Week 7 Story: The White Lotus Lodge

And so I continued on my journey.  I wasn't sure where I was going, but I had a feeling that I was headed the right direction.  After another long day of travel, I came upon a welcome surprise: an inn! An old inn, but an inn nonetheless on top of the hill.  I hadn't seen a building in weeks, let alone a person.  Some roads are less traveled than others, and I was starting to feel that perhaps this road was not a common one.  I must admit, at times I felt as though there was an unnatural energy to the place.  There would be no one for miles, and all of the sudden I would hear laughter or shouting.  The convenient thing about traveling alone was that, in those unnatural times, there was no one present to confirm the voices.  "Maybe it's all in my head," I would think aloud.  At times, it seemed easier to convince myself that I was crazy instead of actually acknowledging that those were REAL sounds.  I could deny the supernatural happenings no longer after staying at the White Lotus Lodge.

"White Lotus Lodge?" I asked aloud as I walked close enough to read the old wooden sign.  I had never heard of it, but I didn't expect to have being a foreigner and all. As I approached the door I heard raucous laughter and merriment.  I opened the door to find soldiers sharing mead and telling stories.  Soldiers? I was confused--I didn't even recognize the emblem on their clothes.  I quickly got a room for the night and stayed there.  Something about those soldiers seemed off... Before I had stopped thinking about it, I heard the soldiers start to exclaim to one another in hushed tones, "The sorcerer is coming! The Sorcerer is coming!" 

I peeked through a small hole in my wall just in time to see an older, gowned man with a long beard barge in through the front door.  He was furious, claiming that they had let his candle blow out while he was away.  The sorcerer was outraged--"You made me walk home in the dark! The lot of you couldn't even stay focused long enough to keep a candle from going out!" In his fury, the sorcerer turned an argumentative soldier into a pig.  

I swiftly packed my stuff and waited for an opportune moment to leave; I was chilled to the bone.   

bibliography: The Sorcerer of the White Lotus Lodge by R. Wilhelm and translated by Frederick H. Martens (1921).

Author's note: I based my story off of two separate Chinese fairy tales.  The first one is about a traveling merchant.  After feeling uneasy on the road he has been traveling on, he comes upon an inn.  The inn is full of soldiers, which confuses the merchant as there is no ongoing war or battles that he is aware of.  The merchant witnesses the general of the army get taken apart in his room.  Terrified, the merchant runs away from the inn as soon as he could.  He finds out that the area is an old battlefield, and there are a lot of unnatural happenings around those parts.  The other story I based my story off of is called the Sorcerer of the White Lotus Lodge.  In this story, there is a sorcerer who is very powerful.  He is known far and wide, and has acquired pupils who want to learn from him.  In this story, he gives his pupils different tasks to watch over while he is gone.  One of the tasks is a candle, which the students let go out.  This angers the sorcerer.  One of the sorcerer's pupils argues back and is turned to a pig.  After seemingly to get captured and eaten following this, the sorcerer outsmarts those looking to capture him and bring him to justice.  In my story, I took a traveler but not necessarily a merchant.  My person is more of just the wandering type.  My character also finds the road to be unnatural, and comes upon an inn with soldiers in it.  At this point, I introduce the wizard who is angered by the soldiers lack of discipline.  In his rage, he turns one of them into a pig.  I had fun writing this story, I hope you enjoyed reading it :)

A supernatural looking path.

source: flickr