Three li west of the crossing, on a dune, stands a stone statue. That is me.
Two men high, in a monk's habit, a carrying-pole chiselled across one shoulder with a scripture-chest at either end. The mason's craft was superb: sand gathers in the folds of the carved robe, and you can count every knot in the straw sandals. Only one place stands empty —
the face.
Not worn smooth. A face worn smooth keeps its underlayer; some trace of brow and socket always survives. My face is blank — as if the mason reached that spot and suddenly stayed his hand; or as if it was finished, and then taken, all of it, lifted away clean, leaving the stone smooth as an egg.
That is how I was when I woke.
Stone becomes spirit by being held in mind. A statue takes a bow, receives a stick of incense, hears a murmured prayer — and a grain of remembrance settles into its stone heart. When the heart fills, it wakes. I woke on a rainy night a century and more ago, and the first act of my waking was to reach up and touch my own face.
I touched smoothness.
It has been my sickness ever since. Whose image am I? The ones who raised this statue — after whom did they carve me? A walking monk with pole and scripture-chests and straw sandals, stood by a dead river, fed on incense for centuries — surely the one being bowed to had a name?
I asked the old man who still comes with incense. He said: our ancestors bowed here, so we bow; we bow to the Master who crossed the river. Which master? The old man shook his head: the stele is gone.
Gone, indeed. Beside my pedestal stands half a stele-stump with an ancient break. The fallen half went, centuries ago, to prop somebody's millstone; the millstone broke into paving stones; the paving scattered into the sand-sea. I begged brother Sand Wisp to search. He recovered seven fragments. Assembled, they yield four legible characters:
"…once crossed here…"
Once crossed here. Who once crossed here?
Unresigned, I asked the eldest ones. The Bone General says he saw the stele raised — but he was newly dead then, his remembrance thin, and cannot recall the text. The nine skulls heard my question and burned a whole night without answering. And the roll-calling voice in the storm's eye — Sandstorm Shanxiao listened on my behalf — says the first name on the list, by its cadence, sounds like a dharma-name.
Like a dharma-name.
A stone statue cannot hurry, and cannot move. So I do what I can do: I stand. I point the way for travellers — my carrying-pole aims true at the old ford. I break the wind for those sheltering from the storms — three feet behind my back, the gale goes around. And at night I serve as a beacon for the lost — a stone heart steeped in centuries of incense gives off, in the dark, a faint light.
And then there are the rainy nights.
In every downpour, water runs down my "face." A statue standing in rain — entirely natural. Except the water on my face refuses every other channel and descends from just two places, side by side, unwavering, like two lines of —
no. I will not use that word. Stone has no right to that word.
The night the medicine-basket boy passed, it was raining. He studied me by torchlight a long while, then handed the torch to the monkey, raised both hands, and pressed them — gently — against my empty face.
He said: "Strange. There's nothing here at all. And yet I keep feeling that he's looking at me."
Boy — you will never know how close that one sentence came to cracking a statue clean through.
They are bound west. These several thousand jin of me cannot walk such a road. But I petitioned Elder Curtain-Raiser, and from the memory-water of the sunken palace he condensed me a small stone seed, egg-sized, now tucked in the boy's pack — the seed is joined to my stone heart, and wherever he walks, I see.
Go, then. Look into every temple along that road for me, one by one.
Find which temple keeps, upon its altar —
a face that I recognize.
What can "recognize" mean? I have no eyes. I have never seen any face.
And yet I know. When that day comes — when that face stands before the stone seed —
my rain will stop.