Hymn For a Lost Pilgrim
I: Friend of Fools
Yotan was sharing his bacon with highwaymen.
It hadn’t been his dinner plan for the evening. But then again precious few plans he made on the Jao had worked out just how he wished. The unexpected had a way of sneaking up on you out here, just as these bandits had snuck up on him and his party and clubbed them into submission before they even knew they were surrounded. Now his companions sat bound and shivering across the clearing, while he warmed himself by the fire and poked at some sizzling bacon on a flat stone with his walking stick.
“It was very kind of you to offer to cook for us,” the leader of the highwaymen was saying. “We haven’t had meat in weeks.”
“Isn’t there an inn just up the way?” Yotan said, gesturing with his stick. “I was told they have a fish stew that’ll warm your bones for just a penny.”
“Aye,” said the bandit. “But we have a bit of a reputation around here now. And that place harbors marshals.”
Yotan clucked his tongue empathetically, fishing a strip of bacon off of the stone and dumping it onto someone’s proffered bowl. “I will make sure to taste the stew for you.”
“You and what money?”
Yotan’s eyes widened. He had already told them he was penniless, and a thorough search had shown him to be so. He couldn’t tell whether the question was asked in suspicion or jest.
“Oh you know us pilgrims, I’ll just beg a coin off of the next traveler I see. You and I aren’t so different, sir.”
The bandit laughed uproariously, a booming bellow that sent a nearby flock of birds scattering. “Oh, you’re funny. You know, it’s a good thing the Jao is so expensive to walk so you all bring lots of money with you for us to take!” He descended into more laughter, the other bandits joining in. Yotan thought he could hear the captives groaning.
“Doesn’t it give you pause,” began Yotan after the merriment died down. “To cause such suffering for these simple folk? They have done no evil to deserve this. All they have done is walk a road of faith.”
“You are a beggar pilgrim,” said the bandit. “You are not like them. We leave you be, see?” He gestured at Yotan’s comfortable seat near the fire and at their huddled mass. “But those others, they must be rich if they can leave their life behind to walk a holy path and pay for fish stew all the way along.” He jangled the coin purses that he had confiscated from the other pilgrims for emphasis. “In this perfectly still and balanced world of ours a man can only get rich by making another poor. It was either this or breaking our backs in a stone quarry until we fall over dead. Better the rich pilgrims help us out than we poor quarrymen help them out, right?”
Yotan shrugged. “I think you didn’t touch me because I’m not worth any ransom, and then I offered to cook my bacon for you. Not because I’m a beggar.”
The bandit’s smile faded. “Of course it sounds less highminded when you put it like that.”
Yotan became aware that he was criticizing a band of armed outlaws that had him surrounded. He busied himself prodding the bacon. “You have my thanks in any case,” he said. “I will be out of your hair in the morning and you can be sure the marshals won’t hear a word from me.” He winced as soon as the sentence came out of his mouth. It would have been better to not put that thought in their minds!
“Tell the marshals whatever you’d like. They know we’re here. They get a cut.” The mischievous laughter started up again from the assemblage.
Yotan let out an exasperated sigh. “Well then why don’t you go have some fish stew when you want?” These bandits really weren’t the brightest.
“We pay the marshals. Not the innkeeper, not the patrons. They can’t be seen with us. We have a reputation, remember?”
Yotan felt very embarrassed. It was he who was the dull one here. ”Ah, this is why you are a good bandit and I a good pilgrim.” They all chuckled once more.
Content that he had curried enough favor to make it through the night with his throat unslit, he announced he was going to sleep and the rest of the bacon was ready to eat. The bandits shoved each other as they tried to pick the strips off of the hot stone, cursing as they burned their hands repeatedly. Nobody thought to use a stick as he had been doing for the past hour. Yotan rolled his eyes as he spread his mat. Maybe their leader was indeed sharp, but the rest of them left something to be desired.
II: Yet Polite
Yotan gazed at the brushwork on the wooden sign. Donkey teahouse. He grimaced as he shed his sandals and clambered up onto the porch. What sort of self-respecting proprietor named their business “Donkey teahouse”? These country folk never ceased to vex him.
He slid the paper door open and crawled in. These sort of roadside inns were always so squat you couldn’t stand up in them, so you would locomote by shuffling and crawling to your table or mattress. The squatting owner let out a distracted greeting as he tended to his pot of famous fish stew.
Yotan scanned the dark and smoky room. There were the usual toothless peasants getting in their morning liquor before a long day in the rice fields. And seated in the corner, there they were, two athletic men with trimmed mustaches. Their swords were perched against the wall as they smoked their long pipes, filling the room with a searing haze.
“Ah, you look like a pilgrim,” said the owner, turning from his pot. “Just the stew today, I presume? Shame you didn’t get here before nightfall, I had a premium mattress available that I would’ve given you for cheap.”
“Kind sir, those two are marshals are they not?” Yotan pointed at the smoking men. “Why are they in here and not patrolling the roads?”
“You begrudge a working man his smoke break?” the owner grumbled. “You pilgrims are always so uppity. Not all of us can afford to go sightseeing. Sometimes a smoke is the only pleasure awaiting you for the day. Just give me the penny already.”
Yotan swatted his grasping hand away. “I don’t want your stew. I already ate.”
“Well then get the hell out, will you? This is a business, not a monastery!”
The commotion had drawn the attention of everyone in the room, even the reclining marshals. Yotan waved his hand at them.
“You two! Me and my friends were robbed not an hour’s walk from here! There is a great band of highwaymen camped out near the south bridge, where the pines are. I barely escaped with my life. Come now and you can catch them!”
The marshals sat silent for a moment. Yotan hid his smile. They may be on a payroll, but just as the bandit leader had said: the patrons weren’t.
“You’re a crazed man,” said the younger one with unmasked disdain. “You’re half-starved and taken with religious fervor. We will not go walking with you. What if it is you that is the robber?”
Yotan let out an exasperated laugh. He spread his robe, showing himself bare chested and unarmed. “I’m going to rob two of Lord Toshi’s marshals? What purpose do you serve if you fear even a half-starved pilgrim?”
“Silence, swine!” the other barked. “You dare to speak to your betters in such a manner? Be on your way before I run you through.”
“Hold on now,” piped up one of the peasants. “I need to walk south today to fetch my ox. And you’re not even gonna look? What if they’re still there? This is the third time we’ve heard about them!”
Emboldened by the first protest, the other peasants began talking over each other, demanding the marshals investigate. Yotan smiled and turned back to the owner.
“I apologize for being short with you earlier,” he said over the din. “Where is the temple from here?”
“Oh, er—there are steps on the right side of the road another hour on. They lead up to the far face of the mountain.”
The peasants were standing (as well as they could) from their tables and surrounding the marshals now, jabbing their fingers in their faces and cursing their mothers.
“It’s been a pleasure. Hope I’ll get to try the stew on the way back.” He slipped back out onto the porchside and dropped onto his sandals. Maybe if he was lucky the half-drunk peasants would form a mob and all go down to the camp together.
III: Without Guile
Yotan sat on the top step, catching his breath. The view was indescribable. The tree-choked valley bathed in a diffuse evening fog, the orange sun rays bouncing off of the suspended water droplets gave everything a warm glow. He could hear rushing water, reminding him just how dreadfully thirsty he was.
“Just one today?” croaked a gravely voice from behind him. “I heard there was a large party on their way.”
“Those were mine,” said Yotan, massaging the callouses on his feet. “They were temporarily indisposed. It is my hope they will be up here tomorrow or the day after.”
“But you not indisposed, are you?” the old monk quipped. “You look quite unindisposed.”
Yotan gave a tight smile. “Yes, quite disposed. I hope you have rice in there.”
The monk chuckled. “We haven’t quite meditated past the need for food yet. I hope you have coin on you, we have a special guest.”
Yotan sighed. Special guests in need of coin were rarely good news. He laboriously heaved himself off of the step and followed the monk into the soft glow of the temple hall.
The other monks were already seated around a mat, eating rice and joking with each other. It was always a coinflip whether a temple would be staffed by the solemn type or the merry type. These ones seemed particularly merry.
They looked up as the two entered. “Only one tonight? You are a poor fisher of men indeed!” one said. They let out a flurry of greetings and jokes as Yotan seated himself at the mat and had a bowl of rice placed in front of him.
“So, who is the special guest?” he asked around a mouthful of rice. “No offense, but these monks look standard issue.”
“Well, Kobada always dines alone. Maybe she doesn’t like our stench—”
Yotan sucked a grain of rice into his windpipe. His eyes bulged as he slammed his fist onto his chest, finally expelling it through his nose.
“Kobada?” he gasped between hacking coughs. “The same Kobada who—”
“Yes,” the old monk said, slapping him on the back. “If you have five on you she will read your fortune.”
Yotan flew to his feet, his earlier weariness evaporated. He rushed over to the entrance and grabbed his right sandal, prised open a small compartment in the heel, and shook the coins into his hand.
“What was it? Five?”
“Yes, but you can’t enter in such a fit. You’ll upset her.”
“Some enlightened one she is if a single pilgrim is enough to set her off! Where is she? Never mind I’ll find her.” Yotan slipped on his sandals and stomped back out, right into a puddle. A late summer rain had began.
He wandered up the temple complex path, dodging puddles in the fading light. He saw the main shrine, the general quarters, a reception hall for more honorable guests than himself, the well. And then at the terminus of the path, there it was. Some sort of lodge on stilts with a wraparound porch. He climbed up, slipped off his sandals, and knelt next to the sliding paper door, sliding it open just a crack.
“Mistress Kobada?”
Nothing. Then a faint wisp of a voice. “Yes?”
“I am a pilgrim come from afar to see you. I hoped I could have the honor of your advice.”
“Come in.”
Yotan shuffled into the lodge. It was even smokier than the inn from earlier. A single brazier set into the floor was heaped with glowing coals, casting an unsettling amber light across the woman. She looked almost skeletal, her colorful robe hanging loosely against her gray wrinkled skin. She was sitting cross legged on the far side of the brazier, her bowl of rice untouched.
“What is your name, pilgrim?”
“Yotan. Of the Dae Canton.”
“What advice do you seek?”
Yotan shuffled up to her, bowing and placing the coin at her feet with both of his hands, and then shuffled back to his side of the brazier. “I hoped to know what lies in my immediate future.”
She let out a sharp, single snort. “More walking and more temples, I suppose.”
“I seek something on the Jao.”
“As do we all.”
“Please, I need to know if I will find it.”
She let her eyelids droop down and licked her teeth. As soon as they were fully shut, her slumped posture snapped into a perfect upright stance, as if she’d become young again. She began to speak in an otherworldly tone, singsongy and cacophonous.
“I see that you carry a heavy burden, Yotan of the Dae Canton. You served your master well, but all was not well in your own household.”
“Never mind that!” Yotan hissed. “The future, not the past!”
“Your wife,” Kobada continued, “she loved another. And you killed her for it.”
“It was my right!”
“The old masters did not think it so. You learned the teachings of the Eldest and it gave you pause. Perhaps some absolution was in order. Perhaps it could be found on the Jao.”
“The future! Did I pay you to tell me what I already know?”
“There is a man you seek here. The erstwhile lover who stole her from you. Your lord had him exiled and you took his wife for your own but you are still not satisfied.”
“Yes! Do I find him?”
She cocked an eyebrow and opened one of her eyes. He shuddered as her enormous black pupil bore into him.
“What will you do with him when you do find him?”
Yotan opened his mouth but nothing came out.
“I can only tell a future that is certain,” Kobada sighed. “And you are not. You relentlessly seek this man like a bloodhound yet you do not know what to do when you catch him. I can only tell you that he is nearer than you think.”
Yotan stammered, searching for a response. “I, uh, thank you Mistress. Thank you.”
“Yotan, I wish to warn you about those who embark on the Jao with impure heart. When I look within you, all I see is contradictions. You have observed every rite. You have done your thousand acts of kindness and then washed them away with a thousand acts of callousness. You left your traveling party in the hands of outlaws!”
“I only met them a week ago! And besides, I sent help after them.”
“But you yourself could not stay lest your trail runs cold. This is not the way that was taught to you. A man is a man, even if you’ve known him for an hour. You are forsaking your duties at home and to God just to silence some hateful voice within you, when you could be learning to find Quiet within, as I have.”
“I will never be like you.”
The wise woman snorted again. “That much is for sure. Complete the Jao, for your own soul’s sake. Or die trying. But don’t just return home once you’ve gotten what you’ve wanted, or you’ll find that old voice replaced with a much less pleasant one.”
Yotan couldn’t imagine a less pleasant voice than what he already endured daily. But Kobada had began to eat her rice. His time was up. He crawled out of the lodge and back into the rain.
IV: With Spite
“Have you ever known a lost one?” said the monk, peering through his glasses at the book.
“Huh?” Yotan was jolted out of his reverie. “A lost what?”
“Pilgrim, of course.” The monk touched his brush to the page, tracing a surreally perfect circle. Yotan could never get used to seeing them do that.
“How would I meet a lost pilgrim if I stay on the road? And how does one get lost anyway, there are signs everywhere!”
The monk glanced at Yotan over his spectacles. “I took you for a thinker. Are you playing dense on purpose? Pilgrims get lost in their mind, in their heart. Their feet walk the road but their soul ambles home and has tea and waits for the body to return.”
“Can’t say I’ve ever met someone with their soul out to tea. Don’t know how’d I tell in any case.” Yotan gazed out the doorway onto the temple complex. Morning had broken, but the rain still hadn’t let up. Everything looked a lot drearier than when he had arrived.
“You can sometimes tell from their book. They will be missing entries. Forgivable at times, but never a good sign.”
“Well, you would say that. You’re the one that collects the fee for drawing your little circle.”
The monk glanced at him again. “These fees are close to the only income the temples have, pilgrim. Without the book, the Jao wouldn’t exist.”
“Then charge us a fee to enter the gate, or to pray at the shrine! Why make me carry this book and watch you all play calligrapher?”
The monk sighed and placed down the brush. “You’ve been ill-mannered since you first entered this sacred place. I don’t know how you made it this far without it being to explained to you, but we holy men are usually afforded a certain reverence for the services we render. Now if you’re having doubts about whether the Jao is for you, then you should let your feet carry you back home to rejoin your soul for tea. The most difficult portion still lies ahead. But don’t make me listen to you prattle on about whys and hows when I’m trying to paint!”
Yotan flushed with embarrassment. He was used to the monks praising him for his exceptional courtesy, not upbraiding him.
“Of course, you are right. I am sorry. Kobada’s telling put me in a foul mood.”
“She tends to do that to people who rush in on her like you did. Maybe you should meditate by the top of the waterfall. You have a long journey ahead of you to the next stop and your mind must be strong if you are to endure the hardships to come.”
Yotan had spoken with enough monks over the past year to know that was an order, not a suggestion. Letting out a sigh he heaved himself to his feet, donned his sandals, and had the monk point him toward the waterfall.
Meditating was his worst skill as a pilgrim. He could walk just fine, and beg with perfect humility, and fast for days, and render acts of kindness like a saint of old. He even memorized the hymns faster than the others. But sitting perfectly still, alone with the voice. That, he despised.
Still—he thought as he trudged toward the waterfall—he needed time to think about what Kobada had told him. It was true he didn’t know what he would do when he found his cuckold. The Jao pilgrimage had been more than just a pretense. He had truly changed along the way. He had learned a way of loving every man he met, even the most despicable and corrupt and tyrannical. Even the bandits who took his bacon. He simply did not know if that love would hold strong face to face with Jora.
Jora had taken her from him. But after months of trudging along dusty roads, that hateful voice had began to ask him something new: Why weren’t you worthy of her loyalty?
It was a fair question. He was a man of blood and steel. The darkness he had faced in his lord’s service, the things he had done and seen, they were inescapable. They haunted his daydreams and his nightmares. The only time he truly felt at peace was when he was drunk beyond all reason. He hadn’t been a good husband. He hadn’t really been a husband at all. After all that, why would she remain loyal?
And then, when it had all come out, he did to her what he had done to so many others. He took her head and sent her to an outlaw’s grave. Why had he done that! Why had he removed the only one whose forgiveness he sought, before he had found the Eldest, before he had walked the Jao! Now she was beyond his reach, and he wished nothing more than to be weeping at her feet and begging her forgiveness instead of sitting next to this deafening waterfall.
The laws were wrong. It was foolish to kill an adulterous wife. It robbed her soul of redemption and your soul of closure.
The waterfall really was quite loud. It crashed and burbled down the sheer cliff. How could anyone concentrate with this din?
“Ho, fellow traveler.” Yotan started at the greeting. He thought he was the only pilgrim here? He looked up across the stream that fed the waterfall. A completely nude man was waist deep, scrubbing himself, giving a cheerful wave. He stopped abruptly when their eyes met.
“Jora?” Yotan yelled. “Is it really you?”
A cloud of terror passed over the bather’s face. He scrambled up onto the opposite bank, reached into his pile of clothes and produced a short sword, like what a bandit would wield. In that time Yotan had leapt to the opposite bank.
“You stay back!” Jora yelled in a quivering voice, holding the sword at the ready. “I don’t want to spill your blood in this sacred place but I will do what I must.”
Yotan grinned. “You think that little thing will stop me? I could knock you off this cliff, or drown you, or bash your skull in with a rock. It would be so easy.”
“Then I’ll see you in hell, Yotan. But I think I’ll be looking down. She loved me, not you.”
Yotan’s shoulders slumped and his grin faded. “I know. That was why it hurt.”
“I heard from some frontrunners that you were on the Jao. Why didn’t you catch up to me sooner? You could have just skipped a shrine and waited for me at the next temple.”
Yotan shrugged, avoiding eye contact. “I suppose I was hoping you’d run scared and I could complete it myself. And God would take this hate from my heart. That was my wish. I know you’re not supposed to tell anyone, but that was it.”
Jora lowered the sword. “It was mine, too. I just want to come home.”
Yotan grimaced. “That’s never happening. I’m only here at our lord’s pleasure. He told me to finish you off. He knows you carry secrets.”
Jora glanced around, then lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Then cut my braid. Take a bit of scalp with it. Go in peace. Let me finish this and build a new life.” He flipped the sword around so he was holding it by the blade and offered the handle. “I can already see the Jao has changed you. Let it finish its work. A log half carved—”
“—is uglier than a log uncarved.” Yotan grasped the sword. Jora turned about and held his braid taut.
“Just a little bit of scalp, please.”
Yotan could not believe it. How could this man go from trembling in fear to turning his back to him so quickly? How could he trust one who had pursued him for so long?
Yotan raised the blade up. He could take his head. The arm was in the way, but a strong enough strike would cleave through the arm and the neck. It would all be over. The voice would go silent. Then he could trudge the rest of the way down the Jao and wish for forgiveness instead.
He expertly sliced the blade. Jora let out a shriek as the patch of scalp ripped away, leaving the braid in his hand. He dropped it, clutching both hands to his skull, and dove into the stream.
“Mu, lord of this stream, heal us with your cleansing water,” he chanted breathlessly. “Wash away our pain and our sin and make us whole.” A tiny viscous streak of red blood snaking from his head wound its way down the stream and over the edge of the waterfall, tumbling far down and crashing on the rocks.
Yotan stabbed the blade into soft riverbank and buried his head in his hands. Killing Jora would not bring her back. But sparing him hadn’t either.
“Why don’t you come in?” Jora said. “Mu’s water is cold but it is very cleansing.”
Yotan didn’t look up. “I thought sparing you would silence the hate. But it hasn’t. I still want to kill you as much as before.”
“Ah,” said Jora, heaving himself back up onto the riverbank. “But you didn’t, given the chance. What is in your heart does indeed matter, but it is what your hands do that shows who you truly are. That is why the Jao is so long. There is no abrupt moment of catharsis and enlightenment like in the stories. Only a slow slog of lessons and tiny changes. Then you emerge a new man.”
Yotan was not in the mood for a religious lecture. He was thinking of his shaking wife kneeling in front of him to accept his blade. “You were foolish to turn your back on me. Don’t make that mistake again, or I cannot promise you it will end the same.”
Jora smiled sheepishly. “Well, I have seen Kobada yesterday. She told me that Mu would protect me. When I remembered her promise, my fear left.”
Yotan trembled with rage. He had spared this man because of his inexplicable act of trust and forgiveness, but now it was all because of some nonsense prophecy?
“Don’t let me see you on this road again, Jora. Frontside or backside. I will spare you today, but I may never forgive you.”
Jora smiled and slapped him on the back. “Don’t be such a fatalist. You’ve already moved past the man who would kill me on sight, and you’re only halfway done!”
The flesh on his back felt aflame where that adulterer had touched him. Jora hadn’t shown him even an ounce of remorse. He could not take this one second longer. His hand closed around the sword hilt. Jora’s eyes widened as they followed his motion. Both men leapt to their feet and took a step backward from each other.
“Don’t do this. A murder on the Jao is unconscionable.”
“This is not murder. It is your sentence.”
Yotan raised the sword and let out his war cry. Jora spun and kicked his leg out, striking Yotan in the back as he prepared to deliver the killing blow. Yotan lost his footing on the soft riverbank and dove headfirst into the stream.
It was perfectly silent underwater. Yotan closed his eyes. Perfectly black, too. Like he was floating in the void. For the first time in a while, the hateful voice was gone. Was this the Quiet? Had Mu washed him clean? Maybe when he came back up, Jora would be gone too, and it would all be over.
He didn’t want the silence to end, but he could feel his lungs growing desperate for air. He lingered for as long as he could before he finally surfaced. Immediately his ears were buffeted by the crashing of the waterfall, louder than he remembered. He wiped the water from his eyes. Jora was far upstream from him.
“I forgive you! May God do the same!” Jora cried over the growing roaring sound. Yotan’s placid mood vanished. Jora was forgiving him? He was not the adulterer!
These were the enlightened thoughts that occupied him as the current carried him to the waterfall.