Shuli Go Stories Vol. 5: The Two Keepers

Part 16

Quan heard the bang of the pistol firing and jumped just like everyone else. He had a half-second of confusion and fear, just like everyone else. But he wasn't scared for his mother or Fen, and he closed his eyes to return to his meditation before Lian emerged to shoo everyone away. He knew his mother wasn't going to come all this way just to get killed the night before a battle. He'd watched her go in there and thought that some sort of sparks would fly, though gunsparks were not quite what he'd had in mind.

Most of the villagers were too scared or nervous to fall asleep. The few that had taken his mother's suggestion and drank a bowl or two of wine were in the best shape, but even they tossed and turned in their sleep. Quan knew he wouldn't be able to sleep – he'd aim to get a few hours in before sunrise – so he'd forced his mind into meditation. Just like when Palden had been whipping him a few days earlier, meditation brought Quan to a mental place where things like hunger, pain, or not having slept for forty hours, were distant nuisances.

Usually he could stay in that mental space for hours, oblivious to the outside world. Usually.

As he sat cross-legged next to some of the unconscious but restless villagers, he could sense every one of their rustled movements: every scratch, every turn, every sigh and snore. And each one met him on his plane of mindfulness, disturbing the quietude he could usually hold close. He tried pushing further into himself, centering his breathing and reciting the mantra the Keepers had taught him. But nothing worked. Every whisper from across the network of caves magnified and slammed into his exhausted brain like a blacksmith's hammer, forging louder, stronger steel.

He'd encountered those kinds of distractions before, but never with so much exhaustion hanging over him, burning through him. It wasn't the physical exhaustion – he'd had practice managing that – it was the emotional drain of the past few days. The excitement of setting off, the terror of the first meeting with the bandits. Hearing about his mother beating a relatively innocent man. Fen.

His eyes snapped open and he stood up out of the meditative pose, all hint of patience gone. He set off for a walk away from the camp, north up the gash in the earth, the rage of failure setting his heart to tremble. He left the din of the camp behind him and enjoyed the cool night air on his face. It urged him awake but also to calm, the free flow of it achieving what the stale, windless sweep of the campsite had denied him – a reminder of his place in the larger world.

Those were the two dilemmas of Tiendu Shu life: to find the universe in one's self, and to find one's own place in the universe. The monks taught that the two were the same, that spiritual truths would illuminate the social worries that plagued each and every human being.

Quan had always found truth in those teachings, even beauty. When his mother had left him when he was a child – every year around the same time, abandoning him to people whose love felt conditional at best – he'd found wisdom in meditation, in striving inwards. And when he'd grown older and developed a better appreciation for Lian's situation, he'd reflected his own discoveries of who and what he was back upon her. That was how he'd forgiven her for all the tearful goodbyes and resentment. He'd found a vacuum somewhere beyond conscious existence where he could release all the hatred he'd felt towards her, and in doing so, he'd finally seen just how much love she'd had for him. Love enough to come back every year, around the same time, despite the poverty she endured or the toll the travel took on her every year. Forgiveness was what he discovered, inside and out.

But Fen seemed incapable of forgiveness, and that, more than anything else, tore at him. He couldn't sleep, not because of the bandits the next day, but because of the night before. The rush of feelings, the terrifying embarrassment of having so incorrectly judged her, of that shift from li – love – to terror as she pressed the knife into him. He'd felt his body alight with wonderful new senses, and then tremble at its own fragility, all in one short sweep of time. And yet still, when he thought of her, he thought she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. And that confused him more than any type of meditation could possibly fix.