Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart

Author:Barry Hughart
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fantasy - General, Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy, China - History - Fiction, Fiction - Fantasy, Fiction, Fantasy, Science Fiction - General, China, Fantastic fiction, Historical fiction, General, History
ISBN: 9780345321381
Publisher: New York : Ballantine Books, 1985.
Published: 1985-04-12T04:00:00+00:00

17. A Miraculous Transformation

In a way we were quite lucky. The Duke of Ch’in was continuing his tax trip with the Key Rabbit — Lotus Cloud was to rejoin them in a week or so — and in his absence we received a very considerate death sentence from the provincial governor, who was understandably annoyed because we had delayed his entrance into Lotus Cloud’s bed.

“You may choose your own method for departing this earth!” he yelled.

Then we were marched up to the roof of the tallest tower and the door was bricked up. This left us the choice between slowly starving to death or jumping to the cobblestones one hundred feet below, and I sat down miserably and buried my head in my hands. How much longer could the children last? Two months? Three? The keen-eyed bonzes that the abbot had posted would stare in vain from the roof of the monastery, because Master Li and Number Ten Ox were not going to return with the rest of the Great Root of Power. I wept until I realized that some of the sounds were coming from below me, and with a startled sense of hope I saw that the soldiers were unsealing the door.

Hope faded quickly when I understood that they were merely opening the door in order to shove another condemned prisoner up upon the roof, and as they bricked it up again Master Li took note of a pair of little pig eyes, a bald and mottled skull, a sharp curving nose like a parrot’s beak, the loose flabby lips of a camel, and two drooping elephant ears from which sprouted thick tufts of coarse gray hair.

“Would you care to buy a goat?” he said with a polite bow.

To our astonishment Miser Shen ran to embrace us with cries of joy.

“What good fortune!” he cried. “I had feared that I would never have the opportunity of thanking my benefactors in person!”

“Benefactors?” I said.

“Thanking us?” said Master Li.

“For saving my life!” cried Miser Shen. “If it had not been for you, the Key Rabbit would not have determined the extent of my wealth, and if he had not determined the extent of my wealth he would not have invited me to tea, and if he had not invited me to tea I would still be the stingiest and most miserable miser in China. Lotus Cloud,” he said proudly, “made a new man of me.”

“Let me guess,” Li Kao said. “She bankrupted you in a week?”

Miser Shen drew himself up proudly.

“Great Buddha, no! Why, such was the extent of my wealth that it took the dear girl almost a month to reduce me to abject poverty. Of course I owe a good deal to luck,” he added modestly. “After Lotus Cloud ran through my countless chests of buried gold I was able to get very good prices for my eight businesses, my six houses, my carriage, my sedan chair, my horse, my three cows, my ten pigs, my twenty chickens,

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