Once Upon A Time (7) Wild Orchid

by Cameron Dokey

My father lifted his eyes to mine.

  “I thank you for your concern, Daughter,” he said.

  I released his hand. “You are welcome, Father.”

  “At least now all of us are muddy,” General Yuwen spoke up, his voice as sunny as a spring morning.

  At this my father began to roar with helpless laughter. It didn’t take long before General Yuwen and I joined them. All three of us sat in the mud of the stream bank, laughing until our sides ached.

  “What’s the matter? Are you injured?” Over the sound of our laughter. I heard Li Po’s anxious voice.

  “We are not injured,” my father said as he reached to wipe the tears of laughter from his eyes. Unfortunately, this only smeared more mud across his face.

  “We are muddy and hungry and we are going home to eat,” my father continued. “And you are coming with us. Come and help me up, Li Po.”

  Eyes wide in astonishment, Li Po climbed carefully down the bank. Together he and General Yuwen helped my father to his feet.

  But when my father went to take a step, his right leg buckled once more. Were it not for the fact that the others held his arms, he’d have collapsed to the ground.

  “You have hurt yourself,” I cried. “I’ll bet the fall pulled your stitches out.”

  I watched my father grit his teeth against the pain. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, stop it,” I said. “This is no time for heroics. You do so.

  Now,” I went on, addressing Li Po and General Yuwen, “you help him home, being as careful of that leg as you can. I’m going on ahead to tell Min Xian to boil plenty of water. If those stitches have come out, we’re going to have to sew up the wound again.” Gathering my skirts like a child playing dress-up in her mother’s clothes, I sprinted up the bank and set off for home.

  By the time the other three arrived, my father’s face was tight with pain and Min Xian and I had a bright fire going on in the kitchen.

  A pot of boiling water sent up a soft cloud steam. Li Po and General Yuwen eased my father into a chair near the fire.

  “I want to see that wound,” I said.

  “Very well,” replied my father.

  A quick examination proved my worst fears. My father’s fall had yanked out his stitches. “We need to clean this and then resew the wound,” I said.

  “I do not need to be bathed like a child,” my father snapped.

  I took my tongue firmly between my teeth and stepped back.

  “Suit yourself,” I said. “How you get that wound clean I leave to you. The new stitches you will leave to me. Min Xian’s stitches would be prettier. But my eyes are stronger and my hands are steadier.”

  “Huh,” my father said. He looked up at me for a moment, his gaze unreadable. “Huaji can clean the wound. Let’s get on with it.” By the time my father’s wound was clean, Min Xian and I were ready. I had passed my best sewing needle through a candle flame to sterilize it, and then I’d threaded it with a length of my strongest thread. But as I took my place at my father’s side, I began to worry that my hands would shake despite all my brave words.

  I stared at the gash across my father’s right leg. General Yuwen had been right. The wound was not healing properly. The edges still were angry and red. Though I knew the general had cleaned it carefully, I put a cloth into the steaming water, feeling the way its heat stung my hand. Then I pressed it to my father’s wound, testing his strength and mine. The flesh of his leg quivered as if in protest to my touch, but my father never made a sound.

  Just get on with it, Mulan, I thought. I set the cloth back into the dish of water and took up my needle and thread. This is a seam, just like any other.

  Straight seams I had always been good at. Straight seams I understood. I appreciated them; they were the best way to get from here to there. It was the fancy stitches that served no purpose.

  “I will hold a light for you,” General Yuwen said.

  “Thank you,” I answered.

  Li Po brought a cushion. “For your knees,” he said.

  I shifted back so that he could slip the cushion beneath them.

  “I will begin now, if you are ready,” I told my father.

  “I am ready.” He said.

  I pulled in one deep, fortifying breath, set the needle to the edge of the wound, and began to stitch.

  Afterward I was not certain how long it had taken, for time seemed first to slow and then to stop altogether. There was only the sound of my father’s breathing, quick and light. General Yuwen shifted position once or twice, ever so slightly, so that my hands never worked in shadow but always in clear, bright light. And so I came to the end of the wound and knotted off the thread, snipping the extra with my embroidery scissors. I got to my feet, trying to convince myself that my knees weren’t shaking.

  “There. That’s done,” I said.

  My father sat perfectly still for a moment, looking at the stitches I had made.

  “It is well done,” he said, correcting my words and praising me at the same time. Then he lifted his eyes to mine. “I thank you, my daughter.”

  For the first time since the day we’d met, I looked straight into my father’s eyes.

  “ I am glad to have been of service to you,” I said. “And I am happy to have pleased you, Father.”

  “It would please me,” General Yuwen put in, “if you’d stay off that leg for a while. Give Mulan’s fine stitches a chance to do their work.”

  “Why is everyone so bossy all of a sudden?” my father asked.

  “I’m hungry.”

  General Yuwen laughed, and set the lamp down. “So are we all.

  Let Mulan wash her hands, and then we will eat.” The four of us are together right there in the kitchen, gathered around the fire. General Yuwen, Li Po, my father, and I. the light of the fire played over all our faces as we devoured Min Xian’s good food.

  It was the happiest moment of my life.

  General Yuwen left at the end of the week with Li Po riding beside him.

  Li Po promised he would write as soon as he was settled in Chang’an. I was eager to know all about the city and the duties he would perform there.

  That day I awoke early, as soon as the red streaks of dawn began to mark the sky. I lit a stick of incense and said a prayer to the Hua family ancestors, asking them to watch over Li Po and General Yuwen, to keep them safe from harm. Then I put on my best dress on honor of their departure, vowing silently that I would keep it clean. I was out in the courtyard watching the sun come up when General Yuwen found me.

  “Good day to you, Hua Mulan,” he said. “Are you making the sun rise?”

  “You are the one doing that, I think,” I answered with a smile.

  “For she wants to keep an eye on you, to see you safely back to Chang’an.”

  “Thank you for your kind words,” the general said. “Will you walk with me to the stables, Mulan? There is a gift I would like to give you, if you will accept it.”

  “With pleasure,” I said.

  We walked to the stables in companionable silence.

  General Yuwen’s horse gave a whicker of greeting at the sight of us. The general produced a slice of apple from a hidden fold in his garments, offering it on a flat palm. Then he went to where his saddlebags lay ready to be strapped to the horse’s sides. General Yuwen took something from among them and then turned back to me.

  I caught my breath.

  It was a bow. The finger I had ever seen, the wood so smooth it seemed to glow. He held it out.

  “Let me see you try it,” the general said.

  I took it from him, feeling the weight of it in my hands. He did not have this made for me, I thought. I could tell that this bow had been designed for someone taller and stronger than I was. But I had no doubt I would be able to make it shoot true, if I practiced enough.

  Li Po had taught me to shoot using his own bow.

  I set my feet, as Li Po had taught me, lifted the bow, and pulled the string
back, taut. I held it there until my shoulders sang with the effort it took to hold the string straight and still. Then I eased it forward again, lowering the bow.

  “That was well done,” General Yuwen said. “I knew I had made a good choice.” He turned back to the saddlebags and produced a quiver of fine-tooled leather filled with arrows. “These belonged to my son.” My mouth dropped open before I could stop it. “Oh, but,” I stammered. “Surely Li Po…”

  “Li Po is as fine an archer as I have seen,” the general agreed.

  “You were absolutely right on that point. Nevertheless, I am giving this to you, Mulan. I would like you to have something to remember me by. But more than that…”

  He paused, and took a breath. “I would like to give you something to help you to remember yourself. To remember the dreams that you hold in your heart. I will be taking Li Po far away from here, and as a result you will be lonely. Perhaps this will help.”

  “It is a wonderful gift,” I said. “I will take good care of it, I promise. But I don’t have anything to give you in return.”

  “You are giving me your best friend,” the general said. “I think that’s more than gift enough. Now let’s go inside for breakfast before your father begins to fear that I intend to take you with me as well.” And so on a fine autumn morning I watched my oldest friend and my newest friend ride away together. And I wondered what would happen to those of us who stayed behind.

  EIGHT

  My days with my father soon fell into a rhythm. While he spoke no more than he had before, his silence no longer stung me with imagined comparisons between the daughter he had envisioned and the daughter he had actually found. This new silence felt gentler, more companionable somehow. As if my ability and determination to restitch his wound had enabled more than just the healing of his leg. it had created the possibility for us to heal as well.

  I caught my father watching me from time to time when he though I wouldn’t notice. He did this mostly in the mornings while I worked dutifully at my sewing. Sometimes I wondered if it was because I looked like my mother once had, hard at work with her own needle and thread. But although my father and I were slowly drawing closer, we both avoided the subject of my mother.

  My days were not all given over to traditional tasks, as I had once feared they might be. My father suggested I continue with my reading and writing. He set me a series of tests during our first days together, as if to judge my progress.

  “Your friend Li Po has taught you well,” he commented after reviewing my work. “You have a fine and steady hand with a calligraphy brush.”

  “Thank you, Father,” I answered, both astonished and pleased by the compliment.

  My father gazed at the characters I had made, as if reading something there I had not written that only he could decipher.

  “You must miss him very much,” he finally said.

  “Yes, I do,” I said. “But I…” I broke off, hesitating.

  My father looked up from his study of my work. “But what, Mulan?”

  “I am glad that General Yuwen wanted to make Li Po his aide,” I said. “It is a wonderful opportunity. It is perfect for him. I would not have you think – I wouldn’t wish Li Po back just because I miss him. I am not jealous of his good fortune or his happiness.” My father regarded me steadily for several moments. It was long enough for me to curl my toes inside my shoes, the closest I could come to squirming without giving myself away.

  “Your feelings do you credit, Mulan,” my father said at last. “I think…” Now he was the one to pause, as if he wished to use the perfect words or none at all.

  “I think that you would be a good friend to have.” Before I could think of an answer, my father tapped the sheet of paper in front of me with the end of his brush.

  “Now,” he said, “let us see if we can pick up where you and Li Po left off.”

  And so my father became my new teacher, teaching me even more characters than Li Po had. Surely there was not a girl in all of China with my skills, and nit simply because I could read and write.

  It took some time for me to decide what to do about General Yuwen’s gift of his son’s bow, quiver, and arrows. But I finally came to the conclusion that he had not bestowed such a gift only to have it collect dust. And so late one afternoon, as my father was following his usual custom of quiet contemplation out in the sunlight, I took General Yuwen’s gift from its hiding place and changed from one of my new dresses back into my tunic and pants. Then I headed to the old plum tree.

  There were no plums at this time of year, but there were still plenty of leaves to use for targets. The fact that I had learned to shoot on one of Li Po’s bows now came in handy, as it meant I was accustomed to handling a bow made for someone larger than I am. I made myself string and unstring the bow a half a dozen times, testing my strength against its weight before I so much as looked at an arrow.

  And even then I tested the tension of the string first, pulling it back, holding it steady, easing it forward another half a dozen times. Only when I felt certain that the bow and I understood each other did I select an arrow and put it to the string.

  I set my feet the way Li Po had always shown me, feeling the power of the ground beneath my feet. I pulled back the string, sighted, and then let the arrow fly. By a hand’s breadth it missed my intended target, a fat cluster of autumn-colored leaves at the end of one of the plum tree’s branches. Annoyed with myself, I made a rude sound. I took a second arrow and tried again. This one just tickled the leaves as it whisked by. My third arrow passed straight through the target, scattering greenery as it went. I lowered the bow and rolled my aching shoulders.

  “That is fine shooting,” I heard my father say. Startled, I spun around. I had been so engrossed in mastering my new bow that I hadn’t heard my father approach. We stood for a moment, gazing at each other. I was just opening my mouth to apologize for both acting and looking so unladylike, when my father spoke first.

  “May I see the bow?” he inquired.

  Wordlessly I brought it to him. He took it in both hands and examined it closely. “I know this bow,” he said at last. “It belonged to Yuwen Zhu, General Yuwen’s son.”

  “General Yuwen gave it to me as a parting gift,” I said.

  “Huh,” my father said, and I felt my heart plummet. In my experience this was the reply he gave when he wished to keep his feelings a secret.

  “Today is the first day you have used this?” my father asked.

  I nodded. “Yes, Baba.”

  Without warning my father lifted the bow as if to shoot it himself, pulling back the string.

  “Huh,” he said once more. He lowered the bow and turned to look at me. “And you show only twice before you found your mark?”

  “I shot three times,” I said, “and found my mark on the third try.

  The bow and I are still becoming acquainted.”

  “Hmm,” my father said. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this new comment.

  “I suppose it was your friend Li Po who taught you to shoot as well.”

  “Yes, Father,” I said again, and then decided it might be better to get it all over with at once. “And to ride a horse, and to use a sword, though I’m better at riding and archery than at swordsmanship.”

  “Is that so?” said my father.

  “I’m sorry to have deceived you,” I began, “but I –” My father held up a hand, and I fell silent. “I don’t think

  ‘deception’ is quite the right word,” he said quietly. “I never asked if you could do such things, for it never occurred to me that you might be able to. When I was away, I didn’t think much at all about what you might or might not do, to tell you the truth.” An expression I had never seen before came and went in his eyes, too quickly for me to be able to identify it.

  “Is there anything else that I should know about?”

  “No,” I answered as steadily as I could. “At least, I don’t think so.”

  “So let me see
if I have this right,” my father went on. “I have a daughter who can read, write, ride a horse, wield a sword, and accurately shoot an arrow with a bow that would make a strong young man work hard. She can also weave, sew as fine a seam as I have ever seen, and embroider.”

  “Yes,” I said, “but I hate the embroidery.”

  “I am glad to hear it,” my father answered without missing a beat. “In my experience those who are good at everything usually are also good at being insufferable.”

  I opened my mouth, and then closed it without making a sound.

  “I don’t know what to say,” I confessed.

  At this my father laughed aloud. And suddenly the expression on his face that I had been unable to read before made perfect sense. It was amusement.