The Fox Demon Came to Repay the Monk Before His Vows novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Fox-Bane

The fox-bane lamps burned all night, and by dawn Yanzhi was on his hands and knees in the woodshed, being sick into a bucket.

The smoke was a thick, bitter resin, and it came in under the door.

Every breath of it scraped the inside of his skull.

He had been hurt by a bell on the stairs and now by a lamp in the yard.

He would have laughed if he could have stopped coughing.

The door banged open.

"Fox."

A huge shadow dropped beside him, and a cool hand closed on the back of his neck.

"Don't talk," said Jingmo. "Breathe through the cloth."

He pressed a wet strip of linen over Yanzhi's nose and mouth.

It smelled of mint, and the air that came through it was clean, and the room stopped turning.

"I'm fine," Yanzhi croaked.

"You are grey."

"It's a good color on me."

Jingmo made a sound that was almost a laugh, and then he picked Yanzhi up.

He lifted him the way you lift a sleeping child, one arm behind his knees and one behind his back.

He stood with Yanzhi against his chest.

Yanzhi decided he would have an opinion about that later.

"Where are we going?"

"Up."

"Is it far?"

"Close your eyes."

Yanzhi did, and he felt Jingmo walk out of the shed through the grey dawn and the lamp smoke.

The goat track behind the orchard went up and up through cold pines.

Jingmo climbed with Yanzhi's head tucked under his chin and Yanzhi's fingers curled in his collar.

When Yanzhi opened his eyes again, the smoke was gone.

They stood on a bare ridge above the temple.

In front of them, tucked against a face of black rock, was a hut no bigger than a cart.

It had a plank door, a roof of old moss and a single window facing east.

"The Rock Hermitage," Jingmo said, setting him on his feet at the threshold.

"A novice keeps vigil here the last night before his final vows. It is empty until sunset. The lamps cannot reach this high."

"You've been here before."

"For seven years I came on every full moon." He opened the door. "To sit."

Yanzhi went in.

It was a bare, scrubbed room with a straw mat, a low table, a little iron stove and a stack of firewood.

One wall held a shelf with a single Buddha the size of a hand.

In front of it, in a small bowl, lay a peach stone.

"Sit," said Jingmo. "I will make tea."

"Let me."

"You nearly burned down the shed."

"I will not burn down a stove."

Jingmo looked at him, and then stepped back, and Yanzhi made tea for the first time in his life with a monk watching.

It was dreadful.

Jingmo drank all of it.

Yanzhi sat across from him on the mat with their knees almost touching.

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