“Ox, I learned a valuable lesson in natural history when I was exiled to Serendip,” he said. “When a foraging ant discovers something of value, it grabs a sample and dashes back to the colony screaming, ‘Awake! Arise! Beat the drums! Sound general quarters! I have discovered wealth beyond the dreams of avarice!’ Then the whole colony follows the ant back to the treasure, but are they content to take what they see? Not if it is a trail of something. Ants that find trails of something they like will follow those trails to the source, even if it means crossing half of the world. Do you see the significance of that?”
“No, sir,” I said.
“You will,” said Master Li.
In the marketplace he bought a large jar of honey and a box that contained a colony of ants. Then he bribed a maid to bring a message to Lotus Cloud, and on the first cloudy night we scaled the outer walls of the governor's palace, slipped past the guards, and made our way to the tower. I hooted three times like an owl. Lotus Cloud, who was enjoying the game immensely, opened her window and poured the jar of honey that the maid had brought down the wall, and when the thick sweet trickle reached us Li Kao opened the box and released the ants. They plunged into the honey with bulging squeals of delight, discovered that it was a trail, and started to climb.
The last ant was the biggest, and it was towing a gauze thread that was lighter than a feather. It scrambled over Lotus Cloud's windowsill, and she detached the thread and tugged three times. Li Kao tied a fine length of string to his end of the thread and tugged back, and Lotus Cloud began pulling it up. Then came a cord tied to the end of the string, and a rope tied to the end of the cord, and Lotus Cloud tied her end of the rope to something sturdy inside the apartment. Li Kao hopped upon my back and in a matter of minutes I had climbed an unclimbable wall and flopped over the windowsill.
“Boopsie!” Lotus Cloud squealed happily.
I dumped my pearls and jade at her feet. “Do I have a story to tell you!” I panted.
“Later,” Li Kao said warningly.
Footsteps were approaching the door. I took Master Li on my back and swung back out the window, and then I clung to the rope and lifted my eyes back up over the windowsill. A pasty-faced lout crashed through the door, staggered across the room, dumped an armload of pearls and jade on top of my pearls and jade, fell to his knees, wrapped his arms around Lotus Cloud's legs, and buried his face against her thighs.
“My surname is Chia and my personal name is Chen and it is my unhappy lot to serve in this miserable rathole as the duke's provincial governor, and I have worshipped you ever since you grinned at me in the garden this morning,” he moaned.
Lotus Cloud laughed happily; her fingers played with his hair.
“I shall call you Woofie,” she said.
I sighed and sadly climbed back down the wall.
“Woofie?” said Master Li. “Ox, far be it for me to interfere with your affairs, but there would appear to be certain drawbacks in forming a close relationship with Lotus Cloud.”
“I love her as much as ever.” I sighed.
He patted my shoulder comfortingly. “At least you will never be lonely,” he said. “You and her other admirers can hold annual conventions. Perhaps the imperial elephant stables might be large enough for the purpose, and if not, you can rent an impoverished province. I hear that the grain harvest in Hua has been miserable this year, and the peasants should be delighted to entertain sixty or seventy thousand visitors with money in their pockets. Although I am talking nonsense, since every one of you will be bankrupt.”
“Great Heavens!” the lout yelled above us. “There is a rope tied to your bed!”
“Rope? What rope?” said Lotus Cloud.
The pasty-face peered over the windowsill, and under the circumstances there was little that we could do except smile in a friendly fashion and wave. The provincial governor pointed down at us and squawked,
“Burglars! Fear not, my beloved, I have my trusty sword!”
And then the bastard cut the rope.
We had ample time to survey the landscape as we plunged toward the courtyard. In another part of the palace a banquet was breaking up and the departing guests were climbing into carriages and sedan chairs. We were plunging straight toward one of the latter, and we landed upon the vast belly of an enormously fat fellow. I bounced off to the cobblestones, but Li Kao was much lighter and he continued to bounce up and down like a ball while the fat fellow's dinner sprayed into the air.
Pigeon-egg soup, with lotus roots and dumplings and crushed pine kernels was followed by ducks’ tongues cooked in sesame oil with mushrooms and bamboo shoots, which were followed by the ducks themselves—at least three—which had been stuffed with shellfish and steamed inside a cover of hardened bean curd, which were followed by spider crabs simmered in sweet white wine, which were followed by lamb kidneys sauteed with minced walnuts, which were followed by honeycakes, which were followed by candied fruits, which were followed by sweetmeats, which were followed by green tea, which was followed by plum wine, which was followed by Daffodil Digestive Tonic, which was followed by Seven Spirits Regulating Tonic, which was followed by Fragrant Fire Vitality Tonic, which was followed by hiccups, which were followed by a pair of hands that clamped around Li Kao's throat.
“What have you done with my case of compasses?” screamed our porcupine merchant.
17. A Miraculous Transformation
In a way we were quite lucky. The Duke of Ch'in was continuing his tax trip with the Key Rabbit—Lotus Cloud was to rejoin them in a week or so—and in his absence we received a very considerate death sentence from the provincial governor, who was understandably annoyed because we had delayed his entrance into Lotus Cloud's bed.
“You may choose your own method for departing this earth!” he yelled.
Then we were marched up to the roof of the tallest tower and the door was bricked up. This left us the choice between slowly starving to death or jumping to the cobblestones one hundred feet below, and I sat down miserably and buried my head in my hands. How much longer could the children last? Two months? Three? The keen-eyed bonzes that the abbot had posted would stare in vain from the roof of the monastery, because Master Li and Number Ten Ox were not going to return with the rest of the Great Root of Power. I wept until I realized that some of the sounds were coming from below me, and with a startled sense of hope I saw that the soldiers were unsealing the door.
Hope faded quickly when I understood that they were merely opening the door in order to shove another condemned prisoner up upon the roof, and as they bricked it up again Master Li took note of a pair of little pig eyes, a bald and mottled skull, a sharp curving nose like a parrot's beak, the loose flabby lips of a camel, and two drooping elephant ears from which sprouted thick tufts of coarse gray hair.
“Would you care to buy a goat?” he said with a polite bow.
To our astonishment Miser Shen ran to embrace us with cries of joy.
“What good fortune!” he cried. “I had feared that I would never have the opportunity of thanking my benefactors in person!”
“Benefactors?” I said.
“Thanking us?” said Master Li.
“For saving my life!” cried Miser Shen. “If it had not been for you, the Key Rabbit would not have determined the extent of my wealth, and if he had not determined the extent of my wealth he would not have invited me to tea, and if he had not invited me to tea I would still be the stingiest and most miserable miser in China. Lotus Cloud,” he said proudly, “made a new man of me.”