The Ring of Water - Chris Bradford [11]
He turned to the altar and began babbling some incomprehensible prayers. Jack quickly gathered the monk was mad. Otherwise he seemed relatively harmless, so Jack saw no reason to wake Ronin.
All of a sudden, the monk seized Jack’s wrist.
‘My, my, my! What an interesting life!’ he proclaimed, running a dirty fingernail along the lines of Jack’s palm.
Jack tried to pull his hand away, but the monk was remarkably strong.
‘Don’t you want to be told what the future may hold?’ the monk admonished.
Reluctantly, Jack allowed the man to study his hand. Arguing with a lunatic would get him nowhere. The monk’s bulging eyes widened even more and there were numerous coos of surprise, sighs of woe and fits of giggles as he read Jack’s palm.
‘What have you seen?’ Jack asked, curious in spite of himself.
The monk looked up, a deadly serious expression on his face. ‘You seek more than you have, young samurai,’ he answered, his voice grave and low. ‘Know this! What you find is lost. What you give is given back. What you fight is defeated. And what you want is sacrificed.’
Jack stared at the monk, utterly bewildered. ‘What does any of that mean?’
‘What lies behind us and what lies before are tiny matters compared to what lies within us,’ he replied, letting go of Jack’s wrist. ‘Other hand.’
Sighing, Jack offered his left hand in which he held the green silk amulet, hoping for a more lucid answer.
‘The Great Buddha’s omamori!’ the monk exclaimed in delight. ‘Did you climb through his nose, or just bow down before his toes?’
Though Jack had no idea what the man was talking about, he was thrilled to discover the monk recognized the amulet. ‘You know whose this is?’
‘That I do! It’s the Great Buddha’s,’ replied the monk, smiling broadly to reveal a toothless mouth.
‘Do you know where he is?’ Jack demanded.
The monk nodded. ‘From here he’s neither near nor far.’
Jack tried to keep calm in the face of the monk’s infuriating riddles. ‘In which direction?’
‘If you went backwards, it would be Aran.’
The monk was making no sense to Jack. Desperation getting the better of him, he asked, ‘Can you guide me there?’
Jumping to his feet, the monk pirouetted on the spot and raised his parasol of leaves. ‘Do not walk behind me, for I may not lead. Do not walk ahead, for I may not follow.’
Jack realized it would be a futile expedition to go with this crazed man. ‘At least point me in the right direction.’
The monk laughed. ‘Riddle me this, young samurai! What is greater than God, more evil than the Devil? Poor people have it, rich people need it, and if you eat it you’ll die. Tell me this and I shall give it to you.’
Jack thought hard. At the Niten Ichi Ryū, Sensei Yamada had often set his class koan riddles – testing questions to focus on while meditating. Although familiar with the mindset required to answer such conundrums, Jack was never the best at these mental tests. How he wished his friend Yori was with him now. That boy could figure out any koan. But Jack’s head was too clouded and confused for meditation and no answer came to mind.
‘I don’t know,’ replied Jack in frustration.
‘Come, fish, don’t give up so easily! Your soul’s not beat until you next meet me!’
With that, the Riddling Monk danced off into the pouring rain.
6
THE RING OF WATER
Jack sat staring at the bend in the path where the crazed man had disappeared, questioning whether he’d seen the monk at all. The encounter had been so bizarre as to be unbelievable. Having already lost his memory, Jack convinced himself the monk was no more than a figment of his fevered imagination – a combination of fatigue, stress and lack of food.
The amulet in his hand was real enough, though. And the pain he felt was all too real. Then he noticed the footprints in the mud, heading towards the forest. They weren’t his or Ronin’s. They could only belong to the Riddling Monk. The rain was falling even harder now, rapidly washing away the evidence. But at least Jack knew he wasn’t going mad.
Only dead