She Belongs to Them Both

Chapter Two-1

Chapter Two

The sun had set again the next evening before Jie could move again. After devouring the bowl of meat his godfather had given him, he’d spent the night roaming the grassy plain, allowing the compelling moonlight to pull long, plaintive howls from deep inside his being. At the first hints of dawn, he’d returned to the safety of Li’s hut. After the change back into human form, he’d just had enough energy to crawl into his bed and pull the covers up to his chest.

Li must have come in and raised the blind on the window, allowing the dry wind to penetrate Jie’s small room. His godfather had also turned on the small lamp on his bedside table.

Jie rolled onto his back and stared out through the window. The change back had been as excruciating as the change to beast and his entire body felt as if it had been mercilessly stretched on a rack until near breaking, only to be stretched again and again, like some medieval form of torture.

A footfall sounded in the doorway. Jie slowly turned his head toward the noise. The sight of Li, holding a tray with a steaming pot of tea comforted him. Since Jie was a boy, whenever he’d fallen ill, Li had done the same thing. “Thank you, Li sifu.” Jie winced at the way his voice rasped out harshly as if he were just learning how to speak.

Li carried the tray to his bedside and set it on the nightstand. He leaned over and helped Jie to sit up, always surprising Jie with the strength of his seventy-five-year-old frame.

When Jie was leaning back more comfortably against the pillow, Li poured a cup of the tea and held it to his godson’s lips. The old man’s touch alone was healing, giving Jie the strength to lift his hands and take a long sip of tea, knowing Li had let it cool just enough before serving it.

Jie emptied the cup and lay back, exhaling a long breath. Just drinking from a cup had tired him. If he no longer had the inner strength to hold back the change, was he to endure this torture month after month, year after year?

Li took the cup from him and set it on the tray before lowering himself to perch on the edge of the mattress. He looked at Jie, his thoughts practically transparent in his clear brown eyes. The old man’s expression shifted, deepening the wrinkles around his eyes. “Sometimes healing does not mean a cure, Jie. You’re a doctor. You know that.”

Jie nodded. “I do know.” He sat quietly, returning Li’s steady gaze, understanding also the kindness behind his words. “Does this have to do with what you have to tell me?”

Li nodded. A faraway look came into his eyes. “In Tibet, the rinpoches and lamas are found using the stars.”

Jie furrowed his brow. Li had told him this many years ago when he’d taken him to see the nearby Labrang monastery. It was the most important Buddhist temple in Tibet, next to the Potala, where His Holiness the Dalai Lama had resided before he was forced to flee the Communist regime. Thankfully, it was one of the few monasteries the Chinese government had let stand, intact.

A moment of concern for Li’s mental health weighed on him. Why was the old man telling him something he already knew?

“The stars will tell anyone his destiny. Anyone who asks,” Li said.

Jie sighed in relief. Li was an expert astrologist. “Have you asked the stars something?”

His godfather nodded again. “I’ve been worried for you, my son. I needed to know your destiny.”

Jiu experienced a wave of self-pity, something he’d been vulnerable to since the days when his parents would leave him with Li for long periods of time while they taught in Beijing. Since he’d been bitten, Jie already had a sense of his destiny, to fight off the curse of transformation from man to beast each month. He felt a newfound respect for women’s suffering, for what it was like for them, knowing that each month they would bleed. Month after month. Year after year.

Only his was a lifetime curse that didn’t end after a certain age. He strained against succumbing to the crippling emotion of self-pity, if only out of respect for his teacher.

“Jie, there is a woman for you.” Li’s soft voice cut into Jie’s thoughts.

Jie looked up. A woman. The mere word sent sparks of energy into his limbs. To his chagrin, his groin tightened, as if imbued with a life of its own. He hadn’t been with a woman since Su Lin had divorced him. With the exception of the female patients he treated, he’d stayed away from women after that painful breakup. His heart couldn’t have borne having another woman growing to detest him because of his sympathy for the Tibetan people and he’d dealt with loneliness by throwing himself into his medical practice. That is, until he’d been bitten out on the prairie three years ago and had gone into hiding in his boyhood home.

“She is meant for you, Jie.”

He looked at Li. “How could that be, sifu? How could a woman know about…my curse…and want me?”

“The stars don’t lie, son. We lie to ourselves.”

Jie sighed. He wanted to tell Li to ignore what he’d learned. He wanted to tell him to let the subject die. But he couldn’t. Not only could he not say such a thing to Li, his venerated godfather and teacher but truthfully, Li’s pronouncement had begun to unleash his desire. As much as he wanted to suppress nature, he could not. The word woman and all that it meant had embedded itself inside him as soon as Li had spoken it. “Sifu, where is she?”

Li rose slowly from the bed. He trudged to Jie’s desk and pulled his atlas from the shelf of books on the wall above the desk. He returned to the bed and sat back down, opening the book on his lap.

Jie watched the old man turn page after page, stopping only when he’d reached the United States of America. His heart began to pound. He’d been to England for medical conferences. He had even studied English and spoke it passably well. But he’d never been to America.

Neither had Li, though a childhood friend with whom he’d spent his youth in a Shaolin monastery before the Communists took over, had emigrated to America. The boy, Chen Lem Kin, had family who owned a market in Boston’s Chinatown since the turn of the twentieth century. Li had often spoken of the pranks he and Chen pulled in the monastery. Ironically, it had been one of Li’s astrological charts that had advised Chen to go to America to find his future wife and make his fortune.

“Here, si zi.” Li moved his index finger across the page and stopped on Massachusetts. Boston. He tapped the spot several times. “She is there. In Chinatown. The prediction is that you will know her by smooth ivory, deep jade and golden silk.”

Immediately, confusion clouded Jie’s mind. “Li sifu, how will I find her that way when I can’t see colors?” Since being bitten, he could only see in black and white, as if the entire world were colored the same shades of black, white and grays as an old movie.

Li shook his head. His wrinkles deepened as he smiled. “If the Tibetans could find His Holiness the Dalai Lama by the stars, so you will find her.” His smile suddenly faded and he lifted his hand from the book and grasped Jie’s forearm. “You must go soon, si zi. You must accept your gift, or someone else will.”

Jie’s heart lurched. “Someone else?”

Li nodded. “Another lang ren. Not here in China. But he will go to her and take her.” His eyes darkened. “Not good for her.”

A chill snaked up Jie’s spine. One thing he knew for certain, Li did not make up stories. If he said there was a woman for him in America, she was there. If Li said she could be in trouble, it was true. As much as Jie had wanted to hide from the world, he couldn’t now and he knew it. Life had been bound sooner or later to force him out of hiding. He’d spent much of his adult life healing others. Even if the idea of having a mate hadn’t reawakened his desires, he knew he’d go to help another human being in trouble. Li had always been there for him. Honoring the knowledge Li was giving him now was the least he could do.

He nodded. “I’ll go, of course.”

Li squeezed his arm. “Go soon.”

“My papers are in order. I can leave tomorrow.”

The old man heaved a deep sigh and loosened his grip on Jie’s arm. “You’re a good son, Jie. Don’t forget. Smooth ivory. Deep jade. Golden silk.”

“I won’t forget, sifu.”

Li nodded and reached over to pour another cup of tea for Jie.

Jie lay back against the pillows. Already, new strength infused him. Though he didn’t understand the words and couldn’t see the colors, all the same, they roused his deepest desires.

He hadn’t even met her yet. She was still on the other side of the earth from him.

Yet he wanted her.