The Story of the Stone

shorthand for antique Great Seal script, which hasn't been in common usage for a thousand years.”

“Ox is capable of the damnedest things,” Master Li muttered. “Right now he's capable of sketching the ancient characters for “Love,” “Strength,” and “Heaven,” and I know perfectly well he doesn't understand a single Great Seal ideograph. Well, boy, are you going to keep us in suspense?”

I turned bright red. “I had a dream,” I said humbly. “Just before you woke me up. Something in this scene reminded me of it, and it had strange patterns.”

I had dreamed that I was sitting on the grass near a village very like my own. Somebody had attached a bamboo pole and a black flag to the gears of the grindstone at the water wheel, as we did in my village because the gears kept slipping. Farmers could glance up from the fields and see if the flag was pumping up and down, and if it wasn't, a boy would be sent to get Big Hong, the blacksmith, to reset the gears. As the black flag rose to the apex, it flared out and hovered in the air for a moment before starting back down.

Children were playing in front of the waterwheel. One little girl was jumping up and down. Her long black hair lifted up into the air and hovered for a moment before settling down to her shoulders.

In front of the children were butterflies fluttering among some reeds. One was black, and it swooped up, paused, hovered, and then fluttered back down.

The black flag, black hair, and black butterfly formed a nearly straight line that pointed toward my feet. I looked down and saw a small round orange-colored piece of clay. My hand reached out and closed around it, and something told me to keep watching the pattern: up, pause, down… up, pause, down…

My fingers tingled. The piece of clay had a heartbeat, and it was the rhythm of the pattern, and an ache filled my heart and tears filled my eyes. Up, pause, down: kung, shang, chueh. I was not hearing the wonderful sound but feeling it in the pulse of a piece of clay, and then I was in my old classroom in the monastery and a bunch of boys were looking at me with eyes like owls and I was desperately trying to explain something very important.

“Don't you understand?” I said. “The life force of a round piece of orange-colored clay is like a flag and a butterfly and a little girl's hair. Up, pause, down; up, pause, down. The important thing to remember is the pause. Can't you understand that?”

The boys stared at me solemnly.

“It's the pause!” I yelled. “It isn't like the heartbeat of a person, and you'll never hear the wonderful sound it makes unless you understand the pause!”

The old abbot was shuffling toward me. Then he came closer and he wasn't the abbot at all. He was Master Li, and he grabbed my shoulders and shook me and screamed furiously, “Number Ten Ox, you couldn't teach a banana to turn black!”

Then I woke up.

“Sir, that's all I can tell you about the dream,” I said. “Something in this scene reminded me of it, and the pattern it took. That tall dead tree, then a space, then lower dead trees, then a space, then bushes…”

I shrugged and sketched in the air. “And you draw ancient scholar's ideographs for love, strength, and Heaven,” Master Li said thoughtfully. “Are you quite positive that the round piece of clay was colored orange?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

He scratched his nose and chewed thoughtfully on the tip of his mangy beard. “That may bear looking into when we have the time,” he said. “The symbolism is obvious, but it leads to a swamp I'd rather stay away from.”

Master Li started looking for traces of mysterious monks in motley, and I started gathering more plant and soil samples, and just then the drums began. Sheepskin drums, hundreds of them, pounding softly but methodically from all over the Valley of Sorrows. The prince looked at Master Li with raised eyebrows, but Master Li jerked his head in my direction. “When it comes to the ways of peasants, ask the expert,” he said.

I flushed again. “Your Highness, they're going to blackmail you,” I said meekly.

“Eh?”

“Blackmail isn't quite right, but I don't know the proper word,” I said. “They're going to start a work song. It's older than time, and it's used by peasants when they want the lord of the valley to do something.”

“What lord of what valley?” the prince said angrily.

Master Li kindly stepped in to help me. “The peasants think your ancestor is behind this, and so far as they're concerned, you're lord of the valley whether you like it or not. The headmen are preparing the chant that details the peasants’ duties to the lord, and thus implies the lord's duties to the peasants. Ox, how many verses are there?”

“Over four hundred,” I said. “When they get to the end, they'll start all over again, and they can keep it up for a year if need be.”

I didn't add that in their place I'd do the same thing myself. Confucius thought so highly of the blackmail song that he put part of it in the Book of Odes, and it's really very effective when the drums go boom, boom, boom.

“In the fifth moon we gather wild plums and cherries,
In the sixth moon we boil mallow and beans,
In the seventh moon we dry the dates,
In the eighth moon we take the rice,
To make with it the spring wine,
So our lord may be granted long life.
In the sixth moon we pick the melons,
In the seventh moon we cut the gourds,
In the eighth moon we take the seeding hemp,
We gather bitter herbs; we cut ailanto for firewood,
That our lord may eat.”

The chanting is without emotion except for the last line of every third verse, and after a few months of it the subject begins to cringe when each third verse starts. It's hard for a lord to justify chopping off insolent heads; it's just a work song.

Boom, boom, boom:

“In the eighth moon we make ready the stackyards,
In the ninth moon we bring in the harvest;
Millet for wine, millet for cooking, the early and the late,
Paddy and hemp, beans and wheat.
My lord, the harvesting is over.
We begin work on your houses;
In the morning we gather thatch reeds,
In the evening we twist ropes,
We work quickly on the rook,
For soon we will sow the lord's many grains.”

“How can they do this to me?” the prince said plaintively. They know very well that my family hasn't collected a copper coin or grain of rice for centuries.”

Boom, boom, boom:

“In the days of the first we cut ice with tingling blows;
In the days of the second we bring it to the cold shed.
In the days of the third, very early,
We offer pigs and garlic, that our lord may eat.