Wild Orchid

If I had been a son, I could have gone to fight in my father’s place
.

My father could have remained home and our family could still have kept its honor. But I was not a boy; I was a girl. A girl who could ride a horse, with or without a saddle. A girl who could shoot an arrow from a bow made for a tall, strong man and still hit her target. A girl who had never wanted what other girls want. A girl unlike any other girl in China.

I must not let my father go to fight
, I thought.
I will not
.

I would not watch my father ride away, and then stay behind to comfort my stepmother as she cried herself to sleep at night. I loved them both too much. And I had waited too long for my father to come home in the first place to stand in the door of our home now and watch him ride away to die.

And so I would do the only thing I could to protect both my father’s life and our family’s honor: I would go to fight in his place. I would prove myself to be my father’s child, even if I was a daughter.

“O
NCE UPON A
T
IME
”
IS TIMELESS WITH THESE RETOLD TALES
:

Beauty Sleep
Cameron Dokey

Midnight Pearls
Debbie Viguié

Snow
Tracy Lynn

Water Song
Suzanne Weyn

The Storyteller’s Daughter
Cameron Dokey

Before Midnight
Cameron Dokey

Golden
Cameron Dokey

The Rose Bride
Nancy Holder

Sunlight and Shadow
Cameron Dokey

The Crimson Thread
Suzanne Weyn

Belle
Cameron Dokey

The Night Dance
Suzanne Weyn

Wild Orchid
Cameron Dokey

The Diamond Secret
Suzanne Weyn

CAMERON DOKEY

If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

SIMON PULSE

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www.SimonandSchuster.com

First Simon Pulse paperback edition February 2009

Copyright © 2009 by Cameron Dokey

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

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.

The text of this book was set in Adobe Jenson.

Manufactured in the United States of America

4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3

Library of Congress Control Number 2008932845
ISBN 978-1-4169-7168-9
eISBN-13: 978-1-416-98531-0

For Suzanne, Rosa, Anne, Sara, and Michel,
the gang at Cameron Catering without
whose support Mulan’s adventures would
not have been possible

O
NE

When the wild wood orchids bloom in the spring, pushing their brave faces from beneath the fallen leaves of winter, that is when mothers like to take their daughters on their knees and sing to them “The Ballad of Mulan,” the story of the girl who saved all of China. For if you listen closely to the syllables of that name, this is what you’ll hear there:
mu
—“wood”;
lan
—“orchid.”

Listening is a good habit to learn for its own sake, as is the art of looking closely. All of us show many faces to the world. No one shows her true face all the time. To do that would be dangerous, for what is seen can also be known. And what is known can be out-maneuvered, outguessed. Lifted up, or hunted down. Uncovering that which is hidden is a fine and delicate skill, as great a weapon for a warrior to possess as a bow or a sword.

I sound very wise and knowledgeable for someone not yet twenty, don’t I?

I certainly didn’t sound that way at the beginning of my adventure. And there are plenty of times even now when wise and knowledgeable is not the way I
sound, or feel. So what do I feel? A reasonable question, which deserves an honest answer.

I feel … fortunate.

I have not led an ordinary life, nor a life that would suit everyone. I took great risks, but because I did, I also earned great rewards. I found the way to show my true face freely, without fear. Because of this, I found true love.

Oh, yes. And I did save China.

But I am getting very far ahead of myself.

I was born in the year of the monkey, and I showed the monkey’s quick and agile mind from the start, or so Min Xian, my nanny, always told me. I shared the monkey’s delight in solving puzzles, its ability to improvise. Generally this took the form of escaping from places where I was supposed to stay put, and getting into places I wasn’t supposed to go. My growing up was definitely a series of adventures, followed by bumps, bruises, and many scoldings.

There was the time I climbed the largest plum tree on our grounds, for instance. When the plum trees were in bloom, you could smell their sweetness from a distance so great I never could figure out quite how far it was. One year, the year I turned seven, I set myself a goal: to watch the highest bud on the tallest tree become a blossom. The tallest tree was my favorite. Ancient and gnarled, it stood with its feet in a stream that marked the boundary between my family’s property and that of my closet friend—my only friend, in fact—a boy named Li Po.

Seven is considered an important age in China. In our seventh year, childhood comes to an end. Girls begin the lessons that will one day make them proper young women, and boys begin the lessons that will make them proper young men.

Li Po was several months older than me. He had already begun the first of his lessons, learning to read and write. My own would be much less interesting—as far as I was concerned, anyway. I would be taught to weave, to sew, and to embroider. Worst of all was the fact that all these lessons would occur in the very last place I wanted to be: indoors.

So in a gesture of defiance, on the morning of my seventh birthday, I woke up early, determined to climb the ancient plum tree and not come down until the bud I had my eye on blossomed. You can probably guess what happened next. I climbed higher than I should have, into branches that would not hold my weight, and, as a result, I fell. Old Lao, who looked after any part of the Hua family compound that Min Xian did not, claimed it was a wonder I didn’t break any bones. I had plummeted from the top of the tree to the bottom, with only the freshly turned earth of the orchard to break my fall. The second wonder was that I hit the ground at all, and did not fall into the stream, which was shallow and full of stones.

Broken bones I may have been spared, but I still hit the earth with enough force to knock even the
thought
of breath right out of my lungs. For many moments all I could do was lie on my back, waiting
for my breath to return, and gaze up through the dark branches of the tree at the blue spring sky beyond. And in this way I saw the first bud unfurl. So I suppose you could say that I accomplished what I’d set out to, after all.

Another child might have decided it was better, or at least just as good, to keep her feet firmly on the ground from then on. Had I not accomplished what I’d wanted? Could I not have done so standing beneath the tree and gazing upward, thereby saving myself the pain and trouble of a fall?