Breaking the cold awkward silence that followed, Mah Lin kindly offered a correction. “Arkthar, the sticks in the rice call to mind the incense offered at a funeral, they call to Death.”
My day had been full. My body was tired when I lay down that night, my mind however, reared up like a wild horse. I was its rider, but not its master. It jumped and raced past memory and half thought, from place to place with no control or guidance. It carried me to the iron monument in the open clearing, where once again I stood humbled before the mighty effigy.
From the towering lion to the jagged flight of bats and the steady syncopation of the forge machinery, my psyche charged onward. It brought me from the darkness of the cave through the churning falls and into the sunlight, where I emerged and drew fresh breath. My imagination slowed from its untamed gallop, and I stopped to survey the vast landscape that stretched before me. The last thoughts of my day had become the first dreams of my night, and I was not alone.
We three stood looking at the mountain of fire. Our location was as before, but now the fire and molten rivers were long gone, and instead of the blackening smoke, its rocky peak stood wrapped in blue white ice. The high altitude winds carried snowy powder up and off, painting feathers on its frozen cap.
The once blistering terrain was now a fresh spring meadow. From the lush green lowland a forest climbed the mountain's base like an advancing army, front lines halted far below the snow and ice. Thick mist cloaked the cliffs and craggy outcrops; it hung and lingered in the trees caressing the forest in its damp embrace.
A mighty river snaked and coiled its way from high to low, undulating like the mythical serpent of old seafarers' tales. It remained ever humble in its almighty power, seeking only the course of least resistance. It cut deep and moved fast on high, but slowed, widened, and finally wandered like an old man as it arrived at the gentler slope at mountain's foot, its energy spent by the length of its journey.
Water is the ice, the river, and the mistâone element, three forms. I felt his presence behind my back, but I would not turn around.
“You have done well, Arkthar, since we last met above the desert sands,” Death said. If within the dream Selah and Mah Lin heard him, they gave no indication and continued to look silently in the direction of the mountain. “I have done my best,” I replied, and this too, they seemed unable to hear. “Well at least so far you have kept your feet on the ground,” Death quipped, and we both shared a chuckle. Still I dared not turn around.
“In the world of men I am much maligned. They see only that I take and never see that I give in great measure. I alone release them from their suffering. In times of great dying, men point to me and curse, but it is they that have overturned the balance.” I felt Death move much closer, and my body shuttered.
“I am Death, and I am the natural law. I have walked this world since life began. From primordial seas I helped life thrive, it was I that pushed it up upon the solid ground, and it was I that gave it wings and launched it to the heavens. I am the keeper and the one that weeds your earthly garden.” I listened carefully to the words he spoke, and when he paused, I heard the earth begin its lamentation.
“Arkthar, we are moving into strange times. Mankind is new upon this platform, and from their beginnings they have fought against the natural order, it is your kind who work me to the bone.” He spoke again with purging energy, “It was I who gave you back your life when you died at the hands of men. You intrigue me, and I am not done with you. Study well the wisdom of the monk and heed the lessons from the past, for as we speak a storm is gathering to come against you. The dark tempest is driven by hatred and revenge. It seeks your end and the ruin of all that you hold dear.” I listened silently and stared off at the mountain, and Death continued.
“Remember me kindly, Arkthar, and remember this as wellâto unleash the Dragon you must first imprison it. Heed me, once the Dragon is released there can be no returning.” Death spoke again but it was not with words. Instead, the cries of the earth rose and trembled with the voices of the past. It was the growing cry of age-old pain, and it shocked me to the core. Spurred by terror I tried to run, but the sound followed and engulfed me.
It trailed off, then started up and filled my room again, until it became the familiar sound of the rooster's morning crowing.
Selah handed me my breakfast bowl immediately. Mah Lin sat amid a pile of shavings whittled from the handle of a garden hoe. The Five Element sword was sheathed upon his back. As he rose, his hands traced the patterned smoothness of his work and he was satisfied. The farmer's tool he handed me had been transformed. It had been sculpted quickly but with great skill. I held the hard wooden hilt and felt its heft. It was not steel, but it was a weapon. No longer meant to work the garden, clearly it was now a tool that the priest had crafted to train me. Mah Lin's tone was jovial, “No more a handle,” he said; “now it is an oar.”
The room had been cleared, and as I shoveled in the last of my gruel he began to speak with both his voice and his body. “Five Elements, five cuts,” he said dryly. With his right arm he traced a large X in front of his body as he faced me. Then, holding an imaginary sword with two hands, he began.
From top right to bottom left a diagonal slash, “One.” He turned his hands rotating the unseen edge and then back on the same line, from bottom left to upper right, “Two.” He drew the imaginary blade back slowly past his ear and down in a graceful half circle until it rested at his lower right. He brought it up and to the left
,
“Three.” At its apex his hands moved again rotating the invisible edge like a swallow's flight, and then down smoothly from top left to bottom right, “Four.” The momentum of the phantom blade spiraled steadily forward as his two hands came up to torso height and then became a center thrust. “Five.” The sword tip's target was the intersection of the X, the middle of the body line.
His body faced me squarely, and he began the count once more. Both hands flew up to the handle at his back. The sword came up, out, and down to the left. “One.” From lower left it retraced its path up and to the right. “Two.” It drew back gracefully, circling down to the bottom right and up. “Three.” The blade turned over and from high left cut down, and to the right. “Four.” Moving upward it gathered momentum as its point flashed precisely through the center. “Five.”
“Eventually the five cuts will become only one cut.” He moved again, and in less time than a nod the sequence of five blurred together and became one. It was faster by far than the eye could follow. He laughed at my open mouth, and said, “Ring by ring, Arkthar. Now five cuts, but not five elements, for before there was steel, there was wood.”
We moved outside into the clean morning air, the wood felt heavy in my hands. Once I had gotten comfortable with the five cuts from a square unmoving stance, we began again. The first cut with the right leg leading, the second with the left stepping forward, third in harmony with the right step, the forth with the left, and the fifth thrust with the planting of the right. “Five cuts, five paces.” Mah Lin said and asked, “How fast can you run?” I didn't have any real answer and so I replied, “As fast as I have to.” His frown told me he was not joking, and he sprinted to the count of five, covering about four body lengths along the ground.
Mah Lin raised the sword and ran at full speed toward a bamboo grove. This tall plant stood in clusters everywhere upon this land. It was most utilitarian, used to craft everything from furniture to cutlery. It would grow the length of fist to elbow in a single day, and it would reach the thickness of a man's arm. What made it unique was not its girth, but that inside it was completely empty. So it seemed that it should have no strength at all, but like many things of this world the opposite was, in fact, the truth.
By the time he reached it, he was at full stride and the sound of steel on wood rang out. Every step a cut, he had traversed four body lengths in the time of one breath. Only as he impaled the last trunk with the metal tip did the diagonally severed victim of first blow reach the ground. With a tilt of his head three more in sequence followed suit.
Sweat glistened on his muscled chest when he rejoined us, sword in hand. “Arkthar,” he said as he touched the wooden sword within my hand, “Keep it with you and let it grow to become your fifth limb.” I was touched by his gift and bowed with deep respect. He had called it an oar, I knew that it was now a necessary part of my journey, an implement that if used well would propel me forward. So it was that a new element had been added to the structure of my day.
Before first meal and with Selah near me, I voraciously studied writing, reading, and wisdom past. To the accompaniment of morning birdsong, I practiced the slow movements of the dao yin. At midday from flower to acorn, and from bud to leaf, the oak and the raven would watch over me as I held my quiet stance beneath them.
The daily pounding of the falls with my friend and teacher, signaled and conditioned my body for the fast and hard training of limb and movement that we practiced inside the cavern. I returned home every evening and with arms held at shoulder height, carrying two pails of bat dung to feed our thriving plot.
During the day my heavy wooden blade never left my back, but the time of its training was sunset. Bathed in the warm blood red light of day's end, I held the oar within my hands, and traced the pattern of five cuts until every muscle of my body held their memory. I remembered also the sword art of the fierce Norse raiders, and learned from it. With every new skill that my right arm learned, I trained my left to be its equal.
As well as arts of war, I mastered what I once considered women's work. I tended the livestock. I learned to flavor well most of what we ate, for I enjoyed the new experience of spice. At evening meal I learned to follow by ear their conversation, and now could add my simple point in the language of this land. Sometimes speech switched from my language to theirs, and like spice, perhaps a flavor of Latin, Norse, or Celt would surface in the mix.
In my new world, the monk Mah Lin taught me the ways of the warrior priest, while with Selah I learned the arts of the scholar and the methods of traditional medicine. I had often heard father and daughter speak of the natural world reflecting the movement and balance of opposite forces.
Through conflict to peace, from soldier to healer, now with the passage of time I was beginning not just to understand this concept, but to embody it.
Within the darkened shadows of the cavern's forge, my training with Mah Lin continued. He spoke of the new form that I would learn, “It is older by far than many,” he said, “first brought by a brown southern giant to the temple we call Shaolin.” I recalled the name from our conversation of long ago in the presence of the sacred oak. The priest nodded with pleasure when I remembered its name, “vajra fist,” and nodded once more when I remembered that its meaning is “thunderbolt.”
He began his instruction without fanfare; the form opened slowly, and was initially not unlike the “dao yin sequence” that Selah had taught me. After its slow opening all similarities vanished. I watched in awe as his movements transformed from the slow power of twist undulate and coil, to the blinding speed of limb and leg. This speed was not yet within my reach, for full mobility had not yet returned to my battered body. The priest assured me, however, that it would, but for now I was to be content to imitate his motions as accurately as possible.
By month's end I had learned all the movements, but the real skill would come only with practice. Day by day we trained the motions of the vajra fist, and day by day I did become more fluid in its powerful execution. Steadily I grew stronger and more confident, I was indeed happy to push myself once more beyond the limits of flesh and mind.
Satisfied at last that the form was in my body and that my mind no longer needed to focus on recalling the next sequence, Mah Lin bid me pause and reflect. “Now that the first stage of your training has ended, the hidden truths of this ancient exercise can be explored.” He reached high into a crevice and drew forth a work of wonder. It was beautifully crafted and old beyond measure. “This relic, too, came to us with the journey of the southern monk. It is a steel they call
wootz,
and its making is the secret of our sacred forge.
He held it with reverence in his strong hands and showed it to me to examine only with my eyes. “It is the earthly symbol of what you now study through the flesh,” he said, and as I looked upon it he continued to explain. “This is the vajra. In a time long past it was held by the hand of the Bodhidharma, and aided his meditation.” I looked at what he spoke of and could think only that for such a powerful object it was indeed quite small. It rested comfortably upon his outstretched palm. It shared the texture of Mah Lin's sword, perfectly symmetric in shape like two oaken acorns joined by a straight silver bridge.
Mah Lin was not one to use words carelessly. With explanation he was more than sparse, assuming, I think, that my understanding would catch up over time. He stated simply that, “this object is a symbol. The twofold meaning of vajra is thunderbolt and diamondâthe blinding light of enlightenment that crashes unexpectedly to permanently illuminate the darkened mind and leaves in its wake a new consciousness as clear and resilient as the hardest jewel in nature's crown.”
As I listened mindfully to his words, he added one more thought, “The hammer of Thor has traveled far.”
He led me now to a small grotto at the cavern's far end, where he bid me sit in the uncomfortable cross-legged style of his custom. He had me close my eyes lightly and direct my breath to my center. My fingers he placed in a specific way, he called “a mudra.” The fingers of my right hand surrounded the extended index finger of the fist of my left.