Finally, he stopped.
“One spirit, two souls,” he said. “That is the first thing to understand. There is the wild soul. Violent, selfish, full of strength; and the tranquil soul, healing, compassionate, selfless and flexible. They are reflections of each other. If you lean too hard into the strength and fury of your angry soul, it will take over. If you lean too far into the tranquil soul, you lose the will to act. You must balance them.
“I can teach you the techniques to reach inside the mirror of yourself.And draw from your spirit-energy as needed. But there must always be a return to balance. If you trigger your energetic soul, you must return to peace with your tranquil soul.”
“How do you do that?”
“Through your action. It is the way of positive and negative. If you take, you must then give. If you harm, you must then heal. There are different ways we do this.”
“Like what,” Sen asked.
Jobo gave him nothing. “I cannot teach that which you will not learn.”
He walked on, in silence, until they reached the Godspath once again.
“Please,” Sen said, remembering the question. “Theteaching.”
“Go home,” the crow monk said, and shut the door.
As night fell, Sen saw faint light in the woods where the other crow monks had gone, as though someone were holding torches of blue flames, only no one was there.
He followed the lights to a stream, where he saw, far off, a faint glow hovering over the water, drifting down the bend. It seemed to flicker over the trickling current; it looked like the lights were dancing.
What was his lesson? He turned it over in his mind, determined to figure out what he had to do, to meet Jobo’s terms.
So he sat and meditated on it. He stopped asking, but he didn’t leave. He waited at the side of the gate, as, each day, the monks came and went about their duties, trekking down the mountain to the local outvillages, collecting alms.
He didn’t see their master, Jobo, however. He remained inside the temple gates. Sen didn’t demand, or beg, from the crow monks anymore. He simply nodded to them, and once or twice even smiled, as they passed.
He settled back on his small square of cloth to resume his sitting.
I won’t give up, he’d told himself.They will take me, they will.
But time dragged on, and the seasons changed, and the wind grew cold and harsh. The leaves began to turn. He worried he wouldn’t have the resolve to wait them out. Then, one morning, bright with autumn cold, he turned from his small pallet outside the monastery, shivering and noticing the frost. The gate opened. Jobo appeared.
“It’s cold,” he said.
Sen stirred. He had no demands left, too tired to uphold the facade. “You can have my blanket if you want.”
The crow monk smiled. “The teaching,” he asked at last, “or the clothes?”
“None,” Sen said.
Jobo cocked his head. “Then what is a warrior doing in the mud?”
This time, he was ready. This time he had an answer.
“Learning,” he said.
Jobo held a bucket out for him to take. “Then learn.”
When he walked back to the temple, he left the gate open behind him. Sen scrambled to his feet.
“You have stolen from good people in these hills,” Jobo said. “You will start by repaying them.”
CHAPTERSEVEN
Rui
