Suddenly I paused, startled by a swift pattering of feet from somewhere just behind me. As I looked round, a little girl shot past me, her two jet-black pigtails flying out behind her, her tiny feet pounding the earth like toy piston rods. The long sleeves of her apple-green pyjama-jacket flailing as she ran called to mind a butterfly skimming the grass in panic flight from some predatory bird. This was certainly no ordinary village girl, no daughter of the black-clad peasants of Lantao.
Following her with my eyes, I
watched her branch sharply to the left and scramble up a narrow slope set in an
otherwise perpendicular rock face. At
astonishing speed, she flew up to the top and disappeared across a platform of
rock some twenty or thirty feet above the path. The
roof and walls of a grey-brick hermitage with an ornamental frieze below the
eaves were now clearly visible from where I
stood and, spurred by the thought of tea and a place to rest, I
began to climb up after her. Dragging
myself up the rocky slope proved even more difficult than it looked; roots and
grasses trapped my legs and loose pebbles slipped from under me. Indeed,
my mode of ascent was ludicrously different from hers. When
I reached the top, there was no sign of the girl; instead a tall,
dignified recluse in an ample robe of blue stood gazing at me. There
was no doubt about him being a Taoist, for his long hair
was gathered up into a bun and fastened with an ornamental wooden comb,
protruding from a hole in the top of his antique headgear. Here,
at last, was a rider of griffins and unicorns.
John Blofeld, The Wheel Of Life. Berkeley, Shambala, 1959.
Griffin fresco in the "Throne
Room", Palace of Knossos,
Crete, Bronze Age.
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