Chapter One: The Scaffold

Standing on the scaffold, Wang Erlang gazed up at the flying apsara painted on the wall and let out a soft breath of relief. It was the first time his master had let him complete a cave's apsara mural entirely on his own — before, he had always worked alongside his fellow apprentices and other painters on the Buddha images together. This time, his master had finally entrusted him with painting every single apsara in this newly carved grotto in Shazhou.

It was the proudest moment since he had begun his apprenticeship. He worked with the utmost diligence and care, fearful that the smallest slip would betray his master's expectations. Through countless days and nights he had labored by lamplight, and as the scaffold rose level by level, today he was finally nearing completion. The higher the apsara flew across the wall, the higher his scaffold climbed to follow it. Looking down now from this height, he remembered how his legs used to tremble at the mere sight of the scaffold when he'd first begun; now, climbing it and painting at such heights felt as easy as walking on level ground. Before much longer, he would be able to fulfill what his master had entrusted to him.

Without quite realizing it, he had grown rather pleased with himself.

The brush in his hand — that was the distance between the scaffold and the apsara. Though his brushes varied in length and thickness, as the apsara gradually took on its full, complete form, he felt himself drawing ever closer to her.

He ate a hasty lunch, ground a little more mineral azurite, added some malachite green and cinnabar, and climbed back up the scaffold. He was only halfway up when he glimpsed, faintly, a young woman sitting at the edge of the platform at the top, her two legs swinging back and forth. The sight gave Wang Erlang quite a start.

"Whose daughter are you? Climbing up so high? It's dangerous — come down at once." Everyone had been busy with their own work moments before, and with the lamplight so dim, no one had noticed anyone climb the scaffold.

He heard the young woman reply, unhurried and at ease, "It's fine. I'm used to it."

"You're used to it?" Wang Erlang was a little taken aback. But then again, there was no shortage of painters working in the caves, coming and going in waves — he couldn't possibly know them all. Perhaps she was the daughter of one of the painters, so accustomed to following her father in and out of the caves that climbing up and down was simply routine to her.

"Why climb so high?" Wang Erlang asked.

"To watch you paint the apsara, of course!" The young woman swung her legs again.

"You understand this sort of thing?"

Wang Erlang was half-doubtful. Looking at her, she seemed barely to have come of age — how could she possibly understand such things, unless some painter relation of hers had long steeped her in it? So he asked, in particular, "Well then, what do you think of my painting?"

"It doesn't look right," the young woman said, shaking her head.

Note: Shazhou is present-day Dunhuang.