Seeing me standing there without moving, he urges me. “You’d better hurry get the fire going. I am starving.”
“You’d better get the fish fast or I will be too sleepy and too tired to eat.” I mumble and then go look for twigs and branches.
As soon as I get the fire going, he has already caught three fish and prepared them with scaling and gutting. I am surprised on how well he knows about preparing fish. He grew up in such a prestigious environment, I do not think he would ever need to cook for himself.
“Where did you learn to do this?” I ask him while he is putting a branch through the fish.
“I go hunting a lot.” He gives me a short explanation and then puts the fish sticks away from the direct fire flames.
“I thought you grew up with servants all around you.” I mutter.
He chuckles while the fire is dancing shadows on his face. “I never had any servant. Since I was eight years old, I have been living with other imperial guards. I have to do everything by myself.”
“You mean, you have been living on your own since you were eight?” I can’t help but feel sorry for this guy. Comparing with him, I might have been really well spoiled when I was eight. With two house maids and one nanny, I also had a slew of private tutors. I had thought he probably had a better childhood than me.
“Yes, I was the youngest imperial guard ever. I did not want to live in my mom’s place anymore and I was causing too much trouble for my uncle. I used to fight a lot with other kids in Chang’an. My uncle was tired of apologizing to others all the time. So he put me as a guard under him. I was trained like everybody else.” He gives a low laughter.
I laugh too with the image of him being the little rascal wandering on the streets of Chang’an and picking fights with others. Since I have met him, he has always acted responsibly towards everything. I can hardly imagine him being a street fighter.
“How did you end up to be Emperor Wu’s special assistant?” I ask him curiously.
“My mom thought my uncle was too tough on me. So she asked Empress Wei to pull me out. Between Empress Wei and my uncle, Emperor Wu decided to make me his special assistant. So I could get pulled out once a while, at the same time I could get disciplined by my uncle.”
“It sounds like you used to be a headache for all of them.” I laugh.
He seems agree with my assessment without saying anything.
“That’s not ready yet.” I tell him when he trying to bite into the fish on the stick.
“That’s alright, I even ate raw horse meat when I was in the front.”
“Yuck.” I feel disgusted. “If you don’t fully cook the meat, the bacteria inside might be still alive and they will get you really sick.”
“What is bacteria?”
“It’s a tiny little living organism.” I explain to him. “We always carry them with us. They can be good or bad. When the bad ones pass to us, we become very sick.”
“Show me.” He says.
“Unless we have microscope, otherwise we cannot see them with naked eyes.”
“What is microscope?”
“…” I decide to give up.
The fish are delicious after slow roasted over the fire. But I can barely finish one.
“You don’t eat much.” He takes mine away and eats the rest of it without hesitation.
I try to tell him the fish has my germs now, but then I stop myself. If he can eat raw horse meat, the germ from me does not sound that hideous.
After we eat, I clean myself by the river and decide to get into my sleeping bag right away. It has been a long day.
He lies down next to me after he cleans himself.
“Shiaonu,” He calls me just before my eyes about to glue together. “I am sorry for what I have said. I don’t know why I said those awful things about you. Every time when I was with you, I just could not control my temper. I am not usually that way.”
“Forget about it.” I yawn. “We just don’t see things eye to eye. I have never been popular anyway. It’s just that you are the only one ever scolded me like that.”
“But that’s not how I think of you.” He says in frustration. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I am usually very cool about things.”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me either.” I sigh. “I have tried so hard to get on your good side and I ended up doing nothing but annoying you.”
“You did not annoy me.” He protests first then he changes his mind. “Well, maybe a little.”
I laugh in silence. After a long while, he says to me. “Go back to Chang’an with me. I will help you.”
“I won’t. I don’t want to get drowned.” I grumble while my eyelids become too heavy to continue any conversation with him.
I wake up and find myself sleeping inside his arms. I am still in my sleeping bag while he wraps both of us with his blanket.
He is still sleeping. I can see his chest moving along with the slow and steady breathe.
The breeze in the morning is cool and refreshing. It not only quickly clears up my head, but also diminishes any desire to stay in his warmth. I can’t imagine what he will think of me once he finds us in such a dubious position, given how low an opinion he has about me.
I slowly and carefully pull myself away from him.
Feeling my move, he lets go of me, turns on his back and continues sleeping.
I sit up after I break away from him. The air is fresh and crisp. I can smell the grass around us. The rose colored clouds predict another sunny day ahead.
I then turn to watch Huo. He looks quite peaceful. His mouth is relaxed and his forehead is bright and smooth. I feel like combing through his thick and dark hair with my finger tips and trace his lips, his cheeks and his eyes softly. I see his eyelashes move as the wings of butterfly.
“Morning.” He opens his eyes suddenly.
“Ah… hi… morning.” I blush on being caught staring at him stupidly. “I will go and wash myself by the river.”
I get up and run to the river.
The water is cool when splashing on my warm face. After wash, I sit down on the river bank, waiting for my racing heart to calm down.
The morning sun, gleaming over the river and mountains in a red hue, inches up slowly but mesmerizingly.
When I walk back to where we camped, I find him still lying down there.
“Do you want to sleep more?” I ask him.
“Come here.” He says to me.
“What for?”
“Come here and let me find out something.” He sounds serious.
So I lie down next to him. He turns me on my stomach.
“What’s wrong?”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were injured yesterday?”
“What are you talking about?” I tried to sit up, but he presses me down.
“Let me check how bad it is.” He tries to lift my dress up from my back.
“Stop” I push his hand away and sit up angrily. “What are you doing?”
“Look here.” He removes the sleeping bag and I see a large blood stain on the white fur blanket.
“No… no...” I cannot believe my first menstrual cycle comes in at such a bad timing.
“Let me wrap up the wound and we can go find a doctor right away.” He gets on his feet.
“That’s not injury.” I don’t know how to tell him.
“Then what is it?” He seems irritated by my slow response. “Let me help you stop the bleeding first.”
I am dumbfounded by him. “You really don’t know?”
“What should I know?”
“You really don’t know every women, every month…” I try to hint him.
“What is it?” He becomes impatient.
I cover my mouth with both of my hands and start laughing. All these time, I have thought of him as this larger than life figure, even when he is mad at me, I tried to blame on myself, thinking he should have known better than me. But actually he is just a boy, a seventeen year old boy who
does not even know what a menstrual cycle is. I am pretty sure there is no teaching in Han about sex or puberty. I cannot help myself feeling how stupid I have been.
His face grows darker with my laughter. And my heart turns tender towards his awkwardness. I know from this moment, he is going to be different in my mind, his rough edges will be forever softly wrapped with the understanding and forgiveness.
“I am sorry.” I try very hard to compose myself to a calm state. “I have just realized something.”
“Are you going to tell me what it is or you are just going to laugh at me?” He frowns on me.
With a very serious tone, I tell him. “Every girl, when she reaches certain age, she will start having menstrual cycle, which means she will start bleed for a few days every month.”
“Every month?” His face twists together with disbelief.
“Yes, unless she becomes pregnant.” I try to act seriously.
“Does it hurt?”
“Cramping most of the time.”
“Where do you bleed?”
I pause on this question. “Ugh…at … the….” My face turns red. I cannot say it to him.
He blushes too. So he doesn’t press on me.
“So what do you do?” He asks. “Just let it bleed?”
“I really do not know.” Where can I find tampons? Where can I find feminine napkins?
We decide to go to his mom for help.
He has promised me to keep me hidden in his mom’s place and if he cannot find a solution for my problem within a month, he will send me off without trying to stop me.
His mom almost cried when she saw us.
“I don’t come here often.” Huo explains to me. “She and her husband live here.” Actually he only comes to his mom’s house once a year, according to his mom.
Huo was a pre-marital illegitimate son. His mom, who was just a servant maid in Princess Pingyang’s household. His father was a low ranking clerk. He dumped her when she was pregnant and married somebody else immediately.
Luckily, Huo’s mom has a good sister, Wei Zifu, who married Emperor Wu and became Empress after she borne him his first son. Huo’s mom later married a famous aristocracy, a decreed marriage arranged by Emperor Wu. They have been happily married for more than fifteen years. But somehow Huo still find it’s more comfortable living in the house of his uncle, General Wei, or in Palace with Emperor Wu, or in barrack. He has been brought up mostly by General Wei and became the special personal assistant of Emperor Wu since he was only eight years old.
Having known all these from the history book, I still find it heartbroken to hear pieces from him or his mom, especially with my latest realization that he is just a boy, two years older than my age in this world, one year younger than my real age.
His mom, regardless of everything she has gone through, still holds a young girl’s heart inside. She laughs a lot and cries easy. You can almost see or hear what she is thinking. She is like a clear glass that simply contains happiness and kindness, anything complicated or evil will be overflown naturally. I can see why Huo has nothing to say to his mom. He is totally opposite from her.
She sews me a few menstrual belts with clean wood ashes inside. I can dump the ashes and wash the belts for reuse.
Naturally she is very curious about me. When she finds out I ran away because of arranged marriage, she shows her support. She has even told me her husband was her lover before Emperor Wu married her to him. I like her instantly.
We spend most of the time together during the day. She tries to teach me how to dance and how to sing. I treat it as a way to kill time. Eventually I find out that she and her two sisters, including Empress, used to form a band. They sang and danced together. I have met Empress Wei and knew how stunning she is. Now Huo’s mom. I can only imagine three beautiful young girls singing and dancing in the center of the stage. What a beautiful trio!
Huo’s mom reminds me of a beautiful bohemia woman who chooses to love life and enjoy everything life has offered.
I sometimes wonder how a free spirited woman, who braces love enthusiastically and bravely, ends up having such an uptight son. It is probably not fair to call him uptight any more, since I have seen his smiles more often. His bad temper towards me has also completely vanished.
He usually comes home in the evening for dinner, which has always been served with good food, along with the dominate conversation between his mom and me, with an occasional contribution from his step father, and the absolute silence from him.
He asked me once how I have found so many things to talk with his mom. I did not know how to answer him. To me, his mother is very easy to get along. Not only we have a lot of common interests, we hold the similar attitude towards life as well. Neither one of us have an absolute goal set ahead of us. We tend to relax and enjoy life whenever we can, as much as we can.
Huo pulls out something from his sleeve pocket and hands it to me. We are sitting in the woods behind his mom’s house.
“What is it?” I ask.
“A wood hair pin.”
It is really a hand-made hairpin, a badly made one, I have to say. Out of a hunch, I ask him. “You made it yourself?”
“Yes.” He turns his head away from me. I think I see him blushing.
“When did you make it?”
“When I was in the front. It was very boring with lots of free time. Xiongnu has been avoiding us and we could not find them for three months. ” He says.
“So you made a hair pin for me when you were bored?” I cannot help smiling.
“This is actually the fifth one. “He says it honestly. “I kept breaking them just when they were almost ready.”
I did not ask him why he has waited three months to give it to me. He looks uncomfortable enough. So I just put it in my hair and showed it to him with my head turned away.
“Shiaonu, can you draw another picture just like the one you sent to Ponu?” He asks me one day.
“Sure, what for?”
“I believe I know how to help you now.” He says. “And it will solve your problem once and for all.”
“Really? How?”
“Just draw a nice picture and I will take care of the rest.” He assures me.
Luckily I have left some homemade papers at Dongfang Shuo’s home, otherwise I really don’t know how to draw on silk with charcoal. Huo retrieved a stack of paper for me, along with a letter from Dongfang Shuo, who told me I need to carry thorns on my back to ask for forgiveness, or he wrote at the very end, I can supply him with Baijiu for the rest of his life.
For the next ten days, I come up with two drawings: One is a scene of a pier on Weihe River with buildings, boats, fields and mountains in sunset; the other is a scene of winter banquet with laughing Emperors and his companions: beautiful Empress, handsome General Wei and drunk Dongfang Shuo.
When I give them to Huo, he watches them carefully. Then he smiles and points out something from each drawing. Two vague figures with horses on the first one and two vague figures by the door on the second one.
The day he comes back with a broad smile accompanied by a eunuch from Palace. I know I am free.
“How did you do it?” I run to him.
“Now you are officially a student in Imperial University.” He tells me while stopping me by holding my arms.
“How could that be possible? Emperor Wu would not even allow me to sit in.”
“Not until he found out you are the one who designed the saddle, and you are the one who learned how to read and write within three months. When I handed him your drawings, he took them away and would not return to me. My uncle told him how the design of your saddle speed up the new cavalry to learn to ride and how it helped our soldiers in battle fields. Dongfang Shuo also mentioned that you have received full collection of Huainanzi from King Huainan, Emperor Wu knew he’d better keep you in his court. So everything after that is easy. “
“You teamed up with General Wei and Dongfang Shuo?”
“Yes
, I talked with both of them and they went with me in front of Emperor Wu.” He smiles at me. “Now, you own them both Baijiu for life.”
“But how does it solve the problem of my arranged marriage?”
“Being accepted by Imperial University means you are tax exempt for life. Even if you stay single for the rest of your life, you are not going to be punished by tax.”
“So staying single still breaks the law, but the punishment of it doesn’t apply to me anymore.” I finally figure that out.
“That’s right.”
“And the marriage contract with Huang?”
“That’s another matter needs to be taken care of.” He continues. “Do not worry. Dealing with Huang is rather easy.”
“How can it be easy?”
“Gold or a big stick.”
I laugh. “Who told you that?”
“His Majesty.” He laughs too.
15 Nightmare
The home coming was more than I can handle. Niang’s tears just kept pouring, while Papa and Jinu were choking with words. My tears ran freely too, but my face was with smiles. When Ponu came home and grabbed me into his arms, both of us cried loudly in front of everyone.
The eunuch came home with us was from Emperor Wu. He was patient enough until we all calmed down and bowed down in front of him. He opened a silk roll and announced the imperial decree.
I knew the content already, but it sure has stunned my family: I became the first female student in Imperial University and thus I am exempt from all tax duties.
Jinu immediately thanked that eunuch with a small purse of gold nuggets inside. But instead, the eunuch asked for Baijiu. Jinu insisted on him taking the purse and also sent him five big jars of liquor when he went back to Palace.
The dinner was served at our own house where Papa got drunk at the end. Huo could only explain to Jinu and Ponu about the plan with Huang.
Just when they were ready to go to Huang for the cancellation of the engagement, the news came: Mr. Huang, my fiancée, was killed when he got into a fight with someone at a brothel house. Both of them were drunk and the other guy escaped soon after.
My Soul is in the Sky Page 15