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THE STORY OF SU NU

Chapter 1

Solo Rite

Honourable Elder Sister, I have rewarded the bandy-legged oaf who brings you this with more than gold, of which he carries enough to comfort our honourable parents so be sure to get all of it. I will have his manhood if he cheats you. Tell him. Have you missed me? Had you noticed me gone? Such relief you must have felt when I disappeared with Master Lu Yan and his Dancing Bear. No more Su Nu, no more little sister to make sheep’s eyes at your suitors. I hardly knew my power of enchantment then and never set out to steal them. You found others, surely? Have you held any? Or does your sharp tongue wilt their Jade Stalk? And me, what of me, I don’t hear you ask. Well, few find me plain, although that is my nomme d’amour at Court: the Plain Lady, a name I took so I would think of you whenever I heard it called. Which is often: the Golden Lotus is watered well and I have grown used to breakfast in bed, even if not the same every morning. Are you surprised that I, who would not even lift my hem behind a bush on a forest picnic, now have the ear, and more, of the Emperor? But I do not write to brag or belittle: what need? Three summers ago the Master took me to his hermit cave and initiated me into the Solo Rite, the same I saw through your screen, the same, but different. You were noisier and did it lying down. Then he went, leaving me a promise of wetter times ahead and instructions to follow the Tao of my destiny. I have completed my tasks. I wish to find him again and test his promise. Has he visited the village again, to pluck another virgin? If you help me find him I will look after you well, Elder Sister. Send word with Ah Li and I will come home. Meanwhile, see if my story sends you behind the screen to fiddle your lute strings.

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Loins aching and lips atingle from that Night of First Love, mind ablaze with what I discovered later, I set out from the valley of the cave. The previous day he guided me by hills and open meadows, through forest and down valley, along a stream and behind a waterfall. Once through the slippery entrance he felt around for materials to kindle fire, blew red embers to heat my body, opening me to his whispered stories of the Golden Lotus, the Jade Stalk, Bamboo Grove and Strumming Lute. I had heard these stories five summers before, listening with the innocence of a child, after the Fang Shi picked me to honour our ancestor, the goddess Hsuan Nu. Father boasted I was chosen for my lineage and for my birth, when Yin met Yang on the breath of midnight between Earth Monkey and Rooster, in the hour of Rat, on the tenth day of Rain Waters under the sign of Rabbit: making me, he declared, a perfect match for the son of the Son of Heaven, heir to the Dragon Throne. Amid words too big for a child to understand I acquiesced, to honour my family. Mother said I was special anyway, when you taunted me about my strange coppery hair and full lips. Had a gweilo passed by at Harvest Moon in the Year of the Wooden Horse? Ha Ha. The jet-black eyes and little nose reflected in the stillness of our pond were definitely Nu, as were my broad forehead, and slim hips now forming a more girlish shape.

His hands moulded to that shape as we lay on sheepskins watching the fire pink our cheeks. I thought him a handsome man with his short black triple-forked beard and wild hair bound in the red band of a trance-healer, a Master of the Formula. Their kind had no lineage and roamed alone, falling in fits and healing the sick. Mediating with Spirit, they called it and everyone was in awe of them, with their shadowed eyes and secret powers. They could make people sleep and walk at the same time, stand on hot stones and feel no pain. Masters of magic and fighting, they would tarry in the forests where villagers brought food and gifts to barter for healing. We never saw more than one in any season but rumours ran of gatherings and dark practices under the black moon, circles of fire and the calling of beasts. My Master told me that after their penultimate initiation they each must find a mate to bring into the Circle for the highest degree, the Double-Master of Yin and Yang. He told me too of the

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days when the Fang Shi flourished, of the teachings of the Lady, then of persecution by those who taught celibacy in defiance of the Goddess. “Now we hide and wear the headband far from the cities. Now we practice without drums, rattles, robes or other articles of our craft. Now you cannot tell a sage by his clothes. We are called the Hidden Masters but our influence has waned. Now the time is come again to penetrate the inner chamber.” His soft voice aroused me, and the warmth of the fire my body. He laid a hand on my belly and my heart hammered. “Our rites are sacred,” he said, “and secret because they give power. You will know the power of Yin. To use it you will learn from many teachers…” I whispered, “I want only you to teach me, Master…” He stopped me. “Give up comfort of the known. To awaken you must seek the hard.” His hand covered my breast and the nipple rose to his palm, hot through the silk. “I will teach you the first step. Find others to for Clouds and Rain, Three Treasures and Sacred Geometry, the Five Flavours and many more. Free yourself, through exhaustion of desire and claim your seat in the Circle.” He went on talking, lightly tapping fingers on my chest to make the points, palm resting on my skin. On the cusp of womanhood, burning with curiosity, I heard the stories unfold anew. Much of what he said I found hard to understand and some hard to believe but did I care? I was lying in his cave, on sheepskins beside a fire, held by the man held in awe by my family and the whole village; and his hand was in my blouse. “Stories hide codes, codes conceal practices. Codes without practice are empty, Su Nu,” he said, flames dancing in his eyes. “What use is knowing the five flavours, without blending them to make the five pleasures? Only the adept sees through the veil.” The Master opened his pouch. My mouth watered at the sight of his fruit packed inside. He fed me in ritual fashion, inserting little by little. I savoured the taste, rolling the fruit around with my tongue. Soon his hands slid from my mouth to my face and then down to my shoulders. My heart pounded as he slipped down my arms to my hands. He guided me to fan my arousal then withdrew, openly watching. I was tentative, embarrassed yet fascinated by his pleasure.

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I already knew the pleasure of watching, of the tingling below when I peeked at you, Elder Sister, sometimes putting my own small hand into my undergarment to copy your movements, rubbing my little bubble of flesh down there but I could not comprehend the violent jerking that overcame you after a few minutes of your frantic finger-blur. Sometimes I was not alone. The first time Second Uncle made his presence felt behind me I almost jumped out of my skin. A sudden big hand clamped my breast and pulled me back against him. I felt him fumbling and then his other hand drew out his sword. That’s what he called it but I only ever saw the hilt gripped in his fist while he jerked in silence to the rhythm beyond the screen. His chest heaved and juddered and his other hand scrabbled to get inside my shirt. I know not what he sought there for I had little to offer in that department but nevertheless with he so excited I deemed it wise not to interfere. When you let out a shriek that sounded like but I knew could not be pain, Second Uncle’s sword hilt squirted Dragonseed, over my silk pantaloons. He would join me at the spy hole in those drowsy afternoons when honourable parents were out of the house and, on reflection, Elder Sister, knowing what I know now, I believe you may have been deliciously aware of our hidden presence. He told me to keep it ‘our little secret’ and I was happy to do so. He was only a few years older, growing up with the games we play but do not show. He knew better than to try to pluck my cherry, knowing it would be not only my blood that spilled as by then I had been dedicated to the Goddess and waited for my first moon to be taken by the Master, he who lay beside me now, breathing secrets in my ear.

“Understand pleasure,” he murmured, “as the key that opens the door to bliss in the house of ecstasy. Learning is easy, practice: perfection. Your childhood training prepared your body and mind. You are strong from copying the men and boys in their warrior ways. The women have taught you to honour the Earth and Cosmos.” From the full moon following my dedication I had been allowed to join the village women when they met Chang-O in the silver-tipped glade. They laughed when I danced, pigtail flying in her light, bright as day in the night. They sang songs of the earth our

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mother, of the ocean star, queen of heaven, of wind and thunder, lake and mountain, and were tolerant of my fidgeting during the long silent meditations on the Universe Beyond the Visible. The men were more serious and the boys, well, boys run about as if their hair were on fire; boys just have to win; boys get very upset when they lose, especially to a girl. I was good at the exercises and strong for my age, supple and fast. And the Fang Shi paid me special attention in the forest training sessions. I thought it was because I bested all the boys my own age and some of the older ones. Then he pitted me against a full-grown man who beat me with a blow. “There is always someone bigger, faster, better, or with stronger Qi, the inner power. Get your way or get away, with the power of Yin. Leave winning to men, let your weapon be to yield. Man fights in a line, woman wins in the circle. Be open to all ways free: there is always another.”

He sat me up on the sheepskin, fed the fire, then faced me. Our knees touched. He began the incantation of the solo rite, his voice echoing in the cave. “With your mind’s eye look in front of you and see the sun. Breathe in the sunlight; shine within. Shine within and now, look inwards and upwards to a point at the top of your head between skull and scalp. Between skull and scalp, pleasure’s peak. From throbbing base it will surge to the crown! Hold it there, until the bolt of inner lightning strikes, down through your belly, down to spark the fire that opens the Jade Gate.” I had memorised the formula and rehearsed it to familiarity, with discipline to wait for the proper initiation but no experience to understand it. “Self love is First Love,” said the Master, watching my slender fingers on the hooded bud glistening between my lips. “Self-intercourse, the union of Yin and Yang within one being, harmonises the heavenly cycles, creating the immortal foetus, transcending the greater cycle of life and death.” Warming the stove as I had been shown, my free hand roamed up through valley and into forest, lingering in open meadows and over twin hills tipped with rosebuds. His

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hands mirrored mine, adventuring a different landscape, harder, with flatter hills, thicker forest, mighty stalk. I let my eyes close an instant, to capture the vision. “Feel the connection of hand and heart, lust and passion, fire and water, heaven and earth, yang and yin, above and below.” I wanted to lie down, to feel silk on my flesh, to draw my long skirt slowly up my legs. Urgent instinct pulled me down. “Stay up, Su Nu,” he rasped for his breath, too, was coming fast through his nose, “Stay upright. Your spine links heaven and earth. It must be erect. The bones are stiff and the hard tip penetrates at the Jade Pillow. Stiffen your tongue back to the soft rear palate, first gate to the universe beyond the visible, draw heaven’s dew to the valleys of throat and below….” Discipline gained over gratification and I stayed upright, cross-legged, hem to my waist, blouse open and falling from my shoulders. Right hand down, strumming the lute- strings, left massaging my young breasts, I swayed back and forth. At first I felt only the intensity of pleasured rubbing and wondered if I was doing it right. Should I not have felt heaven’s pull by now, and the earth rise like a fountain? My head could not cope with the pictures and the formulas at the same time. I gave up trying and then, the moment I relaxed into my pleasure, that soft flare of liquid light rose up my back, over my shoulders and up my neck, to the top of my head then down, flowing like heaven’s dew over my tongue, cascading down through throat and heart, past my navel to the base of my being and then, up my back. I squeezed below and breathed in, up my spine, over my crown, a sweet circulation of the heavenly cycle, exhaling down from the third eye, to parting legs to crown and round again. My tongue massaged inside my cheeks as I imagined another’s on my inner lips, struggling with my fingers for pride of moistened place. My eyes rolled inward and upward to look out through my crown at the visible universe, the stars and planets, galaxies and constellations, and beyond to beyond belief.

Till now I had contained my arousal in the vessel of heaven. A vision of my beloved carried me over the peak. A glimpsed memory flashed with fantasy, real and

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imaginary, long of finger, light of tongue, he saw me, stroking my hands, feeling skin, touching flesh, remembering playful childhood. Watching his face, I massaged pleasure zones, rubbing feet and inner thighs, buttocks and sides, hips and ribs, fingering and lingering over skin and belly as the last garments fell away. Hands strayed back to arms and shoulders, neck, fingertips throat and face, soft, hard; tracing the outline of my ears to the voice of seduction, my nose scenting the fragrance of desire, eyes open to reflected passion, lips licking with love. Hear my beating heart, beloved. Mouth sucks fingers into the wet soft heat, bathing them in heaven’s dew. I took that dripping sweet caress down, smearing my breasts, and felt the valley open. Squeezing nipples alive with pleasure, descending, teasing, slow. Oh, the shine in my Master’s eyes as rocking becomes thrusting, quivering and lusting! In my power, the Golden Lotus blooms. He brought his Jade Stalk to stand hard at the entrance. My welcoming petals unfold glistening pearls. Fingers on shaft play the Flute of Fantasy. Warmth flows from base to belly, finger and thumb vibrating the stiff stalk tip. Other fingers delve into mystery as fist pumps ecstasy, dragon writhes in valley and tiger leaps to mountain. Arched like a rainbow I steam the sunlit sea, fire inside water, Yang inside Yin. My breath goes deep. Thrusting eases to rocking, rocking to swaying, and swaying to stillness. I release the bud, clench my fists and clamp my jaw, pull up tight inside. My whole body rigid, I squeeze the juice of ecstasy up to my crown to hold it there with my breath. Dizzy, I enter the void.

After eternity, I feel my clothes rumpled beneath me, the dew in my valley, my swollen lips. I explore myself with the lightest of touches, sensitive and warm. My bud is no longer greedy but I have a wish for something more, an ache to feel another body. But the Master has gone, the feast finished and the lamps expired, no shadow falling on the flame-lit walls. If he were here, would I ask for more? Would he touch me or just watch, perhaps lick my fingers, savouring taste and scent, testing his restraint?

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Alive with sensation, engorged with blood, soaked with sweat and dew, I am more than ready for my next step, Clouds and Rain, initiation and defloration. Then can I learn the Jade Egg and then, my beloved, will I surround you, to grip and squeeze the essence of your masterhood. Will you be as willing to share your power, my lord, as you are to share mine, I wonder?

In the silence of the cave I heard a slow drip. I lay and listened for a while, attention drifting from that sound to the uproar within. He had not gone inside me. He had observed the Solo Rite that, I would later learn, was more usually honoured in the violation. But now I was beginning to understand something of the power, that it could be directed and used for other than singular pleasure or, in union, creation of life. I still yearned for the full experience, now I had a taste. He said I would find others but where? He told me I should trust the Tao as it unfolded. Did that mean I should go with the flow of life? Drifting like a leaf might satisfy some, Elder Sister, but had not most of us in the family planted our feet in the padi rather than walked on its water? In the digging of irrigation ditches Honourable Father would point out the direction of water’s flow as always downward. I would rather fly than flow, fly circles round the moon and play among the stars. I grew up an active child and, woman or no, I would not become a passive adult. I had been chosen! If my path awaited me then I must find it, not wait for it to beat one to my door – or lack of, in this cave. I got back into my clothes, grasped a brand from the fire, blew it into life and went in search of the drip. Some few steps into what my flame now showed me was quite a cavernous space, I stumbled.

***

My bare toe struck a large stone disk, at least the length of my body across and a man’s hand span thick, with a hole in the centre as small as the breadth of my palm. It looked like a huge fallen coin, slightly concave surface carved in a curious pattern, the outline of a dragon in low relief surrounded by shallow characters dancing in my flickering torch light. I read, “East, where things begin.”

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I knew these words, the opening incantation of the Five Elements. ‘The season is springtime, the element Wood, the guardian Dragon.” My brain whirred like the wings of a humming-bird. There would be more, at least four. Unless this one was the mark of this cave, with others spread across the land as points of a star. He had told me to look for patterns to make sense of the codes and to find the doors. Was this my first problem to solve? Or opportunity to miss? My fire was fading. I whirled the brand around my head and it flared again. Similar stones were scattered seemingly at random, as if coins fallen from a hole in the pouch of a standing giant, but then I noticed the largest in the centre of a triangle of three. Mine was one of another five around the triangle. I cast my mind back to the journey. The Master led me blindfold until late afternoon when I felt the terrain underfoot steepen. I tripped on roots until he released me and I saw we were going down into a strange valley. The path twisted through bushes beside a stream. The sky was rosy above the waterfall: we were facing the sunset. So the cave entrance was to the east and the dragon stone nearest the entrance. I felt a little buzz of satisfaction at working this out for myself, not that anyone was there to help me, and I imagine it would have been obvious to some, Elder Sister. If the Dragon Stone is in the East, what would be next, over to my left in the outer circle of five? “The season is summer, the direction south, the element Fire and the Guardian…” what was the Guardian? I went to the stone in the south and saw the Red Pheasant, the Fire Bird. I had found a Portal, I knew it now, as sure as I knew I would return here, that this was to be the scene of my ultimate initiation. I felt my hair stand on end as I looked around, peopling the stones with sages in silken robes and shifted shapes, the Eight Immortals and Gods of the Left and Right, human Monsters and beast-headed angels, Turtle and Deer from the Kingdom of North, the place of Death and Conception, White Tiger prowling the West and Golden Phoenix soaring above. Nine stones, the number of completion. One in the centre, three around it: Jing, Ching and Shen, – the Three Treasures! I caught my breath. The outer stones made a five-pointed star for the Elements. The five and the three made the Eight Forces, with the One in the centre completing the nine.

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The centre stone was blank, a smooth disk except for the hole: Wu Wei, the void. Was this the altar for initiation of a Double-Master? Where I would return at eighteen, three years hence? Nine stones, each one for a union of Yin and Yang: eighteen. A drip from higher up, in darkness beyond the range of my flame, fell into the hole in the central altar, which amplified the sound. I held out my hand, caught a drop. There was no taste. He had told of water and fire. He had shown me the way. Now I must follow and now, alone, I must complete the Solo Rite to enter the universe beyond. I felt moved as if by magnetic force to lie on the altar. It was hard and cold. I took off my clothes and spread them on the stone, careful to leave the hole open. I dropped my brand and lay down. Tears from the roof wept between my legs. I spread my lips directly under the drip and shuddered at the first tiny cold splash. They came moments apart, those flying water-shocks. Curious to feel more, I manoeuvred so they struck the crease of my groin. Brrrr!. I wriggled to catch one in my navel, giggling as it dropped. Then the centre of my breastbone, sending sent a thrill through my heart. Each nipple was eager to feel the drip, tightening with ecstasy on impact. Arousal returned. Lifting my legs, holding them apart by the ankles, I spread my cheeks wide to the drip. Ah, so much pleasure! Trickling wet chilled every nerve end, soft private flesh puckering before releasing to welcome another icy teardrop, then tight again, open, shut, open. I pulled my knees hard against my breasts; buttocks open even more, jerking to the chilling water-kiss, again, again, again. Suddenly my body spasmed, arms flew out sideways and my legs parted. Spread- eagled star-shaped on the stone I felt the drips falling silently into the sparse hair below my belly, becoming a cool trickle turning into a stream that became a torrent flowing over my bud and between my lips, rushing in through the Jade Gate. The stone beneath me began to spin, faster and faster. In a crescendo of pleasure transforming to bliss, the gate to ecstasy opened, wide and welcoming. Then a mighty wind tore through and a crack of thunder split the valley. I saw myself, flying in space, spread among the stars, the Milky Way streaming from my loins. I came to the white mountain reflected in a crystal lake, ancient healing forest around the shore. The sun went down, fire under

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water, boiling the ocean to steam, dissolving my body to light until dawn made pale the night.

The valley stream swirled around my legs: water rushed between my thighs. I rode the stream of ecstasy until collapsing on a mossy bank as the first rays of sunlight filtered through the forest. I travelled in the clothes I wore, no bags, no possessions, no money and no weapons. This was the Task of Initiation, to trust the Tao. Then, at the start of my journey, I had no thought of failure or future, nor even of food or comfort. I believed him but I also believed what I wanted to believe: that when I was ready he would come for me and take me back and now here I am, waiting. The equinox approaches and he is not here to take me through that slit in the fabric of time.

Help me find him, Elder Sister. I beg you, let go your bitterness that you were not the one chosen for Hsuan Nu. I do indeed have pleasures, power and riches in the mundane world but every step is an ordeal in which I must prove myself again and again and I cannot go back for it is as if I swallowed a porcupine. Now I need you to help me find the Fang Shi for this is the final gate where I stand without key and cannot even knock. If you knew what I have had to do and be to reach this place you would not envy me. Only he can take me into the Circle. He is not like other men. He pushed me away like water in a bucket and, like water in the bucket I flow back to him. He told me it was for my freedom, my growth, my independence to honour the goddess and it is true, I am free, so free of desire I am immune to emotion, so grown I cannot rest, so independent that those who have my body want to cage my spirit. And I miss him. He is my half, like the coins we broke to fit together when next we meet. I need to claim my seat beside him; and nor can he enter the Circle alone and, indeed, nor can the Circle itself be complete without us both. When I left that pleasure dome of high degree to follow the Tao, I knew my destiny was to return with him. I have honoured my contract with heaven, made at my conception, and I have faced whatever awaited me, in whatever form, time or place, from Wanchai rooftop to gilded chamber. Now I must return, Elder Sister.

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Do not let it be known I am coming, for among those in the Forbidden City is one who loves me so much that I am watched whenever I leave the Palace, my assignments noted and reported. But I have paper and ink aplenty and gold to squeeze one messenger through the eunuchs guarding the corridors. And myself when I have word from you.

All day through forest glades I strolled at leisure, broad trails and narrow paths beneath the greenwood trees, here resting, there chewing berries for nourishment. Mind full of formulas, stones, codes and incantations, I hardly heard the twittering birds. At first my training kept me alert to distance and direction. The day was warm, the air still. Knowing the unaimed arrow never misses, yet I began to tire of aimlessness. Where were the challenges he had foretold? My every learning would be followed by a test, he said. Was boredom to be the first test of my Solo Rite? My mind wandered with me, through a bamboo grove. A small shrine on a post, a spirit-house such as found by each dwelling in our village to honour the ancestors, stood by the path. A few paces beyond, in a raised palm-thatched shelter, I saw a large brown jar, wooden ladle hanging on a peg in split bamboo. I dipped the ladle, tilted my head back and poured cool water over my face and into my mouth. We had a similar shelter on the way to my own village, for rest and refreshment for anyone passing. There must be habitation ahead. I began to feel nervous. I had never before entered a strange village on my own; in fact none of the villages around where I used to live were strange to me as I had relatives in all. Seven broad white steps led down to a garden with scattered statues. Two tall trimmed bushes with dark green shiny leaves marked the entrance. I went through and stopped, astonished at the transformation. To my right stretched a lake, blue lilies floating, as far as the eye could see. In front of me a lawn path flanked by beds of yellow chrysanthemums ran to a spiral pattern of raked pebbles round a rocky mound with trees of white blossoms. And, to the left of the entrance to this magical place, a forest of rhododendrons bloomed. The sun had some little way to go before sinking below the rockery and its rays were still warm on my face. Closing my eyes to capture an image of the mystic garden, I breathed in the fragrances, let the sounds of nature soothe my ears, felt the earth beneath

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my feet, reassuring myself of reality, even if this were but an illusion created by he who had gone before. A sudden shadow snapped me alert. A huge bear loomed, blocking the way. Fear sped my heart and breath. Was this my fate, to be taken by the Legendary Yu who sundered the land and fathered the shaman race? Or was I to go to the Lord of the North before my time? Would my spirit returning after seven days find only mangled bones and shredded silk? No! I would not allow it to end, so near the beginning. Fate is what happens, Destiny my response. And my Destiny was the path of the goddess. Loins thrilling with fear I confronted the snarling beast, stared up at bloodshot eyes and dripping mouth, smelling its fetid breath. I felt my newfound Yin power rise. I ripped away my clothing. The Bear seems to shrink a little. I challenge its stare and flaunt my nakedness. My hands stroke my throat. I poke my breasts out. My nipples rise, the lotus opens, moistens and grows. I am nothing but petals and fragrance as I shift shape and expand. The Bear retreats, fading. Momentarily, I lose concentration. The Bear looms large again, fangs bared, paws slashing the air, flanks heaving, roaring to shake the earth on which I tremble. As in love, so in war. Spreading open my legs for the solo rite, my hand goes down to my hair. I am wet with fear and passion. I push out my hips, bring fingers to my mouth, register the new taste in the back of my brain, outstretch my dripping hand, rubbing myself with the other. The Bear looks longingly at me. His tongue hangs out. What will he smell, what will he taste, the fear or the passion? Which way will he turn? Will he seize and lick me? Or impale me on his red dog-like root in a barbarian squat? Will sharp claws burst my budding breasts? Or is he the One of my Two? Arousal sends fear to flight as I dance and rub before him, hair flying across my face. I open my mouth wide and put out my tongue like a public woman. I turn and spread my buttocks, look up between my legs then spin, back to mock him, leap up and laugh at him. You told me, Master, you told me, spirit cannot face scorn, you told me and I take vengeance on the Great Bear of the River.

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He shimmers with light, transforming. I stab him with a glare of steel. I will not let him shift to refuge. I rub harder, bucking like an animal myself, panting, swelling to the sky. This is the power that overcomes strength, this is ecstasy, I am the goddess! The bear sits down on the greensward, a normal sized black bear, nothing special and quite shy. I revel triumphant as my body reshapes, feet on the earth and head in the stars, sun in my navel and moon in my kidneys. The bear is small. He turns, takes a look over his shoulder and shambles away. Was he real or did I imagine him? Or a trick of the Master, baiting the Bear, testing me? Or was that myself, standing in my own way? Whichever, I had won the One with the first code of yin.

I woke lying on the road, excited insects tickling my nose. I brushed them away. An owl flew across the moon. I lazed into a dream, the Dream of Gods and Angels, lost in time and place until sudden hands, large and rough and many, held me down, tied me up, carried me blindfold away, Are you doing this, Master? Or am I in the real world now, just a young girl lost in captivity? Your secret codes have no power to break these bonds. I have fallen from illusion to reality, to pain or pleasure beyond your teachings. Don’t let them hurt me.

*****

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Chapter 2

Dream of Gods and Angels

“Thank you, Ah Li. Wait outside.” The bandy-legged man bowed backwards from the lacquered chamber, one foot feeling behind to step through the moon-gate. “Read it to me, Chi Pu,” said the Chancellor to his plump twin, settling with a rustle of satin into the cushions. “It is a very long scroll, Chi Po. It will keep us amused for a few evenings.” The Chancellor wobbled his chins, “She would become wary if she had no reply in three moons. And I do not care to argue with her princely friends and their impatient swords.” Chi Pu nodded, sank to the floor-cushions beside him, beckoned the lantern- bearer and, when satisfied with the amber light over his shoulder, began reading in a high voice. Now and again he sipped from a cup refreshed by another brocaded servant. At first mention of the Hidden Masters Chi Po hissed. “As I thought. As I thought! Now we have them.” A boy in thin blue robe stepped through the moon gate and and knelt by the cushions. From a cloth shoulder-bag he drew the makings to prepare a pipe, heating the brown pellet in a silver spoon over a candle flame. When smoking hot he placed it in the long pipe and proffered it to his master. Chi Po heaved himself on to his side, sucked in the fumes and dozed and dreamed. How best to use this intelligence? Chi Pu continued to read, a high background drone, a man sounding more like a woman but lacking the honey tones of such as Su Nu. Nevertheless, Chi Po imagined it was her voice telling the story.

***

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I struggled in vain. Mighty arms slung me like a carcass over iron shoulders that butted my stomach and hurt my ribs. It was less painful to hang limp. What could they want? Was I to be ravished, the initiation I was longing for? I felt sick, wishing I had never left the village. Even your ridicule, Elder Sister, even marriage to the portly butcher who had already spoken twice in vain to our honourable parents seemed a price worth paying, to be safe at home again, living a normal life. For the first time I lost touch with the sense of my destiny. Half a night-time later I was flung down on an unsteady platform. I heard a voice. “Careful, Mong. We’ll get nothing for damaged goods.” “Shut up, Ming, I know what I’m doing.” Iron hands turned me on my belly. I felt cold air on my bottom. Those brutish tones again, “See, she’s bruised already. Hey, just look at that arse.” Calloused palms forced my buttocks apart and a blunt finger probed. Before I could squirm or scream I heard the thud of bamboo on bone, a grunt of pain and the finger went. “You never bloody learn, Mong, do you? Never bloody learn. Get up, lead the ox, stay off the cart. You know we get more for a double-cherry girl.” “Fuck you, Poon. Anyway, how do you know she is? I was just making sure, wasn’t I?” “I know, don’t you worry. And its for Aunty Gu to make sure, not your clumsy stubs.”

The oxcart moved. Obviously their mission was not to kill me: I was to be sold. Sold? I’d rather be dead, I thought, I should have jumped into the bear’s slashing claws. Sold! And yet, despite my plight I found myself wondering, how much would I fetch? A double-cherry girl: sounds expensive. I knew what it meant, but what was I worth? Was this to be the end of my father’s dream of matching me up with the son of the Son of Heaven, the Master’s dream of using me to gain entrance to the Celestial Circle of the Fang Shi? Were their dreams mine too? I have to say, Elder Sister, being raised as an obedient child to become a dutiful adult does not encourage one to nourish a dream of one’s own.

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Planned or otherwise, and I no longer care, beign kidnapped forced a change in my way of thinking. But then, a new voice sounded above me, from the front of the cart. “What’s your name, girl?” I did not answer. My spirit was returning. Of course I could not beat them physically, big strong men they must be, any more than I could have wrestled the bear. I heard the Master’s whisper, trickery and deception, the power of yin, everything is perfect, trust in heaven. “Are you thirsty?” I held silence. I was for sale so they were not going to damage me. Was I for public auction or private collector? I saw myself standing on the block amid a market’s babbling throng, colours swirling like dyes in a vat, around stalls of saffron, fruits and hanging silks, piled sides of meat, squealing piglets and chinking coins, scents of spice and rank humanity, greedy eyes sucking me in, huddled children naked behind me waiting their turn, a crowd of hands reaching for firm young flesh, slapped away by a fiercely-masked official whose white lacquered Fan of Office snaps open with a flick of his wrist and a frightening crack and who draws from the sleeve of his crimson robe Aunty Gu’s red-sealed certificates of my virginity, one vaginal, one anal and waves them above the many-headed multitude as he roars my virtues. “See the fire in her eyes! See the light in her face! Imagine her doing your will! Young, strong and sexy, all ways a virgin. Do I hear one hundred? Come, citizens…two! Three? Five, to the gentleman in the yellow cloak…ten hundreds? Of course, your highness…” Do I go to the highest bidder or does some random lord rescue me from the block, throw my nude body across his horse and gallop me out to steppes of delight? Or am I specially commissioned for a sleepy-eyed libertine who will think no more or less of my tender loins than of the honey-glazed duckling breast in which he sank his teeth? I must pull back from this incongruous fantasy and address the situation. They were taking me to this Aunty Gu and I might learn more by seeming to co-operate. “Oh, don’t waste time, Ming. She’s a stubborn bitch.”

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“Yes, I am thirsty.” “She speaks! Take a break. Let’s have some fun.” The rattling stopped in the cart but began in my bones as nervousness took hold and I shook uncontrollably. What next? I was lifted up and set down, to kneel on what felt like grass. “Thirsty, Girl? Open wide.” They laughed when I obeyed, terror hidden by the blindfold. I sensed heat from a presence right in front of me, and a powerful smell of male, a smell I had encountered before. Perhaps it was not pain they planned next. I bared my teeth in what I hoped was a smile. “Watch out, Mong. She’ll bite it off.” “I won’t,” I pleaded, “Don’t hurt me, please. I know what you want. I’ll do it. I know what to do. I can give you pleasure.” Of course I did not know at all but, remembering the Master feeding me his fruit, it could not be that difficult. And even before, watching Second Uncle’s hand on his hilt, a thought of swallows may have strayed through my mind. “Maybe she’s not a cherry-girl,” said the brute. “I am,” I said quickly, “I promise. No man has been inside me. I let one teach me the art of the tongue.” I wished. But it sounded good, I thought until a sudden wrench forced my head forward and hot hard flesh jabbed between my lips. I fought for breath as he jerked into my throat while obscenity hammered my eardrums like hailstones on rawhide. “Suck me, you little cunt, suck my cock, suck it, suck it, suck it…ouch, mind your teeth, bitch, …suck it!” I struggled to turn away but he held my head in iron hands. Other hands tugged at my clothes and my breasts sprang free, to be seized and squeezed from behind, nipples taut in pain so intense to be almost pleasure. Then my mouth flooded and I gagged at the taste of rice-beer. “Fuckin’, lyin’, bitch, you never done this before. Art of the tongue, my arse…” a blow snapped my head sideways. “Get off her, Mong. I’ll teach her.” I quailed, expecting another whack but felt instead softer hands and another stalk grew into my mouth, the shape but not the taste reminding me of the Master’s banana. It gently thrust to and fro then stopped. “Run your tongue around the ridge, yes, yes, yes,

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like that, ah! Yes, now in the groove, and around more, oh yes, oh, yes.” Another flood, less rancid this time for which I was grateful, and it wilted and withdrew. “See. She wants to learn. No need to hurt her. Ready, Ah Poon?” One more? What was this? My head was pushed from behind into what could only be a pair of buttocks held open by a pair of hands. I felt their knuckles against my cheeks even as my nose touched the Pouch of Twin Pearls. “Lick me, little one. Lick out my arse.” This I had never imagined. I held my breath and licked. O Elder Sister, what would I not have given for some clean linen and a little warm water to prepare the way for my reluctant tongue. And now another shock! My remaining clothes had gone, all but the blindfold, and the stubble of an unshaven face butts between my own globes of posterior flesh! Even as the tip of my tongue explores the hairy and malodorous orifice below me the tip of another tongue licks at my own.

Three of them. Come and gone in a trice. Lust exhausted, they tied me up and slept either side, the one called Ming whose voice I liked holding me in his arms while I lay as if it was there I would rather be than anywhere else under Heaven and waited for their snores and the restlessness that I have since discovered parts even the most ardent of sleeping lovers. Little by little I distanced myself until I could jerk sideways and roll far enough to struggle out of my bonds. I sat and rubbed my wrists and waited. If any should awake they would see me there, quiet and apparently content. What a curious thing was happening to me! Truth to tell, after the first shock of that strong meat in my mouth I had enjoyed the assault on my senses, even my very powerlessness, reveling in their hands on my body, their stiff Jade Stalks, juices squirting on my face, their tongues in the places of pleasure. But I doubted I would ever develop a taste for rice beer. Does the juice of a man always taste of his drink?

We had traveled far enough for me to lose my sense of location, and played long enough to lose all sense of time until a new morning joined heaven to earth. I had to decide what to do; a very basic choice common, the years have taught, to many situations: to stay or to go.

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I would be able to move faster by day but so would they in pursuit. We were in deep forest where I could hide easily. I could make a start, edging between the trees and if they came after me I would squat and say I needed to answer nature. Which was true. Stepping with care not to crack a twig I slipped away, sat a while in thought, relishing my freedom. Where would I run? And how far? And what if they caught me? Clearly I had a value but I imagined if caught again the rest of my journey would be even more uncomfortable. My temple was still pounding from the brute’s side-swipe. Suppose, on the other hand, the whole thing, bear, capture, violent abuse (had I chosen to see it that way) was part of the Master’s plan? If I stayed, I would remain to a certain extent in the field of the known, with which I had coped up to now. If I left, it would be for the unknown – and I had coped with that so far too. This was where I began to develop a practice that led me into and out of a lot of trouble, saved my life more than once that I knew of and however many times I didn’t, and led me to fulfill my destiny. What, I asked myself, is the worst than can happen? Then I stopped trying to think like a man and followed my instinct.

***

Slow light filtered through the forest canopy, on to the faces of my sleeping captors. A burly man with shaven head and spirit-tail of long grey hair sprouting just back of his crown lay on a chestnut-coloured horsehide, legs akimbo, face to the sky. This was Mong. He woke before the others and saw me sitting, watching. “Hey!” he sprang up and seized my arms. “You’re going nowhere. Where you been?” His was the voice of the brute and I flinched. Ming opened his eyes and raised himself to rest an elbow on the blankets we had slept on. Dark hair swung about his shoulders. He had quite a thin face, with a thin droopy moustache and wispy beard, whiplike body in faded yellow robe. He looked about the same age as Second Uncle. “She’d have gone by now if she was going to be gone, Mong.” “You what? Oh. Yeah.” He let go my arms.

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“You can’t be very good kidnappers. I could have run away to freedom and you’d have heard nothing through your snores.” Poon was awake too, a stocky man with grizzled head and deepset eyes. “Or been eaten by a bear,” he growled. How did he know? What did he know? My thoughts rushed back, of manipulation by the Master, of tests and trials, failures and learnings. “Why did you come back?” “Oh, you know, I ran away from home to seek adventure. Now I’ve found it why should I escape?” “Talk straight. I don’t believe people who answer with a question.” “I doubt you believe anybody. I needed the toilet, if you must know. And I have no idea where I am. You kept me blindfold all night, remember?” “Sassy little cow, ain’t she?” “They like spirit in a girl. Aunty Gu will sort her out.”

Rough they may have been but they were not cruel, and even wild old Mong had no malice in him. Theirs was the way of the kidnapper: they roamed seeking wares to sell for other men’s pleasure, and who was I to judge them? Were they worse than the Great Yao who destroyed towns, slaughtered men saving only artisans, sold their women and babes into slavery, rewarded his chieftains with girls and boys and now is revered for wisdom and justice? They helped me understand the nature of men, how even the violent have needs, how money can both restrain and excite. I learned that coarse talk in the right moment can stimulate lust. Mong claimed it was not coarse but natural, his mother tongue – the very words obscene upon his lips - having no swear words. I had to disagree when the axle of the cart splintered on a steep rocky slope and he emerged from beneath it after inspection with the words ‘the fuckin’ fucker’s fucked,’ but he missed the point.

And they restored my faith in the Power of Yin, because I could escape. Deceived by my real and obvious pleasure in their sexual fun and games – oh no, it was not just I who provided the sport – and the strange friendship that grew between captor

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and captive, they neglected bonds and blindfold as we travelled by day and played by night. Men without women, they said, invent their own compensations. One evening after chores of hobbling Mu and pitching camp, a lean-to of leaves and branches between a couple of forest trees and a pot of snared hare or hunted deer set to simmer, they wanted to watch me at my Solo Rite although that was not what they called it. I imagine our initial meeting led them to consider themselves properly introduced but they did not go quite that far: my cherry was to be preserved. They pleasured themselves as if climax were the only purpose and that to be achieved as fast as could be. Next day traveling I did venture to explain some of the Master’s ideas of conserving energy but they scoffed and called it black magic. Meanwhile Mong’s mighty fist hammered like a woodpecker at his surprisingly small red stalk as he lay with knees bent, giant legs spread and robe rucked up, his big round face turned towards me and eyes fixed on what he could see between my teasing fingers. Ming, less blatant, concealed his action inside the yellow robe as he sat propped against a tree-trunk watching my jutting breasts jiggle. It aroused me to see his half- hidden hand moving in shadow and I caught a glimpse of his Jade Stalk: bent in a sideways curve the shape of Mong’s hunting bow. He was embarrassed to show but I wanted to see, to feel with my hands and to suck. “Come, Ah Ming, let me see,” I wheedled, lifting my hem. I moved to straddle Mong, and lowered myself on to him, not inside me but riding his little rod, my slippery lips sliding back and forth along its ridge, pumping my hips as if in full gallop and holding my breasts, squeezing the nipples and pushing them out towards Ming, holding his eager gaze, beckoning him to me with my forefingers until he stood in front of me, legs parted over Mong’s face and I took that tempting curve into my mouth, while his hands on my shoulders shook with ecstasy.

Spontaneity liberated me. I joined in their fun with a lascivious delight that astonished me as much as them. Instead of internalizing my climax I lay back on Mong’s great legs and bucked, my fingers frantic on bud and breast, and let myself be carried away. Their excitement intensified and I felt Ming’s lips sucking me and Poon joined in

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too, until I knew not which was part of whom and hot juice ran down my face and belly. I smeared it on my skin. Poon rolled away to lie face down, bottom bared to the sky, truncheon rubbing between hand and leg. He got a crick in his neck from trying to watch me at the same time but his climax was instant when I obeyed his gasping order: ‘Show me your arse!’ Kneeling on Mong’s chest I turned and poked it out, holding my rear open until I heard his grunts of ecstasy. Boys are so easily pleased, Elder Sister, do you not think? Another evening Mong and Poon danced naked with wands waving while Ming, semi-dressed, beat a rhythm on his little drum. They pushed their groins together and told me to show my breasts. Stripped, I could not help but dance between them: ah, that was pleasurable, feeling the wands pressing me, front and back. I turned to face one and then the other, grasping the rods in front and behind, my nipples sucked by one and rubbed by the other. Laughing, we jerked in unison until our excitement threatened to devalue their investment. I have to confess, I was more than ready for it by then but contented myself by lying between them, hands outstretched to pump their rods and Ming kneeling over me with his in my mouth and tongue on my bud, still beating his drum and we all came in time with its rhythm. I tried to take the three of them into my mouth at once. Two, yes, all they had to do was press against each other standing up or lying down. In all other positions their bodies got in the way. I don’t imagine you’ve ever considered this amusement, Elder Sister, but should perchance the sun rise in the west one day and you decide to experiment outside of fantasy, see if you can squeeze in three, and come in the attempt.

How I loved the thrill of it all, the freedom from codes and containment, prayer and ritual; the playfulness: I had more orgasms in those few days and nights than in some whole moons of later years, and enjoyed them in safety with experienced men who did me no harm. I loved their innocent rudeness and lack of shame. Riding in the cart one day in broad daylight Mong said, “Fuck, I need a wank, come on Girl, show me,” and we went right at it with open-mouthed excitement, there and then, in the back of the bouncing cart. That got the other two going. Poon mounted Ming from behind:

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interesting to see but rather boring to watch, with none of the same intensity as when they played with me. Curious about their different likes and dislikes I asked each to show me where to touch them – it varied – what to say or how to say it, to cry out in a certain way. Poon really liked watching, telling me to pose naked embracing a fallen tree, and once to ride the ox’s hump. Mu plodded on, the only male immune to what I brought to our little band.

Sometimes one or another had trouble getting hard, or climaxed too fast and lost interest for a time. I saw how they all rose stiff in the morning, yet lost it after urinating. I learned their tastes, their grunts and cries and shouts and roars, points of arousal and places to calm, whether they liked to see, to hear or to touch. This hard-earned knowledge has served me well. They were open with me, more so than later men who looked to me for the teachings.

“How did you know I was a virgin?” I asked one day as the cart creaked its endless way. “You might have captured anyone.” “We might, and everyone has a price,” said Poon, “but we make more from one cherry-girl or boy than a dozen used. More money, less work. Soon as we find one we go straight back to the Aunty. No point in dawdling or looking for others. Any day some bandit could ambush us.” “But how can you tell?” “Its the way they move their body. Kind of not knowing what its for. And there’s a look in the eyes…” said Ming. “And how they talk. Innocent.” said Poon. Mong said, “I only trust the finger. Remember Sai Ho?” They laughed more with rue than humour. Ming said, “We lay up near this village down south, out of sight, waiting for a stray child to wander to the edge of the woods. This kid comes along picking flowers, looks thirteen, maybe fourteen – your age, Girl…” “I’m fifteen! I was born when Monkey turned Rooster.” “Chatterbox AND Show-off!”

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“Whatever.” Ming ignored us. “…really beautiful, silky hair to the waist, smooth oval face, perfect skin, cute tits, bum like a peach..” “You couldn’t see that.” Mong interrupted. “I guessed,” said Ming. “Anyway, we pounce. Kid struggles like crazy, just like you but doesn’t stop, but doesn’t make a sound either.” “Till we get to the cart,” Poon continued, “and suddenly we hear ‘get the fuck off me’ in a man’s voice, well, a boy, voice breaking. Mong shoves his hand up…” “Its got a fuckin’ prick! Full size, and soon as I touch it stiffens up.” “You must have had some fun,” I said. “Fuckin’ freak,” said Mong. “Ain’t bloody natural, is it? Tits and a dick.” “Some say divine, Yin and Yang in one,” from Ming. “Nice blows,” grinned Poon. “The dark people from a temple across the mountains bought him. Her.” “It!” “Really, Mong, I’d never have thought you a prude.” “I rode and raped with the Khans, Girl, had all I wanted, but never no lady-boy. Give me a mare and something to stand on, better.”

We had been heading southwest and would reach the city and Aunty Gu in two more days, they said. I was curious about her. “You’ll find out soon enough.” We came out of the forest into a countryside of yellow fields with ditches, green pastures of grazing horses, scattered woodlands and rocky outcrops. The few people went about their business, hewing wood, drawing water, digging and herding, taking no notice unless we passed close, then a sideways glance and murmured greeting, neither friendly nor hostile. I had given up ideas of escape after the conversation about bandits. I could easily have slipped away helping Mong set his evening snares while the other two made camp. His touch with the sinews and branches he formed into traps was as delicate as his talk was rough. “If it wasn’t for the money, Girl, I’d be fuckin’ your brains out,” was the

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general tenor of his small talk. If in the mood and I rarely wasn’t, I would tease him away him from his trap setting, flashing my breasts or bare bottom until I let him chase me to the ground. I loved to hear his grunts as he jerked, “Come on, little fucker, make me come, come on…” I knew I could outwit and outrun him but where to? Its not as if I wasn’t happy, in the circumstances fate had spread around me. Apart from apprehension about Aunty Gu, who by now I imagined as some wicked old witch with gnarled fingers and pointy blackened nails, I was enjoying myself and growing fond of “my men”.

Poon was younger than Mong and not so slow, older than Ming but not so quick. He directed them with casual authority and wasted few words. I had come to think of them as protectors. I knew their most intimate desires but little of their various pasts. I do not believe they were trying to hide anything: it was more as if they were not interested, as though the former life each must have had led was now irrelevant. Their respect for me was based on commerce and I had more than once wished for what Mong would have called a good hard fuck. Our games made me long to know how it would be to feel a man, someone, anyone, something, by now anything, inside me, but always they kept me – and one another – in check: I was worth more intact. On the road with them, living in the moment, I was tempted to become a kidnapper myself, a bait to harvest the pleasures that abounded. I would escape from whoever bought me and, deflorated, rejoin them. I would grant Mong his wish, to fuck my brains out. I pictured the look on his face when I returned and danced nude for him again, and told him he could go all the way. Although I suspect he relished the struggle. The others would want their turn: I could accommodate all three once my two sacred orifices were unblocked. The night before we were due to arrive at Aunty Gu’s I could wait no longer and drifted away.

***

I was not long finding the seven steps, broad and white. Something had changed in the garden. I peered through the dark green shiny bushes at the entrance. Where had

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been the rhododendrons a low hill now stood, a strange conical mound smoking at the summit. A burst of fire erupted. Liquid red rock in pearly skin overflowed the slopes into the lake, creating thick clouds of steam. A sudden breeze cleared the air. All was as before, the red trees to my left, lake to my right, blue lilies as far as I could see and, in front, beds of yellow chrysanthemums. Amid the flowers, a shallow bowl of simmering clear liquid lay flush with the ground. Four streams spiral rather than flow into the cauldron and evaporate. Beyond, I recognise the rocky mound of trees with white blossoms, surrounded by raked white pebbles. Where are the statues? No longer scattered, grouped nearby under the boughs of a tree. Life had been breathed into their stone and they appeared as angels. They beckon, and I fall. A most beautiful young man approaches, naked but for an open green mantle. He grows heavy and hardens. My breath quickens, loins pulse. I want to grasp his manhood. We lie down. This is my moment: I have found the One to make the Two. Between my open legs he worships in my valley. My petals unfold to his mouth, to the tip of his tongue. I dare not reveal what I learned from the Master, never mind the school of Ming Mong & Poon. His hand guides mine to his hilt and he shows me how to pump. I touch his pouch, feeling it tight. I move his throbbing stiffness up and down. His voice is deep with arousal. ‘I must fuck you.’ ‘Fuck, my lord?’ I whispered, arms around his neck. His sweat was sweet as I held him close in hot surrender. I came into a dream, of the garden, a fallen white statue, its cool hard phallus stained with blood. Breasts grew from its chest and its eyes came to life, eyes of ten thousand seasons. Its stalk grew. Impassive angels held me down and I woke in pain. I lay still, aware of another presence. Soft fingers lifted my eyelids.

***

“Both ways intact. But not for public auction. See the fire in her eyes, the light in her face? She has been touched by heaven to shed light on earth…” “Yes, Aunty, and we will be famous for finding her. How much?” Aunty Gu. Face of the god become goddess, radiating youth and power.

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“It will take a little time to place her, Ah Poon. We have a duty to the gods.” Never had I heard so musical a voice. “How long and how much?” “Come back when Grain Fills…” “Too long. We’ve spent half a moon finding this one and bringing her back safe. We can’t wait another three to get paid.” “Ah Poon, please, ...” “Maybe you have credit with the gods, Aunty, but I’ve got Ming and Mong outside and they want to fill some bellies after seven nights with a virgin.” “Ah Poon!” “What?” “I was going to say, I will give you silver for now, enough for your fun and to cover your next foray. Return in the Horse Moon for the balance in gold but I must be truthful with you, Ah Poon, not since Sai Ho has anyone like this come our way…” “She’s a double-cherry, Aunty, not a freak…”

They spoke as if I were not there. Let them haggle. I looked around what was to become my home and pleasure-house. Hanging crystals turned light into rainbows. Herbal plants were strung from dark wood roof-beams under pinpoints of light in the tiles. The grey stone floor felt cold to my hand, unlike the beaten earth of our parents’ home. I was glad of the thick mat beneath me in a corner. A red circle around the floor touched each wall, bounding a five-pointed star. In the centre lay a small drum and, above, a bell suspended at head height. Everything means something, I thought: a room of codes and secrets. The washed blue wall beside me carried the image of a sage, triple-forked beard and vaguely familiar features brush-painted in meditation Drawn on the wall opposite the front door were two interlocking circles: blue above, red below, an eye painted between. On a corner shrine stood five bowls of different colours – I could not see what they held – three candles and a tiny box. The front door, limned in light, was along the wall to my right. To my left, rich cloth hangings concealed another door. Aunty Gu and Poon sat on stools at a low table of

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shiny carved wood, near a small fire-pot. She reached up to a herb bundle, pulled out some dried leaf and crumbled it over the flame. Fragrance filled the room. “Listen to me, now, Ah Poon. I promise you will not get less than her worth. Lu Yan controls the money. He sent word he will come in the Grain Rains to speak with Grand Minister Chang.” Suddenly my skin crawled with goose bumps and it was in that instant, Elder Sister, that I truly lost my innocence. The Master had plotted everything. Aunty Gu must be in it too. Could I trust nobody except myself? What of my captors, the men who had brought me here unharmed, intact?

What now? I could embrace fate, nourish my destiny as I had, and been rewarded with experiences beyond the ken of most young girls - even those chosen by a goddess. I could again turn my thoughts to escape but again it was the same dead end: where would I go? Destiny or destination? And is there not a kind of security in knowing everything has been planned? But I was no puppet. I could run. But to run before my friends got paid would be a betrayal. I could wait three moons. But, really, what did I owe them? Had I not given them enough to discharge any debt, whether barter, money or karmic? They had the pleasure of my young budding body, not quite all of it admittedly, for seven days and seven nights, Was I being honest? Could there another reason for me to wait? To see him again, my Hidden Master, on whatever business brings to him to the Court of Yao, probably nothing to do with me.

Poon had gone by the time my buzzing brain stilled enough to focus on Aunty Gu again. She had seated herself on the mat beside me, looking me over as I did her. She said light shone from my face but that could have been but a reflection of her own. She said she had seen fire in my eyes but that too could be a mirror of hers. Her turquoise robe was loose. My mouth went dry. “Well, my dear, let us see to your injuries.” She laid one hand on my belly. Her touch was soft and her face beautiful, the Yin aspect of the young god. “Injuries?”

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“Yes, darling, look, your thighs, your breasts. Those boys, those men, such insensitive creatures, they’ve rubbed you red raw.” Her hand went down. “Even your poor little bud. Feel?” I winced. “Oh! Yes, it is a bit sore.” I did not disclose I had done most of that myself. “I have a soothing lotion.” She dipped her finger, white, elegant and completely opposite to what I had imagined - as was everything else about her - into what looked like a transparent bubble of colourless grease. “What is it?” “In time I will teach you everything, about healing, about men, about women, to play the flute and strum the lute, to dance your lovers out of their mind, to sing the irresistible song…we will find you a very rich man for the Rite of Two.” Her eyes were deep with ancient secrets. “For now, let go, relax, close your eyes, and as you listen to my voice feel yourself going deeper…” It was the first time I felt the touch of a woman in this way and what a contrast to my three ruffians! Cool at first, her ointment eased my soreness, then warmed me in my most tender spot. Silk rustled somewhere far away and soft breasts rubbed my firm ones and soft lips played around my mouth and kissed my eyelids and her soft tongue parted my lips and slipped inside. No stubbled jaw or unshaved head made the red rash bloom in my tender places. My hips moved slowly, shy at first until the whole length of my trembling naked body covered hers. Her legs parted over mine and I felt her wet heat on my thigh. Her tongue traced around my ears and down my throat, the dew of her saliva moistening the groove at the base and down between my stiff little nipples, and her hands cupped the underswell of my breasts. I could have wept with the pleasure of it. Below, I did. She turned, lubricated by our sweating skin . Her hands went beneath my hips, lifting my mound to her mouth. I pushed up, wanting whatever she would give. My breath outran my heartbeat as my fingers spread her smooth plucked flesh above my face. I gazed, then kissed the pink sweetness of the Cave of Mystery. This I had never even imagined. All my thoughts and fantasies before were of men, until Mong’s remark about mares – mine were stallions of course, mounting from behind and stretching me to the limit - but now I felt what it would be like to lick

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myself as my inquisitive tongue curled inside. I had of course never been completely inside myself so this was to, so to speak, virgin territory. I moved in with a finger, into the hot slippery darkness, explored around the spongy inner surfaces, felt a hard tip deep inside. She was so close even my nose slid in until I had to come up for air. She rubbed herself over my face, jerking against my chin and doing likewise to me at the other end. I thought I was going to drown in pleasure and the smell, ah the scent of divinity, her womanliness! Once again that liquid light flowed along my back, over my shoulders and up my neck, to the top of my head then through my tongue into her, bathing us both in heaven’s dew, a sweet circulation of the heavenly cycle. Escape? Not I! From what? Had I known the what, I might have fled that very night. Might. How far must a girl go to lose her virginity?

***

“Strange. Interesting. Sometimes she writes as if to her sister, sometimes as if to herself.” Chi Pu adjusted his clothing and rolled the scroll out further. “Have you a plan yet, Brother Twin? “Our interests,” mused the Chamberlain, “might best be served by this letter reaching its destination. In fact,” heaving to his feet, “by making sure it does. Call Ah Li..” “But there is more, much more. Should we not read on? Although I do feel somewhat overstimulated.” “You could just read it. No need to act it out. Very well, but we must finish soon.” “Why, Brother?” “Has it not crossed your mind that she might be writing to us?”

*****

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CHAPTER 3 – Clouds and Rain

That first morning I awoke with Aunty Gu we played with a bright disc of polished silver. I saw my fingers explore and wanted to be smooth down there like her. She said I must wait. “Fuck before you pluck, little darling. It would not be proper for a young cherry girl to show such sophistication.” The shiny surface reflected my small bush, my badge of purity she called it. I angled the mirror to show the soft underswell of my breasts and her fingers moved up. I saw and at the same time felt them tweak my nipples. She knew how to touch, to create precisely the response she wanted, whether to bring me to sudden ecstasy or hold me in simmering bliss. From the reflection of her fingers stroking my breasts I looked up to her face, such a beautiful face, with no sign of the years in her blooming skin, smooth broad forehead, arched brows and black shining eyes reflecting my own. Yesterday she had suddenly seized my face in her hands when I asked, “Am I pretty, Aunty Gu?” “Are you pretty? Let me see.” She scrutinised me. “A touch of the gwailo by the look of it. Its in your colouring. That coppery sheen to your hair. Your skin is perfect of course. Pure porcelain. Your mouth is just a little too wide: it should be no wider than your nose, see, look at mine, like a rosebud.” Glossy dark hair showed not a streak of grey. Slender, full-breasted, she moved with grace and suppleness, whether making love with me, walking around or squatting to relieve herself. How many seasons had she lived? Aunty was a term of respect for older women but she seemed young to me. I remembered stories of vampires who found eternal youth by sucking the life-force of others, and lived for eternity as ghosts in their bodies. A worm of fear slithered in my bowels but then that perfect rosebud, so red and soft, opened and touched my lips. This could only be a human tongue that wet mine with warmth and hunger. And ghosts had no need to relieve themselves. And I had seen her eat, with an

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appetite to match my own. Gu was real, as real as the breasts I felt on mine. Her hand went down again. I squirmed with delight and dropped the mirror. How different from the rough handling of my captors. They were rough, with themselves, with each other, seeming to know what to do. Men know what men like, women know what women like, she told me, and should learn to please each other.

“Aunty Gu,” I said when we lay on our sides, hands casually brushing still tingling nipples, “how do you hold a cock?” “Uncouth child! You mean Beating the Bamboo,” she said, “are you asking me how I do it, or how it should be done?” “I’m sure you do it the way it should be done, Aunty.” “What makes you sure?” “Well you are so sensitive, you know what I like without knowing me.” “You believe I do not know you?” “I came here only yesterday,” then I giggled, “well, and a few times since.” She did not share my little joke. “You are believing what you want to believe: a dangerous formula for life.” Why was she being so strict? Fate had put us together for me to learn from her but could we not share intimacies without the bed turning into a philosophy classroom? I sat up, cross at being put down. “So what do you know about me? And just what exactly is the right formula for going through life, my lady?” She smiled. “I like your spirit. Don’t let me intimidate you, little one. It has taken me,” she hesitated, “more than years to learn the arts of the bedchamber and now I am to pass everything on to you in the space of three moons.” She paused. “If you want to know the formulas for life, look at where life begins and where life ends. From conception to death, life is lived around the bedchamber. If you understand that, Ah Su, you understand what makes men and women move. We are ruled by our desires, always and in everything.” “You, too, Aunty?” “I speak of the unawakened. However strong their need, some men need special attention before they are ready, swollen, stiff and strong. We use three special grips to

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prepare the Jade Sceptre for entry. Before gripping, there is cupping, holding the heaviness. Following entry there are another three grips, and after withdrawal, three more.” “So much counting! Is there no passion? You spoke of desire but I hear nothing of that.” “Passion, desire and lust are the masters of men. We are the mistresses of those feelings. When we feel them ourselves, it is because we allow them.” Where, I wondered, was the spontaneity? “When we have mastered instinct we can enjoy pleasure, let go, yet still be in our power, the empty force, the power of yin. We learn the drills of the Jade Sceptre like the warrior learns sword, spear and hand. Once the forms of hollow hand, parted lips, and cave of mystery have been practised and absorbed, we make the right response without having to think. “Hollow Hand begins with the Sacred O,” she held, forefinger and thumb in a circle, “gripping the rim of the turtle-head. The Ways of O are three: from above or from below, rubbing, squeezing and releasing. It does not matter which you do first. The third way is Plum Blossom, the five fingertips close around the rim, rubbing with an up- down spiralling motion. “To play the Flute of Fantasy, have your forefinger and thumb on the rim and the other fingers spread along the shaft. Thumb can be above the rim with little finger reaching to the Pouch of Pearls, or below with forefinger on the pubic bone and little finger touching the purple mushroom.” “I want to do it,” I burst out. “This talk of hands and thumbs and fingers starts me aching below again. I know you satisfy me, and its beautiful, but I need more now. Hot hard flesh to grasp and rub.” “Practise with this,” She handed me a life-size crystal phallus, “but only the grip, mind you. Don’t put it inside yet.” “I want a man, Aunty, I want a cock in me, I want to fuck and come.” “And so you shall, and very soon. Now pay attention my dear. The third Way of O is grasping the whole shaft with the fist and pumping up and down. Take care not to

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touch the head directly without first lubricating it. Otherwise use the skin to rub over the flesh.” “What’s it like? To have it in?” “The first time can be uncomfortable, depending on the skill of the man. When you are used to it, it is a pleasant feeling.” “Pleasant?” “What are you expecting, child? Earthquake and starburst?” “Well, yes, I suppose I am. You heave with passion, you make me come again and again. Is it not the same with men?”

She seized back the crystal phallus, lay back on the pillows and spread herself wide. She licked the head and held it in her mouth. Her other hand stroked the smooth skin between her legs. Her bud swelled, the lips engorged and heaven’s dew trickled from the cave of mystery. Again I felt that deep tingling. She took the phallus from her mouth, touched it to her sex and said, “Watch now. Watch where your eyes go, notice how your mind follows, and now feel: where your mind goes, the blood flows, awakening your own sex.” She rubbed the crystal head between her labiae and her breath quickened. “Feel how your own bud swells, Ah Su, your inner lips fill, your sensitivity is heightened, your nipples stiffen into life, see, as mine do,” and her fingers grasped her right nipple, forearm pressed against her left. I copied. “Your juices flow. Without me in front of you doing this, you would close your eyes and allow your imagination to work its magic. Now you hear my the sound of my voice, you see this hard stiff thing enter my open valley, you feel the touch of your fingers, you smell my arousal and,” she extended a moist fingertip, “you can taste me here.” I licked her finger and shuddered in delight. “All your senses are stimulated, and this before we have done much of anything. With a man, it is different. Man is in a hurry. Man wants nothing more than to get in, get off and get out.” I remembered the urgency of the kidnappers even as I remembered the restraint of the Master.

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“Not all men, surely?” “Not all, no. My first was one who already knew.” “Will you tell me about him?”

She withdrew the crystal and lay silent. Then picked up the mirror and spoke to it in a voice of long lost love. “Like you, a virgin but, unlike you, without experience of men, I was the elder daughter of a noble house and betrothed to the younger son of my father’s vassal. It was but a short journey across a stretch of desert to the lands of my future husband. They said he was handsome but I had not seen him. My father sent me with a strong escort, gifts and treasures. “The Raiders of the Khan had left us in peace for a few seasons but when they chose to resume it was my bridal caravan that fell prey. I remember the cloud of dust storming towards us and the terrified cries of my relatives and bodyguards. Albeit Warriors of the High Degree they had no defence against the horned bows of the hundreds who rode shooting with deadly accuracy at the joints between discs of impenetrable jade armour. Our screams drowned in their whoops of triumph and the thunder of their hooves and we were done for. They came in like a whirlwind and rode the same away, my slaughtered escorts’ blood seeping into the sand, myself slung across the neck of a galloping horse, hair undone and whipping like its mane in the wind.” My vision of rescue from the market! “While his band rode away with their spoils I know not where, we flew over barren hills to a low tent floored with skins and hung with coloured cloths woven by the women of his tribe in the long evenings of their nomadic life. “When he lifted me from his horse his gentleness surprised me. I stood by its sweating flank, beautiful yellow dress flecked in foam from its mouth. He fondled the horse’s head, pulled off the sheepskin saddlecloth and slapped its rump. I remember my silly girlish thought as it trotted away, ‘How will I get home now?’ but then he turned to me and I found myself looking into eyes of startling violet, in the most beautiful face I had ever seen, and a smile that made my mouth water. His lips were red as the cloth binding his wild hair; his teeth so white I wished they were mine.

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“Now I had never set eyes on the princeling to whom I was pledged so felt no disappointment at losing a lover, only a faint and I do confess rapidly dwindling regret that I would not be able to fulfil the contract between our families. I must have had all these thoughts later because in this moment I felt a thousand feelings new to my sheltered palace life. The very smell of him was overwhelming, horse sweat and manliness, the light of victory in his eyes, and pride! He had captured the daughter of a duke and the riches of her wedding entourage. “He seized me round my waist and pulled me close. My breasts crushed against his deerskin-clad chest. His skin was a light brown and those eyes tilted up at the corners made his face look ever cheerful. He was the son of a minor Khan who once raided far to the northwest and carried off a blue-eyed girl from the land of snows. He told me this later, of course, when I was wondering what our child would look like.” “Aunty Gu! You had a child…” “Focus, darling. I am answering your earlier question. Let us not fall into gossip.” “Was it love at first sight?” “Is there another kind? I was ready for love, ready as you are now. I had been thinking of my wedding night, preparing myself for an ordeal with a stranger. Temeluk was a stranger of course but there was something extra, something special…we connected that night, body, mind and soul. “He sat at my feet and sang to me in his tented chamber. I knew none of the words but all of the meaning. His voice melted my heart, and I opened to him like a rain- kissed flower. Watching his face in the flickering light of the sand-lamp and hearing his songs I felt my heart beat faster and faster and my body hotter and hotter. By the time he reached for me I wanted to be naked, to touch his skin and stroke his hair and, even as I had that thought, he reached out and stroked mine. “I felt the furs under my back. I sighed and kept my eyes on his face. That was the most I would do to show that I was open to his approach. Of course he could have taken me by force but I knew he sensed I wanted him. “Then he kissed me, Ah Su.”

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My sadness welled up listening to Aunty Gu. I could not help shaking with sobs and tears coursed down my face. It could never happen to me. I was full of experience, had seen so much in my short life, fought a bear, done ceremony with a Fang Shi, had every kind of sex, except penetration with a bunch of thugs and what’s more, been chosen for some god-knows-what task of destiny. Could I not have just had a normal life? Silly question.

“I know what you are feeling, little one, but believe me, each one of us has our destiny and we live to nourish and fulfil that destiny, but I, like you, have sometimes looked with envy at the lives of others. “Temeluk’s destiny that night was to initiate me into Clouds and Rain and he did so with love, gentleness and a passion that had every pore of my skin begging for more. He spent so long kissing my face, with intensity, with playfulness, with kisses like butterflies on my eyelids and ears. I was throbbing inside by the time he moved to my neck and throat, and apprehension evaporated. And after each foray over my willing body he would come back to my face and gaze into my eyes and say words I could not understand but knew every meaning. “He worshipped my breasts as if they were cushions of the gods, he caressed my sides and licked my tongue, I tell you I was frantic and trying not to show it. This was my wedding night even though the bridegroom was not the original, I wanted him, “As he played with me the pictures in the pillow-books came to life in my mind and I heard the whisper of my nurse in my ear, although the breath was his, saying ‘A little shy boldness might not go amiss.’ I let my hand reach down. Pictures are such flat images, are they not? When I felt this living staff of life leap into my hand, when my palm enclosed its pulsing girth, when I felt the weight of the Pouch of Pearls, why, my whole being came to life, more than life, to the creation of life. It was as if my every fibre began to dance. “I let myself fall back. He spread my hair on the white fur beneath me and with those white teeth tugged at the ties of my dress. It fell open. He could see my breasts. His eyes went from them to mine, and back, and up, and back. There was no hiding my response to his look, his touch and the sound of his breath. His nostrils flared, my mouth

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became dry as the moisture drained down and wet me within. Oh, now I wanted him so much I became shameless. I pulled his deerskin tunic over his head and he lifted his arms like a little boy being undressed. “We were naked. We reached for each other but still he would not complete our union. I stroked his head as his tongue journeyed from my nipples to my belly, down to my valley. I clutched his hair, my head tossed from side to side; I could not contain my pleasure. When it passed beyond unbearable I pushed up and moaned, ‘Please…’ “His arms were beneath my thighs, his hands on my hip bones. He pressed his fingers down into the crease of my groin and sudden warmth filled me down there, from navel to my knees, and then spread up to my chest. My nipples strained for touch and my hands of their own accord went to them. With his tongue and my hands my body spasmed, a climax I had felt before on my own and as soon as he held me beneath my shoulders and moved his body up. Our lips met. “Below, a twinge of sudden pain intensified my ecstasy and then I felt a fullness, an utter satisfaction as if I could never want for any greater bliss, as if every feeling had been condensed into one long moment, as if I was filling up with infinite pleasure. As he began slowly to pump into me it became as if everything before had been but a mild taste of the sumptuous dish to follow. “A little harder, a little faster, and I was soaring, He slowed, teased, withdrawing to the very edge before plunging again as I whimpered to have him back. He played again, a few times shallow, sudden deep, and then I felt that rolling wave beyond the words of man. He burst inside me.”

A single tear welled from one corner of Aunty Gu’s eye and rolled down the side of her face.

***

She had given birth but a whole season was to pass before I learned of her life with the nomads and how it ended when the armies of Great Yao drove the barbarians away, of her escape with one of her husband’s retainers, and of the loss of her child.

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Meanwhile I lived with her, made love with her in the way of women and learned the woman’s way of fighting. She taught only sword and spear of the traditional weapons, dismissing others as too specialised or faddish. She also taught me the horned bow she had learned from the barbarians, different from our own and more powerful. We trained every day, weapons practice in the mornings in the shaded walled garden at the back of her house. We practised love in the afternoon, placing the mats in different parts of the five-point star painted on the floor of her chamber, so I could better understand the meanings of the Five Flavours, the Five Desires and the Ten Movements. In the evenings, passion spent, we discussed in the formal language of Court the Nine Methods and Twenty-four Positions, and she instructed me in the way of men.

“Most seek to take their own pleasure. A few seek to give. Where do you suppose they learned? From women such as us! And we learn from each other. And to teach them our pleasure we must learn to give them theirs. See, I have complete control of this lump of crystal. It cannot push into me before I am ready. It cannot ram me repeatedly until it is satisfied and then lose its power. But to control a real one attached to a live man means exercising control from the outset, from the first encounter. Men like to be controlled, Ah Su. As long as it is subtly done in a feminine way, they become as melting butter. “We learn this first by understanding the physical and the visible, then knowing and using the focus points of the energy pathways and eventually gain power over the Shen, the spirit of the mind. This is why you have been apprenticed to me for the time being – not entirely with my full agreement because I have been given so little time. Thus there is an urgency to what we do.” “Why so little time?” “You must be ready when the Master arrives.” “He controls you?” “We are bound by other ties.” “And what are they?”

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“You will learn in due time. Meanwhile, would it be too much to ask you to practise subtlety? I find you quite as direct as any male, Ah Su.” What a strange mixture of pride and humility followed that remark by my Lady Gu.

We entered the garden on the night of the dark moon in preparation for a visit to the Palace. I was excited but Aunty Gu cautioned, “This is not your cherry-plucking. You are to assist, participate a little, but not for penetration yet.” “When?” I screamed, “ When when when when when? All I’ve done is wank, be wanked, and wank everyone else. When, Aunty, please!” She was unfazed by my outburst, alas not my first, alas again, not my last. “Soon, darling, very soon, I promise. For now, the Breath of Life awaits our practice.” Spoken to like a child! I swallowed my fury as we stepped down the white stone slabs between the green shrubs. A few moments in the peace of that place recycled my frustration into a determination to please. The beautiful young god appeared to greet us, green mantle modestly covering his body. He smiled and before our eyes seemed to change shape, into the form of a dragon and turning, led us through yellow flowered pathways, past the sunken hot spring simmering in the centre fed by the four spiralling streams, to the raked white pebbles around the rockery of white-blooming bushes. The dragon breathed fire into a grotto. A young girl dressed in white appeared. She had the features of Aunty Gu, or how I imagined Gu would have looked at that age, probably the age of her wedding to the barbarian. The girl indicated we should be seated where two white cushions appeared on the ground. Her voice was sweet and musical, a younger version of Aunty’s. “Close your eyes and focus on the breath coming and going through your nose. With your mind’s eye look in front of you and see the sun. Breathe in the sunlight; shine within. Shine within and now, look inwards and upwards to a point at the top of your head between your skull and your scalp. Feel it grow warm, and let that warm relaxing feeling flow down, down through your body, to the base of your being.

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“Imagine now, you can breathe in through the base of your being, the point Hui Yin, the Gate of Life and Death, breathe in, squeeze and pull up the breath, up your spine to the crown of your head. “In this way you draw in the essence of Yang, into the Lake of Yin, and up to the Lake of Yang in the crown. Again breathe in the sunlight between your eyebrows, mingle it with the essence and swallow down to Hui Yin again. Squeeze in, draw up, and circulate in the Small Heavenly Cycle. Thus you will transcend the Cycle of Life and Death.” The voice repeated the instructions several times and I felt myself becoming light- headed. It passed and a sense of courage filled me with each breath. “Now create the empty force,” the girl’s voice continued, “by sucking in the belly but not taking in any breath. Instead, imagine sucking in through your sex.” Power surged up inside me and a sense stronger than pleasure. Unbidden my eyes flashed open. There was no girl, but a white tiger sat where she had been, staring at me with eyes of light. I closed my lids at once, feeling I had seen something forbidden, and my flesh rose in tiny bumps like that of a goose. “Use the empty force to draw in the Yang, combine with Yin to create the Elixir of life.”

***

“The purpose of sex between man and woman is to create life,” Aunty Gu explained as we waited for the palanquin of Grand Minister Chang to bear us to the Palace, “but how often do men and women have sex only to produce children? Nevertheless, at each sexual encounter the body prepares for that moment of creation, that immense power, the greatest force we know. Let the alchemists play with their immortality pills. Everyone dies anyway. But the life force goes on. Now, if we are not using that power to create another life then we, the inner alchemists, harness it to enrich ourselves in this life.” The palanquin, carried by six muscular men fore and aft, stopped by the door. An armed officer escort called his troop of spear-carrying guards to a halt, marched over and

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bowed low. Then he drew aside the curtains and I stepped up behind Aunty Gu, seating myself opposite her. We were dressed alike in rich silks of plum, fans of scarlet dangling from our wrists. I closed the curtains and felt the swaying movement of the palanquin as the bearers began a slow trot, chanting some or other song as they went. “Thus you will see, as I bring my man to the peak, I close my eyes, look inward and upward to a point at the top of my head between skull and scalp and open my crown by touching my tongue to the soft palate at the roof of my mouth. At the same time, by squeezing below and sucking in with empty force I steal his yang essence, draw it within and circulate to mingle with my yin.” “Can he not do the same to you?” Aunty smiled. “You are learning well. Yes, it is a battle, but we can adopt a strategy for the battle. Mine is to choose much younger men, inexperienced in the art of the bedchamber and ignorant of the secrets of inner alchemy. The young men enjoy the pleasure of a Mistress of the Formula, and I squeeze their juice like fresh lemons. In time, Ah Su, you will be in a position to do the same. Until then the converse will be true for you, and this is the purpose of your training, to protect against depletion of your own essence. You are young and juicy and will be desired by alchemists and libertines alike.”

The swaying stilled and we felt the palanquin set down. A voice said, “We are at your pleasure, my lady.” Aunty leaned over to me, parted red lips smiling a whisper, “When you alight, you will see a line of soldiers ready for inspection. Pick out the biggest – you will see what I mean - tap his shoulder with your fan, then turn your back on him and follow me.” A line of young men wearing white linen breechclouts stood against the guardhouse wall inside the Dragon Gate. As I drew level with the first, he tugged at his waist and the cloth fell away. I paused, scrutinising a very fine member that, as I watched, stirred and swelled. Was I allowed to touch it? Feigning clinical detachment I grasped the Pearl Pouch and felt the delicious weight. The Jade Stalk stood to attention. I was doing the right thing: how else would I tell the biggest? I already knew that sleeping size was no indicator.

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I walked the line, looking and feeling until each of the eighteen was, so to speak, straining to go. Myself, I kept outwardly cool but inside, why, my skin was fire, my valley water and my bud about to burst. To prolong my delight of which concealment was as much a part as the visual and tactile pleasure, I then went behind to survey the hammers that would drive the nails. Ah but these were fit boys, Elder Sister. And I had been instructed to select only one. I made my choice, a pair of buttocks shaped like the Peach of Immortality and a Jade Stalk the envy of a horse, and followed Aunty Gu into the palace, leaving behind murmurs of disappointment and a muttered, “Kwan with his big swinging dick.” We came to a chamber hung with silks and smelling of sandalwood, and enough candles shining to keep my parents house lit for a whole winter. Flanked by black-clad attendants on a low dais at the end, a man in a purple robe sat cross-legged on a yellow cushion. In front of him, below the dais, thick mats of red and blue covered the floor and, in the centre, three white sheepskins. The man wore his silver-streaked dark hair in a topknot. His eyes had a fierce slant and his nose hooked over his mouth, with a silvery moustache and slender beard. In his hand he held a whisk of white horsehair. Grand Minister Chang. The three of us, Aunty Gu, the fit young soldier Kwan, and I bowed low, touching our foreheads to the floor. In the following exchange of formal Court pleasantries I detected energy like hidden lightning crackle between Gu and Chang, under the protocols an easy familiarity such as with long-time lovers. Gu seated herself on one of the three sheepskins, the soldier opposite and me kneeling to the side.

The Grand Minister said to me in his rumbling voice, “Prepare her ladyship.” The plum silks of Gu’s robe fell away as she settled herself. I looked a question at her and she glanced down and slid her tongue along her lips. Ah! I went down on her until the Five Signs showed: her face flushed, nipples erect, a glisten of sweat on her nose, her throat swallowing and juices flowing. Withdrawing, I licked my lips – her taste was ever divine – and resumed my kneeling position. Kwan’s arousal was unmistakeable. Chang ordered, “Begin with Flying Dragon.”

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Gu beckoned the soldier. He turned to me, as if for permission, for it was I who had picked him, he must have thought for my own pleasure. I laughed gently, “No, I am here to watch and to learn and to tease you back to life when you tire. Now attend to my lady, if you please.” His Jade Stalk softened and he looked in panic at Chang. “Get on with it, boy. Show him your tits, girl.” Obviously the language of Court had a time and place. I pulled my robe aside just enough to show a glimpse of nipple, and squeezed it for him. He stiffened at once and thrust into Aunty Gu. She raised her thighs to receive him and said, “Easy, soldier. Go in slow, enjoy the feel…slow!” I saw her thigh-muscles flex as he tried to ram her with the impatience of overpowering lust but she held him immobile. I noticed the Grand Minister’s hand had gone inside his robe. Why should he be any different from Ming, Mong or Poon? I felt utter gratitude for my time with them. Their urges had been my teachers, as much as the ritualised training with Gu. She, meanwhile, having brought the impetuous young man under control, had him practising “Eight Shallow, Two Deep” which seemed to send her wild with joy but one could never really tell with Aunty whether it was spontaneous or contrived. Perhaps she had reached a level where they were the same. “Now Tiger Stance,” said Chang from the dais. Gu slid from beneath the soldier, rolled onto her belly and raised her buttocks. He needed no help for this one and knelt behind her, gripped her hips and went straight in. They were locked tight together. I told him the formula. “Move with her, thrust five times eight, then she will open and close and heaven’s dew will flow.” Kwan became bold, looking directly at me as he performed on Gu and I could see his excitement mounting. As if sensing his distraction Gu must have squeezed hard inside for his face changed. “Ow!” he cried. “Focus!” she snapped, as she so often had to me in a drowsy afternoon. He pulled out, limp, but dry. “I’m sorry, my lady, I…” “Silence,” said Chang. “Come on, girl, get him up again. I want to see them in Monkey.”

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It seemed this was as to be as much a test of my learning as of Kwan’s virility. I certainly did not want to see one so well endowed assigned to the Corps of Eunuchs. I made a few passes with my hands over my body, flashing a little here, poking out there, making some faces I knew had worked well with my captors, a particularly effective one being to smile directly into the man’s eyes and put my face very close to his, in front, to one side and the other, all the time holding his gaze. “Hey, do that to me,” said the Grand Minister. “Gods above, you are an exciting child!” I jumped up on the dais and he reached out but I slipped away laughing, into a dance where I opened and closed my robe and lifted and lowered the hem. When I let it slip from one shoulder then the other, even the solemn black-garbed attendants were vibrating themselves. The soldier was ready again. I stopped my dance to put him in position above my lady as she lay supine: his shoulders pushing her thighs and knees down to her breasts until her buttocks and back are lifted. Then I did what I had been wanting to do since I first saw it: I seized his throbbing Jade Sceptre and, giggling, gave it a couple of jerks with the Sacred O before inserting the tip inside Gu’s Jade Gate. It aroused me even more to see this. She began to move with him inside her. I moved to stand behind him, to press against his back and hold his shoulders. “Press deep,” I said. My voice was husky. “Press deep.” She climaxed quickly with a cry and I am sure it was genuine. Grand Minister Chang called the instructions and I orchestrated Gu and Kwan, through Embrace of the Crickets and Rising Turtle, Phoenix Soaring and Rabbit Licking, to Fishes Touch and Necking Cranes. In the last position, sitting upright on Kwan’s lap, naked now, her long smooth back gleaming with sweat and hips jerking hard, Aunty Gu brought him to climax. I could see her tense, drawing in his essence, raising the energy up to the crown of her head. The fit young soldier fell back and lay as if dead on the floor. In between times I took my own pleasure. And what was that? Well, I have known only one in my life so far, have I not? Masturbating. I masturbated for myself, I masturbated for Kwan, I masturbated for Gu, I masturbated for the row of blinking

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wanking attendants and I masturbated for Grand Minister Chang. And, except for Kwan and Gu, they all masturbated back for me. At the end, everyone lay in their own trance, ended only by Chang saying, “We must send this little one immediately to Sai Ho for further education. She has a rare and wonderful gift, keeping my jaded old appetites stimulated throughout an evening of watching, and without even touching me.” Sai Ho. That name sounded familiar. But Aunty Gu was not happy with this suggestion. “May it please the Grand Minister, this is a wonderful plan but should she not await the arrival of her Master? It is just half a moon now until he is due.” My heart skipped a beat but then felt disappointment when Chang responded, “Why wait? The stars have other plans for her and I have other business with Lu Yan.” Thus fate and destiny collided and I had no choice. Chang was still speaking, “I want Lu Yan to call a meeting of the Fang Shi.” One of his attendants, a spare man whose black robe hung from his shoulders as if from a tree in winter, said, “With the most immense respect for the illustrious Grand Minister’s idea, he must surely know such a meeting has no precedent. The Fang Shi are solitary wanderers scattered through all the kingdoms.” Chang retorted, “Going contrary to what is normal brings gain, while going in accord with it brings loss. Since its never been done, the Northern Wei will not be expecting it. We will have surprise.” “The time it would take to arrange such a meeting…” “Fuk Lee, I appreciate your warnings, your wisdom, your advice. Just do it. Give him two summers to bring them here and they can make their move all together, one summer later. There you are.” “As my lord pleases. The meeting then to be in the Year of Ox?” “Very appropriate. The Enforcer. Choose an auspicious date.” “And the action the following summer, in Rabbit.” “I subdue by conforming – excellent.”

***

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“She must be writing it to us. Why else would she offer such information?” “To trick us, Chi Pu. And we have now less time than ever - this is that year! But you must read on. I cannot risk any action until I have seen the whole scheme of things she is laying out. And if it is a trick, the greater the deception the greater the chance of her slipping up. Read!”

*****

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CHAPTER 4 - Fusion

In fresh dawn light they led me from the monastery, over flat stony ground to the foot of a low white pyramid, my arms in a grip that told me I had no chance of escape. The relentless drumming I heard all night now hammered my ears, speeding my heartbeat. Through the red veil I could see rising steps lined with shaven priests, brown- skinned in white loincloths and each with the sacred string looped over his right shoulder. Naked under the ankle-length bridal veil, I was to pass through them, pausing for a blessing between the smoking pots of incense on each step. My arms were released as I raised my foot to begin the ascent.

Sai Ho had instructed me throughout the night in his sly gossipy entertaining way, falsetto ‘girl-voice’ breaking when he forgot himself in the excitement of speaking his mother tongue. He needed no persuading to show me what was under his robe – I could not tell which side of the sheet to put him, or her. I decided that as I was female he would be male for me: I could not see him as one of my own, however he chose to dress and sound. Nor would I collude with his ‘lost souls together’ scenario despite similarities of age and exile for were we not both fulfilling the Destiny of Heaven? . We sat on bamboo mats on the roof. The monastery adjoined the temple, overlooking the great rolling river. The air was warm, the sky studded with stars and the drumming a long way off. Looking down into the temple courtyard I saw a fire’s glow, and by the riverside a clump of palms, waving fronds silhouetted on silvery water. I had not seen Kwan since we arrived. I had asked for him, saying I wanted to thank him for looking after me through the many moons of our journey south, but Sai Ho said he had been billeted in the soldiers’ quarters and assigned other duties in the palace. My stomach lurched. “What kind of duties?” “Ooh, I can’t imagine. Missing our hunk, then, are we? Forget him, sweetie. Things are different here. Its the fertility festival tomorrow and you’re invited,” he smirked, “Maid of honour, supposedly. The Great King, Maha Rajah in their language, goes among the people standing on an elephant showing off his virility, then climbs the

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pyramid and fucks the virgin at the top. She’s been prepared by sitting on a shiva-lingam or more likely the Bahun Baje’s.” ‘The who?” “No, head priest. The virgin’s not, one really, see. Years ago the then Maharajah lost it - she was too tight and he couldn’t get it in, so now they give him one they’ve prepared earlier. He has to stay up or its bad luck for the harvest. Only the priests know she’s been done already. They’ll give you a little capsule of sheep’s blood to pop inside you before he puts it in. Be sure to make the right noises.” “Which are?” “You don’t know? I don’t think so. Whatever. You’ll find out: full undress rehearsal, lucky bitch. I was chosen for it myself last year. The old Maharajah, well he wasn’t that old but had started showing grey hair so of course he was killed and now it’s his son’s first Holi. Heh, heh, you’ll both be first timers. No, he’ll have been practising. He’s replenished the harem – his dad preferred boys, or in my case lady-boys; spent more time with the eunuchs than the pussies they were supposed to be guarding. He wanted me to be the Holi Virgin but the priests wouldn’t allow it. They were quite happy to take their pleasures with me at rehearsal but apparently one needs a proper vagina to qualify as a proper virgin. Slags. Who would care? Everyone knows anyway. I’m pretty famous round here, not just pretty, heh heh.” “They have more power than the king?” “Believe it, sweetie! If you want to get along in Jantastan you keep the Brahmins happy. They only have to peek up a chicken’s bum and read the wrong signs and it’s off with your tits, or balls for those who have them.”

That sickening lurch repeated in my belly as I mounted the first step and paused between the incense pots and the first two priests. They smelled of sweat and spice through the fumes. Each had a red dot between his eyebrows. Sai Ho had told me this enabled them to see thoughts and know secrets. I fought the panic that made me want to scream and run but could not stop the creeping cold sweat. It would surely be the end if they knew. Sai Ho tried to wheedle it out of me last night. “You can talk to me. Everybody talks to me, little sister, even the eunuchs.”

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“I’m not your little sister!” “I’m being nice to you, Ah Su. I could be nasty, you know. And it could be one of them looking after you and they stink of garlic.” I forced a giggle. “I’m sorry. I’m just nervous. Honestly, I haven’t got anything to hide.” “Nothing?” “Nothing.” “At all?” “At all.” “What if I told you they were going to castrate Kwan?” I could feel blood drain from my face and nausea rising. Sai Ho’s malicious look softened. “Just kidding. Come on, its obvious. You can trust me. I never break a confidence. Get it off your chest, sweetie.”

Memories of the mountains filled my mind. Falling snow covered our fur hoods and ground stark in moonlight. Our shadows trudged up the steep pass, horses, yaks and men, heads down into an icy wind that blew away the footprints left behind. The guides said we would find shelter on the downside. I counted every step. My escort of armed soldiers had the additional duty of guarding a trade caravan going south to Chikdakerry, capital of Jantastan and my destination, the Kali temple. The traders were skilled and quick at making camp each night, often in caves made cosy by fires with bundles of wood from the supply animals. Differences of rank and station blurred when we sat around the fires telling tales of travel. I sat beside Kwan, appointed my bodyguard by Grand Minister Chang. Whenever I had cause to speak to him or just catching his eye at random I was transported back to the night in the palace and the sight of his body pleasuring Aunty Gu and obviously it was the same for him. He was easygoing, handsome in a rugged kind of way, and drew looks from several of the travelling women. Yes, he was a hunk, and I bet Sai Ho too would have jumped at the chance of a tumble with Hung-Like-a-Horse Kwan. We would fall asleep around the fires, huddling together for extra warmth and the comfort of human contact. The traders slept in family groups well away from fit young

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soldiers far from home. The troop slept apart so as not to disturb others when roused for watch, which Kwan was excused. Each night we seemed to move a little closer and when I failed to wrap my heavy yakwool blanket as tight around me as perhaps I should he would pull it up to my chin and tuck it around my body. We were fully clothed, of course. The watch kept the fires going, but one night after more than the usual jealous ribbing by his comrades we lay down outside the circle of light and warmth. I awoke cold and wriggled backwards. Kwan’s arm came over my shoulder and pulled me to him. My heart started a beat that I was sure could be heard on the other side of the cave. Pretending to be very sleepy I pressed my back against him. In fact in my sleep I found myself holding his hand against my breast. When I felt him move in a desperately slow rhythm I could not help myself: my hand went behind me and I felt him. Down there. Now I already knew the size of him but it had never occurred to me that his would be the first key to unlock my Jade Gate. But I knew I was going to do it. I had spent enough days astride a horse pressing my bud against the saddle for surreptitious thrills and enough nights with my stiff little fingers looking forward to some distant prospect of defloration and the fantasy was always Kwan’s massive member. Master Lu Yan had told me to exhaust my desire, that eternity ago in another cave by another fire. Since then I had done everything but, and now, right now, I needed a man after midnight and Kwan was there, right here. My body needed filling, whatever my destiny. How could we deny the physical? Would the gods tell me not to move my bowels? No. So why should I deny Nature, my nature, in other ways? I moved in time with him. He quickened and I felt him fumble with his sheepskin leggings. I wore the same, bulky but warm. Without changing position, on my side with my back to him, I pulled mine down too. I felt his hot shaft hard against my hot skin. His hand moved under my shirt and my nipples sprang into his palm. He was very slow, very tender. His lips grazed my ear, whispering, “I have wanted this from the moment I saw you, Lady Su, from the moment I saw your eyes on me, standing by the Dragon Gate inside the palace wall.” I grasped my buttocks and held them open. “Do it, Kwan. Do it.”

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“My lady, are you really sure? I am supposed to be guarding you, not…” I turned my head to face him. “Kwan!” I said into his mouth in as loud a whisper as I dared. “My lady?” I raised my fingertips to his lips in the darkness and felt the smile. His correctness was a tease. “Kwan, if you don’t fuck me right now, Kwan, I’ll scream and scream and scream till I make myself come, Kwan. Then I’ll fuck the watch. Each. All.” We held each other, shaking in laughter we dare not let out. Then stopped. My neck ached. He turned my body to face him. His man-scent filled my nostrils. We lay on our sides, locked in each other’s arms. He kissed my brow. He kissed my cheeks. He kissed my eyes. He kissed the tip of my nose. He kissed my chin. He kissed my lips. Hot slow warmth glowed down my body, down through my belly gathering in intensity, down to the deepest place inside me and started a tiny fire. His tongue licked around my tongue. My mouth opened wider. I breathed through my nose. His cheeks felt bristly but not hard. He kissed my ears and a shiver ran down my sides and through my loins. We were panting. He pulled his bearskin cape over our heads and that smell of bear intensified my arousal. In the pitch black under the cape were only smell, and touch and taste. I pushed against him, hard, urgent, my body talking. His hand, calloused by daily weapon-drill, stroked my inner thighs. They opened in a life of their own and, holding his lips to mine, he moved me on my back, my head nestling in the crook of his elbow. I rubbed my hand over his chest, tight with the muscle of a trained fighter. The thigh hand moved to cup my mound, the heel gently rubbing my bud while fingers waited at the gate. My hot juice wept upon them and inner lips swelled as if to kiss. One finger moved softly up and down, heating me more, exciting my juices. I pulled his ear to my mouth and said with hot breath, “Now. Now.” He rolled onto me, and I felt his weight. One arm under my head, a pillow of flesh, the other supported my sacrum. I pulled his face to me again and locked his lips

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with mine and felt heaven’s dew flow into my mouth in the mating of our tongues. I reached down, found his bush and mighty pulsing shaft. “Lift up,” I whispered, grasped his stalk and rubbed the swollen head up and down over my sex, feeling the heat, feeling the hardness, my swollen wetness. And I was tight. I needed to breathe. He began to move. “Wait. Please wait. Just a moment. Please…just a…” He could not. I would have screamed out loud had not his mouth muffled me and that great cock thrust in, a stab of burning pain, right through from the base of my body, tearing my flesh, ripping my belly. Once in, he held still. “Relax.” I started to cry. It was too much, too big. I was being split open. I struggled, tore my mouth from his. “Stop, please come out.” I pushed against his chest but even that movement of my upper body made me feel the size of his monstrous weapon rammed inside me. He held me tighter. “Don’t stop me now, my lady. I can’t.” It was too dark for him to see my face screwed up and ugly with pain. I struggled and squirmed, overwhelmed by his crushing weight, grunting lust in my ears, the smell of sex filling my nose, and the smell of my blood. “Kwan I can’t take it. You’re too big. I’m sorry. Please, come out, please.” “Be still. Just hold me. Yes, like that. Tighter.” My arms squeezed him to me. “Breathe,” he said, and began to move again, taking his weight on his elbows. The pain was less. I kept my eyes shut. This was what I had longed for all these moons. This was the reality that had arrived to supplant my fantasy. I imagined the pain becoming pleasure, moved into the Power of Yin, moved with him as his thrusting quickened, and I surrendered. Passion took us by storm and we made violent silent love. I rose to a climax different from all the bud rubbing of before. I came into ecstasy and in that moment I wanted nothing else. I knew my destiny. He stretched me. Later I worried he might have made me too big to give pleasure to the less endowed but then I learned the secrets of the Jade Egg and have pleasured to many with the inner squeezes of O.

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Everything was perfect.

***

Euphoria ruled in that dreamtime when our laden or mounted animals and weary humans wended the downward slopes. Down still meant a lot of up. Why could ‘they’ not smooth the way through scree, bamboo and rain forest to the great plains below, edged green along the mighty river? We took chances to slake our lust, Kwan and I, and it was the best of all I had anticipated. And I waited, with a certain anxiety I admit, to discover if it were true that my monthly pain would lessen following the loss of my virginity. I thought the other travellers too busy with their own comfort or fatigue to take much notice of us and believed our secret safe but now I was approaching the summit of the temple pyramid and the allseeing eye of the Bahun Baje. My veil was lifted from behind. It had been lifted at every step when brown hands reached underneath to bless the various parts of my body. I had noticed some areas got more blessing than others. Now I stood naked on a white slab, in front of one the like of whom I had never seen, seated in lotus on a stone throne a step below. His wild eyes stared, the whites showing all around and startling in his almost black face. Three white stripes ran across his forehead. His hair and beard were a tangled mass of waist-length black curls. Around his neck hung a garland of tiny skulls. A belt of human hands, marked with dried blood, lay about his waist. His emaciated body, naked but for a red cloak loose round his shoulders, was smeared with ash. In his right hand he held a long trident and in his left a human skull. His whole body trembled slightly. “Blessings of the Great Mother, Terrifier of the Ignorant and Protector of the Enlightened!” His mouth had not opened. He had made no sound, yet those words rolled like laughter in my head. I wanted to laugh with him. Nerves? Mockery? I felt neither. I was reconciled to my fate. The Master had taught me to accept with grace my contract

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with heaven. I sucked in breath without breathing, the empty force, and touched my power. One of the Brahmins, a pudgy man with soft eyes in a brown moon face and gentle touch, knelt to the side and pressed a hand on my inner thigh. Instinctively I moved my leg away, widening my stance. He looked up at me, nodding as if encouragement, holding my leg in place, and dipped his other hand in a brass bowl. A smell foul beyond imagination assailed my nostrils. He rubbed that evil grease up and down the inside of my legs, higher with each stroke. At first I felt only revulsion and screwed up my nose and shut my eyes. The rubbing hand reached my pubic hair and the smell changed. As he massaged my labia and bud I felt intense arousal. The smell was fragrant now, as if all the scents of rose and ylang had blended to fill the air with seduction. His finger stroked between my lower lips. I could not help thrusting my hips forward and it went in, then another, probing inside me till it found that magic spot Kwan had discovered just a few weeks before, and I spasmed into ecstasy. My secret was out. When the waves of bliss receded the wild man spoke again. “You have been blessed.” I opened my eyes. He was laughing; mouth wide showing white teeth and red tongue, tangled black curls shaking. He rose with what seemed a great deal of care and stepped up from the throne. I looked in horror at the stone phallus he must have been sitting on, smeared and bloody in the centre of the seat. It was certainly as big as Kwan’s. He took my hand with a rough hot palm. Now I was numb below, power forgotten, and very frightened. The Brahmin took my other hand and they led me down the white stone steps, between the dark green bushes and into the garden. “I am Fire,” said the wild man, “Liago, Fire of Warmth, Fire of Destruction.” “Earth am I,” said the Brahmin, “Serenity.” “Metal, me.” The tiger-girl appeared before me. “I reflect and inspire, I cut and contain.” “And I am Wood, Guardian of the East, where things begin.” It was the beautiful young god in the green cloak.

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We walked in silence to the lake where blue lotus patched the surface. I could see pebbles under the clear water at the edge. The girl faced north and called, “Lord of the North, come forth in Conception and Death!” A ripple in the lake became a wave, the water heaved and opened and a great turtle splashed to the shore trailing clumps of lotus, riding its back a woman whose clinging wet blue dress outlined her every contour. “Kanpani am I. Water,” she said in a deep voice.

They joined hands in a circle around me and guided me to centre of the garden: the thermal pool fed byfour hot streams. I stepped into the steaming bubbles and felt every pore of my skin pummelled gently in front, back and both sides. My guides joined me, surrounding me with touch. I surrendered to the pleasure washing me all over and closed my eyes. Hands and water massaged my breasts. Other hands and a hot jet massaged my anus. More hands and hot liquid opened my Jade Gate, my yoni. I felt around under water with my own hands and found other hands on each other’s sex. I could feel the heat even in hot water, and the hardness of Liago and the Brahmin and Wood – appropriate name flashed though my mind at another level of consciousness - and the wet slippery arousal of Tiger-girl and Kanpani. We were all pleasuring each other not knowing what belonged to whom and where one ended and another began. Someone’s mouth covered mine and filled it with a bitter taste. It was Liago, I could tell from the curling beard and moustache. I was close to coming when Tiger-girls’ soft lips followed but with a strange pungent taste. Then came the Brahmin, tasting sweet and I wanted him to stay but Kanpari took his place, salty and tantalising. Finally Wood’s hard sour tongue brought me over the top in a cry of ecstasy. They echoed, Wood very loud being close to my ear, Kanpani a low rumble and the Brahmin an extraordinary guttural grunt. Tiger-girl’s was harsh panting, while Liago’s laughter rose and fell like a dancing flame. We lay, letting the water move our bodies in lazy waves, bumping and sliding against each other. Nobody spoke for a long, long time.

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Then, “Give me your impatience,” said Liago. What did he mean? I was not feeling impatient, not now, but now I was not feeling much of anything except satisfaction and, I must confess, perhaps a small renewal of arousal. But then I recalled my impatience at so many things; from eagerness to lose my now shed virginity to times in another life when I wanted to learn the fighting skills faster than any of the boys. “Let me take your sadness,” said Tiger-girl. Was I sad? No, but had been when they would not let me wait for my Master. It had been so long and I had begged and begged but Aunty Gu would not intercede with Chang, nor even listen to me herself. It was not fair. “Give me your anger,” said Wood. Perfect timing! “Don’t worry,” said the Brahmin. “Everything happens for the best.” “Yes, when its happening to someone else,” I could not help retorting. “Have no fear,” said Kanpani. “You can understand your feelings without being a slave to them.” What was this? Some kind of personal development class? A few moments ago we were wanking each other silly and now a lecture? “Take it easy, Dakhini.” The Brahmin gently stroked my belly. “Dakhini?” Am I getting a new name? Why not? I was a new woman, or newly a woman, in a new place. What was I fighting for? These people, spirits, deities, elements, whatever they were, meant me no harm, it seemed. Or was I still believing what I wanted to believe? Tiger-girl ran her hands over my skin. It felt lovely in the rippling warm water. “You are full of courage,” she said, “you have no need of more.” “No,” agreed Wood, “and tolerance comes with maturity.” “Are you saying…” I started, but stopped in the face of Liago’s laugh. “Allow the joy,” he said, “the love and the laughter.” “Yes,” murmured Kanpani, “and you could try a little tenderness. Be gentle, Dakhini. You don’t have to be so tough all the time.”

They were right. I could learn something from them. And had they not saved me from the fearsome stone cock in the middle of that throne? I had been curious though.

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The thought got me going again. I moved through the swirling water and leaned back against Kanpani’s breasts. Her arms went round me, squeezing my nipples. Tiger-girl’s mouth sucked one, while the Brahmin took the other, and I felt their sex pressing on my legs. Hands, mouths, and bodies rubbed all around me, heating the water, building desire anew. A Jade Stalk that could only be Wood’s went into my mouth. As I opened my lips and ran my tongue around the ridge I felt fingers spread my lower lips. Bubbles fizzed over my bud, a local pleasure almost unbearable in intensity. Hands pulled my hips deeper into the now frothing water and I felt someone’s Sceptre enter me from below, moving to a crescendo of bliss. Jerking into ecstasy I felt myself dissolve in boiling liquid, reducing, thickening, condensing into crystal, spinning into translucent pearl containing the rainbow, hurtling to the centre of all existence, time abolished, maid divine. Hands held me in place, hands gripping my wrists, hands gripping my ankles, holding me down tight, upright on the phallus. I screamed into orgasm.

***

My scream rose through space, came back and woke me to the reality of being seated cross-legged on a white marble plinth, looking down on a colourful mass dancing below. Ten thousand arms waved to heaven, ten thousand feet slammed earth, ten thousand hips gyrated to the drumming and in the centre of this rainbow throng an elephant raised its painted trunk and trumpeted to the sky. Mighty ears spread and flapped as it danced back and forth, commanding a space in the crowd, dust in small clouds around its feet. A troupe of semi-naked girls and boys backed like a bow-wave in front of the animal, writhing in sinuous poses as if to entice it. Under diaphanous cloaks they wore belts of gold and anklets of silver bells tinkling as they twirled in rhythm, the girls’ breasts and the boys’ genitals vibrating with each stamping step. Around them a half- circle of sweating drummers capered backwards, beating faster and faster as the elephant approached the pyramid where the lowest steps now were filled with musicians playing

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through brazen tubes, horns and instruments of reed what sounded to my alien ears like shrieking discords. On a platform hung with cloths of red and gold on the elephant’s back, balancing easily to the movement of the great beast, stood the naked figure of a man. It was not the lustrous black hair to his shoulders that caught my first attention, nor the shoulders themselves, honey coloured and broad under garlands of yellow flowers, nor his face, a young face alight with exultation, aquiline and silk-bearded; not the upheld arms flashing with gold bracelets in the noonday sun, nor the muscled belly or warrior legs each embraced by a naked girl glimpsed behind the outspread shimmering fan of a living peacock perched on the elephant’s bejewelled head, partly concealing the monstrous erection sprouting from the dark forested loins of his Grace and Majesty, Ekdamthulo Vajra Saheb Bahadur, Maharajah of Jantastan. More elephants in swinging caparisons and gilded tusks swayed in crescent formation behind the leader, each bearing a batch of glitterati sitting in the shade of crimson umbrellas. Only the Maharajah and the dancing crowd were exposed to the full glare of the Sun God. They were all looking up towards him, hands outstretched and chanting as they stamped their feet to the dancing beat of the drummers in the front.

I sat naked, alone with an aching belly, shielded from the direct rays of the sun under a red canopy. In stifling heat, except when the occasional puff of wind stroked the flat-topped pyramid fluttering the fringes of their orange parasols, the Brahmins were seated in a semicircle around and behind me. The Bahun Bhaje, that soft kindly Head Priest who had massaged my sex and kept my secret put a small squishy bladder of blood in my hand then moved to stand two paces to my right. He held a conch horn, and a parasol-bearer shaded him from behind. The procession below stopped. Silence fell as the lead elephant knelt. The two naked girls ministered to the Maharajah to sustain his erection as he stepped from the animal’s neck on to the first step of the pyramid where the dancing girls and boys had made a corridor through the musicians and up the steps. He ascended alone and in silence, rubbing himself to keep stiff. As he reached the top, the Bahun Baje raised the

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conch shell to his lips and blew three notes that rang out over the crowd, through the city and across the plain of mudwalled villages. Anticipation stirred in the mass below. The Maharajah stood before me. His eyes flashed fire and I felt my legs open, my sex open, my heart open. Heaven’s Dew coursed from my valley, blood rushed to my nipples and bud, and his divine Grace and Majesty smiled. The plinth where I was seated was a perfect height. The royal penis rose stiff and quivering. It was dark purple at the head and black of shaft, contrasting with the honey colour of his body. He rubbed the tip on my sex and felt my readiness. I opened my knees, and brought my heels up on to the plinth, supporting myself with my hands on the cool marble behind me, and arched my back to thrust my breasts towards him, and not for a moment did my eyes leave his. That fire consumed me, gave me life and warmed my soul. Outside running with sweat from the heat of the day, I sweated double hot inside. What was happening to me? Rivers of passion carried me through a portal to another world, of fire under water, the sun in the ocean, heaven and earth and yang inside yin, a universe beyond the visible, beyond the known, beyond the beyond. A king he was and like a king he moved, with grace and power, standing against my plinth, his hands on my buttocks pulling me to him, burning my soul with those eyes of fire, filling me up with his majesty, slowly in and out, in and out. My breath quickened and I knew I could not help myself and would lose control while he continued his slow deep thrusts. Our position had the rim of the turtlehead rubbing my most sensitive inner spot when he withdrew, and when he drove deep his pubis stimulated my bud. His eyes signalled me to look down and I did, and watched his glorious shaft pumping me. I lifted my hips and joined his rhythm and we moved together. My eyes went back to his and locked as we moved faster. Somehow he was sitting on the plinth, I seated on him, his legs under my buttocks, his hands on my back. My arms went round his neck, my hair covered his shoulders and his mouth touched mine. Now I felt him fully inside me and it was for me to do the moving. I heard a distant sound, a blast of the conch and Bahun Baje cried, “Maithuna!”

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The crowd’s roar rose round the pyramid, the drumming and music resumed and I moved in time. Now I needed to come, and bucked hard but he slowed me down. I closed my eyes but he stroked them open. Must I hold his gaze in the moment of climax? We would be forever one. His eyes held mine and I surrendered, drowning in fire. His tongue found mine and the juices flowed. Our mouths were sealed and I breathed in his breath and he mine. Then it seemed as if heaven opened and we were one in the night sky, making love among the stars. Far below and deep inside I felt a rising heat and now it was he speeding our movement. We were connected, from eyes to sex, through heart and belly in the world of body, and one in the world of spirit and as his hot flood filled me I had a vision of a waiting soul, a soul waiting to incarnate. And then ecstasy overwhelmed me and I was lost in my king. I was his, and this was my life. But I had forgotten the bladder of blood.

*****

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