The Jade Enchantress. E. Hoffmann Price
didn’t mean to tease you—it was a crazy impulse—I couldn’t help it, really, I couldn’t—I should have known you’d sense my wantings.”
“O mi to fu! What is—who are—what are you?”
“I don’t know what to tell you—” She came toward him, then checked herself; she opened and closed her hands, clutching air. “Aiieeyah! I’m crazy!”
Ju-hai outgrew his dismay and confusion when she wavered, on the verge of tears. “If you’re crazy, then what am I?”
She drew a deep breath. “I’m an Immortal—one of the servants of the Moon Goddess, Lady Chang Wo. She could not spare the time to see the Kwan Village Moon Festival last year, so she sent me to have a look and tell her all about it—and I got a sensing of you and how you love jade—I saw your work.”
Details bewildered Ju-hai, but a shade of sanity came to help.
“I met a man in a Taoist monastery—they said he was a hundred and eighty-one years old, but he looked about my age. When he sat on a cushion, it bulged from his weight. Everyone in the neighborhood knew he wasn’t a fraud—grandfathers remembered him.”
Mei-yu brightened. “Then you do understand enough to hear more. I’m not a Goddess like Lady Chang Wo, and I’m not solid like your tao-shih—there are different sorts of Immortals—from saints that still wear human bodies to the Pah Hsien, and Tien Hou, and Lady Hsi Wang Mu—well, I used to be a Buddhist nun.”
“So that’s why I shouldn’t kiss you. But your hair isn’t cut—your hood doesn’t hide it all. Why don’t you sit down?” He pointed to the bench. “You’ve let your hair grow.”
The cushion did not sink when she seated herself.
“Ju-hai, you’re precious! You’re fabulous! Keeping your wits about you that way! Of course the cushion doesn’t sink; I really have little weight; and in your world, I don’t have any.” She patted her hip. “Looks good, but simply not solid enough. None of me. Well, not yet.”
“But you changed my inked lines on the jade and you drew new lines.”
“You’re impossible! If I did have a solid body, you’d not love me to death, you’d question me out of existence! So I’ll tell you all about it. I was a nun and I did so much good work, as they call it, that the Emperor of Heaven made me an Immortal, and I went to work for Lady Chang Wo—jade is made of moonbeams, you know.”
“You make all the jade—”
“No, I race around wherever jade is found in the entire world and I see to it that the elemental spirits who turn moonbeams into jade do their work properly—and—and—” Mei-yu rose to her feet and laid a hand on his wrist. Her eyes were misty, glowing, a luminous, dark wonder. “I was a virgin when I became an Immortal; I’ve never had a lover—and you’re wondering just how—”
“With a Buddhist nun, o mi to fu! But with a Goddess—”
“Ju-hai, I’m not a nun, haven’t been for years, and I’ve never been a Goddess. I’m simply a woman, only not as solid as Lan-yin.”
“But I’m not an Immortal—do I have to—”
She swayed toward him. “We’re going to meet again; and next time, you won’t have to wonder how to become as frail as I am now.”
Mei-yu reteated to the court. He stood for moments before he could accept the fact that somewhere short of the shadows of a bamboo she had become entirely moon glamour enveloped by darkness.
Chapter III
As usual, Lan-yin and her husband, Chen Lao-yeh, were haggling some well-worn subject. That evening the topic was their son, Chen Yin-chu, recently conscripted because of trouble in Turkistan. The Chens were speculating on how lavish was the bribe which Old Man Kwan had offered the captain to make sure that neither Ju-hai nor Younger Brother, Shou-chi, would be taken into the army.
The brothers had been in the next higher foothills of the Tai Pai Shan, cutting firewood, as everyone knew. The debate centered on how it had happened that the Kwan sons were away just when the recruiting officer made his rounds.
Each villager, male or female, slave or free, was listed on the census rolls. Law required that on the door of every house there must be a list of the dwellers. The captain, after declaring that he’d pick up the missing on his way back and en route to Ch’ang-an, had not returned. There were many approved solutions which helped the military stave off madness because of the Bureaucracy. Any officer worthy of his rank would have sense enough to pay the jailer of the nearest city a reasonable sum, whereupon every prisoner, regardless of offense, would become a soldier. The jailer split the cumshaw with the magistrate. The officer was reimbursed for expenses in getting the recruits missing the first time around, and all balanced out.
Chen Lao-yeh had automatic responses which made it seem that he was listening to his wife, who was busy in an adjoining room. Although Master Chen, who was nudging his fortieth year, wore the dark blue jacket and knee length pants of the Shensi farmer, there was something about his easy, graceful posture, his long slender hands, and his thin, sensitive face which gave the overall impression that this man normally wore the robe and cap of scholar and for some unspecified reason was disguising himself. The few lines of his smooth face were about the eyes, and largely sun squint. His expression was benevolent, serene, and his attention, like his gaze, was far away from the little farmhouse with its rammed earth floor and whitewashed walls.
The Chens had done nicely; he and his late father had put undeveloped farmland into production, starting as had the Kwans, though three centuries later. And a good deal still depended on his temporarily soldiering son.
Lan-yin was busy. Between dipping a finger into the pot of water heating over the coals of the hearth, then dipping strings of cash from a more or less secret wall niche, slapping them on the table, and all the while declaring herself to her husband, the mistress of the house was fully occupied.
Now that the crypt was emptied, the strings of cash were heaped, and the water sufficiently hot, Lan-yin grabbed the pot and, without skipping a beat, headed for the adjoining room. There she outvoiced her splashings in the little tub until at last she paused in the tirade. His Honor, Chen, who was unaware that she had changed the subject several times, felt that it was time to say something.
“You’re going to be with one of the Kwan sons this evening?”
“If you’d been listening to what I was saying, you’d know that Ju-hai is going to Ch’ang-an to study for the examinations and the Old Man wants him to sleep with that little snip of a slave girl, that Hsi-feng, so he’ll get used to doing it with a lady—mind you, a lady slave girl!”
While she was laughing that one off, Chen prepared his retort. “And since when,” he asked with elaborate smoothness, “has Old Man Kwan begun telling you his plans? When he finally got you knocked up and you spewed out that son of yours, he had his fill of you.”
“Your Excellency, Master Chen, in the first place the Kwan sons are more fun than he ever was, and in the second place, his Number Two Concubine told me all about the plans for Ju-hai to go to the capital to study for the Imperial Civil Service.”
Every once in a while Chen won a round, so he pursued his opportunity. “And of course the concubine knew all about Hsi-feng? Mmmm… She is getting to be luscious and I bet Ju-hai is drooling. The change will do him good.”
“You’d never get as much as a look, much less a smell of that!” Lan-yin mocked. “And so you think I was waiting for concubine chatter? The other night Ju-hai woke up and still more than half asleep, he called me Hsi-feng; and then, when he was fully awake, he felt awkward and told me all about the girl and how he was going to persuade his father to send her to Ch’ang-an to keep house for him.”
Chen snorted. “Anyone persuading Old Man Kwan to do anything has his life’s work cut out for him.”
“Whether he can or can’t talk