Free A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park Page A

little shelf formed by the rocks, with chopsticks, a single spoon, and Crane-man's knife in a neat row. Tree-ear's sleeping mat was rolled up and set to one side. There were two baskets Crane-man had woven. One held a few wild mushrooms; the other, bits and pieces that might come in handy one day—scraps of cloth, twine, flint stone. Everything was so familiar to Tree-ear. Crane-man having lived under the bridge so many more years, it must be nearly invisible to him by now.
    Tree-ear spoke almost before he thought. "Crane-man—how is it that when you lost your home and your family, you did not go to the temple?"
    Those with nowhere else to go always went to the temple. The monks took them in, fed them, gave them work to do. Eventually, many of them became monks themselves. This would have been the usual course for someone who met with misfortune as Crane-man had, and Tree-ear wondered why he had never asked the question before.
    Crane-man looked almost displeased for an instant; then his lips curled into a sheepish smile. "Ah. There is a reason, but it is a foolish one, and would become more so in the telling."
    Tree-ear waited.
    "Psshh," Crane-man said at last. "It is a worse foolishness to do something foolish and then to be unable to laugh at it later! A fox, then. It was a fox that kept me from the temple."
    "A fox?"
    Foxes were dreaded animals. They were not large or fierce, like the bears and tigers that roamed the mountains, but they were known to be fiendishly clever. Some people even believed that foxes possessed evil magic. It was said that a fox could lure a man to his doom, tricking him into coming to its den, where somehow he would be fed to its offspring.
    Even to say the word made a trickle of fear run down Tree-ear's spine.
    "The house had been sold," Crane-man said. "I gathered up my few things and made ready to go to the temple. It was a fine day, I remember, and I made a long time of it, walking up the mountainside.
    "So it was dusk, and I was still a good distance away. Suddenly, a fox appeared before me. It stopped there, right in the middle of the path, grinning with all its teeth shining white, licking its lips, its eyes glowing, its broad tail swishing back and forth slowly, back and forth—"
    "Enough!" Tree-ear's eyes were wide with horror. "What happened?"
    Crane-man picked up the last morsel of rice with his chopsticks and popped it into his mouth. "Nothing," he said. "I have come to believe that foxes could not possibly be as clever as we think them. There I was, close enough to touch one, with a bad leg as well—and here I still am today.
    "But that night, of course, I could not continue on my journey. I walked all the way down the mountain again, looking over my shoulder nearly the whole time. The fox did not follow me; indeed, it disappeared as quickly as it had come. That night I stayed under the bridge, although you can be sure that I found no sleep.
    "It was many days before I could even think about making the journey again, and by that time, this"—Crane-man waved his chopsticks at the little space—"had begun to seem like home. Days became months, months grew into years. Then you came along." Crane-man smiled as he finished his story. "Between the fox and you, I was destined never to become a monk!"
    Tree-ear unrolled his sleeping mat and lay down. But a few moments later he rose to his knees and peered at the darkness beyond the bridge. Were those two eyes glowing—or just reflections of starlight on the river?
    As always, Crane-man seemed to know what Tree-ear was doing even in the dark. "Go to sleep!" he ordered, sounding almost like Min. "Or are you trying to make me feel an even bigger fool for planting foolishness in you?"
    Tree-ear shook his head, smiling, and settled down at last.
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    To Tree-ear's surprise, Min's wife was waiting for him out on the road in front of the house the next morning. Beside her were the cart and spade. Although her face was as