casserole, a farm-style, one-dish meal of duck, mushrooms, diced pork, and dried oysters miraculously brought back to fresh size and texture. For good measure, clusters of tree fungus floated in the gravy.
Always, Orchid stood by, ready to refill his wine cup; this ceremonial touch gave him a feeling of magnificence. Master Wu, the teacher, was indeed understanding. It did take a while to become accustomed to his new life.
Courtyard walls blocked out the cries of street hawkers. He could not recall when he’d ever been more content with life and the world, except for missing Hsi-feng.
Ju-hai sighed. Yawn followed sigh. It became ever more fascinating to watch Orchid’s stately pacings from the table side to the kitchen annex for more wine, and finally, for tea of a flavor different from any that he’d ever tasted before. He’d been speculating, not so much as to what Orchid’s contributions to his welfare were to include, as to when she’d be getting around to that.
“Nice, really nice…kind of exciting, in her quiet way.”
A deeper sigh, another yawn…the Orchid query would keep until he set his books aside, tonight, but right now…
Ju-hai decided he’d lounge in the garden, loll around, and compose verses to capture the autumn spirit; but at the door opening into the court with its miniature lake, miniature bridge, and pavilion not large enough for three persons, he paused. He’d eaten too much…o mi to fu!…what a cook…what wine!
Before he was halfway to the bedroom he was sleepwalking from golden pleasance into a cozy blur of shimmering shadow and darkness, a confusion of times, places, and people…a borderland wherein dream and waking merged, each borrowing from the other, until finally he could not guess whether he was in both or in neither.
Eventually he became aware of certainty; someone, during one of his waves of more than half oblivion had slipped into bed with him—a shapely girl, none the less alluring because her warmth was filtered through the filmiest fabric imaginable.
That shao-hsing hsueh chiew—dark, syrupy, sweetish, with a mouth filling flavor…oddly enough, he knew that something had stimulated his imagination and he wondered at this, as if he stood outside himself, studying his moods and whimsies. Maybe he was becoming a poet… Master Wu would be pleased…mouth filling flavor of that dark wine…how ideas associated… Hsi-feng’s two outstanding attractions, dainty and… Speaking of Little Orchid—no, Little Phoenix—what would happen if she and Mei-yu and Orchid merged to become a one-woman composite… with a dash of Lan-yin essence—
In his stumbling drowsiness, Ju-hai had not drawn the bedcurtains; but moonlight reaching in, after contending with all the obstacles of the courtyard, cast a glamour which was more deceptive than revealing. The girl in the fragile garment ought to be either Hsi-feng or Mei-yu—and why not Orchid? The light was too tricky but he’d outwit that bit of lunar witchery.
He closed his eyes firmly. With the most subtle caress, a scarcely touching stroke, he traced her curves and paused at times to appraise the fastenings and the confusing loops.
Despite tightly closed eyes, he could see her exquisite body, a bit at a time… Careful now…mustn’t wake her; that would be discourteous. The further he progressed the more he became confused as to her identity—
“Going to school hasn’t done a thing for you,” she murmured. “If I’d worn harness, you’d have had me undressed in a flash. I’m not your housekeeper—”
“Mei-yu!”
Before his awareness could find voice, she gave him no further chance for word or gesture. “I’ve been going wild, day after day after day.” She sat up. “Let me get out of this thing.”
This she did, with a body twist and arm flash, whisking away the fragile garment, a wisp of mist swallowed by darkness.
Finesse ignored, the pillow book forgotten, for some while the lovers had no thought for Orchid, whose elegant body had pleased many a high official when he needed a traveling concubine during an inspection tour of a remote province.
Finally, Mei-yu sighed and went comfortably limp and relaxed. Like Ju-hai, she was ready for gossip, retrospect, and for words relating to their future.
“Lady Chang Wo’s light is shifting. Let’s hitch over and stay in the dark. You can imagine this is all-me; some time, maybe, if I can talk the Goddess into it, I’ll be all-me, in a body all my own! Then you’d know, really know—”
“Jade Lady, I’d not live through it.”
“Of course you would!”
“If I didn’t, I’d die happy.”
“I was desperate that night I appeared long enough to give you and Hsi-feng my blessing. I didn’t want to spoil your farewell night, though.” She sat up, twisted about, and caught him by his shoulders. “Lover, I know all the stories and things about what bitches women are when another woman is concerned—but really, I wouldn’t have borrowed her body. I was an idiot ever to start this escapade. I’m miserable whenever we’re not together, though I’m happy we’ve shared as much as we have. You’ve got to become an Immortal yourself, so I can make up for my lost thousand years.”
It was night in Ch’ang-an, three thousand feet above sea level, and the harvest moon was past her fullness.
“It’s getting chilly,” Ju-hai said.
Mei-yu groped till she found and drew covers about them. “It would be awfully bad karma if you and Orchid got pneumonia, which is something an ethereal Immortal can’t get—aiieeyah!” She shuddered. “What nasty karma we’d get!”
“We must have good karma,” Ju-hai objected. “Or I’d never have met you or Hsi-feng.”
She snuggled up and clung desperately tight. “Lover, you’ve never had me in a body that’s all-mine.” Mei-yu shuddered. “I’ve been worried about you.”
“I’ve had my worryings. Getting Hsi-feng the last minute, just to make it as sad as possible—just when I had to leave.”
Mei-yu sat up straight. “The sadder you are at parting, the more you should know that it or she was so awfully good for a while. If you just have to be sure you’ll never be sad, avoid everyone that’s fine and wonderful. You’ll have none of the pains the Lord Gautama the Buddha talked about.”
“You mean no attachments, no loving anyone, no wanting anything, no wanting anyone, then no grief?”
“That’s right,” Mei-yu replied. “That’s the Great Law of the Cosmos. Whatever you get, you pay for, in one coin or another. Once you accept the Great Law, know its rightness, you don’t suffer any more. It is written and it has been said, ‘He who knows how to suffer, that one suffers never again’ ”
It took Ju-hai moments to digest that one, and it ended by giving him spiritual indigestion. He said, bitterly, “That is simple, isn’t it?” He made a snarling sound, deep in his throat, as if a far-off tiger had bared its teeth. “I’ll accept the grief it takes to pay for the good I—we—have had.”
“Really mean that?” Mei-yu asked, very softly.
“Yes.”
“You’ve challenged the Great Law. All
