Chapter Two: Doesn't Look Right

"Doesn't look right?" Wang Erlang felt a flicker of inexplicable irritation. He had followed his master's every teaching scrupulously, refining each stroke without the slightest slackening — what could a mere slip of a girl possibly know about whether an apsara looked right or not?

"What doesn't look right about it?" Fearing he might frighten the young woman, Wang Erlang swallowed his displeasure and tried to keep his tone gentle as he asked again.

"The ribbons, the posture, the spirit of it — none of it looks right," the young woman answered earnestly.

"How would you know it doesn't look right? And in what way?"

"I've seen a flying apsara before!"

Wang Erlang was startled for a moment, then it came to him: if her family elders were also apsara painters, of course she would have seen one — no wonder she spoke this way.

"Every painter has his own technique. As long as one follows the teachings passed down from master to disciple, each has his own merits — there's no question of looking right or not." Wang Erlang answered earnestly too, not treating her carelessly just because she was young.

"That's not what I mean," the young woman shot back at once, decisive as ever.

Now Wang Erlang felt his temper rising again — even if she were some other painter's daughter, speaking this way was hardly polite. His master was the foremost mural painter in all of Shazhou; pilgrims and patrons traveled great distances from the heartland of China just to commission his work, as an offering of devotion to the Buddha. As the saying goes, "One does not slight the monk out of respect for the Buddha." His master was such an extraordinary figure, and though he, the disciple, could never match his master's divine skill, he had at least inherited a measure of his true teaching — how could this young woman dismiss it so lightly?

He was about to speak up and correct her when he saw the young woman rise and walk straight down the scaffold.

"Come with me to the mouth of the cave, and you'll see for yourself." The young woman did not look back; her voice came out so light and airy it seemed swallowed whole by the vast cave, and had he not seen her walking away with his own eyes, Wang Erlang would have doubted whether she had spoken at all — perhaps she never had.

What struck him as truly astonishing, though, was that not only was her voice light — her footsteps too were so gentle that the scaffold did not so much as tremble. Wang Erlang knew this scaffold better than anyone; even he could never walk across it without some sound and sway. Yet this stranger's steps seemed not to touch the ground at all, swift and steady all at once. In no time, she had descended nimbly to the ground and reached the mouth of the cave.

She really must be a child who had spent years climbing up and down the caves alongside some painter relation, to move across the scaffold with such effortless ease, and find her way so quickly through the dark caverns.

Wang Erlang himself was not entirely sure why he had followed this strange young woman all the way to the cave entrance. He had to pause a moment to adjust to the glare of daylight and the gentle breeze drifting past.

"Look." The young woman took off the silk sash draped over her shoulders and let it flutter gently in the wind.

"When an apsara flies and dances through the sky, her sash — or her sleeves — should move with the wind."

Wang Erlang stared blankly at the sash rippling in the breeze, then glanced at the young woman before him, his mind suddenly muddled. The desert sun was especially fierce; a moment more in it and one already felt the sting all the more keenly — yet where it fell on the young woman, it seemed only to make her whole being shine all the brighter. He nearly forgot that what she meant for him to watch was the wind-blown sash, not her. Quietly, he pulled his gaze away and made himself focus on the rhythm of the sash instead.

Perhaps, having spent so many years painting in the dim caves, he had forgotten the force and beauty of wind moving through open air — a single sash, brought alive by the wind, left him utterly entranced.

Silently, Wang Erlang walked through the other caves, studying closely how the other painters had rendered their apsaras. He lingered there a long while in thought, then walked back to his scaffold without a word, only to find the young woman already seated again in her usual spot. She glanced at him once, said nothing, and turned her head away, quietly swinging her legs again.