The Horse Spirit

Shen Yan was a native of Liangzhou, orphaned young and raised by an uncle who traded in horses. The uncle's stable often held scores of mounts. When Yan was twelve, after a snowfall he found among the ruined stalls a sickly foal, all bone and scorched coat, barely breathing. Yan pitied it. Each day he drew warm water to wash its wounds and secretly fed it his uncle's grain; in a month it stood again. The uncle, seeing it weak, meant to sell it to the butcher; Yan knelt and wept to beg its life, and it was spared. Later, in a lean year, the stable scattered and the foal vanished. Yan grew up and became a clerk in a trading house at Qinzhou.

One winter the house had an urgent dispatch to deliver to Commissioner Wang, the military supervisor of Longxi. The road ran over Black Pine Ridge, lofty and snow-laden, notorious for danger. The master gave Yan an old horse. "This one is Zhaoye," he said. "Aged, but he knows the way." Yan looked: black mane, white blaze, uncommonly fine, save for an old scar on the left forehoof — the very mark of the foal he had saved. His heart stirred, but he dared not ask.

They set out, five men in all, bearing goods. At the ridge's mid-slope the sky darkened suddenly and snow fell in great flakes. The guide lost the way; the party panicked. Then came a howl from behind the mountain and dozens of riders broke upon them — bandits. The freight master fell screaming from the cliff; the column broke. Zhaoye reared, gave a long neigh, and bore Yan away through the snow; arrows rained and none reached him.

They ran thirty li to a ruined shrine. Yan, frozen, slipped from the saddle; the horse licked his face with a tongue warm as broth. Yan woke to find the beast bloodied all over, blood melting the snow. As he despaired, the horse lowered its head and neighed — and the sound slowly shaped itself into human speech: "Master Shen, I am no horse." Yan rose in terror and saw the black mane fade; the body flowed and folded into a gaunt old man in coarse brown, straw sandals, weathered face, left foot slightly lame — and the lameness was the old wound of the foal he had nursed.

The old man said: "When you were twelve you washed my wounds and fed me grain and gave me life. I am a horse spirit of these hills; owing you that second life, I swore to repay. The dispatch you carry — Commissioner Wang is in truth this house's enemy: it was they who burned his brother's home and seized his land last year. Deliver the letter and neither you nor your master will be spared. I led you from the bandits for this alone. Burn the letter, pretend defeat, and you may live." With that the body became a horse again; the neigh faded; the eyes closed. At dawn the shrine held nothing — only a single black mane hair, still warm, left in Yan's coat.

Yan said nothing. He burned the letter, wrapped the hair, and went home. The master blamed him for the loss; Yan lied that bandits had taken all. The master could do nothing. More than a year later, word came that Commissioner Wang had indeed unearthed the house's old crime; the master went to prison, and only Yan, for his "lost letter," escaped. Men called it luck and knew nothing of the cause.

Ever after, whenever Yan passed Black Pine Ridge, he would dismount and pour wine upon the snow. At sixty he still did. He once said to others: "The one debt of my life is to a horse at Black Pine Ridge." They thought him fevered and laughed.

The Chronicler of the Strange says: Beasts know repayment, yet men often betray it. Yan with a ladle of warm water gave life to a foal; the foal with its own life gave life to a man. Cause and return turn in a ring and never miss. Those who receive kindness and forget it should blush before this horse. Yet the horse's repayment asked for nothing; men's kindness commonly expects its price. This is why the horse is spirit, and man, mere mortal.