I nervously looked around the wall for something truly sneaky, but the only sneaky thing I saw was a lizard stalking a bug.
“Centuries ago, a general just happened to dream that he had been summoned to Heaven, and when he returned he discovered that his plans had been altered to place Dragon's Pillow in this ludicrous position,” said Master Li. “Then a reading of the Trigrams just happened to provide a ghostly watchman named Wan, and a couple of centuries after that some of the local children began playing a game.”
Master Li finished his rice and pointed a chopstick at me.
“The Duke of Ch'in very nearly eliminated all trace of the Princess of Birds when he burned the books, destroyed priests and temples and worshippers, and decapitated professional storytellers, but he forgot about a children's game,” said Master Li. “Ox, there is such a thing as racial memory, which preserves events long after conventional histories have turned to dust. One of the ways in which this memory is expressed is through the games and songs of children, and when the children came to the wall that day, they began to play the Hopping Hide and Seek Game, which happens to be the history of the Duke of Ch'in and the Princess of Birds.”
I stared at him stupidly.
“Jade Pearl was a ginseng child, in the sense that her godmother was the Queen of Ginseng,” said Master Li. “How do you capture a ginseng child?”
“With a red ribbon,” I said.
“How did the duke disguise himself when he approached her handmaidens?”
I thought of the painting in the Cavern of Bells. “As a lame peddler who leaned upon a crutch,” I said.
Li Kao began to imitate the sick boys in the infirmary at the monastery, shaking his shoulders and snatching at the air. Then he imitated the girls, making swooping pulling gestures.
“The boys are pretending to be lame peddlers who must hop on one leg, although they are not consciously aware of it,” he said. “They are trying to get the girls’ red ribbons, and while the girls are not aware of it, they are ginseng handmaidens who are being killed. The last girl becomes Jade Pearl, but the Princess of Birds cannot be killed because she has eaten the Peach of Immortality. So the boy who takes her red ribbon hides her. He is now the duke, and the other children become the birds of China, blindfolded because the birds cannot see their princess after she has lost her crown. They try to find and rescue her by touch, but there is a time limit. All right, why does the duke count to forty-nine?”
I am not usually so intelligent, but the answer popped unbidden into my mind.
“Seven times seven,” I said. “Jade Pearl could escape if she reached the Star Shepherd before the seventh day of the seventh moon. But, Master Li, why couldn't there be ten or twenty other interpretations of the Hopping Hide and Seek Game?”
“Ginseng,” he said promptly. “The moment that the children of your village took the tiniest taste of the Great Root their racial memory was stirred, and instinctively they began to play their ginseng game. A slightly stronger taste dredged up a deeper racial memory, and an understanding that had eluded the conscious minds of the children who had first experienced it. The moment that they began to chant a nonsense rhyme, they were able to find the Princess of Birds. Ox, that was no accident when Monkey reached out and touched Fang's Fawn.”
Li Kao began a slow rhythmic beat upon the rim of his rice bowl with his chopsticks.
“The ghost of poor Wan must have been very lonely,” he said. “Ghosts also share racial memories, and when he saw the children play the Hopping Hide and Seek Game he realized that the question that the game asks is, ‘Where is the Princess of Birds? Where has the lame peddler taken her?’ Wan knew the answer. He wanted to join the game, but he was determined to play fair—how many times had he listened to the riddle games of children? — and his impromptu effort was so good that I strongly suspect that he had been far more than a simple soldier.
Master Li tossed the chopsticks into the bowl and winked at me.
“Ever since the standard was set by Yang Wan-li, what has been the common metaphor for the moon?”
“A plate of jade,” I said. “Sailing across ten thousand miles of blue-black sky.”
“In relation to the moon, what can you make of ‘six, eight'?”
“The sixth day of the eighth moon?” I guessed.
“Try it the other way around.”
“The eighth day, the sixth moon—why, that is today!” I exclaimed.
“It is indeed. We've begun with the moon, so what about the fire that burns hot?”
“The sun?” I said.
“And the night that is not?”
I scratched my head. “An eclipse?”
“It could be, but I don't recall any eclipse of the sun on the eighth day of the sixth moon. Try something simpler.”
“Sunset,” I said. “The sun has gone, but the light remains.”
“Excellent,” said Master Li. “So in their game the children were asking, ‘Where is the Princess of Birds?’ and Wan told them that if they looked from his watchtower when the sun sank below the horizon on the eighth day of the sixth moon, they would see where the lame peddler had taken Jade Pearl. Specifically, they would see something that looked like cold fire, and that first burned silver and then burned gold. In a few minutes,” said Master Li, “that is precisely what we are going to look for.”
I felt myself flush, and I said, almost angrily:
“Master Li, we are trying to find the Great Root of Power for the children of Ku-fu! We are not trying to find a little goddess for the Emperor of Heaven!”
“Dear boy, don't you think the emperor realizes that? Be patient for a few minutes more,” Master Li said soothingly.
The sun slowly sank behind distant mountain peaks, and the clouds began to glow with the colors of sunset. I saw nothing like cold fire. The light began to fade, and I could see faint stars, and still I saw nothing. It was almost dark, and to tell the truth, I had no faith at all in Master Li's analysis of the nonsense rhyme.
Suddenly the concealed sun sank to an invisible gap in the western mountain range. A brilliant shaft of light shot like an arrow across the valley to the eastern mountains. At no other time in no other day of the year would the angle have been perfect, but now a small circular spot that was concealed among peaks began to glow like cold fire. It shimmered like silver, and then it faded to dull gold, and then it vanished.
Master Li motioned for me to get down on my knees and clasp my hands together.
“Well done, Wan!” he cried. “You have fulfilled the mission for which you were chosen by the Emperor of Heaven, and surely your spirit will be allowed to ascend to the stars. There you will find many children who will ask you to join their games, and the goddess Nu Kua will be delighted to have such a sentinel to help her guard the Celestial Walls.”
We performed the three obeisances and the nine kowtows, and then we got to our feet. Li Kao grinned at me.
“Ox, what do you think that we're being sent to find?”
I stared at him. “Isn't that the place where the peddler took the Princess of Birds?” I asked.
“He undoubtedly took her there, perhaps to find the city where her godmother lived, but it would be quite useless for us to search for Jade Pearl,” Master Li said patiently. “If the Duke of Ch'in had a brain in his head, he would also take her to the Old Man of the Mountain. She couldn't be killed, but she could be transformed, and the Princess of Birds might now be a raindrop hidden in a thunderstorm, or a petal in a field of flowers, or one special grain of sand among a billion on a beach. No, you and I and the August Personage of Jade are engaged in mutual back-scratching because there is one thing upon the face of the earth that we can use to force the duke to hand over the Great Root of Power, and it can also force him to hand over Jade Pearclass="underline" I will bet anything you like that the Emperor of Heaven will see to it that we can't get one without the other.”