The Derelict Temple

Ning Caichen was a young scholar of an honest and easy temper, traveling south on foot with little more than a bundle and a great deal of indifference to hardship. He slept where he could, ate what he could buy, and asked no one for anything he had not earned.

The road that summer was dry and long, and the villages along it had been half emptied by a season of bad harvest. Toward evening of a burning day he came in sight of an old temple set back from the road among broken tombs, and he made for it gratefully.

The temple was Jin Yang, or what had once been Jin Yang. Its gates hung loose on their hinges; its hall was roofless in one bay; the great statue of the Buddha leaned a little to one side as though listening. Weeds grew through the stones of the courtyard, and the tablets of the dead lay tumbled like fallen leaves.

But it had a roof, and walls enough, and Ning meant to sleep under it. He pushed through the gate and set down his bundle in the lee of the hall, and was already spreading his mat when he noticed another man sitting in the shadow of the corridor.

The man was a traveler like himself, or so he seemed at first. He wore a plain robe and carried a long sword across his knees, and he did not rise when Ning entered. He was middle-aged, with a hard, weathered face and eyes that did not miss much.

Ning greeted him politely. The man returned the greeting with a nod and little else. He gave his name as Yan, and said he was a wayfarer who preferred his own company. Ning, who preferred his own company too, settled in across the courtyard and asked no more questions.

The sun went down behind the broken tombs, and the air cooled. Ning lit a small fire of broken kindling and made a bowl of thin gruel. Across the courtyard, Yan sat without moving, polishing his sword blade with a cloth, the firelight moving across his face.

Ning had the uneasy feeling that the whole temple was watching them. The broken statues in the hall seemed to turn their blind eyes toward the court. The wind moved through the weeds, and the sound was like a great many people breathing at once.

He told himself he was tired, and that a long road tells strange tales to a tired man. He wrapped himself in his cloak and lay down, meaning to sleep before the fire died. But he had not closed his eyes for long when he heard, from the inner court, the soft sound of a woman singing to herself.

The song was low and old, a tune Ning did not know, and it came closer rather than farther. He lay very still and listened, and felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. He told himself it was some peasant girl out late, gathering herbs in the graveyard. He told himself this until the song stopped, and he heard the soft sound of sandals on the stone.

He opened his eyes. A young woman was standing at the edge of his fire, so close that her cloak hung in the light. She was beautiful beyond any beauty Ning had ever seen, and she looked at him with a pity so deep that it made his heart ache. He did not move.

She did not speak. She only stood there, and the fire did not seem to warm her, and the light did not seem to make her shadow. At last she turned and went back the way she had come, and Ning lay awake the rest of the night, his heart knocking, and did not understand why she had looked at him as though he were already dead.

When the dawn came grey over the broken tombs, Yan was already gone from his place, and the sword-mark in the dust was the only sign he had ever been there. Ning sat alone among the weeds and tried to make sense of the night, and could not.