The Rabbit Spirit

The white rabbit in the moon was the one who pounded medicine beneath the cassia tree. So the old tales have always said.

White and bright in the cassia's shadow, it pounded, pestle after pestle, the medicine of immortality. Yet it was not, itself, any happier for it. In the moon there is neither day nor night, neither wind nor rain, and not a sound — only a stillness strange beyond telling. How long it had pounded, no one could reckon: a thousand years, perhaps, or longer — so long that it had forgotten whether it had ever been anything but a rabbit, and remembered only the pestle in its hand. The moon is cold and clear; now and then it would look down upon the world below, where there were lamps and human voices and the sound of wind through bamboo — none of which it had, yet all of which it knew, for the medicine it pounded was brewed against the sickness of the earth. A thousand years and more it had pounded, and never once seen the medicine reach a single hand.

One night — after the mid-autumn, before the frost's descent — the moon lost a corner of its light. Not swallowed by the heavenly dog. The white rabbit had fallen from the moon.

It landed in an herb garden.

The garden was the Liu family's, a small plot by the river west of the city. The Lius had pounded medicine for generations; by Old Liu's time his wife was long gone and his son and daughter-in-law had died in that year's pestilence, leaving only him and a granddaughter, A-chu. A-chu's name was taken from the medicine pestle — the year she was born, Old Liu had just cast a new bronze pestle, heavy and good in the hand, and so called her Chu. The name was plain, yet honest, like the Liu folk and like the Liu medicine.

That night A-chu heard a sound in the yard and went out with an oil lamp. In the middle of the garden lay a white rabbit, larger than common rabbits, its fur the color of moonlight, neither startled nor fleeing, only watching her with a pair of red eyes. Its forepaws still held the posture of pounding, clenched as if a pestle were truly in hand.

Old Liu came out with his coat over his shoulders and looked a long while. "Wild rabbits do not look at men so," he said. "This rabbit is a spirit."

For the first few days the grandfather and granddaughter dared not approach. The rabbit did not move either, only lying there, not even the twitch of an ear. A-chu set a bowl of clear water by its side; the next day the water had sunk a thread — it had drunk. Only then did Old Liu decide that, spirit though it was, the rabbit meant no harm, and he let it stay in the yard.

Yet it harmed no one. By day it crouched by the medicine roller, watching the grandfather and granddaughter pound; by night it lay beneath the cassia — the Liu yard, too, grew one, small but thick with bloom every year — gazing at the sky. There was its home, now only a half-moon. The first winter came early and cold. A-chu cut a corner from her own old padded jacket and padded a small nest for the rabbit by the stove. The rabbit did not refuse; it curled in, a white ball. Old Liu, rising at night to mend the fire, would find the one girl and the one rabbit both asleep in the warmth of the hearth, and the hollow grief of losing wife and son seemed, for a little, filled.

A-chu fed it greens; it would not touch them. She fed it herbs; then it ate, and only certain ones: white atractylodes, poria, licorice. Old Liu clicked his tongue: "It knows medicine." Only later did he learn, by slow degrees, that those were the very guides at the base of the formula it pounded in the moon — without them the medicine would not be.

The Liu milling-room stood just behind the main hall: one stone mortar, one bronze pestle, and on the wall a few strings of shade-dried herbs. Every day the thud, thud, thud of the pestle rang from first light to the slant of the western sun. After the rabbit came, the pounding seemed to carry a lighter echo, impossible to tell whether it was the pestle or the answering of its paws.

The days passed quietly. The Lius rose before light to build the fire, clean the herbs, and set them on the roller; the rabbit watched, never blinking. Once, when A-chu's hand tired and the pestle slowed, the rabbit leapt onto the stone mortar and, with both forepaws on the handle, helped her pound, stroke after stroke. Old Liu watched and said after a long while, "It could work the pestle of the moon; this earthly mortar is nothing."

From then the Liu medicine was different. Same formula, same fire — yet the ground powder was finer, the brewed decoction clearer. The neighbors said it worked sooner; Old Widow Shen, who had coughed for years, drank the Liu brew and that night slept through for the first time. Old Liu said nothing of it, only lowered the price: "The rabbit's labor cannot be counted as coin." Blind Old Qian, who came often for his medicine, felt the packet and laughed: "The Liu medicine, just the smell of it settles a man." He naturally knew nothing of what the medicine now held. A-chu, though, had begun to feel the strangeness — since the rabbit came, the rhythm of her own pestle had fallen steady, as if something were keeping time for her. At night, when she rose to trim the lamp, she would often find the rabbit crouched by the mortar, forepaws on the pestle, pounding the moonlight, stroke after stroke.

The neighbor's little child came to play and, seeing the white rabbit, reached out to touch; A-chu was about to stop him, but the rabbit only nuzzled its head into the child's palm. The child laughed, and from then came every day, crouching by the mortar to watch it — the one child and the one rabbit, neither disturbing the other.

But the rabbit, in the end, longed for the moon.

Each full moon it would neither eat nor drink, facing the moon at the window the whole night. Old Liu called it gazing at the moon; A-chu called it homesickness. Both were true — the moon was its home and its bondage. How long it had pounded in the moon no one could reckon; now away from it, it was as if a load were lifted, and as if a soul were lost, watching the whole night through, a point of white reflected in its red eyes.

That winter a pestilence rose in the city. More than half the river quarter fell ill — fever, blood in the cough — and the physicians were helpless. Old Liu brought out a prescription kept at the bottom of the chest and added one herb he had never dared use: the heart of the licorice root the rabbit often ate. He tried it several times and mixed it in. The rabbit, seeing him compound it, leapt onto the table and with its forepaws spread that herb the more evenly. The first decoction brewed, Old Liu tasted it himself — bitter with a sweet return, the very flavor of an ancient formula he had once seen in a dream. His hands shook; he compounded a second, a third, and through one night brewed seven doses, sending A-chu house to house.

Old Liu sat by the stove three nights running, his eye-sockets sunk; A-chu kept watch at the medicine furnace, dozing against the wall when exhaustion took her. The rabbit crouched by the furnace, its red eyes lit by the hearth-fire, quiet as if keeping guard over the pot. Those days the weeping along the river did not cease. A woman came knocking, a feverish child burning in her arms; Old Liu pressed the last dose into her hands, his own hands trembling. Three days later the woman returned with the child, able to stand, to kowtow; only then did A-chu find she had wept, the front of her jacket wet through.

The medicine went out and saved many; even Widow Shen's grandson, who had taken the fever, broke it after the Liu brew.

Afterward Old Liu bowed to the rabbit: "You come from the moon; this medicine you know." The rabbit gave no answer, only watched him with red eyes, until Old Liu's heart ached. He understood suddenly: the rabbit had not come to seek refuge, but to repay a debt. Having pounded medicine for ten thousand years in the moon, it meant, having fallen to earth, to give that skill back to the people of the earth.

Spring passed, autumn came; the rabbit spent two years at the Liu house. A-chu grew, and her pestle-hand grew steadier than Old Liu's. Whenever she brought the pestle down, she always felt another pair of hands beside hers, helping her, stroke after stroke, so light as to be almost unfelt. Once she asked it, "What is your name?" The rabbit, naturally, did not answer. So she named it herself — Chu-er, "little pestle" — and from then pounded as if a mute companion stood at her side. On feast days she would add a chopstick of vegetables to its bowl, though it never touched human food. After the Beginning of Spring, A-chu set out a few furrows of mint and perilla in the yard, and the rabbit would lie often by the rows, sniffing the new green leaves. In summer thunderstorms it did not hide either, only pressed its ears to the ground, as if listening for something far off. A-chu teased it: "Is it the thunder of the moon you're hearing?" It gave no answer, only blinked its red eyes.

The third mid-autumn, the moon was round again. A-chu set out moon-cakes in the yard and left one for the rabbit. The rabbit did not eat, but leapt onto the mortar and struck the bronze pestle with a soft sound — once, and once more, as if pounding something invisible.

Old Liu said, "It wants to go back."

A-chu's eyes reddened: "Can it go back?"

Old Liu gave no answer. There is cassia in the moon, and cassia beneath the moon; in the moon one must pound medicine, and on earth one pounds too. If it returned, it would be the pounding rabbit of the moon; if it stayed, it would be the white rabbit in the Liu yard. Both are bondage, and both, in a way, are home.

After that night, the rabbit did not leave.

It still crouched by the roller by day, lay beneath the cassia by night. Only its red eyes grew less red, as if it had moved the light of the moon, bit by bit, into the lamp-light of this human world. A-chu took the medicine shop's work; on the counter she kept the bronze pestle always; in the mortar the white rabbit always lay. Neighbors came for medicine and, seeing the rabbit, smiled: "Your rabbit is more efficacious than the medicine."

A-chu did not smile. She only said, "It has pounded medicine all its life, from the moon to the earth, and never rested."

Later Old Liu grew old and passed, quietly, as if in sleep. A-chu took the shop and still rose each day to build the fire, clean the herbs, set them on the roller. The bronze pestle on the counter never gathered dust; the white rabbit in the mortar never changed its place.

No one knows whether the rabbit truly came from the moon. Yet all along the river they say the Liu medicine is good, half for A-chu's hand, and half for the white rabbit. The shop's sign grew old, yet its paint was renewed each year. When A-chu herself grew old, a disciple took the shop — but the white rabbit in the mortar, the neighbors all said, had never once been replaced. The new disciple doubted at first, then in time came to set a bowl of clear water by the rabbit each day, and spoke of it to no one. One Shangyuan Festival, the disciple rose at midnight and saw that white ball by the mortar moving the bronze pestle, stroke after stroke, with a sound as light as, and the same as, in the old days. He stood beyond the threshold and dared not make a sound, lit no lamp, for fear of startling it. When morning came he told no one.

As for whether the white rabbit is still upon the moon — of that no one can say. Only on every night of the full moon, beneath the cassia's shadow in the Liu yard, there is always a point of white, lying quiet, as if still pounding something, stroke after stroke.