The Deer Spirit

At the foot of Cangxia Ridge lived a herb-gatherer surnamed Yan, whom everyone called A-yan. Orphaned young, he kept house with his blind mother, going up the mountain each day to gather medicinals and sell them in the market so the two might eat. His mother had been blind for three years, and though A-yan searched every manual he could find, nothing had helped.

Late one winter, deep snow on the ground, A-yan shouldered his basket and followed the stream upward. Halfway up the ridge he heard a faint cry from the thorn-brake — a doe lay in the snow, an arrow sunk deep in her thigh, the blood welling dark. The arrowhead was no woodsman's iron but the forged steel of a tradesman's make. "What wounds her," A-yan sighed, "is profit." He drew the shaft, washed the wound with snowmelt held in his mouth, bound it with the mugwort floss he carried, and carried her home.

He tended her in the back court, feeding her rice broth and tender shoots. In ten days the wound closed, yet she did not leave at once. Each evening she lay by the old woman's bed, breathing warm upon the blankets. The mother stroked her and told A-yan, "This creature has a spirit; she is no common beast." A-yan only smiled.

Then came a druggist named Old Jiao, who heard tell of a wondrous deer on the ridge and offered a heavy purse for hunters. Jiao was a grasping, cunning man who meant to take the antlers and sell them to the great houses as a cure for age. The hunters ringed the mountain for three days and found nothing. In a rage Jiao had A-yan bound in the market and beaten, demanding to know where the deer hid. A-yan said only, "She has fled, sir; why bind me?" Jiao would not believe him and plied the whip. A-yan bore the pain and spoke no more.

That night the storm broke in full. When A-yan returned, the doe stood in the court, and beside her a young woman in a green robe, of a calm and gentle face, who bowed twice and said, "I am the deer-spirit of this ridge. You gave me life, and took the lash in my stead; such kindness cannot be forgotten. Your mother's eyes — I know of the Restoring-Sight Herb on the north cliff, blooming once in three years upon the sheer wall. I will lead you." With that she turned to a deer and went before him.

A-yan followed to the north cliff and there indeed found the herb. He brewed it and fed his mother; within a month her sight returned, and she could make out the features of his face. Mother and son wept for joy.

When spring ran deep, the deer came to take her leave. She stood in the court and gave three low cries, as if she spoke; A-yan bowed three times in answer. She went, leaving a single line of hoof-prints in the snow that vanished at the stream's edge. Ever after, each first month, a shed antler of jade-white would lie in A-yan's court — enough sold to keep his mother all the year. When others asked whence it came, A-yan only smiled. "A gift from the mountain," he said.

The Chronicler says: Those who chase gain are of Old Jiao's sort — they bind a man and beat him for the sake of one deer. Yet A-yan, by a single mercy, saved a life and restored his mother's sight, and gained far more than he sought. The deer, though of another kind, knew gratitude and repaid it; shall man do less? Yet what I love best are his four words — "he only smiled." Kindness need not be spoken of, and a bond need not be kept; when the mountain wind passes, the pure remains pure. The world busies itself with getting, while A-yan found his in not seeking. A thing to sigh over, indeed.