The day I shed my shell, all of Water Curtain Cave rang with the sound.
Not the waterfall. Me. The stone casing split piece by piece, like ice breaking up in spring. Grandpa Long-Arm stood guard, letting no monkey come near and no monkey leave — a shedding monkey is at its softest, he said, soft enough for a twig to wound; and a shedding monkey must never be unwatched, because once the shell touches the ground, some things can never be picked up again.
When I stood up out of the shell I was taller, my arms were longer, and the stone-smell in my chest had settled deep into my bones. Everyone cheered: the little stone monkey has become a Spirit Ape! Only Grandpa Long-Arm did not cheer. He crouched down and turned over the shed pieces one by one, and when he reached the largest piece, his hands stopped.
On the inside of the shell, there was a line of writing.
Not claw marks. I know claw marks. The line was too orderly, the strokes finished with little hooks, as if someone had carved it with the finest needle — from the inside, outward. But I was what was inside that shell. I never carved anything. In all my years inside it, I couldn't even read.
Grandpa Long-Arm stared at the line for a long time and said only: "Put it away. Show no outsider." I asked what it said. He said he couldn't read it. I said, you stared at it so long. He pushed a fruit into my mouth. He has used that trick on me my whole life.
From that day on, I found myself standing at a crossroads.
The elders say a Spirit Ape is an age that is "still deciding what it is." From the same body, entirely different monkeys walk out: train your strength, and you grow into shoulders like Grandpa Long-Arm's; train your legs, and you run yourself into wind, like Uncle Red-Rump. And there is one more path — the elders lower their voices when they mention it. Monkeys who walk it grow brighter and brighter, as if moonlight were seeping out from under their fur. They call it the Intelligent light.
"Don't rush the choice," Grandpa Long-Arm says. "A path is fed with days, not picked with a thought."
And yet I keep feeling that something has already grown impatient on my behalf.
Since the troubles at Aolai Town, more people come up from below. The Bureau's notice is pasted on the old waystone at the mountain's foot: all yao to be counted, registered, and bound. In their ledger, the box left for a monkey like me is one finger wide. The name column: blank. The origin column: blank. Only "earth yao, ape kind" fills its space completely. The boy with the medicine basket read it out to me, and afterward neither of us spoke.
Can a one-finger box hold the sound of the day I shed my shell? Can it hold the line of writing inside that no one can read?
On sleepless nights I go to the deep of the cave and look at the stone seat. I used to be too short to reach its rim. Now I can reach it. Still no one dares sweep the dust. I held my palm above the ring left by a leaning staff, held it there a long, long time — and in the end, did not touch.
One day I will take the step at that crossroads. Before I do, there is one thing I mean to understand —
that line carved from the inside out: did I bring it with me, or did someone write it and leave it for me, long before I became me?