The Fox Demon Came to Repay the Monk Before His Vows novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Soup

By noon the next day, nine novices had asked to touch Yanzhi's ears.

"They're not out," he said.

"Can you take them out?" asked a boy with an enormous front tooth.

"I cannot take them out on request, like a bread knife."

"Brother Zhiyin said you could do a tail."

"Brother Zhiyin," said Yanzhi, turning, "is a tattler."

The cook stood behind him with a rolling pin, grinning.

"I said he does it when he's happy," said Zhiyin. "Now stop talking and knead."

"We have four hundred dumplings to fold before the Council, and you have the hands of a scribe."

"I have the hands of a fox."

"Even better. They're clever and they steal things."

Zhiyin had put Yanzhi at the long kitchen table with an apron tied around his waist and a bowl of dough in front of him.

Eleven young monks pretended not to watch.

It had been that kind of morning.

Somebody had given Yanzhi a pair of felt slippers.

Somebody else had left a dish of salted plums on his doorstep, with a note in careful brushwork that said, "For the guest who stood up in the hall."

Three of the older monks had walked by and refused to look at him.

The rest of them could not keep away.

Yanzhi folded a dumpling.

It looked like a dead mouse.

"That," said Zhiyin, very gently, "is a crime."

Yanzhi folded another.

By the twentieth, he had learned that you pinch the skin in a row of little pleats.

By the fortieth, he had learned that if you lose your temper the dough knows.

The boy with the tooth held up one of his.

"It's lopsided."

"It has character."

"It looks like him." The boy pointed at the door, where a large shadow had appeared with a bucket of water. "It's got his shoulders."

The shadow stopped.

Everyone in the kitchen looked at the ceiling.

Yanzhi had never been so proud of a dumpling.

"Back to work," said Jingmo, with great dignity, and went on to the well, and the tips of his ears were red.

In the afternoon, the abbot sent for Yanzhi.

He found him in the small courtyard beside his room, sitting at a stone table.

A board of black and white stones had been laid out on it.

"Do you play?" said the abbot, without looking up.

"I know the rules."

"That is a very good beginning."

Yanzhi sat opposite him and was beaten in twenty-two moves.

The abbot poured tea.

"Tell me, young fox," he said, setting a white stone in a place Yanzhi had not seen coming. "What do you want him to be?"

Yanzhi looked at the board.

"A monk," he said, "if that's what he wants."

"And if he does not want it?"

"Then he can be whatever he likes. A cook. A farmer."

"A man with a bad temper and a broom." Yanzhi's throat tightened. "I'd carry the broom."

The abbot was quiet for a while.

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