Bridge Of Birds (2 page)

The emperor was so sick of the whole affair that he refused to allow that cursed stretch
of wall, or anyone connected with it, to be mentioned in his presence. Of course that is
what the clever fellows had been planning all along, and their friend the general was
quietly set free to write his memoirs.

For nearly a century Dragon's Pillow was a favorite of sightseers. A small number of
soldiers was detached to maintain the wall, but since it served no purpose except as a
watchtower for a ghost it was eventually allowed to fall into decay. Even the sightseers
lost interest in it, and weeds grew and rocks crumbled. It was a paradise for children,
however, and for a few centuries it was the favorite playpen of the children of my
village, but then something happened that left Dragon's Pillow abandoned even by children.

One evening the children of Ku-fu were beginning one of the games that had originated
somewhere back toward the beginning of time, and suddenly they stopped short. A hollow,
bodiless voice - one boy later said that it might have been echoing through two hundred
miles of bamboo pipe - drifted down to them from the Eye of the Dragon. So strange were
the words that every one of the children remembered them perfectly, even though they took
to their heels as soon as their hearts resumed beating.

Was it possible that poor Wan, the most important of all sentinels on the most important
of all watchtowers, was sending a message to China through the children of the humble
village of Ku-fu? If so, it was a very strange message indeed, and sages and scholars
struggled for centuries to wrest some meaning from it.

If my illustrious readers would care to take a crack at it, I will wish them the very best
of luck.

Jade plate,

Six, eight.

Fire that burns hot,

Night that is not.

Fire that burns cold,

First silver, then gold.

My story begins with the silk harvest in the Year of the Tiger 3,337 (A.D. 639), when the
prospects for a record crop had never seemed better.

The eggs that Ma the Grub handed out were quite beautiful, jet-black and glowing with
health, and the leaves on the mulberry trees were so thick that the groves resembled
tapestries woven from deep green brocade, and youngsters raced around singing, “Mulberry
leaves so shiny and bright, children all clap hands at the sight!” Our village crackled
with excitement. Girls carried straw baskets up the hill to the monastery, and the bonzes
lined them with yellow paper upon which they had drawn pictures of Lady Horsehead, and the
abbot blessed the baskets and burned incense to the patron of sericulture. Bamboo racks
and trays were taken to the river and vigorously scrubbed. Wildflowers were picked and
crushed, lamp wicks cut into tiny pieces, and the oldest members of each family smeared
cloves of garlic with moist earth and placed them against the walls of the cottages. If
the garlic produced many sprouts it would mean a bountiful harvest, and never in living
memory had anyone seen so many sprouts. The women slept with the sheets of silkworm eggs
pressed against their bare flesh, in order to hasten the hatching process through body
heat, and the old ones tossed handfuls of rice into pots that bubbled over charcoal fires.
When the steam lifted straight up, without a quiver, they yelled, “Now!”

The women brushed the eggs into the baskets with goose feathers. Then they sprinkled the
crushed wildflowers and the pieces of lamp wicks on top and placed the baskets upon the
bamboo racks. The goose feathers were carefully pinned to the sides of the baskets, and
charcoal fires were lit beneath the racks. (The significance of wildflowers, lamp wicks,
and goose feathers has been lost in antiquity, but we would never dream of changing the
custom.) The families knelt to pray to Lady Horsehead, and in every cottage the eggs
hatched right on schedule.

The Dark Ladies wriggled lazily, enjoying the heat of the fires, but they were not lazy
for long. Unless one has seen them, it is quite impossible to imagine how much silkworms
can - must - eat, and their only food is mulberry leaves. It is not much of an
exaggeration to say that the chewing sounds of ravenous silkworms are enough to waken
hibernating bears, but sleep would be out of the question anyway. It takes thirty days,
more or less, for silkworms to prepare to spin, and there are but three brief periods when
they aren't eating: the Short Sleep, the Second Sleep, and the Big Sleep. After the Big
Sleep silkworms will die if an hour passes without food, and we worked day and night
stripping leaves from trees and carrying them to the cottages in basket brigades. The
children were given regular rest periods, of course, but during the thirty days the rest
of us were lucky to get sixty hours of sleep.

The old ones tended the fires, because silkworms must have steady heat, and the children
who were too young to work in basket brigades were turned out to fend for themselves. In
grove after grove we stripped the trees to the bare branches, and then we stumbled in
exhaustion to the mulberry grove that belonged to Pawnbroker Fang. That cost us more IOUs,
but they were the finest trees in the village. Gradually the silkworms changed color, from
black to green, and from green to white, and then translucent, and the oldest family
members erected bamboo screens in front of the racks, because silkworms are shy when they
begin to spin and must have privacy.

The deafening feeding noises dropped to a roar, and then to a sound like distant surf, and
then to a whisper. The silence that finally settled over our village seemed eerily unreal.
There was nothing more to be done except to keep the fires going, and if fortune favored
us we would pull the screens away in three days and see fields of snow: the white cocoons
called Silkworm Blossoms, massed upon the racks and waiting to be reeled onto spindles in
continuous strands more than a thousand feet long.

Some of us made it to our beds, but others simply dropped in their tracks.

I awoke on the fifteenth day of the eighth moon, which happened to be my nineteenth
birthday, to the sound of a soft pattering rain. The clouds were beginning to lift.
Slanting rays of sunlight slid through silver raindrops, and a soft mist drifted across
the fields like smoke. In the distance I could see the hazy outline of Dragon's Pillow,
and nearby on the riverbank some boys were teasing Fang's Fawn, who was riding a water
buffalo. I decided that the boys were following her around because the rain had plastered
her tunic around small shapely breasts that the pretty little girl didn't have a month
ago, and Fawn was enjoying the attention immensely. Bells were ringing from the monastery
upon the hill.

I stretched lazily in bed, savoring the smells of tea and porridge from Auntie Hua's
kitchen, and then I jerked upright. The boys at the riverbank were staring wide-eyed at
Fang's Fawn, who had turned pale as death. She clutched her throat and gave a sharp cry of
pain and toppled from the water buffalo to the grass.

I was out the door in an instant. Fawn's eyes were wide and staring, but she didn't see me
while I tested her pulse, which was faint and erratic. Perspiration glistened on her
forehead. I told the boys to run for her father, and then I picked her up and raced up the
hill to the monastery.

The abbot was also our doctor, professionally trained at Hanlin Academy, but he was
clearly puzzled by Fawn's sickness. Her vital signs had dropped so low that he had to hold
a mirror to her lips to find a trace of condensation, and when he took a pin and pricked
her flesh at various pain points there was no reaction. Her eyes were still wide and
unseeing.

Suddenly the pretty little girl sat up and screamed. The sound was shocking in the hush of
the monastery. Her hands clawed the air, fending off something that wasn't there, and she
jerked convulsively. Then she fell back upon the bed and her eyes closed. Her body grew
limp, and once more her vital signs dropped to almost nothing.

“Demons!” I whispered.

“I sincerely hope so,” the abbot said grimly, and I later learned that he had begun to
suspect rabies, and that he would prefer to confront the most hideous demons from the most
horrible corners of Hell.

There had been noises swelling up in the village below the hill, a confusion of sounds,
and now we began to hear curses from the men and wails and lamentations from the women.
The abbot looked at me and raised an eyebrow. I was out the door and down the hill in a
flash, and after that things got so confusing that I have difficulty sorting them out in
my mind.

It began with Auntie Hua. She had been tending the fire at the silkworm rack in her
cottage and she had smelled something that worried her. When she cautiously peered through
a crack in the screen she had not seen a field of snow, but a black rotting mass of pulp.
Her agonized wails brought the neighbors, who raced back to their own cottages, and as
howls arose from every corner of the village it became apparent that for the first time in
living memory our silk harvest had been a total failure. That was merely the beginning.

Big Hong the blacksmith ran from his house with wide frightened eyes, carrying his small
son in his arms. Little Hong's eyes were wide and unseeing, and he screamed and clawed the
air. The blacksmith was followed by Wang the wineseller, whose small daughter was
screaming and clawing the air. More and more parents dashed out with children in their
arms, and a frantic mob raced up the hill toward the monastery.

It was not rabies. It was a plague.

I stared in disbelief at two tiny girls who were standing in a doorway with their thumbs
in their mouths. Mother Ho's great-granddaughters were so sickly that the abbot had worked
night and day to keep them alive, yet they were completely untouched by the plague. I ran
past them into their cottage. Mother Ho was ninety-two and sinking fast, and my heart was
in my mouth as I approached her bed and drew back the covers. I received a stinging slap
on my nose.

“Who do you think you are? The Imperial Prick?” the old lady yelled.

(She meant Emperor Wu-ti. After his death his lecherous ghost kept hopping into his
concubines' beds, and in desperation they had recruited new brides from all over, and it
was not until the total reached 503 that the exhausted spectre finally gave up and crawled
back into its tomb.)

I ran back out and turned into cottage after cottage, where tiny children stared at me and
cried, or laughed and wanted to play, and the old ones who wept beside the racks of
rotting silkworms were otherwise as healthy as horses. Then I ran back up the hill and
told the abbot what I had seen, and when we made a list the truth was indisputable, and it
was also unbelievable.

Not one child under the age of eight and not one person over the age of thirteen had been
affected by the plague, but every child - every single one - between the ages of eight and
thirteen had screamed and blindly clawed the air, and now lay as still as death in the
infirmary that the abbot had set up in the bonzes' common room. The weeping parents looked
to the abbot for a cure, but he spread his arms and cried out in despair:

“First tell me how a plague can learn how to
count!
”

Auntie Hua had always been the decisive one in our family. She took me aside. “Ox, the
abbot is right,” she said hoarsely. “We need a wise man who can tell us how a plague can
learn to count, and I have heard that there are such men in Peking, and that they live on
the Street of Eyes. I have also heard that they charge dearly for their services.”

“Auntie, it will take a week to squeeze money out of Pawnbroker Fang, even though Fawn is
one of the victims,” I said.

She nodded, and then she reached into her dress and pulled out a worn leather purse. When
she dumped the contents into my hands I stared at more money than I had ever seen in my
life: hundreds of copper coins, strung upon a green cord.

“Five thousand copper cash, and you are never to tell your uncle about this. Not ever!”
the old lady said fiercely. “Run to Peking. Go to the Street of Eyes and bring a wise man
back to our village.”

I had heard that Auntie Hua had been a rather wild beauty in her youth and I briefly
wondered whether she might have reason to sacrifice to P'an Chin-lien, the patron of
fallen women, but I had no time for such speculations because I was off and running like
the wind.

I share my birthday with the moon, and Peking was a madhouse when I arrived. Trying to
shove through the mobs that had turned out for the Moon Festival was like one of those
nightmares in which one struggles through quicksand. The din was incredible, and I forced
my way through the streets with the wild eyes and aching ears of a colt at a blacksmiths'
convention, and I was quite terrified when I finally reached the street that I was looking
for. It was an elegant avenue that was lined on both sides with very expensive houses, and
above each door was the sign of a wide unblinking eye.

“The truth revealed,” those eyes seemed to be saying. “We see everything.”

I felt the first stirrings of hope, and I banged at the nearest door. It was opened by a
haughty eunuch who was attired in clothes that I had previously associated with royalty,
and he ran his eyes from my bamboo hat to my shabby sandals, clapped a perfumed
handkerchief to his nose, and ordered me to state my business. The eunuch didn't blink an
eye when I said that I wanted his master to explain how a plague could learn to count, but
when I said that I was prepared to pay as much as five thousand copper cash he turned
pale, leaned weakly against the wall, and groped for smelling salts.

“Five thousand copper cash?” he whispered. “Boy, my master charges fifty pieces of silver
to find a lost dog!”

The door slammed in my face, and when I tried the next house I exited through the air,
pitched by six husky footmen while a bejeweled lackey shook his fist and screamed, “You
dare to offer five thousand copper cash to the former chief investigator for the Son of
Heaven himself? Back to your mud hovel, you insolent peasant!”