Chang'an in the reign of Emperor Wuzong, late in the Tang.
Yellow sand drifted beyond the city walls; inside them, beauty was legend. A street song praised the two daughters of the Yi family: Yichun could captivate a city, Yimei a kingdom.
That fame brought an imperial order. Yimei was summoned into the palace. Yichun was married to Zongzheng, the emperor's favored retainer.
Yimei did not want to abandon the man she loved. She tried to escape into religious life at Famen Temple, but could not. In the end she hid her pride and her little venomous sting, and became the most favored woman in the harem.
Yichun, meanwhile, was given the man who should have belonged to her sister. Bewildered and half-delighted, she lowered her eyes and became an obedient bride.
Then came the day both sisters went into labor.
The same man who was bound to each of them betrayed them both.
Driven by a jealous empress, Zongzheng secretly exchanged the infant daughter his wife had borne at the cost of her life for the son born to his former beloved in the palace. What should have been a prince became a princess. That alone might not have been fatal; the emperor still named the child Princess Yuan. But the child was born blind.
From then on the blind princess and her beautiful mother were treated as uncanny, almost demonic. Their residence became a cold palace in all but name.
By the time Princess Yuan was eighteen, she went one day to Famen Temple. By touch of the fingers and by some strange instinct no one could explain, she chose a delicate, handsome young monk and had him summoned to the palace day after day to lecture on scripture.
Her loneliness eased. She had a companion who could tell stories like that of King Sibi sacrificing himself to save a dove.
Her blindness ended. The man who was secretly her biological father, burdened all his life with guilt, made a terrible vow before the Buddha and offered up a fearsome devotion in exchange for the return of her sight.
And she fell in love.
She loved the young monk, Jueneng.
He said, "I take refuge in the Buddha, I take refuge in the Dharma, I take refuge in the Sangha..."
She said, "Say instead: I take refuge in Princess Yuan."
He answered, "I take refuge in Princess Yuan..."
They fled together on horseback across the sand. On the road, news came from the capital: Emperor Wuzong, ardently devoted to Daoism, intended to seize the Buddha Finger Relic from Famen Temple and destroy it.
Jueneng was Yichun's son—the prince Zongzheng had smuggled out of the palace and hidden inside Famen Temple. He loved Princess Yuan, but he loved the Buddha more.
He stepped onto the altar and burned himself into a single crystal, asking Yuan to carry that crystal back in place of the relic and let it suffer the catastrophe meant for the Buddha Finger.
As he walked toward the flames, she wept and begged him to turn and look at her once, to remember her face clearly, so they might recognize each other in another life.
He did not turn.
If I look back at you, he thought in silence, how could I possibly still go on?
Zongzheng, now acting as the emperor's envoy, destroyed the relic she brought back before her eyes.
Princess Yuan, before her true father, ended her own life.
Jade and stone were shattered together.
In that life, he took refuge in the Buddha.
Twenty years later the throne passed to the old emperor's nephew, a young ruler devoted to Buddhism.
He visited Famen Temple again and again. He even brought back to the palace a tea-selling girl from outside the temple gates, a girl called Yuanmei, and had her brew tea in the cold palace for his aunt Yimei, who was famed for telling stories.
Perhaps tea can brighten the eyes. Perhaps grief had simply waited long enough. Yimei, who had cried herself half-blind over Princess Yuan, gradually recovered her sight in the mist of Yuanmei's tea and to the sound of the xiao played by the artisan Funeng.
And when she finally saw the pair clearly, she trembled.
They were the living image of Princess Yuan and Jueneng reborn.
She asked them shakily: Tell me—what promise did you make to each other in your previous lives?
What else was there to do but arrange their marriage?
But before that could happen, the leader of the Tuoba clan came to the Tang court in Chang'an. First he demanded Yuanmei and failed to get her after losing in combat to Funeng. Then he demanded the relic.
Funeng and the young emperor devised a decoy, a false bone relic to mislead the Tuoba leader, while the true Buddha Finger Relic was concealed deep beneath Famen Temple, in the hidden underground palace below the True Body Pagoda.
War with the Tuoba followed.
It was a war to defend the realm, the relic, and the faith. The instability and decline of the late Tang cast a sorrowful shadow over it all.
Outside Chang'an, with yellow sand blowing across the land, Funeng marched out with the army. He and Yuanmei made a simple vow: he would go to defend the country, and she would remain at the gate of Famen Temple, brewing tea for the soldiers heading to war and praying for his safe return.
But like so many young men carried off to battle in the chaos of the late Tang, he never came back.
And like so many young women who could only wait and pray in those years of turmoil, Yuanmei was left with nothing but the fragrance of tea before the temple gate and an empty vigil.
In that life, he took refuge in the Dharma.
Wind scattered the sand. Time carried everything away. This time, fate slept for more than a thousand years.
In the 1980s, after repeated reconstructions, the True Body Pagoda at Famen Temple collapsed in wind and rain. The excavation of the underground palace beneath it and the search for the relic drew national attention. Among those involved were Dr. Xiao Tang and a journalist named Yuanyuan.
They discovered too many strange things in common.
Both liked to put salt in their tea, following a Tang custom.
Both felt an unaccountable sense of belonging to Famen Temple.
Both shared the same intuition about the position of the underground chamber.
Between them was an attraction difficult to put into words, and an uncanny understanding that seemed to arrive of its own accord.
The excavation became the focus of the world's attention. Yet the two of them, who had taken part in it from beginning to end, quietly slipped away from the celebration banquet.
They walked side by side under the moonlight, talking still in that drifting, indirect way people do when everything important remains unspoken.
A thin sheet still separated them.
Yuanyuan returned to the city with a vague ache in her heart. Xiao Tang stayed behind in Fufeng to handle the remaining archaeological work.
Then, in the middle of the night, memory—or something like memory—rose back up. Realizing how much had been missed in the two previous lives, Yuanyuan was overwhelmed with grief. She rushed back to Famen Temple, determined that this life would not be another unfinished bond.
But what stood between them now was no longer imperial power, no longer righteous duty, no longer war.
It was a vermilion temple gate.
During the days they had been apart, Xiao Tang had already shaved his head and entered the order at Famen Temple. His monastic name may have been Keneng.
In that life, he took refuge in the Sangha.
Princess Yuan. Yuanmei. Yuanyuan.
Jueneng. Funeng. Keneng.
He says: "I take refuge in the Buddha, I take refuge in the Dharma, I take refuge in the Sangha..."
She says: Someday, in one lifetime at last, you will take refuge in me.