The History of Mischief

by Rebecca Higgie

  ‘Isn’t it lovely? Have you been down to the bakery? Didn’t I tell you they have the best jam donuts? What is your favourite thing about Guildford so far?’

  ‘Well, I like the house mainly. Jessie likes the park.’

  ‘I like the big gravestone,’ I say.

  ‘She means the war memorial,’ Kay says to Grandma.

  ‘No, I mean the big gravestone.’

  ‘Anyway, we found a book in the study. It was in a secret compartment in the floor,’ Kay says. Then she brings the History out of her backpack. I can’t believe she made me read Winnie the Pooh on the train. She hands it to Grandma, who looks surprised.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘It’s The History of Mischief!’ I say. ‘Are you A. Mischief, Grandma? We haven’t read it all yet, Kay won’t let me. Are you in there?’

  ‘Jessie, calm down,’ Kay says.

  Grandma hands the book back. She doesn’t really look at it.

  ‘I’ve never heard of it,’ she says. ‘It must’ve been left there by the people before us.’

  ‘Really?’ I ask.

  ‘Sorry, dear.’

  I put my hand in my pocket and then remember Kay has taken all the keys. ‘It’s on the gate key, Grandma, Property of A. Mischief. Don’t you remember?’

  ‘Not really.’

  But Grandma never forgets anything. I wonder if this is what Lulu meant by ‘erratic behaviour’. Grandma changes the subject and Kay seems fine with it. They talk about pointless things for another half-hour. I eat ALL the Tim Tams (one normal, four double coat, two chewy caramel). I feel angry but no one notices.

  Kay won’t let us read the History on the way home. She tries to talk to me on the train but I ignore her. It is raining but the train is on tracks, so we can’t go anywhere even if the wind blows really hard. And there are walls between the tracks and the road. Even if a car slips it won’t hit us.

  It’s still raining by the time we get to Guildford.

  ‘If you stop sulking and keep dry, we can read the next history before bed,’ Kay says.

  ‘Okay,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Kay opens up her umbrella and puts her backpack on her chest. She hugs it with one arm and holds the umbrella with the other. We both get a bit wet but the backpack stays dry.

  ‘Thank you for taking me to Grandma’s,’ I say when we get home. I smile so Kay won’t think I’m sulking.

  A. Mischief the Forty-Ninth

  Northern Wei, China 423 AD – 445 AD

  The day the mischief came my daughter left for war.

  She handed me a leather-bound collection of papers and smiled casually, like she was simply handing me a cup of tea.

  ‘Don’t worry, Mother.’

  Then she rode off.

  I never thought she’d go. Not even when she came home dressed as a soldier, her long hair cut clean off. Even when she galloped away, I thought she’d loop around the bend, disappear for a moment, and come back.

  Mulan should have been a boy. She started moving when she was just a small bump in my belly. Friends declared that the great Hua Hu had a son who was already practising the martial arts that earned him such respect as a younger man. When she arrived, Hu laughed as he was told his son was actually a daughter. He announced she’d be fiercer than the lazy sons of our neighbours. And she was.

  I complained when Hu gave Mulan her first sword at age five, but there seemed little I could do. Soon she picked up the bow, and then the lance, and by this point I’d given up. It was easy, in a way, because she also sat with me at the loom. She went hunting in a face made up with powder and rouge. She was my little girl and her father’s son. She was nine when I finally managed to give her a sibling, her sister Munan, and twelve when our first and only son, Yao’er, was born.

  She was sixteen when she handed me The History of Mischief and left.

  The cock crowed. I opened my eyes and counted twelve, twelve days she’d been gone. I wanted nothing more than to stay in bed. But Hu was waiting.

  I got up, dressed, and went to the kitchen. I prepared a simple meal, some rice and soybeans with a little pork, and went to Hu’s room.

  I opened the door slowly and said, ‘Good morning, my darling.’

  I didn’t wait for his response. I came in, placed the bowl on the small table beside his bed and went to the windows. I opened a small wedge in them, letting the morning light and cool air seep in.

  I helped him sit up. Some days, he wouldn’t need help. Some days he would. Some days his hands shook and he couldn’t hold his chopsticks. That day, he hung his head as I propped him up against a pile of cushions. His hands trembled.

  I retrieved the bowl and fed him. He chewed slowly, clenching and cracking the shaking hands in his lap. I smiled at him the whole time, offering encouragement – ‘There there, eat up, no rush, enjoy’ – as he made his way through the bowl. He didn’t look at me, his shame so heavy it left him hunched over, but just as I put the bowl down and wiped his face with a damp towel, he glanced up and our eyes met. In those sad eyes I saw every unspoken apology, every feeling of guilt, his emasculation coupled with his gratitude, and he said so quietly and earnestly, ‘thank you’. I stroked his cheek and said as sincerely as I could, ‘my pleasure’.

  When I took the bowl back to the kitchen, I noticed the strange gift from my daughter, sitting by a cold teapot. Why had I ignored it for so long? It was thick and heavy, like a block of wood. As I opened it, it cracked, as if the leather was centuries old. I flicked through the pages. They weren’t particularly remarkable. Strange squiggles and symbols on each page, all in the same black ink. Some scripts I recognised: Chinese names of men and women. I saw my husband’s name and then Mulan’s, the last one listed in this strange book of sorts.

  I felt the ache of missing and touched Mulan’s handwriting.

  Flashes of other lives filled my vision. I saw through the eyes of so many different souls, of people with rounded eyes, black skin, and hair the colour of wheat and fire. I lived – and it was living, for I felt their heartbeats, felt their fear and joy. I felt the heat of fire blazing through a library. I laughed as I was thrown off a tower and flew. I questioned a thousand different gods as centuries passed. I wondered every time where the mischief had come from.

  Then I saw myself, young, through my husband’s eyes. I saw him use this strange magic to orchestrate our meeting, to save my father from a group of robbers who were but shadows he commanded. Then I saw Mulan, five years old. Hu gave her the book on the same day she received her first sword. Through her eyes, I saw her sneaking around me as she and her father trained. Then I saw her great act of mischief, at the age of twelve: stealing a penjing tree from a wealthy lord, a beautiful gift she simply left outside my room, one I always assumed was from her father.

  As the memories became mine, not a second passed in my world. I was shocked to find myself back in my kitchen, the day still so young.

  My penjing tree had long been neglected. I felt guilty as I approached it under the veranda, knowing now the effort Mulan had gone to in stealing it. Penjing require maintenance, care. My tree, a trident maple with its roots stretched taut over a large rock, was overgrown and a thick layer of its three-pronged leaves rotted at its base. I touched it lightly and its leaves quivered, as if to wave at me. I spent some time pruning it, listening as the world around me woke: chickens rustling in their coop, doors opening and closing in the house, the squeal of a kettle.

  It was strange that the magical book set me back to my mundane routine. I’d done nothing but the bare minimum since Mulan left, only feeding my husband and children. I had no feats of sorcery in me. I was a sphere of a woman who went from one chore to the next, my once milky skin tanned almond from hours in the garden. What great mischief could a woman like me muster?

  I remembered a moment early in Hu’s sickness, as I went door to door selling eggs. A neighbour’s husband asked how I did it, how I managed to do everything now that my husband was an invali
d. How did I manage the finances, care for my family, grow the vegetables, clean the gutters, build the chicken coop, keep out thieves? I resented everything in those questions, the fake pity, the way he emphasised the word invalid. More than anything, I resented the implication that the task was bigger than me, that all these things were new. I narrowed my eyes and said, ‘Women have always done this.’

  So, let the History record this: the chores of Hua Yingtai. Let it follow me as I clean out the chicken coop. I’ve quietly done more than every tale in its wicked pages.

  Every day, I sat with the trident maple. Long ago, I had fashioned wire over its branches to shape it into a leaning position. Shaping required months and years. As the plant grew and aged, the shapes that had been wired into its hardening bark were fixed in place. With the mischief, I could shape the branches like they were sand. The tree, such an old thing, sang as its aged bark dissolved and twisted into the shape of a dragon. I smiled as I wondered if Yao’er would be able to spot the shape in this one. He checked the tree daily, waiting for new figures to appear.

  ‘Spirits live in our garden! They’re trying to trick me!’ he claimed. No one took much notice. A boy who saw spirits in plants was just a silly child telling stories. I hoped he’d stop when he got old enough for childish eccentricity to be taken for adult madness, but the delight I felt when I heard his squeals of joy tear through the house made it worth the worry.

  ‘It’s a dragon today, Mummy, a dragon!’

  And I would say, ‘Of course it is,’ and that would be that.

  I tried to speak to Hu, tried to share the wonder of surprising our sweet boy with such tricks, but the mischief wouldn’t let me. This made no sense. Mulan’s memories showed Hu talking about the histories with her quite freely. Mischiefs who passed the History on, often coaching their successor, didn’t lose their abilities either. So why was he bedridden, when once the mischief helped him move so freely? Sometimes I dropped rice when I fed him and looked away, hoping he’d use the mischief to pick it up. When I turned back the rice was still resting on his chin or lap, and he looked at me with sad eyes. The rules of mischief, it seemed, were not fixed. It was as if it couldn’t settle on what it was. I concluded that was why the word mischief had been chosen to describe it. It was benign and troublesome, benevolent and cruel, seen and unseen. It was fickle.

  Outside was where I felt it most. I carried my shears only for show now, pruning plants just by running my hands over their branches. I drew water out of the soil and into the roots of starved crops. Sometimes, I gathered insects without touching them, their little bodies hovering behind me in a swarm, and flung them into my neighbour’s yard. I knew it was wrong but that little tickle of mischief took hold sometimes.

  I boiled water with the click of my fingers. I could feel when the water reached the optimum temperature for more delicate tea, bringing it to just below boiling and resting it there. I could smell when a cucumber was ripe. I could hear when eggs were waiting for me in the coop. I saw Yao’er pinch Munan behind my back. Mischief wasn’t an unlimited form of power; it was an enhancement of one’s existing abilities. I spent years doing this. Making mischief out of managing a house.

  As time went by, I sank into the magic like one settles into a chair that has, over the years, moulded around you. It was a feeling more than anything. I was bound to the world, to the house and the life within it. My body was tethered to the heartbeats of my children, the germinating seeds outside, and the wind that rustled between the trees that shaded the vegetable garden.

  Seven years passed.

  Yao’er stopped checking the penjing and Munan, in the spirit of her older sister, gave up any pretence that she was ‘watering the garden’ when she was firing arrows into a now thoroughly splintered tree behind the chicken coop. We received three letters from Mulan in that time. She signed them with her father’s name and said the war was going well, that she was happy and had many new brothers among the ranks. I read them to Hu, leaving out the part in the most recent letter where she warned us that there were bandits looting villages close to the mountains near our home.

  I started dreaming of her, or, with her. She was older, stronger, her skin rippled with gashes and scars. I sat on her shoulder as she fought, listening to her grunt and pant.

  ‘Behind you,’ I warned.

  She turned and slashed the man who snuck up on her. I felt her thoughtless panic, fear so primal it left her mind blank, as she battled like she was trying to fight a sea of ants from enveloping her.

  ‘To the left.’

  They felt like more than dreams. They didn’t come often, but every night when I lay down to bed, I stretched the tendrils of my mischief out into the world and begged them to find her.

  Plumes of black smoke billowed out of the forest-rimmed horizon. It was far away, so only the faintest smell reached us, but it rose like a warning. I didn’t say anything to Hu, keeping the windows closed so the smell wouldn’t disturb him. He fed himself that morning, eating his breakfast angrily as if he knew I was hiding something.

  ‘Fetch Munan and Yao’er,’ he said as he handed back the bowl.

  I sent the children to him and went about the day’s routine, cleaning and watering mindlessly, my thoughts on the fire and the bandits in Mulan’s letters. Please come home, I begged her silently. As I walked to the chicken coop, my sandals squelched. I was drawing water out of the earth with every step I took.

  ‘It’s alright,’ I muttered to myself, wishing my worry away from the mischief. ‘It’s alright.’

  ‘Mother.’

  Yao’er’s voice was quiet but I jumped. He’d snuck up behind me.

  ‘Father asked us to call the neighbours to meet with him. He didn’t want you to know, but I thought maybe you should. Some of them have already arrived,’ he whispered.

  I nodded and touched him briefly on the cheek before going inside. He followed a few steps behind. When I came in, Munan scowled at him.

  There were four men in Hu’s room, all from nearby houses. One lent heavily on a walking stick, and sagged as we bowed our greeting to one another. The same scowl from Munan appeared on Hu’s face as he looked for Yao’er behind me.

  ‘Sit, boy,’ the walking-stick-wielding elder commanded to Yao’er.

  ‘He’s eleven,’ Hu said. ‘My daughter will sit with us. Yao’er, help your mother with the tea.’

  Munan bowed deeply, I suspect to hide her smile, and drew up a chair for herself. Yao’er followed me to the kitchen.

  The kitchen was some distance from Hu’s room. I sent the mischief out, leaving my ear in that room.

  ‘Not even I, confined to this bed, can ignore the whispers,’ Hu said. ‘Smoke rises from our neighbours in the mountains. The forest is the only thing separating us from the looting that has befallen them.’

  ‘My son calls them leopards,’ one man said. ‘Their leader is a man known only as Leopard Skin. They say he is twice the size of a normal man, thrice as broad.’

  ‘I don’t doubt the veracity of your son’s testimony but these aren’t hardened warriors burning our villages. They are petty vandals. They can be frightened away.’

  ‘By what? Whoever they are, they’ve taken advantage of the fact that we are without our strongest heirs. We are towns of elders and children.’

  ‘Perhaps we can bribe them,’ one man suggested.

  ‘One cannot bribe men who have the power to take everything,’ the elder’s voice came, deep and low. ‘I sent my youngest to the capital a week ago. Hopefully he can convince the Emperor to release our sons before the bandits arrive. It may be too late, but we can do little else.’

  Yao’er’s voice, so little and young, came into my ears. ‘Mother.’

  My attention returned to the kitchen. He stood there, a teapot in his hands.

  ‘The tea is ready. Shall I …?’

  I took the teapot from him and smiled. ‘No, darling, let me.’

  I listened to the voices in Hu’s room as I appr
oached.

  ‘They have a pattern,’ Hu said. ‘They burn the surrounds of a village to frighten people and force them out into the open. They’ll burn the forest first.’

  I served the tea. The men looked through and around me as if I wasn’t there. Only one, the same man who’d questioned how I was managing all those years ago, bowed as I filled his cup.

  ‘Perhaps we should run,’ he suggested. He gestured at Munan. ‘We cannot have our daughters face the same disgrace as our sisters in the north.’

  ‘Perhaps if your daughters could fight like me they wouldn’t have to,’ Munan said.

  Before any could rebuke her, Hu spoke. ‘My daughter is right but there’s no time to train them. Perhaps fleeing is our only option.’

  As I filled the last cup, Hu motioned for me to leave. I left the pot by his bed and listened from outside.

  ‘I’ve lived seventy-two years in this village,’ the elder said. ‘I’m not abandoning it to some roaming phantoms. Flee if you wish, but these gangs roam every road. If we put up enough of a fight, they’ll leave and never come back. Gather your grandsons. Better to fight at home than fight on the road.’

  The back and forth continued until the tea went cold. There was no resolution. Some said they’d run at any sight of fire in our forest; others said they’d fight with what little men they had. As they left, the elder rather gloomily told them that whether they fled or stayed, they should give daggers to their wives and daughters. The men nodded soberly.

  Munan was annoyed by this. As she cleaned up after they’d left, she seethed. It was unfair, she said, that those were the only options for women: be protected by good men or commit suicide to save oneself from wicked ones. She yelled at Yao’er for the rest of the day.

  Hu slept, fatigued from the neighbours’ visit. When I brought him his evening meal, he was revived, his eyes alert and hopeful despite the shaking in his hands.

  ‘We only need to frighten them, you know,’ he said to me.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The bandits. We only need to frighten them. These are just leopards separated from the pack, not an army. There are too many for us to fight, but we could easily scare them. They’re deeply superstitious.’