The Deer Immortal
Old Ke, a lone herb-gatherer on Cloud Dream Mountain, frees an old deer from a stranger's trap and binds its wound. Come spring, rare healing herbs appear at his door; the deer also leads him from cliffs. The prefect sends archers to seize the 'immortal deer'; Ke bars the door and they withdraw. The deer vanishes into mist. On his deathbed Ke says they are even—it owed a wounded leg, he owed a safe road. A faint call rises through the wind.
The Deer Immortal
Cloud Dream Mountain holds both medicine and mist. Old Ke the herb-gatherer, fifty, lived alone in a thatch hut at the foot, never wed, keeping himself on yellow essence and poria and treating the villagers' poisons as he went.
In the first month of winter, snow broke the branches, and Ke followed an animal's track into the hills and found an old deer caught in a hunter's trap, its hind leg laid open. It did not start at the man but met him with wet, quiet eyes. Ke knew no trap belonged in these woods—a stranger had set it. He knelt, pried the iron teeth with his small knife, tore his hem to bind the wound, chewed a styptic herb and pressed it on, and patted the deer's back. "Go. Step no more on iron." The deer did not go; it stood by his feet a long while, then limped into the snowy wood.
With spring came a strange thing. Each time Ke opened his door a fresh bundle lay under the eaves—once the rare revival grass, once the flower that stills a frightened heart. He used them, and they worked; the feverish child of Widow Wang settled at a single broth. Ke understood who sent them.
Later the deer did more than send herbs. When Ke lost his way a white shape appeared deep in the trees and led him around the cliff; when his strength failed it waited a pace off till he caught his breath. Man and deer knew each other without a word, like old friends.
The new prefect heard of an immortal deer on Cloud Dream and sent archers to take it alive for favor. Ke stood before his hut: "This deer has saved half the mountain. Touch it and I lie down first." The archers feared a death and withdrew. But the deer came no more. Ke searched the hills and heard only one or two calls in the mist, far off, like an answer, like a leave-taking.
Ke lived to eighty and died in his sleep. At the last he told the neighbor boy at his bed: "I saved it, and it repaid me; but that trap should never have been—my mountain failed to keep it safe. It owed me a wounded leg; I owed it a safe road. Now we are even." Beyond the window the mountain mist was rising, and a deer's call came faint through the wind, too far to be sure.