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Ang-nuo
by Corinna
Summary: "Angel and a buncha monks in the middle of nowhere: there's a
party."
Author Notes: Thanks to beta extraordinaire The Green Chick, who
practically deserves a co-author credit. Thanks also to the helpful people
of the Angel Fanfic Workshop. All of the Lao-Tse comes from Stephen
Mitchell's beautiful translation of the Dao De Jing.
Spoilers: through "Darla"
Warnings: het, violence
Disclaimer: Anyone in here you recognize, I have no rights to and didn't
create.
I
The first night of the new moon, a stranger came to the monastery. He was
guai lo, a white devil, tall even by their reckoning, and he looked
haggard and scared.
"Fetch Brother Xiao," the abbot ordered. Xiao had been raised in Beijing,
and spoke some of the guai lo's languages. The novices who had clustered
by the gate ran back towards the temple, their dark robes flapping behind
them. The guai lo waited out in the road, shivering into the blanket
wrapped around his shoulders.
Xiao came out to examine the stranger: pale skin, dark circles under his
eyes, brown hair worn long in an old-fashioned style. Not the sort of man
he had known in his youth, but since the Fist of Righteous Harmony had
begun their revolt, all sorts of strange foreigners were fleeing Beijing.
"Ni shi yinguoren ma?" he asked, and when he got no response, he tried it
in translation. "You are English?"
The stranger's face lit up. "English, yes, I speak English." His accent
was strange to Xiao's ears.
"What do you want?"
"Sanctuary," he whispered.
"I do not know this word."
The stranger frowned. "Sanctuary? It is a safe place. Do you know `safe'?
I need cover."
"We have a guest house. You may stay there tonight." Xiao motioned to one
of the novices, who lifted the heavy bar.
"Thank you. Thank you," the stranger said, and he stumbled through the
gateway.
As he crossed the monastery's threshold, a deep and ululating wail came
up from the ground itself. The monks looked at each other in confusion and
fear, but the abbot raised his arms and chanted an incantation. There was
a noise like thunder, and the stranger was thrown to the other side of the
road as the gates slammed shut again.
"Xiang shi," said the abbot, and turned to go.
The monks were looking at the stranger and the abbot, whispering in each
other's ears: they couldn't have heard that right, could they? The
stranger had already scrambled to his feet and was hurrying back to the
gates. "Please," he said.
"Is this true?" Xiao asked. "You are xiang shi?"
"Xiang shi." The stranger seemed to know this much Chinese, at least.
"Vampire. Yes, yes I am. But --"
"Tell him to leave this place now," the abbot said, "or I will strike him
down."
"Our abbot is very strong in the Dao," Xiao warned the vampire. "If you
do not try to harm us, he will not destroy you."
"I'm... I'm not like the others. Please. I don't mean anyone any harm. I
just need a place to stay when the sun comes up. I don't... I won't hurt
anyone here. I won't." He said the last words with a fervency that made
Xiao notice yet again how sick he looked.
"Xiang shi feed on humans," shouted one of the novices at the back of the
crowd. "Send him away."
"What can you live on if not human blood?" Xiao asked the stranger, who
was now stealing glances at the sky, worrying over the coming dawn.
"Do you have rats? I can eat them. I can clear them out, earn my keep?
Please."
"How is it that you say you do not hunt us? Is it not in your nature?"
The stranger looked pained, and tried to explain. "I have been cursed
with a soul. I may be xiang shi, but I know right from wrong now."
Xiao looked into the stranger's red-rimmed eyes and decided to believe
him. "Wait." He ran after the abbot, who had headed back to the temple,
and relayed what he had heard.
Abbot Wu was intrigued. "He is xiang shi, but his higher soul has been
restored to him? This is unprecedented. If it is true." He thought for a
moment. "We cannot risk turning him away if it is. We will protect
ourselves, but he must come in." And the abbot returned to the gate, spoke
another incantation, and gestured for the vampire to come across the
threshold.
"Xie-xie nin," he said humbly, bowing to the abbot.
"You do speak a little Chinese, then," Abbot Wu said. "That will make
this easier." The vampire shook his head, trying to signal that he did not
understand, but the abbot just smiled and gestured again.
The monks moved away from the gate as the vampire entered, but followed a
few yards behind the tall foreigner and the abbot as they moved across the
broad stone courtyard, past the temple on the right and the larger living
quarters on the left, back to the monastery's gardens and the small stable
building. There, the abbot took a knife and a cup from the worktable and
cut a wound in the throat of one of the oxen. The beast bellowed as the
blood poured into the cup, but the abbot never stopped smiling. "Make sure
the wound heals correctly," he said to one of the monks in the crowd, and
the man ran to the beast, soothing it with words and pressing a hand to
the injury. The abbot brought the cup to his new guest and urged him with
his hands to drink. The vampire's face registered confusion, surprise, and
gratitude in rapid succession, and he drained the cup quickly and bowed
again. His hands trembled as he handed back the cup, but Xiao thought he
looked a bit less tired.
"Xiao, explain to him that he will stay in the cellars; he can take straw
from here to make a pallet if he likes," the abbot ordered. "I will take
him to a room and cast wards around it myself. Tomorrow, you will
translate for me again, and we will teach him more of our language. I want
to learn how he comes to be here, and how he could possibly be what he
says he is. There may be things that we are meant to learn from him."
"As you wish, Master," Xiao said as humbly as he could. He was torn
between astonishment at the abbot's decision and delight that he was to
assist him in this work. For all that Xiao believed in his vocation, there
were times when following the Way could be more deathly dull than
blessedly serene.
"And find out his name; it will just make the younger boys jumpy if we're
calling him by `xiang shi' all the time."
Xiao did as he was told, and before Abbot Wu took the creature to his
basement cell, he told the assembled monks that he had made the xiang shi
a proper Chinese name out of his strange foreign one: Ang-Nuo.
II
The second night of the new moon, Brother Xiao followed his abbot down
into the cellars of the monastery's living quarters, where dark rooms held
their stores. The abbot stopped at the only shut door, knocked twice, and
entered. Ang-Nuo rolled off his pallet and into a standing defensive
crouch in what seemed to Xiao no more than the blink of an eye; then,
realizing who his visitors were, he stood up straight and relaxed a bit.
Abbot Wu gestured to Xiao, who brought forward a cup of oxblood the abbot
had had drawn; Ang-Nuo bowed and drank it down in two quick gulps, his
dark brown hair falling down in front of his round eyes.
"Did you sleep well?" the abbot asked. Xiao translated.
"Yes. Thank you. And thank you for... for the blood, as well."
"The abbot says to say xie-xie, if you will; he would like you to learn
more Chinese so hecan speak with you directly."
Ang-Nuo looked startled. "Why would he want to do that?"
"He is interested in you," Xiao said simply. The abbot's interests were
wide-ranging for a man with a monastic vocation; he felt that it was
through a thorough understanding of the world that one could best rid
oneself of desire for worldly things. He loved to take the novices on long
walks through the countryside, teaching them about the equilibrium of
nature and how to spot a demon's tracks. "Abbot Wu does not think you
arrived here by accident."
"I didn't set out to find this place, I swear..."
"I believe you. But my abbot thinks that by finding what you were not
looking for, you may have found what you sought." The vampire looked
confused. "It will take some time for you to understand our beliefs.
Should you choose to learn. But the abbot has questions for you now,
should you wish to stay here through tomorrow's sunrise or longer."
"Stay? I could...?" Xiao nodded, and the vampire smiled, and nodded
exaggeratedly at Abbot Wu, to show he agreed. The abbot clapped his hands
together once and smiled back.
"The most important question, I think," said Xiao, "is if there is anyone
who might be looking for you. We might not survive an attack by a pack of
xiang shi if we are taken unawares."
A shadow passed over Ang-Nuo's face. "No one will be looking for me. I
left them all behind in Peking, and they'll not be coming after me now."
"Not even to kill you?"
"I'm dead to them already," he said flatly, and Xiao shivered. But when
he translated for his abbot, the older man just nodded, and asked another
question.
"You were in Beijing, then?" Xiao over-enunciated the proper
pronunciation of the name.
"Yes. That's where the rest of - we called ourselves a family," he said,
and laughed bitterly. "A family! A pack of wolves, more like."
"They also have higher souls, like you?"
"No. I'm the only one. That's why they wouldn't have me stay."
"Where were you going?"
"I - I just left. I had to leave Beijing." He stumbled a bit on the
unfamiliar pronunciation, but he'd caught the hint. "It's a difficult time
to travel, and I have very little money. I hid in a cart that I thought
would take me south towards Shanghai for two nights, and then I was found.
I have been on the road alone, finding shelter where I could, for four
days since."
"We are still a long way from Shanghai, Ang-Nuo."
"Well, yes." A smile twitched at the side of his mouth. "I had figured
that much out myself."
"How is it that you are the only one of your kind with a higher soul? We
are taught that it leaves the body at death."
"It does. Mine did."
"Then how--?"
The vampire sighed, and sat back down on his pallet. "It's a long story."
"Abbot Wu and I will stay here all night if need be. Please, begin at the
beginning."
And so he did.
Xiao had not lived a righteous life before he came to the monastery; the
teachings of the Dao had found him after the law had, when he met his
first teacher in a Beijing jail. He had stolen and worked at gambling
houses and sold opium to the guai lo. But he could not have imagined a
story like the one Ang-Nuo now told. He spoke slowly at first, as if the
words cost him great effort, and when he stopped, Xiao would prompt him by
providing the Chinese word for something he had said. Travel. Fight. Kill.
The abbot's expression never changed from one of sympathetic curiosity,
and Ang-Nuo seemed to derive some courage from that: the story came from
him more easily as it continued. Xiao was enthralled, imagining this
creature before him, so tired and sad, as he once was, as he strode across
foreign countries wreaking havoc, causing terror. And the woman he
described, the one who had turned him into a xiang shi, the one who had
been with him so often: the way he spoke of her made it clear he desired
her even as he despised her, and Xiao's mind was aflame with the image of
her, ghost-pale skin and lovely form and seductive laughter.
"...She told me that I needed to prove I could still be what I had been.
And I -- I couldn't. And she told me I disgusted her. So I took the child,
and I left. The rest you already know."
"Where is the child now?" Xiao asked.
"With the Methodists, in Beijing. I took him there. I saved him."
"There is no `saved' among the missionaries in Beijing," Wu said, "not
now. The child is most likely dead."
Ang-Nuo started as if he'd been slapped. "Oh, no. No. I didn't... I
suppose I should have known, but I..." He bowed his head and turned away.
Abbot Wu sat quietly for a long moment, regarding his guest with a
thoughtful expression. Finally, he spoke, and he gestured to Xiao to
translate for him.
"Had another man told me he had heard this story, I would think he had
been fooled by an especially crafty xiang shi looking for a meal. But I
see your behavior and I hear your voice, and I cannot believe you are
lying to me." He paused for a moment, watching Ang-Nuo intently, before he
continued. "You may stay till you regain your strength, and then we will
help you get to the train station in Jinan so you can continue south to
Shanghai. Or, if you want, you can stay on here as a student. Daoism
teaches that there are two opposing forces, yin and yang, which structure
the five elements of the universe. The true Way, the Dao, exists in the
balance between them." Wu's voice became gentle as he continued. "Your
soul is new to you, and you have not found your way yet. Perhaps we can
help you learn to find that balance."
"Thank you. I would welcome that," Ang-Nuo said. "I am honored by your
generosity."
"It does not come without conditions," the abbot warned. "First: though I
can never make you a monk of our order, as long as you are here you will
live as one, and obey my commands completely."
"That seems fair."
"Second: you will give me your solemn oath that you will never harm a
single person within these walls, and that as long as you are here, you
will never kill a human."
The vampire nodded solemnly and met the abbot's eyes. "You have my word."
"Excellent. Tomorrow, we will begin your lessons." Wu rose, and the other
two followed suit. "Is there anything you need before then?"
"No. I've been - it's good to be able to rest in safety."
"Good. Then, may I ask one favor of you?"
"Yes. Of course. What can I do?"
"Lean forward," said the abbot. Puzzled, Ang-Nuo leaned over until he was
almost eye-to-eye with the shorter man. Abbot Wu reached into the sleeve
of his hassock and pulled out a piece of parchment on which some
characters were scrawled in red, licked the back, and stuck it to
Ang-Nuo's forehead. Startled, the other man tried to pull away, only to
find himself frozen in place where he stood.
"What - what have you done?" he managed to sputter.
Abbot Wu pulled the parchment from the vampire's forehead. Released from
the charm,Ang-Nuo fell backwards onto his pallet again, and the abbot
laughed. "Thank you. I always wondered if that really worked."
III
Later that night, when he returned to his own bed, Brother Xiao dreamt of
rutting with Ang-Nuo's demon woman on a bed of corpses. He awoke from the
dream with his heart pounding, terrified and disgusted and aroused.
In the morning, after meditation, the abbot was a flurry of activity in
the courtyard, going from building to building, making things happen. Xiao
stayed in the temple until the dinner bell rang, breathing in the incense,
letting the disquiet from his dream fall away. Then after a meal of rice
and vegetables with his brothers, he joined the abbot once again in the
cellars.
"Xiao, can you ask them, do they not have a longer robe?" Ang-Nuo,
released from his magically warded room, was now seated on a barrel in the
cellar's wide hallway, the torches on the walls around him all lit for the
first time Xiao could remember. The abbot and two other monks were down
there with him.
Xiao had to laugh; the way he was sitting, the robe barely covered the
Westerner's knees. "You are too tall; I do not think there is enough
fabric in the entire monastery to make you a robe long enough."
Ang-Nuo started to protest, and then, thinking better of it, just
shrugged. "It's not like anyone else will see me like this, I suppose. But
between this robe and the hair, I'm starting to feel grateful I don't have
a reflection." His hand went up to his long brown hair, and he smoothed it
down pensively. "Darla always liked my hair worn loose. She said it made
me look... It..." His eyes turned glassy with remembrance.
"Well," Xiao said loudly, clapping his hands with a cheerfulness he did
not feel, "then it is good to leave that behind you, as you start a new
life here, is it not?" That brought Ang-Nuo out of his reverie; he dropped
his hands and nodded gratefully.
"I've done so - so much wrong. And you are all so good to me. I hope I
can... I hope I can be what you want me to be."
"No one here wants you to be anything other than who you are, Ang-Nuo."
Ang-Nuo didn't respond to that; he just gave Xiao a smile, small and
tight and entirely unconvinced. Brother Wei picked up his shears and began
to cut off the xiang shi's hair.
"...So we arrive at a paradox: to study the Dao is not to know it at all.
The more you talk of it, the less you understand."
"That sounds like the sort of thing Drusilla would say," Ang-Nuo replied,
and his smile, though small, was a real one.
The abbot looked at him skeptically, and quoted a passage from Lao-Tse.
"When a foolish man hears of the Dao, he laughs out loud." Xiao grimaced
an apology as he translated.
"I'm sorry. Please, tell him I didn't - I don't -- mean to be
disrespectful. I, uh, well, Dru was right, most of the time, if you
understood her."
Xiao remembered Drusilla from the previous night's stories. A seeress.
Ang-Nuo had made her a xiang shi as well, but not before he made her
insane. There was tenderness to his voice when he spoke of her that Xiao
preferred not to think of.
"To know the Dao, we study the teachings of the ancient masters. We learn
from their words. But we cannot know the Dao truly if we have not
experienced its truth within ourselves. And so we meditate." Abbot Wu
smiled and made a wide, sweeping gesture as he continued. "There are as
many ways to meditate as there are blades of grass on a hillside. Walking
meditations. Standing meditations. Sitting meditations. For the ancient
masters, all actions were a meditation, because everything they did, they
did through the Dao. Their paths were clear as light to them. The rest of
us - well, we have to practice. The brothers of this order share our
sitting meditation every morning from sunrise to midday; we work at tasks
on the land or in our buildings from the midday meal till dinner; the
evenings we spend in meditation or study. You can join the work in this
building in the afternoons, no?"
"Yes. I don't need to sleep all day; I just need to stay out of the sun."
"Good. Brother Wei here -" Wei nodded to him, and Ang-Nuo bowed his head
in response, "he teaches the novices. You will study with him as well
until he says he can teach you nothing more. Xiao will work with you to
help you learn more Chinese, and I look forward to being able to speak
with you directly."
"As do I, sir."
"Sir?" The only translation Xiao had been able to come up with was a
title for a nobleman. "That is not what you should call anyone here. You
may call me Wu Laoshi."
"That means Teacher Wu," Xiao added.
"Wu Lah-shurr," Ang-Nuo repeated back.
"He's going to need a lot of practice," Wei said.
"The guai lo always do," Xiao replied, and he was surprised at the
defensive sharpness in his own voice.
Abbot Wu shrugged. "Never mind; it will come to him in time. It is past
nightfall: let us all return to the temple together."
And so Xiao's days took on a new rhythm. His mornings remained the same:
meditating with his brothers in the temple, the centering peace he found
there now his day's one great luxury. His afternoons had once been spent
out in the monastery's gardens, tending to the vegetables, fruits, and
herbs grown for the monks' meals. Now they were spent in the monastery's
living quarters; his afternoons began with Wei and the novices,
translating for the strangest of Wei's students, and ended at a
calligrapher's desk, helping with the monks' laborious record-keeping and
listening for the sound of sandals running on stone that would tell him he
was once again needed for his English.
Ang-Nuo did not join the monks at their dinner; he returned to his room
in the cellars. Every second day the brothers who watched the animals
would bring him blood to drink. He would thank them and shut the door, and
return the empty cup to the stables later that night. He had told Abbot Wu
that feeding every other day would be more than enough for him, but Xiao
knew that the cooks called him the Demon Rat-killer.
After dinner, Xiao went to Ang-Nuo's cellar room and if the weather was
clear, they would sit out on the broad stone steps of the monastery's
living quarters, speaking in a mixture of English and Chinese that Xiao
reassured himself was slowly becoming more Chinese with every passing day.
Mostly they spoke of small things: the heat as spring turned to summer,
the antics of the young novices, a phrase from Lao-Tse that Ang-Nuo had
just learned. After a little while, Ang-Nuo would go to the temple to
meditate. Xiao went most nights as well, but as often as not, he came up
with some excuse to go back to the living quarters beforehand, just for a
moment, so he would not have to share his meditations with the xiang shi.
Human novices were twitchy and restless, the life forces within them not
yet in balance; Ang-Nuo was utterly still, and that was somehow even more
distracting.
One night near midsummer, Xiao chose not to return to the temple. His
bones ached from too much sedentary work, and he didn't think he could
concentrate in the still close heat of the temple. Instead, he found a
torchlit flat spot out on the courtyard, stripped to his undergarments,
and assumed the opening pose of his taiji-qian regime. The buzzing tension
in his head disappeared as he focused on each position in turn, grounding
himself in his body, honoring its connection to the forces that move the
universe as his muscles uncoiled and his breath deepened.
"What are you doing?"
Xiao dropped out of the pose and tried to let go of his annoyance. "Why
are you not inside?"
Ang-Nuo shrugged. "All this sitting, it's very hard for a man used to
action. I get... itchy. And I can't stop thinking --"
"It's hard for all beginners," Xiao interrupted. "You get used to it." He
remembered learning to sit in the noise and stench of the jail, how
unbearable it had felt to do nothing before it became natural.
"I know. That's what Wei told me too. But, when I couldn't sit any more,
I looked for you. And you hadn't come in, so - what was that you were
doing, before?"
"Taiji-qian. It's a sort of physical training that was created for Daoist
monks many centuries ago."
"I've never seen anyone here doing something like that before."
"It's usually practiced in the early hours of the morning."
"Oh." Ang-Nuo's face took on the shuttered, inward look Xiao already knew
well, but that quickly changed to confusion. "Then why you are doing it
now?"
"I had other things I needed to take care of this morning." Xiao's dreams
were sapping him of sleep, and a few more moments in bed had seemed more
inviting than following old Mingzhu through the movements in the dawn
cold.
"Oh. So you don't have to do it in daylight, really? If, uh, you
couldn't?"
Xiao sighed. There were times his charge reminded him of a small child.
"Fine. I'll teach you." Ang-Nuo grinned, a huge smile that spread across
his whole face, and Xiao couldn't help smiling back. "But before I do,
Ang-Nuo, let me explain: this is not just a way to stretch your muscles.
Taiji-qian trains you to move with focus and clarity, the mind and body
acting in harmony - it should be another form of the same doing not-doing
that makes you itchy in the temple."
"But if you can not-do without, you know, doing nothing..." Ang-Nuo
sighed. "I used to hunt almost every night, stalking the streets,
chasing... chasing people, I liked the chase." He closed his eyes against
the memory and shook his head. When he looked at Xiao again he spoke in a
firm voice. "I haven't even walked further than from the temple to the
main building and back again in weeks. I won't be what I was again, Xiao,
I won't. But I swear to you, if I don't get to move about I think I'll go
mad."
"Very well, then. Get ready." Ang-Nuo took off his robe and stood before
him in his long brown drawers. He was no longer the frail creature he had
been when he arrived: although he was still as pale as a ghost, his body
had become thick and muscular. "Stand as I stand; feet at shoulder width,
arms loose, spine straight. Look inside yourself, as you do when you sit
in the temple: find your center. Now plant your feet firmly on the ground.
Feel yourself connected to the spirit of the earth, to its energy. We
start all of our movements from the feet; you will want to use that
power."
That night, Xiao dreamt that he and Ang-Nuo were chasing their terrified
prey across dark Beijing streets. They cornered a couple, both young and
beautiful and wealthy, in a corner behind a tavern. Ang-Nuo ran possessive
hands up and down the woman's body, and Xiao laughed as her screams
blended into the drunken party going on inside. As he leaned in to consume
the young man in his own arms, Xiao woke with a start. He stood and went
to his window, hoping the night air would help blow the images out of his
head. In the wide courtyard, lit only by one torch, Ang-Nuo continued to
step through the movements of the basic form Xiao had taught him. His
white skin glowed in the firelight, and there was a feral grace to his
turns and bends. The scene was so dreamlike Xiao wondered for a moment if
he were still asleep. The story of Zhuang Zi's dream of the butterfly
floated back to him then, and his face twisted into an unamused smile. Am
I a monk dreaming he is a vampire, he wondered, or a vampire dreaming that
he is a monk?
IV
The first night of the next new moon, Brother Xiao found himself being
called to the abbot's table at dinner. He was surprised by this honor,
though he told himself later that he should not have been surprised at all
to learn that it was because the abbot wanted to discuss with him the
progress of his xiang shi.
"He is not my xiang shi, surely," Xiao protested in as calm a voice as he
could manage. "I have taken on the role of translator for him, true, but
that was at your request, Master."
"Indeed it was," said the abbot. "But I thought he had become your friend
as well?"
"I do not think that xiang shi have friends."
"Xiang shi do not study the Dao, either. But Brother Wei tells me this
one is doing quite well with it."
"Wei would know better than I do."
"But I wish to know for myself, Xiao. How are his studies of Chinese
coming along?"
Xiao considered this for a moment. "He continues to improve," he said at
last. "He needs my help less and less, and he is starting to be able to
have conversations with the other monks here on his own."
"Excellent news. Then he will converse with me tonight." Xiao must have
looked alarmed at this declaration because the abbot added, "You can join
us, of course, if you think it will be helpful."
Xiao did, and so he and the abbot went to the cellars together that
night. Ang-Nuo's eyes widened in surprise at the sight of Abbot Wu, and he
bowed. "Wu Laoshi. I am honored by your presence."
"Your Chinese has gotten much better, Ang-Nuo," said the abbot.
Ang-Nuo ducked his head at the compliment. "Nali, nali; Brother Xiao is
very patient with me."
"Patience is an important part of our practice."
"I am learning that, Wu Laoshi."
"This evening in the temple, we shall be patient together, Ang-Nuo."
"I am at your disposal, Wu Laoshi." Ang-Nuo bowed again, and gave one of
his small half-smiles.
In the temple, Abbot Wu lit candles at the altar and at the feet of an
old stone goddess, and then motioned for his newest acolyte to join him in
a far corner. Xiao could feel the eyes of the other monks on them as they
crossed the long wooden floor together. As they settled themselves onto
their seating mats, the abbot turned to Ang-Nuo and said, "You do not
breathe?"
"No. I... I take air in to speak, and to smell, but I don't need to."
"We usually have the novices start with breath meditations; they are a
good place to begin our practice."
"I found it hard to remember to breathe when I tried that, Wu Laoshi."
"Hmm. I see. What does Brother Wei have you do instead?"
"He told me to meditate on a word, or a concept, or a teaching."
Wu considered this, and nodded. "Good. What is your current meditation?"
Ang-Nuo looked uncomfortable to be asked the question, but after a long
moment he said, "Compassion."
Wu smiled, and nodded again. "An excellent choice. Let us begin."
Xiao settled on to his mat, his legs crossed in front of him and his
hands resting lightly on his lap. He had been mortified to hear the abbot
refer to breath meditation as a novice's technique; it was the method his
first master had taught him for centering himself every time he sat, and
he still used it. Not all of the abbot's teachings needed to apply to him
equally, he told himself; not all of them would. He closed his eyes and
breathed in.
He began by focusing on the movement of his breath into his chest and
down through his body. When his lungs were full he breathed out again,
concentrating on the sensation of release. Slowly, the room, the incense,
the stares of his brothers, everything began to fade as his attention
turned further inward. His breaths became deeper and more regular. He
envisioned the Dao itself filling his heart with each inhale, spreading
itself across his limbs with each breath out, spilling out through his
skin and --
"Is this how you meditate?"
Xiao's came back to outward consciousness with a start, astonished and
ashamed, to find that the abbot had been speaking to Ang-Nuo.
He shrank into himself under the abbot's examination. "I -- I..."
Wu shook his head and waved an arm dismissively. "This is not the posture
of a monk seeking the truth, Ang-Nuo. This is the posture of a warrior."
"I was a warrior," Ang-Nuo said sharply.
"And you wish to be one now?"
Ang-Nuo looked down at that, and said nothing.
"You are still fighting. Who is your enemy now?" Wu's voice had gotten
louder, and the monks sitting nearby had given up even the pretense of not
staring at the scene. Ang-Nuo did not respond, and the abbot repeated
himself more sharply. "Who is your enemy, Ang-Nuo?"
"I am."
Xiao heard a sharp intake of breath from one of the monks behind him, but
the abbot's expression softened at this response. "The demon. It calls to
you."
"Yes."
"And you fight it."
"Yes."
"Why?"
Ang-Nuo was startled by the question. "Why? Well, I... I don't want to
hurt anyone."
"And to do that, you hurt yourself?"
"I don't hurt myself - I just do what I have to do."
Wu looked hard at him, as though he were trying to solve a puzzle. "Is
Brother Wei so poor a teacher?"
"What?" Ang-Nuo looked up at this. "Wu Laoshi, no. He has helped me a
great deal."
"But we have failed you if you cannot see that fighting the demon makes
it stronger."
Ang-Nuo looked tired and skeptical. Wu placed a gentle hand on his
shoulder and quoted Lao-Tse again. "`If you want to become full, let
yourself be empty. If you want to be reborn, let yourself die.' To escape
the thing you fear, you must acknowledge it. When you meditate, your
thoughts and emotions are like the clouds in the sky - you see them, but
they are separate from you, and they pass by without touching you. When
you feel the xiang shi upon you as you meditate, then, let it come. Sit
and observe its presence. Let it come and then, in its turn, it will go.
If you are afraid of it, it will retain its power over you forever."
"But..."
"Let it come, Ang-Nuo. I am not afraid."
There was a noise like a parasol opening, and Ang-Nuo changed. Xiao was
transfixed. He had never seen a xiang shi's true face before except in
pictures in the monastery library, and those wood-carved images could
never capture the experience of seeing a face he had come to know well
shift into something else, something inhuman, with a protruding ridged
forehead and long sharp teeth. Off to Xiao's left, a monk scrambled to his
feet and ran out.
"Very good," said Abbot Wu. "Now, return to your meditation."
The xiang shi's bright yellow eyes turned to him in confusion.
"Go on," the abbot said. "You know what to do."
Ang-Nuo looked shocked, but he placed his claw-like hands back in his
lap, and slowly once again closed his eyes.
The abbot looked for the first time at the other monks who were still
watching the scene. "Do you think you will find enlightenment by watching
another walk the path?" he asked, and settled back on his own mat.
Xiao closed his eyes, but his heart was pounding and he found it more
difficult than usual to keep his concentration on his breath. After what
seemed an unbearably long time, he broke off the attempt and opened his
eyes again. Ang-Nuo still sat beside him, but he had shifted back to his
human form, and there was no sign in the calm of his expression that he
had ever been anything else. Xiao watched him there for a long time, and
his sleep that night was dreamless.
V
It was after that night, Brother Xiao would later realize, that things
began to change. He did not notice the changes at first, since they were
small ones: the monks who already avoided Ang-Nuo did so more assiduously,
while the ones who stared and whispered seemed even more transfixed by
him. Ang-Nuo himself was much the same: quiet and tentative, a ghostly
figure a head taller than even the tallest monk. But although his smile
grew no wider, it was more frequent, and he spoke less hesitantly when
Brother Wei asked his students a question. It was not long before Xiao was
able to stop attending classes as Ang-Nuo's translator, and to resume his
work in the monastery gardens in time to help with the early harvest, and
with preserving their crops for the winter ahead.
He still spoke with Ang-Nuo each evening after dinner: it had become as
much a ritual as anything, a breathing space in his day before the evening
meditations, and after all Ang-Nuo's Chinese was still far from perfect.
One night, Abbot Wu had even seen them on the broad steps of the
monastery's living quarters and joined their discussion. Before long, Wu's
answers to Ang-Nuo's questions about the writings of Zhuang Zi had drawn
other monks to listen in, and to ask further questions, and soon a large
discussion was underway. Xiao looked over to Ang-Nuo and saw that although
he had not moved from his spot at Wu's left, he was somehow at the edge of
the group. He was sitting very still, as was his way, and clearly working
to follow the conversation as it became more animated. Xiao caught his
eye, and Ang-Nuo smiled at him and raised his eyebrows, an expression of
complicitous amusement so unexpected that Xiao laughed out loud. Ang-Nuo's
face was blank again by the time Wu had finished chiding Xiao for his
disruption, but Xiao thought that, just for a second, he might have seen
Ang-Nuo smirk at him.
But it was another night, under a bright full moon, when everything
changed for good. Xiao and Ang-Nuo were again in their familiar place on
the steps: they had talked for longer than usual as Ang-Nuo tried to
describe a demon that did not exist in China, a wolf-man brought to life
by the moon's phases, when he held up a hand for silence. "I hear horses,"
he said. "A few of them, and no wagon."
Days could pass between the times a horse came down the road from Laiwu,
even in broad daylight, and they were almost always beasts of burden
carrying a merchant and his wares. Xiao wondered if Ang-Nuo might have
some sort of moon madness himself, but then he heard the sound too, a
faint echo in the dark. The two of them looked at each other for a moment
and then ran to the monastery gates to watch for the riders.
As the noise grew louder, Xiao realized that the horses were moving fast,
too fast even on a night so luminous. The hammer of hooves sounded like a
raceway and he wondered how the riders could find their way in the dark.
Then, as they came around the bend to the black iron gates, the horse
hooves pounding loud enough that a few other monks had come out of the
living quarters to see what was going on, he saw how they managed it. They
carried torches.
The first rider -- one of two torchbearers -- stopped at the gates and
wheeled around to face them as the other four joined him. All five were
long-haired and bearded and dirty, like peasants from the west, but they
wore armor breastplates and helmets no peasant would ever have.
"Greetings, brothers!" the first rider called out.
"Now isn't he a friendly one," Ang-Nuo muttered in English.
Xiao glanced back at the monastery buildings. More of the monks were
gathering at the doorways, but he could not tell if the abbot was among
them. "What do you want?"
"What do we want? We want as you do, honored brother - to be at one with
the Universe itself." The rider smiled, showing brown teeth behind his
long moustache. "Until that time, we'll be satisfied with your food and
your gold."
"We have no gold here, my friend." Xiao peered through the iron bars at
the horsemen. He could barely see them on the other side of the
torchlight. "But the abbot of this house is a powerful magician. Leave,
and you'll be safe."
"Leave?" The man laughed. "Monastery life must make men soft in the head
as well as the belly. Zhang, show our friend what we think of his
superstitions and magics."
The second torchbearer tipped his light to the rider furthest back in the
group. Something blazed in the darkness, then flew - an arrow with a tip
covered in burning cloth. It landed on the sloping wood roof of the
temple, which quickly began to smoke.
"So much for your magical protection."
"The abbot will --"
"If he doesn't want to see this entire place turned to ash, the abbot
will give us your harvest and your riches, and he'll thank us for it.
Zhang, again!" Another arrow landed close to the first, and now there were
flames, and smoke coming from inside the temple, and frantic shouting.
Xiao could hear the fire bell sounding behind them.
"Don't be a fool," he said, his heart pounding against his chest. "There
are forty of us to five of you, and if our buildings burn it is nothing to
us. But we will defend this place from evil to the death."
"To the death?" the man said, and laughed. "If you insist."
There was a loud noise, and Xiao was pulled down and over, behind the
wall at the right side of the gates. His left arm was warm and itchy.
"Guns," Ang-Nuo hissed. "Damn it! I should've seen them. Where are you
hit?"
"Hit? I --"
"You're bleeding, Xiao. I can smell it. It's your arm? Can you move it?"
Xiao nodded. "Good." Ang-Nuo's face changed. "Hold the wound tightly to
slow the blood. Don't worry. I'll take care of our visitors."
"But --"
He was already gone, jumping to the top of the tall stone wall around the
monastery in one inhumanly long movement. "I wouldn't try that gun on me,"
he called. "They just make me irritable." Another gunshot in reply, and
then he was over. Xiao crawled back towards the gates on his stomach,
trying to see what was happening.
Ang-Nuo had landed on the back of one of the bandit's horses. He had one
arm wrapped around the rider's neck, and he pulled him up, almost out of
the saddle; his head lowered and his hands went around the rider's neck,
and when he looked up again it was to throw the bandit to the ground,
where he fell with a thump and lay still. Two of the others were already
aiming their guns at Ang-Nuo: he flattened himself against the horse's
neck and galloped towards them.
The second torchbearer's horse startled at this, and Ang-Nuo grabbed the
torch from the struggling rider's hand and in one fluid motion threw it at
the rider farthest from the gates. The man screamed as his clothing caught
fire and his horse ran off with him, terrified. Xiao could smell the man's
burnt flesh and his stomach heaved.
The torchbearer tried to counter-attack, urging his horse against
Ang-Nuo's, but the animal balked. Ang-Nuo rode up beside the man and
snapped his neck. Sending that horse away with a kick, he turned to the
remaining two bandits, who faced him from opposite sides of the road.
"Miserable beast," the leader shouted, "you think I am afraid of you?"
"You should be," Ang-Nuo said, and he roared, a harsh animal sound Xiao
hadn't heard before. As Ang-Nuo chargedagain at his adversaries, the far
rider wheeled and ran. The group's leader was now the only one left.
"Follow your friend, and you get to live," Ang-Nuo called.
The bandit fired his pistol three times in response. Ang-Nuo's body
jerked as the bullets hit him, and he fell limply forward on his horse's
neck. The animal seemed to take this as a signal, and started walking
slowly forward towards the bandit, who laughed.
"Next time," he said, turning his horse to face the small crowd that had
gathered a few yards back from the gates, "I'll bring forty men." He
gestured at Ang-Nuo, now practically close enough for the bandit to touch
his horse's head. "And you won't have your beast-man to protect you."
"Not so fast," Ang-Nuo said, and he threw himself at the bandit, knocking
them both to the ground. The bandit's torch flew out of his hand and broke
against the gate. Xiao covered his head with his hands protectively, but
not before he saw Ang-Nuo, fangs bared, lowering his head to strike.
A moment later, Ang-Nuo stood, letting the man's body drop at his feet.
His face shifted back to human; there was a gash on his forehead and red
blood on his chin. He took the two horses still in the road by the reins,
gentling them, and walked them back towards the monastery; Xiao scrambled
to his feet and unlocked the gate for him. As he stepped into the
courtyard again, the ground wailed.
Abbot Wu stepped forward from the crowd. "Ang-Nuo," he said. "What have
you done?"
Ang-Nuo looked astonished. "I have saved us! Those men would have
destroyed this place, killed us all!"
The abbot reached up to him, his fingers gently brushing the wet spot on
Ang-Nuo's chin. "Does their evil excuse your own?"
Ang-Nuo's eyes dropped, and his expression grew pained. "I was... I only
wanted to help."
"No," said Abbot Wu sharply. "It was more than that. You took pleasure in
your actions. Do you know what Daoism teaches about violence? That it is
detestable! The honorable man will take up arms to protect himself if he
must, but always with restraint. Always! `How could he rejoice in victory,
and delight in the slaughter of men? He enters a battle gravely, with
sorrow and great compassion, as if he were attending a funeral.' Did you
have compassion for the men you killed here? Or did you rejoice in the
battle?"
"I only rejoiced in protecting you, Wu Laoshi."
"You must not call me that again. I have taught you nothing. I'm sorry I
led you to believe that I could."
Ang-Nuo opened his mouth as if to protest, but no sound came out. He took
a deep, hitching breath, and lowered his head. "I only meant... I am so
sorry."
The abbot just nodded. "Tomorrow at sundown, you will take one of these
horses and ride to Jinan. There is a Shanghai-bound train from the station
there every night: ride hard and you'll make it on time. You'll be warded
into the cellar until then. Please, go there now."
Ang-Nuo looked up again, stricken. "I... I mean, I --" He stopped,
composed himself, and straightened, squaring his shoulders. "Thank you,"
he said, and his voice was steady. The crowd parted for him as he passed.
"The fire is out?" Wu asked, looking towards the temple. Seeing that it
was, he continued, "Get some torches and get those bodies to the temple to
clean them up for proper burial. The last thing we need is for more xiang
shi to rise here."
The monks standing by the gate stayed in their places, looking dumbly at
one another, until Wei bellowed "Now!!" and they scattered. Abbot Wu
walked over to Xiao, who was still standing by the gate, clutching the top
of his left arm with his right hand.
"You're hurt?"
"I'll be fine. Master, --"
"Go see Peisen, have him make sure that the wound doesn't get infected."
"Master, you must not send Ang-Nuo away. Please."
"Please?"
"He saved my life."
"He took three others."
"But --"
"No, Xiao. He cannot stay here."
Xiao's arm throbbed, and his chest felt like a weight was being pressed
into it. "And me? I have taken lives too, Master. Will you put me on the
train in Jinan as well?"
The abbot looked shocked, but not at all surprised. "Xiao," he said
softly. "That is a terrible burden for you to have to bear. I am sorry for
it. But you have been one of our brotherhood for three years and you have
lived in peace, in the Dao, for all that time. Ang-Nuo has barely been
among us for three months and he has already broken the solemn vow he made
to me not to hurt humans."
"But he did it to help us. Can't you give him another chance?"
Wu smiled. "And you told me once that xiang shi do not have friends."
"Master, please --"
"I do not blame Ang-Nuo for what happened here tonight. I realized,
watching him attack those men - yes, Xiao, those evil men --" he added as
the younger man began to protest, "I realized that I had been arrogant to
think that I could make a monk out of a xiang shi. Even one with a higher
soul. It is like making a house pet of a scorpion. It may grow to love
you, but that does not mean it will not sting. To think you can change a
creature's nature, it is against everything I know about the Dao. I
blinded myself to this in my vanity, thinking I could teach him how to
overcome the demon. I thought I was a great enough teacher to do this. But
he cannot overcome what he is. Letting him stay would just be waiting for
the day when he realizes this too." Wu shook his head and quoted Lao-Tse
again. "`If you blame someone else, there is no end to the blame.
Therefore the Master fulfills his own obligations, and corrects his own
mistakes.' I do not blame Ang-Nuo for what he did, but I have to correct
the mistake I made with him. He must go."
Xiao was filled by a sudden, blinding rage against the abbot, with his
white hair and complacent smile and constant quotation. He spat back the
first lines of Lao-Tse he had learned by heart: "What is a good man but a
bad man's teacher? What is a bad man but a good man's job?"
"But Ang-Nuo is not a man. And I can do nothing more for him now." Abbot
Wu turned to look at the temple, where the monks were pulling water- and
smoke-damaged items out to the courtyard. "I have a monastery to take care
of."
VI
The sun was high in the sky when Brother Xiao went to the cellars the
next day. He knocked on the storeroom door and waited a moment before he
walked in.
Ang-Nuo was sitting in the far corner, against the outside wall of the
building. His knees were pulled up in front of him, and his arms were
wrapped around his chest. He was still wearing his brown monastic robe,
which Xiao could now see was stained and torn.
"Good morning," Xiao said softly.
"What do you want?" Ang-Nuo asked in English.
"I came to see you. You were injured last night --"
"I'm fine."
"Good. I brought you clothes. For tonight." Ang-Nuo looked directly at
him for the first time, and his face shifted from surprise to anger to
sadness before he looked away again. "It's your own clothes: they were
cleaned, and set aside. I suppose someone thought you might need them
someday. There's nothing else here that would have fit you, so..."
"Lucky me."
"Well, as I said, they're clean, and they're mended. You'd stand out more
in Chinese clothing anyhow."
Ang-Nuo snorted and muttered something to himself. Xiao put the pile of
clothing on the floor by the door, and patted it reassuringly. "It's there
for you when you're ready." No response, and Xiao didn't know what else to
say, or how to say it, in the face of this silence. Finally, he decided
he'd just have to speak. "I also have two letters I wrote for you. Don't
let the abbot see them when you leave." Ang-Nuo looked up as Xiao took two
envelopes out of his sleeve and added them to the pile.
"What is that?"
"The top one, that's for Shen Baojun. He runs a gang on the Shanghai
piers, and he's a cousin of mine. I worked for his brother for a while in
Beijing. The letter asks him to hire you. I tell him that you need work,
that you're stronger than three men, and you have the power to terrify
people, but that you won't kill for him. Don't let him tell you that you
have to."
"Your abbot thinks that I don't need to be told."
"My abbot doesn't know everything." Xiao tried to ignore the expression
on Ang-Nuo's face as he heard that. "Listen, Baojun will pay you well, and
you can use the money to buy passage on a boat to America, and maybe have
some left over, to help you start again somewhere new. If I had money of
my own --"
"I couldn't take it."
"I would insist." Ang-Nuo smiled at that, a ghost of his familiar
half-smiles. "The other letter is for when you get to America. My first
teacher lives there in a city called San Francisco. I'm told many of the
boats from China land there. The letter is for him."
"Your first teacher?"
"Yes. Wang Yan. He taught me the Dao when - well, when I didn't think I
had anything to learn from anyone. The letter tells him all about you, and
why you are leaving this place, and it asks him to help you if he can. He
was a taiji-qian master when he was younger. I think you would like him."
"That doesn't matter."
"I think he would - well, he never judged me, anyhow. And I gave him
reason to. If you want him to, I believe he would continue to teach you."
"Teach me?" Ang-Nuo was incredulous. "Teach me what, exactly?"
"Ang-Nuo..."
"No, really, Xiao, tell me what I've learned here. Besides a few words of
Chinese, of course." Ang-Nuo pulled himself to his feet and in a few steps
he was across the room, toe to toe with Xiao and staring him down. "What
is it that your Wang Laoshi could continue to teach me? Because I've
learned nothing here."
"That's not true." Xiao was surprised not to be intimidated. "I know
that's not true. I've watched our practice change you."
"You saw what you wanted to see."
"No," Xiao said. "No, I didn't."
"It wasn't enough, though, was it? Or the right kind of enough."
"It can only ever be enough for you yourself. It's your path, Ang-Nuo."
"My path?" Ang-Nuo snorted again. "It's not my path taking me to Jinan
tonight. Not my choice." He turned away, and Xiao ever so slightly
relaxed. "Would you like to know the most amusing part of this, Xiao? Last
night, when I jumped up on the monastery wall to fight those men? It was
perfect. I moved without even thinking. The entire fight, it was as though
my body knew what to do without my having to will it. As though there was
something greater than myself that I had tapped into. That was. . .
breathing through me. As though I had found the Way." He laughed softly
and shook his head. "I was protecting you, and I was the demon, and I was
at peace. I had clarity. I thought I was enlightened. And then --" He
swallowed hard. "So, tell me, Xiao. What did I learn?"
Xiao's voice lodged in his throat. If Ang-Nuo had been one of the
novices, a boy unsure of his choice and missing his home, or a hardened
criminal trying to accustom himself to a life of contemplating all the
things he'd spent years trying never to think about, Xiao might have known
what to say, might have even made him feel better. But there was nothing
he could say to this.
After a long silence, Ang-Nuo ran his hand over his scalp and laughed
again. "This is where you tell me that killing humans goes against the
Way, isn't it?"
"You know that already."
"I do. I just. . ." His voice trailed off, and they were quiet again.
Finally, Ang-Nuo said "You should go. You'll be missed."
"I can stay if you..."
"No. Thank you, Xiao. I'd rather not."
"All right." Xiao started to leave but then, for a moment, turned back.
"Tell Wang Laoshi for me that I'm well. And that I miss the sound of his
voice."
At sundown, a horse was brought to the gates, and Ang-Nuo was brought up
from the basement. The blue Western trousers and white shirt sat awkwardly
on him, and he shifted several times in his jacket. Xiao stood on the
porch of the living quarters and watched as one of the monks went over the
route to the Jinan train station one more time. Ang-Nuo nodded and mounted
the horse. He dug his heels into its flanks, and he was gone. Xiao hadn't
expected him to look back.
He stood and looked out past the gates, at the road to Jinan and Mount
Tai in the distance. The sky grew darker but he stood there till the other
monks began to return from their evening meditation, when he went
reluctantly back to his bed. That night, he dreamed again.
It was the first dream he recalled having in weeks, and it was more vivid
than any dream he could remember. In it, he saw himself walking out the
monastery gates with his rucksack, still wearing his monk's robes. He was
walking towards Jinan and the sun was warm on his face and scalp. At the
end of the dream, he sprouted large brown wings on his back and begun to
fly, upwards and up, until the entire valley was no larger than a postage
stamp below him. He'd woken up at that, breathless and awed. All day, even
as the funeral preparations in the temple and the abrupt silences of the
other monks as he walked by felt like weights, the memory of flying made
him feel dizzyingly light. Sitting in the temple, at the deepest center of
his practice, he thought he could feel his wings.
When he left the temple that night, he looked toward the gates again, out
towards the road. That was when he knew that this much of the dream was
true: he would leave the monastery. Not soon, but in time, and forever.
And not to follow Ang-Nuo to America, or to leave his vocation behind
either, but to teach the Dao where it was needed. To help where he was
needed. He felt light again as he watched his path change.
End Ang-Nuo by Corinna: adanvers@yahoo.com
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