40
Nothing.
A black and silent nothing.
So deep and endless, it feels devoid of time. Of everything.
Nowhere to turn, no way to yell, no eyes to witness or judge. The kind of oppressive void that could squeeze your chest inward. Except it doesn’t, for there is no chest, there is no in. Strangely, I feel at peace. Like I have moved from the chaos of a spinning wheel to the steady hub that keeps it moving.
The promised flashes at the end of life, they never came. But I remember, nonetheless. Everything.
Now? There shouldn’t be a quest, I tell myself. Enjoy the state of non-being, Yinyin. Like the fish whose joy comes from not thinking about the surrounding water.54 It’s time. Nonetheless, I keep searching. For sounds, lights, for anything beyond nothing. But nothing is all that keeps coming. Or going away. I think of the butterfly, the dream. The story of death being a beautiful life with no thread to the other side, no memory of what came before. It’s not. There is no flight, no wings, no colors. I remember everything and fly nowhere. They lied. The ones who wrote those stories, those who promised to go save me…Everyone.
How about everyone else too? The ancestors, the demons, the immortals? Is death just this, a false promise? You end up for eternity stuck in what may easily be the infinite stomach of a dragon? A sleepy dragon that refuses to swim or even eat anything else?
Time passes.
And passes.
And passes.
And I know because I thought about a lot of things. But how long, I can’t tell. Was it a minute? A month? Hard to know, from inside the belly of this great lizard of nothingness. In the absence of everything, I have only myself to talk to. So I do. It’s not for the first time, anyway.
“Hi, Yinyin.”
“Was it worth it? The pain, the sacrifice?”
“Not sure.”
“You may have saved them all, though.”
“Well, they still have the bots, and mind control.”
“But not the Shadow Leap.”
“That’s something. So why doesn’t it feel good?”
“Because there’s no reward?”
“No. Not that.”
“Because you’ve been lied to?”
“Not that, either. I don’t know if they deserved it.”
“What did you expect?”
“Understanding?”
“You know what I think?”
“Of course, I do. You’re me, remember?”
“Yep. But I’ll tell you, anyway. I think you expected redemption. You feel betrayed.”
“You’re right. Where’s the reward for my sacrifice?”
“You’ve spent too much time in the West. You’re thinking like them now.”
I don’t like this argument. So I stop. Dive deeper into the nothing, or myself, the belly of the dragon.
“Hello, Claudia,” says another voice. That isn’t mine. I think it isn’t, at least. Sounds like Shifu. A memory.
“Wake up,” the voice insists.
Nothing again.
“Wake up.”
“Uh? Shifu? Is that you?”
His chuckle feels so warm.
“Where…what is this?”
“Some people call it the Dao.”
He tells me to open my eyes. Didn’t know I still had them. He insists, but I don’t understand this new mercurial body of mine. He says, “You will remember.”
Lights turn on.
I am covered in blood. Bullet holes that fit a finger. Yet, alive. Should I be freaked out? I recognize the place. The smell of bamboo and wet dirt. The breeze, the light so pink and dry. The sound of the critters of the conglin but louder. And echoed. Yes, the water hole from my family stories. From my dreams of Shifu’s shadow theater, but real. A soft, ghostly version of the place where I grew up, from my fantasies as a little girl. I see them playing beyond the trees, the baby phoenixes and foxes with nine tails. The fire lions and bronze rhinos with horns of lightning. The magnificent dragon horse.
Shifu holds me, helps me stand on my feet. It’s as if I’d never used a muscle in this body. But I’m not hurt anymore. No pain. Even the signs of blood are gone now.
From the top of a large boulder, a monkey observes, curious and quiet.
“A life of yang, a death of yin,” says my master. “Congratulations. Balance, after all.”
He’s been waiting for this moment for a long time. So have I, much as I never wanted to admit it. And I’m glad the darkness is gone.
My eyes fill with water.
“Now we can cross,” says my master.
Cross? I don’t understand. But I don’t say anything.
“Yes, cross the light. I’ve been waiting so we can do it together. Let our spirits join the Dao again, as one.”
Shifu points at a light glowing under the deep part of the river. My Wudang. The river. The mountain afar. The mythical Shadow Monkey watching us. Wu Wei, I think. Do nothing. Think nothing. Just let the Dao be. Everything is so perfect.
“One last step till the end. And the beginning. Of everything.”
“What does that mean?”
“Means we become qi,” he says. “The qi. The thing we are all made from, and eventually return to. Everyone’s strength, gust, and shadow. We go back, and every time a young girl breathes in the energy of the air, an old man summons the strength of the Earth. Anyone on Earth feels the fire flowing through their blood or the metal protecting their limbs, that will be us.”
Us and the ones before us. The enlightened masters from the past. “I am yesterday. You are now, Claudia. We can only be immortal if we become tomorrow.”
I don’t know if I’m ready.
The breeze moves my hair, the sun warms my face. I wonder if that’s by my own command. A farewell. I gaze around. To the sides, back and forth. Up and down.
This is beautiful indeed.
“All we have to do is hold hands and…let go of ourselves.”
“Shifu?”
“Yes, Claudia.”
I bend down. Snap a flower from a bush nearby. Sniff the perfume with my eyes closed. It smells just like I thought it would.
I say, “I don’t get it.”
“Don’t get what?”
“Why did you call me Claudia, Shifu?”
He pauses. Asks what I mean. He knows now.
“You always call me Tigress….”
I squint. Stand up. A triumphant beam.
The floor rumbles and light pours from his pores, melting every inch of skin around them. Like if he was turning into lava. “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!” he yells in agonizing pain. And I watch in pride.
Then a blinding flash; he stops. Quiet.
It takes some time for my sight to adjust back. First the outer edge of the eyes, slowly I regain the center too. Where Master used to be, now is Simon, mocking me, more amused than upset. He knows I won, though. Or so I think.
54. Another essential allegory among Daoists is Zhuangzi’s story about the joy of the fish. Like many of them, the translations rarely bring all the nuances of the original, since they are full of puns and ambiguity. But for those interested, there are lots of careful notes about it in the chapter “The Happy Fish” Hans-Georg Moeller’s Daoism Explained.