Page:Weird Tales Volume 42 Number 06 (1950-09).djvu/82

 the Emperor had honored him and called him Elder Brother. Usually artists executed one phase only in the making of porcelain. One shaped a vase, another fired it. Some were specialists in glazes, others painted butterflies. The painter of moons was not nearly as famous as the painters of clouds or mountains. But Tang Ling did all these things with equal facility.

At times Tang Ling took weeks to perfect a single vase and during that time he conversed with no one, except for an occasional word with the old servant who brought him his rice. Though his possessions were considerable, while absorbed in creating he lived as frugally as a peasant. Tea was his one luxury, rare tea that had been grown high on a mountain where the Green Lady occasionally touched the growing leaves ever so gently with her long cold fingers.

Tang Ling assigned names to the vases he created. The title of the case that held an enduring place in his heart was "The Three Pools arid the Painted Moon." He kept it on a teakwood table near the open window in his sleeping room. The vase was of sunflower yellow with the glow of the sun upon it even when there was ho sun. Beside one of the clear cool pools of water stood a man and a girl. The man was richly attired in garments of green silk, emroidered with the Imperial Gold Dragon. The girl was like a lovely flower swaying in the breeze. Her fingers and lips were colored with the juice of balsam flowers. Her cheeks had been brushed with rice powder. Her hair, simply arranged, was black with tints of blue as the sun shone upon it. Her eyes were like unto black opals, with all their abundant mystery. But it was her smile that caught and held the attention, gentle, all-knowing and wonderfully sweet.

For hours each day, Tang Ling gazed on her enraptured; and when he slept, she invaded his dreams, For him she possessed a warmth of affection. How he longed to take her into his arms. No thought had he that she was but the figment of his own imagination, a fragile, exquisite porcelain lady. So enraptured was he, he seldom left the room that was glorified by the sparkle of her eyes, the slender grace of her body. He longed to be ever at her side, to be her devoted companion for days without end. And as he sipped the tea which his servant set down before him, he gazed into her eyes, and she gazed back at him. Her expression was enigmatic. Was it only his imagination or did she desire him also? Then suddenly a solution came to him, a solution so simple he marveled that he had not thought of it before. He would paint himself into the vase, standing beside her. And happiness would indeed be theirs.

He spent days mixing and grinding new colors for this supreme effort of his career. Using antimony as a base he manufactured common black, mirror black and also a wide variety of shades of purest yellow like unto the yolk of an egg, eel skin yellow, straw-color, canary, citron or lemon yellow, mustard, orange and sulphur. Then he mixed luxurious greens—snakeskin, cucumber, emerald, céladon or sea green. His blues were famed wherever artists congregated—powder-blue, sapphire, turquoise, peacock, kingfisher and blue like the sky at morning after rain. From copper he evolved crimson, peachbloom, crushed strawberries. From iron, vermilion, coral, tomato. From gold, rose, pink and ruby. He slashed his finger with a small knife and mixed his blood with the cupric oxide that is copper red.

The actual painting of himself into the beloved vase began on a morning at sunrise when the dew was heavy on the cool grass and the last vestige of moonlight still lingered in the tall bamboo. The perfume of flowers was attuned to the songs of gay plumaged birds, drunk with joy as they sang salutations to the dawn.

Tang Ling had bathed and dressed with extreme care as though this were the day of his wedding. He had purchased an Imperial Coronation robe that had once adorned a Ming Emperor. In the center was the Yang and the Yin, the male and the female principles, representing divine origin, embroidered in gold couché stitch on a plum-colored satin background. All the constellations from one to nine, representing the great social bows and mutual