flung onto the shore.
Master Lotus’s strong magic restored many to life. As they got slowly to their feet, they knew they must flee, but their legs failed them. They lay down and wept, their tears falling, like hail, into the lake, made foul by the snake demon. The salt in their tears cleansed the filth, and a blue mist of sadness spread, soaking up the cruelty that had inhabited the water.
Then Master Lotus summoned sweetly chirping birds to gather in the trees, which cheered the people, who stood, stretched and set off for home, to their pastures and villages where barley and cabbage grew. Potters returned to their kilns, stone masons to their quarries; tanners gathered mirabilite crystals from the roadside to soften their leather. Master Lotus knew they might encounter bandits or evil spirits, and never find their homes, but he bestowed on them his blessing with auspicious words.
Master Lotus was not a deity, but he was a future deity. He had earned his power through his devotions and asceticism, and carried magic objects that guaranteed victory over the demons. His head was filled with powerful incantations. Although he could not travel freely into Heaven, he could fly up to the gate, where the Guanyin Bodhisattva, saviour of all those who suffer, would be waiting for his report on what he had witnessed during his journeys through Gling. The Bodhisattva would tell his story to those above.
He flew from Gling to Heaven on the back of a roc, holding on to its feathers to steady himself. Dizzy, fearful of falling into the great void, he recalled that he could soar aloft on a ray of sunlight. Why, then, was he afraid? The people he had saved must have shaken his inner tranquillity.
He sat on the roc’s back, his long hair flowing behind him, the wind howling past his ears. Reaching out, he squeezed the water from the drifting clouds, twisting them into auspicious knots, then tossing them to the ground. Later, when he had become a deity, sacred signs appeared where the knots had landed.
A voice full of laughter spoke: ‘After that, people will think of you wherever they are.’
He reined in the roc and, eyes downcast, hands at his sides, sat up straight. ‘It was the whim of a humble monk . . .’
Above him, all was quiet.
‘I shall go down to retrieve the knots.’
‘There is no need,’ the voice said. ‘I am happy that you have returned from the human world in such high spirits.’
Master Lotus breathed a sigh of relief.
The Bodhisattva said, ‘Dismount and we shall talk.’
How could he dismount in the void?
‘Just climb down from the roc’s back.’ The Bodhisattva smiled and waved, turning the void into rippling blue water, from which emerged enormous water lilies, one after another, until they formed a path at the monk’s feet. Master Lotus stepped forward, overwhelmed by their powerful scent. He felt as though the flowers were carrying him up to the Bodhisattva.
‘You have had a difficult time,’ the Bodhisattva said gently. ‘The evil spirits were a match for you.’
‘Bodhisattva, I should not have tired so easily.’
The Bodhisattva laughed. ‘That was because the ignorant mortals could not tell good from evil.’
So everything was visible from up here, he thought. Why, then, did they send me there?
The Bodhisattva waved a plump, soft hand and said, ‘Do not try to guess at celestial intentions. You will understand when you live here.’
‘I see. I must gather enough karmic merits.’
On that point, the Bodhisattva was clear: ‘Indeed. A human must acquire sufficient experience to become a deity.’ Then the Bodhisattva added, ‘There is no need for you to describe what you heard and saw in Gling. We see everything clearly from here, not only that which has already happened but that which is to come.’
‘Then why do you not alleviate the suffering down there?’ Master Lotus asked.
A stern look appeared on the Bodhisattva’s face. ‘All we can do is give help and guidance.’
‘Then please allow me to return and fight.’
‘You have accomplished your mission, and your karmic merits now allow you to be freed from samsara, the wheel of reincarnation. You will become a deity and take your place in the heavenly court. From now on, you will use your magic to protect the black-haired common folk who live amid the snowcapped mountains. You will never again appear in person to fight demons.’
The Bodhisattva turned and passed through the celestial gate on a pink, auspicious cloud. Master Lotus waited for a long time, long enough to burn several sticks of incense, but the Bodhisattva did not reappear. He did not know whether he could now enter the heavenly court, so he grew anxious and restless. Had he been his impatient, pre-transformation self, he would have hopped back onto the roc and returned to the mountains where he had undergone his training as a monk.
The Storyteller The Shepherd’s Dream
Yes, restless and anxious.
Those drifting, floating clouds. Anxious and restless.
The shepherd had had the same dream many times. And it always ended at the moment when the most revered Bodhisattva entered the celestial gate. Even in the dream he felt restless, that it was not the man pacing outside the gate but he himself who was anxious because he wanted to know what would happen next.
In his dream he had looked deep into the celestial court and seen a sparkling jade staircase. The steps closest to him looked sturdy, those further away soft, but the end of the staircase did not disappear into the cloud. Instead, as though unable to bear its own weight, it tipped at the top . . . but he could see no further. Once, at the edge of a summer pasture, he had climbed a five-thousand-metre sacred mountain that wore a helmet of snow and ice. There, too, the mountain had seemed to tip into the clouds that roiled beneath its cliffs. Beyond lay another world, but what that world looked like he would never know, not in this lifetime.
He dreamed that the other world would crack open before him, like a cave – those words appeared in his head. Although he was an illiterate shepherd, in his dreams he had become wiser. Strange how such a literary phrase popped into his mind just when he was waiting anxiously to see what would happen next. He heard a roar, like torrents of water sluicing down the rocky surface of steep hills when frozen rivers melted on a summer day. The noise woke him. He opened his eyes to find that he had been sleeping on a hill sheltered from the wind by Siberian cypresses. The sheep were scattered across the grassy floodplain, cropping tender grass, flaring their nostrils to capture the scents on the breeze. When they saw him, they raised their sad faces and called out to him.
Baa.
Half dreaming, compassion rose inside him: he was reminded of the people who had been manipulated by the demons.
He gazed into the sky, and the roar he had heard in his dream burst forth again, like thousands of mounted riders galloping towards him. Above him a great crevasse had opened under the thick layer of snow on the slopes of the sacred mountain, between the ice and the steel-grey rock. With a muffled rumble, the snow slid slowly down until it reached the fractured ridge where it became an avalanche, ice powder rising into the air. Wind buffeted his face, the chill purity of the air driving out the last remnant of sleep. He had been expecting an
