The Boy, the Monkey, and the Well
by Paul Echeverri
This is a story about a little boy.  Little Chin Jiang was most
like a monkey; no one who saw the shape of his brow or his 
stooped walk could help thinking otherwise.  The people he lived
with, who were distant relatives, and unkind, spoke about it to
his face.  "Straighten up, damn you.  You look like a monkey."
That is what his uncle Ro-Hen said.  "Stop scratching yourself! 
You make me itch just to look at you."  That is what his aunt 
Tsing said.  The people of his village, who were unkinder still, 
spoke exclusively behind his back, and his monkeyish carriage and
countenance were much discussed in the market squares and dirt 
streets.  

The village was by a tiny, sluggish stream that no-one had bothered 
to name, or whose name no-one had bothered to remember.  Its waters 
gave a great laziness of mind and limb, and the villagers could at
times barely rouse themselves to do the work required to feed
themselves.  The houses had been built leaning against each other,
and each time it rained the dried mud that made the walls would
soften and flow.  Over the seasons, the houses melted into each
other, and the village became less like a village and more like
a crazy, overgrown house with many rooms.  That is how lazy the
people there were.

Chin Jiang annoyed the people of his village because he wasn't 
lazy and sluggish all the time.  Sometimes he would not be 
tired and lazy at all.  On these days he would jump and run, 
and chase small things that wandered into the village from the 
bamboo thickets that grew by the riverbanks.  His quick movements; 
his pattering feet; his excited shouts, which sounded most like a 
monkey's screeches and barks; these things vexed the people of 
the village as they lay in their hammocks and on their mats, 
resting irritably as the river's moist lassitude oozed through 
their bellies and blood.  "Go away," Chin Jiang's aunt Tsing said.
"Run and yell somewhere else.  You disturb my rest."  That is what 
his uncle Ro-Hen said.  But most of the time, he was tired and wan
like the rest, and would rest in the shade under the thatch eaves
of the house that was the whole village.

One day, as he sat and rested and listened to the quiet mutter 
of the creeklet as the day wore on, Mu-Shen came stumping by.
Now this was before Mu-Shen's name was known by every little boy
and girl in the Four Kingdoms, so of course Chin Jiang didn't know
who Mu-Shen was.  Because of this, even though you and I know it
would be the wise thing to do, he didn't laugh at Mu-Shen or
throw rocks to keep him away.  Instead, he was curious, because
strangers came to the village very rarely, and most were so
disgusted by the prevalent laziness that they hurried away.
If they stayed too long, of course, they would drink the water,
and soon become too lazy to leave.  But that almost never happened,
because then as now the People were diligent and dutiful.

Because he wasn't quite as lazy as the rest of the villagers, Chin
Jiang became very curious about the heavy waterbags Mu-Shen carried;
he did not see why anyone would carry waterbags when they walked by
the banks of a creek.  Because Chin Jiang was almost as lazy as the
rest of the villagers, he asked rudely, without the greetings or the
offers of hospitality that are proper among the People.  "Why do you
carry waterbags when you walk beside a good river?"  That is what Chin
Jiang asked Mu-Shen from the shade under the eaves of the house that
was the whole village.

Mu-Shen smiled and answered, "I've come to dig a well for your village!"
And he shuffled his feet in a little dance of happiness.  Of course, this
was no answer at all.  Hearing this, Old Lin raised his head and shouted
from his hammock, "Go away, foolish man!  We are beside a most excellent
creek and need no wells dug."  Mu-Shen smiled again and shuffled his feet
in a little dance of persistence.  "But you do, you do!  I will show you."
Old Lin grunted and said no more; he had lived in the village by the creek
for one hundred and twenty-eight years, so you can imagine that he was by
far the laziest person there.

Mu-Shen walked to the side of the village furthest away from the creek.
Chin Jiang, still curious, followed him.  Even though you or I might think
him a sluggard, he was still the least lazy person in the village.  Chin
Jiang watched Mu-Shen empty one of his waterbags onto a bare spot, but the
ground never got wet; the water seemed to go right through it.  Mu-Shen
winked at Chin Jiang and stretched the empty waterbag out on the bare spot.
Then he whistled like a sparrow as he bowed to the North.  He picked it up
and shook it, and it became a long, sharp knife!  The knife said, zissh, zassh,
and Mu-Shen had three long, pointed poles of bamboo cut before him.  He
threw the knife down on the ground, and it became an empty waterbag again.
He picked up the waterbag and tied it around his waist; then he sat down by
Chin Jiang's side.

Mu-Shen hummed a tune to himself and wiggled his fingers in the dirt; just
like that, the bamboo poles danced around the spot where he had emptied his
waterbag.  As Mu-Shen's fingers poked at the dirt, the bamboo poles drilled
and loosened and picked at the earth, and as he scooped up the dust between
his knees, the loose dirt went flying out of the hole.  Before Chin Jiang had
drawn ten breaths, the bamboo poles (longer than Xiao Half-a-Li's hammock,
and that was very long) were in a hole deeper than they were long, and mud
came out of the hole instead of dirt.  Mu-Shen whistled and cast a small rock
 into the well, and Chin Jiang heard a rumbling from the creeklet.  Turning,
he saw a line of stones dragging themselves out of the riverbed, around the
village (there was no clear way through, because all the houses were melted
together), and into the well.  As Mu-Shen whistled, Chin Jiang looked into
the well and saw the stones lining it.  When the well was lined, Mu-Shen
stopped whistling and broke three twigs over his head.  One pole shivered
itself into strips, which plaited themselves into a rope.  One pole split
itself into flat strips and pegs, which assembled themselves into a bucket.
The rope tied itself to the bucket and to the other pole.  The bucket jumped
down the well.  The well was finished.

"Drink, little boy!"  Mu-Shen danced a thirsty little dance in the dust.  Chin
Jiang drew water from the miracle well and drank.  He shivered, and a little
monkey fell from the back of his head.  It screeched when it hit the ground!
It ran into the trees and scolded Chin Jiang and Mu-Shen.  It ran into the
village and broke every water-jug it could find.  Everyone was too lazy to catch
the naughty monkey.  Chin Jiang no longer looked like a monkey, but like a
pleasant little boy who's slept too long.  He stretched, and stood up straight,
and laughed for joy.  Mu-Shen's dance had started to work on the other people
of the village, and they came to the well to drink.  A few people went to the
river, because it was closer; but the monkey threw rocks at them until they went
away.  They were very angry, of course, and wanted to catch the monkey.  But
it was much easier just to go to the well instead, which is what they did.
Then they all drank, and it seemed to them that the well-water was much
sweeter than the creek-water.  Their eyes grew brighter, and the people
all stretched and yawned as if they were coming awake for the first time.

Then everyone in the town, except for Chin Jiang and Mu-Shen (and, I imagine,
the monkey, although no-one knew where he was just then), shivered.  And a
person fell out of each person's head.  These new people were the ugly and
lazy parts of the people, the parts that the river-water had fed.  So the
villagers chased away their lazy shadows with sticks.  The lazy shadows ran
into the bamboo, and when they could no longer be seen the people cheered
and danced.  But when they turned to thank Mu-Shen, they could not find him,
because he had gone away.  The villagers built proper new houses around the
miracle well, and they blessed Mu-Shen's name for a week and a day, never
giving thought to the lazy shadows they had chased away.  The shadows were
hungry and cold, and far too lazy to provide for themselves.  In a week and
a day, their sloth had turned to a bright and ugly anger.

One night, then, a week and a day after the miracle well had been dug and
the new houses built, the lazy shadows crept into the village.  They were
very quiet, and the only noise they made was the noise wind makes blowing
through reeds: rrissh, rrassh.  Soon, each shadow came to the side of the
person it had fallen out of.  When this was done, they all breathed softly
into the villagers' sleeping ears, and their breath was black and thick.
The black poison came into the brains of the villagers and killed them.
They screamed quite loudly as they died, and this is what woke up Chin
Jiang, who didn't have a shadow fall out of him, but only a little monkey
(and no-one knew where the monkey was).  When the villagers died, the shadows
all vanished, so that Chin Jiang woke up in the middle of the night to
a terrifying sound and a town full of corpses.  He was sure it was a nightmare.

But when the sun came up, he knew it was not, and cursed Mu-Shen's name and
face all that day, while the sun burned its way across the sky.  At the end
of the day, he threw himself down the miracle well.  No-one ever found out
what became of the monkey.