Girl Goes To Wudang (An Emily Kane Adventure Book 7) Page 21

  The old man said nothing, merely tracing the same form again, slowly and calmly, as if she weren’t even there. The perimeter was shallower this time, allowing him to attack from a different position, lunging low to strike at her knees – she blocked and prepared a counter-strike, and felt her arm go numb from the elbow down. He’d managed to sting her with a finger-jab to a pressure point she hadn’t noticed before, and she drew back to cover her flank. When the old man tried to kick at her belly, she blocked by kicking inside his strike, then flicked her foot up to his head, struggling to shake the tingling out of her arm the whole time.

  He ducked under her leg and jabbed at her face from below with a spear hand, and then another, and Emily’s blocks with her good arm, at first hard, grew softer and then stickier, until Wu Yutian found himself completely entangled once she regained sensation in the other arm. He had trapped himself: to pull back would make him vulnerable to an inside strike, and there was no way forward through her elbows and knees – this was the design and purpose of her style.

  The door to the back room creaked open and two faces peeked out with boyish curiosity. When she turned to focus on them, the door clicked shut again.

  “Ah, wing chun, I see, guniang. Now I understand.”

  Wu Yutian sneered as he spoke, as if he’d exposed a secret, then pulled one arm back and jabbed the flat of the other hand into her face. Of course, she knew how to respond, blocking on one side and flicking a fist at his face, holding it just short of his nose. He sneered again and let her feel his thumb against the artery throbbing in her neck. How had he managed that? She slapped it away and struck again from the other side, only to feel the same thumb jammed into the soft flesh under her chin just as her fist would have contacted his eye. Another combination, and a fourth and a fifth, all ended similarly, with a thumb or finger pressing a painful point and nullifying whatever opening she’d slipped a strike through. The old man’s resourcefulness was seemingly without limit, even under the increasing intensity of her onslaught.

  Could she really not strike at him without risking a devastating counter-attack? This had always been her secret, seizing the initiative from within her opponent’s attack. Something was different this time, and her mind raced to comprehend it. In her previous battles, she tended to be smaller and lighter, and her opponents also typically enjoyed a significant advantage in strength and speed. Wu Yutian, however, possessed none of these, though perhaps he was slightly taller, and his technique did not depend on overpowering her or being particularly quick. He moved with a sort of patient indifference, and as she thought about this, it occurred to her that he had no initiative she could take from him.

  One more spear hand for her to lean away from – blocking it would be easy, a subtle nudge to push it aside, and a counterstrike her block would create an opening for. But the sequence of movements flashed through her mind, like ripples in a pond, and she began to see how it would lead yet again to a thumb pressed against an artery, or a finger jabbed into some other sensitive spot. Don’t block and counter. It was so clear.

  Emily leaned away and his hand grazed the lobe of her ear, and as he pulled it back, she pivoted outside his arm and didn’t try to strike the side of his head or his exposed ribs. She merely seized the wrist and twisted it down, her thumb pressing the back of his hand to enforce compliance. A soft kick to the back of his knee brought him forward into a hard crouch, and his only remaining move was to tumble forward and reset himself against her once he’d pulled her down. But what he didn’t expect was that she’d tumble with him, maintaining control of the wrist and scissoring her legs over his head.

  Finally, she’d locked him down, this old Proteus, and according to the old myths, she’d now earned the right to ask him one question.

  “Thank you for the lesson, Wu Yutian,” she said, uncoiling her legs from around his neck. She reached down to help him to his feet, and brushed the clay dust from his clothes. The door in back creaked open again, and the old man shook his head. Once it had closed, he turned his attention back to her.

  “Shuai-jiao,” he said, thinking of a popular sport in Beijing. “Grappling, but not exactly. You seek resolution, not victory.”

  “Riben qinna,” she said. “Japanese grappling, heqidao, the way of harmonious spirit. In Riben-yu, we say aikido.”

  “Please don’t think me impertinent, guniang, but this style suits your spirit better than wing chun.”

  “Wu Yutian, will you teach me your style?”

  “There is nothing for you to learn from me.”

  “There never is.” Emily looked at the floor as she growled this lonely thought.

  “Let us walk, and I will tell you about Bagua-zhang… and, by the way, there are many more than sixty-four hands.” He laughed as he said this last bit, and held the street door open for her.

  “Should we wait for Wu Dao?”

  “No, there is plenty for my grandson to do helping get the oven ready.” He signaled to the bodyguards waiting outside that they were not needed, and pointed across Changchi Rd to the entrance to the Sacred Way, which served as the gateway to the valley of the Ming Dynasty Tombs. A paved road directed traffic around the narrow spit of this end of the park, though the tide of cars had ebbed a bit in the late afternoon. Ornate plantings were visible lining the path to a great stone archway in the near distance.

  Shadows had already begun to stretch across the main walkway, and Wu Yutian led her through a second, massive red gate, which bore the inscription, “All riders must dismount before passing.”

  “It was the Emperors’ way of enforcing respect, even after they were dead,” the old man said.

  A quarter mile further on brought them to a slightly smaller pavilion, in the center of which a massive tortoise supported a stone column resting on a stone scroll in the center of his shell. The Emperors must have meant to communicate some subtle message to their subjects. The support of the empire, the column, rested on a scroll – perhaps a symbol of the wisdom of the emperors, or at least the records kept by an army of bureaucrats – all of it carried by the reliably slowest of the animals, the epitome of inertia. As Emily contemplated the tortoise, she wondered if the old man had his own lesson for her to learn from the display, and it occurred to her that the head seemed more like that of a dragon, perhaps, than a turtle, though she was hardly an expert on amphibian anatomy.

  Most of the tourists had begun to filter out toward nearby shops and restaurants. Emily doubted many of them would be interested in nearly spherical, clay water jugs with a spiral decoration, and saw how little the old man cared about such things. She wanted to understand how he thought, if thinking was the right word… or how he focused his mind in his wu shu… but all he wanted to talk about was throwing pots.

  “Have you noticed how the inside and the outside of the clay are opposed to each other? My hands bring the pot into being through their opposition.”

  Perhaps he was speaking in a sort of allegory – she couldn’t exactly tell – something about how meditation works. “You are a mystic, Wu Yutian. One thing I have noticed is that you are unable to close the top of the pot.”

  “Yes, guniang. My thick fingers get in the way. Yours are slender. I wonder if you could manage it.”

  She tried to read the gleam in his eye as he said this. Perhaps he meant that achieving any genuine transcendence through meditation was impossible, despite what the masters of the southern martial arts believed, and which she had assiduously practiced throughout her youth. If the inside could never be completely severed from the outside, she would have to turn elsewhere for any sort of harmonious resolution to the restless energy in her heart Focused breathing and meditation would be useless, if there were no truth to be found in the depths of her heart. Most troubling of all, she was not certain this is what he meant.

  “You mock me, sir.”

  He paused to consider her face, and then began to speak in the tones usually reserved for children’s stories, or religious parables.
“There was a butcher’s apprentice who worked to perfect his craft. He studied anatomical diagrams and imitated his master’s technique, amassing wisdom about the animals he was instructed to butcher and the blades he used. But he was unable to satisfy himself about the precision of his cuts, and the more he practiced the worse they seemed to get.”

  “I’ve heard this story before, Wu Yutian. Eventually, the apprentice relents and aims his focus away from the blade, and his cuts improve.”

  “You are wise, guniang. Can you tell me where the apprentice directs his focus, if not to the blade and meat?”

  This question was harder to answer than interrupting the old man had been. Of course, it had occurred to her in one form or another over the years. She knew well the value of turning one’s focus away from a goal, of cultivating an unfocused mind, but for her it had always meant turning inward, pursuing her chi through the depths of her heart. Paradoxically, the inward turn had also made her sensitive to the chi of others, to her opponents, and she had turned this to her advantage in one battle after another.

  “Nowhere.” She offered this reply without quite understanding what it might mean, though no other answer was possible.

  “Yes, indeed, young lady. He does not meditate on the ‘meaning of the blade’, or examine his conscience. He cuts the meat without reflecting on it.”

  “… and your thick-fingered pots, what of them?”

  “I think you already know the answer.”

  “If I do, I don’t understand it. My wu shu is based on my chi, and I look for that inside, in my heart, and in my breath… and in the memory of my father. Where else can I find it, if not there?”

  “Bagua-zhang is based on the eight-sided circle and the eight fundamental forms of nature. We constantly move and avoid fixed forms, and reject the superficial social distinctions of everyday life. A battle is that element of human life which always involves breaching boundaries, and bagua-zhang teaches one to recognize sooner which boundaries are arbitrary and which must be observed.”

  “So I noticed. But don’t the Buddhists call the northern styles internal?”

  “Perhaps they do, but it would not make sense to say that of bagua-zhang, as you have seen. Internal and external represent merely arbitrary conceptions of life, and the Buddhists have never grasped this, but it is the essence of Daoism.”

  “There is so much I could learn from you about all of this, Wu Yutian.”

  The old man turned to look at her for a moment. By this time, they were standing halfway along an avenue flanked on each side by paired animal statues. A little further down, the animals gave way to images of warriors and scholars, or perhaps they were merely bureaucrats. A row of willow trees rippled in a passing breeze. “You are not a dragon, or a tiger, or a crane, or even a monkey, though I can see that you have been schooled in those styles.” He paused to consider her face again, this time tilting his head. “No, you are more like the snake. You prefer directness and subtlety, but you strike with coiled suddenness. If you had been sent to kill my grandson, there is little his bodyguards could do to prevent it.”

  “I… I can’t… I would never…”

  He reached for her hand and held it up between them. “I know, guniang, but these slender fingers have killed men before, haven’t they? The scars have healed, but the signs are still visible. Don’t worry. You don’t have to answer. I can see that my grandson is safe with you.”

  “Thank you for the vote of confidence. My mother will be relieved to hear it.”

  “On the other hand, my son thinks Daozi is not safe around you, and that you are an opportunist.”

  “Is that what you think, too?”

  “It is easy to see that your heart is not building a roof over this relationship. You would like to wear my grandson for a festival and then move on. I hope he feels the same way.”

  “My mother would not be as relieved to hear this judgment.”

  “My son was foolish to call off Daozi’s security people the other night. He hoped to reveal your untrustworthiness, but it seems to have had the opposite effect, and my grandson is more smitten than ever.” He stared at her for a long moment, fixing her eyes, searching for a clue or a confirmation. “I trust you will let him down easy.”

  The first cold breeze of the day rippled through the willows, and the sky seemed to darken by a shade. A shiver tingled Emily’s spine and shook her shoulders. This old man had read her so well, as if her heart were simply open to his inspection. She saw the truth of his surmises, even if it felt like a dim light shrouded in fog: she wasn’t ‘in love’ with Wu Dao. She was merely playing at being in love. The inevitable next question presented itself to her mind – not, how or when should she end this dalliance, but what, if anything, remained in her heart that might belong to Perry? She couldn’t see clearly enough to penetrate the fog surrounding this question.

  They walked in silence back toward the studio, and the air grew colder as the sky gradually dimmed. Passing through the smaller pavilion, Emily wondered about the strength of the tortoise’s shell. Perhaps he’d been transformed into a dragon, at least in spirit, by the weight of his burden. The scroll might soften the burden a bit, whether it represented the inherited wisdom of the Emperors or the intransigent bureaucracy they could hardly avoid creating. If this were true, one would need to cultivate an effective faith to continue to believe in the benevolence of dragons.

  Once they’d reached the end, standing just outside the stone archways they’d entered not an hour earlier, the streetlights began to flicker into a sleepy brightness all along Changchi Road, and the few passing cars had turned on their headlights. As if on cue, the dusky sky turned dark in response, and Emily turned to Wu Yutian.

  “Wait, how did your son know we would be attacked if he pulled the security people?”

  20

  Traveling with the Wa Army

  “How’s it look?” Danko asked. He sat on a bar stool in what appeared to be an abandoned restaurant – the front window, the main source of light in the room, had long since broken – as Connie and a young woman tended to the knife wound behind his shoulder. This little village outside of Tangyan Township had seen better days, at least since the government in Naypyidaw had decided to mobilize the battalions around Mandalay.

  “It’s not the worst thing back here.”

  “Even with the burn?” Danko made a doomed effort to turn around inside his shirt to get a peek.

  “All this wriggling isn’t gonna make it look any better.” Connie jabbed him with the needle.

  “Take it easy. I’m sorry I asked. Just try to make it presentable.”

  “I can do tight. If you’d wanted presentable, you shouldn’t have punched that doctor back in Kengtung in the nose.”

  “That son of a bitch shouldn’t have burned me.”

  “They should have gotten you drunker, if you want to know what I think.” Danko turned again to glance back and catch her eye. “Fine, I get it,” she growled. “More stitching, less talking… I’m just saying… it’s not like he had an operating room. We were standing in the back of an auto repair shop.”

  “A torch. He used a damn torch on me.”

  “Stopped the bleeding… probably sterilized the wound.” Connie paused to tie off the thread and snip off the excess. The girl squeezed some cream out of a tube directly onto the stitches and taped a piece of gauze over the entire area. “If you don’t get gangrene, you probably have him to thank for it. Now can we get moving?”

  The two of them towered over every other person in Tangyan, most of whom had taken the liberty of staring at Connie when they first arrived. At least that’s how it seemed. Perhaps they were only wondering if this amazon who had suddenly materialized in their midst could be a portent of victory in the latest battle with the Tatmadaw, the official name of the Myanmar armed forces. Things had heated up in the last few weeks, with as many as twenty battalions moving north into the Shan State, and two Mi-24 helicopter gunships had been spotted,
though they had yet to be used in any raids.

  “They’re vulnerable to Stingers,” Danko said.

  “Do the Shan actually have any Stingers?” Connie asked.

  “Yeah, but they can’t afford to fire them. This entire war is being conducted on the cheap, since neither side can afford to risk its big guns.”

  “So the troops just have to slug it out in the jungle? That could go on forever.”

  “Which is why the Shan have enlisted the assistance of the Wa. They’re outnumbered, but the mountains make it nearly impossible for the Tatmadaw to use its heavy weapons. They also have total air superiority, but it isn’t much use to them.”

  “Was that Hsu Qi’s doing, you know, getting the Wa involved? Because I thought you said they had allied with the junta against the Shan.”

  “Exactly, but it’s always a fluid situation up here, and the junta can be an unreliable ally. Part of the problem is that the other ethnic groups trust Tammy only so far, for tactical decisions and temporary alliances. But for everything else, the Wa and the Kachins would never work with the Shan unless she asked. She’s the one who got them to give up poppy production. Tammy could never have done that.”

  “She’s like the indispensable person in Shan State.”

  “Which puts a huge target on her back. If the Tatmadaw ever captured her or…”

  “I get the picture.” Connie rubbed his shoulders, and his breathing slowed. “Are we sticking with the Wa, or going our own way from here?”

  “I think we have to follow them a little longer, at least as far as Man Kat. The quickest way to Kutkai is to take route 445 to Naphai and then head north through Lashio. But we don’t know if route 3 has been compromised. At Man Kat, we’ll have to decide whether to leave the highway and take these scooters through the mountain villages, from Mong Mai to Hseni.”

  “Commander Wei will see you now,” a young man in a nearly complete military uniform said. “Come this way.”