Barry Hughart - The Story of the Stone

The stone was warm. It was living, and I could feel a flow of energy like a heartbeat. A tingle entered my fingers and spread throughout my body. It spread through every nerve like a miraculous tonic, and my weariness vanished, and I had the distinct sensation that at any moment I might begin to bloom like a flower. Master Li gestured for me to pass it around, and I handed it to Grief of Dawn. She began to weep, even while a smile came to her lips, and when Moon Boy received it he turned white as a ghost and pressed it to his chest as though he wanted to join the stone with his body.

Master Li took it back and held it up to the torchlight. “The author of Dream of the Red Chamber never saw the stone, but I'm willing to bet he did indeed see one of the Annals of Heaven and Earth, and that it simply said the stone was flawed. It was the flower that was evil, but Tsao Hsueh Chin imputed evil to the stone because of the peculiar reaction of two great men who once possessed it. Ssu-ma Ch'ien never touched the stone with his hands, and he too imputed evil because of the reactions of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu. If Ssu-ma had not been under such a strain he might have paid closer attention to the shape of the stone, and reached a different conclusion.”

Master Li grinned at us and quoted Ssu-ma. ” ‘Smooth flat area rising to round concave bowl shape.’ What does that suggest to you?”

It suggested nothing at all to me or Moon Boy, but Grief of Dawn's eyes lit up.

“A place to grind an ink stick and a bowl to dip the brush into. It was a natural ink stone,” she said.

“Good girl! Natural ink stones are highly prized, and this one was presented first to Lao Tzu and then to Chuang Tzu. I would give almost anything to have been there when the great men first used it,” Master Li said. “Their writing brushes dipped into the well and moved over the flat area, coming into contact with a stone that carried the touch of Heaven, and they gaped with stunned eyes when the calligraphy that flowed from their brushes was that of the gods. They could keep quiet about the stone and claim such genius as their own, and the temptation must have been terrible, and they yelled, ‘Evil!’ and hurled the stone away. Anyone who heard them would assume they were referring to the stone, not the temptation that came with it.”

He placed the piece of stone into his purse and secured it with a leather thong.

“This is only one piece. There are two to go,” he said grimly. “When the Laughing Prince rose from the dead he was totally mad and almost totally mindless, and he couldn't possibly have planned rational actions. Somebody else has been doing the thinking, and somewhere down here is the ringleader who has his hands on Prince Liu Pao. Unless…”

His voice trailed off. We knew what he was thinking, and our faces were white and strained as we methodically moved among the Monks of Mirth. We pulled back cowl after cowl. All we found were white skulls, or recent ones with patches of skin and hair still clinging to them. Moon Boy nearly had a heart attack when both empty eye sockets of a skull suddenly winked at him, but then a frightened bat flew from the hollow skull. Something terrible might have happened to the prince, but at least he wasn't one of the monks.

We took torches and bent close to the floor. It took nearly an hour to find it, but Moon Boy suddenly whooped happily. A scarlet tassel lay at the entrance of one of the side passages. Again we clutched our weapons and started off, with me in front and Grief of Dawn covering the rear.

If the prince hadn't managed to leave that trail we would have been hopelessly lost in a matter of minutes. It was a maze inside a labyrinth that was inside another maze, and tunnels branched off in all directions. Everywhere we saw heavy wooden braces holding the ceilings together. We had to move carefully to avoid touching scaffolding, and we found ourselves whispering, as though a loud word could bring the tomb down on our heads. Tomb it was: room after room, some finished and some incomplete, designed for every conceivable function and pleasure. The Laughing Prince had decided to take his whole world with him, and I even expected a polo field until I realized that in his day we had imported the marvelous horses from India (left by the mad Greek invader) but not the game that went with them.

The scarlet tassels continued to show us the way. Moon Boy whispered that he could hear water, and a few minutes later we stepped into a beautiful cave. From what we could see in torchlight, the stone was blue and green and very beautiful, and a marble floor led to a pool fed by a small trickle of water falling from a ledge nearly forty feet above it. Marble steps led up to jutting rock shelves, and I had a weird vision of a parade of skeletons and mummies climbing up to dive.

Moon Boy held up a hand. “Something moving,” he whispered. “It's coming this way. Up there,” he whispered, pointing to one of the rock shelves above the pool. Then we all froze like statues, because a high screeching voice began to shriek.

“Master, O Master, the game nears your bow!

An old stag, two young bucks, and a lovely young doe”

The echoes bounced back and forth between the walls and vibrated into endless passageways. Something moved. A small graceful figure wrapped in a robe of motley was standing on the shelf looking down at us. I stopped breathing when I saw the cowl was pulled back just far enough for the top of the head to be seen above dark shadows. The hair was the color of fire. I heard a clear lilting laugh, and then the pure lovely voice of a girl.

“I hope I didn't frighten anybody. Who are you?”

Master Li's eyes were slits so narrow I wondered how he could see anything, and his cool voice was sardonic.

“Tourists,” he said. “Who are you?”

The girl shyly plucked at her robe. “My friend calls me Fire Girl,” she said. “Have you seen him?”

“Possibly,” Master Li said. “Is your friend the happy fellow who cavorts with monks who wear robes like yours?”

“Yes. He's my friend until my real friend comes, but I haven't seen him for the longest time.” Her pure voice was puzzled. “He promised to come back, I know he did, but I can't remember when it was.”

Master Li heaved a sigh and reached for his wine flask.

“His name, no doubt, is Wolf.”

“Yes!” the girl cried delightedly. “Have you seen him? I've been waiting and waiting and I know we have something important to do, but my head isn't very clear and I can't remember what it is.”

She had the most beautiful young voice I had ever heard, but there was a strange discordant note behind it. Something was off center, and it came not from the vocal chords but the mind.

Master Li swallowed some wine, and for once he didn't seem to enjoy the taste. “We also have a friend,” he said. “He has funny hair that sticks out all over, and ink stains on his nose. He may have gone with your other friend, the one with the monks.”

“Yes, I saw him.” She gestured vaguely behind her. “Back there. Maybe he's sick, because they were carrying him.”

“Then we'd better go to him with some medicine,” Master Li said reasonably. “Do the monks call your friend the Lord of Laughter?”

“Yes, but I don't like it when he laughs,” she said gravely. “He smells bad too, but when I woke up I was all alone, and I was alone for the longest time, and I was glad when I found him.”

“That was when you learned how to open the doors and get into the burial chamber,” Master Li said matter-of-factly. “Was he out of his coffin when you found him?”

She plucked her robe nervously and was silent for a long time.

“Yes,” she whispered. “But he wasn't really awake, and it took me the longest time to learn how to wake him up.”