rather satisfactory evening.”
9. A Brief Interlude for Murder
As soon as my wounds had healed, Master Li suggested that I should take another stroll through the gardens with Fainting Maid, with her father and himself as chaperones, and Ho and I were quite surprised when he led the way up the path toward the old well and the bricked-up patch of wall. Fainting Maid was in good form.
“Roses! My favorite flowers!” she squealed, pointing to some petunias.
Maste Li's voice was as sweet and smooth as warm honey. “Beautiful roses indeed,” he cooed, “but as Chang Chou so charmingly put it, women are the only flowers that can talk.”
Fainting Maid simpered coyly.
“Stop!” cried Master Li. “Stop right here, with your exquisite feet against this mark in the path! Here the light strikes you perfectly, and never has your beauty been more breathtaking.”
Fainting Maid posed prettily.
“Absolute perfection,” Master Li sighed happily. “A lovely lady in a lovely setting. One can scarcely believe that so tranquil a spot could have been the scene of tragedy, yet I have heard that here a door was locked, and a key was stolen, and a handsome young man and the girl who loved him lost their lives.”
“A stupid soldier and a slut,” Fainting Maid said coldly.
Her father winced, but Li Kao at least partially agreed.
“Well, I'm not so sure about the slut, but the soldier was stupid indeed,” he said thoughtfully. “He was honored with the opportunity of marrying you, O vision of perfection, yet he dared to prefer a lowly dancing girl. Why, he even gave her a valuable jade pendant that should rightfully have been yours!”
I was beginning to sense a certain menace behind Li Kao's beaming smile.
“I would imagine that it was the first time in your life that you had been denied something that you wanted,” said Master Li. “You know, I find it rather odd that Bright Star wasn't wearing the captain's pendant when they fished her body from the water. She would scarcely have paused to take it off before seeking a watery grave, unless, of course, she wasn't seeking a watery grave at all. Meaning that somebody hired a pack of thugs to lock a door and steal a key and murder a dancing girl.”
His hands shot out and jerked a gold chain from Fainting Maid's neck, and up over her head. At the end of the chain was a jade pendant, which he bounced in the palm of his hand, and I realized with a sick sense of shock that I had seen it twice before. First between Fainting Maid's breasts in the carriage, and then in ghost form between the breasts of Bright Star.
“Tell me, dear child, do you always wear this next to your sweet little heart?” Master Li asked, smiling as warmly as ever.
Henpecked Ho was staring at his monstrous daughter with horror and revulsion, and I suppose that the expression on my face was similar. Fainting Maid decided that Li Kao was the safest.
“Surely you do not mean to suggest—”
“Ah, but I do.”
“You cannot possibly suspect—”
“Wrong again.”
“This incredible nonsense—”
“Is not nonsense.”
Fainting Maid turned red, turned white, clutched her chest, reeled, and screeched, “Oh, thou has slain me!” Then she lurched two steps back and six to the left and disappeared.
Li Kao gazed at the spot where she had vanished. “Captious critics might tend to agree with you,” he said mildly, and then he turned to her father. “Ho, you are perfectly free to hear whatever you choose, but what I hear is a magpie that is imitating the sounds of a scream and a splash.”
Henpecked Ho's face was white, and his hands trembled, and his voice was unsteady, but he never flinched.
“Clever little creature,” he whispered. “Now it is imitating the sound of somebody screaming ‘Help!’ ”
Li Kao linked arms with Henpecked Ho, and the two of them strolled up the path while I trotted nervously behind.
“What a talented magpie,” Master Li observed. “How on earth can it manage that sound of thrashing in the water, and the gurgle that sounds strikingly like somebody sinking down into a deep pool?”
“Nature is full of remarkable talents,” Henpecked Ho whispered. “Yours, for example.”
“There is a slight flaw in my character,” Master Li said modestly.
When we returned an hour later I judged from the silence that the talented magpie was no longer with us.
“I think that I had best remove this mark from the path, lest busybodies wonder why it is precisely two feet in front and six feet to the right of an old well from which somebody has rashly removed the cover,” said Master Li. “Ready?”