The Legend of Tu Thuc Cave

Snap. Just a small sound, crisp as a dry twig breaking underfoot, in a pagoda garden crowded with people who had come to see the flowers. A peony branch had just come away from its bush, and its red petals were still trembling in the hand of a young woman.

The old tale says that on that day, a large pagoda was holding a peony festival. The peony was a prized flower, and the whole garden was in full bloom, red as a warm fire. Lost in the flowers, the young woman leaned close to the loveliest blossom and snapped off a branch by accident. The pagoda had a rule that anyone who broke a flower must pay a fine. The young woman was poor and had not a single coin on her. So the flower guards held her there in the middle of the crowd and insisted that she pay.

She stood there with her head bowed, still holding the broken branch in both hands, with no way to pay.

Among the flower viewers that day was a young official named Từ Thức. He had passed the examinations at the age of 20 and had been sent to serve as magistrate of Tiên Du district. But he seldom cared for the paperwork of the courthouse. He preferred wine, poetry and long trips among the mountains and rivers. That day, he too had strolled to the pagoda to see the flowers.

When he saw the young woman held there, his heart was moved with pity. He did not use his rank to shout at the guards or to force them. He simply took off the brocade robe he was wearing, an official's finest robe, and handed it to the guards for her release. They took the robe and let her go.

The young woman looked up and thanked him softly. She said she came from the Tống Sơn area. Then she slipped into the stream of people and was gone, as lightly as a passing breath of fragrance.

Not long after, Từ Thức was reprimanded by his superiors for neglecting the affairs of his district. He had already grown tired of the confining life of an official. So he took off his official hat, hung up his seal of office, resigned and went home. He made his way to the Tống Sơn area. Day after day he sailed his boat along the Thần Phù estuary, watching the mountains and the clouds. Whenever he came upon a beautiful view, he stopped to write a poem. He still remembered the young woman from the festival, and he searched everywhere, but never caught a glimpse of her.

Early one morning, while mist still hung over the water, Từ Thức suddenly saw a strange mountain rise beyond the estuary. It was a deep blue-green and stood alone far out on the open sea, as lovely as a lotus just lifting above the waves. Puzzled, he rowed closer. At the foot of the mountain, he found the mouth of a cave, deep, dark and cool.

Từ Thức went in. After a little way, the cave suddenly filled with light. Before him was no longer cold stone, but another world of vermilion towers and purple pavilions with white clouds drifting around them. The air was sweet with the scent of flowers, and the faint sound of strings and flutes came from somewhere nearby. The old tale says this was the sixth of the 36 fairy caves.

A fairy with a gentle face came out to greet him. She smiled and said she had long known his kind heart. Then she called for a young woman. Từ Thức looked up and froze. It was the very young woman who had broken the peony branch at the festival. The fairy said that this was her daughter, Giáng Hương. On the day of the festival, the girl had come down to wander in the human world, and by good fortune he had stepped in to help her. Now the fairy had invited him here to repay that old kindness.

So Từ Thức stayed on in that land of the immortals as the fairy's honored guest, keeping company with Giáng Hương from morning to evening. The place was more beautiful than words could say. There was no harsh sun and no endless rain. Flowers bloomed all year round, and the streams ran clear. Strangest of all, no one grew old, and no one kept count of the days or months. Từ Thức felt as if he had only just arrived.

But then, amid all that beauty, his heart gave a sudden pang of longing.

He missed his father and mother. He missed the thatched roof of home, the village road, even the rooster crowing at dawn. The fairy world had everything except one thing, and that was his homeland. The longing grew day by day, until he asked Giáng Hương to let him go home for a visit.

Giáng Hương was very sad. She said softly that the fairy world and the human world now lay far apart, and if he went back, he might find it hard to return. But seeing how much he missed home, she gave in. The fairy gave him a carriage made of cloud to carry him back. Giáng Hương handed him a sealed letter and told him to open it when his heart was at its saddest.

The cloud carriage gently set Từ Thức down in the very countryside he came from. But as soon as he looked around, everything seemed strange. The old road was gone. The old house was gone. The familiar faces were nowhere to be seen. The whole countryside where he had lived had changed completely.

Từ Thức stopped an old man by the roadside and asked about his house and his family. The old man thought for a long while, then answered slowly. In his family, five generations back, there had been an ancestor with exactly that name. The story went that this man had left home for the mountains and was never heard from again. That must have been nearly 300 years ago. The sapling Từ Thức had planted in front of his house as a young man had become an ancient tree. It was so wide that it took several people to circle it with their arms.

Từ Thức stood motionless in his own home village, where no one knew him anymore. To him, it felt as though he had been away only a short while. Yet down here in the human world, five generations had been born and passed away, one after another. All those years had slipped by while he was enjoying himself in the fairy world.

He hurried back to find the cloud carriage, hoping to return. But the carriage had turned into a bird. It shot up into the sky and vanished into the clouds. Following his memory, he made his way back to the Thần Phù estuary. He looked for the lotus mountain and the mouth of the cave. He searched and searched, but found nothing. The fairy world had closed behind him.

Từ Thức sat down by the road and, with trembling hands, opened the letter from Giáng Hương. Inside was her gentle farewell. It said that the bond fate had given them had come to its end, and that the fairy mountain out at sea could not be found again.

He sat still for a long time. Only then did he truly understand what Giáng Hương had told him, that the fairy world and the human world lay far apart. The door to the fairy cave had closed, and his parents and the people he once knew had passed away long ago.

Then Từ Thức stood up, put his robe back over his shoulders, and quietly set out on the road. He walked on and on, and from that day on, no one ever knew where he had gone.

Today, in the Nga Sơn area of Thanh Hóa province, there is still a large cave. People call it Từ Thức Cave. It is also known as Bích Đào Cave. Inside, stalactites hang down in countless shapes. In one place they look like a store of gold, and elsewhere they glitter like flowers. People of old who came here felt they had wandered into a land of fairies. So they praised it as the seventh most beautiful cave under the southern sky. Whoever steps into that cool cave remembers Từ Thức. They remember a man who once held a whole fairy world in his hands, yet in the end wished only to find his way back to his old home.