Xu Yan of Yangxian was walking through the Suian hills carrying a cage with two geese in it when he came on a young scholar of seventeen or eighteen lying by the roadside.
“My feet hurt,” said the scholar. “Let me ride in your goose cage.”
Xu Yan thought he was joking. The scholar got into the cage.
The cage did not get any bigger. The scholar did not get any smaller. He sat in there between the two geese as comfortably as anything, and the geese were not in the least alarmed. Xu Yan hoisted the cage onto his back and walked on — and it did not feel any heavier.
When they had gone a little way Xu Yan sat down under a tree to rest, and the scholar climbed out.
“Let me give you a small meal,” he said.
“Gladly,” said Xu Yan.
The scholar opened his mouth and brought out a bronze casket; and in the casket were dishes and cups and a great deal of excellent food and wine. And then — while Xu Yan was still blinking at that — he opened his mouth again and produced a girl of fifteen or sixteen, dressed in figured silk, and lovely beyond anyone Xu Yan had ever seen, and the three of them sat down and ate.
Presently the scholar, who had drunk a great deal, lay down and slept.
The girl leaned over to Xu Yan and said quietly: “I am bound to him, but my heart is not. I have brought a young man along with me — I hid him — and I would like to call him out for a while. Please say nothing.”
And she opened her mouth, and out of it came a young man of about twenty-three, clever-looking and handsome, and the two of them sat and talked together with their heads close, while the scholar snored.
Then the girl, seeing the scholar begin to stir, said to Xu Yan: “He is waking. Wait here.”
And out of her mouth came a silk screen — a folding panel, embroidered — and she set it up between them and the sleeping scholar, and she and the young man went behind it.
After a while Xu Yan heard whispering. And then he heard the young man’s voice, low, saying: “I have brought someone too. Wait — I’ll call her, but you must not let my girl see.”
Xu Yan, by now, had stopped asking questions. The young man opened his mouth and brought out a woman of about twenty. The three of them sat behind the screen and drank and laughed for a long time.
Then the scholar on the ground began to move and stretch.
“My husband is waking,” said the first girl. And she and the young man and the woman behind the screen folded up the screen, swallowed the woman, swallowed each other, and sat down beside the sleeping scholar as though they had been there all along.
The scholar sat up. He drank off a cup of wine and said goodbye to the girl, and the girl went into his mouth. Then he said goodbye to Xu Yan, gave him a bronze vessel — a beautiful thing — and told him it had been made by the girl, so that he would have something to remember them by.
And he went off down the road, and Xu Yan went home with the cage on his back.
In the seventh year of the Taijian era, Xu Yan told this story to an officer of the guard named Lan, and Lan wrote it down, and so it is in the world. The bronze vessel — the record adds, and this is the part worth keeping — was still in Xu Yan’s house.