The Orchid Spirit

At the foot of Qingxi Mountain lived a young scholar surnamed Tao. Orphaned and poor, he kept a single broken hut and studied hard for the exams, yet year after year he failed. Beside the hut, beneath a rocky ledge, grew a cluster of wild orchids--nine stems in all, with long green leaves. Deep each night they breathed a faint sweetness that drifted around his roof and would not disperse. Tao loved them. Every day he fetched stream water to nourish them, and through the hardest winters he never ceased. So it went for three years.

In the eighth month of autumn the rains came without end, and the mountain flood rose. Fearing the shallow roots would be swept away, Tao took up his oiled hat and straw cloak and went out into the night, piling stones beneath the ledge as a barrier and covering the plants with fallen leaves. He returned soaked, took a chill, and lay abed ten days before he could rise.

Near midnight, with the moon hidden in cloud, he heard a voice within the room, soft as a falling petal. Tao started up and saw a maiden standing by the lamp, dressed in green like a new lotus leaf. Her face was peerless, her bearing gentle, and about her clung the scent of orchid, dizzying to breathe. She bowed and said, "I am the orchid beneath the ledge. For three years you watered me, and tonight you shielded me with stone. Such kindness cannot be forgotten. Borrowing a little of the spirit of grass and wood, I have taken human shape for a while, and I would stay to sweep your hearth and repay you."

Tao was at once frightened and glad. He asked her name; she said, "Call me Lan." From then on, whenever the night grew deep, Lan came of her own accord. She opened the door and entered, boiled millet gruel, mended his old clothes, swept the dust and made his bed, and when her work was done she vanished. Tao grew hale, and his writing grew clear; the neighbors wondered, suspecting some strange helper, but none could guess the truth.

Not long after, Lan turned grave and said to him, "At noon the day after tomorrow the southeastern mountain will fall. You should move away for a time; do not cling to this hut." Tao doubted, yet he had always heeded her word, and so he lodged with a kinsman in the village. The next day came a great quake; the ledge gave way and his old hut was rubble, but Tao was unharmed. The villagers marveled at his foreknowledge.

A wandering alchemist named Zhou passed through and, reading the air, knew a spirit dwelt beneath the ledge. He meant to dig up the orchid's root and brew it into a drug, hoping to lengthen his life. That night Lan wept and told Tao, "He would destroy me for his own gain. If you can shield me, this thread of life may yet hold; if not, we part forever." Tao was angry. At dawn he moved the orchid to a hidden grotto by the deep stream, covered it with moss, and kept watch beside it for three days without leaving. Zhou sought it in vain and went away discontent.

Two more years passed. One day Lan's color began to fade. She said to Tao, "My root is old and failing; the spirit has nothing to cling to, and I must return to the soil. Your kindness is such that heaven will surely bless you, and one day you will meet your fortune. I go now. Care for yourself." With these words her body dissolved into a clear fragrance that filled the room. When he looked again, the orchid cluster by the window had suddenly withered, yet at its root a new shoot had appeared, tender and green and pitiful.

Later Tao at last passed the provincial exam and was made a county warden. Yet all his life he loved orchids, and wherever he lived he planted several by his window. When people asked why, he only smiled and said nothing.

The Chronicler of the Strange would say: Plants have no understanding, yet the orchid, granted a man's kindness, woke to a spirit and repaid a single meal with three years of care. Even as its frostbitten root failed, it did not forget the old debt. As for Zhou and his kind, the orchid had long since left their hearts; they seek only a drug of long life--is that not backwards? Most men treat grass and flower as playthings, not knowing that every leaf remembers its source. The purity of the orchid lies not alone in its scent, but in its heart. Alas--can a man do worse than an orchid?