The Heavenly Sword & the Dragon Sabre – Chapter 16 – Part 5

When the girl gave that faint smile, her eyes brimming with such crafty mischief, Zhang Wuji felt a start. Those eyes were so like his mother's. When his mother deceived that old monk at Shaolin Monastery before she died, her gaze had held the very same expression. The memory surged upon him until his eyes blurred, and tears spilled down his cheeks.

The girl spat. “I wasn’t going to steal your flatbread anyway, so there’s no need to cry. You’re just a useless fool.”

Zhang Wuji replied, “I never wanted your flatbread. I was merely remembering something of my own.”

The girl had already turned away, but at his words she glanced back over her shoulder. “What something? What business does a great lump like you have with memories?”

Zhang Wuji sighed. “I was thinking of my mother. My mother who is dead.”

The girl chuckled. “Your mother used to feed you flatbread all the time, did she?”

“She did. But the reason I thought of her just now was because the way you laughed was very much like her.”

The girl’s face darkened. “You wretch! Am I so old? Old enough to be your mother?” She snatched up a stick of firewood from the ground and swatted him twice across the body. It would have been easy enough for Zhang Wuji to seize the branch from her, but he reflected that she did not know how beautiful his mother had been in her youth, and had taken her to be some homely creature of his own age. Small wonder she was offended. He let her have her two strokes, then said, “My mother was very handsome when she died.”

The girl’s expression set like stone. “Are you making fun of the way I look? You want me to pull your legs off?” She bent down as though to seize one of his legs.

Zhang Wuji was alarmed. The broken bones in his leg had only just begun to knit. If she pulled at them, all his healing would be undone. His hand closed about a ball of snow. The instant her fingers so much as touched his leg, he would strike her meixin¹ acupoint and send her sprawling.

Fortunately the girl was only frightening him. When she saw how his face had changed, she said, “Look at you, all scared! You asked for it, making fun of me.”

Zhang Wuji said, “If I were making fun of you on purpose, may these legs of mine break three more times once they’ve healed, and never set right, so that I limp for the rest of my days.”

The girl gave a titter. “Well, I suppose that’s that.” She sat down beside him. “If your mother was such a beauty, why compare me to her? Do I look handsome too?”

Zhang Wuji was taken aback. “I couldn’t say why exactly. You just remind me of her, somehow. You aren’t as pretty as my mother, but I like looking at you all the same.”

The girl crooked her middle finger and tapped him twice, lightly, on the brow. “Good boy, then. Call me Mother.”

No sooner were the words out than she realised how they sounded. She clapped a hand over her mouth and turned her head away, but could not keep from laughing. Watching her in that mood, Zhang Wuji recalled with sudden clarity those times on Ice Fire Island when his mother teased his father in exactly this fashion. In an instant the ugly girl seemed graceful and winsome, her bearing full of a quiet charm. She did not seem ugly at all. He stared at her, quite lost.

The girl turned back and found him gazing at her in a daze. “Why do you like looking at me? Tell me.”

After a long pause Zhang Wuji shook his head. “I can’t say. I only know that when I look at you, I feel at ease. At peace. You would only be kind to me. You wouldn’t bully me or harm me.”

The girl laughed. “Ha! You’ve got it all wrong. I like harming people more than anything.” All at once she raised the firewood stick in her hand and knocked it twice against his broken leg, then sprang to her feet and ran. Both blows fell swift and true upon the fracture. Taken wholly unawares, Zhang Wuji cried out in pain. The girl’s bright laughter drifted back. She turned and pulled a face at him.

Zhang Wuji watched her grow smaller in the distance. The pain in his broken leg was unbearable. So women are all alike, he thought. The beautiful ones harm you, and the ugly ones make you suffer just the same.

That night he dreamed of the girl several times, and several times of his mother, until at last he could not tell which was which. He could not make out in the dream whether the face before him was beautiful or ugly. He saw only those clear, bright eyes, at once mischievous and beguiling, fixed upon him. He dreamed of his childhood. His mother used to tease him then as well, deliberately stretching out a foot to trip him, and when he fell and cried, she would gather him in her arms and kiss him over and over. There, there, my good boy. Don’t cry. Mother loves you.

He woke with a start. Questions he had never before considered crowded into his mind. Why had his mother taken such pleasure in making others suffer? She had blinded his adoptive father. She had maimed Yu Daiyan, his Third Shibo, leaving him crippled for life. She had murdered the entire family of the Longmen Armed Escort in Lin’an. Was his mother good, or was she evil? He stared up at the stars winking in the sky above him. After a long while he sighed. “Good or evil, she was my mother.” He thought, If only she were still alive. How wonderful that would be.

Then he thought of the village girl. He could not understand why she had struck his broken leg for no reason at all. He had done nothing to offend her. Why had she wanted to make him cry out in pain? Did she truly delight in harming others? He wanted her to come back, and yet he feared what new trick she might play upon him. His hand found the half-eaten flatbread at his side, and he remembered the way the village girl had spoken: If your mother was such a beauty, why compare me to her? Do I look handsome too? He murmured to himself, “You are handsome. I love looking at you.”

He lay there two days, thinking such disjointed thoughts. The village girl did not return, and he concluded she had left him for good. But on the afternoon of the third day she appeared again, coming round the slope with her bamboo basket on her arm. “You ugly brute,” she called. “You haven’t starved to death yet?”

Zhang Wuji smiled. “Most of me has starved. A little bit is still alive.”

The girl sat down beside him with her usual grin, then suddenly kicked him on the broken leg. “Is this bit alive or dead?”

Zhang Wuji yelled. “Ow! How can you be so cruel?”

“What cruel? What have you ever done for me?”

Zhang Wuji was taken aback. “You hurt me terribly the day before yesterday, but I didn’t hate you for it. These past two days, I’ve been thinking about you constantly.”

A flush crept across the girl’s face. She was about to flare up, but checked herself. “Who wants a great ugly brute like you thinking about me? You’re not thinking anything nice, I’m sure. You’ve been sitting there calling me ugly and wicked in your heart.”

“You aren’t ugly,” Zhang Wuji said. “But why must you make people suffer before you’re happy?”

The girl laughed. “If other people weren’t suffering, how would anyone know I was happy?”

She saw that Zhang Wuji did not agree, and noticed too that he was still holding the half-eaten flatbread. Three days had passed and he had not finished it. “You’ve kept that flatbread all this time. Doesn’t it taste bad by now?”

“It was a flatbread you gave me. I couldn’t bear to eat it up.” Three days ago he would have said the words in teasing half-earnestness. Now he spoke in plain sincerity.

The girl knew he was not pretending. A little colour came into her cheeks. “I’ve brought you fresh flatbread.” She drew food from her basket. Besides the bread there was a roast chicken and a roast lamb leg.

Zhang Wuji was overjoyed. For more than five years in the emerald valley he had eaten nothing but unseasoned fish. The chickens he roasted over a fire had been raw and half-cooked. Since breaking his leg he had lived on raw eagle flesh, bloody and tough and rank. This chicken was fragrant and golden, still too hot to hold, and when he bit into it the flavour was beyond anything he had tasted in years.

The girl watched him eat with relish. She sat hugging her knees, smiling. “Ugly brute, you eat with such enjoyment. It’s rather amusing to watch. I seem to feel a little differently about you now. I can make myself happy without having to harm you.”

Zhang Wuji said, “When others are happy and you are happy too, that is real happiness.”

The girl smiled coldly. “Let me tell you this much. While I’m in a good mood, I won’t harm you. But the day I’m in a bad mood, I may well put you in a state where you can neither die nor live. And then don’t come blaming me.”

Zhang Wuji shook his head. “I grew up among bad people. The more they harmed me, the tougher I got.”

The girl smiled coldly. “Don’t speak too soon. We shall see.”

Zhang Wuji said, “When my leg is healed I shall go far away, and then however much you want to torment me or harm me, you won’t be able to find me.”

“Then I’ll break your legs first, so that you can never leave me.”

Her voice was so cold that Zhang Wuji shivered. He believed she meant every word. This was no idle threat.

The girl stared at him for a long while. Then she sighed, and her face changed. “As if you were worth it! You ugly brute, you think I’d bother breaking your wretched legs for me?” She leapt to her feet, snatched the half-eaten chicken and the lamb shank and the flatbread, and flung them far away. Then she turned and spat at his face.

Zhang Wuji stared at her. She was not angry, nor was she scorning him. Her face was drained of colour, twisted with a grief she could not hide. He wanted to comfort her, but no fitting words came.

The village girl saw the look on his face and stopped short. “You ugly brute, what are you thinking?”

“Miss,” Zhang Wuji said gently, “why are you so sad? Will you tell me?”

Hearing the tenderness in his voice, the girl could not keep up her defences. She sank down beside him, took her head in her hands, and began to weep.

Footnotes

1. 眉心穴 – méixīn xué. The acupoint at the centre of the brow, between the eyebrows. A strike here causes instant unconsciousness. ↩