Feeding the Feral Children Read online

  “Perhaps,” Chong Deming said thoughtfully, “it will please. Perhaps to a sorcerer it will be worth enough.”

  #

  For four days, Huang Fa traveled with the monk and led his mare, skirting the grasslands at the edge of the desert, chasing the wizard’s caravan. Here there had once been wild asses, giant wild bulls, and red deer in abundance, and cheetahs to hunt them. But over the past twenty years the rising number of caravans had driven many herds away, and the plague of anthrax had killed most other animals. Some said that the caravans themselves spread the disease. It was well known that one could catch it from handling the skins of animals that had died from the plague.

  Now, the red plains seemed barren, almost lifeless. In two days Huang Fa saw only a few wild ostriches and a couple of giant elephants that the emperor’s men sometimes harnessed and trained for war. Such beasts were difficult for the barbarians to hunt, he knew. The swift ostriches were a temptation, forever running just out of the bow’s range. The elephants, masters of the plains, were four times the weight of the smaller Indus elephants, and had rust-colored tusks that could grow to over twelve feet in length. The bull elephants sometimes became mad and attacked even caravans.

  For Huang to travel past such a herd in a caravan was a bold deed. To creep past them with only a monk at his side, pulling his mare on a rope, was terrifying. Yet to his surprise, the larger bulls only sniffed the air with their trunks and flapped their ears in agitation. They did not stomp the grass or throw hay in the air. They did not charge.

  Still, the young men kept a respectful distance, and traveled as long as they could. Such was Huang Fa’s urgency to find the caravan, to get home to Yan, that he did not want to camp until well after dark.

  The monk spoke little as they traveled. He plodded along, staring ahead evenly, whispering poems that he composed in his head.

  Huang Fa was bumbling along, eyes growing heavy, imagining what it would be like to take Yan into his arms at last when he dreamed of the feral children.

  There were dozens of them, circling a campfire in a large cavern. They were thin creatures with protruding bellies and skin clinging tightly over their ribs. Their bare backs had been tattooed with images of snake-headed lizards. Their gaunt faces were just flesh-colored bones, and their teeth had all been filed.

  There were children of all ages in the group, from toddlers to the ages of ten or eleven. They were practically naked, all bare flesh.

  Now, a couple of the nearest turned, peered at him hungrily, and jostled their neighbors. They too turned to search for him, but many of the children seemed unable to spot him, as if he were far away.

  Suddenly, in the midst of the bonfire, a sorcerer appeared, as if bursting up from the flames. He wore a mask of red jade, a demon’s face, and he wore a cloak made of tiger hide. He danced among the flames, hopping among the coals without apparent harm. He carried a huge rattle made from a giant cobra’s skull in his right hand, and held the dragon’s tooth in his left. He sang as he danced, his voice rising and falling in the quavering manner of one who grieves.

  The children around the fire chanted words that Huang Fa could not quite understand. They pounded their right fists into their left hands, and one by one it seemed that all of the children became more aware of him. They began turning and peering at him with greater eagerness. Huang Fa spotted saliva dripping down the chin of one starving girl toddler, drooling down from a mouth full of fangs.

  Suddenly the sorcerer snarled a curse, almost spitting his words, and hurled the dragon tooth through the darkness. Huang Fa jerked, as one sometimes will in his sleep, as he tried to dodge. The fang slapped Huang Fa in the chest.

  His eyes sprang open.

  He stood, heart pounding in fear at the terrible dream. It is just my guilt that haunts me, he reassured himself. Someday I will forget it.

  The sun cast immeasurable shadows. He glanced behind and saw it sailing over the edge of the world, hanging beneath some clouds like a red, staring eye.

  “Ai!” he whispered to the Taoist monk, still wrestling his fear. “I had a terrible dream.”

  “Tell me what you saw, and perhaps I can divine the meaning,” the monk suggested.

  It had been so vivid, Huang Fa could still feel where the dragon’s tooth had hit him. He reached down to touch the spot—and found the dragon’s tooth lodged in the hair of his sheepskin vest.

  The monk gaped at the tooth.

  Huang Fa peered all around the plains, to see if someone could have thrown it, but all that he could see was rippling fields of grass.

  That’s when he knew. The sorcerer had thrown the tooth at him—a distance of more than 300 li.

  “It does not take a divine scholar,” the monk said, “to know that sorcerer has rejected your apology.”

  #

  Darkness came, and with it came the howling of wolves and the cries of hunting cats in the desert. Huang Fa and the monk loped up a hill, and far in the distance, miles away, they spotted the bright-colored silk pavilions of the caravan. The pavilions, made in the peaked Arab style, had lamps and campfires lit within, and each glowed a different color like radiant gems in the desert in shades of ruby and tourmaline, diamond and sapphire. The pavilions beckoned, but Huang Fa’s legs felt like lead. “A march of a single night would bring us to the wizard’s caravan.”

  “I cannot go on,” the monk begged, panting. “The stars are strangely dark tonight.” He leaned over and grabbed his knees, trying to catch his breath.

  It was true. There was a cloudy haze across the heavens, obscuring the River of Stars. Huang Fa had a star chart, painted upon a silken map, that could help guide a man across the desert at night, but on a night like this it would be no use. “We should camp,” the monk suggested. “A man who races headlong in the night is sure to fall in a hole.”

  Huang Fa considered lighting a knot of grass and using it as a torch, but felt reluctant to do so. It might attract unwanted eyes. He glanced behind him, with an uncanny certainty that he was being watched.

  #

  In his dream that night the feral children stalked him.

  He dreamt first that the moon was out, as bright as a mirror of beaten silver, and by its light he saw a strange creature—grand and majestic. It was an elk, he thought, or something like an elk. Its hair was as pale as cotton and it stood taller than two men; its antlers had many tines and were so broad that a man could have lain between them. At first he thought that there were cobwebs between the tines, but then he realized that it was a thickening of the horn, unlike any that he had seen upon an elk before.

  The creature mesmerized him. Never had he seen such a regal animal, so full of power and strength.

  Then he heard a rustling behind, and realized that something was creeping toward him through deep grass. He whirled and glimpsed pale bodies, naked children sneaking on all fours, like wolves on the trail of a wounded ibex. He was not sure if they were after him or the majestic elk.

  In his dream, he knotted a clump of dry grass and struck a flint with his knife, igniting it. He raised his makeshift torch in the cold air, hoping that it would frighten the feral children away, but they only growled low in their throats, crawling ever closer. Their eyes glowed strangely in the night, the color of blood sapphires, and they were close enough so that he could see their teeth filed down to fangs and the glint of their green jade daggers in their hands.

  Some were nearly men in size, others mere toddlers.

  In that dream, the monk was not beside him, and Huang Fa called out in terror, “Where are you, my friend?”

  Lost in the distance, the monk called back, “I have chosen to take the Way. You should have, too.”

  #

  Dawn came with muddled results. Huang Fa awoke, with the monk shaking him insistently. “Something is wrong,” he whispered. Huang Fa sensed it before he even opened his eyes. The air felt stifled, dead, and for a moment he just lay in his blankets, imagining that dawn was hours off.

 
; “The sun is up,” the monk warned, “but it is a day unlike any I have ever seen. A storm comes.”

  Huang Fa squinted. The whole world had gone red, from heaven above to the earth beneath. On the horizon was a red cloud, a wall of filth, filling the air, rising incredibly high, taller than thunderheads. The sun could not pierce through it, and so it seemed more like night than morning. Indeed, the sun was less than a sooty smudge, and the grim light that filtered through was the color of a poor ruby.

  “My friend,” Huang Fa shouted, leaping to his feet, “the Yellow Wind is coming!”

  “Yellow Wind?” the monk asked.

  “Yes, a dust storm out of the Gobi! One blew over our village when I was but a child, but it will be worse here! Quick, grab our blankets. I will get the horse. We must find shelter!”

  The fine mare was tied to a small tree, peering east with her ears slanted forward, eyes dull with terror and fatigue. Her right knee was bent forward, as if her hoof was sore. She wheezed, and muscles in her shoulder spasmed. She lost her balance and stumbled a bit.

  Resting a palm on her snout, Huang Fa found that she was feverish. She did not respond to his touch. She did not lean in for affection or shy away nervously. It was as if he didn’t exist, as if he were a ghost.

  She coughed lightly, trying to clear phlegm from her lungs, and then just stood, wheezing.

  “Don’t touch her,” the monk warned. “She has anthrax. I have seen it before.”

  Huang Fa peered at the coming storm. He’d never heard of one so immense. It came like the night, a grim shade. The dust rose higher than the tallest cloud, blotting out the sun. The storm did not ride on a great gust of wind. Indeed, the wind felt sullen, still, almost dead. The storm only crept toward them.

  “Cover your nose,” Huang Fa said. “The dust will clog your throat. When it hits, don’t dare to stop moving. If you lie down, the dust might bury you.”

  The monk, a thin young man, looked terrified.

  “Can we run from it?” the monk asked. “It moves slowly.”

  “We cannot run faster than the storm,” Huang Fa said. “Even if we could, it would catch us when we tired. The only shelter is ahead of us—at the caravan.”

  The monk peered back down the trail, glanced at a mound of rocks not five hundred yards off. It might provide some shelter from the coming wind, but not much.

  “Let us hurry, then,” the monk urged.

  Huang Fa patted his horse, quickly untied her.

  “Leave her,” the monk whispered. “She will only slow us, and she does not have long to live. Besides, if we reach the caravan, she might sicken the other animals.”

  “I can’t leave her,” Huang Fa said. She was his future. The silver might be a dowry, but the mare was worth far more. “She might get better. Even anthrax does not always kill.”

  The monk shrugged, leaving the decision to him.

  Huang Fa pulled at the mare’s rope, but she would not follow. He wrapped an arm around her neck. “Come, Bojing,” he whispered, “please . . .”

  The mare stood, ears leaning forward. She knew what he wanted. She staggered a step, but then just stood.

  “It is a curse,” Huang Fa wailed, wringing his hands.

  The monk tried to calm him. “Sometimes a storm is just a storm,” he said. “Sometimes a sickness is just a sickness. I think, these things are beyond the powers of even a famed sorcerer like Battarsaikhan.”

  Huang Fa hung his head, thinking furiously. He remembered the dragon’s tooth. The sorcerer had thrown it hundreds of li.

  Huang Fa covered his head with a straw hat from his pack, wrapped a rag across his face, then strode toward the storm.

  “Try to remember where we saw the lights of the caravan last,” the monk suggested. “We should make straight for it.”

  Huang Fa gazed toward the horizon but could not be sure of the direction. He followed the monk. Grimly, the curtain of red dust rolled toward them until it swallowed them whole.

  #

  All through the morning, Huang Fa and the monk pushed through the dust storm. The gritty dust stung Huang Fa’s eyes, and he kept them narrowed to slits. Even then, his eyes soon streamed from tears.

  The dust filled his sinuses, until sludge ran from his nose, and when he tried to breathe from his mouth, mud clogged his throat and left him gasping. He’d never imagined such a hell.

  The dust was incredibly fine, and it coated everything, gritting up his skin, filling every orifice.

  It was all that he could do to keep plodding, placing one foot in front of another. Time and again, the monk would reach back and grab Huang Fa, who was trying to pull the mare. She grew more headstrong as her sickness worsened.

  The only thing that kept Huang Fa moving was the thought of Yan at the end of his trail.

  The tracks of the caravan would normally have been easy to follow, but dust was rapidly settling over everything, creating a red carpet that filled hoof prints. Dust infiltrated his lungs, so that they felt heavy, as if he carried stones in them.

  They had not gone far into the cloud when the mare simply stopped.

  “What’s wrong?” the monk called. Huang Fa looked but could not see the monk, until the fellow suddenly materialized out of the dust not ten feet ahead.

  “Bojing!” Huang Fa cried.

  The monk tugged at the rope and cursed, but it did no good. Bojing merely stood, coughing and wheezing. Huang Fa leaned his head against her chest, to listen to her lungs, and Bojing seemed to take that as a sign. She dropped to her front knees, and then lay down to die.

  Huang Fa did not want to leave her in such misery. He put his coat over her face, hoping that it would keep the dust from her lungs. Then he knelt beside her for several long minutes, just stroking her.

  “Leave her,” the monk begged. “Don’t touch her. The anthrax might spread to you!”

  “I can’t leave her,” Huang Fa shouted.

  He realized now that it was hopeless. He only wanted to comfort the precious beast as it died. “I’m sorry, my princess,” Huang Fa whispered again and again as he stroked her gritty hide.

  Between the dusty air and the anthrax, she died within an hour.

  When she was gone, Huang Fa removed her saddle packs, filled with what was left of his treasure, and stumbled on.

  He closed his eyes against the storm and let the monk guide him.

  The world seemed darker, and when Huang Fa looked up, he wondered if he had lost track of time, for it seemed that night was falling. Then he realized his mistake: he’d stood at the edge of the storm and marveled at how terrible it was, but standing upon the brink of it was nothing compared to what he saw now: the wind that had seemed gentle, subdued, was beginning to gust stronger, and as it did, the dust belted them in waves. The haze that had hidden the sun an hour earlier now thickened and threatened to blot it out entirely.

  Surely I am cursed, Huang Fa thought. I wanted so badly to save my mare. Now the sorcerer has ripped her from my grasp. Battarsaikhan is fierce indeed!

  So he staggered forward blindly, led by the monk, whose ability to negotiate through the storm felt nothing less than mystical. Huang Fa could not breathe, could not get air into his lungs for all the dust, and began to fear that despite his best efforts, he would suffocate in the storm.

  Coughing, his face hidden beneath his robes, at last in a perpetual gloom he dropped to his knees to crawl, holding on to the cuff of the monk’s robe. At last his hand bumped something that yielded, and realized that they had found a tent.

  The monk knelt and untied some fastenings, and they lunged into a pavilion where several merchants in their finest wares—in multicolored silks as bright as songbirds and butterflies--sat on cushions around a single golden lantern, drinking tea. Even in here the air was thick with dust. A courtly scholar in dark blue robes peered at Huang Fa knowingly and announced, “And here, good sirs, are the visitors that I promised: one man who is holy, and another who is damned.”

  The silk me
rchants gaped at Huang Fa and the monk in astonishment. “Incredible!” one of them cried. “In the midst of a killer storm!” another shouted. Two of the men actually clapped in delight at such a spectacle.

  #

  That night, as wind prowled outside the pavilion like a demon spirit and dust filtered through the air in a dense fog, Huang Fa peered through gritty eyes at the wizard, a eunuch with a face that was somehow regal despite the fact that he had no beard.

  “You should not have given Battarsaikhan the dragon’s tooth,” the wizard warned after he had heard Huang Fa’s tale. It had been hours since he’d entered the pavilion, but only now was he able to breathe well enough to plead for help. The day was dying, the sun descending into a bland orange haze, and the silk merchants lay about in a strange lethargy, weary of breathing, so that only the wizard, Huang Fa, and the monk were up. “If a sorcerer has something that you have touched and owned,” the wizard continued, “it can give him power over you.”

  “I only hoped to gain his forgiveness, Master Wong,” Huang Fa apologized.

  “There shall be none,” the wizard intoned. He peered down into his lap.

  “Is there nothing we can do?” the monk begged. “How will the sorcerer attack?”

  “I am an expert in divination,” Master Wong replied. “I am not an expert in all sorceries, but I have traveled the Earth, and I know something of these barbarians. He will send an animal spirit to possess Huang Fa, one that will fill him with animal desires and lead him to ruin.”

  “What kind of spirit?” the monk asked.

  The wizard shook his head. “I cannot be sure. A fox spirit would fill him with lust, a wolf with a thirst for blood. A boar will turn him into a glutton. An ape spirit would make him act like a fool, but we are far from the land of apes. It will be . . . an animal close to the sorcerer.”

  Master Wong clapped his hands and asked a young boy, his assistant, to bring his “special trunk.” The boy hurried to another pavilion, and returned moments later. Master Wong had Huang Fa lie down; he took a bottle of henna dye and a calligraphy brush and began to write spells of warding upon Huang Fa’s face. As he worked, he explained, “Animal spirits cannot take control of you unless you welcome them in. You can fight them. You must fight them. The spells that I am writing will help. The spirits will seek to enter through an orifice—your nostrils or mouth are the weakest points, and so I will surround them with spells.”