“Hello, director. Mrs. Yi sent me.”

Close by, the woman named Mia whispered to him. She looked like a mermaid, with the mountains as her sea. The director looked at Mia in surprise and thought to himself, How smart and mature she’s become in such a short time!

“I can’t see you, but your glow feels familiar,” she said.

There were several kinds of herbs in her basket. Evidently she had become an expert on herbs. She sat down on the rock without noticing its patterns. But the director saw a huge golden flower splash up from where she sat.

“Thank you so much for coming here, director. It’s nice to sit here, but I can’t stay long. I have work to do at home. I’ll tell Mrs. Yi that I saw you, and she’ll be delighted.”

Unhurriedly, she lifted the basket onto her back and swam down the hill.

The director remembered what had happened that night, and—ashamed—he said to himself, “She is the pearl of night and I am unspeakable filth. How lucky I have been in my life.”

His glowing light blinded him. It was some time before he saw the rock again, and the patterns on it were still shifting. The director felt strongly that something was hidden in the patterns, but he couldn’t figure out what. When a blurry image of a river appeared, he almost caught the word, but what came out of his mouth was a syllable, kui; he did not know what that meant. If Chunxiu were here, he thought tenderly, she would know what it meant, and she would know what object was hidden behind the shifting patterns. Chunxiu and Mia were real practitioners.

An old man came by, and the director could see only half of his silhouette.

“How do you do? I am old Tauber. You must have heard of me. I’ve heard so much about you.”

A little excitedly, Tauber smiled at the director.

“Can you see me?” the director asked.

“Only your head. You’re wrapped in a halo. Do you like the local chestnuts? And the herbs—do they look the same as they used to?”

“The chestnuts taste great, but the shapes of the herbs are much different from the way they were before. Of course, I can still recognize them. They’ve changed for ghosts like us, haven’t they?”

“Exactly. The herbs always come out from the same place as we do, in all kinds of shapes. Have you seen Mrs. Yi yet? You have? Oh, how lucky you are! I’ve been waiting here for three days, but I still haven’t seen her. I’m longing to talk with her under this Bodhi tree,” Tauber said wistfully.

“It makes me feel good to hear you speak of my student like this.”

As they talked, they drew close to each other. The director couldn’t touch the other half of Tauber’s body, and Tauber couldn’t touch the director’s whole torso. But they felt they had achieved a kind of authentic interaction, and they both blushed.