The Book of Swords. Gardner Dozois
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Clang!
The tips of their swords collide, and a spark lights up the air like an exploding firework. The sword in the hand of the woman in black bends into a crescent, slowing her descent until she is standing inverted in the air, supported only by the tip of her adversary’s blade.
Both women punch out with their free hands, palms open.
Thump!
A crisp blow reverberates in the air. The woman in black lands against the mountain face, where she attaches herself by deftly wrapping a vine around her ankle. The woman in white completes her arced swing back to the rock, and, like a dragonfly dipping its tail into the still pond, pushes off again for another assault.
I watch, mesmerized, as the two swordswomen pursue, dodge, strike, feint, punch, kick, slash, glide, tumble, and stab across the webbing of vines over the face of the sheer cliff, thousands of feet above the roiling clouds below, defying both gravity and mortality. They are graceful as birds flitting across a swaying bamboo forest, quick as mantises leaping across a dew-dappled web, impossible as the immortals of legends whispered by hoarse-voiced bards in teahouses.
Also, I notice with relief that they both have thick, flowing, beautiful hair. Perhaps shaving is not required to be the bhikkhuni’s student.
“Come,” the bhikkhuni beckons, and I obediently make my way over to the small stone platform jutting into the air from the bend in the path. “I guess you really are hungry,” she observes, a hint of laughter in her voice. Embarrassed, I close my jaw, still hanging open from shock at seeing the sparring girls.
With the clouds far below our feet and the wind whipping around us, it feels like the world I’ve known all my life has fallen away.
“Here.” She points to a pile of bright pink peaches at the end of the platform, each about the size of my fist. “The hundred-year-old monkeys who live in the mountains gather these from deep in the clouds, where the peach trees absorb the essence of the heavens. After eating one of these, you won’t be hungry for a full ten days. If you become thirsty, you can drink the dew from the vines and the springwater in the cave that is our dormitory.”
The two sparring girls have climbed down from the cliff onto the platform behind us. They each take a peach.
“I will show you where you’ll sleep, Little Sister,” says the girl in white. “I’m Jinger. If you get scared from the howling wolves at night, you can crawl into my bed.”
“I’m sure you’ve never had anything as sweet as this peach,” says the girl in black. “I’m Konger. I’ve studied with Teacher the longest and know all the fruits of this mountain.”
“Have you had pagoda-tree flowers?” I ask.
“No,” she says. “Maybe someday you can show me.”
I bite into the peach. It is indescribably sweet and melts against my tongue as though it’s made of pure snow. Yet, as soon as I’ve swallowed a mouthful, my belly warms with the heat of its sustenance. I believe that the peach really will last me ten days. I’ll believe anything my teacher tells me.
“Why have you taken me?” I ask.
“Because you have a talent, Yinniang,” she says.
I suppose that is my name now. The Hidden Girl.
“But talents must be cultivated,” she continues. “Will you be a pearl buried in the mud of the endless East Sea, or will you shine so brightly as to awaken those who only doze through life and light up a mundane world?”
“Teach me to fly and fight like them,” I say, licking the sweet peach juice from my hands. I will become a great thief, I tell myself. I will steal my life back from you.
She nods thoughtfully and looks into the distance, where the setting sun has turned the clouds into a sea of golden splendor and crimson gore.
Six years later:
The wheels of the donkey cart grind to a stop.
Without warning, Teacher rips the blindfold away from my eyes and digs out the silk plugs in my ears. I struggle against the sudden bright sun and the sea of noise—the braying of donkeys; the whinnying of horses; the clanging of cymbals and the wailing of erhus from some folk-opera troupe; the thumping and thudding of goods being loaded and unloaded; the singing, shouting, haggling, laughing, arguing, pontificating that make up the symphony of a metropolis.
While I’m still recovering from my journey in the swaying darkness, Teacher has jumped down to the ground to leash the donkey to a roadside post. We’re in some provincial capital, that much I know—indeed, the smell of a hundred different varieties of fried dough and candied apples and horse manure and exotic perfume already told me as much even before the blindfold was off—but I can’t tell exactly where. I strain to catch snippets of conversation from the bustling city around me, but the topolect is unfamiliar.
The pedestrians passing by our cart bow to Teacher. “Amitabha,” they say.
Teacher holds up a hand in front of her chest and bows back. “Amitabha,” she says back.
I may be anywhere in the empire.
“We’ll have lunch, then you can rest up at the inn over there,” says Teacher.
“What about my task?” I ask. I’m nervous. This is the first time I’ve been away from the mountain since she’s taken me.
She looks at me with a complicated expression, halfway between pity and amusement. “So eager?”
I bite my bottom lip, not answering.
“You will choose your own method and time,” she says, her tone as placid as the cloudless sky. “I’ll be back on the third night. Good hunting.”
“Keep your eyes open and your limbs loose,” she said. “Remember everything I’ve taught you.”
Teacher had summoned two mist hawks from nearby peaks, each the size of a full-grown man. Iron blades extended from their talons, and steel glinted from their vicious curved beaks. They circled above me, alternately emerging from and disappearing into the cloud-mist, their screeches mournful and proud.
Jinger handed me a small dagger about five inches in length. It seemed utterly inadequate for the task. My hand shook as I wrapped my fingers around the handle.
“What can be seen is not all,” she said.
“Be aware of what is hidden,” Konger added.
“You will be fine,” Jinger said, squeezing my shoulder.
“The world is full of illusions cast by the unseen Truth,” Konger said. Then she leaned in to whisper in my ear, her breath warm against my cheek, “I still have a scar on the back of my neck from my time with the hawks.”
They backed off and faded into the mist, leaving me alone with the raptors and Teacher’s voice coming from the vines above me.
“Why do we kill?” I asked.
The hawks took turns swooping down, feinting and testing my defenses. I leapt out of the way reflexively, brandishing my dagger to ward them off.
“This is a time of chaos,” Teacher said. “The great lords of the land are filled with ambition. They take everything they can from the people they’re sworn to protect, shepherds who have turned into wolves preying on their flocks. They increase the taxes until all the walls in their palaces are gleaming with gold and silver; they take sons away from mothers until their armies swell like the current of the Yellow River; they plot and scheme and redraw lines on maps as though the country is nothing but a platter of sand, upon which the peasants creep and crawl like terrified ants.”
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