THE RECLUSE
of the dreadful things the Tartar would have done had he been quicker.
Thus, Su-rah learned that the favorite beverage of the Tartar Hordes was the blood of a Chinese, drunken from a baby’s skull and her fear of them became associated with the man on the horse.
Often in her dreams, he sat and watched her; far away at first, then nearer, steadily regarding her, but unmoving in the dreams, merely appearing closer with each successive night, until one terrible night he stretched out his hairy hand and caught her by the throat.
Just as, in her dream, he swung her from her couch to his saddle, a monstrous thing sprang from the shadows all about, growling horribly and dragged him down.
Snarling, it worried him until the Tartar no longer fought, but lay quietly beneath its emerald paws. Then it lifted its head and she gazed into the glaring red lacquered eyes of the palace guardian, the Fu-dog in the garden—and awoke.
That morning she went out and inspected the Fu-dog with a different interest than ever before.
He lay crouching as if for a spring, as always a motionless piece of statuary, upon his pedestal of white tiles.
All that Su-rah’s nurse knew of the history of the statue, she had told the little girl; how once very long ago, when the world was young and strange beasts roamed that now no longer were seen, the Great Lord Buddha was given badly needed assistance by a passing and friendly Fu-dog. In his gratitude, Lord Buddha caused the animal to become sacred and in consequence, pairs of them will be found carven and sculptured in temples to act as guards against evil spirits.
That the Fu-dog would ever be supposed to be merely a mythological animal, part lion, part unicorn, neither Su-rah nor the nurse, of course, could have suspected, regarding him as a being very real.
Su-rah gazed at his shaggy mane, the globe beneath his foot, his short stub of a unicorn’s horn, the tip missing and wondered at the little dog which hung from his flank.
She knew from the stories of her nurse, that the inscription upon the pedestal told how a very holy man had built with his own hands this statue and endowed it with supernatural qualities.
With mingled respect and fear, she stood before it, remembering while she did so, the tale her nurse had told, concerning a robber who once entered the garden at night to steal the palace treasures and how in the morning he was found horribly mangled and quite dead in the pool near the statue. And nurse said that there had been blood on the Fu-dog’s fangs!
As she eyed his wide open mouth, gleaming red inside and equipped with sharp white porcelain teeth, four inches long, in each jaw, the pieces of red lacquer which formed his eyes, set loose in their sockets as in most old pieces of pottery, so they would wobble about, turned suddenly toward her and they stared at one another, face to face and eye to eye!
Bravely, remembering that in her dream he had saved her from the barbarian, she stood her ground, though her small knees quaked beneath her.
“Big dog,” she squeaked, “I am not afraid of you, but do not look at me like that!”
“What would you do, big dog, if the Tartars should come to eat me up?”
The muzzle of the dog seemed to crinkle up, baring the white fangs even farther and all the surface of its back writhed with running motion as though the shaggy hair was rising. The hideous face was dark and overcast with an ugly look.
The little girl screamed and ran from the garden, for it appeared that the Fu-dog was about to spring.
A rushing sound went by her in the trees and a wind tossed the willow tops. Perhaps, it was their shadows on the surface of green porcelain that had given the fearsome look, but at three years old, little girls do not think much of that.
Curiosity, conquering fear, sent her back to peep around the pillar of the gate arch.
Motionless, the Fu-dog crouched on his pedestal of white tiling and a trick of fading light from a suddenly cloud obscured sun, gave his eyes a sly humorous look as though he winked, knowingly, benignantly, at the little girl.
(sixty-four)
