The Stone Spirit

At the western edge of the Cangwu hills stands a boulder on the mountainside, curved like an old man asleep; the villagers call it the Cloud-Sleeping Stone. No moss grows on it, no ants gather, and through three hundred years of wind and rain its surface has stayed the colour of spilt ink.

Qi Fu, a stonecutter, had lived at the foot of the hill for thirty years, carving grave steles for a living. His only son died young, leaving him a grandson, A Pan. The boy was born mute and at ten still could not speak, yet his nature was uncommonly still; he would often fall asleep with his arms around the stone. Whenever Qi Fu worked, he would chat at the Cloud-Sleeping Stone: "Old friend, I must trouble your neighbours again today." The stone answered never a word.

In the year Bingwu the rains failed for months. The fields cracked like a turtle shell, and dust rose from the bottoms of the wells. The villagers gathered beneath the stone and burned incense for water. Qi Fu pointdto its root and laughed: "Watch." From a seam in the rock a thin spring welled, dripping into a thread that did not fail all day, and the whole village lived by it. A Pan lay by the water, catching it in his palms, laughing soundlessly.

A wealthy man, Steward Zhou, offered Qi Fu a hundred coins to hew the stone into a grave tablet for his late father. Qi Fu knelt and pleaded: "This stone has a spirit; harm it and you court disaster." Zhou scoffed and sent rough servants with hammers. At the first blow a shower of sparks leapt from the rock like a red serpent, and the servants fled. That night A Pan did not come home but was found by Qi Fu asleep in the stone's embrace, breathing slow and even, as though held.

The next day the boy led the village children to gather the fallen chips and pile them beneath the stone like a small grave. The villagers marvelled and said nothing.

Ten days later Zhou came himself with his masons to force the cutting. Before the hammers had done, a cold wind rose from the valley, sand and grit flew, and chips fell like rain. The workers dropped their tools and ran; Zhou fled down the hill, his cap askew and his robe torn. When the wind settled, they returned to find the Cloud-Sleeping Stone split by a single seam, and from that seam a cluster of wild orchids had sprung, leaves jade-green and blossoms pale, breathing a faint scent that lingered a month.

A Pan stood before the stone and opened his lips for the first time, calling faintly, "Graandfather." He reached to touch the orchid in the seam and smiled. From then on, before any change of weather, he would lay his hand on the stone's grain and murmur, as though conferring with an old friend.

Qi Fu died the next spring. A Pan built a thatched hut at the stone's side and never left it. Passers-by would sometimes hear a low murmur from beneath the rock, and none could say if it was the wind or the boy.

The Chronicler of the Strange says: Worldly men chase coin and would cleave a living stone to flatter the dead, while a mute child who hugs the stone alone hears heaven's clear music. The stone cannot speak, yet what it speaks is in the rain and the spring and the orchid, and in the heart of the single-minded. Steward Zhou paid a hundred coins for a tablet that was never cut, and his own heart cracked first; A Pan repaid the stone with silence, and the stone cracked and bore flowers. All things have spirit, not in their form, but in whom they meet. Meet a vulgar man and they become goods; meet a fond child and they become a friend. Let this be a warning.