Ten Hexagrams

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Young Osho waved his bird-scarer at the empty sky. A task that was dull enough at the best of times, but the crows had all long flown and his presence felt especially pointless.
The furrows of the newly ploughed and seeded field stretched long and brown beneath an equally muddy expanse of cloud. The air from the mountains draped heavy as a woollen cloak.
His father Wen placed a grimy, work-calloused hand upon his shoulder.
“Come, son. A storm is gathering.”
There was a hint of admonishment in his voice. Osho had lived on farmland all his life and should have recognised the signs himself.
They walked together along the straight dirt track towards home. Wen small and dark, strong and silent as a stone. Osho tall and slender, in constant noise and motion, like a breeze blown reed.
There was a sudden loud crack! and brilliant flash. A bolt of lightning struck in the nearby orchard. One of the cherry trees fell, blasted black.
Osho recoiled in fear. He had felt the jolt through the ground. A jagged after-image still formed a split across his vision. The atmosphere fairly crackled and stank of smoke and ozone.
Wen was more phlegmatic. “Thunder at the foot of a fruit tree,” he quoted sagely. “The sign of exceptional growth in summer.”
“Are the gods not angry?” Osho demanded, tremulously.
“On the contrary. The Lord of Lightning himself has stretched out his finger to bless our land.”
Rain began to fall and they hurried to shelter.

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The next day dawned clear, with high sails of cloud scudding across the sea-blue heavens. A welcome freshness as they hauled the fallen tree away to be chopped up for firewood.
Where its roots had broken the ground, there was a rain-washed hollow and two objects were revealed, half buried in mud. Osho uncovered them and carried them home to be cleaned. One was a slim, curved sword, almost as tall as himself. The other, a round cooking pot of glazed pottery banded with metal.
Naturally enough, he was most excited by the sword and worked on it first: carefully wiping the blade clean to reveal its plain, untarnished silver sheen and dangerously keen edge. Its hilt was of intricately carved ivory and would require a great deal of attention to remove all traces of dirt from its finely detailed lines.
Wen busied himself with the pot. With its simpler design and safer curves, it was far easier to clean. Yet it was just as exciting, in its own way. Its handles and banding were revealed to be gold. Its glaze a deep, lustrous, midnight blue, which quietly spoke of quality.

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That afternoon, two horsemen rode onto the farm. Apparently warriors of some renown, as they had been allowed to grow beards to make their aspect more fearsome.
“By order of the Prince,” they announced. “All men of sword-bearing age are to report to the town garrison.”
“My son is but a child,” objected Wen.
“Yet he carries a sword.”
Wen could not argue. It was self-evident.
“What’s happening?” blurted Osho, excited by the prospect of going to town, which was indeed a rare event.
“The storm has caused flooding in the hills. There is intelligence that brigands may descend in search of plunder.”
Osho raised the sword and wielded it with far more enthusiasm than skill, but its blade was so finely balanced that he was able to cut quite impressive figures, while mimicking its swishing noise.
The horsemen rode off laughing.
“We seem to have woken a sleeping dragon.”

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The journey to town turned out to be more arduous than Osho had expected. He started out by marching purposefully and insisted on carrying the sword. But its length became more of a burden as he struggled to stop its point dragging on the path. His shoulders soon began to ache and his feet grew weary.
Wen merely maintained a dogged pace – sometimes behind and more often ahead – and remained a stolid presence round which his son revolved.
Osho’s spirits rose when their path became paved stone and lined on either side by the colourful flutter of prayer flags.
On arrival at the town gates, they were met by a scribe who recorded their names and assigned them bunks in barracks. Osho found new energy and was keen to join the soldiers drilling in full battle armour.
Instead, they were directed to join a gang of other peasants outside the town walls, where they were set to work digging ditches and piling the dirt into defensive palisades.
“This is folly,” declared Wen. “The building of fortifications declares that we have something worth stealing. We are waiting in mud, like pigs to be slaughtered. We should be waiting in blood.”

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The town was built on the shores of Lake Cho. Each day, the lake grew wider as the swollen rivers carried rainwater down from the mountains.
The ditches began to flood and had to be abandoned as they formed a moat around the town and turned it into an artificial island.
Many peasants drowned or were buried under mud-slides.
Osho almost grew used to feeling cold, wet, filthy and miserable. He spent what little time was allowed him on obsessively cleaning his sword. Keeping its blade clear of rust and revealing more of the design on its hilt.
He could discern that it had been shaped to represent two dragons twined round each other.
“Who do you think it belonged to, father?”
Wen took his time replying. Although he was accustomed to hard physical labour, this pointless toil sucked at his spirit as relentlessly as the mud sucked at his feet.
“I think it may be my grandfather’s. He was also called Osho. You are named after him.”
“What was he like?”
“There are stories that he was a great warrior in the Emperor’s army. But he never spoke of it. I just remember him as a quiet, kindly old man who gave me piggy-backs across the fields. I held on to his long, grey hair, which smelled like pipe smoke and summer hay…”

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Weeks passed and the spring rains ceased. It became apparent that no attack was forthcoming.
News began to filter in from the outlying regions that bandits had chosen easier targets. They had raided the undermanned farms, stealing whatever they could and laying waste to what remained. Women had been despoiled, children taken into slavery and old men killed for sport.
Osho and Wen, along with their fellow draftees, were evicted from their barracks and told to return home. The town would need their crops, come harvest time. They had best hurry back to their farms and repair the damage done by their own neglect.
They stood forlorn by Lake Cho, which had been their bane for so long and listened to the peaceful lapping of its wave, the cry of birds, the drone of dragonflies.
Osho felt mocked.
“How can we go back? It is impossible.”
Wen squinted into the reflected shimmer of early summer light.
“My grandfather always used to say: a fire on a lake seems impossible, until you look at a sunset on the water.”

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Osho pointed to the opposite shore of the lake, where the beginnings of a green pasture could be seen.
“What is that far land, father? Is it another country?”
“All lands belong to the Emperor. But it is certainly another province.”
Wen considered their options. Like Osho, he had spent all his life in this one small place. And what had been his reward? Everything that he had once held to be his own had been rendered down to ruin. There was a feeling in his stomach, like standing atop a mountain and staring down into an empty chasm.
“It is said that the plains above a lake are blessed with great fertility,” he ventured.
“I am not sure that I trust your sayings any longer,” Osho replied bluntly. The hard digging of the past few weeks had broadened his shoulders and he had grown more fully into his height.
“Nevertheless.” Wen stepped off the coastal path and started to walk towards the unknown. “Let us approach this task together in the hope of good fortune. Remember that summer must end in the eighth month.”
Osho shouldered his sword, which no longer weighed on him as a burden and fell in step beside his father.

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It was a long trek. Much further than either of them had ever travelled before. Further than either of them had even heard of anyone travelling. The lake seemed endless. The mountains did not diminish. The plains grew no closer.
At last, they came to a road which curved away to the horizon in two directions.
Osho uncovered a marker stone and brushed the moss from its face. He read the ancient script and laughed.
Carved into the stone was the name of their home village and an arrow pointing to the right.
“Is this another portent, father?”
“It is merely a sign, in the literal sense.”
Wen turned left and they continued plodding along the road. At length, they came to a river that fed into the lake and a ramshackle bridge across to the other side.
Its timbers were old and rotten and its whole structure was in disrepair. They crossed cautiously, one at a time, for they feared its creaking planks would not bear the weight of both of them at once.
Thus, they arrived in a new land. Its grass no greener and its air no sweeter – but they were struck by its eerie silence. There were no birds, no animals, no insects to be seen or heard.
Then, the very ground bucked and trembled beneath their feet. With an almighty grind and groan, the earth itself threw them off balance. The bridge collapsed and fell into the river and was washed away in splinters.
“Thunder underground. Now that is what I call a sign.”

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They soon came to a town that sprawled across the verdant plain and appeared to have no need for walls. The people were open and welcoming and they learned from them that plentiful farmland was available. At a price. Commerce ruled this land rather than soldiers.
As they camped out for another night beneath the summer stars, Osho stared despondently into the flames of their cooking fire.
“How can we afford to buy our own farm? It will take us forever to save the money if we work as common labourers. We have no other skills.”
Wen tapped their cooking pot, which rang with the pure note of a temple bell.
“Do you think our food tastes any better because our cooking pot has golden handles?”

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The merchant counted out six silver coins and placed them side-by-side on his counter.
“A fair price, gentlemen, for such a fine piece of craftsmanship. From the Emperor’s personal pottery, if I am any judge. And no questions asked.”
He beamed. It was doubtless worth far more, but they could not prove its provenance. And it was just enough to finance their own smallholding.
Wen looked at the coins. With his eye for symbols, he automatically read the two trigrams they formed: Dragon over Wood. Being carried away.
The merchant focused his attention on Osho.
“And you, young sir. I see you carry a handsome sword. I can offer you an equally generous deal. Set you up as a real man-about-town.”
Osho straightened up under his gaze. Although somewhat unkempt, he had filled out with all his physical exertions and matured with all his mental duress. He now cut something of an imposing figure.
He noticed the merchant’s daughter eyeing him up coquettishly. He could see his whole future unfolding on a map before him: a farm, a wife, a family. Like his father and his father’s father.
Yet, as he grasped the hilt of his sword, he considered the mysterious other life of his great-grandfather.
“A dragon mounted on the wind yields up all power,” quoted Wen.
The merchant frowned. “Is that a yes or a no?”