Barry Hughart - The Story of the Stone

Each chest was nicely calculated to get us so far across the long gray plain. Master Li and Moon Boy hurled coins until their arms were falling from the sockets, and as the cart grew lighter, I was able to pull it faster. Ahead was the great gray wall of the Tenth Hell, rising at the top of a hill. I puffed and panted as I hauled the cart up the steep slope. The howling wretches began to dwindle behind us. One determined band kept up, but Moon Boy had one last cask, and he tilted it and a shower of silver fell down the hill. At last we were rid of the mob and could start worrying about reaching the Great Wheel.

A demon army patrols the walls of the Tenth Hell. Master Li wasted little time. By ripping the canopy from the state umbrella he was able to fashion an acceptable ceremonial wreath, and the handle passed for a wand, and Moon Boy's jewels produced a pearl that could pass for the sacred one. Moon Boy and I were naturally suited to be the Disciples of Wealth and Poverty, and Master Li's venerable wrinkles formed a passport of their own. He started toward the walls waving blessings right and left, and the cry went up: Ti-tsang Wang-p'u-sa! The God of Mercy arrives for his annual inspection!”

The wall was not difficult. There were many foot and hand holds, and Master Li hopped up on my back and Moon Boy grabbed my belt. I was halfway up the side before the soldiers began to wonder why the God of Mercy simply didn't fly over the thing, and the alarm wasn't sounded until I was almost at the top. Arrows flew harmlessly over our heads as I started down the other side, but I almost fell nonetheless. I simply wasn't prepared for my first view of the Great Wheel of Transmigrations.

The immensity of it cannot be described. Some phenomenon made the lower spokes move slowly even while higher ones were lifting with blinding speed. The wheel lifted up and up and up, and it wasn't even halfway visible. It vanished in gray clouds, and I realized that it had to reach the surface of the earth and then keep lifting until it could deposit newborn yaks upon the highest mountains of Tibet.

Endless lines of the dead were converging upon a humble cottage where Lady Meng brewed and served the Broth of Oblivion. When the dead were herded back into lines their minds were as empty as the eyes of politicians, and demons tossed the trappings of their next existences over their heads: animal skins, bird feathers, and so on. It took a little while for the soldiers inside the wall to be alerted to our presence, and by that time we were shuffling in a line with sheepskins over our heads. Master Li's nimble fingers had snatched them so quickly the attendant didn't know they were gone, and the soldiers passed us by.

We were getting very close to the Great Wheel. The dead were climbing inside to swinging platforms. “Ox, if we get inside we'll never be able to get out,” Master Li whispered. I nodded and he prepared to hop on my back, and Moon Boy prepared to grab my belt.

“Now,” I whispered.

Master Li hopped and Moon Boy grabbed and I jumped and caught a spoke. I managed to get my feet on the outer edge of the rim just as the soldiers spotted us. Demons screamed with rage, and arrows and spears flew, but we were rising with great speed. An arrow missed Moon Boy's nose by half an inch and a spear grazed my arm, and then we were too high for missiles to reach, and a moment later we were shooting up into the clouds. We rose with incredible speed that made tears blur my eyes, and Master Li began to swear quite foully.

We had left the demons below, but we would be lost if we couldn't see where to get off, and the clouds obscured everything. Long minutes passed as we whirled into infinity, and still the clouds billowed around us. Then I began to see pinpricks of light like tiny stars, and Master Li scanned the sky.

“There! The perfectly round one. See it?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Don't miss.”

“No, sir,” I said.

The small round spot of light appeared to be zooming toward us at an unbelievable speed. I crouched, trying to judge the trajectory. “Ready,” I said. My heart stopped when a thick cloud blinded me, but then we shot through it. “Set,” I said. The light was crossing my imaginary target point and I jumped with all the strength I had. We shot across the sky like a projectile from a catapult, and the light grew brighter and brighter, and then we plunged straight into the center of it and hit a wall of water.

The breath was knocked out of me and I almost choked to death as I floated upward, and then my head broke through the surface and I gasped and gulped fresh air. I hauled Master Li and Moon Boy to a bank and dragged them up. We were lying on green grass, and a yellow sun was shining, and bright birds were chirping, and a white skull was grinning up at us from the bottom of a pool.

Master Li crawled over and tilted his wine flask over the pool, and Moon Boy and I watched the wine whirl in a spout that disappeared into the grinning jaws.

“Ling, old friend, you are a truly great artist,” Master Li said admiringly.

The reeds moved. “Burp.” They moved again. “No, but I am not a bad quack.”

Moon Boy was probing sensitive areas that might or might not have come into contact with an oversize demon. I stared at a long bleeding scratch where a spear might or might not have grazed my arm. Master Li grinned at us.

“Moon Boy, have you forgotten your teacher and the bandit he deafened? Ox, have you forgotten Granny Ho and her son-in-law? If Moon Boy hadn't handled that demon we would have been killed, and if Ox had missed the target just now we would also have been killed. We have been treated to the artistry of the great Liu Ling, which makes questions of literal truth immaterial, if not absurd. Was Chuang Tzu imagining himself to be the butterfly, or was the butterfly imagining itself to be Chuang Tzu?”

He turned back to the pool and poured more wine in, and the old man and the skull drank in comfortable silence like old friends.

“Ling,” Master Li finally said, “your priests did a marvelous job of probing our minds while we lay in mushroom stupors, and they were not blinded—as I am—by subjective experience. Is it permissible to ask for an opinion?”

The reeds remained still.

“Let's put it this way. If you were to entertain somebody with the story of Li Kao and Number Ten Ox and Grief of Dawn and Moon Boy and Prince Liu Pao and so on, what would you call it?”

The reeds remained quiet, but then, slowly, they moved.

“Shi tou chi.”

“The Story of the Stone?” Master Li nodded. “Yes, I vaguely perceive what you mean. It's a question of priorities, of course, and I haven't quite sorted them out. But I'm almost there, I think.”

He got to his feet. Moon Boy and I followed his example, and we bowed to the skull.

“Ling,” Master Li said, “I still say you're a very great artist.”

The reeds moved for the last time. “Kao, I still say you were born to be hung.”

A priest was holding a gate open for us. We walked out to a green hillside, and the last I saw of the Temple of Illusion was a window in a small tower with shutters half-closed. A winking eye.

A few miles past the White Cloud Convent we turned off the path and climbed shale and granite and black rock and crossed a clearing. We burrowed through brush to another clearing at the side of a cliff, and Master Li gazed happily at a strange and rather unimpressive plant.

“The mind is a miser,” he said. “Nothing is ever thrown away, and it's amazing what you can find if you dig deep enough.” He began stripping thorny little seed like things. “Don't play with thorn apples unless you know what you're doing,” he cautioned. They're of the nightshade family, like mandrake and henbane and belladonna, and their principal product is poison. From the Bombay thorn apple comes the legendary potion of India, dhatura, which can stupefy, paralyze, or kill, depending upon the dosage, but which can also produce a medicine with remarkable effect upon internal bleeding and fever. With any luck we'll have Grief of Dawn on her feet in no time.”